MIDDLEBURY, Vt. (AP) – Former President Bill Clinton told Middlebury College graduates Sunday that building a community in the world by recognizing similarities rather than differences among all of humankind will help solve the world’s problems.

After listing a host of problems from resource depletion to global warming, avian influenza, terrorism and economic inequality, Clinton told the students that genetically all humans are 99.9 percent the same.

“Why would I come to you and ask you to think about community? Because I believe questions about community and personal identity will determine our collective capacity to deal with all the problems,” Clinton said during a 20-minute speech.

The key is “the elemental knowledge that what we have in common is more important than what divides us,” he said.

Clinton’s speech came after a brief rain storm that doused the 600 graduates and more than 7,000 guests and faculty sitting outside on the Middlebury campus.

Clinton, who served as president from 1993 to 2001, received an honorary doctor of humane letters degree, for his legacy of commitment to service, from attorney general of Arkansas, governor of Arkansas, through his presidency and today as “a supportive spouse, global citizen, dedicated to the betterment of this world and mankind,” said Middlebury President Ronald D. Liebowitz.

Clinton said he first learned about Middlebury from Ron Brown, his late commerce secretary, a 1962 Middlebury graduate who also served on the college’s board. Brown died in April 1996 in the crash of a military transport plane in Croatia.

“I could see that he found here what I want for everyone in the world. A kid who grew up in a hotel in Harlem found a home here because there is a community here in the best sense and that’s really what we have to build in the world.

Such a community is built on a broadly felt opportunity to participate and responsibility for the success of the enterprise and a genuine sense of belonging, he said.

The former president, who served in the White House for two terms and was the first Democrat in six decades to be awarded a second term, advised the students to “see” all the people in the world, as they go out to save it. “The bigotry you have to work hard to avoid is not seeing everyone else,” he said.

Clinton recognized former Gov. Madeleine Kunin, who served as his ambassador to Switzerland, and Andrews Friendly, his personal aid, and a Middlebury alumnus.

Since leaving office, Clinton has formed the William J. Clinton Foundation, which has worked to provide medical treatment to adults and children living with HIV/AIDS in 25 countries and to address climate change, childhood obesity in the U.S. and other issues.