"there is no such thing as failure. failure is just life trying to move us in another direction."
oprah winfrey, talk show host and media entrepreneur, addresses graduates at harvard's 362nd commencement on may 30, XX.
oh my goodness! i'm at harvard! wow! to president faust, my fellow honorands, carl that was so beautiful, thank you so much, and james rothenberg, stephanie wilson, harvard faculty with a special bow to my friend dr. henry lewis gates.
all of you alumni with a special bow to the class of '88, your hundred fifteen million dollars.
and to you, members of the harvard class of XX! hello!
i thank you for allowing me to be a part of the conclusion of this chapter of your lives and the commencement of your next chapter. to say that i'm honored doesn't even begin to quantify the depth of gratitude that really accompanies an honorary doctorate from harvard. not too many little girls from rural mississippi have made it all the way here to cambridge. and i can tell you that i consider today as i sat on the stage this morning getting teary for you all and then teary for myself, i consider today a defining milestone in a very long and a blessed journey. my one hope today is that i can be a source of some inspiration. i'm going to address my remarks to anybody who has ever felt inferior or felt disadvantaged, felt screwed by life, this is a speech for the quad.
actually i was so honored i wanted to do something really special for you. i wanted to be able to have you look under your seats and there would be free master and doctor degrees but i see you got that covered already. i will be honest with you. i felt a lot of pressure over the past few weeks to come up with something that i could share with you that you hadn't heard before because after all you all went to harvard, i did not. but then i realized that you don't have to necessarily go to harvard to have a driven obsessive type a personality. but it helps. and while i may not have graduated from here i admit that my personality is about as harvard as they come. you know my television career began unexpectedly. as you heard this morning i was in the miss fire prevention contest. that was when i was 16 years old in nashville, tennessee and you had the requirement of having to have red hair in order to win up until the year that i entered. so they were doing the question and answer period because i knew i wasn't going to win under the swimsuit competition. so during the question and answer period the question came "why, young lady, what would you like to be when you grow up?" and by the time they got to me all the good answers were gone. so i had seen barbara walters on the today show that morning so i answered "i would like to be a journalist. i would like to tell other people's stories in a way that makes a difference in their lives and the world." and as those words were coming out of my mouth i went whoa! this is pretty good! i would like to be a journalist. i want to make a difference. well i was on television by the time i was 19 years old. and in 1986 i launched my own television show with a relentless determination to succeed at first. i was nervous about the competition and then i became my own competition raising the bar every year, pushing, pushing, pushing myself as hard as i knew. sound familiar to anybody here? eventually we did make it to the top and we stayed there for 25 years.
the oprah winfrey show was number one in our time slot for 21 years and i have to tell you i became pretty comfortable with that level of success. but a few years ago i decided as you will at some point, that it was time to recalculate, find new territory, break new ground. so i ended the show and launched own, the oprah winfrey network. the initials just worked out for me. so one year later after launching own nearly every media outlet had proclaimed that my new venture was a flop. not just a flop but a big bold flop they call it. i can still remember the day i opened up usa today and read the headline "oprah, not quite standing on her own." i mean really, usa today? now that's the nice newspaper! it really was this time last year the worst period in my professional life. i was stressed and i was frustrated and quite frankly i was actually i was embarrassed. it was right around that time that president faust called and asked me to speak here and i thought you want me to speak to harvard graduates? what could i possibly say to harvard graduates, some of the most successful graduates in the world in the very moment when i had stopped succeeding? so i got off the phone with president faust and i went to the shower. it was either that or a bag of oreos. so i chose the shower. and i was in the shower a long time and as i was in the shower the words of an old hymn came to me. you may not know it. it's "by and by, when the morning comes." and i started thinking about when the morning might come because at the time i thought i was stuck in a hole. and the words came to me "trouble don't last always" from that hymn, "this too shall pass." and i thought as i got out of the shower i am going to turn this thing around and i will be better for it. and when i do, i'm going to go to harvard and i'm going to speak the truth of it! so i'm here today to tell you i have turned that network around!
and it was all because i wanted to do it by the time i got to speak to you all so thank you so much. you don't know what motivation you were for me, thank you. i'm even prouder to share a fundamental truth that you might not have learned even as graduates of harvard unless you studied the ancient greek hero with professor nagy. professor nagy as we were coming in this morning said "please ms. winfrey, walk decisively."
i shall walk decisively. this is what i want to share. it doesn't matter how far you might rise. at some point you are bound to stumble because if you're constantly doing what we do, raising the bar. if you're constantly pushing yourself higher, higher the law of averages not to mention the myth of icarus predicts that you will at some point fall. and when you do i want you to know this, remember this: there is no such thing as failure. failure is just life trying to move us in another direction. now when you're down there in the hole, it looks like failure. so this past year i had to spoon feed those words to myself. and when you're down in the hole, when that moment comes, it's really okay to feel bad for a little while. give yourself time to mourn what you think you may have lost but then here's the key, learn from every mistake because every experience, encounter, and particularly your mistakes are there to teach you and force you into being more who you are. and then figure out what is the next right move. and the key to life is to develop an internal moral emotional g.p.s. that can tell you which way to go. because now and forever more when you google yourself your search results will read "harvard, XX". and in a very competitive world that really is a calling card because i can tell you as one who employs a lot of people when i see "harvard" i sit up a little straighter and say "where is he or she? bring them in." it's an impressive calling card that can lead to even more impressive bullets in the years ahead: lawyer, senator, c.e.o., scientist, physicist, winners of nobel and pulitzer prizes or late night talk show host. but the challenge of life i have found is to build a resume that doesn't simply tell a story about what you want to be but it's a story about who you want to be. it's a resume that doesn't just tell a story about what you want to accomplish but why. a story that's not just a collection of titles and positions but a story that's really about your purpose. because when you inevitably stumble and find yourself stuck in a hole that is the story that will get you out. what is your true calling? what is your dharma? what is your purpose? for me that discovery came in 1994 when i interviewed a little girl who had decided to collect pocket change in order to help other people in need. she raised a thousand dollars all by herself and i thought well if that little 9 year old girl with a bucket and big heart could do that i wonder what i could do? so i asked for our viewers to take up their own change collection and in one month just from pennies and nickels and dimes we raised more than three million dollars that we used to send one student from every state in the united states to college. that was the beginning of the angel network.
and so what i did was i simply asked our viewers "do what you can wherever you are, from wherever you sit in life. give me your time or your talent your money if you have it." and they did. extend yourself in kindness to other human beings wherever you can. and together we built 55 schools in 12 different countries and restored nearly 300 homes that were devastated by hurricanes rita and katrina. so the angel network i have been on the air for a long time, but it was the angel network that actually focused my internal g.p.s. it helped me to decide that i wasn't going to just be on tv every day but that the goal of my shows, my interviews, my business, my philanthropy all of it, whatever ventures i might pursue would be to make clear that what unites us is ultimately far more redeeming and compelling than anything that separates me. because what had become clear to me and i want you to know it isn't always clear in the beginning because as i said i had been on television since i was 19 years old. but around '94 i got really clear. so don't expect the clarity to come all at once to know your purpose right away, but what became clear to me was that i was here on earth to use television and not be used by it; to use television to illuminate the transcendent power of our better angels. so this angel network, it didn't just change the lives of those who were helped, but the lives of those who also did the helping. it reminded us that no matter who we are or what we look like or what we may believe it is both possible and more importantly it becomes powerful to come together in common purpose and common effort. i saw something on the bill moore show recently that so reminded me of this point. it was an interview with david and francine wheeler. they lost their 7 year old son, ben in the sandy hook tragedy. and even though gun safety legislation to strengthen background checks had just been voted down in congress at the time that they were doing this interview they talked about how they refused to be discouraged. francine said this, she said "our hearts are broken but our spirits are not. i'm going to tell them what it's like to find a conversation about change that is love, and i'm going to do that without fighting them." and then her husband david added this, "you simply cannot demonize or vilify someone who doesn't agree with you, because the minute you do that, your discussion is over. and we cannot do that any longer. the problem is too enormous. there has to be some way that this darkness can be banished with light." in our political system and in the media we often see the reflection of a country that is polarized, that is paralyzed and is self-interested. and yet, i know you know the truth. we all know that we are better than the cynicism and the pessimism that is regurgitated throughout washington and the 24-hour cable news cycle. not my channel, by the way. we understand that the vast majority of people in this country believe in stronger background checks because they realize that we can uphold the second amendment and also reduce the violence that is robbing us of our children. they don't have to be incompatible.
and we understand that most americans believe in a clear path to citizenship for the 12,000,000 undocumented immigrants who reside in this country because it's possible to both enforce our laws and at the same time embrace the words on the statue of liberty that have welcomed generations of huddled masses to our shores. we can do both.
and we understand. i know you do because you went to harvard. there are people from both parties and no party believe that indigent mothers and families should have access to healthy food and a roof over their heads and a strong public education because here in the richest nation on earth we can afford a basic level of security and opportunity. so the question is what are we going to do about it? really what are you going to do about it? maybe you agree with these beliefs. maybe you don't. maybe you care about these issues and maybe there are other challenges that you, class of XX, are passionate about. maybe you want to make a difference by serving in government. maybe you want to launch your own television show. or maybe you simply want to collect some change. your parents would appreciate that about now. the point is your generation is charged with this task of breaking through what the body politic has thus far made impervious to change. each of you has been blessed with this enormous opportunity of attending this prestigious school. you now have a chance to better your life, the lives of your neighbors and also the life of our country. when you do that let me tell you what i know for sure. that's when your story gets really good. maya angelou always says "when you learn, teach. when you get, give. that my friends is what gives your story purpose and meaning." so you all have the power in your own way to develop your own angel network and in doing so your class will be armed with more tools of influence and empowerment than any other generation in history. i did it in an analog world. i was blessed with a platform that at its height reached nearly 20,000,000 viewers a day. now here in a world of twitter and facebook and youtube and tumbler, you can reach billions in just seconds. you're the generation that rejected predictions about your detachment and your disengagement by showing up to vote in record numbers in XX. and when the pundits said they said they talked about you, they said you'd be too disappointed, you'd be too dejected to repeat that same kind of turnout in XX election and you proved them wrong by showing up in even greater numbers. that's who you are.
this generation your generation i know has developed a finely honed radar for b.s. can you say "b.s." at harvard? the spin and phoniness and artificial nastiness that saturates so much of our national debate. i know you all understand better than most that real progress requires authentic- an authentic way of being, honesty, and above all empathy. i have to say that the single most important lesson i learned in 25 years talking every single day to people was that there is a common denominator in our human experience. most of us i tell you we don't want to be divided. what we want, the common denominator that i found in every single interview, is we want to be validated. we want to be understood. i have done over 35,000 interviews in my career and as soon as that camera shuts off everyone always turns to me and inevitably in their own way asks this question "was that okay?" i heard it from president bush, i heard it from president obama. i've heard it from heroes and from housewives. i've heard it from victims and perpetrators of crimes. i even heard it from beyonce and all of her beyonceness. she finishes performing, hands me the microphone and says "was that okay?" friends and family, yours, enemies, strangers in every argument in every encounter, every exchange i will tell you they all want to know one thing: was that okay? did you hear me? do you see me? did what i say mean anything to you? and even though this is a college where facebook was born my hope is that you would try to go out and have more face-to-face conversations with people you may disagree with.
that you'll have the courage to look them in the eye and hear their point of view and help make sure that the speed and distance and anonymity of our world doesn't cause us to lose our ability to stand in somebody else's shoes and recognize all that we share as a people. this is imperative for you as an individual and for our success as a nation. "there has to be some way that this darkness can be banished with light," says the man whose little boy was massacred on just an ordinary friday in december. so whether you call it soul or spirit or higher self, intelligence, there is i know this, there is a light inside each of you all of us that illuminates your very human beingness if you let it. and as a young girl from rural mississippi i learned long ago that being myself was much easier than pretending to be barbara walters. although when i first started because i had barbara in my head i would try to sit like barbara, talk like barbara, move like barbara and then one night i was on the news reading the news and i called canada can-a-da, and that was the end of me being barbara. i cracked myself up on tv. couldn't stop laughing and my real personality came through and i figured out oh gee, i can be a much better oprah than i could be a pretend barbara.
i know that you all might have a little anxiety now and hesitation about leaving the comfort of college and putting those harvard credentials to the test. but no matter what challenges or setbacks or disappointments you may encounter along the way you will find true success and happiness if you have only one goal, there really is only one and that is this: to fulfill the highest most truthful expression of yourself as a human being. you want to max out your humanity by using your energy to lift yourself up, your family and the people around you. theologian howard thurman said it best. he said "don't ask yourself what the world needs. ask yourself what makes you come alive and then go do that because what the world needs is people who have come alive." the world needs-
people like michael stolzenberg from fort lauderdale. when michael was just 8 years old michael nearly died from a bacterial infection that cost him both of his hands and both of his feet. and in an instant this vibrant little boy became a quadruple amputee and his life was changed forever. but in losing who he once was michael discovered who he wanted to be. he refused to sit in that wheelchair all day and feel sorry for himself so with prosthetics he learned to walk and run and play again. he joined his middle school lacrosse team and last month when he learned that so many victims of the boston marathon bombing would become new amputees michael decided to banish that darkness with light. michael and his brother harris created to raise 1,000,000 dollars for other amputees. by the time harris runs the XX boston marathon. more than 1,000 miles away from here these two young brothers are bringing people together to support this boston community the way their community came together to support michael. and when this 13 year old man was asked about his fellow amputees he said this "first they will be sad. they're losing something they will never get back and that's scary. i was scared. but they'll be okay. they just don't know that yet." we might not always know it. we might not always see it, or hear it on the news or even feel it in our daily lives but i have faith that no matter what class of XX you will be okay and you will make sure our country is okay. i have faith because of that 9 year old girl who went out and collected the change. i have faith because of david and francine wheeler, i have faith because of michael and harris stolzenberg and i have faith because of you, the network of angeles sitting here today. one of them kadija williams who came to harvard four years ago. kadija had attended 12 schools in 12 years living out of garbage bags amongst pimps and prostitutes and drug dealers, homeless, going in to department stores, wal-mart in the morning to bathe herself so that she wouldn't smell in front of her classmates and today she graduates as a member of the harvard class of XX.
from time to time you may stumble fall, you will for sure count in this no doubt, you will have questions and you will have doubts about your path but i know this, if you're willing to listen to be guided by that still small voice that is the g.p.s. within yourself, to find out what makes you come alive you will be more than okay. you will be happy, you will be successful, and you will make a difference in the world. congratulations class of XX, congratulations to your family and friends, good luck and thank you for listening. was that okay?
president bok, former president rudenstine, incoming president faust, members of the harvard corporation and the board of overseers, members of the faculty, parents, and especially, the graduates:
尊敬的 bok 校长， rudenstine 前校长，即将上任的 faust 校长，哈佛集团的各位成员，监管理事会的各位理事，各位老师，各位家长，各位同学：
i’ve been waiting more than 30 years to say this: dad, i always told you i’d come back and get my degree.
有一句话我等了三十年，现在终于可以说了： “ 老爸，我总是跟你说，我会回来拿到我的学位的! ”
i want to thank harvard for this timely honor. i’ll be changing my job next year … and it will be nice to finally have a college degree on my resume.
i applaud the graduates today for taking a much more direct route to your degrees. for my part, i’m just happy that the crimson has called me harvard’s most successful dropout. i guess that makes me valedictorian of my own special class … i did the best of everyone who failed.
but i also want to be recognized as the guy who got steve ballmer to drop out of business school. i’m a bad influence. that’s why i was invited to speak at your graduation. if i had spoken at your orientation, fewer of you might be here today.
但是，我还要提醒大家，我使得 steve ballmer (注：微软总经理)也从哈佛商学院退学了。因此，我是个有着恶劣影响力的人。这就是为什么我被邀请来在你们的毕业典礼上演讲。如果我在你们入学欢迎仪式上演讲，那么能够坚持到今天在这里毕业的人也许会少得多吧。
harvard was just a phenomenal experience for me. academic life was fascinating. i used to sit in on lots of classes i hadn’t even signed up for. and dorm life was terrific. i lived upat radcliffe, in currier house. there were always lots of people in my dorm room late at night discussing things, because everyone knew i didn’t worry about getting up in the morning. that’s how i came to be the leader of the anti-social group. we clung to each other as a way of validating our rejection of all those social people.
radcliffe was a great place to live. there were more women up there, and most of the guys were science-math types. that combination offered me the best odds, if you know what i mean. this is where i learned the sad lesson that improving your odds doesn’t guarantee success.
one of my biggest memories of harvard came in january 1975, when i made a call from currier house to a company in albuquerque that had begun making the world’s first personal computers. i offered to sell them software.
i worried that they would realize i was just a student in a dorm and hang up on me. instead they said: we’re not quite ready, come see us in a month, which was a good thing, because we hadn’t written the software yet. from that moment, i worked day and night on this little extra credit project that marked the end of my college education and the beginning of a remarkable journey with microsoft.
what i remember above all about harvard was being in the midst of so much energy and intelligence. it could be exhilarating, intimidating, sometimes even discouraging, but always challenging. it was an amazing privilege – and though i left early, i was transformed by my years at harvard, the friendships i made, and the ideas i worked on.
but taking a serious look back … i do have one big regret.
但是，如果现在严肃地回忆起来，我确实有一个真正的遗憾。
i left harvard with no real awareness of the awful inequities in the world – the appalling disparities of health, and wealth, and opportunity that condemn millions of people to lives of despair.
i learned a lot here at harvard about new ideas in economics and politics. i got great exposure to the advances being made in the sciences.
我在哈佛学到了很多经济学和政治学的新思想。我也了解了很多科学上的新进展。
but humanity’s greatest advances are not in its discoveries – but in how those discoveries are applied to reduce inequity. whether through democracy, strong public education, quality health care, or broad economic opportunity – reducing inequity is the highest human achievement.
i left campus knowing little about the millions of young people cheated out of educational opportunities here in this country. and i knew nothing about the millions of people living in unspeakable poverty and disease in developing countries.
you graduates came to harvard at a different time. you know more about the world’s inequities than the classes that came before. in your years here, i hope you’ve had a chance to think about how – in this age of accelerating technology – we can finally take on these inequities, and we can solve them.
imagine, just for the sake of discussion, that you had a few hours a week and a few dollars a month to donate to a cause – and you wanted to spend that time and money where it would have the greatest impact in saving and improving lives. where would you spend it?
during our discussions on this question, melinda and i read an article about the millions of children who were dying every year in poor countries from diseases that we had long ago made harmless in this country. measles, malaria, pneumonia, hepatitis b, yellow fever. one disease i had never even heard of, rotavirus, was killing half a million kids each year – none of them in the united states.
we were shocked. we had just assumed that if millions of children were dying and they could be saved, the world would make it a priority to discover and deliver the medicines to save them. but it did not. for under a dollar, there were interventions that could save lives that just weren’t being delivered.
if you believe that every life has equal value, it’s revolting to learn that some lives are seen as worth saving and others are not. we said to ourselves: this can’t be true. but if it is true, it deserves to be the priority of our giving.
the answer is simple, and harsh. the market did not reward saving the lives of these children, and governments did not subsidize it. so the children died because their mothers and their fathers had no power in the market and no voice in the system.
we can make market forces work better for the poor if we can develop a more creative capitalism – if we can stretch the reach of market forces so that more people can make a profit, or at least make a living, serving people who are suffering from the worst inequities. we also can press governments around the world to spend taxpayer money in ways that better reflect the values of the people who pay the taxes.
if we can find approaches that meet the needs of the poor in ways that generate profits for business and votes for politicians, we will have found a sustainable way to reduce inequity in the world. this task is open-ended. it can never be finished. but a conscious effort to answer this challenge will change the world.
i am optimistic that we can do this, but i talk to skeptics who claim there is no hope. they say: inequity has been with us since the beginning, and will be with us till the end – because people just … don’t … care. i completely disagree.
i believe we have more caring than we know what to do with.
我相信，问题不是我们不在乎，而是我们不知道怎么做。
all of us here in this yard, at one time or another, have seen human tragedies that broke our hearts, and yet we did nothing – not because we didn’t care, but because we didn’t know what to do. if we had known how to help, we would have acted.
even with the advent of the internet and 24-hour news, it is still a complex enterprise to get people to truly see the problems. when an airplane crashes, officials immediately call a press conference. they promise to investigate, determine the cause, and prevent similar crashes in the future.
but if the officials were brutally honest, they would say: of all the people in the world who died today from preventable causes, one half of one percent of them were on this plane. we’re determined to do everything possible to solve the problem that took the lives of the one half of one percent.
the bigger problem is not the plane crash, but the millions of preventable deaths.
显然，更重要的问题不是这次空难，而是其他几百万可以预防的死亡事件。
we don’t read much about these deaths. the media covers what’s new – and millions of people dying is nothing new. so it stays in the background, where it’s easier to ignore. but even when we do see it or read about it, it’s difficult to keep our eyes on the problem. it’s hard to look at suffering if the situation is so complex that we don’t know how to help. and so we look away.
finding solutions is essential if we want to make the most of our caring. if we have clear and proven answers anytime an organization or individual asks how can i help?, then we can get action – and we can make sure that none of the caring in the world is wasted. but complexity makes it hard to mark a path of action for everyone who cares — and that makes it hard for their caring to matter.
cutting through complexity to find a solution runs through four predictable stages: determine a goal, find the highest-leverage approach, discover the ideal technology for that approach, and in the meantime, make the smartest application of the technology that you already have — whether it’s something sophisticated, like a drug, or something simpler, like a bednet.
the aids epidemic offers an example. the broad goal, of course, is to end the disease. the highest-leverage approach is prevention. the ideal technology would be a vaccine that gives lifetime immunity with a single dose. so governments, drug companies, and foundations fund vaccine research. but their work is likely to take more than a decade, so in the meantime, we have to work with what we have in hand – and the best prevention approach we have now is getting people to avoid risky behavior.
pursuing that goal starts the four-step cycle again. this is the pattern. the crucial thing is to never stop thinking and working – and never do what we did with malaria and tuberculosis in the 20th century – which is to surrender to complexity and quit.
the final step – after seeing the problem and finding an approach – is to measure the impact of your work and share your successes and failures so that others learn from your efforts.
you have to have the statistics, of course. you have to be able to show that a program is vaccinating millions more children. you have to be able to show a decline in the number of children dying from these diseases. this is essential not just to improve the program, but also to help draw more investment from business and government.
but if you want to inspire people to participate, you have to show more than numbers; you have to convey the human impact of the work – so people can feel what saving a life means to the families affected.
i remember going to davos some years back and sitting on a global health panel that was discussing ways to save millions of lives. millions! think of the thrill of saving just one person’s life – then multiply that by millions. … yet this was the most boring panel i’ve ever been on – ever. so boring even i couldn’t bear it.
what made that experience especially striking was that i had just come from an event where we were introducing version 13 of some piece of software, and we had people jumping and shouting with excitement. i love getting people excited about software – but why can’t we generate even more excitement for saving lives?
still, i’m optimistic. yes, inequity has been with us forever, but the new tools we have to cut through complexity have not been with us forever. they are new – they can help us make the most of our caring – and that’s why the future can be different from the past.
the defining and ongoing innovations of this age – biotechnology, the computer, the internet – give us a chance we’ve never had before to end extreme poverty and end death from preventable disease.
sixty years ago, george marshall came to this commencement and announced a plan to assist the nations of post-war europe. he said: i think one difficulty is that the problem is one of such enormous complexity that the very mass of facts presented to the public by press and radio make it exceedingly difficult for the man in the street to reach a clear appraisement of the situation. it is virtually impossible at this distance to grasp at all the real significance of the situation.
thirty years after marshall made his address, as my class graduated without me, technology was emerging that would make the world smaller, more open, more visible, less distant.
the emergence of low-cost personal computers gave rise to a powerful network that has transformed opportunities for learning and communicating.
低成本的个人电脑的出现，使得一个强大的互联网有机会诞生，它为学习和交流提供了巨大的机会。
the magical thing about this network is not just that it collapses distance and makes everyone your neighbor. it also dramatically increases the number of brilliant minds we can have working together on the same problem – and that scales up the rate of innovation to a staggering degree.
at the same time, for every person in the world who has access to this technology, five people don’t. that means many creative minds are left out of this discussion -- smart people with practical intelligence and relevant experience who don’t have the technology to hone their talents or contribute their ideas to the world.
we need as many people as possible to have access to this technology, because these advances are triggering a revolution in what human beings can do for one another. they are making it possible not just for national governments, but for universities, corporations, smaller organizations, and even individuals to see problems, see approaches, and measure the impact of their efforts to address the hunger, poverty, and desperation george marshall spoke of 60 years provided
members of the harvard family: here in the yard is one of the great collections of intellectual talent in the world.
哈佛是一个大家庭。这个院子里在场的人们，是全世界最有智力的人类群体之一。
what for?
我们可以做些什么?
there is no question that the faculty, the alumni, the students, and the benefactors of harvard have used their power to improve the lives of people here and around the world. but can we do more? can harvard dedicate its intellect to improving the lives of people who will never even hear its name?
let me make a request of the deans and the professors – the intellectual leaders here at harvard: as you hire new faculty, award tenure, review curriculum, and determine degree requirements, please ask yourselves: provided
should our best minds be dedicated to solving our biggest problems?
我们最优秀的人才是否在致力于解决我们最大的问题?
should harvard encourage its faculty to take on the world’s worst inequities? should harvard students learn about the depth of global poverty … the prevalence of world hunger … the scarcity of clean water …the girls kept out of school … the children who die from diseases we can cure?
should the world’s most privileged people learn about the lives of the world’s least privileged?
那些世界上过着最优越生活的人们，有没有从那些最困难的人们身上学到东西?
these are not rhetorical questions – you will answer with your policies.
这些问题并非语言上的修辞。你必须用自己的行动来回答它们。
my mother, who was filled with pride the day i was admitted here – never stopped pressing me to do more for others. a few days before my wedding, she hosted a bridal event, at which she read aloud a letter about marriage that she had written to melinda. my mother was very ill with cancer at the time, but she saw one more opportunity to deliver her message, and at the close of the letter she said: from those to whom much is given, much is provided
when you consider what those of us here in this yard have been given – in talent, privilege, and opportunity – there is almost no limit to what the world has a right to expect from us.
in line with the promise of this age, i want to exhort each of the graduates here to take on an issue – a complex problem, a deep inequity, and become a specialist on it. if you make it the focus of your career, that would be phenomenal. but you don’t have to do that to make an impact. for a few hours every week, you can use the growing power of the internet to get informed, find others with the same interests, see the barriers, and find ways to cut through provided
you graduates are coming of age in an amazing time. as you leave harvard, you have technology that members of my class never had. you have awareness of global inequity, which we did not have. and with that awareness, you likely also have an informed conscience that will torment you if you abandon these people whose lives you could change with very little effort. you have more than we had; you must start sooner, and carry on longer.
and i hope you will come back here to harvard 30 years from now and reflect on what you have done with your talent and your energy. i hope you will judge yourselves not on your professional accomplishments alone, but also on how well you have addressed the world’s deepest inequities … on how well you treated people a world away who have nothing in common with you but their humanity.
