推荐迈克尔布隆伯格在哈佛大学201X年毕业典礼英语演讲稿word范文 10页.docx

1、推荐迈克尔布隆伯格在哈佛大学201X年毕业典礼英语演讲稿word范文 10页本文部分内容来自网络整理，本司不为其真实性负责，如有异议或侵权请及时联系，本司将立即删除！= 本文为word格式，下载后可方便编辑和修改！ = 迈克尔布隆伯格在哈佛大学201X年毕业典礼英语演讲稿Thank you, Katie and thank you to President Faust, the Fellows of Harvard College, the Boardof Overseers, and all the faculty, alumni, and students who have welcome

2、d me back to campus.Im excited to be here, not only to address the distinguished graduates and alumni atHarvard Universitys 363rd commencement but to stand in the exact spot where Oprah stoodlast year. OMG.Let me begin with the most important order of business: Lets have a big round of applause fort

3、he Class of 201X! Theyve earned it!As excited as the graduates are, they are probably even more exhausted after the past fewweeks. And parents: Im not referring to their final exams. Im talking about the SeniorOlympics, the Last Chance Dance, and the Booze Cruise I mean, the moonlight cruise. The en

4、tire year has been exciting on campus: Harvard beat Yale for the seventh straight timein football. The mens basketball team went to the second round of the NCAA tournament forthe second straight year. And the Mens Squash team won national championship. Whod a thunk it: Harvard, an athletic powerhous

5、e! Pretty soon theyll be asking whether youhave academics to go along with your athletic programs.My personal connection to Harvard began in 1964, when I graduated from Johns HopkinsUniversity in Baltimore and matriculated here at the B-School.Youre probably asking: How did I ever get into Harvard B

6、usiness School, given my stellaracademic record, where I always made the top half of the class possible? I have no idea. Andthe 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 havechanged since I was a student here

7、. Elsies a sandwich spot I used to love near the Square is now a burrito shop. The Wursthaus which had great beer and sausage is now an artisanalgastro-pub, whatever the heck that is. And the old Holyoke Center is now named the SmithCampus Center. Dont you just hate it when alumni put their names al

8、l over everything? I was thinking aboutthat this morning as I walked into the Bloomberg Center on the Harvard Business Schoolcampus across the river.But the good news is, Harvard remains what it was when I first arrived on campus 50 yearsago: Americas most prestigious university. And, like other gre

9、at universities, it lies at theheart of the American experiment in democracy.Their purpose is not only to advance knowledge, but to advance the ideals of our nation. Greatuniversities are places where people of all backgrounds, holding all beliefs, pursuing allquestions, can come to study and debate

10、 their ideas freely 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 valuesat great unive

11、rsities. Joined together, they form a sacred trust that holds the basis of ourdemocratic society.But that trust is perpetually vulnerable to the tyrannical tendencies of monarchs, mobs, andmajorities. And lately, we have seen those tendencies manifest themselves too often, both oncollege campuses an

12、d in our 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 stopthe development of a mosque a few blocks from the World Trade Center

13、site.It was an emotional issue, and polls showed that two-thirds of Americans were against amosque being built there. Even the Anti-Defamation League widely regarded as the countrysmost ardent defender of religious freedom declared its opposition to the project. The opponents held rallies and demons

14、trations. They denounced the developers. And theydemanded that city government stop its construction. That was their right and we protectedtheir right to protest. But they could not have been more wrong. And we refused to cave in totheir demands. The idea that government would single out a particula

15、r religion, and block its believers andonly its believers from building a house of worship in a particular area is diametricallyopposed to the moral principles that gave rise to our great nation and the constitutionalprotections that have sustained it. Our union of 50 states rests on the union of tw

16、o values: freedom and tolerance. And it is thatunion of values that the terrorists who attacked us on September 11th, 201X and on April15th, 201X 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 toh

17、uman 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 itnever will be. It is up to us to guard it fiercely and to ensure that equality und

18、er the lawmeans 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 youwish, 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 attempting torestri

19、ct 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 truein cities and it is no less true at universities, where the forces of repression appear to bestronger now than they have b

20、een since the 1950s.When I was growing up, U.S. Senator Joe McCarthy was asking: Are you now or have you everbeen? He was attempting to repress and criminalize those who sympathized with an economicsystem that was, even then, failing.McCarthys Red Scare destroyed thousands of lives, but what was he

21、so afraid of? An idea inthis case, communism that he and others deemed dangerous.But he was right about one thing: Ideas can be dangerous. They can change society. They canupend traditions. They can start revolutions. Thats why throughout history, those in authorityhave tried to repress ideas that t

22、hreaten their power, their religion, their ideology, or theirreelection chances. That was true for Socrates and Galileo, it was true for Nelson Mandela and Vclav Havel, and ithas been true for Ai Wei Wei, Pussy Riot, and the kids who made the Happy video in Iran.Repressing free expression is a natur

23、al human weakness, and it is up to us to fight it at everyturn. Intolerance of ideas whether liberal or conservative is antithetical to individualrights and free societies, and it is no less antithetical to great universities and first-ratescholarship. There is an idea floating around college campus

24、es including here at Harvard that scholarsshould be funded only if their work conforms to a particular view of justice. Theres a word forthat idea: censorship. And it is just a modern-day form of McCarthyism. Think about the irony: In the 1950s, the right wing was attempting to repress left wing ide

25、as.Today, on many college campuses, it is liberals trying to repress conservative ideas, even asconservative faculty members are at risk of becoming an endangered species. And perhapsnowhere is that more true than here in the Ivy League. In the 201X presidential race, according to Federal Election C

26、ommission data, 96 percent of allcampaign 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 isamong Ivy League donors.That statistic should give us pause and I say that as someone who end

27、orsed President Obamafor reelection because let me tell you, neither party has a monopoly on truth or God on itsside.When 96 percent of Ivy League donors prefer one candidate to another, you have to wonderwhether students are being exposed to the diversity of views that a great university shouldoffe

28、r.Diversity of gender, ethnicity, and orientation is important. But a university cannot be great ifits faculty is politically homogenous. In fact, the whole purpose of granting tenure to professorsis to ensure that they feel free to conduct research on ideas that run afoul of university politicsand

29、societal norms. When tenure was created, it mostly protected liberals whose ideas ran up against conservativenorms.Today, if tenure is going to continue to exist, it must also protect conservatives whose ideasrun up against liberal norms. Otherwise, university research and the professors who conduct

30、it will lose credibility.Great universities must not become predictably partisan. And a liberal arts education mustnot be an education in the art of liberalism.The role of universities is not to promote an ideology. It is to provide scholars and studentswith a neutral forum for researching and debat

31、ing issues without tipping the scales in onedirection, or repressing unpopular views.Requiring scholars and commencement speakers, for that matter to conform to certainpolitical standards undermines the whole purpose of a university. This spring, it has been disturbing to see a number of college com

32、mencement speakerswithdraw 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 Swarthmoreand Johns Hopkins, Im sorry to say.In each case, liberals silenced a voice and denied an honorary degree to individuals they