哈佛、耶鲁大学新学年校长开学演讲

开学

演讲

 NO.1 

哈佛大学

图源：哈佛大学官网

当地时间8月30日，美国哈佛大学举办开学典礼。面对1649名入学的大一新生，哈佛大学校长劳伦斯·巴科（Lawrence Bacow）发表开学演讲：哈佛校园是现实世界的缩影，世界不会因为哈佛毕业生的身份而善待你……

Good afternoon, Class of 2026.

下午好，2026届的同学们！

It is an honor to add my voice to the chorus welcoming you officially as members of the Harvard community.我很荣幸能够在这里欢迎你们正式成为哈佛大学的一员。

Fifty-three years ago this week, I said goodbye to my friends and family in Pontiac, Michigan and arrived here in Cambridge, Massachusetts for my first year of college. Not here, exactly, but just down the street at MIT.

53年前的这个星期，我告别了密歇根州庞蒂亚克的朋友和家人，来到了马萨诸塞州剑桥市，开始了我的大学第一年。确切地说，不是这里，而是就在街边的麻省理工学院。

It seems like yesterday.

这一切就像发生在昨天一样。

I can tell you with complete confidence that memories of your first few weeks on this campus will remain vivid throughout your lifetime. You will recall who you met, who you befriended, your very first class, your very first burger at Bartley’s—everything.

我可以完全肯定地告诉你们，在这个校园头几周的记忆将在你们一生中留下生动印记，无论何时都历历在目。你们会想起一切——遇到的人、结识的人、第一堂课，还有在巴特利餐厅吃的第一个汉堡。

Among my most vivid memories is my freshman roommate. His name was Alan. He was a lacrosse player from New Jersey.

我印象很深的一个人是我的大一室友。他叫艾伦，是来自新泽西的棍网球运动员。

He was big. I was small. He was messy. I was neat. He brought his stereo to campus and liked to study with it on. I liked to study with it off. He liked to listen to the Rolling Stones, The Who and The Band. I liked Bob Dylan, James Taylor and Joni Mitchell. He liked almost all New York sports teams. I hated them. He was politically quite conservative. I was anything but.

他是大高个，我是小个子。他很邋遢，我很整洁。他把音响带到校园并喜欢开着它学习，我则喜欢关了音响安静学习。他喜欢听滚石、谁人和The Band乐队的歌，我喜欢鲍勃·迪伦、詹姆斯·泰勒和乔尼·米切尔。他喜欢几乎所有的纽约运动队，而我讨厌他们。他在政治上相当保守， 我则不然。

"This will never work out," I thought. 

“这永远不会有结果的。”我想。

So—you can probably tell where this story is going—I could not have been more wrong. 

现在，你们可能知道这个故事的走向了——我大错特错了。

Alan, beneath a seemingly crusty, loud, opinionated exterior, proved to be one of the kindest, most interesting people I met during my time in college. 

艾伦，外表看似暴躁、吵闹、固执，结果证明是我在大学遇到的最善良、最有趣的人之一。

He was incredibly well read, a terrific writer, and very generous with his time, patiently helping me navigate through freshman physics, calculus, and chemistry. While we differed on almost everything related to politics, he loved a good argument, and we had many. 

他阅读量大得惊人，是个了不起的作家，而且很舍得为朋友花费时间，耐心帮助我完成了大一的物理、微积分和化学课程。我们在与政治有关的几乎所有方面都有分歧，他喜欢理性辩论，我们也有过很多这样的辩论。

He became one of my closest friends, and we continued to live together, even as graduate students. On my first day at Harvard Law School, he fixed me up on a blind date with his girlfriend’s roommate. That blind date is here today. Let me introduce you to her, my wife of 47 years, Adele. 

他成了我最亲密的朋友之一，即使读研究生时我们还继续做室友。在我进入哈佛大学法学院的第一天，他就为我安排了一次相亲，对象是他女朋友的室友。那个相亲对象今天就在这里。让我向大家介绍她，我47年的妻子——阿黛尔。

And Alan wound up marrying Adele’s roommate, Debby, one week before Adele and I got married. The two of them came to our wedding on their honeymoon.

而艾伦最后在阿黛尔和我结婚前一周与阿黛尔的室友黛比结婚了。他们俩在蜜月期间来参加了我们的婚礼。

Today, 53 years after we met, Alan and Debby remain two of our closest friends. This summer, they spent three days with us at our home. We have been through all of life’s passages together—the birth of our children and their children—the work of building careers and families—the joys and disappointments of life—the sweetness of every milestone and the sorrow of every loss.

今天，在我们相遇53年后，艾伦和黛比仍然是我们最亲密的两个朋友。今年夏天，他们还在我们家住了3天。我们一起走过了人生的各个历程-——我们孩子和他们孩子的出生、成家立业的过程、生活的欢乐和失望、每一个里程碑的甜蜜和每一次失去的悲伤。

We still agree about very little when it comes to politics, but we have civil conversations—even debates from time to time—and usually end up agreeing to disagree. But we always respect each other, and we often learn from each other. And, after 53 years, we love them like family.

在政治方面，我们仍然没有什么共识，但我们有文明的谈话——甚至不时进行辩论——通常以求同存异结束。但我们始终尊重彼此，而且经常互相学习。53年后，我们像爱家人一样爱他们。

During your time here, please don’t overlook your Alan. Please don’t judge people quickly based on their outward appearances or your first impressions. 

在这里的日子里，请不要忽视你的艾伦。请不要根据人们的外在表现或你的第一印象来迅速判断他们。

One of the many reasons we admitted students from around the world, people with every interest imaginable, is because we learn from our differences. 

哈佛录取的学生来自世界各地，兴趣各不相同，原因之一就是我们要从我们的差异中学习。

As you get to know your roommates and your classmates, try to be slow to judge and quick to understand. Give everyone the benefit of the doubt, at least initially, not just at Harvard but throughout life and you will be surprised by the number of friends you will acquire, people quite different from you, but people who will enrich your life immensely.

当你了解你的室友和你的同学时，试着缓慢判断、快速理解。至少开始时要对别人往好处想，不仅仅在哈佛，而是整个人生，你会对你将获得的朋友数量感到惊讶，这些人与你截然不同，但他们会极大地丰富你的人生。

If you are like most Harvard students, the friendships you make in the next few days will stay with you forever. A few of you are even likely to meet your spouse or life partner here. 

如果你像大多数哈佛学生一样，接下来几天建立的友谊将永远伴随你。你们中的一些人甚至有可能在这里遇到你的配偶或生活伴侣。

I know this statement to be true because I attend a lot of Harvard reunions. I hear the same stories over and over about lifelong relationships that started during the first few days of school. 

我知道这是真的，因为我参加了很多哈佛的同学聚会。我一次又一次听到同样的故事——在学校的头几天就结下了终生的关系。

Your best friends, people with whom you will share your life together, are sitting among you. Your job is to find them.

你最好的朋友，将与你一起分享人生的人，就坐在你们中间。你的工作便是找到他们。

Let me also acknowledge that you may meet people at Harvard that you do not like. 

我也承认，你或许会在哈佛遇到不喜欢的人。

Harvard is a microcosm of the larger world, and everything that you may find objectionable in the larger world is present in some measure here. We are not perfect, but we strive to be better. 

哈佛是更大世界的一个缩影，你在大世界中可能发现的所有令人反感的东西在这里都有一定程度的存在。我们并不完美，但我们努力做得更好。

While trying to be a caring, understanding, and welcoming community, we cannot protect you from everything that is unpleasant. Our job is to prepare you for the world you will inhabit when you graduate. And that world is not going to treat you with kid gloves simply because you have a Harvard degree. 

在努力成为一个充满关怀、理解和热情的校园的同时，我们不能保护你们免受一切不愉快事情的影响。我们的工作是让你们为毕业后将面临的世界做好准备。而那个世界不会就因为你有一个哈佛的学位而善待你。

We would not be doing you a favor if we placed you in an emotional bubble and did not let your emotional immune systems develop. We are here to prepare you to deal with a world that will challenge you—and sometimes even offend you. 

如果我们把你们放在一个情绪泡泡中，不让你们的情绪免疫系统发展成长，那我们就不是在帮你们。我们在这里是为了让你们准备好应对一个将挑战你们——有时甚至会冒犯你们的世界。

I hope you will master these skills while you are at Harvard so you can devote your life to repairing a world that we all know is far from perfect.

我希望你们在哈佛时能掌握这些技能，这样你们就能用余生来尽力修复这个我们都知道远非完美的世界。

I know from conversations that I have already had with some of you that you want to change the world. Good for you. That is one of the reasons we admitted you. 

我已经与你们中的一些人谈过话，从中知道你们想改变世界。这对你们来说是好事。这也是我们接纳你们的原因之一。

But if you want to change the world, you need to master the art of persuading people to change their minds. And I guarantee that you will not be effective at doing so unless you first have the experience of changing your own.

但是，如果想改变世界，你就需要掌握说服人们改变想法的艺术。而且我保证，除非你先做到改变自己，没有这样的经验，你不会有效地改变他人。

Our motto at Harvard is Veritas. It is more than a motto. It is the reason we exist, to seek the truth. 

哈佛的校训是“真理”。它不仅仅是一个校训。它是我们存在的原因——为了寻求真理。

Over time, truth is revealed, it needs to be tested on the anvil of competing ideas. If you really seek the truth, you must engage with those who think differently than you.

随着时间的推移，真理会被揭示，它需要在相互竞争的思想平台上接受考验。如果你真的要寻求真理，就必须与那些与你想法不同的人接触。

Even more importantly, you must be willing to change your mind—to be persuaded by a better argument or new information. Only when you have this experience will you be well equipped to make a difference in the world. This is another skill I hope you will master at Harvard.

更重要的是，你必须愿意改变你的想法——被更好的论据或新的信息所说服。只有拥有了这样的经验，你才会有足够的能力来改变世界。这是我希望你们在哈佛掌握的另一项技能。

On move in day, Adele and I met many of your families. We witnessed more than one emotional goodbye. Most of you have been at the center of your loved one’s lives since the day you entered their world. Now you are gone, and, for many left behind, the silence is deafening. 

在入住当天，阿黛尔和我见到了你们中的许多家庭。我们目睹了不止一次的感性告别。自你们进入所爱之人的世界的那天起，你们中的大多数人就一直是他们生活的中心。现在你们离开了家，对很多人的家人来说，只剩下了沉默。

You have many people to help you make your transition to college—academic advisors, peer advisors, residential advisors, proctors, deans—you name it. But your loved ones are on their own. They are also going through a big adjustment, and it is up to you to help them through it. Please give them a call from time to time, not a text—a call, and ask them how they are doing. I guarantee you they will appreciate it.

有许多人会帮助你们过渡到大学——学术顾问、同伴顾问、住宿顾问、监考人、院长。但你们的亲人只能靠他们自己了。他们也正在经历一个巨大的调整，而你们要帮助他们渡过难关。请不时给他们打个电话，不是短信——是电话，问问他们过得如何。我保证他们会很喜欢。

Class of 2026, we have great expectations for you. I hope that Harvard is everything you dreamed it will be—intellectually, socially and personally. 

2026届的同学们，我们对你们寄予厚望。我希望哈佛符合你们梦想的一切——无论在智力上、社交上，还是个人方面。

I only wish I could be there at your 50th reunion so you could tell me how your life turned out and the role that Harvard played in it.

我只希望在你们50周年聚会时我能在场，这样你们就能告诉我，你们的人生是如何展开的，哈佛在其中扮演了怎样的角色。

Best of luck to each of you, and Godspeed.

祝你们每个人好运，一帆风顺！

开学

演讲

 NO.2 

耶鲁大学

图源：耶鲁北京中心

美东时间8月22日上午，耶鲁大学举行了2022-2023年度耶鲁本科学院的开学典礼。耶鲁大学校长苏必德（Peter Salovey）和耶鲁本科学院新任院长Pericles Lewis向2026届新生表示欢迎。

开学典礼上，苏必德校长发表了题为“在耶鲁踏上追寻真理之路”的演讲，他呼吁学生“以对不同观点的包容，以尊重和积极的心态，以耐心的倾听和深刻的思考，以满怀同理心和理解的表达，为耶鲁的校园再倾注一些对真理的追寻。”

中文译文参考链接：开学第一课 | 耶鲁大学校长2022开学演讲：在耶鲁踏上追寻真理之路（附中文译文+全程视频）

Pursuing Truth at Yale

– Opening Assembly Address, Yale College Class of 2026

Peter Salovey, President of Yale University

August 22, 2022

Good morning, everyone. Thank you, Dean Lewis, for those inspiring remarks. It is truly a thrill to welcome all of you, our entering students, and your family members to our campus for our Yale College Opening Assembly. Today is the official start of your undergraduate education at Yale, and on behalf of all my colleagues here on stage with me, we are delighted this day has arrived!

As you know, Yale’s motto is Light and Truth – Lux et Veritas in Latin, Urim v’Thummim in Hebrew – and you will see it etched ubiquitously on crests around campus. Today, I want to speak with you about the part of our motto we share with many other universities around the world through their mission, ethos, culture, and that is, Veritas, or Truth.

For several years now, even as the world struggled to contain a public health crisis, we have witnessed the virulent spread of deceptive information, even outright lies. We have seen an assault on expertise, an assault on scientific and other scholarly findings – indeed, an assault on truth. Hardly a day passes without a report on someone who has “discovered,” in the comfort of his or her own home, that the scientific experts are wrong about COVID. Hardly a day goes by when someone on the internet does not spin some new, fact-free conspiracy theory. Historical events we know to be true are denied by individuals with nefarious motives.

Here are five brief examples:

Earlier this year, some in our country, including those in positions of leadership, depicted a violent mob’s attempt to disrupt the most basic functioning of our democracy by denying an election outcome as “legitimate political discourse.”

As destructive wildfires, severe drought in some places, historic flooding in others portend a catastrophic climate emergency, we see those faithful to unfounded skepticism disregard overwhelming scientific consensus. In some counties in the United States, half of the residents still do not believe global climate change is real.

In recent months, Vladimir Putin has propagated misinformation about rooting out Nazis as the motivation for his unprovoked invasion of Ukraine.

Social media platforms have been mobilized to incite or stoke ethnic violence by propagating falsehoods in countries like Myanmar and Ethiopia.

And finally, a recent defamation trial focused on a notorious conspiracy theorist who claims that the murder of twenty school children and six adults in Sandy Hook, Connecticut – about a half-hour’s drive from here – was staged by the U.S. government.

Of course, spreading misinformation is not new. History teems with the haunting consequences of lies.

Philosopher Hannah Arendt – on whom Yale bestowed an honorary degree in 1971 – writes of some of humanity’s darkest chapters and the malignant regimes that authored them: “the ideal subject of totalitarian rule,” she says, “is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist.” It is rather “people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction (that is, the reality of experience) and the distinction between true and false (that is, the standards of thought) no longer exist.”

Yes, malevolence can feast on the environment devoid of Veritas. And at stake, therefore, in the abiding search for truth is humanity itself.

For our part, colleges and universities must combat the spread of misinformation, propaganda, and conjured conspiracy theories first by supporting faculty; they generate scientific data and scholarly insight. Faculty must be free to disseminate knowledge and teach you to think critically about ideas and their sources.

But to do so effectively, our institutions of higher education – faculty and students – must be open to engaging with diverse ideas, whether conventional or unconventional, of the left or of the right. It is Yale’s obligation to address the credibility crisis, for we have long stood for the pursuit of truth and devoted ourselves to it.

Colleges and universities like Yale are home to artists, and scholars, and scientists, and practitioners who spend their entire lives searching for truth. Yet, the growing polarization in society around ideas, spoken of by your Dean, whether embraced or eschewed by a particular faction, impedes this search for truth, and threatens to erode public confidence in expertise, minimizing the impact of universities precisely when unvarnished truth is so desperately needed.

Faculty and students – indeed the university itself – will be viewed as reliable sources of information if we do not appear closed off to unpopular or otherwise nonmainstream ideas from thoughtful individuals responsibly articulated. Most Americans still have a positive view of universities and consider a college education important for future success. But confidence that higher education has a salubrious impact on society is eroded by a belief that we will not engage with ideas that challenge us.

So let me discuss a familiar example: that there has been a steady decline in the percentage of college students who believe the freedom to express unpopular points of view is secure. Actually, it is a myth that students do not want their campuses to be home to a broad range of perspectives. They do. Recent opinion polling by the Knight Foundation confirms that most students believe it is more important to be exposed to all types of speech than to protect people by prohibiting offensive or biased speech. What some refer to as “cancel culture” is not the dominant ideology of students.

Here at Yale, which is home to the country’s oldest collegiate debate society, students across the political spectrum can engage in spirited, yet civil discussions. Yale College students have selected Hillary Clinton as a Class Day speaker and honored both George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush as Yale Undergraduate Lifetime Achievement Award recipients. And the university has hosted interactions between individuals with ideological differences, such as a recent conversation between Emily Bazelon and Ross Douthat, and another one among four former Secretaries of State, Democrats and Republicans.

But let’s be frank. It can be difficult to articulate unpopular views on college campuses. That Knight Foundation survey I cited a moment ago suggests that only about half of all students feel “comfortable offering dissenting opinions.”

So, we need to build on an existing desire among students to engage every day – in classrooms, in dining halls, in meeting spaces – with different viewpoints and to appreciate the importance of expressing their disagreement with one another. Indeed, in a university setting, we must be able to distinguish – emphatically – legitimate dissent from outright deceit. We must make room for beliefs we find objectionable as faithfully as we reject falsehoods we know to be lies.

And we must, therefore, nurture a bias toward openness, even – and especially – when this ethos exposes us to points of view that test our most strongly-held assumptions. Such a climate affords the search for truth – and the credibility necessary to trust it.

Of course, as we search for truth, we must be mindful of the power and influence of institutions like Yale. We must recognize, with humility, that what looks like a truth might not be one. I think, for instance, of our own history: our resistance to co-education for so long or our leadership at one time in eugenics. With power comes great responsibility. These disturbing realities are why some are reluctant even to use the word “truth” in describing our mission.

Nonetheless, at Yale, I’ve often observed our faculty actively encouraging students to interrogate data and other ideas presented to them, and I’ve seen students change their minds when confronted with contrary evidence. Every one of you will have that experience as part of your Yale education. I suspect you’ll have it often.

You can enroll in courses that bring together pairs of professors representing different disciplines, who model how looking at a problem from divergent perspectives can lead to new insights: a course on film taught by a film historian and a physicist, a course on the nature of choice taught by a philosopher and an economist, a course on transgender health taught by faculty members from American Studies and the School of Nursing. Similarly, in a recent semester, three experts from across the political spectrum co-taught a course on the crisis of liberalism, covering the Obama and Trump presidencies.

We will continue to create opportunities like these for you to have open conversations about contentious, complex issues – opportunities rooted in the reality that no ideological bloc can claim ownership of truth; that facts pledge no fealty to any of our preferred conclusions. And, therefore, that evidence must guide the beliefs we hold rather than conform to them.

In considering this imperative, I’m reminded of the book, “The Death of Truth,” by Michiko Kakutani – a winner of the Pulitzer Prize, and an alumna of Yale College (Class of 1976), and a champion of the sense of truth we seek to promote.

Kakutani’s stirring appeal for reason and objectivity concludes with an especially, if not unnervingly, relevant warning for our era issued by James Madison: “a popular Government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Force, I’m sorry, is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy; or perhaps both.” Indeed, “without commonly agreed-upon facts,” Kakutani posits, “not Republican facts and [not] Democratic facts; not the alternative facts of today’s silo-world – there can be no rational debate over policies, no substantive means of evaluating candidates for political office, and no way to hold elected officials accountable to the people. Without truth, democracy is hobbled. The founders recognized this, and those seeking democracy’s survival must recognize it today.” That was all a quote from Kakutani.

I think, too, of James Hatch – an extraordinary Yale undergraduate who spent over two decades with the Naval Special Warfare Command before returning to complete his college education. As he wrote, the climate at Yale “is one where most students understand that there has to be a place where people can assault ideas openly and discuss them vigorously and respectfully in order to improve the state of humanity.”

Yale is committed to the responsibility of promoting the public’s trust in academic research, expertise, and the value of higher education by ensuring that Mr. Hatch’s experience is typical of every student, every day, and in every classroom.

Philosophy 181 reflects this responsibility. In her course “Philosophy and the Science of Human Nature,” Yale’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences Dean Tamar Gendler ties contemporary cognitive science, which has helped us to gain an understanding of how our minds operate, to the work of ancient philosophers. Students in her class consider anew Plato’s allegory of the cave, in which people mistake shadows on the wall for reality. Dean Gendler walks her students through this allegory to challenge them to consider this question: How do you discover truth given that the human mind is imperfect?

Of course, our limitations pose no impediment to the search for truth. For they are, in fact, what can power the curiosity necessary to sustain it. By embracing our humility, we can broaden our understanding.

So, at Yale, we will not merely reaffirm what you already think as you arrive. We will, instead, provoke you to uncover all you do not know before you leave. We will fine-tune your ability to sift facts from falsehood, for the core of a liberal education is comprised of reason, logic, and critical thinking.

Soon, you will be the beneficiary of such an education. Yet, it behooves you also to be an active participant in it as students – and then, in due course, as alumni.

And so, today, as you begin your college career, I call on all of us to promote a truth-seeking climate at Yale – in every seminar, in every residential college, and in every late-night conversation (to echo our Dean) – by being willing to entertain ideas with which we do not agree, by being willing to extend grace and assume positive intent, by listening carefully, by thinking deeply, and by speaking with empathy and understanding.

Let us, together, elevate the virtues of tolerance and engagement, and reject the culture of public shaming, doxing, and ostracism.

And, in time-tested tradition, let us strengthen the open discourse that has, for centuries, been a hallmark of our intellectual community at Yale – and that has produced the scholarship and scientific breakthroughs that have improved the world well beyond it.

By doing so, you can develop expertise – and also help to rescue its standing. You can, in an increasingly dark world, bring Veritas to Lux. And, perhaps equally as vital in a fragmented world, bring Lux to Veritas – Light to Truth.

Welcome to Yale. Thank you.

来源：哈佛大学官网、英语世界、耶鲁北京中心，图片源于网络，如侵删。 

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监制：李璨
审核：刘煜责任编辑：杨冬妮记者：郑楠

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