2017年哈佛校长福斯特哈佛大学毕业典礼演讲0627

1、哈佛校长福斯特2017年哈佛大学毕业典礼演讲 Address by P reside nt Drew Faust at Harvard Uni versity Comme nceme nt Tercentenary Theatre, Harvard Uni versity, Cambridge, Mass. May 25, 2017 哈佛大学背景补充: Harvard Un iversity is devoted to excellence in 致力于在.领域追求卓越 teachi ng, lear ning, and research, and to developing leaders

2、培养领袖 in many disciplines who make a differenee globally享誉世界. Established in 1636, Harvard is the oldest in stituti on of higher educati on in the Un ited States. The Uni versity, which is based in 位于. Cambridge and Bost on, Massachusetts, has an enrollment of 在校学生多达 over 20,000 degree can didates, i

3、n cludi ng un dergraduate, graduate, and pro fessi onal stude nts. Harvard has more tha n 360,000 alu mni around the world. 哈佛校长演讲全文如下: Good after noon. My remarks at this mome nt in our Commencement rituals 毕业典礼仪式 are officially titled a Report to the Alumni. The first time I delivered them, in 200

4、8, I was the only obstacle between all of you and J.K. Rowling JK 罗琳.I looked out on a sea of 许多；人山人海 eager children, costumed Dumbledores （阿不思-邓布利多是哈利波特系列丛书中的人物，他 是霍格沃茨魔法学校校长，被公认为是当代最伟大的巫师。），and Quidditchbrooms （魁地奇 扫帚，魁地奇是电影哈利波特中的一种对抗运动。）waving impatiently in the air. Today, you await Mark Zuckerb

5、erg, whose wizardry （巫术、魔法 ）takes a different form, one that has changed the world, and although he does n seem to have inspired an outbreak of hoodies, we certa inly do have some costumes in this audie nee today. I see we are now handing out bla nkets. This is a day of joy and celebratio n, of happ

6、y endings and new begi nnin gs, of families and frien ds, of achieveme nts and hop es. It is also a day whe n we as a uni versity p erform our most important annual ritual, affirming once again the purposes that animate 激励 us and the values that direct and inspire us. I want to sp eak today about on

7、e of the most imp orta nt - and in recent mon ths, most con tested 争议的- of these values. It is one that has p rovoked debate, disse nt, confron tati on , and even violenee on campuses across the country （ 可拆开翻译，处理为：激起争论、造成不 满和导致对抗，甚至在全国各大校园引发暴力）,and one that has attracted wides pread public atte nti

8、 on and criticism. I am, of course, talking about issues of free speech on university campuses. The meaning and limits of free sp eech are questi ons dee ply embedded in 深深地植入至 U our legal system, in interp retati ons of the First Ame ndme nt and its app licati on s. I am no con stituti on al lawyer

9、, i ndeed no lawyer at all, and I do not intend in my brief remarks today toaddress complex legal doctri nes. Nor, clearly, can I in a few brief minutes take on even a fraction of the arguments that have been advanced on this issue. Instead, I speak as one who has been a university president for a d

10、ecade in order to raise three questions: First: Why is free speech so important to and at universities? Second: Why does it seem under special challenge right now? And, third: How might we better addressthese challenges by moving beyond just defensively protecting free speech - which, of course, we

11、must do - to actively and affirmatively enabling it and nurturing environments in which it can thrive? So first: Why is free speech so important to and at universities? This is a question I took up with the newly arrived first-year students 一年级新生 in the College when I welcomed them at Convocation la

12、st fall. For centuries, I told them, universities have been environments in which knowledge has been discovered, collected, studied, debated, expanded, changed, and advanced through the power of rational argument and exchange. We pursue truth unrelentingly 不断追求真理 , but we must never be so complacent

13、 as to believe we have unerringly attained it. Veritas is inspiration and aspiration. We assume there is always more to know and discover so we open ourselves to challenge and change. We must always be ready to be wrong, so being part of a university community requires courage and humility 勇气与谦逊 . U

14、niversities must be places open to the kind of debate that can change ideas and committed to standards of reason and evidence that form the bases for evaluating them. Silencing ideas or basking in intellectual orthodoxy 正统知识 independent of facts and evidence impedes 阻碍 our access to new and better i

15、deas, and it inhibits 抑制 a full and considered rejection of bad ones. From at least the time of Galileo, we can see how repressing 抑制 seemingly heretical ideas 歪理邪说 has blinded societies and nations to the enhanced knowledge and understanding on which progress depend. Far more recently, we can see h

16、ere at Harvard how our inattentiveness 漫不经心 to the power and appeal of conservative voices left much of our community astonished - blindsided 攻其不备 by the outcome of last fall election. We must work to ensure that universities do not become bubbles isolated from the concerns and discourse of the soci

17、ety that surrounds them. Universities must model a commitment to the notion that truth cannot simply be claimed, but must be established - established through reasoned argument, assessment, and even sometimes uncomfortable challenges that provide the foundation for truth. The legitimacy of universit

18、iesclaim to be sources and validators of fact depends on our willingness to actively and vigorously defend those facts. And we must remember that limiting some speech opens the dangerous possibility that the speech that is ultimately censored may be our own. If some words are to be treated as equiva

19、lent to physical violence and silenced or even prosecuted, who is to decide which words? Freedom of expression, as Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes famously said long ago, protects not only free thought for those who agree with us but freedom for the thought we hate. We need to hear those hateful ideas

20、 so our society is fully equipped to oppose and defeat them. Over the years, differences about the implementation of the University sfree speech principles have often provoked controversy. And we haven talways gotten it right. As long ago as 1939, an invitation from a student group to the head of th

21、e American Communist Party generated protest and the invitation was ultimately canceled by the Corporation. Bertrand Russellsappointment as William James Lecturer just a year later divided the Corporation, but President Conant broke the tie and Russell came. Campus conflicts over invited speakers ar

22、e hardly new. Yet the vehemence 激烈 with which these issues have been debated in recent months, not just on campuses but in the broader public sphere, suggests there is something distinctive about this moment. Certainly, these controversies reflect a highly polarized political and social environment

23、- perhaps the most divisive since the era of the Civil War. And in these already fractious circumstances, free speech debates have provided a fertile substrate into which anger and disagreement could be planted to nourish partisan outrage and generate media clickbait. But that is only a partial expl

24、anation. Universities themselves have changed dramatically in recent years, reaching beyond their traditional, largely homogeneous populations to become more diverse than perhaps any other institution in which Americans find themselves living together. Once overwhelmingly white, male, Protestant, an

25、d upper class, Harvard College is now half female, majority minority, religiously pluralistic, with nearly 60 percent of students able to attend because of financial aid. Fifteen percent are the first in their families to go to college. Many of our students struggle to feel full members of this comm

26、unity - a community in which people like them have so recently arrived. They seek evidence and assurance that - to borrow the title of a powerful theatrical piece created by a group of our African-American students - evidence and assurance that they, too, are Harvard. The price of our commitment to

27、freedom of speech is paid disproportionately by these students. For them, free speech has not infrequently included enduring a questioning of their abilities, their humanity, their morality - their very legitimacy here. Our values and our theory of education rest on the assumption that members of ou

28、r community will take the risk of speaking and will actively compete in our wild rumpus of argument and ideas. It requires them as well to be fearless in face of argument or challenge or even verbal insult. And it expects that fearlessness even when the challenge is directed to the very identity - r

29、ace, religion, gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, nationality - that may have made them uncertain about their right to be here in the first place. Demonstrating such fearlessness is hard; no one should be mocked as a snowflake for finding it so. Hard, but important and attainable. Attainable, we

30、 believe, for every member of our community. But the price of free speech cannot be charged just to those most likely to become its target. We must support and empower the voices of all the members of our community and nurture the courage and humility that our commitment to unfettered debate demands

31、 from all of us. And that courage means not only resilience in face of challenge or attack, but strength to speak out against injustices directed at others as well. s Free speech doesnt just happen and require intervention when it is impeded. It is not about the freedom to out-shout others while eve

32、ryone has their fingers in their ears. For free speech to flourish, we must build an environment where everyone takes responsibility for the right not just to speak, but to hear and be heard, where everyone assumes the responsibility to treat others with dignity and respect. It requires not just speakers, but, in