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Rev. Jesse Jackson Speaks Spirited Words at Kennedy School Class Day

When asked at a press conference what he would have done in Clinton's stead, Jackson said he felt the U.S. should have negotiated more before resorting to military action.

"We went into [the Rambouillet negotiations] without enough patience, with de facto support for the KLA," Jackson said.

Jackson also denounced the "double standard" the U.S. invokes when dealing with humanitarian disasters in Europe and Africa--intervening in Western conflicts, but not those on other continents. He compared the refugee crisis in Sierra Leone, an African nation which has been embroiled in a civil war for several years, to the one in Kosovo.

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"Let me tell you a tale of two continents," Jackson said, "Sierra Leone shares the horrors of Kosovo but not its hope. There is no public outcry against the violence, no commitment for aid to reconstruct the country."

Jackson finally trained his guns upon Harvard itself, criticizing the KSG for having too few tenured black faculty members.

"It's not about brains," Jackson said, as applause from the audience drowned out his words, "but about opportunity and the flow of cultural and historical bias."

It was ironic, Jackson said, that an institution publicly committed to indoctrinating its students into the world of public policy and social justice also faced problems with discrimination.

"If justice is to be taught, let justice also be done," Jackson declared.

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