萨默斯校长说过些啥？ 编者题记： 虽然哈佛校长 Lawrence H. Summers 下台了，并成为任职时间最短的哈佛校长，但孔夫子说了： 君子不以言举人，不以人废言（卫灵公第十五）。 Summers 校长的许多教导并未过时，其强调关注弱势群体与增进国际理解的话仍然是今日大学生明日领导人所应关注的。特转述如下： Lawrence H. Summers Charles W. Eliot University Professor of Harvard University http://ksghome.harvard.edu/~lsummer/fullbio.htm 2006 Commencement Address Harvard University President Lawrence H. Summers Cambridge , Mass. June 8, 2006 As prepared for delivery Today, I speak from this podium a final time as your president. As I depart, I want to thank all of you - students, faculty, alumni and staff - with whom I have been privileged to work over these past years. Some of us have had our disagreements, but I know that which unites us transcends that which divides us. I leave with a full heart, grateful for the opportunity I have had to lead this remarkable institution. Since I delivered my Inaugural address, 56 months ago, I have learned an enormous amount -about higher education, about leadership, and also, about myself. Some things look different to me than they did five years ago. And yet the convictions I expressed as I entered Harvard's presidency I feel with even more urgency these five years later. It is the urgency, and the possibility, of all Harvard can accomplish in the next years that I want to focus on this afternoon. The world that today's Harvard's graduates are entering is a profoundly different one than the world administrators like me, the faculty, and all but the most recent alumni of Harvard entered. It is a world where opportunities have never been greater for those who know how to teach children to read, or those who know how to distribute financial risk; never greater for those who understand the cell and the pixel; never greater for those who can master, and navigate between, legal codes, faith traditions, computer platforms, political viewpoints. It is also a world where some are left further and further behind - those who are not educated, those trapped in poverty and violence, those for whom equal opportunity is just a hollow phrase. Scientific and technological advances are enabling us to comprehend the furthest reaches of the cosmos, the most basic constituents of matter, and the miracle of life. They offer the prospect of liberating people from drudgery on an unprecedented scale and of eliminating dreaded diseases. At the same time, today, the actions, and inaction, of human beings imperil not only life on the planet, but the very life of the planet. Globalization is making the world smaller, faster and richer. One-third of human beings now live in places where the standards of living may increase 30 fold in a single human lifespan - a transformation that dwarfs what we call the Industrial Revolution. Still, 9/11, avian flu, Darfur, and Iran remind us that a smaller, faster world is not necessarily a safer world. Our world is bursting with knowledge - but desperately in need of wisdom. Now, when sound bites are getting shorter, when instant messages crowd out essays, and when individual lives grow more frenzied, college graduates capable of deep reflection are what our world needs. For all these reasons I believed - and I believe even more strongly today - in the unique and irreplaceable mission of universities. Universities are where the wisdom we cannot afford to lose is preserved from generation to generation. Among all human institutions, universities can look beyond present norms to future possibilities, can look through current considerations to emergent opportunities. And among universities, Harvard stands out. With its great tradition, its iconic reputation, its remarkable network of 300,000 alumni, its unmatched capacity to attract brilliant students and faculty, its scope for physical expansion in Allston and its formidable financial resources, Harvard has never had as much potential as it does now. Thanks to your generosity and the endowment's strong performance, our resources have increased in just the last three years by nearly seven billion dollars. This is more than the total endowment of all but four other universities in the world. And yet, great and proud institutions, like great and proud nations at their peak, must surmount a very real risk: that the very strength of their traditions will lead to caution, to an inward focus on prerogative and to a complacency that lets the world pass them by. And so I say to you that our University today is at an inflection point in its history. At such a moment, there is temptation to elevate comfort and consensus over progress and clear direction, but this would be a mistake. The University's matchless resources - human, physical, financial - demand that we seize this moment with vision and boldness. To do otherwise would be a lost opportunity, not only for Harvard but also for humanity. We can spur great deeds that history will mark decades and even centuries from now. If Harvard can find the courage to change itself, it can change the world. Opportunity All over the world, and in every corner of America , Harvard's prestige, and wealth, inspires awe. For some, the name Harvard is synonymous with privilege. In fact, Harvard is a place of great and transforming opportunity. This week we read of a Bronx postman's son whose life was changed by his years of study in this Yard. This man is now to lead one of America 's great financial firms. I know that scores of you from every alumni class gathered here have similar stories. When I became president of Harvard, I resolved that, on my watch, we would have more such stories of opportunity to tell. Thus, in the last five years we have eliminated the necessity of contribution towards tuition for families earning below $60,000 per year. We have seen an increase by a third in the number of eligible lower- and middle-income students attending Harvard, and even more importantly, we have seen other institutions follow our lead. Still, when the gap between the life prospects of the children of wealthy parents and those of middle class and poor parents is widening, we have only made a beginning. I look forward to the day when Harvard sets a standard by eliminating any financial burden for lower and middle class families and when students from these backgrounds are fully represented in every Harvard class. There is more to equal opportunity. Should not every young person have the opportunity to choose a career that, while it may not be lucrative, serves our world - whether it is performing basic research, counseling the troubled, teaching in urban schools, struggling to bring peace to nations, preserving the public health? A university like ours cannot change the distribution of financial rewards in our society. But we can press on to find more financial aid, more ways to support those who commit themselves to service. We have, in the last years, begun to treat financial aid as a university-wide responsibility, creating new fellowships and increasing the resources available for students who pursue public service. But there is much more to do. I look forward to the day when Harvard sets a standard by insuring that every student with the ability and the drive to study here can pursue a career of service to society without fearing the debt that they will incur. Science Ponder this. Within the next 25 years, it is more likely than not that genomics will have led us towards a cure for many cancers; that stem cell research will transform treatment of diabetes, that basic research will make possible a vaccine for Alzheimer's, and that we will have means to control AIDS and malaria. Draw a circle with a five-mile radius from this point and you encompass the greatest concentration of biomedical talent on earth, and, almost as remarkable, the undeveloped urban real estate capable of making Harvard the world's epicenter of biomedical progress. Recognizing the potential, we have in the last five years created a Stem Cell Institute to fill the gap left by federal policy and so ensure that this research area - with its promise for diabetes, Parkinson's and much else - is fully explored. We have launched the Broad Institute for Genomics in collaboration with MIT, and embarked on planning and construction of more than 20 football fields' worth of laboratory space to be devoted to interdisciplinary science in Cambridge and Allston. We have expressed our commitment to scientific education in new undergraduate courses that cut across scientific disciplines, and that focus, too, on the economic, social, and ethical aspects of scientific discovery. And we are on the verge of creating, at last, a new school for engineering and applied science. All this represents a significant, and rapid, expansion of Harvard's prior investment in science. But there is much, more for Harvard to do. We owe to the next generation, and to our own, every effort we can make. I look forward to the time when because of Harvard's bold investments and its magnetic power, Boston is to this century what Florence was to the 15th - not the richest or most powerful, but the city that through its contribution to human thought shone the brightest light into posterity. I look forward to the lives we will save. The World America today misunderstands the world and is misunderstood in the world in ways without precedent since World War II. A great university like ours has a profoundly important role to play in promoting international understanding. I know that my own professional path was set by the summer during graduate school I spent in Indonesia . There is no substitute for living abroad if one is to understand another country or even, I dare say, one's own. The number of Harvard College students studying or working abroad has sharply increased over the past few years: now nearly two-thirds of a Harvard class - 1,100 students - will work or study abroad this year. I look forward to the day when Harvard sets a standard for future leaders of our country by assuring that all students have meaningful international experiences before they graduate. There is much more to be done, too, in truly integrating Harvard with the world. Students from abroad coming here to study return home changed people, and those they meet here are changed by them. Remember a few years ago the rescue of a doomed Russian submarine crew? This rescue was only made possible by a contact between a Russian admiral and an American admiral - two who never would have communicated if they had not met in a Kennedy School joint military program. New research offices in major cities on every continent, our agreement with Google for the potential digitization of our entire library collection, our ongoing experiments in distance education - these demonstrate that Harvard can educate far beyond the boundaries of its campus. A century ago, our Extension School opened these gates to the greater Boston community. I look forward to the day when Harvard fully uses information technology to extend its reach into the entire world. The College At the very center of the University lies Harvard College , where, every year, 1,650 of the most impressive students on earth begin their undergraduate educations. In my Inaugural address I called for a comprehensive review and reform of the Harvard College curriculum, for the curriculum had not been addressed in over a generation. We can take satisfaction that now we do offer freshman seminars for all, and that there now exist faculty-led seminars in many concentrations. We have increased student choice and flexibility within general education and within concentrations, we have begun a much-needed overhaul of our advising system, and we have begun to bring practice in the arts - the creation of music, of visual art, of film and of writing - fully into the Harvard curriculum. I was honored to approve the appointments that have allowed the faculty to grow so rapidly in recent years, and I was especially excited to promote to tenure from within some of the College's most superb teachers. And yet, we are still short of realizing the truly great curriculum our students are waiting for. I believe that to realize this curriculum, the Faculty of the College will need to put individual prerogatives behind larger priorities and to embrace new structures and norms of teaching and learning. To provide the closer student-faculty contact our students deserve, faculty will need to take a greater role in leading discussions, in responding to student writing, in advising student concentrators. They will need to provide the broad introductions to large bodies of knowledge the students are right to demand. They will need to think with vision, and with generosity, across disciplinary borders and their particular purviews to craft a compelling description of just what, in the 21st century, it means to be an educated person. I look forward to the day when Harvard is not just the greatest research university in the world, but is also recognized for providing the best undergraduate education in the world - the day when once again what we do here in this Yard defines the ideal of liberal education. Conclusion Yes, I have these last years been a man in hurry. My urgency boils down to this: For an institution like ours to make the great contributions the world rightly expects of us, we cannot rest complacent on this, the more comfortable side of innovation; on this, the more familiar side of the lectern; or, even, on this, the reassuringly red brick side of the river. Harvard must - we must - cross over: Cross over from old disciplines to new; Cross over from old structures of governance to new; Cross over from outdated lectures to new active modes of learning, Cross over from the confines of Harvard Square and put down new, ambitious stakes, in Allston and beyond. We owe it to those who come after us to become for this city, this region, this nation and this world a center of human improvement. Our long preeminence must become a spur, not a bar, to our constant transformation. I am honored to have served as your president during the early days of what I hope - and believe - will be Harvard's greatest epoch. I have loved my work here, and I am sad to leave it. There was much more I wanted, felt inspired, to do. I know, as you do, that there are many within this community who have the wisdom, the love of Harvard, the spirit of service, and the energy that will be necessary to mount the collective efforts that this moment in history demands. I bid you farewell with faith that even after 370 years, with the courage to change, Harvard's greatest contributions lie in its future. Commencement Address 2005 Harvard University President Lawrence H. Summers Cambridge , Massachusetts June 9, 2005 (As prepared for delivery) I am pleased to have this opportunity to report to the Harvard Alumni Association. I want to address what I think is perhaps the defining development of our time, what your University has been doing about it, and what we hope to do in the future. I refer to the growing integration between the developing world and the developed world, and the rising importance of the developing world in shaping human history. My guess is that when the history of our time is written 300 years from now, what is happening in the developing world and how the United States responds to it will be the most important story. A university as fortunate and as strong as ours can, should, and will play an important role in shaping that story. The remarkable opportunities inherent in the current global moment bear emphasis: For the first time in all of human history, a majority of people now live in countries where leaders are democratically elected, where women are treated as full citizens, and where the press is free. Both the proportion of the world's population that lives a full lifespan and the proportion that is literate are higher and rising more rapidly than at any time in the history of civilization. Nations where more than one-third of humanity lives are seeing their economies grow at a rate where living standards could rise thirty-fold in a single human lifespan, a trend that, if it continues, will rank in the last one thousand years only with the Renaissance and the Industrial Revolution. Despite all the tragedies of war that rightly preoccupy us, the fraction of the world's population killed each year in wars has, in recent times, been more than 95 percent lower than the comparable fraction for an average year of the 20th century. The United States is more extraordinary in its military strength and the global extent of its cultural influence than any nation has been at least since the Roman Empire . All this suggests opportunity. But it does not suggest any lack of challenge or any grounds for complacency. As long as any child is hungry or any war is being fought, as long as any person is dying of an easily treatable disease, or any political dissidents are being denied their human rights, there is vital work to be done. Moreover, if history teaches anything, it is that there is nothing inexorable about positive trends. We know that especially in new democracies there is the risk that brutal tyrants will be freely elected. We know that rising economic powers have rarely been accommodated by the world system without turbulence and turmoil. We know that the same scientific progress that has fueled prosperity has also made it possible to kill more people with less effort than ever before. We know that while basic indicators of human development have progressed overall, they have regressed in dozens of countries, primarily in Africa , where one-tenth of humanity lives. Even now, 1.2 billion people today struggle to live on less than $ 2 a day. Finally and critically, we have to acknowledge that while the United States may today be at the zenith of its power, there has not been another moment when the perceptions of the United States around the world have been as troubled, and as troubling, as they are today. All of this is to say that we are at a hinge point in history. The 21st century can be a far better one than the 20th century, with less brutality and more human freedom, and many more people lifted beyond bare subsistence. But it need not be so. What happens will depend more than anything else on ideas, and on the wisdom of people who are in positions to use them. Isaiah Berlin famously observed that philosophical concepts nurtured in the stillness of a professor's study could destroy a civilization. Berlin might have continued that wars can start or end depending on what leaders do or do not understand about history or religion or culture, that economies can grow or contract depending on what policymakers do or do not understand about economic theories and models, that people live or die depending on what we do or do not understand about biology and medicine and public health. A great university like ours, rooted in an American tradition - committed to education, to spreading and creating knowledge, to ideas and the people who bring them forth - has a responsibility not just to our students, but to our nation and to the world. History will judge us on how we build on Harvard's strong foundation to meet this responsibility. TEACHING At a time when the United States has never been so misunderstood by the rest of the world, and quite likely has never been so misunderstanding of the rest of the world, we have a special need to prepare our students with international understanding and a lifetime commitment to comprehending changing global realities. This is a matter of paramount concern to the faculty as it debates the reform of the undergraduate curriculum. Even as those discussions continue, I am pleased to be able to report to you that the Harvard student experience is changing in ways that prepare our students for a world that some of them will go on to shape, and in which all of them will need to think globally. The enrollment in foreign language courses at Harvard has increased 45 percent in the last decade, and enrollment in Arabic has increased more than three-fold since 2002. From greatly increased coverage of non-Western material in art, music, literature and social science courses, to the expansion of the role of the African-American Studies department to embrace African studies, to the extension of our network of area studies programs to cover every major region of the world, we are assuring that our students graduate with much more understanding of the developing world than any previous generation of students. The number of Harvard College students studying or working abroad during the term or the summer has more than doubled in the last few years. Indeed, in this academic year alone, more than 800 students - equivalent to roughly half a Harvard class - will have spent some amount of meaningful time in a foreign country. This summer a biochemistry concentrator will be assisting medical professionals in a hospital in East Timor, a young woman interested in public service will be gathering oral testimony from North Korean refugees, and through new programs in the Summer School, more than 200 students will be studying abroad for credit with Harvard faculty, from Barcelona to Beijing . These kinds of opportunities can be transforming. I know that the course of my own life was changed forever by the chance Harvard gave me 25 years ago to do economic work in Indonesia . And, of much greater moment, historians record that John F. Kennedy's vision of the world was importantly shaped by what he learned traveling through Europe while preparing to write his Harvard undergraduate thesis. Dean Kirby is fond of remarking that there is no place to study China like China . With his leadership and that of his colleagues, I am pleased to report that we are approaching the day when, like the swimming test for a previous generation of Harvard undergraduates, an international experience will be the norm for future generations of undergraduates. AN INTERNATIONAL STUDENT BODY One way we promote international understanding is by including opportunities to study and work abroad within a Harvard education. Equally important is the commitment to bringing international students here to Harvard. Harvard is and will remain an American university. But it must be a university that increasingly welcomes students from all over the world if it is to provide the best possible learning environment for American students and if it is going to meet its obligations to the world. The University's degree students come from nearly 90 different countries. International students account for nearly one-third of the population of degree students in our Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, the Kennedy School , and the Schools of Business, Public Health, and Design. Dean of Admissions Bill Fitzsimmons estimates that one-third of admitted students in Harvard College speak a language other than English at home. It is hard to overestimate the benefits of opening our doors to students from around the world. Again and again during my years in Washington , I would meet with foreign officials. We would go through our respective talking points. And then the foreign officials would ask whether I was the same Larry Summers who had taught at Harvard. I would say yes. And they would then go on to explain how their years at Harvard had changed their lives - and their attitudes towards America . Professor Nye likes to tell the story of Alexander Yakovlev, who was a key ideological advisor to Mikhail Gorbachev. Yakovlev was asked about the origins of the ideas that helped to bring down the Berlin Wall. Inevitably there were many sources, but notable among them was what he had seen and learned studying political science in the United States in the 1950s. If Yakovlev was even a small contributor to the end of the Soviet Union, and if his study in the United States was even a partial factor shaping in his advice, I would suggest that his experience alone may well justify a half century's national investment in exchange programs. We as a university must do more in the years ahead to recruit the most able students from all over the world: We have taken an important step towards recruiting more of the most able students by establishing the global principle that anyone with a family income under $40,000 can come to Harvard College with no parental contribution. We have an arrangement that will allow any student from any country in the world to borrow the entire cost of his or her education at a sub-prime interest rate. Our new Presidential Scholars program provides grants that enable dozens of foreign students to study in our public service-oriented graduate schools each year. And in what I hope will be a precedent-setting agreement for other countries with other Harvard schools, this year the government of Mexico , along with a private consortium, has agreed to finance Ph.D. training for all Mexican students admitted to Harvard. This is all progress. But our goal should be clear: let us work towards the day when cost will not stop any student anywhere in the world from studying at any of Harvard's schools. As we continue to seek the best students from around the world, our success will depend on national policy as well as our own efforts. While there have been some significant improvements recently, restrictions on student visas have become a very serious issue for our students, our University, and our nation. I think of a brilliant science student at Harvard who returned to China for his father's funeral and then missed a chance to publish his first major scientific paper because he was not allowed back into the country for several months. We understand the government's concerns when it comes to security. At the same time, let us do everything we can to send a clear signal that foreign students are welcome at Harvard and in America, and to ensure that every Harvard student we accept is able to enter this country and begin his or her studies on time. RESEARCH Harvard, of course, exists not only to spread knowledge but to create it. Much research at Harvard is directly focused on key global problems. Consider a few examples: Research at the Kennedy School 's Belfer Center has set the agenda for our national effort to reduce the threat of nuclear terrorism by securing weapons-grade materials around the world. Research at the Graduate School of Education has shown how recent policy reforms in Latin America have resulted in expanding access to school and educational attainment for all children. Research at the Divinity School on the tenets of Islam has demonstrated how terror is an affront to its deepest traditions and ideals. Collaborative research between Professor Dyann Wirth at the School of Public Health and scholars at our new Broad Institute is seeking cures for malaria by better understanding the genomics of resistant strains. And award-winning research at the Design School has led to innovative design responses in the wake of the tsunami disaster. Beyond these examples of research that focuses on pressing problems, much of the humanistic scholarship that is Harvard's deepest tradition develops the wisdom that is essential to create a secure world. George Marshall famously remarked on the need to have thought hard about Thucydides to have a prospect of understanding international politics. The novels of Joseph Conrad and Graham Greene speak more powerfully than any bit of social science to the difficulty of nation building. We saw in the successful American occupation of Japan after World War II the benefits of the kind of deep cultural understanding that comes out of thoughtful research in anthropology. It is not for the University to have a foreign policy. But it is very much for the University to encourage and support our faculty as they engage their intellectual strength with the vexing problems of the world - a world where decisions and actions taken in ignorance can have terrible consequences - and where decisions and actions informed by deep knowledge can transform a great many lives for the better. PRESENCE ABROAD Through the international experience our students enjoy, through the education Harvard offers students from abroad, through the work of our community in advancing knowledge and understanding, we make crucial contributions. But if Harvard is to maximize its contributions to the world, then we will have to find more ways in the future than in the past to be in the world. We will need to pursue a growing presence abroad - carefully, prudently, mindful of quality, remembering always that what is so special about Harvard is the community of people who gather in Cambridge and Boston - yet also respond in cases where a foreign presence is compelling. Last year, I visited the University's center in Santiago , Chile , which provides a home away from home for our students who choose to study in South America and for our faculty who are pursuing research questions on Latin America . A similar office will soon be opened in Bombay . Harvard Medical International harnesses the expertise of our medical faculty to train doctors and scientists, design models for patient care, and generate new discoveries in more than 30 countries worldwide. The Business School 's Global Initiative now has research centers in Hong Kong, Paris , Buenos Aires , and Tokyo that allow faculty to immerse themselves in the culture and business practices of these regions, leading to business cases that are more global in perspective than ever before. The School of Public Health is one of a handful of schools chosen for a very large program under the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, to provide capacity building and treatment for tens of thousands of people where the AIDS pandemic has already taken a grotesque and staggering toll, in Nigeria , Botswana , and Tanzania . Let us build on these steps and look forward to the day when there will be Harvard offices supporting the foreign study of our students, the research of our faculty, the dissemination of our ideas, and the involvement of our alumni in every part of the world. I suspect, though, that when historians of higher education look back at our period, even more important than physical presences that universities establish abroad will be what they are able to do virtually. Here are two examples that point to the potentially transformative impact of information technology on what we can accomplish as a university. Business School Professor Michael Porter, an international expert on strategy and competition, is teaching a class on the microeconomics of competitiveness that is now being offered simultaneously in universities in 56 countries. Partner universities have the opportunity to participate in classes, in sessions where teaching plans are developed, and supplement the course with materials on matters of local concern. Harvard has long been proud of having the world's largest open stacks library collection. This year Professor Sid Verba, the head of the Harvard University Libraries, took a bold step towards dramatically opening our stacks even further when we announced the pilot phase of a project with Google that may eventually lead to the digitization of vast portions of our library collections. Information technology offers the potential to multiply manyfold the number of students and scholars with access to Harvard's unique intellectual resources. Without diluting the special character of the education that can only be obtained here as a member of the Harvard community, I call on each of the Faculties to think creatively and boldly about how they can extend the reach of their excellence through technology in the years ahead. And I commit the University's strong support for these efforts. CONCLUSION I mentioned John F. Kennedy a moment ago. More than 40 years ago, mere months before his assassination, he addressed a commencement at Vanderbilt University in Tennessee . It was a moment when the South and our nation faced a simple question: Would we honor our founders' promise and extend to all Americans equal opportunity and liberty under the law? He said that day, We live in an age of movement and change, both evolutionary and revolutionary, both good and evil. And in such an age a university has a special obligation to hold fast to the best of the past and move fast with the best of the future. I believe we at Harvard are aiming to live by those words. While affirming and renewing our best traditions, we are teaching more broadly, and our students are living and studying more widely. Our community is richer than ever in international students. Our researchers are tackling more extensively the most serious global issues of the day, and perhaps of any day. And our pedagogical reach into the far corners of the globe is deeper, and more complete, with each passing year. We understand the importance of an enlightened response to a shrinking world and our role in fostering it. Even more important, let me say to our newest alumni that we understand your role. It is now your turn to engage with the world in ways that realize the broadest possible benefits of your education. It is a world unlike any we have known, where literally billions of people stand at the edge of an historic opportunity, for better health and higher incomes, for more education and greater freedoms. Your ideas, shaped by your time here, hold the promise, in turn, to shape that world. How you take advantage of the opportunities before you can, in turn, enlarge the opportunities of people around the globe. I know you will more than meet this challenge, with the same drive and insight you have graced us with here at Harvard. Harvard University President Lawrence H. Summers Commencement Address 2004 Cambridge , Mass. June 10, 2004 (As prepared for delivery) Introduction Before I say anything else, I want to recognize Ron Daniel, who will step down later this month as Treasurer of the University after 15 years of distinguished service. Ron has made countless contributions to this University. Ron, thank you for a job well done. This has been a productive year at your University. The Faculty of Arts and Sciences has completed the first phase of a curriculum review that promises to bring students and faculty closer together as we reshape the college experience for our students. We have begun to set a course to guide development of our land in Allston, and we have retained a planning firm to help us think through the exciting array of options for science, public service, student life and the community that our faculty/student task forces have put forward. We have established the Broad Institute, jointly with MIT, that will enable us to harness the power of genomics to understand fundamental life processes and conceive of new medical treatments. Others may withdraw from stem cell research, but Harvard will not withdraw. We have inaugurated a stem cell institute that will engage hundreds of researchers in tackling diabetes, heart disease, Alzheimer's and other diseases that shorten the lives of our friends and loved ones. And as befits the mission of this University, the stem cell lines we create are being made available to any researcher or student in this country to pursue their own scientific inquiries. REAFFIRMING OUR COMMITMENT TO OPPORTUNITY Harvard's Initiative Aimed at Economic Barriers to College Many of you may have heard about a recent initiative in which the University announced that families with incomes of less than $40,000 will no longer be expected to contribute to the cost of attending Harvard for their children. We undertook this initiative because we believe that the University has a profound responsibility to help meet our national challenge of achieving equal opportunity. And that's the subject I wish to address today, to direct my remarks to the problem of equal opportunity within the United States and what Harvard, and higher education, can do about it. Rising Inequality The evidence is overwhelming that inequality in our nation is increasing. More ominous still, the transmission of inequality from generation to generation may be increasing as well. Median family incomes have increased by 18 percent since 1979 - the incomes of the top one percent of families have increased by 200 percent. Of even greater concern, a child born in the bottom 10 percent of all families by incomes has only a one-third chance of rising above the bottom 20 percent. More inequality, and more persistence of inequality, mean just this: The American dream is becoming more remote, as the gap between the life prospects of the children of the fortunate and the less fortunate widens. This is a crucial issue for an institution like ours. Writing a century and a half ago, Horace Mann called education, beyond all other devices of human origin ... the great equalizer of the conditions of men - the balance-wheel of the social machinery. Yet education may in fact be adding to the problem. For the linkage between education and economic success has become much stronger, and the differences in access to education across different income groups have increased. In the 1930s and '40s almost half of American CEOs and founders of leading businesses had no college degree. Now almost all top business leaders have college degrees, and 70 percent have an MBA, J.D., or other advanced degree. This is not just a question of credential inflation. Rather it is the result of a cognitive revolution in the workplace itself, as success in every sphere from finance to baseball depends more and more on powers of analysis. Indeed, the return for completing college has more than doubled over the last generation - individuals with a college degree can expect to earn twice as much as those with only a high school education. The return for attending selective colleges is even greater. Spaces in our nation's colleges and universities - and particularly in colleges like Harvard - are thus highly prized, but unequally allocated. Consider the facts: In the United States today, a student from the top income quartile is more than six times as likely as a student from the bottom income quartile to graduate with a B.A. within five years of leaving high school. At selective institutions, only 10 percent come from the bottom half of the income scale. In other words, children whose families are in the lower half of the American income distribution are underrepresented by 80 percent. We do a bit better at Harvard with 67 percent under-representation. The data are less clear for professional schools, but it appears that students in these schools have even more affluent parents than those in college. To some extent these differences in access reflect differences in preparation and ability. But less than one might suppose. One observer put the fact starkly if undiplomatically - the least bright rich kids are as likely to go to college, and more likely to go to a good college, than the brightest poor kids. Getting the Message Out Harvard College 's longstanding commitment at Harvard to need-blind admissions and meeting the full need of every admitted student is thus vitally important. But, it is not, by itself, enough. That is why we chose, with the low-income initiative, to send the strongest possible message to families across the nation that Harvard is - really and truly - an option for exceptionally talented students whatever their financial means. And it is why we are investing significant additional resources, beginning this summer, in recruiting students from disadvantaged backgrounds using some of the techniques - school visits, personal phone calls, and student-to-student contact - that have worked well for us in recruiting minority students. It is also why, in our admissions process, we are making sure that we consider each student's background and the circumstances under which credentials have been achieved. Students who have taken prep courses for the SATs surely show up more favorably at any given level of ability than other students. And I would venture a guess that the classrooms of Stanley Kaplan and the Princeton Review are among the least economically diverse in America . The Importance of the Pipeline As part of our new initiative, we have created an intensive summer program on the Harvard campus - the Crimson Summer Academy - for academically talented high school students from disadvantaged backgrounds in the greater Boston area. But there is a limit to what any one institution can accomplish with discrete educational programs. In an elitist age, the Duke of Wellington famously observed that the battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton . In this less elitist age, the battle for America 's future will be won or lost in America 's public schools. This is a vast national project and a subject of considerable debate. But Harvard, as an educational institution, must do its part. The center of our efforts has been and will continue to be our Graduate School of Education. And we will make the biggest difference if we focus on those things a university can do best. We need to attract talented students to the field. That is why we established the Presidential Scholars program to fund outstanding graduate students in public service fields, including education. I have noted before that we are rightly proud of the fact that any student can attend Harvard College regardless of financial circumstance or need. The same should be true of students who wish to be teachers. We need to support outstanding research. In the late 1960s, faculty at our Education School broke new ground by packing a basic skills curriculum, founded on cognitive research, into a lively television show - Sesame Street . More recently, one of our economists has developed powerful evidence showing the interaction between race and socio-economic status in explaining the black-white test gap. We need to engage with the world of practice. This past fall, we announced the Public Education Leadership Project, which teams faculty from our Business and Education Schools in a program that works with top management from 11 of the nation's urban school systems. We should be proud of these efforts. But Harvard's contribution to improving public education must be intensified, and it must be university-wide. We need to draw on policy analysis to guide change in school systems, legal analysis to challenge inequitable school financing systems, public health studies to tell us what students need to come to school ready to learn, basic business practices to manage schools and school districts. Finally, as our College curriculum review moves through its next and more substantive phase, I hope we will bear in mind President Conant's fundamental insight, embodied in General Education in a Free Society, that Harvard's thinking about a college education, properly conceived, has the potential to shape our thinking about how and what students should learn before college. CONCLUSION We are all so fortunate to be here, to be part of this community. Let those of us who have benefited so much from what Harvard has to offer work together in the coming years to ensure that our University affirms its promise to advance the vital quest for equal opportunity in America . President Lawrence H. Summers' remarks at ACE: 'Higher Education and the American Dream' American Council on Education 86th Annual Meeting Miami , Florida February 29, 2004 As prepared for delivery Introduction Thank you, David for that generous introduction. I am honored to be here today, representing Harvard before this assembly drawn from the most diverse, expansive, and excellent system of higher education in the world. I am grateful for the opportunity to address an issue that I believe is central both to our nation and to our colleges and universities -- the manifest inadequacy of higher education's current contribution to equality of opportunity in America and how we can do better. I will frame my remarks by noting some of the important changes in our national economy over the last generation, and then discuss issues of access in higher education and their relationship to fundamental fairness. I will conclude by highlighting some initiatives we are taking at Harvard to promote access in the context of broader issues of national policy. Our national economy has been transformed in recent years. Not quite 15 years ago it was a common joke that the Cold War was over, and Europe and Japan had won. Today, the United States is pulling away, and after two decades of stagnation, family incomes have risen significantly as the economy has been transformed by internationalization and information technology. The gap in income for going to college has risen from 31 percent in 1979 to 66 percent in 1997. Accompanying this change has been substantial increase in inequality. In 1979, the top one percent of the population earned less than half the share received by the bottom 40 percent. The most recent data suggest that today the top one percent earn more than the bottom 40 percent. Or, to put the point differently, in the same period when the median family income was going up 18 percent, the top one percent of all families saw a 200 percent increase in their income. Sharp increases in inequality and their relation to education are a serious concern. They are even more troubling when one examines changes in intergenerational mobility. Here the evidence is murky because of the difficulty of matching parents and their children over long periods of time. But the evidence suggests that intergenerational mobility in America is no longer increasing and may well be decreasing. One recent study found that a child born in the bottom 10 percent of families by income has only one chance in three of getting out of the bottom 20 percent. . Others suggest that Andrew Carnegie's famous line -- shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in three generations needs to be revised to five or six generations. . More inequality, and more persistence of inequality, mean just this: The gap between the children of different economic backgrounds has sharply increased in this country over the last generation. Higher education and equal opportunity Increasing disparity based on parental position has never been anyone's definition of the American dream. Going back to the beginning of the Republic, and Jefferson 's view that virtue and talent were sown as liberally among the poor as the rich, the contribution of education -- and especially higher education -- to equality of opportunity has been a central concern. Indeed, 64 years ago, at the outset of World War II, one of my predecessors as president of Harvard, James Bryant Conant, delivered an address at the University of California entitled Education for a Classless Society. In that speech, Conant cites Lincoln for the proposition that we have as a nation the duty to afford all an unfettered start and a fair chance in the race of life. And he offered a manifesto for a more just society achieved through equal opportunity in education. We in higher education and the nation have done much since the Second World War to promote equality of opportunity. We made genuine progress through the happy accident of the GI Bill. By 1947, one out of every two students in higher education was financed by the Bill, and the proportion of young people going to college had almost doubled. Many feared that the influx of students from a broad cross-section of America would strain capacity and dilute quality, but in fact the opposite proved true. The veterans were particularly motivated and successful students, and the overall quality of higher education improved with expansion. Furthermore, the rising number of educated people ushered in a period of growth and prosperity unmatched in our history. The success of the GI Bill, and the success of the students it brought into our nation's colleges and universities, had far-reaching impact. Harvard and many other universities substantially increased the resources for financial aid, and a number of leading institutions adopted need-based financial aid policies. State and local governments invested on an unprecedented scale in constructing campuses that made college pervasively available. And with the passage of the Higher Education Act, the federal government made a major commitment to assure, in the words of President Johnson, that a high school senior anywhere in this great land of ours can apply to any college or any university in any of the 50 States and not be turned away because his family is poor. The civil rights movement added yet another dimension to equality of opportunity in higher education. In the Harvard classes of 1957 through 1961, there were seven or eight African Americans -- today that number is seven to eight percent. And every graduating class in America looks very different today from the way it did decades ago. This evolution in the composition of our student bodies has not happened by accident, by coincidence, or by the invisible hand. It is the result of conscious choice in the public and private sectors, by people determined to bring us to this point. It reflects a choice that institutions make with an awareness of the profound importance of fairness to all -- and with the recognition that what is fair is also effective. We in higher education can take some satisfaction in the Supreme Court's reaffirmation, in the Michigan case, of our efforts in this regard. That reaffirmation rested on constitutional law. It also rested on a broad coalition that saw the importance of our efforts. We have a long way to go to make sure that we deliver, in the experience and academic success of minority students on our campuses, on the promise we make at the door. We have a long way to go to close the gap in academic achievement and standardized test scores separating black and Hispanic students from their white and Asian-American counterparts. And we have a long way to go in bringing to bear on the problems plaguing our public schools sufficient imagination, insight, and relentlessness to begin to make a dent. The challenge ahead Today, two-thirds of high school students go into some form of post-secondary education, far more than in most industrialized nations. No doubt, without this progress in promoting access to higher education in the United States , inequality would be even greater. No doubt, without this progress, there would be an even stronger correlation between the socioeconomic status of parents and their children. But surely, given the changes in the United States over the last generation in inequality and its current magnitude, it behooves us to ask whether we in higher education are doing enough. I believe that we are not. In the United States today, a student from the top income quartile is more than six times as likely as a student from the bottom quartile to graduate with a B.A. within five years of leaving high school. And in the most selective colleges and universities, only three percent of students come from the bottom income quartile and only 10 percent come from the bottom half of the income scale. Let me underscore what I just said. Children whose families are in the lower half of the American income distribution are underrepresented by 80 percent. These differences cannot be fully accounted for by native ability or academic preparation. Indeed, a student from the highest income quartile and the lowest aptitude quartile is as likely to be enrolled in college as a student from the lowest income quartile and the highest aptitude quartile. Why do these gaps in attendance and graduation persist? In part, because some students simply cannot afford to go to college. At all but the most well-endowed institutions, many students face high tuition and inadequate financial aid. In part, because many students never consider applying to certain colleges or universities because they believe them to be out of reach. This past fall we held focus groups at Harvard with students with family incomes under $50,000. We learned that these students often work to make up the parental contribution because they do not want to subject their parents to additional financial stress. There are also issues that are specific to highly selective institutions. The evidence is overwhelming that binding early decision programs of the kind that some colleges and universities use penalize students in need of financial aid by precluding them from comparing offers in choosing a college. Students fortunate enough to be able to be channeled toward prep courses for the SATs surely show up more favorably at any given level of ability than other students. I would venture a guess that the classrooms of Stanley Kaplan and the Princeton Review are among the least diverse in America . Many very talented students from low and middle-income families cannot compete with their more affluent peers in the apparent level of cultural or athletic extra-curricular pursuits reflected in their college applications. Whatever the reasons, the degree of inequality in access to higher education is a problem that must be addressed: It is more urgent than ever before because the economic impact of going to college in general, and going to a more selective college in particular, has never been greater, and some research suggests that this impact may be greatest for the poorest students. It is more urgent than ever before because one in five American children now has a foreign-born parent, and the children of immigrants are twice as likely to be poor. It is more urgent than ever before because our nation's competitiveness depends ever more on the quality of those who graduate from our nation's universities and colleges. And only by assuring access to everyone can we maximize the quality of our nation's college graduates. And it is more urgent than ever before because excellence in education depends on diversity. If our college graduates are to learn all they can from each other, we must assure that they come from a truly wide range of backgrounds. These are not just abstractions. I think of a young woman at Harvard who came from a refugee camp on the border between Cambodia and Laos when she was two, and whose parents worked in an L.A. laundry. In the summer before last, she went back to that refugee camp to help. I think of a young man who came to Harvard last year from Hialeah High School , right near here. He came to this country when he was twelve not speaking a word of English, and came in third in the Florida debate championships just a few years later. These stories are multiplied many times over. They could be multiplied many times more if we as a nation were fully redeeming our commitment to equality of educational opportunity. A new initiative at Harvard In this spirit, we are announcing at Harvard a new initiative to encourage talented students from families of low and moderate income to attend Harvard College . The program has four major components: 1) Financial aid: Beginning next year, parents in families with incomes of less than $40,000 will no longer be expected to contribute to the cost of attending Harvard for their children. In addition, Harvard will reduce the contributions expected of families with incomes between $40,000 and $60,000; 2) Recruiting: The College Admissions Office has intensified its efforts to reach out to talented students across the nation who might not think of Harvard as an option and make sure that they understand Harvard's long-standing commitment to enrolling students from a wide range of backgrounds and regardless of financial circumstances; 3) Admissions: Harvard is reemphasizing, in the context of its highly personalized process of admissions, the policy of taking note of applicants who have achieved a great deal despite limited resources at home or in their local schools and communities; 4) Pipeline: Harvard recently announced the establishment of the Crimson Summer Academy , an intensive summer program for academically talented high school students from financially disadvantaged backgrounds in the greater Boston area. Each student will participate for three successive summers, beginning after ninth grade, receiving encouragement and preparation to attend a challenging four-year college or university. We want to send the strongest possible message that Harvard is open to talented students from all economic backgrounds. Too often, outstanding students from families of modest means do not believe that college is an option for them -- much less an Ivy League university. Our doors have long been open to talented students regardless of financial need, but many students simply do not know or believe this. We are determined to change both the perception and the reality. We have also taken steps at the graduate level to assure that students who wish to pursue careers in public service are not deterred because of finances. Last year we established a $14 million Presidential Scholars program to fund top master's and doctoral students choosing careers in fields such as education, public health, and government service. Harvard is fortunate to have the resources to undertake these programs. But as one institution, we are a very small piece of the puzzle. The Higher Education Act is on the table for reauthorization this spring, and there is clearly much work to be done. The trends I have described today are not unrelated to the fact that we have allowed the purchasing power of the Pell Grant to decline for the last thirty years by 11 percent in real terms, relative to overall price increases at private institutions of 150 percent; that we have moved from grants to loans as the primary vehicle for federal financial aid; and that state legislatures have slashed operating support for universities, sending tuitions higher, while diverting scarce grant resources to merit aid. It is not the work of one bill, or one administration, to restore higher education to its full force as an engine of equal opportunity. Plainly there are many new priorities on our national plate -- homeland security, the war in Iraq , nation building, to name a few. But we need to understand, as we did after World War II, that education is not a discretionary expense; it is a necessary investment in the future of the next generation and, thus, in the future of the nation. We need to support programs that work with children from a very early age to make sure that they set their sights high and have the preparation to succeed in college and meet challenging goals. We need to reverse the questionable allocation of national resources that results in greater, not lesser, inequality. In short, we need to recognize that the most serious domestic problem in the United States today is the widening gap between the children of the rich and the children of the poor, and education is the most powerful weapon we have to address that problem. Let us make sure that the American dream is a possible dream for every child in the nation. Address of Lawrence H. Summers President, Harvard University October 12, 2001 I accept! Members of the University community, friends of Harvard from far and wide: we celebrate today a ritual generations older than our nation -- a joyous ritual -- a solemn ritual -- that reinforces our sense of tradition and community. To begin, we acknowledge all who have come before us, all of those who have built Harvard from a small school in a cow yard centuries ago to the vibrant university of today. We are truly blessed by their efforts. I want especially to recognize one person's leadership. Neil Rudenstine stood in this place ten Octobers ago. His vision, his dedication, his care, have left Harvard far stronger than he found it. Neil, thank you! Neil and I both know what President Edward Holyoke, who by the way was not an orthopedist, and lends his name to the chair on which the Harvard President sits, said in 1769: If any man wishes to be humbled and mortified, let him become President of Harvard College. Humbled, yes; mortified, I hope not; excited and exhilarated, for sure. I pledge my energy to Harvard's work. Today's gathering is about more than any individual or any office. Harvard's distinction, and its promise, flow from all who are here. From this entire community, from all those who read books, who write books, who shelve books. From all who do their part in the constant quest to make a great university a greater one. I will do my best to hear Harvard's many voices, and to respond. I admire President Eliot, but not for me his view that a Harvard president should be measured by, and I quote, the capacity to inflict pain. Nor, I hasten to reassure you, his predilection for the hour and three-quarter inaugural address. And much as I admire the movie Love Story , I do not believe that being president means never having to say you're sorry. The Torch of Truth We meet now in the shadow of the terrible and tragic events of September 11th. These events give fresh meaning to Franklin Roosevelt's words from this stage 65 years ago. Said Roosevelt: It is the part of Harvard and America to stand for the freedom of the human mind and to carry the torch of truth. And so, in our present struggle, we do our part, we carry that torch, When we show support for the victims and their families; When we honor those who defend our freedom and the calling of public service; When we stand as an example of openness and tolerance to all of goodwill; And, above all, when we promote understanding -- not the soft understanding that glides over questions of right and wrong, but the hard-won comprehension that the threat before us demands. We will prevail in this struggle -- prevail by carrying on the ordinary acts of learning and playing, caring and loving -- the extraordinarily important acts that make up our daily lives. And we will prevail by recognizing anew that each of us owes it to all of us to be part of something larger than ourselves. And here we are. Today we recommit ourselves to the university's enduring service to society -- through scholarship of the highest quality, and through the profound act of faith in the future that is teaching and learning. A World of Ideas Great universities like this one have become more worldly in recent years. More and more of us directly engage with the problems of the day. Whether whispering in the ear of a President or helping museums preserve great art; whether establishing legal foundations for civil society in distant lands or advising on the ethics of life-and-death medical decisions; whether planning cities of the future or finding better ways to teach children to read. The people of the university make contributions every day. This is good and it is important. That we serve in this way reflects the immediate and practical utility of the knowledge developed and taught here. But the practical effectiveness of what we do must never obscure what is most special and distinctive about universities like this one: that they are communities in which truth -- Veritas -- is pursued first and last as an end in itself -- not for any tangible reward or worldly impact. Whether reading great literature, or discovering new states of matter, or developing philosophies of ordered liberty, it is the pursuit of truth, insight, and understanding that most defines enlightened civilization. Indeed, when the history of this time is written, it will be a history of ideas -- and of the educated women and men whose intellect, imagination, and humanity brought them forth and carried them to fruition. It will, in large part, be a history of what has come forth from campuses like this one. Creative Tensions I will speak in a few minutes about some of the specific challenges that Harvard faces in coming years. But I want to say a word first about the singular success of universities as social institutions. Though they are sometimes derided as remote or not relevant, universities, and Harvard in particular, have an extraordinary staying power -- as we are reminded by this ritual -- in a volatile and changing world. Why? The answer may lie in some of the creative tensions that are at the heart of the academic enterprise. The university is open to all ideas, but it is committed to the skepticism that is the hallmark of education. All ideas are worthy of consideration here -- but not all perspectives are equally valid. Openness means a willingness to listen to ideas -- but also the obligation to sift and test them -- to expose them to the critical judgments of disinterested scholars and a discerning public. We must be neither slaves to dogma nor uncritical followers of fashion. We must exalt neither novelty nor orthodoxy for their own sake. Our special obligation is to seek what is true -- not what is popular or easy, not what is conventionally believed, but what is right and in the deepest and most rigorous sense advances our understanding of the world. Universities are places of ideas but also places of idealism. We owe allegiance to the dispassionate pursuit of truth. But universities -- and certainly this one -- have been and should always be places of passionate moral commitment. We cultivate what is special and intellectual here, but we must also nurture the value of generous public service to society beyond these walls. This takes on a special importance at a moment like this, when we have an opportunity to awaken a new generation to the satisfactions of serving society. And not just as individuals do we serve, for as a university we serve. Most importantly, always through our teaching and our scholarship, we must avoid temptations to take on tasks beyond our scope and our capacity. But we can -- and we will -- meet our obligations to members of our campus community and to the communities in which we reside. Perhaps the most important creative tension in our university is this: we carry ancient traditions, but what is new is most important for us. Our most enduring tradition is that we are forever young. Our historic buildings always house new students. We venerate our past but we succeed and endure only when the university renews itself in each generation. Renewal does not just mean doing new things and growing larger. It means moving beyond activities that have run their course, being selective and disciplined about the most critical paths to pursue, and nimbly and rapidly responding to the opportunities created by a changing world. Harvard is strong today -- to keep it strong we will need to maintain that careful balance that has sustained us so long, between openness and skepticism, between the imperatives of thought and service, and between tradition and innovation. Challenges Ahead Now is the time to consider Harvard's challenges for a new century. We come here together at a moment when this university is fortunate in all that it possesses -- physically, financially, and most of all intellectually. But we will -- and we should -- be judged not by what we have, but by what we do, not by what we accumulate, but by what we contribute. Undergraduate Learning First, we will need in the years ahead to ensure that teaching and learning are everything they can be here, especially at the very heart of the university -- Harvard College . Oliver Wendell Holmes said late in his life that he was set on fire in his freshman year here by reading and discussing the essays of Emerson. We are exceptionally fortunate in the students who choose to come here. To do them justice, it is our task to set their minds on fire. We must help them to find what intrigues them most, press them to meet the highest standards of intellectual excellence and start them on a lifetime quest for knowledge and truth. This has many aspects: - It means assuring that the academic experience is at the center of the college experience. - It means strengthening and expanding our distinguished faculty to embrace new areas of learning. - It means thinking carefully about what we teach, and how we teach, recognizing that any curriculum, course of study, or form of pedagogy can always be improved. And what is most crucial is this: Whether in the classroom or the common room, the library or the laboratory, we will assure more of what lies at the heart of the educational experience -- direct contact between teacher and student. I speak from experience. A moment ago, Karen Kelly mentioned her freshman Ec 10 section -- the first class she took at Harvard and the first class I ever taught. Karen, as we sat in my office talking about elasticity, I don't think either of us imagined that we would be here a quarter century later. I don't know if you and your classmates learned anything much in that class, but I do know that I learned very, very much. Coming Together Second, we need to come together as a university -- a community of scholars and students -- doing different things but united by common convictions and common objectives. Every tub may rest on its own bottom, but all draw on the reservoir of knowledge and tradition that Harvard represents. And the strength and reputation of each depend upon the strength of all. We will not sacrifice the flexibility and innovation that autonomy promotes. But we will assure that Harvard, as one university, exceeds -- by ever more -- the sum of its parts. Discoveries are no longer confined by traditional academic boundaries. Many students no longer crave careers confined to a single profession or field. Specific programs and initiatives have had and will have an important place in responding to these realities. But real and ultimate success will come only as our culture changes -- only when each of us in a single part of the University is genuinely part of Harvard University as a whole. The University in this regard has a historic opportunity to create a new Harvard campus for centuries to come. Think about how grateful we are right now for the vision of those who built the Business School's magnificent campus in what was once a Boston swamp, or helped create the Kennedy School from what was once a not-very-attractive train yard. If we make the right choices -- if we take full advantage of a physical opportunity across the river in Allston -- an opportunity to create a campus that is several times as large as this whole yard -- we will have earned the gratitude of future generations. Let us make these choices as a university, as a community, and let us choose well. Ultimately we are a community though, more of people than of buildings. As we work to strengthen this community, let us reaffirm our common commitment to being ever more open and inclusive. We have come a long way. A century ago this was an institution where New England gentlemen taught other New England gentlemen. Today, Harvard is open to men and women of all faiths, all races, all classes, all states, all nations. As a result, we offer a better education to better students who make us a better university. And yet, as proud as we all are that any student, as we so often stress, can attend Harvard College regardless of financial circumstance or need, I say to you that we should not rest until much the same is true of all this great university. Inability to pay does not constrain students from coming to Harvard College and it should not constrain the most able students from coming here to Harvard to become scholars, or doctors, architects or teachers. Revolution in Science Third, the scientific revolution now in progress demands and compels all of our attention. Steps from here, scholars, individuals, sitting in offices, are able to fathom what happened in detail in the first billionth of a second of the cosmos billions of years ago. They begin now to comprehend the deep structure of matter and the biological and chemical basis for life. We are beginning to understand in a rigorous and clear way the inner workings of the human mind. As a consequence of all of this, as a consequence of science, we have seen life expectancy come close to doubling in the last century, from the mid-forties to the long life expectancies that await the young people who are here today. And all of that was before what looks to be the century of biology and life science. Still, we live in a society, and dare I say a university, where few would admit -- and none would admit proudly -- to not having read any plays by Shakespeare or to not knowing the meaning of the categorical imperative, but where it is all too common and all too acceptable not to know a gene from a chromosome or the meaning of exponential growth. Part of our task will be to assure that all who graduate from this place are equipped to comprehend, to master, to work with, the scientific developments that are transforming the world in which we will all work and live. In a time when multi-billion-dollar projects sequence the genome, at a time when scientific papers are written that have 300 authors, to discern how the university is able to adapt its traditional structures to most effectively engage the adventure of science will pose a closely related challenge. Science does illuminate the human condition, but many of the most perplexing questions -- including some generated by science itself -- cannot be answered by science alone. These questions will demand in the future, as they always have in the past, the kind of insight that can come only from philosophers, artists, historians, critics -- from creative works, and those who study them, that illuminate the essence of who we are as humans. Extending Excellence Finally, over time, the converging phenomena of globalization and new information technologies may well alter -- will alter -- the university in ways that we can now only dimly perceive. The Internet and other innovations in information technology represent the most dramatic change in the way that we share and we pursue knowledge since the invention of the printing press. The rippling effects of that invention took centuries to play out and shaped universities and their structure for all our time. And I have no doubt, the same will be true of information technology. As globalization continues, the opportunity to make a difference through our teaching and our scholarship becomes far more pervasive than ever before. A century ago, Harvard was becoming a national university. Today, while strongly rooted in American traditions and values, it is becoming a global university. We will, in the years ahead, need to think very carefully about technology, about globalization, and how we can enable us to contribute as much to as many as possible. We will also need to assure that we do not compromise our high standards. Our goal will be to extend excellence without ever diluting it. The Adventure of Our Times In this new century, nothing will matter more than the education of future leaders and the development of new ideas. Harvard has done its part in the past. But that past will be prologue only if all of us now do our part to make it so. We will face difficult choices. We will take risks. Sometimes we will fail. Indeed, if we never fail, we will not have participated as fully as we can in the adventure of our times. Like all great universities, Harvard has always been a work in progress, and it always will be. In the words of the song we are about to sing, let us together renew this great university for the age that is waiting before.
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