哈佛大学校长毕业典礼演讲及中文大意.doc

哈佛大学校长Summers，在 2006年6月8日第355届毕业典礼上发表告别演讲，“鼓励学生用理性改变世界”2006 Commencement Address Harvard University President Lawrence H. Summers Cambridge, Mass. June 8, 2006 Today, I speak from this podium a final time as your president. As I depart, I want to thank all of you - students, faculty, alumni and staff - with whom I have been privileged to work over these past years. Some of us have had our disagreements, but I know that which unites us transcends that which divides us. I leave with a full heart, grateful for the opportunity I have had to lead this remarkable institution. Since I delivered my Inaugural address, 56 months ago, I have learned an enormous amount -about higher education, about leadership, and also, about myself. Some things look different to me than they did five years ago. And yet the convictions I expressed as I entered Harvards presidency I feel with even more urgency these five years later. It is the urgency, and the possibility, of all Harvard can accomplish in the next years that I want to focus on this afternoon. The world that todays Harvards graduates are entering is a profoundly different one than the world administrators like me, the faculty, and all but the most recent alumni of Harvard entered. It is a world where opportunities have never been greater for those who know how to teach children to read, or those who know how to distribute financial risk; never greater for those who understand the cell and the pixel; never greater for those who can master, and navigate between, legal codes, faith traditions, computer platforms, political viewpoints. It is also a world where some are left further and further behind - those who are not educated, those trapped in poverty and violence, those for whom equal opportunity is just a hollow phrase. Scientific and technological advances are enabling us to comprehend the furthest reaches of the cosmos, the most basic constituents of matter, and the miracle of life. They offer the prospect of liberating