1、哈弗毕业典礼演讲X哈弗毕业典礼演讲The following is the text of Mike Bloombergs remarks as prepared for delivery:“Thank you, Katie and thank you to President Faust, the Fellows of Harvard College, the Board of Overseers, and all the faculty, alumni, and students who have welcomed me back to campus.“Im excited to be h
2、ere, not only to address the distinguished graduates and alumni at Harvard Universitys 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: Lets have a big round of applause for the Class of X! Theyve earned it!“A
3、s excited as the graduates are, they are probably even more exhausted after the past few weeks. And parents: Im not referring to their final exams. Im 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 cam
4、pus: Harvard beat Yale for the seventh straight time in football. The mens basketball team went to the second round of the NCAA tournament for the second straight year. And the Mens Squash team won national championship.“Whod a thunk it: Harvard, an athletic powerhouse! Pretty soon theyll be asking
5、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.“Youre probably asking: How did I ever get into Harvard Business School, given my ste
6、llar 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. And I have noticed that a few things have changed since I was a student here. Elsies a sandwich spot
7、 I used to love near the Square is now a burrito shop. The Wursthaus which had great beer and sausage is now an artisanal gastro-pub, whatever the heck that is. And the old Holyoke Center is now named the Smith Campus Center.“Dont you just hate it when alumni put their names all over everything? I w
8、as 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: Americas most prestigious university. And, like other great universities, i
9、t 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 come to study and debate their ideas f
10、reely and openly.“Today, Id 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 anothers viewpoint.“Tolerance for other peoples ideas, and the freedom to express your own, are inseparable values at great universities. Jo
11、ined 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 ou
12、r society.“Thats 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
13、.“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 countrys most ardent defender of religious freedom declared its opposition to the project.“The opponents held rallies and demonst
14、rations. 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 a particu
15、lar religion, and block its believers and 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.“Our union of 50 states rests on the union
16、of two values: freedom and tolerance. And it is that union of values that the terrorists who attacked us on September 11th, X and on April 15th, X 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
17、to human kind free will more than the United States of America. That protection, however, rests upon our constant vigilance.“We like 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 to ensure that equal
18、ity 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, you must 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 attempti
19、ng 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 demand for 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 t
20、han they have been since the 1950s.“When I was growing up, U.S. 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.“McCarthys Red Scare destroyed thousands of live
21、s, 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. Thats why throughout history, those in authority have tried
22、to repress ideas that threaten their power, their religion, their ideology, or their reelection chances.“That was true for Socrates and Galileo, it was true for Nelson Mandela and Vclav Havel, and it has been true for Ai Wei Wei, Pussy Riot, and the kids who made the Happy video in Iran.“Repressing
23、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 f
24、loating around college campuses including here at Harvard that scholars should be funded only if their work conforms to a particular view of justice. Theres 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 atte
25、mpting 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 X presidential race,
26、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 paus
27、e 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 v
28、iews that a great university should offer.“Diversity of gender, ethnicity, and orientation is important. But a university cannot be great if its faculty is politically homogenous. In fact, the whole purpose of granting tenure to professors is to ensure that they feel free to conduct research on idea
29、s 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, uni
30、versity 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 stu
31、dents with a neutral forum for researching and debating issues without tipping the scales in one direction, or repressing unpopular views.“Requiring scholars and commencement speakers, for that matter to conform to certain political standards undermines the whole purpose of a university.“This spring
32、, it has been disturbing to see a number of college commencement speakers withdraw or have their 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, Im sorry to say.“In each case, liberals silenced a v
