耶鲁大学校长2010年毕业致辞

1、最新 料推荐speeches & statementsfreshman address: opportunity and responsibilitypresident richard c. levinaugust 28, 2010yale universityi am delighted to join dean miller in welcoming you, the class of 2014, to yale college.iwant to welcome also the relatives and friends who have accompanied you here, an

2、despecially your parents.as a father of four college graduates, i know how proud you parentsare of your children s achievement, how hopeful you are for their future, and how manyconcerns large and smallyou have at this moment.let me try to reassure you. your children are going to love it here!and yo

3、u are going toenjoy your association with yale, too, whether you are a returning graduate or one of the vastmajority of parents who never set foot in new haven until your children started to think aboutwhere to go to college.you may take comfort in learning that surveys have shown that yaleparents a

4、re the most satisfied in the ivy league.so, welcome to the yale family!we are sopleased to have your children with us, and we will do our best to provide them with abundantopportunities to learn and thrive in the four years ahead.and to you, the class of 2014, i make the same pledge.for you, these n

5、ext four years willbe a time of opportunity unlike any other.here you are surrounded by astonishing resources:fascinating fellow students from all over the world, a learned and caring faculty, intimateresidential college communities, a magnificent library, two extraordinary art museums, anoutstandin

6、g museum of natural history, superb athletic facilities, and student organizationscovering every conceivable interest the performing arts, politics, and community serviceamong them.you will have complete freedom to explore, learn about new subjects, meetnew people, and pursue new passions.i want to

7、encourage you, in every way that i can, tomake the most of this rare and unique opportunity.let s start with your academic program.most likely, you will be overwhelmed by the morethan 2000 courses available to you.you will inevitably miss out on 98% of them.but let meurge you nonetheless to sample w

8、idely.each of the scholarly disciplines provides a differentperspective on human experience; each allows you a different window on our accumulatedknowledge of nature and culture, and each, quite literally, allows you to see the worlddifferently.if i could offer only one piece of advice about selecti

9、ng courses, it would be this:stretch yourself.don t assume that you know in advance what fields will interest you themost.take some courses in fields that are entirely outside the range of your past1最新 料推荐experience.you will not only emerge as a more broadly educated person, but you will alsostand a

10、 better chance of discovering an unsuspected passion that helps to shape the futurecourse of your life.by studying philosophy, for example, you will learn to reason more rigorously and to discernmore readily what constitutes a logically consistent argument and what does not.and youwill study texts t

11、hat wrestle directly with the deepest questions of how one should live.your professors of literature, music, and art history will teach you to read, listen, and see closely, and help you to develop a keener appreciation for the artistry that makes literature, music, and visual art sublime representa

12、tions of human emotions, values, andideas. whether you major in these subjects or not, your appreciation of what is true and beautiful may be forever enriched.your professors of history will teach you to appreciate the challenging art of reconstructing the past, and to understand how meaning is extr

13、acted from experience. this may help you to gain perspective on your own experience.years ago, when i taught introductory economics in yale college, i always began by tellingthe students that the course would change their lives.why?because economics will openyou to an entirely new and different way

14、of understanding how the world works.economicswill not prescribe for you how society should be organized, or the extent to which individualfreedom should be subordinated to collective ends, or how the fruits of human labor shouldbe distributed.but understanding the logic of markets will give you a n

15、ew way to think aboutthese perpetually important questions.in similar fashion, each of the other social sciences psychology, political science, anthropology, sociology, and linguistics will give you adifferent perspective on human experience in society.some of you may already have a passion for scie

16、nce or mathematics, and you may have setyour sights on a major in science, math, or engineering.there is so much in these pursuitsto excite the imagination that i hardly need elaborate.in science, we are in the midst ofdiscovering the causes of human disease, the mechanisms of evolution, and the ori

17、gins of theuniverse.in engineering, we have unprecedented opportunities to develop new materials,new medical devices, and new sources of energy.one of the virtues of studying science andengineering at a place like yale is that you can practice science and engineering while youstudy it; you can work

18、in research laboratories along side your professors on problems at thevery frontier of knowledge.with respect to science, i have two messages for you that are mirror images.first, if you aresomeone with an early or emerging passion for science, take the time to sample other2最新 料推荐subjects as well.ev

19、en if you pursue science or engineering as a career, broadening youreducation in the other liberal arts will both enrich your lives and improve yourscience.second, if you do not think yourself a“ science type,” don t just fulfill the sciencerequirement; give science a serious try.during the past dec

20、ade, we have developed anumber of problem-oriented science courses without prerequisites; they are meant to giveyou a rigorous exposure to science without the comprehensiveness of a survey coursedesigned for those already committed to a major or to a pre-medical curriculum.try one ortwo of these cou

21、rses, early on; you may be surprised by your newfound enthusiasm.and, to complete this mini-tour of the curriculum, we will not let you forget about writing,math, and languages.some attention to these skills is required, but there are many ways tosatisfy the requirements.again, i would urge you to s

22、tretch yourselves; try somethingdifferent an expository or creative writing class, statistics instead of more calculus, or a new language, even as you pursue further study of one you already know.my suggestion that you stretch yourselves is not limited to the classroom.it applies to boththe friends

23、and extracurricular activities you choose as well.if the friends you make here areexclusively those who come from backgrounds just like your own and went to high schoolsjust like your own, you will have forfeited half the value of a yale education.you come fromall 50 states and 58 nations, from a wi

24、de range of racial, religious, and socio-economicbackgrounds.each of your residential colleges reflects within itself that rich diversity.seekout friends with different histories and different interests; you will find that you learn themost from the people least like you.no doubt you will participat

25、e in one or more of the 300 student organizations on campus, aswell as varsity, club, and intramural athletic teams.you may find your consuming passion,the passion that shapes your life after yale, in one of these pursuits.i can think of scores ofjournalists, public servants, teachers, start-up entr

26、epreneurs, performers, and filmmakerswhose career choices were shaped by their extracurricular activities here at yale.again, myadvice is to move beyond the familiar; try at least one extracurricular activity that is brandnew to you.and, by all means, do not spend all your time with your varsity tea

27、mmates, oryour fellow singing group members, or the others who write for the yale daily news.makethe most of the extraordinary variety of opportunities available to you.so far, my advice to you is focused entirely on how you might get the most out of your yaleeducation.you might be wondering: am i h

28、ere just to exploit all of yale s treasures formyself alone?the answer is“ no.we” have confidence, based on the evidence of historyand knowledge of the culture of this place, that your journey toward self-discovery, yourprogress toward finding your passion, will yield more than self-gratification an

29、d personaladvancement.we believe that because you are intelligent and reflective members of a3最新 料推荐community of scholars, you will come to recognize that with the abundant opportunities for self-enrichment that yale provides, there also come responsibilities.and what are these responsibilities?they

30、 begin with responsibility for the wellbeing of theinstitution you are joining today.let me remind you that even for those of you whoseparents are paying the full tuition, room and board charges, more than half of the total costof your yale education is supported by the gifts of those who came befor

31、e you.more thanhalf of you hold scholarships.and most of our buildings, athletic facilities, and museum andlibrary collections trace to gifts from graduates of yale college.your responsibilities also include good citizenship in its many varieties.at yaleoundingsfthis took the form of supporting new

32、haven colony and the congregational church.today,while volunteer service to local community organizations, secular and religious, remains adistinguishing characteristic of yale graduates, our horizons have broadened.some of youwill undoubtedly carry on yale s great tradition of producing national le

33、aders, and for all ofyou who spend most of your adult lives in the united states, there is an emerging burden ofcitizenship that will be yours to bear.and that is the powerfully important burden of helpingto raise the level of public discourse.one has only to compare the rhetoric of today s leadersw

34、ith the speeches of abraham lincoln, given 150 years ago, or the transcripts of thekennedy-nixon debates of 50 years ago, to see how oversimplified ideology and appeal tonarrow interest groups have triumphed over intelligence and moderation in civicdiscussion.by insisting, as citizens, on serious di

35、scussion instead of slogans that masknarrow partisan interests, you can help to make our democracy more effective.today, because the world is so highly interconnected and interdependent, you will have theadded responsibility of acting as global citizens.your generation, more than any that hasgone be

36、fore, will need deep knowledge of and intimate engagement with cultures andsocieties very different from your own.those of you who come from abroad will of courseexperience immersion in another culture right here in new haven.the rest of you may do soby taking advantage of one of our many programs o

37、f work or study abroad.such anexperience will stretch you in just the way that i am recommending more generally; it willforce you to see yourself from a different perspective, and to see others free frompreconceptions.since so many of the issues confronting us from poverty and disease tothe proliferation of nuclear weapons require cooperative solutions, a cross-culturalperspective is invaluable. even before you travel overseas, you might start preparing yourselves for global citizenship by sampling some of the courses in international studies offered by the recently establi