[分享]2008哈佛女校长毕业典礼讲话：职业选择与幸福寻找
伯庆评论：（原文出处：http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_5a018b7d0100a57m.html ）
我曾作为学生家长参加过2007届哈佛的毕业典礼，对毕业典礼的仪式和讲话人印象深刻。本科教育是哈佛大学教育的核心，因此，演讲人都会对本科毕业生的前途发表看法。2007届的讲话人是两个比尔：盖茨和克林顿。 下面这篇2008届毕业典礼演讲值得反复阅读，优秀的大学应该培养理想远大道德高尚的君子，而不是技艺超群惟利是图的小人，我真的希望北大的校长能有如此思想吗？你开我玩笑！虽然我们是孔子的家园。
哈佛女校长毕业典礼讲话：职业选择与幸福寻找
译者？
2008届本科毕业典礼上的讲话
In the curious custom of this venerable institution, I find myself standing before you expected to impart words of lasting wisdom. Here I am in a pulpit, dressed like a Puritan minister — an apparition that would have horrified many of my distinguished forebears and perhaps rededicated some of them to the extirpation of witches. This moment would have propelled Increase and Cotton into a true “Mather lather.” But here I am and there you are and it is the moment of and for Veritas.
在这所久负盛名的大学的别具一格的仪式上，我站在了你们的面前，被期待着给予一些蕴含着恒久智慧的言论。站在这个讲坛上，我穿得像个清教徒教长——一个可能会吓到我的杰出前辈们的怪物，或许使他们中的一些人重新致力于铲除巫婆的事业上。这个时刻也许曾激励了很多清教徒成为教长。但现在，我在上面，你们在下面，此时此刻，属于真理，为了真理。
You have been undergraduates for four years. I have been president for not quite one. You have known three presidents; I one senior class. Where then lies the voice of experience? Maybe you should be offering the wisdom. Perhaps our roles could be reversed and I could, in Harvard Law School style, do cold calls for the next hour or so.
你们已经在哈佛做了四年的大学生，而我当哈佛校长还不到一年。你们认识了三个校长，而我只认识了你们这一届大四的。算起来我哪有资格说什么经验之谈？或许应该由你们上来展示一下智慧。要不我们换换位置？然后我就可以像哈佛法学院的学生那样，在接下来的一个小时内不时地冷不防地提出问题。
We all do seem to have made it to this point — more or less in one piece. Though I recently learned that we have not provided you with dinner since May 22. I know we need to wean you from Harvard in a figurative sense. I never knew we took it quite so literally.
学校和学生们似乎都在努力让时间来到这一时刻，而且还差不多是步调一致的。我这两天才得知哈佛从5月22日开始就不向你们提供伙食了。虽然有比喻说“我们早晚得给你们断奶”，但没想到我们的后勤还真的早早就把“奶”给断了。
But let’s return to that notion of cold calls for a moment. Let’s imagine this were a baccalaureate service in the form of Q & A, and you were asking the questions. “What is the meaning of life, President Faust? What were these four years at Harvard for? President Faust, you must have learned something since you graduated from college exactly 40 years ago?” (Forty years. I’ll say it out loud since every detail of my life — and certainly the year of my Bryn Mawr degree — now seems to be publicly available. But please remember I was young for my class.)
现在还是让我们回到我刚才提到的提问题的事上吧。让我们设想下这是个哈佛大学给本科生的毕业服务，是以问答的形式。你们将问些问题，比如：“福校长啊，人生的价值是什么呢？我们上这大学四年是为了什么呢？福校长，你大学毕业到现在的40年里一定学到些什么东西可以教给我们吧？”
In a way, you have been engaging me in this Q & A for the past year. On just these questions, although you have phrased them a bit more narrowly. And I have been trying to figure out how I might answer and, perhaps more intriguingly, why you were asking.
在某种程度上，在过去的一年里你们一直都在让我从事这种问答。从仅仅这些问题上，即使你们措辞问题都倾向于狭义，而我除了思考怎么做出回答外，更激发我去思考的，是你们为什么问这些问题。
Let me explain. It actually began when I met with the UC just after my appointment was announced in the winter of 2007. Then the questions continued when I had lunch at Kirkland House, dinner at Leverett, when I met with students in my office hours, even with some recent graduates I encountered abroad. The first thing you asked me about wasn’t the curriculum or advising or faculty contact or even student space. In fact, it wasn’t even alcohol policy. Instead, you repeatedly asked me: Why are so many of us going to Wall Street? Why are we going in such numbers from Harvard to finance, consulting, i-banking?
听我解释。提问从2007年冬天我的任职被公布时与校方的会面就开始了。然后提问一直持续，不论是我在Kirkland House（哈佛的12个本科生宿舍之一）吃午饭还是在Leverett House（哈佛的12个本科生宿舍之一，本科高年级学生使用）吃晚饭，或是当我在办公时间与学生会见，甚至是我在与国外认识的刚考来的研究生的谈话中。你们问的第一个问题不是关于课业，不是让我提建议，也不是为了和教员接触，甚至是想向我提建议。事实上，更不是为了和我讨论酒精政策。相反，你们不厌其烦问的却是：为什么我们之中这么多人将去华尔街？为什么我们大量的学生都从哈佛走向了金融，理财咨询，投行？
There are a number of ways to think about this question and how to answer it. There is the Willie Sutton approach. You may know that when he was asked why he robbed banks, he replied, “Because that’s where the money is.” Professors Claudia Goldin and Larry Katz, whom many of you have encountered in your economics concentration, offer a not dissimilar answer based on their study of student career choices since the seventies. They find it notable that, given the very high pecuniary rewards in finance, many students nonetheless still choose to do something else. Indeed, 37 of you have signed on with Teach for America; one of you will dance tango and work in dance therapy in Argentina; another will be engaged in agricultural development in Kenya; another, with an honors degree in math, will study poetry; another will train as a pilot with the USAF; another will work to combat breast cancer. Numbers of you will go to law school, medical school, and graduate school. But, consistent with the pattern Goldin and Katz have documented, a considerable number of you are selecting finance and consulting. The Crimson’s survey of last year’s class reported that 58 percent of men and 43 percent of women entering the workforce made this choice. This year, even in challenging economic times, the figure is 39 percent.
对于这个问题有多种思考和回答方式。有一种解释就是如Willie Sutton所说的，一切向“钱”看。（Willie Sutton是个抢银行犯，被逮住后当被问到为什么去抢银行时，他说：“Because that is where the money is!”）你们中很多人见过的普通经济学教授Claudia Goldin 和Larry Katz，基于对上世纪70年代以来的学生的职业选择的研究，作出了差不多的回答。他们发现了值得注意的一点：即使从事金融业可以得到很高的金钱回报，很多学生仍然选择做其它的事情。实事上，你们中间有37人签到了“教育美国人”（Teach for America，美国的一个组织，其作用类似于中国的“希望工程”）；1人将去跳探戈舞蹈并在阿根廷从事舞蹈疗法；1人将致力于肯尼亚的农业发展；另有1人获得了数学的荣誉学位，却转而去研究诗歌；1人将去美国空军接受飞行员训练；还有1人将加入到与乳癌抗战当中。你们中的很多人将去法学院，医学院或研究生院。但是，和Goldin 和Katz教授有据证明的一样，你们中相当一部分人将选择金融和理财咨询。Crimson对于上届学生的调查显示，在就业的学生中，58%的男生和43%的女生做出了这个选择。今年，即使在经济受挑战的一年，这个数据是39%。
High salaries, the all but irresistible recruiting juggernaut, the reassurance for many of you that you will be in New York working and living and enjoying life alongside your friends, the promise of interesting work — there are lots of ways to explain these choices. For some of you, it is a commitment for only a year or two in any case. Others believe they will best be able to do good by first doing well. Yet, you ask me why you are following this path.
也许是为了高薪——难以抵抗的招聘诱惑，也许是为了留在纽约然后和朋友们一起工作生活和享受人生，也许是为了做自己感兴趣的工作——对于这些选择可以有各种各样的理由。对你们中的一些人，无论如何那也只是个一两年的契约。其他的一部分人相信他们只有在过得“富有”了以后才有可能过得“富有”价值。不过，你们依然会问我，为什么要走这条路？
I find myself in some ways less interested in answering your question than in figuring out why you are posing it. If Professors Goldin and Katz have it right; if finance is indeed the “rational choice,” why do you keep raising this issue with me? Why does this seemingly rational choice strike a number of you as not understandable, as not entirely rational, as in some sense less a free choice than a compulsion or necessity? Why does this seem to be troubling so many of you?
我发现我自己有时候对于回答你们的问题并没有多大兴趣，比较而言更感兴趣的却是捉摸你们为什么提那些问题。如果果真如Goldin和Katz教授所说；如果去搞金融确实是一个“理性”的选择，为什么你们会不停地向我提出这类问题？为什么看似理性的选择却让你们当中相当一部分人认为是令人费解的，伪理性的，或出于某种需求和强迫所作出的并不自由的选择？为什么这个问题似乎困扰着你们当中的很多一部分人？
You are asking me, I think, about the meaning of life, though you have posed your question in code — in terms of the observable and measurable phenomenon of senior career choice rather than the abstract, unfathomable and almost embarrassing realm of metaphysics. The Meaning of Life — capital M, capital L — is a clich |
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发表于 2009-12-15 17:57:52
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