NEW YORK - The world's richest person, two former heads of state and a globetrotting economist were all subject to President Ruth Simmons' questions as she led a panel discussion on solutions to global poverty and disease yesterday in New York City at the Clinton Global Initiative.
Former President Bill Clinton's second annual meeting for international leaders in diverse fields, the event encourages participants to both consider and commit to solutions to world issues. By the end of its first day, the event raised more than $2 billion for commitments related to the conference's four themes: climate change, poverty, global health and religious and ethnic conflict.
Simmons' panel came at the end of the first day's sessions and focused on how institutions and individuals could effectively target large-scale problems through specific projects.
Panelists included Microsoft co-founder and philanthropist Bill Gates, now chairman of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation; Peruvian economist Hernando de Soto; former Brazilian president Fernando Henrique Cardoso, who has been a professor at large at the Watson Institute for International Studies since 2003, and Clinton.
"I know if anyone can inspire you, this group will," Simmons said as she introduced the panel.
Simmons asked the four panelists to identify global problems that could be solved by philanthropy and ways that both individual leaders and cross-sector partnerships could combat them.
"You have to start with health," Gates said. "But all inequities are found together, whether it's lack of educational opportunity or agricultural production or a lack of good governance. They tend to reinforce each other."
Despite his foundation's focus on public health, Gates said companies and individuals seeking to make a difference should concentrate on achieving results in a very specific area rather than addressing broad issues.
Part of the unique role of philanthropy, Gates added, is stimulating growth and effecting change in countries where the economic and political risks are too great for significant foreign direct investment.
Noting Simmons' own life story and childhood in Texas, Clinton said the difference between poverty in the United States and developing countries is an understanding in America that hard work will lead to accomplishment.
"The real tragedy of abject poverty - when life is basically a roll of the dice - is that it breaks the connection between effort and reward, and life becomes arbitrary and brutal," he said.
Key to alleviating such poverty, de Soto said, is creating "facilitative law" that will enable the world's poor to start legitimate businesses and organizations rather than risk activity in the informal sector. De Soto, who is president of the Institute for Liberty and Democracy, studies and has written extensively about the extent of informal economic activity in developing countries.
Cardoso said he agreed with de Soto's emphasis on legal infrastructure, but he added that the importance of education and social programs should not be overlooked. As de Soto reiterated his point, the discussion turned into a debate between the two men, but Simmons soon put the conversation back on track.
"She was so great," Clinton said of Simmons in an interview with The Herald. "She told us boys to get in line and get back on topic."
Both the former president and a Brown student volunteering at the conference said they enjoyed Simmons' approach with the four male panelists.
Emma Clippinger '09, who is volunteering at the conference, said she found Simmons' participation in the action-focused panel personally encouraging. "With my interests in global health and development, it was really inspiring to see her up there with some of the top minds - and pockets - in those fields," Clippinger said.
Clippinger is one of three Brown students volunteering at the initiative, but Simmons said she wished more Brunonians could take part.
"I look at this (event) and I think, 'I wish my students were sitting here,'" Simmons told The Herald.
Simmons said the day's events prompted her to consider universities' role in addressing urgent global issues and the contribution college students could make to such efforts. "What if we had a mechanism in universities to link students to these projects?" she said.
Though Simmons said she did not yet have specific programs in mind for Brown, she suggested that internships and student participation in a discussion forum, perhaps similar to the Clinton Global Initiative, could connect students to the work of de Soto, Gates and others engaged in combating global problems.
"If you care about the sustainability of these efforts, you need to get students involved," she said.
Intended as a "catalyst for action," the event requires attendees to commit to a project related to one of its four major focus areas: climate change, health, poverty and religious and ethnic conflict. Those who do not pledge a commitment and follow through within a year are not invited back.
As a speaker, Simmons said she was not required to make a commitment and that her invitation came at too short a notice for the University to develop a unique initiative in time for the conference. But she said some departments had generated proposals for projects and that she hopes Brown can be engaged in a commitment in future years.
Last year's Clinton Global Initiative generated 300 commitments that totaled more than $2.5 billion and led to new microfinance programs, wilderness preservation in Chile and energy-efficient public buses in Brazil. This year's 107 commitments reached the $2 billion mark in a single day. Projects ranged from Pfizer's $15 million pledge to increase malaria treatment in Ghana, Kenya and Senegal to an investment firm's $100 million commitment to support renewable energy technologies.
Simmons' own session began with the announcement of a $500 million commitment funded by two private donors and the nonprofit organization Opportunity International which will provide loans to 50 million people in 34 developing countries in an effort to promote economic growth and combat poverty. Participants will continue to announce commitments over the next two days.
Why did Simmons choose to attend the three-day event? "A presidential invitation is hard to turn down," she said of Clinton's request last spring that she moderate his panel.
Her appearance at the global media event came weeks after she began the academic year with a new focus on "internationalization" for Brown - and days after Newsweek magazine profiled her in its cover story on women leaders. She told The Herald that in addition to raising the University's profile outside the United States, the strategy means preparing students for lives and careers in a globally interconnected world and increasing financial aid for international students.
"I can't think of anything more important as we go forward," she said.
After the panel, as Gates slipped backstage and a crowd grew around Clinton, Simmons posed for pictures with Brown alums and chatted with actor and comedian Chris Tucker.
Nearly 50 current and former heads of state attended the day's events. First Lady Laura Bush, rap mogul Russell Simmons, CBS Evening News anchor Katie Couric and the world's second richest man, Berkshire-Hathaway CEO Warren Buffett, were among the rest of the conference's 1,000 attendees.
Magaziner and Holbrooke speak on health issues
Alums Richard Holbrooke '62, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, and Ira Magaziner '69 P'06 P'07 P'10 spoke on an early panel that focused on how public-private partnerships can work on global health initiatives.
Magaziner urged potential donors and those engaged in funding development work to respect the people and countries in which they do humanitarian work. "It's their country, not ours," he said. "A lot of donors work too often in a colonialist type of attitude that somehow we westerners know best and we'll come in and fix everything."
He emphasized the importance of sustainable projects that developing countries can continue to run themselves and criticized what he described as health and development organizations' tendency to operate at unnecessarily high financial costs. Donors and individuals involved in the Clinton HIV/AIDS Initiative, which he heads, are instructed not to fly business class.
"I can save the lives of 10 kids with the difference in airfare between a coach and a business class ticket," he said. "I can't take that money away from those kids so that you can be more comfortable for a number of hours."
