耶鲁大学校长2010年毕业致辞.doc

SPEECHES each allows you a different window on our accumulated knowledge of nature and culture and each quite literally allows you to see the world differently If I could offer only one piece of advice about selecting courses it would be this stretch yourself Don t assume that you know in advance what fields will interest you the most Take some courses in fields that are entirely outside the range of your past experience You will not only emerge as a more broadly educated person but you will also stand a better chance of discovering an unsuspected passion that helps to shape the future course of your life By studying philosophy for example you will learn to reason more rigorously and to discern more readily what constitutes a logically consistent argument and what does not And you will study texts that wrestle directly with the deepest questions of how one should live Your professors of literature music and art history will teach you to read listen and see closely and help you to develop a keener appreciation for the artistry that makes literature music and visual art sublime representations of human emotions values and ideas Whether you major in these subjects or not your appreciation of what is true and beautiful may be forever enriched Your professors of history will teach you to appreciate the challenging art of reconstructing the past and to understand how meaning is extracted from experience This may help you to gain perspective on your own experience Years ago when I taught introductory economics in Yale College I always began by telling the students that the course would change their lives Why Because economics will open you to an entirely new and different way of understanding how the world works Economics will not prescribe for you how society should be organized or the extent to which individual freedom should be subordinated to collective ends or how the fruits of human labor should be distributed But understanding the logic of markets will give you a new way to think about these perpetually important questions In similar fashion each of the other social sciences psychology political science anthropology sociology and linguistics will give you a different perspective on human experience in society Some of you may already have a passion for science or mathematics and you may have set your sights on a major in science math or engineering There is so much in these pursuits to excite the imagination that I hardly need elaborate In science we are in the midst of discovering the causes of human disease the mechanisms of evolution and the origins of the universe In engineering we have unprecedented opportunities to develop new materials new medical devices and new sources of energy One of the virtues of studying science and engineering at a place like Yale is that you can practice science and engineering while you study it you can work in research laboratories along side your professors on problems at the very frontier of knowledge With respect to science I have two messages for you that are mirror images First if you are someone with an early or emerging passion for science take the time to sample other subjects as well Even if you pursue science or engineering as a career broadening your education in the other liberal arts will both enrich your lives and improve your science Second if you do not think yourself a science type don t just fulfill the science requirement give science a serious try During the past decade we have developed a number of problem oriented science courses without prerequisites they are meant to give you a rigorous exposure to science without the comprehensiveness of a survey course designed for those already committed to a major or to a pre medical curriculum Try one or two of these courses early on you may be surprised by your newfound enthusiasm And to complete this mini tour of the curriculum we will not let you forget about writing math and languages Some attention to these skills is required but there are many ways to satisfy the requirements Again I would urge you to stretch yourselves try something different an expository or creative writing class statistics instead of more calculus or a new language even as you pursue further study of one you already know My suggestion that you stretch yourselves is not limited to the classroom It applies to both the friends and extracurricular activities you choose as well If the friends you make here are exclusively those who come from backgrounds just like your own and went to high schools just like your own you will have forfeited half the value of a Yale education You come from all 50 states and 58 nations from a wide range of racial religious and socio economic backgrounds Each of your residential colleges reflects within itself that rich diversity Seek out friends with different histories and different interests you will find that you learn the most from the people least like you No doubt you will participate in one or more of the 300 student organizations on campus as well as varsity club and intramural athletic teams You may find your consuming passion the passion that shapes your life after Yale in one of these pursuits I can think of scores of journalists public servants teachers start up entrepreneurs performers and filmmakers whose career choices were shaped by their extracurricular activities here at Yale Again my advice is to move beyond the familiar try at least one extracurricular activity that is brand new to you And by all means do not spend all your time with your varsity teammates or your fellow singing group members or the others who write for the Yale Daily News Make the most of the extraordinary variety of opportunities available to you So far my advice to you is focused entirely on how you might get the most out of your Yale education You might be wondering am I here just to exploit all of Yale s treasures for myself alone The answer is no We have confidence based on the evidence of history and knowledge of the culture of this place that your journey toward self discovery your progress toward finding your passion will yield more than self gratification and personal advancement We believe that because you are intelligent and reflective members of a community of scholars you will come to recognize that with the abundant opportunities for self enrichment that Yale provides there also come responsibilities And what are these responsibilities They begin with responsibility for the wellbeing of the institution you are joining today Let me remind you that even for those of you whose parents are paying the full tuition room and board charges more than half of the total cost of your Yale education is supported by the gifts of those who came before you More than half of you hold scholarships And most of our buildings athletic facilities and museum and library collections trace to gifts from graduates of Yale College Your responsibilities also include good citizenship in its many varieties At Yale s founding this took the form of supporting New Haven colony and the Congregational Church Today while volunteer service to local community organizations secular and religious remains a distinguishing characteristic of Yale graduates our horizons have broadened Some of you will undoubtedly carry on Yale s great tradition of producing national leaders and for all of you who spend most of your adult lives in the United States there is an emerging burden of citizenship that will be yours to bear And that is the powerfully important burden of helping to raise the level of public discourse One has only to compare the rhetoric of today s leaders with the speeches of Abraham Lincoln given 150 years ago or the transcripts of the Kennedy Nixon debates of 50 years ago to see how oversimplified ideology and appeal to narrow interest groups have triumphed over intelligence and moderation in civic discussion By insisting as citizens on serious discussion instead of slogans that mask narrow partisan interests you can help to make our democracy more effective Today because the world is so highly interconnected and interdependent you will have the added responsibility of acting as global citizens Your generation more than any that has gone before will need deep knowledge of and intimate engagement with cultures and societies very different from your own Those of you who come from abroad will of course experience immersion in another culture right here in New Haven The rest of you may do so by taking advantage of one of our many programs of work or study abroad Such an experience will stretch you in just the way that I am recommending more generally it will force you to see yourself from a different perspective and to see others free from preconceptions Since so many of the issues confronting us from poverty and disease to the proliferation of nuclear weapons require cooperative solutions a cross cultural perspective is invaluable Even before you travel overseas you might start preparing yourselves for global citizenship by sampling some of the courses in international studies offered by the recently established Jackson Institute such as the new multidisciplinary gateway course on global affairs In addition to the burdens of local national and international citizenship your generation will need to rise as well to t