1、Speaker: Peter Salovey, President of Yale University Date: Sunday, May 20, 2018 Event: Baccalaureate Address, Yale College Class of 2018,Graduates of the Class of 2018, family members, and friends. It is a pleasure to be here with you today, a day filled with joy for the present and hope for the fut
2、ure. There is a wonderful Yale tradition that I would like to honor right now: May I ask all of the families and friends here today to rise and recognize the outstandingand graduatingmembers of the Class of 2018? And now, may I ask the Class of 2018 to consider all those who have supported your arri
3、val at this milestone（里程碑）, and to please rise and recognize them? Thank you!,These are the months and years when people tend to make a lot of plans. Some are practical: you schedule flights and rent apartments and consider where you will live, work, or study after graduation. Others are more aspira
4、tional（有雄心壮志的）: you imagine your future life and what you wish to accomplish in the years ahead. I want to begin by sharing a passage Pauli Murray wrote in 1945 about her aspirations. At the time, she was a young lawyer and civil rights（民权） activist（积极分子）.,“I intend to destroy segregation（种族隔离；） by
5、positive and embracing（欣然接受的） methods,” Murray wrote. “When my brothers try to draw a circle to exclude（排除） me, I shall draw a larger circle to include them. Where they speak out for the privileges（特权） of a puny（弱小的） group, I shall shout for the rights of all mankind.” So today I ask you: How large
6、will you draw your circle? Will you draw a circle that is large, inclusive, and vibrant（充满活力的）? Or will it be small, “puny,” and privileged? The work of inclusion is difficult, but the rewards are great.,Let me suggest ways you might follow the example of Pauli Murrayand many other Yale graduateswhe
7、n you leave this campus. First, make sure your circles are truly large. In todays world, where you can have 700 followers on Twitter and a thousand friends on Facebook, it may seem easy to have a large circle. But if youre bombarded（轰炸） with the same stories, memes（文化基因）, and opinions from all your
8、so-called friends, then your world may in fact be quite narrow. A conversation with six friends in real life actually may lead to a greater variety of ideas and perspectives（看法）.,In my years at Yale, I have been privileged to （有幸）know some of the most brilliant（杰出的） minds in the world. I have learne
9、d that the greatest scholars draw large circles. They read widely and are interested in ideas well beyond the scope of（超出范围） their own research and beliefs. Robert Dahl, who was a sterling（纯正的） Professor of Political Science, taught at Yale for forty years. One of the most respected political scient
10、ists of his generation, Professor Dahl was an authority on democracy（民主主义） and democratic institutions(民主制度). And he was a beloved teacher and mentor（导师）.,After his death in 2014 at the age of 98, tributes（称赞；敬意） from his former students poured in. One of his graduate students, Jeffrey Isaac, recall
11、ed how he vehemently（激烈地） disagreed with some of Dahls arguments, even though he loved taking his classes. For his dissertation（论文）, Isaac proposed（提议；计划） writing a critique（评论文章） of Dahls theories. Much to his surprise, the most enthusiastic and supportive faculty member（教职工） in the department was
12、Dahl himself! He agreed to supervise（指导；监督） the dissertation.,Isaac wrote, “Bob Dahl spent countless hours in his office talking with me about my principal（主要的） theoretical（理论的） antagonist（敌手）him! We would discuss this guy Dahl in the third person, considering the limits of his arguments, speculatin
13、g（推测） about how he might respond to my arguments.” Professor Dahl embraced（拥抱；接受） his critics, listened to them, and conversed（交谈） with them, a model of open and engaged scholarship and teachingthe best we can aspire（渴求） to at Yale.,The lesson extends beyond（延伸到之外） our campus. Our greatest challenge
14、s as a societyclimate change, poverty, insecurity, and violencedemand innovative（革新的） and creative solutions. Yet political polarization（极化） is making it more difficult than ever to solve these problems. We must be able to talk with our opponents（对手） even though we disagree with them. We might start
15、 by emulating（仿效） Professor Dahland so many other wise and generous thinkers who have drawn large circles and so added to the sum of human understanding.,My second piece of adviceand here I am taking some liberties（自由） with the metaphor（比喻；暗喻）is to draw as many circles as you can. One circle will be
16、 your work. Make sure you enjoy it, but make sure you have other circles as well.,We know one of the keys to happiness is developing a passioneven an expertise（专业知识）outside of work. Sharing that passion with others gives us great joy, and it connects us to other circles of friends and associates who
17、 might be very different from the ones we would meet otherwise.,As many of you are aware, I am quite passionate（热情的） about music from the Appalachian Mountain region. My love of traditional country and bluegrass music has allowed me to visit places such as southwest Virginia and eastern Kentucky, to
18、 chair the board（董事会） of the International Bluegrass Music Museum, and to play bass（低音）for thirty years nowwith the Professors of Bluegrass. It enables me to share stories and songs with perfect strangers at summertime bluegrass festivals. Most significantly（意义重大地）, though, it has led to circles of
19、friendship beyond the towns in which I grew up, beyond the universities I attended, and beyond my profession of psychology（心理学）.,I am proud, of course, to be a psychologist, and my discipline（学科；纪律） does in fact provide some empirical evidence（实证） to support my personal experience. Patricia Linville
20、 is a social psychologist who studies how people think of themselves and how these self-perceptions（自我知觉） influence well-being（幸福）. She is now at Duke, but she was my teacher here at Yale when she completed several studies of what she terms（把称为） “self-complexity（复杂性）.”,Greater “self-complexity,” acc
21、ording to Linville, means a person has a variety of aspects to his or her self. In other words, he or she draws many circles. For example, a woman who thinks of herself as a student, a marathon runner, a theater-goer（戏迷）, a reader of the New Yorker magazine, andlets saya bass player in a bluegrass b
22、and would demonstrate（证明） greater self-complexity than someone who thinks of himself only as a lawyer.,Professor Linville, in her research, found that greater self-complexity acts as a “buffer”（缓冲器） against negative experiences. For example, if you define yourself almost entirely in terms of your jo
23、b, getting passed over for a promotion（晋升） might be devastating（毁灭性的） for your sense of self-worth. Linville calls this “putting all your eggs in one cognitive（认知的） basket.” People such as our marathon-running bass player, on the other hand, bounce（迅速恢复活力；反弹） back more quickly after a setback（挫折）. L
24、inville even found that college students with greater self-complexity were less likely to get sick or experience depression or stress.,Third and finally, let me suggest one important way we can expand（拓展） our circlesby reaching out and engaging with（与接洽） others. Here I would like to turn again to Pa
25、uli Murray and one of her more surprising relationships. Murrays papers contain thousands of lettersa reflection（映像） of a full life, animated（活生生的） by many interests, commitments, and relationships. A life of many circles.,During her time at Yale Law School, Murray received a letter from William S.
26、Beinecke, a member of the Yale College Class of 1936. Now the name will sound familiar to everyone here. The Beinecke Rare Book & Manu Library is named for Williams father and two uncles, and many other programs and places at Yale have benefited from the familys remarkable（卓越的，非凡的） philanthropy（博爱，慈
27、善）.,Bill Beinecke passed away just last month; he was nearly 104 years old. In 1963 when he wrote Murray, he was chairman of the Sperry and Hutchison Company, a venerable（庄严的） American company founded by his grandfather. (Your parents and grandparents probably remember S&H Green Stamps.) Beinecke wa
28、s a leader in corporate America（美国公司） and a wealthy and powerful man. He had met Murray at an event at Yale, and not long after that meeting, he wrote her a letter. He enclosed（）附上 a clipping（裁剪） from Time magazine about race relations in the United States and asked what she thought.,Murray responde
29、d. A few weeks later he sent her another article and asked her opinion again, this time about school integration. She wrote back. At one point, Murray wrote Beinecke a four-page, single-spaced, typed letter on what she called the “imponderables on the issue of race.” Their correspondence continued f
30、or several weeks, with interesting and frank letters on both sides.,Beinecke and Murrayboth exemplars of the Yale traditionwere able to sustain a conversation despite differences in gender, family background, race, class, and more. We dont know whether or not they entirely agreed with one another, b
31、ut we can imagine they learned a lot from the exchange. All because two individuals decided to reach beyond their normal circles.,Beineckes decision to write Murray did not take place in a vacuum. In the 1950s, he attended a discussion at Yale Law School on the topic of American race relations. Not
32、long after, he decided to look into Sperry and Hutchinsons hiring practices. He learned that the employment agency vetting applicants for his company was screening out African Americans, removing them from the pool before their applications ever reached Sperry & Hutchinson. Beinecke ended the practi
33、ce.,He also supported scholarships for underprivileged high school students and established a fellowship for students of color at Yale Law School. It was in the course of this work that he met Murray and initiated their correspondence, hoping to bridge the gulf that separated his experience from her
34、s.,Bill Beineckes life was made up of many different circles. He led efforts to improve New Yorks Central Park, he supported environmental causes, he was dedicated to the game of golf, and he remained an ardent champion of Yale and its students, among other interests. And what about Pauli Murray, wh
35、o as a young person promised to “draw a larger circle” in her life? One month after writing her last letter to Bill Beinecke, she participated in the historic March on Washington, which she helped organize. While finishing her doctor of jurisprudence degree here at Yale, she drafted an influential l
36、egal memo, helping to ensure that “sex” was included in the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Murrays other circles included writing poetry and teaching. At the age of 67, she became the first African-American woman ordained as an Episcopal priest, continuing her lifelong commitment to reconciliation and un
37、derstanding.,Enlarging our circles is far from easy. It requires courage, surely, but also imagination and curiosity about our fellow human beings. It rejects fear and suspicion. It demands that we listen to one another. It measures the limits of our humanity. Both Pauli Murray and Bill Beinecke dre
38、w such large circlesand so many circlesthat their lives intersected. I urge you to do the same. Draw many circles; make them large in all kinds of ways. You will find life richer, fuller, and more meaningful, and you will bring to the world the empathy and understanding we so desperately need.,Membe
39、rs of the Class of 2018 (please rise): As you go out on to a “world that is all before you . . . hand in hand with wandering steps and slow,” bring to that world all that your Yale education has given you: the ability to engage critically even while listening respectfully, to respond creatively to c
40、hallenges and obstacles; to embrace your responsibilities while finding happiness, and to draw ever wider the circle of belonging and understanding in this world.c,We are delighted to salute your accomplishments, and we are proud of your achievements. Remember to give thanks for all that has brought you to this day. And go forth from this place with grateful hearts, paying back the gifts you have received here by using your minds, voices, and hands to strengthen your new communities and your world. Congratulations, Class of 2018!,
