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哈佛校長(zhǎng)2015畢業(yè)演講
過(guò)度的自我主義削弱了我們對(duì)于他人的責(zé)任感——一種服務(wù)他人的意識(shí)。一種服務(wù)他人的意識(shí)：這種意識(shí)正是Thomas Shepard所描述的哈佛大學(xué)的使命：讓畢業(yè)生們不斷成長(zhǎng)，超越自我。這種成長(zhǎng)并非僅僅是為了每個(gè)人自身的利益，更是為了他人和整個(gè)世界——這也是這所大學(xué)一直以來(lái)努力為之奮斗的使命。
當(dāng)我們的開(kāi)國(guó)先輩于1630年來(lái)到馬塞諸塞州的這片海岸時(shí)，他們是作為持異見(jiàn)者而來(lái)的——他們摒棄了家鄉(xiāng)英國(guó)的體制。但是一直令我驚奇的是，在當(dāng)時(shí)的這片荒地里，在如何生存下去還是個(gè)未解的問(wèn)題之時(shí)，這些開(kāi)國(guó)先輩很快就意識(shí)到了建立(哈佛大學(xué))這所高等學(xué)府的必要性。
自此以后，一代代人來(lái)了又去，哈佛的校園也不斷擴(kuò)大，不再局限于當(dāng)年的幾間小木樓。但沒(méi)有變的是，每一代人都充滿信心，想要建立更好的社會(huì)，每一代人也都相信，這所大學(xué)將使這種愿望成為可能。正如一位早期創(chuàng)始人Thomas Shepard所說(shuō)，我們希望畢業(yè)生走向世界之后，能夠成長(zhǎng)為對(duì)國(guó)家有益之人。
而如今，將近四個(gè)世紀(jì)后，我們發(fā)現(xiàn)我們處在一個(gè)充滿挑戰(zhàn)的歷史時(shí)刻。我們應(yīng)如何鼓勵(lì)我們的畢業(yè)生去做對(duì)他人有益之事?我們是否培養(yǎng)出了以造福他人為目的的畢業(yè)生?還是，我們所有人都已變得對(duì)個(gè)人成就、機(jī)遇和形象如此癡狂，以至于忘記了我們的互相依賴，忘記了我們對(duì)于彼此和對(duì)于這所旨在促進(jìn)公共利益的大學(xué)的責(zé)任?
這是一個(gè)自拍——還有自拍桿的時(shí)代。不要誤解我：自拍真是件令人欲罷不能的事兒，而且在兩年前的畢業(yè)典禮演講上，我還特意鼓勵(lì)畢業(yè)生們多給我們發(fā)送一些自拍照，讓我們知道他們畢業(yè)后過(guò)得怎么樣。但是仔細(xì)想想，如果社會(huì)里的每個(gè)人都開(kāi)始過(guò)上整天自拍的生活，這會(huì)是怎樣一個(gè)社會(huì)呢?對(duì)于我來(lái)說(shuō)，那也許是“利己主義”最真實(shí)的寫(xiě)照了。
韋氏詞典里，“利己主義”的同義詞包括了“以自我為中心”、“自戀”和“自私”。我們無(wú)休止地關(guān)注我們自己、我們的形象、我們得到的“贊”，就像我們不停地用一串串的成就來(lái)美化我們的簡(jiǎn)歷，去申請(qǐng)大學(xué)、申請(qǐng)研究生院、申請(qǐng)工作——借用Shepard的話來(lái)說(shuō)，就是進(jìn)行不停的“自我放大”。
正如一位社會(huì)評(píng)論家所觀察到的那樣，我們都在不停地為打造自己的品牌而努力。我們花很多時(shí)間盯著屏幕看，卻忽視了身邊的人。我們生活中的很大一部分經(jīng)歷不是被我們體驗(yàn)到的，而是被保存、分享并流傳于Snapchat和Instagram等APP 上的——最終它們呈現(xiàn)出的是一種由我們所有人合成的自拍照。
當(dāng)然，適度的利己是我們的本性。正如我們哈佛大學(xué)的生物學(xué)家E.O. Wilson 教授最近寫(xiě)道的：“我們是一個(gè)充滿無(wú)盡好奇心的物種——只要對(duì)象是我們自己以及我們自己知道或想知道的人們。”但是我想強(qiáng)調(diào)的是，這種自我迷戀會(huì)有兩個(gè)令人不安的后果。
首先，它削弱了我們對(duì)于他人的責(zé)任感——一種服務(wù)他人的意識(shí)。這種意識(shí)正是Thomas Shepard所描述的哈佛大學(xué)的使命：讓畢業(yè)生們不斷成長(zhǎng)，超越自我。這種成長(zhǎng)并非僅僅是為了每個(gè)人自身的利益，更是為了他人和整個(gè)世界——這也是這所大學(xué)一直以來(lái)努力為之奮斗的使命。
我們的學(xué)生和教授已經(jīng)通過(guò)服務(wù)周?chē)纳鐓^(qū)以及整個(gè)世界，身體力行地踐行這種使命。從為哈佛所在Allston小鎮(zhèn)的中小學(xué)生進(jìn)行課外輔導(dǎo)，到去利比亞參與緩解埃博拉病毒危機(jī)的工作，哈佛人改變著無(wú)數(shù)人的生活。哈佛園的Dexter校門(mén)邀請(qǐng)學(xué)生們“走進(jìn)校門(mén)來(lái)增長(zhǎng)智慧，離開(kāi)大門(mén)去更好地服務(wù)你的國(guó)家和你的同胞。”今天，我們約有6500名畢業(yè)生將走出大門(mén)，愿他們每個(gè)人都記得服務(wù)的使命。
利己主義除了削弱了我們的服務(wù)意識(shí)，還有一種后果也是我們應(yīng)當(dāng)注意的。過(guò)度的自我關(guān)注掩蓋的不僅是我們對(duì)于他人的責(zé)任，還有我們對(duì)于他人的依賴。對(duì)于哈佛大學(xué)、對(duì)于高等教育、對(duì)于各種社會(huì)基礎(chǔ)機(jī)構(gòu)，這很是令人困擾。我們遺忘了高校和機(jī)構(gòu)存在的目的和必要性，使我們自己處在危險(xiǎn)的境地。
為什么我們還需要大學(xué)?批評(píng)家們問(wèn)道：我們就不能全靠自學(xué)嗎?硅谷創(chuàng)業(yè)家Peter Thiel敦促學(xué)生們輟學(xué)，甚至還給予他們經(jīng)濟(jì)補(bǔ)助，讓他們輟學(xué)創(chuàng)業(yè)——這其中也包括我們哈佛的一些本科生。畢竟，從邏輯上來(lái)講，馬克·扎克伯格和比爾·蓋茨都輟學(xué)了，他們似乎都很成功。事實(shí)如此，沒(méi)錯(cuò)。
但是請(qǐng)大家別忘了：比爾·蓋茨和馬克·扎克伯格都是從哈佛輟學(xué)的!哈佛是孕育他們改變世界想法的地方。哈佛以及其他像哈佛一樣的學(xué)府培養(yǎng)了數(shù)以千計(jì)的物理學(xué)家、數(shù)學(xué)家、計(jì)算機(jī)科學(xué)家、商業(yè)分析師、律師和其他有一技之長(zhǎng)的人，這些都是Facebook和微軟公司賴以生存的員工。
哈佛也培養(yǎng)了無(wú)數(shù)的政府官員和人民公仆，建設(shè)和領(lǐng)導(dǎo)國(guó)家，讓像Facebook 、微軟以及類(lèi)似的公司可以繁榮發(fā)展。哈佛大學(xué)還培養(yǎng)了無(wú)數(shù)的作家、電影制作人和新聞工作者，是他們的作品給互聯(lián)網(wǎng)增添了“內(nèi)容”。
而且我們也要看到，大學(xué)是人類(lèi)和社會(huì)技術(shù)革新的源泉，這些革新是互聯(lián)網(wǎng)公司發(fā)展的基石——從早期創(chuàng)造計(jì)算機(jī)和編寫(xiě)計(jì)算機(jī)程序的成功，到為如今無(wú)處不在的觸屏奠定基礎(chǔ)的樣機(jī)的發(fā)展。
我們還被告知，大學(xué)將土崩瓦解，顛覆性的創(chuàng)新將使得每個(gè)人可以自學(xué)成才。人們可以在大規(guī)模開(kāi)放在線課程(MOOC)中選課，并設(shè)立DIY學(xué)位。但在線學(xué)習(xí)與大學(xué)學(xué)習(xí)并不相悖，前者可以拓展——但不會(huì)取代——后者。通過(guò)類(lèi)似像edX和HarvardX的這樣的在線課程平臺(tái)，我們已經(jīng)開(kāi)始與全球數(shù)百萬(wàn)的學(xué)習(xí)者分享哈佛的精神財(cái)富。有趣的是，我們發(fā)現(xiàn)世界各地的在線學(xué)習(xí)者中，有一個(gè)群體人數(shù)眾多，那就是老師——他們正用這些在線課程中的知識(shí)來(lái)豐富他們自己線下的學(xué)校和課堂。
總而言之，主張大學(xué)已經(jīng)沒(méi)有存在意義的斷言來(lái)源于人們對(duì)于機(jī)構(gòu)的不信任，這種不信任的根本在于我們對(duì)于個(gè)人權(quán)利和感召力的陶醉以及對(duì)于名人的崇拜。政府、企業(yè)、非營(yíng)利組織都和大學(xué)一樣，成為了質(zhì)疑和批評(píng)的靶子。
很少有反對(duì)的聲音來(lái)提醒我們這些機(jī)構(gòu)是如何服務(wù)和支持我們的，我們常常認(rèn)為它們的存在理所應(yīng)當(dāng)。你的食物是安全的;你的血液檢查是可信賴的;你的投票站是開(kāi)放的;當(dāng)你撥動(dòng)開(kāi)關(guān)時(shí)，一定會(huì)有電;你所乘坐航班的起落都是根據(jù)航空安全規(guī)定進(jìn)行的。設(shè)想一下，假如所有的市政基礎(chǔ)設(shè)施停擺一周或一個(gè)月，我們的生活會(huì)是怎樣?
機(jī)構(gòu)體現(xiàn)了我們與其他個(gè)體之間持久的聯(lián)系，它們將我們不同的天賦和能力擰成一股繩，去追求共同的目標(biāo)。同時(shí)，它們也將我們與過(guò)去和未來(lái)維系起來(lái)。它們是價(jià)值的金礦——這些恒久的價(jià)值超越了每一個(gè)自我。機(jī)構(gòu)促使我們放棄眼前即刻的快感，思考更遠(yuǎn)大的圖景，更長(zhǎng)遠(yuǎn)的全局。它們提醒我們世界只是暫時(shí)屬于我們，我們肩負(fù)著過(guò)去和未來(lái)的責(zé)任，真正的我們要比我們自己和我們的自拍照要廣博得多。
而大學(xué)的責(zé)任正在于此——用我們共同的人類(lèi)遺產(chǎn)號(hào)召大家去開(kāi)拓未來(lái)——這個(gè)未來(lái)將由今天從這里畢業(yè)的數(shù)千名哈佛學(xué)生去創(chuàng)造。我們的工作是一個(gè)持續(xù)的承諾，它并不針對(duì)單一的個(gè)體，甚至不針對(duì)一代人或一個(gè)時(shí)代，它是對(duì)一個(gè)更大的世界的承諾，是一個(gè)對(duì)于正在等待它服務(wù)的時(shí)代的承諾。
1884年，我的前輩、Charles William Eliot校長(zhǎng)為約翰·哈佛雕像揭幕，并談到研究約翰·哈佛——這位冠名了這所大學(xué)的人——“波瀾壯闊”的一生帶來(lái)的啟發(fā)。
Eliot校長(zhǎng)說(shuō)：“他(約翰·哈佛)會(huì)告訴人們善行會(huì)流芳百世，會(huì)以超越所有計(jì)量方式的速度和規(guī)模繁衍。他會(huì)教導(dǎo)人們，在這個(gè)教育花園里播下的種子，如何迸發(fā)出喜悅、力量以及永遠(yuǎn)新鮮的能量，年年花開(kāi)，隨著時(shí)光流轉(zhuǎn)，在人類(lèi)活動(dòng)的所有領(lǐng)域，花繁葉茂。”
所以，今天下午我們列隊(duì)行進(jìn)經(jīng)過(guò)的那座雕像，它不僅僅是一座代表個(gè)人的紀(jì)念碑，更是代表一個(gè)不斷自我更新的社區(qū)和機(jī)構(gòu)的紀(jì)念碑。你們今天坐在這里，就代表了一種對(duì)于哈佛這個(gè)社區(qū)和機(jī)構(gòu)的認(rèn)可，這種認(rèn)可也是你對(duì)于哈佛驅(qū)使你超越自我、惠及他人的感召力的認(rèn)可。我感謝你們今天在這里的許下的承諾，祝你們每一位都開(kāi)心、健康且永遠(yuǎn)充滿活力!
以下為中英文演講稿對(duì)照版
Thank you, President Torres. Welcome, Governor Patrick. Thank you, everyone, for being here.
The 146th annual meeting of the Harvard Alumni Association at the 364th Commencement of Harvard University. It’s a particular pleasure to welcome former Governor Deval Patrick of the College Class of 1978 and the Harvard Law School Class of 1982. Throughout his distinguished career in government, he forcefully argued for the power of education to transform lives. Nothing made that case more persuasively than his own remarkable life – from Chicago’s South Side to the Massachusetts State House. When he was sworn in as governor, he took the oath of office with the Mendi Bible,presented in 1841 by the African captives who had seized the slave ship Amistad to the man who had won their legal right to freedom, John Quincy Adams. Governor Patrick can claim connection with both the African heritage of the Amistad rebels and the institutional roots of their defender. Adams, as you heard before from President Torres, was a member of the Harvard College Class of 1787, and was both the first president of this alumni association, and himself the son of an earlier alumnus, John Adams, of the Class of 1755. That kind of continuity across the centuries is not the least of the reasons that we congregate here every spring to renew and reinforce our ties to this extraordinary place.
Let me start by noticing what is both obvious and curious: We are here today together. We are here in association. It is an association of many people, and many generations. We celebrate a connection across time in these festival rites, singing our alma mater, adorning ourselves in medieval robes to mark the deep-rooted traditions of Harvard, and of universities more generally. Even in the age of the online and the virtual, an institution has brought us together, and brings us back.
We have also sung – or rather the magnificent Renée Fleming has sung – “America the Beautiful,” to honor another institution, our democratic republic, which the men and women whose names are carved in stone in Memorial Church right behind me – and Memorial Hall just behind that – gave their lives to protect and uphold.
When the founders of the Massachusetts Bay Colony arrived on these shores in 1630, they came as dissenters – rejecting institutions of their English homeland. But I have always found it striking that here in the wilderness, where mere survival was the foremost challenge, they so rapidly felt compelled to found this seat of learning so that New England, in the words of William Hubbard of the Class of 1642, so the New England “might be supplied with persons fit to manage the affairs of both church and state.” Church, state, and College. Three institutions they deemed essential to this Massachusetts experiment. Three institutions to ensure that the colonists, as Governor John Winthrop urged, could be “knit together as one” in a new society in a brave new world.
Dozens of generations have come and gone since then, and the University’s footprint has expanded considerably beyond a small cluster of wooden buildings. But we have never lost faith in the capacity of each generation to build a better society than the one it was born into. We have never lost faith in the capacity of this College to help make that possible. As an early founder, Thomas Shepard put it, we hope to graduate into the world people who are, in his words, “enlarged toward the country and the good of it.”
Yet now, nearly four centuries later, we find ourselves in a challenging historical moment. How do we “enlarge” our graduates in a way that benefits others as well? Shepard spoke of enlarging “toward” – toward, as he put it, “the country and the good of it.” Are we succeeding in educating students oriented toward the betterment of others? Or have we all become so caught up in individual and personal achievements, opportunities, and appearances that we risk forgetting our interdependence, our responsibilities to one another and to the institutions meant to promote the common good?
This is the era of the selfie – and the selfie stick. Now don’t get me wrong: There is much to love about selfies, and two years ago in my Baccalaureate address I concluded by urging the graduates to send such pictures along so we could keep up with them and their post-Harvard lives. But think for a moment about the implications of a society that goes through life taking its own picture. That seems to me a quite literal embodiment of “self-regarding” – a term not often used as a compliment. In fact, Merriam-Webster’s dictionary offers “egocentric,” “narcissistic,” and “selfish” as synonyms. We direct endless attention to ourselves, our image, our “Likes,” just as we are encouraged – and in fact encourage our students – to burnish resumes and fill first college and then job or graduate school applications with endless lists of achievements – with examples, to borrow Shepard’s language, of constant enlargements of self. As one socialcommentator has observed, we are ceaselessly at work building our own brands. We spend time looking at screens instead of one another. Large portions of our lives are hardly experienced: They are curated, shared, Snapchatted and Instagrammed – rendered as a kind of composite selfie.
Now, a certain amount of self-absorption is in our nature. As Harvard’s own E.O. Wilson has recently written, and I quote him, “We are an insatiably curious species – provided the subjects are our personal selves and people we would know or would like to know.” But I want to underscore two troubling aspects of this obsession with ourselves.
The first is it undermines our sense of responsibility to others – the ethos of service at the heart of Thomas Shepard’s phrase describing Harvard’s enduring commitment to graduate students who are “enlarged” to be about more than themselves. Not just enlarged for their own sake and betterment – but enlarged toward others and toward the world. This is part of the essence of what this university has always strived to be. Our students and faculty have embodied that spirit through their work to serve in ourneighborhood and around the world. From tutoring at the Harvard Ed Portal in Allston to working in Liberia to mitigate the Ebola crisis, they make a difference in the lives of countless individuals. The Dexter Gate across the Yard invites students to “Enter to grow in wisdom. Depart to serve better thy country and thy kind.” Today, some 6,500 graduates go forth. May each of them remember that it is in some way to serve.
There is yet another danger we should note as well. Self-absorption may obscure not only our responsibilities to others but our dependence upon them. And this is troubling for Harvard, for higher education and for fundamental social institutions whose purposes and necessity we forget at our peril.
Why do we even need college, critics demand? Can’t we do it all on our own? Peter Thiel, Silicon Valley entrepreneur, has urged students to drop out and has even subsidized them – including several of our undergraduates – to leave college and pursue their individual entrepreneurial dreams. After all, the logic goes, Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates dropped out and they seem to have done OK. Well, yes. But we should remember: Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg had Harvard to drop out of. Harvard to serve as the place where their world-changing discoveries were born. Harvard and institutions like it to train the physicists, mathematicians, computer scientists, business analysts, lawyers, and thousands of other skilled individuals upon whom Facebook and Microsoft depend. Harvard to enlighten public servants to lead a country in which Facebook, Microsoft, and companies like them can thrive. Harvard to nurture the writers and filmmakers and journalists who create the storied “content” that gives the Internet its substance. And we must recognize as well that universities have served as sources of discoveries essential to the work of the companies advancing the revolutions in technology that have changed our lives – from early successes in creating and programming computers to development of prototypes that laid the groundwork for the now-ubiquitous touchscreen.
We are told, too, that universities are about to be unbundled, disrupted by innovations that enable individuals to teach themselves, selecting from a buffet of massive open online courses and building do-it-yourself degrees. But online opportunities and residential learning are not at odds; the former can strengthen – but does not supplant – the latter. And through initiatives like edX and HarvardX, we are sharing intellectual riches that are the creations of institutions of higher learning, sharing them with millions of people around the globe. Intriguingly, we have found that a highly-represented group among these online learners around the world is teachers – who will use this knowledge to enrich their own schools and face-to-face classrooms.
Assertions about the irrelevance of universities are part of a broader and growing mistrust of institutions more generally, one fuelled by our intoxication with the power and charisma of the individual and the cult of celebrity. Government, business, non-profits are joined with universities as targets of suspicion and criticism.
There are few countervailing voices to remind us how institutions serve and support us. We tend to take what they do for granted. Your food was safe; your blood test was reliable; your polling place was open; electricity was available when you flipped the switch. Your flight to Boston took off and landed according to rules and systems and organizations responsible for safe air travel. Just imagine a week or a month without this “civic infrastructure” – without the institutions that undergird our society and without the commitment to our interdependence that created these structures of commonality in the first place. Think of the countries in West Africa that lacked the public health systems to contain Ebola and the devastation that resulted. Contrast that with the network of institutions that so rapidly saved lives and contained spread of the disease when it appeared in the United States. Think about other elements of our civicinfrastructure – the libraries, the museums, the school committees, the religious organizations that are as vital to moving us forward as are our roads and railways and bridges.
Institutions embody our present and enduring connections to one other. They bring our disparate talents and capacities to the pursuit of common purpose. At the same time, they link us to both what has come before and what will follow. They are repositories of values – values that precede, transcend, and outlast the self. They challenge us to look beyond the immediate, the instantly gratifying, to think about the bigger picture, the longer run, the larger whole. They remind us that the world is only temporarily ours, that we are stewards entrusted with the past and responsible to the future. We are larger than ourselves and our selfies.
That responsibility is quintessentially the work of universities – calling upon our shared human heritage to invent a new future – the future that will be created by the thousands of graduates who leave here today. Our work is about that ongoing commitment – not to a single individual or even one generation or one era – but to a larger world and to the service of the age that is waiting before it.
In 1884, my predecessor Charles William Eliot unveiled a statue of John Harvard and spoke of the good that can come from the study of what we might call the “enlarged” life of the man whose name this university bears.
Eliot said: “He will teach that the good which men do lives after them, fructified and multiplied beyond all power of measurement or computation. He will teach that from the seed which he planted … have sprung joy, strength, and energy ever fresh, blooming year after year in this garden of learning, and flourishing … as time goes on, in all fields of human activity.”
In other words, that statue we paraded past this afternoon is not simply a monument to an individual, but to a community and an institution constantly renewing itself. Your presence here today represents an act of connection and of affirmation of thatcommunity and of this institution. It is a recognition of Harvard’s capacity to propel you toward lives and worlds beyond your own. I thank you for the commitment that brought you here today and for all it means and sustains. I wish you joy, strength, and energy ever fresh.
Thank you very much.
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