2018年8月25日在耶鲁大学的开学典礼上，耶鲁大学校长苏必德(Peter Salovey)为2022届耶鲁新生发表了开学演讲：
早上好！我谨代表各位在座耶鲁教职员工向出席典礼的学生家长表示热烈的欢迎。新生们，转学生们，以及伊莱·惠特尼（Eli Whitney）项目的学生们，欢迎来到耶鲁！
今天是盛大而激动人心的一天。许多人怀揣着自豪和一些紧张，带着家人来为自己庆祝这一里程碑的时刻。
今天也是耶鲁大学的传统节日。你会在这里遇到无数新的和旧的奇妙仪式。许多仪式的历史已经颇为悠久，但仍深受耶鲁人的欢迎与喜爱。
记住，现在你是一名耶鲁人了！
耶鲁大学的传统之一，是唱一首名为“灿烂的大学时光（Bright College Years）”的老歌。
它写于19世纪末，是我们非官方的、但得到广泛认可的校歌。你会在许多校园活动中听到它，经常是由耶鲁合唱团和其他耶鲁乐队演唱，橄榄球比赛后由耶鲁铜管仪仗乐队演奏。
我是一名贝斯手，不是一名歌手。不过希望你们能允许我来几句：这几句词是我在《灿烂的大学时光》中最喜欢的，而我的经验也证明，它们描绘的是真实的情景。我想对于你们来说也将如此。
但今天，我希望用这首歌的最后几句歌词引入我的演讲，这几句歌词在校友会上很受欢迎，大家总是充满激情地唱着，还挥舞着手帕：这首歌由耶鲁大学1881届学生亨利·杜兰德（Henry Durand）创作，最后的几句是用来作为战斗口号的。
在那个年代，人们都像杜兰德一样，认为大多数耶鲁学生都来自同一个国家，信奉同一个上帝，直到最近几十年，大多数耶鲁人也都是白人、新教徒和美国人。当然，50年前在耶鲁大学，他们也都是男性。
今天，耶鲁大学与杜兰德当时所认识的学校已经不同了。我们欢迎来自世界各地、各种背景和各行各业的人。
我也很自豪能从耶鲁毕业，1986年，我在耶鲁大学获得了心理学博士学位。若是在一百年前，凭我的背景，被耶鲁大学录取的可能性可能很小，我是犹太人，来自东欧。
我的妻子玛尔塔也是一名骄傲的耶鲁大学毕业生，她于1984年获得了公共卫生硕士学位。她的家庭来自波多黎各，我们的故事并非个例，在过去的几十年里，耶鲁的大门越来越敞开，我们扩大了能让人能找到归属感的圈子。
尽管我们拥有差异和多样性，但至少有一个非常重要的共同点：我们共享耶鲁的一切。无论你来自哪里，你是谁，或者你是怎么来到这里的，现在撇去这些，你都是这个社区的一员。你属于这里，你们是耶鲁的公民。
在我们的国家和当今世界，关于公民身份和移民问题的争论非常激烈。但在耶鲁，移民、国际学生和学者的重要性毋庸置疑。学校的教学和研究需要超越国界的人和思想进行自由流动，我谨代表耶鲁，倡导欢迎世界各地的学生和学者来到我们的校园。
然而，我们的耶鲁公民身份并非基于国籍。我们的学生来自121个国家。它也不是基于我们对某种信念或教条的坚持，因为我们给这个校园带来了广泛的观点和角度。
相反，我们是耶鲁的公民，是因为我们都渴望求知、理解和创造。我们同属一个致力于Urim v’Thummim, lux et veritas——光明和真理的社群。
我们虽然职业不同，是诗人、心理学家、历史学家、科学家、医生和院长，但我们都有一个共同的基本目标，拓展已知世界的视野，提出撼动现有知识基础的问题，用新的答案去重新构建它们。
我们的世界迫切需要新的想法和解决方案，我们需要了解人类和我们的星球，我们需要深入了解基因组，我们需要在战胜疾病、减轻痛苦和伸张正义的能力方面取得突破，我们需要解决长期存在的紧迫问题。
你们将在耶鲁完成这项重要的工作。你在这里的经历将塑造你的余生，并且你将拥有大多数人梦寐以求的机遇。
因为享有耶鲁大学的教育格外难得，所以它伴随着某些义务。今天我想谈谈耶鲁公民的一些最重要的义务，我将描述其中四个：求知若渴，倾听他人，尊重文化，服务他人和世界。
1. 求知若渴
第一项义务关系到我们的知识和学术工作。我们的校园必须是一个利于深入学习的地方，能激励你一生的学习和性格的发展，能为你将来成为一名领导者而服务。
耶鲁对你们的要求很高。有时你会不理解作业或者为问题痛苦挣扎，你可能在期中考试中表现不佳，至少我希望如此！
因为这些失败，和你的成功一样，意味着你在做正确的事情。对自己好一点，记住你来耶鲁是因为你并非无所不知，至少现在如此。
作为老师和导师，全体教员将与你们并肩作战，这是我在耶鲁任教的第三十三年，我很清楚与学生合作是这个职业最大的乐趣之一。
在办公时间去找你的老师，了解你的教授，他们会帮助你加深和扩展你的专业知识。
最重要的是，让你的好奇心插上翅膀，带你到意想不到的方向，带你到新的学习、实践和探索的领域。
我在大学时念了我并不打算上的课程。但四十年后，他们改变了我看世界的方式：戏剧风格演变史、诗歌写作、关于现实世界的(应用)社会学课、包括了有趣田野调查的地质学课。请确保你自己能在这里探索到丰富多样的学术经验。
2. 倾听他人
第二，作为耶鲁的公民，我们有义务认真倾听他人。
有时，这意味着我们必须倾听那些我们觉得讨厌的想法，你不必同意这些看法，但我们每个人都享有表达自己想法和观点的机会。
我们在校园里努力维护这一权利。我希望你们在这里有机会深入思考，诚实勇敢地谈论难题。
讨论是学术事业的核心。所以，无论是在教室、餐厅还是在运动场，找个时间和地点进行交谈吧。
有很多阻碍你进行有益的对话的东西，譬如说科技。我不会试图说服你完全停止发短信或发推特。但我建议你尽可能放下手机，寻找面对面交流的机会。
当我们这样做的时候，我们会更快乐，我们的关系也会更牢固。（问问去年修过劳里·桑托斯（Laurie Santos）教授的《心理学与美好生活》的人就知道了！）
在耶鲁，你会遇到才华出众、前途无量、为人正直的人。在未来的日子里，我希望你们能找到各种各样的朋友和同伴。
就像我对去年的毕业生说的那样，给自己建立一个有着长相、谈吐、行为或想法可能与你不同的人的交际圈。
例如向学校的员工介绍自己，了解你在纽黑文的邻居。你的表达能力、倾听能力，你突破舒适区域的能力，将会是衡量你在耶鲁学习期间的重要标准之一。
3. 尊重文化
第三，作为耶鲁的公民，我们努力在校园里支持建设一个相互尊重彼此文化的氛围。为此，我们必须给予每个人应有的尊严和认可。
克劳迪娅·兰金（Claudia Rankine）是耶鲁大学弗雷德里克·伊斯曼诗歌教授。在她充满力量的作品《公民：一个美国人的抒情诗》中，她通过描写一些看似平凡无奇的情景，探讨了公民身份和归属感在当代美国的意义，我想给你们读一段话:
“在杂货店排队时，终于轮到你了，然而他突然走到你前面，把东西放在柜台上。收银员说，先生，她才是下一个。当他转向你时，他真的很惊讶。
哦，我的上帝，我没有看到你。
你一定是太匆忙了吧，你说。
不，不，不，我真的没有看到你。”
我们看到谁，又没看到谁？在我们的宿舍和教室里，在餐馆里，在假期和工作中，在我们的国家和世界里，我们看到了谁，我们又忽视了谁？
你在耶鲁的生活将是忙碌而充实的。你需要学习、工作、做志愿者、参加社交活动，以及我非常希望有时你们能睡会儿。
但是同时请确保自己一定要花时间去看看周围的人，试着用他们的眼睛去想象世界，为你所做的一切带去一份同理心和想象力。
我期望你们每个人共同努力，可以确保耶鲁是一个每个人都感到受到重视和欢迎的社区。
4. 服务他人与世界
最后，希望你们将作为耶鲁公民的义务延伸到校园之外。我们的校友也许是发挥耶鲁服务于人的传统的最好例证。
耶鲁有5名毕业生曾担任过美国总统，4名担任过国务卿，18名担任过美国最高法院大法官，代表不同政治派别的观点，耶鲁校友曾担任过几个国家的国家元首，包括意大利、墨西哥、马拉维和韩国。
许多人作为教师，慈善家和导师，已经改善了他们的社区和城市。还有一些人建立了自己的企业，为社会提供工作岗位。几代人以来，我们的学生和校友为共同的利益做出了贡献。我敦促你们继承耶鲁的这一重要传统。
“为主，为国，也为耶鲁”这仍是《灿烂的大学时光》的承诺，我和其他人一样喜欢唱这几句。即使我们信仰不同甚至无信仰，即使我们是不同国家的公民或无国界人士，我们都共享耶鲁的一切。
作为这个社区的一员，我们为自己的“权利和责任”感到自豪。作为对耶鲁大学精英教育的回报，放眼校园之外，我们追求一个更大的目标，那便是“为世界的今天和下一代做出贡献”。这也是我们的共同之处。
我相信，我们的耶鲁公民身份在今天和317年前耶鲁大学成立时一样重要。世界一如既往地需要光明和真理，它需要你的领导和服务，它需要你带给世界的意义和你提出的疑惑，最重要的是，它需要你付出最大的努力，你的成功和失败。
作为耶鲁大学的公民，我们有着共同的目标，追求知识和理解，让我们从今天开始，开始我们来到这里的任务:提出新的问题，认真倾听，诚实倾诉，用新的眼光看待问题，为我们的社区和世界做出贡献。
最重要的是，今天离开这个大厅的时候，心怀这样一个承诺：做耶鲁的模范公民，建设我们希望看到的未来。
今天，当我望向这间房间时，我对耶鲁的未来和我们这个世界的未来充满乐观。
2022届，祝你们好运！
英文演讲稿原文
Good morning! On behalf of my colleagues here on stage, I extend a warm welcome to all the family members with us today. And to the first-years, transfer students, and Eli Whitney students: Welcome to Yale!
Today is a day of pageantry and excitement. Many of you bring members of your extended families to cheer you on, celebrating this milestone with justifiable pride and just a little anxiety.
Today is also a day of Yale traditions. You will encounter countless wonderful rituals here, some recent and some quite old. Many are steeped in history yet remain popular, even beloved, among Yalies. (And remember, you are now a Yalie!)
One of our Yale traditions is singing an old song, “Bright College Years.” Written in the late 19th century, it is our unofficial, but widely acknowledged, alma mater. You will hear it at many campus events, often sung by the Yale Glee Club and other Yale groups, and played by the Yale Precision Marching Band after football games.
Now, I am not a singer. I am a bluegrass bass player. But I hope you will indulge me for a moment:
The seasons come, the seasons go,
The earth is green or white with snow,
But time and change shall naught avail
To break the friendships formed at Yale.
These couplets are some of my favorites from “Bright College Years,” and, in my experience, they are truthful. I suspect they will prove accurate for you as well. But it is the song’s final lines, popular at alumni gatherings and always sung with gusto, complete with the waving of handkerchiefs, that I want to use to launch my topic for today:
Oh, let us strive that ever we
May let these words our watch cry be,
Where’er upon life’s sea we sail:
“For God, for Country and for Yale!”
“For God, for Country, and for Yale:” A member of the Yale College Class of 1881 named Henry Durand wrote this ballad, and the final lines were meant to be a rallying cry. It made sense in those days to presume, as Durand did, that most Yale students shared, or at least professed to share, the same god and the same country. Most Yalies, until recent decades, were white, Protestant, and American. And of course, until fifty years ago in Yale College, they were all men.
Today, Yale is a different place from the college Durand knew. We welcome people from around the world, from every background and from every walk of life.
I am proud to be a Yale graduate. I received my Ph.D. in psychology from Yale in 1986. A hundred years earlier, I may have been less likely to have been admitted to Yale on account of my background; I am Jewish, with roots in Eastern Europe. My wife Marta, another proud Yale graduate, received her master’s degree in public health in 1984; her family is from Puerto Rico. Our stories are not unique. Over the past decades, Yale has opened its doors wider and wider. We have expanded the circle of belonging.
Yet despite our differences and diversity, we have at least one very important thing in common: we all share Yale. No matter where you are from, or who you are, or your path to arriving here, now you are—among other things—a member of this community. You belong here. You are citizens of Yale.
In our country and our world today, questions about citizenship and immigration are hotly contested. But at Yale, we share none of this uncertainty about the critical importance of immigrant and international students and scholars. The work of the university—education and research—requires the free movement of people and ideas across national borders. On behalf of this university, I advocate for policies that will allow us to welcome students and scholars from around the world to our campus.
Our Yale citizenship, however, is not based on national origin. Our students hail from 121 countries. Nor is it based on our adherence to a certain set of beliefs or dogma, as we bring an enormous range of viewpoints and perspectives to this campus. Instead, we are citizens of Yale because we share a desire to know, understand, and create. We are members of an academic community dedicated to Urim v’Thummim, lux et veritas, light and truth.
We are poets and psychologists, historians and scientists, physicians and deans, and yet we all share the same fundamental goal: to expand the horizons of the known world. To ask questions that shake the foundations of knowledge and to rebuild them again with new answers.
Our world is desperate for new ideas and solutions. We need to understand the human condition and our planet. We need insights into the genome. We need breakthroughs in our ability to fight disease, alleviate suffering, and find justice. We need answers to urgent and long-standing questions.
You will tackle this important work at Yale. The experiences you have here will shape the rest of your lives, and you will have opportunities that most people only dream of.
And because a Yale education is a great privilege, it comes with certain obligations. I want to speak today about some of the most important obligations of Yale citizenship. I will delineate four of them:
The responsibility to be curious, constantly;
The duty to listen to others, even those whose thoughts you despise, and to exchange ideas freely;
The obligation to create a culture of respect here;
And the requirement to use the gifts you have been provided to serve others and the world.
So, the first obligation concerns our intellectual and scholarly work. Our campus must be a place conducive to deep study that will motivate both a lifetime of learning and the development of character that will serve you well as future leaders.
Yale will demand much of you. There will be times when you don’t understand an assignment or struggle with a problem set. You may do poorly on a midterm. At least I hope so! Those failures—as much as your successes—mean you are doing something right. Be kind to yourself, and remember that you have come to Yale because you don’t know everything—not yet.
The faculty will be alongside you, as teachers and mentors. This is my thirty-third year on Yale’s faculty, and I know that working with students is one of the great joys of this profession. Go to office hours. Get to know your professors, and they will help you deepen and expand your expertise. Most of all, allow your curiosity to take wing—to take you in unexpected directions and lead you to new areas of study, practice, and discovery.
I enrolled in courses in college that I hadn’t planned to take, and they changed the way I see the world now, forty years later: a course in the history of theater styles, a course in writing poetry, a course in real-world (applied) sociology, a course in geology that involved fascinating fieldwork. Make sure you explore the great range and diversity of academic experiences available to you here.
Second, as citizens of Yale, we are obligated to listen carefully to others. Sometimes this means we must listen to ideas we find objectionable. You don’t have to agree, but each of us must enjoy the opportunity to express thoughts and opinions. We work hard to safeguard this right on our campus. I hope you will have many opportunities to think deeply and speak honestly and courageously about difficult issues during your time here.
Discourse is the heart of the academic enterprise. So, find times and places for conversation, whether in a classroom, dining hall, or on the athletic field.
There are many impediments to meaningful conversation, including technology. I am not going to try to persuade you to stop texting or tweeting altogether. But I would urge you to put down your phones whenever possible, and seek out face-to-face interactions. We are happier and our relationships are stronger when we do. (Just ask anyone who took “Psychology and the Good Life” with Professor Laurie Santos last year!)
You will meet people of remarkable talent, promise, and integrity here at Yale. In the days and weeks ahead, I would urge you to seek out a wide variety of friends and associates. As I said to last year’s graduating class, draw a larger circle to include people who might look, talk, act, or think differently from you. Introduce yourself to staff members; get to know your neighbors in the city of New Haven. Your ability to speak but also listen, to reach beyond what is familiar and easy, will be one of the great measures of your time here at Yale.
Third, as citizens of Yale we strive to support a culture of mutual respect on our campus. To do this we must accord each person the dignity and recognition they deserve.
Claudia Rankine is the Frederick Iseman Professor of Poetry at Yale. In her powerful work, Citizen: An American Lyric, she explores what citizenship and belonging mean in contemporary America, often by describing mundane situations. I would like to read you a passage:
“In line at the drugstore it’s finally your turn, and then it’s
not as he walks in front of you and puts his things on the
counter. The cashier says, Sir, she was next. When he
turns to you he is truly surprised.
Oh my God, I didn’t see you.
You must be in a hurry, you offer.
No, no, no, I really didn’t see you.”
Who do we see—or not see? In our residential colleges and classrooms, in restaurants, on vacation and at work, in our country and in our world? Who do we see, and who do we look past?
Your lives at Yale will be busy and full. You will study, work, volunteer, socialize, and—I dearly hope—sometimes sleep. But make sure you take time to see the people around you. Try to imagine the world through their eyes; bring empathy and imagination to all that you do. I am counting on each of you. Together we can ensure that Yale is a community where each person feels valued and welcomed.
Finally, your obligations as citizens of Yale extend beyond this campus. Our alumni are perhaps the greatest illustration of Yale’s tradition of service. Five Yale graduates have served as U.S. presidents, four as secretaries of state, and eighteen as justices on the U.S. Supreme Court, representing viewpoints across the political spectrum. Yale alumni have served as heads of state of several foreign countries, including Italy, Mexico, Malawi, and South Korea. Many others have improved their neighborhoods and cities as teachers, philanthropists, and mentors. Still others have built businesses that created jobs. For generations, our students and alumni have contributed to the common good. I urge you to carry on this vital Yale tradition.
“For God, for Country, and for Yale:” This is still the promise of “Bright College Years”—and I enjoy singing those words as much as anyone—that even if we worship differently or not at all, even if we are citizens of different nations or people without a country, we all share Yale. We take pride in our “rights and responsibilities” as members of this community. In return for the great privilege of a Yale education, we look beyond this campus to pursue a larger purpose, to “improve the world today and for future generations.”5 This is what we share in common.
I am convinced that our Yale citizenship is just as vital today as it was 317 years ago when this college was founded. The world needs light and truth as much as ever. It needs your leadership and your service. It needs the meaning you bring to the world and the questions you ask. Most of all, it needs your best efforts—your successes and your failures.
As citizens of Yale sharing a common purpose—the pursuit of knowledge and understanding—let us start today to begin the work we have come here to do: to ask new questions, to listen carefully and speak honestly, to see with new eyes, and to contribute to our communities and our world. Most of all, leave this hall today with a commitment in your hearts to be exemplary citizens of Yale, building the future we hope to see.
Today, as I look out onto this room, I am optimistic about the future of Yale and the future of our world.
Good luck, Class of 2022!
(本演讲稿整理自搜狐)
