【哈佛大学毕业典礼致辞】 哈佛大学毕业时间

　 哈佛大学毕业典礼致辞

　哈佛大学毕业典礼致辞

　XX纽约前市长在哈佛大学毕业典礼的致辞 感谢凯蒂，感谢福斯特校长、哈佛大学理事会成员、监 事会成员， 还有迎接我回校的所有教职员工、 校友及同学们。站在这里我非常激动，不仅是因为我能在哈佛大学第

　363 届毕业典礼上面对各位优秀的毕业生及校友讲话，更是 因为能站在去年奥普拉曾站过的地方。我的天啊。下面让我 从最重要的环节开始：让我们把最热烈的掌声送给 XX届毕业生们，这是他们赢得的。

　毕业生们都一样的兴奋，但同时这几周或许也让他们有 些精疲力竭吧。各位家长，我指的可不是期末考试哦，我说 的是高年级运动会、最后一次交际舞会和游轮酒宴——我指 的是午夜巡游会。不管怎样，今年的校园很令人振奋：哈佛橄榄球队连续 第七次击败耶鲁，男子篮球队连续两年打入全国大学体育协 会冠军赛的第二轮，还有男子壁球队则获得了全国冠军。谁会想到： 哈佛，竟然有如此强大的运动天团 ! 不久后， 可能就会有人问，你们的学术水平是否能和体育水平相媲美我个人与哈佛的关系缘起于 1964 年，当时我从巴尔地 摩的约翰霍普金斯大学毕业并到这里的商学院就读。你们或许在想，或者和身旁的人窃窃私语：他是如何进 入哈佛商学院的呢 ?尤其是他的学术成绩总能排在全班前列我不知道，比我自己更惊讶的可能只有我的教授了。

　总之，今天我又回到了剑桥 （ 注：剑桥为哈佛大学所在 地） 。我注意到，这里跟我学生时代有了一些变化。广场附 近我曾经很喜欢的三文治售卖点爱尔诗，现在成了卷饼店。

　曾经提供美味啤酒和香肠的乌斯特豪斯，现在成了工艺美食 酒吧，不知道这是啥。还有原来的霍利约克中心 （ 现在改名为史密斯校园中心 ） 。

　你们难道不讨厌所有东西都用校友名字命名吗 ?今早经

　过河边的哈佛商学院彭博中心时，我就在想这个问题。

　不过也有好消息，就是哈佛仍然秉承着 50 年前我刚入 校时的优良传统，依旧是美国最负盛名的大学。和其他顶尖 的大学一样，她处在美国民主实验的核心位置。这些顶尖大学的目的不仅是增长知识，还包括推进我们 民族的理想。顶尖大学是让各种背景、各种信仰、探寻各种 问题的人，能到此自由开放地学习和探讨想法的地方。今天我想跟大家聊聊，这种自由的存在对于每个人来说 是多么的重要，无论我们多么不认同别人的观点。包容他人观点，以及表达自身言论的自由，是顶尖大学 不可分割的价值。两者结合在一起，构成了支撑民主社会根 基的一种神圣的信赖。不过我要告诉大家，这种信赖在君主、暴民、多数派的 专制倾向下是很脆弱的。最近，大家频繁地看到这些倾向真实发生的事例，不管是在大学校园或社会。

　这是个坏消息，而且很不幸的是，我认为哈佛以及我自 己所在的城市纽约，也都目睹过这种倾向。首先，来谈谈纽约市。你们可能记得，几年前有些人试 图阻止在世贸中心旧址几个街区远的地方建一座清真寺的 计划。这是个情感的议题，民意调查显示超过 2/3 的美国人反 对在该地修建清真寺。即便是反诽谤联盟——这个被公认为 全国宗教自由最狂热的捍卫者，也公然反对该项计划。反对者发动集会和示威活动。他们谴责开发商，要求市

　政府终止这项工程。那是他们的权利，我们保障他们抗议的 权利。但他们的观点绝对是错误的，我们拒绝向他们的要求 妥协。要求政府单独选出一个特定的宗教、阻止并且只阻止其 信徒在特定区域建立其宗教活动场所的想法，这完全悖离伟 大民族的道德原则，是宪法保护所不允许的。我们这 50 州联邦的建立取决两大价值的结合：自由和

　包容。正是这两大价值的结合， 让XX年9月11日和XX年4月 15日袭击我们的恐怖分子备感威胁。

　在他们看来，我们是一个无神的国度。

　但事实上，没有任何一个国家，比美国更能保护人类各 种信仰和哲学认识的核心——自由意志。不过，这种保护需 要依赖于我们时刻的警觉。我们会这么认为：政教分离的原则已经确立。实际上并 没有，而且永远不会。我们需要坚决地拥护它，以确保法律 条文下规定的人人平等，对每个人都是平等的。如果你希望你的信仰、言论和选择配偶的自由，如你所 愿，你就必须包容我这样做或不这样做的自由。我做的事可能会冒犯你，你可能觉得我的行为不道德或 不正义。但你不能用你不会约束自身的方式来试图约束我， 否则只会导致不公平。我们在要求权利和特权的同时，不能否认其他人也同样 拥有。这在城市中如此，对于大学亦然。我认为现今大学里 对此原则的压制，似乎是自 1950 年代以来最为严重的。在我成长的过程中，美国参议员 ... 当然你们可以鼓掌

　在我成长的过程中，美国参议员乔?麦卡锡曾问“你现 在是，或者曾经是 ()? ”他试图压制和定罪那些赞同哪怕在 当时都已经很失败的经济体制的人。麦卡锡的红色恐怖让数以千计的人失去了生命，他害怕 的是什么呢 ?是一种思想，也就是共产主义，一种被他及其 同僚们视为危险的思想。不过他搞对了一件事——思想可以是危险的。思想能改 变社会，思想能颠覆传统，思想能掀起革命。这就是为什么历史上，那些权贵企图抑制思想，避免这些思想威胁到他们 的权力、宗教信仰、意识形态及连任机会。对苏格拉底与伽利略如此，对纳尔逊?曼德拉与瓦茨拉 夫?哈维尔如此，对艾未未、造反猫咪乐队以及在伊朗制作 《快乐》视频的孩子们也是如此。抑制言论自由是人类本性上的弱点，每次出现时我们都 需要同它进行斗争。对思想的不包容，无论是自由派的还是 保守派的思想，都是与个人权利和自由社会背道而驰的，同 样与顶尖大学和一流学术相背离。大学校园处处充斥着一种观念，我想哈佛也不例外，即 学者只有在研究符合特定正义观念的前提下才应获得资助。

　这种观念可以用一个词来概括：审查制度。这不过就是现代 版的“麦卡锡主义” 。想想这有多么的讽刺， 1950 年代， 右翼份子企图打压左

　翼思想。而如今，在许多大学校园，则是自由派正企图打压 保守派思想，保守派教员正面临着成为濒危物种的风险，这 种现象在常春藤盟校尤为突出。哈佛大学毕业典礼致辞

　The following is the text of Mike Bloomberg's remarks as prepared for delivery:“Thank you, Katie - and thank you to PresidentFaust, the Fellows of Harvard College, the Board of Overseers, and all the faculty, alumni, and students who have welcomed me back to campus.“I ' m excited to be here, not only to address the distinguished graduates and alumni at Harvard University ' s 363rd commencement but to stand in the exact spot where Oprah stood last year. OMG.“ Let me begin with the most important order of business: Let ' s have a big round of applause for the Class of XX! They ' ve earned it!“ As excited as the graduates are, they are probably even more exhausted after the past few weeks. And parents: I ' m not referring to their final exams. I ' m talking about the Senior Olympics, the Last Chance Dance, and the Booze Cruise - I mean, the moonlight cruise.“ The entire year has been exciting on campus: Harvard beat Yale for the seventh straight time in football. The men's basketball team went to the secondround of the NCAA tournament for the second straight year. And the Men ' s Squash team won national championship.“Who'd a thunk it: Harvard, an athletic powerhouse!Pretty soon they ' ll be asking whether you have academics to go along with your athletic programs.“ My personal connection to Harvard began in 1964, when I graduated from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and matriculated here at the B-School.“ You' re probably asking: Howdid I ever get into Harvard Business School, given my stellar academic record, where I always made the top half of the class possible? I have no idea. And the only people more surprised than me were my professors.“ Anyway, here I am again back in Cambridge. AndI have noticed that a few things have changed since Iwas a student here. Elsie ' s - a sandwich spot I used to love near the Square - is now a burrito shop. The Wursthaus - which had great beer and sausage - isnow an artisanal gastro-pub, whatever the heck that is. And the old Holyoke Center is now namedthe Smith Campus Center.“Don' t you just hate it when alumni put their names all over everything? I was thinking about that this morning as I walked into the Bloomberg Center on the Harvard Business School campus across the river.“ But the good news is, Harvard remains what it was when I first arrived on campus 50 years ago: America ' s most prestigious university. And, like other great universities, it lies at the heart of the American experiment in democracy.“ Their purpose is not only to advance knowledge, but to advance the ideals of our nation. Great universities are places where people of all backgrounds, holding all beliefs, pursuing all questions, can cometo study and debate their ideas - freely and openly.“Today, I 'd like to talk with you about how important it is for that freedom to exist for everyone, no matter how strongly we may disagree with another 's viewpoint.

　“Tolerance for other people 's ideas, and the freedom to express your own, are inseparable values at great universities. Joined together, they form a sacred trust that holds the basis of our democratic society.“But that trust is perpetually vulnerable to the tyrannical tendencies of monarchs, mobs, and majorities. And lately, we have seen those tendencies manifest themselves too often, both on college campuses and in our society.“ That' s the bad news - and unfortunately, I think both Harvard, and my own city of New York, have been witnesses to this trend.“ First, for New York City. Several years ago, as you may remember, some people tried to stop the development of a mosque a few blocks from the World Trade Center site.“ It was an emotional issue, and polls showed that two-thirds of Americans were against a mosque being built there. Even the Anti-Defamation League — widely regarded as the country ' s most ardent defender of religious freedom — declared its opposition to the project.“ The opponents held rallies and demonstrations. They denounced the developers. And they demanded that city government stop its construction. That was their right — and we protected their right to protest. But they could not have been more wrong. And we refused to cave in to their demands.“ The idea that government would single out aandparticular religion, and block its believers only its believers - from building a house of worship in a particular area is diametrically opposed to the moral principles that gave rise to our great nation and the constitutional protections that have sustained it.and

　“Our union of 50 states rests on the union of two values: freedom and tolerance. And it is that union of values that the terrorists who attacked us on September 11th, XX — and on April 15th, XX — found most threatening.“To them, we were a God-less country.

　“But in fact, there is no country that protects the core of every faith and philosophy known to human kind — free will — more than the United States of America. That protection, however, rests upon our constant vigilance.“Welike to think that the principle of separation of church and state is settled. It is not. And it never will be. It is up to us to guard it fiercely — and toensure that equality under the law means equality under the law for everyone.“If you want the freedom to worship as you wish,to speak as you wish, and to marry whom you wish, youmust tolerate my freedom to do so - or not do so -as well.

　“What I do may offend you. You may find my actions immoral or unjust. But attempting to restrict my freedoms - in ways that you would not restrict your own - leads only to injustice.“We cannot deny others the rights and privileges that we demandfor ourselves. And that is true in cities —and it is no less true at universities, where the forces of repression appear to be stronger now than they have been since the 1950s.“WhenI was growing up, Senator Joe McCarthy was asking: ‘Are you now or have you ever been? ' He was attempting to repress and criminalize those who sympathized with an economic system that was, even then, failing.“McCarthy's Red Scare destroyed thousands of lives, but what was he so afraid of? An idea - in this case,communism - that he and others deemed dangerous.“But he was right about one thing: Ideas can be dangerous. They can change society. They can upend traditions. They can start revolutions. That ' s why throughout history, those in authority have tried to repress ideas that threaten their power, their religion, their ideology, or their reelection chances.“ That was true for Socrates and Galileo, it wastrue for Nelson Mandela and V dclav Havel, and it hasbeen true for Ai Wei Wei, Pussy Riot, and the kids who made the ‘ H appy' video in Iran.“ Repressing free expression is a natural human weakness, and it is up to us to fight it at every turn. Intolerance of ideas - whether liberal or conservative — is antithetical to individual rights and free societies, and it is no less antithetical to great universities and first-rate scholarship.“There is an idea floating around college campuses -including here at Harvard - that scholars shouldbe funded only if their work conforms to a particular view of justice. There ' s a word for that idea: censorship. And it is just a modern-day form of McCarthyism.“Think about the irony: In the 1950s, the right wing was attempting to repress left wing ideas. Today, on many college campuses, it is liberals trying to repress conservative ideas, even as conservative faculty members are at risk of becoming an endangered species. And perhaps nowhere is that more true than here in the Ivy League.“In the XX presidential race, according to Federal Election Commission data, 96 percent of all campaign contributions from Ivy League faculty and employees went to Barack Obama.“ Ninety-six percent. There was more disagreement among the old Soviet Politburo than there is among Ivy League donors.“That statistic should give us pause — and I say that as someone who endorsed President Obama for reelection — because let me tell you, neither party has a monopoly on truth or God on its side.“When 96 percent of Ivy League donors prefer one candidate to another, you have to wonder whether students are being exposed to the diversity of views that a great university should offer.“ Diversity of gender, ethnicity, and orientationis important. But a university cannot be great if its faculty is politically homogenous. In fact, the wholepurpose of granting tenure to professors is to ensure that they feel free to conduct research on ideas that run afoul of university politics and societal norms.“ When tenure was created, it mostly protected liberals whose ideas ran up against conservative norms.“ Today, if tenure is going to continue to exist, it must also protect conservatives whose ideas run up against liberal norms. Otherwise, university research-and the professors who conduct it - will lose credibility.“Great universities must not become predictably partisan. And a liberal arts education must not be an education in the art of liberalism.“The role of universities is not to promote an ideology. It is to provide scholars and students with a neutral forum for researching and debating issues - without tipping the scales in one direction, orrepressing unpopular views.

　“ Requiring scholars - and commencementspeakers, for that matter — to conform to certain political standards undermines the whole purpose of a university.“ This spring, it has been disturbing to see a numberof college commencement speakers withdraw - or havetheir invitations rescinded — after protests from students and - to me, shockingly - from senior faculty and administrators who should know better.“It happened at Brandeis, Haverford, Rutgers, and Smith. Last year, it happened at Swarthmore and Johns Hopkins, I 'm sorry to say.“In each case, liberals silenced a voice - anddenied an honorary degree - to individuals they deemed politically objectionable. That is an outrage and we must not let it continue.“If a university thinks twice before inviting a commencement speaker because of his or her politics censorship and conformity - the mortal enemies of freedom - win out.“ And sadly, it is not just commencementseason when speakers are censored.“ Last fall, when I was still in City Hall, ourPolice Commissioner was invited to deliver a lectureat another Ivy League institution — but he was unable to do so because students shouted him down.“ Isn ' t the purpose of a university to stir discussion, not silence it? What were the students afraid of hearing? Why did administrators not step in to prevent the mobfrom silencing speech? And did anyone consider that it is morally and pedagogically wrong to deprive other students the chance to hear the speech?“I ' msure all of today ' s graduates have read John Stuart Mill 's On Liberty. But allow me to read a short passage from it: ‘ The peculiar evil of silencing theexpression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. '“He continued: ‘If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error. '“ Mill would have been horrified to learn of university students silencing the opinions of others. He would have been even more horrified that faculty members were often part of the commencementcensorship campaigns.“ For tenured faculty members to silence speakers whose views they disagree with is the height of hypocrisy, especially when these protests happen in the northeast - a bastion of self-professed liberal tolerance.“I 'm glad to say, however, that Harvard has not caved in to these commencement censorship campaigns. If it had, Colorado State Senator Michael Johnston would not have had the chance to address the Education School yesterday.“ Some students called on the administration to rescind the invitation to Johnston because they opposed some of his education policies. But to their great credit, President Faust and Dean Ryan stood firm.“ As Dean Ryan wrote to students: ‘ I have encountered many people of good faith who share my basic goals but disagree with my own views when it comes to the question of how best to improve education. In my view, those differences should be explored, debated, challenged, and questioned. But they should also be respected and, indeed, celebrated. '“ He could not have been more correct, and he could not have provided a more valuable final lesson to the class of XX.“ As a former chairman of Johns Hopkins, I strongly believe that a university ' s obligation is not to teachstudents what to think but to teach students how to think. And that requires listening to the other side, weighing arguments without prejudging them, and determining whether the other side might actually make some fair points.“ If the faculty fails to do this, then it is the responsibility of the administration and governing body to step in and make it a priority. If they do not, if students graduate with ears and minds closed, the university has failed both the student and society.“ And if you want to know where that leads, look no further than Washington,“ Down in Washington, every major question facingour country - involving our security, our economy, our environment, and our health - is decided.“Yet the two parties decide these questions not by engaging with one another, but by trying to shouteach other down, and by trying to repress and undermine research that runs counter to their ideology. The more our universities emulate that model, the worse off we will be as a society.“ And let me give you an example: For decades, Congress has barred the Centers for Disease Control from conducting studies of gun violence, and recently Congress also placed that prohibition on the National Institute of Health. You have to ask yourself: What are they afraid of?“ This year, the Senate has delayed a vote on President Obama ' s nominee for Surgeon General - Dr. Vivek Murthy, a Harvard physician - because he had the audacity to say that gun violence is a public health crisis that should be tackled. The gall of him!“Let ' s get serious: When86 Americans are killed with guns every single day, and shootings regularly occur at our schools and universities - including last week ' s tragedy at Santa Barbara - it would bealmost medical malpractice to