2013 Commencement Address
2013 年毕业典礼讲话
Lee C. Bollinger,
President of Columbia University
Lee C. Bollinger,
哥伦比亚大学校长（注1）
May 22, 2013
2013 年 5 月 22 日
On behalf of the Trustees and the faculty of Columbia University, it is my very, very great pleasure and honor to welcome all of you to this ceremony to celebrate the graduation of the Class of 2013. Every year we gather in this magnificent academic forum to affirm the achievements of our extraordinary students and to reaffirm the intellectual bonds that connect us to those who have passed through these gates for 259 years and for those who will do so for centuries to come. Sixteen different schools are represented here today, along with our affiliate institutions of Teachers College and Barnard. In a time when life can seem increasingly fragmented and solitary, this glorious ritual, in this utterly unique spot on the planet, seems all the more remarkable and even thrilling.
我代表哥伦比亚大学的校董会和教职员工，非常荣幸地欢迎各位来出席 2013 届同学们的毕业庆典。每年，我们都相聚于这优美的学园，见证莘莘学子们的成就、重理智慧的纽带，这纽带将我们和过去 259 年里（注2）和未来将进入这扇大门的人们联结在一起。今天，现场还有哥伦比亚大学十六家学院及附属的教师学院（注3）和巴纳德女子学院（注4）的代表。在一个生活显得愈发零散和孤寂的时代，在地球上最特别的此时此地，这场盛大的仪式来得更加震撼人心、与众不同。
This day is all about the graduates and about what you’ve earned—earned through endless and mostly foggy-minded hours of study; earned by overcoming again and again your natural inclination for procrastination just in time to write papers and take exams (Although it is a well-known fact that the smarter you are the more you tend to procrastinate); you have earned all this through sacrifice of something called sleep, not to mention nutrition and personal hygiene; and earned by carrying on in those inevitable low moments of self-doubt.
今天的主角是这些毕业生和他们的收获——这收获来自没完没了、迷迷糊糊的学习，来自与临时抱佛脚的拖延症反反复复的斗争（虽然大家都说，人越聪明干活就越拖拖拉拉... ...），来自对一种叫做“睡眠”的东西的牺牲，还来自对健康美食甚至是个人卫生的舍弃，更来自于在无可避免的自我怀疑的低潮期之中的一路坚守。
While this occasion is about you, there are also a few people here today who’ve contributed mightily to your getting to this delightful point in life and whom you’ll never be able to thank enough. I can assure you that nothing focuses the mind like the successes and the disappointments of one’s own children. And, as much as we, your faculty, adore you—and we really do adore you—nothing can compare to the adoration of your parents. Please take this opportunity to thank them.
这个时刻是属于你们的。但别忘了还有一些人，是他们坚定地支持你走到这个生命里幸福的时刻，是他们值得你无尽感激。我想说，没有什么比子女们的点滴进退更让父母牵肠挂肚的事了。作为师长，我们支持着你们----我们真心关爱着你们，但这也比不了父母对你们的深爱。请于此刻，感谢他们。
Today we mark, and we celebrate, what in all likelihood you will come to see as one of the defining experiences in your lives—your years of education at Columbia University. I hear this from alumni all the time—how their Columbia experiences were transformational for them. In a surprising number of instances, they also add how this is where they met their spouses and partners, typically right here on the steps of Low under the bewitching eye of alma mater. Maybe this has happened to many of you. In fact, I hear this so often I sometimes imagine that I’m really president of a dating service masquerading as an educational institution.
今天，我们书写，我们欢庆，书写欢庆你们被塑造的经历——在哥伦比亚大学的接受教育的这几年。我常能听到校友们说哥大的经验如何让他脱胎换骨。还有好多回，他们还提到是如何在哥大邂逅自己的配偶和伴侣，基本上就在娄氏图书馆（注5）的台阶上、青铜母校雕像（注6）的眼皮底下。可能这也发上在你们很多人身上。我听到太多这种事了，以至于我这个校长，时常觉得自己其实是一个冒充教育机构的婚姻介绍所的头头。
I recognize that at this moment, when you are still flush with the excitement of having achieved your degree, it is hard to appreciate and grasp all the ways you have grown and changed while here. And it is natural in life to take even very special things for granted. But that makes it all the more important to take note of the fact that for these years you have been in the company of brilliant faculty and students and in an environment where the freedom of inquiry and debate is as great as it has ever been at any place or in any period in human history. (You know, of course, the original definition of the term MOOCS was “Massively Open-minded while-still-being Opinionated Columbia Students.) Within this free and open environment, however, there is at the same time a commitment to submitting all ideas and beliefs to the rigors of reason, to listening carefully to others and then responding, and to living by standards of truth.
我知道，当你们还处于获得学位的兴奋中时，很难感激和完全理解你们在这里所有的成长和变化。人们常把出色的成绩看作己之应得。但有个重要的事你们得记着，就是过去几年你们一直是与才华出众的老师和同学们相伴而行的，包容知识探究和辩驳的自由宽松环境，与人类历史的各个时点别无二致（当然，“一根儿筋”这个词的原意其实就是指那些“思想开明但又固执己见的哥大学生”（注7））。在这种自由和开放的环境里，同时还存在着一种共识：要把所有的想法和信念付之严格的理性，认真的倾听与回应他人，然后坦然接受真理的评判。
And then there is a unique requirement that you actually have to change your mind when faced with better arguments. Being in a university means never saying “Well, that’s just what I believe,” as if that were sufficient to end the discussion. Just imagine how different the world would be if people entered discussions willing to change their minds in the face of superior arguments and evidence.
还有一种特别的要求，即当你面对更令人信服的想法时，你必须改变原来的观点。在一所大学里，你不能说“怎么着吧，反正我就是这么想的”，因为这远远不足以结束一场讨论。试想一下， 如果在论争开始的时候，双方都做好心理准备，倘若对方的理由和证据更出色，就改换他/她自己的想法，这样的世界该变得多么不同。
It must also be noted that you have been in probably the most diverse and international communities—here at Columbia and in New York City—in the world. So you can testify better than almost anyone just how exhilarating and enlightening this can be. My guess is that if most of you were asked what was the most important and influential thing about your experiences here it would be the incredible diversity of the talented people sitting next to you today: your classmates. So, let me take this opportunity respectfully to express the hope that the United States Supreme Court continues to affirm the constitutionality of the now longstanding educationally and socially productive policies of colleges and universities across the nation committed to ensuring student bodies that are racially and ethnically diverse. As George Washington wrote to our fellow Columbian Alexander Hamilton, bringing youth together in universities “from different parts of the United States” helps to unify the country.
还要记着，你们曾经就在这里，最多元化和最国际性的社区——哥大和纽约。你们比任何人都知道这有多兴奋和激动人心。如果有人问，什么是这最重要的、最难忘的经历，我估计你们会说，是旁边坐着那些各色各样的牛人同学兄弟们。我还想利用这个机会，谦恭的表达我的意见，希望美国的最高法院继续以宪法形式支持保护学生群体的构成能体现出族裔多样性的政策。这些政策已经在大专院校中长久广泛施行，在推动教育和社会发展方面都十分有效。当年乔治·华盛顿给我们哥大的亚历山大·汉密尔顿写道，把“美国各个不同地方”的青年才俊带进大学，加固了国家的统一。
Now, as you take leave of us, I have two things I want to say. The first is about the world you will live and work in, its promise and the need for your leadership. The second is more about you personally and what helps make a good life.
此刻，在你们要离开的时候，我想谈两件事。第一件是关于你们将要生活与工作的世界，这世界的希望，还有对你们领导力的期盼。 第二件更多的是关于你们个人，关于什么可以帮你们完善生命。
First, then, the world. I know it’s dangerous to make large generalizations, especially in a university (but what are Commencement speeches for?!) but here’s what I believe: I believe no generation up to now has faced a world with more promise for humanity than yours right now. In the last century, so much effort was required to stop those who would destroy what’s best about human civilization that there was less opportunity to reach for the potential. And two profound forces are now at work that are transforming our collective lives. The first is the emergence of a global economy and its potential benefits to billions of people. The second is the advancement of new communications technologies—principally, the Internet—that for the first time in history will link people across the world (soon some 5 billion people, by most estimates) in the first ever global public forum.
首先，关于世界。 我知道空谈些大道理都是瞎掰，尤其在高校里（可毕业讲话不都是讲些大道理么？！），但我坚信，坚信迄今为止，没有任何一个大道理曾经面对的世界，比你们此时此刻面对的更有人性化的希望。上个世纪，我们花了好大的气力去阻止那些想毁掉人类文明财富的家伙，结果失去了更快发展的机会。两种影响深远的力量正在一起改变我们共同的命运。第一种是全球经济的兴起和它给数十亿人口带来的潜在收益。 第二种是新通讯技术的发展——主要是互联网，使得人类有史以来，第一次在全球范围公共平台上，把所有的人联结在了一起（估计最多可达五十亿人）。
If you believe in the beneficent power of human thought in an open marketplace of ideas, as we have staked our future on in the United States, then this is a truly extraordinary moment. The possibilities for sharing knowledge, for unleashing the power of human creativity, out of the mixing of the variegated cultures and traditions of the world, are suddenly limitless. It’s like Columbia magnified exponentially. We are today only at the edge of this new reality, but we are already witness to profound shifts across the international landscape as people imagine what life can be like.
如果你相信人类思想在公开理论环境中善的力量，就像我们把未来寄望于美国一样，那当下就是个无与伦比的时刻。 各种可能性——知识的分享，人类创造力的释放，斑斓多姿的世界文化及各种传统的融合——突然间，无止无竟。就如同如哥伦比亚大学一样，指数级的爆发。我们刚刚处在这一新现实的入口，都在畅想未来生活的样子，但远远地已经可以望见国际风景的深刻变迁。
Now, to be sure, there are big obstacles and problems to overcome, so many in fact that we almost don’t allow ourselves to entertain thoughts about what might be. We have inadequate international institutions, traditions of national sovereignty that stand in the way of collective action, the absence of the rule of law in too many parts of the world, and more. Yet, the good and bad news is that the major issues the world now faces, and certainly will in the future, are world-wide in scope and can really only be addressed on a world-wide basis.
但还有很多障碍和困难得克服。问题很多，我们无暇旁顾言它。比如，表现平平的国际组织，阻挡共同行动的国别政权体系，在世界多地尚不具备的法律治理等等。亦喜亦忧的是，目前和未来将要面对世界性问题，必须要在整个世界范围的基础上与环境中讨论和加以解决。
Climate change, the spread of infectious diseases, how to minimize the risk and consequences of another global economic collapse, the rising inequalities in the distribution of wealth in a market system that in the 1980s rightly reduced forty years of excessive state intervention but that now is itself in need of correction—all these and other problems are global in scope and can only be fixed globally. The world we live in increasingly is this: a building collapses in Bangladesh and it’s not only a tragedy for those people directly affected and for the nation of Bangladesh but it is also an event that highlights the need for a system of global protections for workers who now make most of the products we consume—comparable to what the 1911 fire in New York City’s Triangle Shirtwaist building did for worker safety policies in our own city and country a century ago.
气候变化，传染性疾病的蔓延，如何降低另一次全球经济崩溃的后果与风险，由上世纪八十年代开始的市场化机制加剧了的不平等的财富分配（虽然这种体制有效地减少了接下来四十年里过多的国家干预，但其自身需要好好修正了）——这些及其他一些困境是全球性的难题，只能在全球化的条件下处理。孟加拉垮塌的楼房（注8），不仅是当地人民和孟加拉国家的灾难，它还凸显了对劳工的全球化保护的重要性，是这些劳工制造了我们绝大多数的生活用品----这场灾难的作用，应该像 1911 年纽约三角衬衣厂大楼火灾对我们自己城市和国家的劳工安全法规所起的作用一样（注9）。
Global issues requiring global action demand in turn the capacity for global discussion and exchange of ideas. Censorship is always bad. But it used to be bad when it happened around the world because we believed in freedom of speech and press as a human right, something fundamental for all people in all places. Now, however, it’s not only a human right but also an imperative. Now banning a book or a speaker in Malaysia, or China or Turkey is as problematic for public discussion of public issues as similar censorship might be in Montana, or California or Tennessee. When the world has real problems to solve, it needs real opportunities to find out about those problems and then debate solutions.
全球行动才能解决的全球难题，需要全球讨论和集思广益。审查永远是坏事。过去，它是坏事，我们相信言论和新闻的自由是人之权利，是所有人的立人之本。现在，这不仅仅是人权，还是当务之急。在马来西亚、（译文此处删除一国名）、土耳其查禁关于公共话题的书籍或演讲造成的恶果，同在蒙大拿、加利福尼亚或田纳西进行审查没什么两样。当世界真的面对棘手问题时，她首先需要真的有机会辨明问题，然后再就解决方案进行探讨。
This is, in fact, exactly what occurred in this country in the last century, as we developed a national economy, with national issues requiring national solutions, and with new communications technologies making a national public forum possible. This is what also made the open and tolerant Columbia you have just experienced. But here’s what you also need to know! None of this happens naturally. Freedom of thought and expression are counter-intuitive. They are always viewed with fear and trepidation about leading to disorder, to a decline in values, to chaos. Indeed, in the United States it took almost two centuries before seditious libel laws were seen as antithetical to good public decision-making. Nobody in power likes criticism. Hell, even I don’t like it, and it’s my field! The simple truth is that being part of genuine open debate is hard work for anyone. We prefer order, opinions that reinforce our own beliefs, not to have to explain and justify our beliefs, and definitely not to have to change our minds. But changing our minds is exactly why we’re here.
上个世纪，在我们发展经济时，全国性的问题需要全国性的解决方案，而新的通讯技术使一个全国性的公共讨论平台变为可能，群言共议也真切地在我们这个国家实现。这也成就了你们开放而宽容的哥伦比亚大学。 但，记着！没有什么是凭空天降的。思想表达的自由其实与直觉并不一致。人们老是担心害怕它们会导致无序、道德下降和混乱。美国用了几乎两百年才搞清楚鼓动性的法律是和良好公共政策的制定并行不悖的。当权者里面没人喜欢批评。我也不喜欢老挑刺，但这就是我要干的事。说实话，参与到开诚布公的辩论中来，对谁来说都不容易。我们喜欢秩序，喜欢那些和我们观点相符的论调，这样就犯不着再费劲解释说明，就心安理得了。可是，思想的变革，我们恰恰为此而来。
And, so, while you will live in a world with more promise for humanity than ever before, with obstacles and problems and issues of true planetary magnitude, always remember that the incredible freedoms of mind and speech and the rigor of intellect you have experienced here have come somewhat recently and not come easily—and they are now an absolute necessity for the world you will inherit.
虽然你们的世界更有希望，也更人性化，但在面对全球级别的困境与问题时，永远记着你们在此地经历的思想与言论的自由，其实来的并不久也并不容易——这种自由在你们将会承继的世界里，不可或缺。
My second and final—and brief—recommendation is for you personally. I began by saying you are all brilliant students. (Some more brilliant than others, to be sure.) The natural course of life from here is to make you ever more specialized. You will become experts in something. That’s the nature of how modern life is organized, and there’s a lot to be said for it. Besides, it’s nice to be an expert. You will achieve a certain respect, and you can hold forth at dinner parties. But, as you progress through life, this will make it harder and harder for you to put aside your status as an expert and to set out to learn something new. We naturally prefer to confer answers than to ask questions. Displaying our ignorance becomes an increasingly untenable psychological proposition, it undermines our needed illusion for mastery over knowledge, and points up painfully the briefness of our existence. But to give in to this impulse takes away the great joy of life. A good life is one in which you feel you are always learning, when you are comfortable with always being a student.
我第二个也是最后一个——简要的——建议是关于你们个人的。我刚才说你们每个人都才华横溢（当然有些横溢的人比别人更横溢）。由这里开始的生命之路会让你们更加与众不同。你们会成为某些方面的专家 。这是现代社会很自然的组织方式，大家讨论过很多了。成为专家没什么不好，受人尊敬，能在饭局上侃侃而谈。可是，当你们延生命之路前进时，它会让你越来越难以放下专家的身段去虚心学习新事物。我们都喜欢提供答案胜过提出疑问。暴露自己的某方面的无知成为让人没法接受的心理障碍， 它伤害了我们无所不知的幻觉，戳到了我们浅薄的痛点。但屈服于这种冲动，会让生命索然无味。 有意义的生命里，你永远觉得自己在学习，永远觉得做学生最开心。
I like what Renzo Piano—our master architect for the new Manhattanville campus—said upon turning 70, when I asked him how it felt. He said it came as a surprise, and he felt that life naturally should be 210 years: 70 to learn, 70 to do what you’ve learned, and 70 to teach others what you’ve learned. What this really reflects is a mind always learning, for even if you lived to be 210 you would still never master all you need to know in that time. So, as you grow older and ask yourselves the inevitable question, “What have I accomplished in life?” always add the thought, “And what can I still learn?” I hope you always remain the brilliant students you have been here with us.
我很喜欢伦左·皮亚诺（注10）——我们曼哈顿城新校区（注11）的首席设建筑师——七十岁生日时跟我说的一番话。我当时问他，觉得怎们样，他说感觉很神奇，每个人都应该活210年才好：70年用来完成你之所学，70年实践你之所学，70年传授你之所学。他思想中闪现的是学习的观念，但即使你能活210年，你也无法全部掌握所需的一切知识。当你们变老，问自己：“我这辈子得到了什么？”的时候，再多问一句“我还能再学点什么？” 我希望你们一直如在此地时这样光辉卓越！
Congratulations and best of luck to the Class of 2013.
恭喜 2013 年的毕业生们。 祝你们前程似锦。
注释：
注1：演讲人Lee C. Bollinger，1946年生，现任哥伦比亚大学第19任校长、纽约联邦储备委员会主席、普利策奖委员会成员、华盛顿邮报董事。毕业于俄勒冈大学及哥伦比亚大学法学院。
注2：哥伦比亚大学前身国王学院建校于1754年（乾隆十九年，纪晓岚中进士），迄今259年。
注3：一所教育学研究生院，“生日快乐歌”和美国黄校车系统的诞生地。于1887年创立于美国纽约，1898（戊戌变法）年并入哥伦比亚大学。
注4：一所私立女子文理学院，创建于1889年，1900年（庚子事变）起并入哥伦比亚大学。奥巴马总统曾在该校2012年毕业典礼上发表演讲。
注5：一幢仿罗马万神殿式样的新古典主义风格建筑，建成于1895年（甲午战争），美国国家历史地标，曾作为哥大图书馆及档案馆，现为办公使用。
注6: 青铜雅典娜雕像，立于1904年（日俄战争），设计师Daniel Chester French 定其名为”Alma Mater”。该设计师的作品还包括位于美国首都华盛顿的林肯坐像。
注7：英文“思想开明但又固执己见的哥大学生”的第一个字母构成的词汇“MOOCS”的发音与“mock”（挖苦、笑柄）的发音接近。此处有自嘲的意思。
注8：2013年4月24日孟加拉达卡郊区的纺织厂建筑物垮塌，造成逾千人遇难。
注9：1911年3月25日，纽约三角衬衣厂高楼发生火灾，导致141人死亡，是纽约在90年后的2001年911事件前导致死亡人数最多的灾难。此后三年内，34项旨在改善工人工作条件和劳动安全的法律在纽约州通过。
注10：1937年生，意大利建筑师，巴黎蓬皮杜艺术中心主要设计者之一。
注11：哥大位于百老汇大街西侧、125街与133街之间的新校园，约占地110亩，校舍面积70万平方米，预计2030年完全竣工使用。该工程因涉及该地区原私有房产拆迁改造，而存在争议。
英文原文链接 http://www.columbia.edu/content/2013-commencement-address.html
中文翻译未经哥伦比亚大学审阅
@ NYC, NY / Danbury, CT / Valdez, AK
July 7th, 2013