学子们 请包容毕业典礼演讲嘉宾

Commencement speakers made news this year mostly by their absence. Protesters on the left assailed speakers who had been invited by colleges and universities, and in some cases, they got their wish, driving away the intended guests.
今年的毕业典礼演讲嘉宾大多是因为缺席而成为新闻人物的。左翼抗议者大肆抨击学院和大学邀请的演讲人，在一些大学，他们如愿以偿，赶走了预约的嘉宾。

Brandeis University rescinded its invitation to Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the Somali-born activist. Others withdrew in the face protests: Condoleezza Rice, the former secretary of state, from Rutgers University; Christine Lagarde, head of the International Monetary Fund, from Smith College; and Robert J. Birgeneau, former chancellor of the University of California, Berkeley, from Haverford College.
布兰代斯大学(Brandeis University)撤销了对索马里出生的活动家阿亚安·希尔西·阿里(Ayaan Hirsi Ali)的邀请。如潮的抗议也让其他演讲人打了退党鼓：前国务卿康多莉扎·赖斯(Condoleezza Rice)、国际货币基金组织(IMF)总裁克里斯蒂娜·拉加德(Christine Lagarde)、加州大学伯克利分校(University of California, Berkeley)前校长罗伯特·柏吉诺(Robert J. Birgeneau)分别谢绝了罗格斯大学(Rutgers University)、史密斯学院(Smith College)和哈弗福德学院(Haverford College)的盛情邀请。

This topic of scuttled speakers was on the minds of many of those who did speak, including some who addressed colleges where the protests succeeded. Some approached the issue humorously and others seriously, some obliquely and others head-on.
他们被迫退出的遭遇，萦绕在许多演讲人的心头，其中包括一些在抗议获得成功的高校发表演讲的嘉宾。谈及这一话题时，一些演讲人开起了玩笑，其他人则显得非常严肃；一些人转弯抹角，也有人针锋相对。

Mostly, they expressed disapproval, warning against political orthodoxy, and insisting that the principle of airing opposing views should have trumped whatever objections there were to the speakers. (Ms. Hirsi Ali was opposed for her denigration of Islam, Ms. Rice for her role in the Iraq war, Ms. Lagarde for the I.M.F.'s treatment of poor nations, and Mr. Birgeneau for Berkeley’s rough treatment of Occupy protesters.)
他们大多表示反对，针对政治观念正统思维发出警告，并坚称，无论学生对这些演讲人持有何种异议，它们都无法逾越其他人宣扬反面观点的基本权利。（反对希尔西·阿里是因为她诋毁伊斯兰教；反对赖斯是因为她在伊拉克战争中扮演的角色；反对拉加德是因为国际货币基金组织对待穷国的态度，反对柏吉诺是因为加州大学伯克利分校曾经粗暴对待“占领运动”示威者。）

Some of the favored graduation themes of recent years have faded — the failings of the financial system, the moral dimensions of a muscular American stance in the world — while others have flourished.
近几年备受青睐的某些毕业演讲主题已经消退，比如金融体系的失效，美国在世界上的强势地位引发的道德困境。另一些主题则逐渐流行开来。

Speakers exhorted young people to take risks, court failure, and embrace uncertainty and change. They noted the growing importance of high-tech fields that have long embraced those values, and the growing influence of that culture on non-tech careers.
演讲人劝告年轻人要敢于冒险，追求失败，拥抱不确定性和变化。他们指出，长期以来信奉这些价值观的高新技术领域已经变得越来越重要，这种文化对非科技职业生涯的影响力也与日俱增。

And many speakers sought to shake graduates out of any complacency — deflating their egos a bit, reminding them how fortunate they are, lamenting persistent economic inequality, and urging them to work hard and pursue higher causes.
许多演讲人试图打消毕业生可能出现的自满情绪——轻微打击一下他们的自尊心，提醒他们拥有多么好的运气，哀叹持续不断的经济不平等，并勉励他们努力工作，追求远大理想。

HARVARD COLLEGE
哈佛学院(Harvard College)

Michael R. Bloomberg, former New York City mayor and majority owner of Bloomberg L.P.
迈克尔·布隆伯格(Michael R. Bloomberg)，前纽约市市长，彭博通讯社(Bloomberg L.P.)控股股东

“Intolerance of ideas, whether liberal or conservative, is antithetical to individual rights and free societies, and it is no less antithetical to great universities and first-rate scholarship. There is an idea floating around college campuses, including here at Harvard, that scholars should be funded only if their work conforms to a particular view of justice. There’s a word for that idea: censorship. And it is just a modern-day form of McCarthyism. Think about the irony: In the 1950s, the right wing was attempting to repress left-wing ideas. Today, on many college campuses, it is liberals trying to repress conservative ideas, even as conservative faculty members are at risk of becoming an endangered species. And perhaps nowhere is that more true than here in the Ivy League. ...
“对观念的不宽容，无论是自由派还是保守派的观念，不仅有悖于个人权利和自由社会，同时也是好大学和一流学术的对立面。一些大学校园，包括哈佛在内，目前涌动着这样一种思潮：只有当学术研究符合特定的正义观时，学者才应该获得资助。用审查一词来形容这种观点再恰当不过。它绝对是一种现代版的麦卡锡主义。想想这有多么讽刺：在20世纪50年代，是右翼在试图压制左翼的思想。今天，在许多大学校园，自由主义者正在不遗余力地压制保守主义思想，即使保守派教师眼看就要沦为濒危物种。最能体现这股潜流的地方，也许莫过于常青藤盟校(Ivy League)。……

“Requiring scholars — and commencement speakers, for that matter — to conform to certain political standards undermines the whole purpose of a university.”
“要求学者——同样也包括毕业典礼演讲人——符合特定的政治标准，破坏了大学存在的全部意义。”

SMITH COLLEGE
史密斯学院

Ruth Simmons, former president of Smith College and Brown University
露丝·西蒙斯(Ruth Simmons)，前史密斯学院和布朗大学(Brown University)校长

“I felt it important to answer the request to stand in for the announced speaker, Madame Christine Lagarde. ...
“我感觉有必要接受请求，代替克里斯蒂娜·拉加德夫人来这里发表演讲。……

“One’s voice grows stronger in encounters with opposing views. My first year after leaving Smith, I had to insist that Brown permit a speaker whose every assertion was dangerous and deeply offensive to me on a personal level. Indeed, he maintained that blacks were better off having been enslaved. Attending his talk and hearing his perspective was personally challenging, but not in the least challenging to my convictions about the absolute necessity of permitting others to hear him say these heinous things. I could have avoided the talk, as his ideas were known to me, but to have done so would have been to choose personal comfort over a freedom whose value is so great that hearing his unwelcome message could hardly be assessed as too great a cost. Universities have a special obligation to protect free speech, open discourse and the value of protest. The collision of views and ideologies is in the DNA of the academic enterprise.”
“通过与对立观点的碰撞，一个人的声音会越来越强大。在离开史密斯学院后的第一年里，我不得不坚持要求布朗大学同意邀请这样一个讲者，虽然这个人的每一个主张都是危险的，让我个人感到是一种极大的侵犯。事实上他至今仍认为黑人继续被奴役下去处境会更好。出席他的演讲会并聆听他的观点，对我个人而言是一件很有挑战性的事情，但它丝毫不会动摇我怀抱的一个信念——容许他人听到他阐述的这些令人发指的观点，是绝对必要的。我本可以避免这场演讲，因为我早就知道他的观点，但这样做无异于把个人的舒适感凌驾于一种自由之上，而这自由的价值是如此之大，以至于聆听他那些不受欢迎的讯息，算不上是多么大的牺牲。保护言论自由、公开演说和抗议的价值是大学的一项特殊职责。观点和意识形态的碰撞乃学术机构天性使然。”

HAVERFORD COLLEGE
哈弗福德学院

William G. Bowen, former president of Princeton University and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation
威廉·鲍文(William G. Bowen)，前普林斯顿大学(Princeton University)校长，前安德鲁·梅隆基金会(Andrew W. Mellon)总裁

“I want to suggest, with all due respect for the venerable right to protest — which I would defend to the end — that it is a serious mistake for a leader of the protest against Birgeneau’s proposed honorary degree to claim that Birgeneau’s decision not to come represents a ‘small victory.’ It represents nothing of the kind. In keeping with the views of many others in higher education, I regard this outcome as a defeat, pure and simple, for Haverford — no victory for anyone who believes, as I think most of us do, in both openness to many points of view and mutual respect.”
“我无意冒犯庄严的抗议权——那是我愿毕生去捍卫的，但我还是想说，那位反对授予柏吉诺名誉学位的抗议领袖犯了一个严重错误——他说，柏吉诺决定不出席这场毕业典礼代表着一场‘小胜’。它所代表的绝不是那么一回事。就像许多从事高等教育的人士一样，我也认为对于哈弗福德学院来说，这样的结果是不折不扣的失败。任何一个认为有必要聆听多种观点并相互尊重的人——我想我们大多是这样的人，都不会觉得这是场胜利。”

THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY
加州大学伯克利分校

Steven L. Isenberg, writer, professor and former publisher
史蒂芬·伊森伯格(Steven L. Isenberg)，作家，教授，前出版人

“Some of you and your parents may have in mind a question as to the world of work and English majors: ‘Do they need us?’ I was reading again, recently, the autobiography of one of my favorite novelists, Graham Greene, and was struck by this sentence: ‘Perhaps, until one starts at the age of 70 to live on borrowed time, no year will seem again quite so ominous as the one when formal education ends and the moment arrives to find employment and bear personal responsibility for the whole future.’ I remembered when I graduated feeling a certain sense of loss at having to leave the coherence and happiness I had built up in undergraduate life. I was unsettled by not knowing what I would do next. The first in my family to go to college, I had small knowledge of the world’s possibilities and only impulses of interests, rather than a settled direction. But I did know how to read and loved to do so, and I liked to write, however much work I knew my writing needed, so I banked on those two elements for confidence, feeling they must be a foundation for whatever was to be ahead.”
“一些学生和家长或许心存一个跟职场和英语专业有关的疑问：‘他们需要我们吗？’我最近正在再次拜读格雷厄姆·格林(Graham Greene)的自传，他是我最喜欢的小说家之一，其中有一句话让我深感震撼：‘也许在一个人活到70岁，随时等待上帝召唤之前，没有哪一年会像正规教育结束，开始找工作并对整个未来肩负起个人责任的那一年那么不吉利。’我记得，当我大学毕业，不得不离开我在本科生涯构建的连贯性和幸福感的时候，我感受到一种难言的失落感。我当时六神无主，不知道接下来该做什么。作为我们家的第一个大学生，我对世界的诸多可能性所知不多，只是任由兴趣的指引，缺乏一个确定的方向。但我的确知道怎样读书，也热爱读书，我喜欢写东西，不管我的写作需要我付出多大努力。于是，我就依靠这两个要素树立起信心，我觉得，它们肯定会成为我未来工作的基石。”

ALBRIGHT COLLEGE
阿尔布莱特学院(Albright College)

Bob Garfield, journalist
鲍勃·加菲尔德(Bob Garfield)，记者

“I just can’t tell you how disappointed I am with you. It was three months ago that Albright announced me as your guest, and not a peep from you.”
“我简直无法表达我对你们有多么失望。早在三个月前，阿尔布莱特学院就宣布我将成为你们的毕业典礼嘉宾，但直到今天，也没见你们抗议一下。”

At other colleges, “students mounted furious protests, signed petitions, dispatched lists of demands to prospective speakers, in letters boiling with moral outrage. And what do I get? Directions from the turnpike. Come on, did nobody Google me? Have I said or written nothing in 37 years as a journalist to offend your sensibilities and provoke righteous indignation? Oh, man. Do you have any idea — any idea — what a disinvitation would have done for my profile?”
在其他大学，“学生们都在举行愤怒的抗议活动，签署请愿书，向可能的演讲人发送要求清单，道义谴责此起彼伏。我得到了什么？收费公路的路线指引。真是的，难道就没有人在谷歌(Google)上搜索一下我的信息？我当了37年的记者，难道就没有说过或写过什么冒犯你的感情，挑起义愤的东西？不可能没有吧。哎，你知道取消邀请将对我的履历起到多大的作用吗？”