Should Harvard encourage its faculty to take on the world’s worst inequities? Should Harvard students learn about the depth of global poverty. The prevalence of world hunger…the scarcity of clean water…the girls kept out of school…the children who die from diseases we can cure?
那些世界上过着最优越生活的人们,有没有从那些最困难的人们身上学到东西?
Should the world’s most privileged people learn about the lives of the world’s least privileged?
这些问题并非语言上的修辞。你必须用自己的行动来回答它们。
These are not rhetorical questions—you will answer with your policies.
When you consider what those of us here in this yard have been given—in talent, privilege, and opportunity—there is almost no limit to what the world has a right to expect from us.
In line with the promise of this age, I want to exhort each of the graduates here to take on an issue—aplex problem, a deep inequity, and be a specialist on it. If you make it the focus of your career, that would be phenomenal. But you don’t have to do that to make an impact. For a few hours every week, you can use the growing power of the Inte to get informed, find others with the same interests, see the barriers, and find ways to cut through them.