耶鲁大学校长2010年毕业致辞

SPEECHES & STATEMENTS

Freshman Address: Opportunity and Responsibility

President Richard C. Levin

August 28, 2010

Yale University

I am delighted to join Dean Miller in welcoming you, the Class of 2014, to Yale College.

I

want to welcome also the relatives and friends who have accompanied you here, and

especially your parents.

As a father of four college graduates, I know how proud you parents

are of your children’s achievement, how hopeful you are for their future, and how many

concerns

–

large and small

–

you have at this moment.

Let me try to reassure you. Your children are going to love it here!

And you are going to

enjoy your association with Yale, too, whether you are a returning graduate or one of the vast

majority of parents who never set foot in New Haven until your children started to think about

where to go to college.

You may take comfort in learning that surveys have shown that Yale

parents are the most satisfied in the Ivy League.

So, welcome to the Yale family!

We are so

pleased to have your children with us, and we will do our best to provide them with abundant

opportunities to learn and thrive in the four years ahead.

And to you, the Class of 2014, I make the same pledge.

For you, these next four years will

be 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, intimate

residential college communities, a magnificent library, two extraordinary art museums, an

outstanding museum of natural history, superb athletic facilities, and student organizations

covering every conceivable interest

—

the performing arts, politics, and community service

among them.

You will have complete freedom to explore, learn about new subjects, meet

new people, and pursue new passions.

I want to encourage you, in every way that I can, to

make the most of this rare and unique opportunity.

Let’s start with your academic program.

Most likely, you will be overwhelmed by the more

than 2000 courses available to you.

You will inevitably miss out on 98% of them.

But let me

urge you nonetheless to sample widely.

Each of the scholarly disciplines provides a different

perspective on human experience; each allows you a different window on our accumulated

knowledge of nature and culture, and each, quite literally, allows you to see the world

differently.

If I could offer only one piece of advice about selecting courses, it would be this:

stretch yourself.

Don’t assume that you know in advance what field

s will interest you the

most.

Take some courses in fields that are entirely outside the range of your past

experience.

You will not only emerge as a more broadly educated person, but you will also

stand a better chance of discovering an unsuspected passion that helps to shape the future

course of your life.

By studying philosophy, for example, you will learn to reason more rigorously and to discern

more readily what constitutes a logically consistent argument and what does not.

And you

will study texts that 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 representations of human emotions, values, and

ideas.

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 extracted 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 telling

the students that the course would change their lives.

Why?

Because economics will open

you to an entirely new and different way of understanding how the world works.

Economics

will not prescribe for you how society should be organized, or the extent to which individual

freedom should be subordinated to collective ends, or how the fruits of human labor should

be distributed.

But understanding the logic of markets will give you a new way to think about

these perpetually important questions.

In similar fashion, each of the other social sciences

—

psychology, political science, anthropology, sociology, and linguistics

—

will give you a

different perspective on human experience in society.

Some of you may already have a passion for science or mathematics, and you may have set

your sights on a major in science, math, or engineering.

There is so much in these pursuits

to excite the imagination that I hardly need elaborate.

In science, we are in the midst of

discovering the causes of human disease, the mechanisms of evolution, and the origins of the

universe.

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 and

engineering at a place like Yale is that you can practice science and engineering while you

study it; you can work in research laboratories along side your professors on problems at the

very frontier of knowledge.

With respect to science, I have two messages for you that are mirror images.

First, if you are

someone with an early or emerging passion for science, take the time to sample other