HAVEL AT COLUMBIA:

Havel and Clinton: The Leaders Reflect

By Emily Laskin

Barnard College

 

Moderated by Lee Bollinger, the president of Columbia University, and assisted by translator and Columbia University lecturer Christopher Harwood, Václav Havel and Bill Clinton discussed their visions for a changing world before an audience of Columbia University students, faculty and staff. If any members of the audience were in doubt as to Havel’s political credentials, Clinton set them straight, placing Havel in the company of Mohandas Gandhi and Nelson Mandela as one of the few men who have ever changed the course of a nation through nonviolence.       

 

Presidents Havel and Clinton kept the tone of the event light and informal, cracking jokes and praising each other as much as talking politics. They repeatedly stressed the need for governments to plan carefully for the future and, as Havel put it “make choices that confront future dangers.” Though neither leader specifically mentioned globalization, the notion that the world is rapidly becoming a more close-knit, interdependent entity dominated the conversation. President Bollinger touched on the issue of globalization with his first question: what should today’s students know about the world they will face in a few short years? Both Havel and Clinton agreed that the world is a changing place, and that citizens should understand what approaches will be necessary for governments to take in the coming years in the realms of international relations, environmental policy, and economic aid.

 

Havel proved to be as thorough and eloquent in political conversation as in his literary works. While he emphasized the importance of planning for the future, he noted that the future is never entirely predictable and mentioned that he was completely surprised by the development of a phase he termed “post-communism” in Eastern Europe. He went on to agree with Clinton that human values such as liberty and civil rights should dominate a society’s political discourse. He adamantly denounced any form of dogmatism, fanaticism, or “ideological hard-headedness,” but appropriately, he said that he was hesitant to transform his views into a doctrine.

 

Iraq loomed large in the background of the discussion, and neither Havel nor Clinton addressed the issue directly, instead using it as a means to extol the virtues of solidarity among the world’s established democracies. Though both shied away from presenting definite solutions to the problems posed by such issues as terrorism, the war in Iraq, poverty, and environmental degradation, the audience was nothing if not appreciative of their emphasis on liberty and cooperation. In their responses to an audience member’s question “must every new country be a democracy?”, both men agreed that not democracy, but tolerance, human rights, and social responsibility are the crucial elements of every government.

 

Early in the conversation, President Clinton mentioned that we as individuals and as nations have a harmful but persistent tendency to focus on differences between people. His observation that “we need a little more humility” was especially apt in the presence of President Václav Havel, one of the most thoughtful, principled, and humble men to ever emerge as leader of a successful “new democracy.”