哈佛大学校长福斯特在2013年毕业典礼上的演讲
It is always a pleasure to greeta sea of alumni on Commencement afternoon—even though my role is that of thewarm-up act for the feature to come. Today I am especially aware of the treatwe have in store as I look out on not a sea, but a veritable ocean ofanticipation.
But it is my customary assignmentand privilege to offer each spring a report to the alumni on the year that isending. And this was a year that for a number of reasons demands special note.
“The world is too much with us”—the lines of Wordsworth’s well-known poem echoed in my mind as I thoughtabout my remarks today, for the world has intruded on us this year in ways wenever would have imagined. The University had not officially closed for a daysince 1978. This year it closed three times. Twice it was for cases of extremeweather—first for superstorm Sandy and then for Nemo, the record-breakingFebruary blizzard. The third was of course the day of Boston’s lockdown in theaftermath of the tragic Marathon bombings. This was a year that challengedfundamental assumptions about life’s security, stability and predictability.
Yet as I reflected on theseintrusions from a world so very much with us, I was struck by how we at Harvardare so actively engaged in shaping that world and indeed in addressing so manyof the most important and trying questions that these recent events have posed.
Just two weeks ago, climatescientists and disaster relief workers gathered here for a two-day conferenceco-sponsored by the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative and the Harvard UniversityCenter for the Environment. They came to explore the very issues presented bySandy and Nemo and to consider how academic researchers and workers on theground can collaborate more effectively.
This gathering represents justone example of the wide range of activities across the University dedicated toaddressing the challenges of climate change. How can we advance the sciencethat helps us understand climate change—and perhaps avert it? How can we devisesolutions—from new technologies to principles of urban design—that mightmitigate it? How can we envision the public policies to manage and respond toit? Harvard is deeply engaged with the broad issues of energy andenvironment—offering more than 250 courses in this area, gathering 225 facultythrough our environment center and its programs, enrolling 100 doctoralstudents from 7 Schools and many different disciplines in a graduate consortiumdesigned to broaden their understanding of environmental issues. Our facultyare studying atmospheric composition and working to develop renewable energysources; they are seeking to manage rising oceans and to reimagine cities foran era of increasingly threatening weather; they are helping to fashionenvironmental regulations and international climate agreements.
So the weather isn’t somethingthat simply happens at Harvard, even though it may have seemed that way when wehad to close twice this year. It is a focus of study and of research, as wework to confront the implications of climate change and help shape national andinternational responses to its extremes.
When Boston experienced thetragedy of the Marathon bombings last month, the city and surroundingmunicipalities went into lockdown on April 19 to help ensure the capture of theescaped suspect, and Harvard responded in extraordinary ways. Within our owncommunity, students, faculty and staff went well beyond their ordinaryresponsibilities to support one another and keep the University operatingsmoothly and safely under unprecedented circumstances. But we also witnessedour colleagues’ magnificent efforts to meet the needs of Boston and our other neighborsin the crisis. The Harvard Police worked with other law enforcement agencies,and several of our officers played a critical role in saving the life of thetransit officer wounded in Watertown. Doctors, nurses and other staff, manyfrom our affiliated hospitals, performed a near-miracle in ensuring that everyinjured person who arrived at a hospital survived. Years of disaster planningand emergency readiness enabled these institutions to act in a stunninglycoordinated and effective manner. I am deeply proud of the contributions madeby members of the Harvard community in the immediate aftermath of the bombings.
But our broader and ongoingresponsibility as a university is to ask and address the larger questions anysuch tragedy poses: to prepare for the next crisis and the one after that, evenas we work to prevent them; to help us all understand the origins and themeaning of such terrible events in human lives and societies. We do this workin the teaching and research to which we devote ourselves every day.
Investigators at the Harvardhospitals are exploring improved techniques for managing injury. Researchers atBrigham and Women’s, for instance, are pursuing the prospect of leg transplantsfor amputees. A faculty member in our School of Engineering and AppliedSciences is studying traumatic brain injury. Faculty in the Business andKennedy Schools are teaching and learning about leadership in times ofcrisis—analyzing historic and contemporary examples, from Shackleton inAntarctica to Katrina in New Orleans—in order to search for lessons for thefuture. The very day of the lockdown, the Mahindra Humanities Center and theHarvard Law School Program on Negotiation had scheduled a conference on“Confronting Evil,” examining the cognitive, behavioral and social implicationsof both what it called “everyday evils” and “extraordinary crimes.” A few dayslater, the Harvard Divinity School assembled a panel of experts to discuss“Religion and Terror,” exploring sources of violence in Bosnia, in the MiddleEast, and during the Troubles in Ireland, which served as a formativeexperience for our Divinity School dean in his youth. At the Institute ofPolitics at the Kennedy School, law enforcement, emergency management and otherexperts gathered to consider lessons learned from the bombings. As we struggledto understand the events that shook our city and our region, members of ourcommunity were already engaged in interpreting the world that had produced suchtragedy and in seeking ways to prevent its recurrence.
Three unusual days, making for anunusual year. Yet these three unusual days underscore and illuminate the usualwork of this University: calling on knowledge and research to addressfundamental challenges and dilemmas with resources drawn from the widest scopeof human inquiry—from the insights of the natural and social sciences to thereflections on meaning and values at the heart of the humanities. Universitiesurge us towards a better future and equip us as individuals and societies toget there.
Yet other events this past yearremind us we cannot take what universities do for granted. This year hasbrought home not just the threats of extreme weather and of terror andviolence. It has also been a year that has challenged fundamental assumptions undergirdingAmerican higher education and the foundations of our nation’s researchenterprise. I have just offered examples of how our research and teaching cancontribute to addressing urgent problems facing our world. We live in an era inwhich knowledge is more vital than ever to nations, economies and societies.Knowledge is, I often say, the most important currency of the twenty-firstcentury. And universities are the places that, more than any other, generateand disseminate that knowledge.
In the United States, thepartnership between universities and the federal government established afterWorld War II has been a powerful engine of scientific discovery and prosperity.Yet that partnership, now more than half a century old, is threatened by the erosionof federal support for research—a situation made acute by the sequester. Anestimated almost $10 billion will be cut from the federal government’s researchbudget in 2013. The National Institutes of Health calculates that cuts to itsresources could mean the loss of more than 20,000 jobs in the life sciencessector. Here at Harvard, we receive approximately 16% of our operating budgetfrom federal research funding. We anticipate we may see declines of as much as$40 million annually in federal support for research.
What does all this mean? Facultyare finding that even grant applications with perfect scores in peerevaluations are not getting funded. They see existing awards being reduced.Aspiring younger scientists are fearful they will not receive career-launchinggrants on which their future depends. Some are entertaining overtures fromcountries outside the United States where science investment is robust andexpanding. Students contemplating graduate training are wondering if theyshould pursue other options. Great ideas that could lead to improved humanlives and opportunities, and improved understanding, are left without supportor the means for further development.
The world and the nation need thekind of research that Harvard and other American research universitiesundertake. We need the knowledge and understanding that researchgenerates—knowledge about climate change, or crisis management, or melanoma, oreffective mental health interventions in schools, or hormones that might treatdiabetes, or any of a host of other worthy projects our faculty are currentlypursuing. We need the support and encouragement for the students who willcreate our scientific future. We need the economic vitality—the jobs andcompanies—that these ideas and discoveries produce. We need the nation toresist imposing a self-inflicted wound on its intellectual and human capital.We need a nation that believes in, and invests in, its universities because werepresent an investment in the ideas and the people that will build and will bethe future.
So as I report to you on the yearwe now bring to a close, I want to underscore the threat to universities and toour national infrastructure of knowledge and discovery that the sequesterrepresents. Even in a year when sometimes the world felt too much with us, wehave never lost sight of how much what we do here has to do with the world. Andfor the world. To sequester the search for knowledge, to sequester discovery,to sequester the unrelenting drive of our students and faculty to envision andpursue this endless frontier—such a strategy does more than threatenuniversities. It puts at risk the capacity and promise of universities tofulfill our commitment to the public good, our commitment to our children andgrandchildren and to the future we will leave them. The challenges facing theworld are too consequential, the need for knowledge, imagination andunderstanding is too great, the opportunity for improving the human conditiontoo precious for us to do anything less than rise to the occasion. With thedevotion of our alumni, with the inspiration of our new graduates and—Ihope—with the support of our nation’s leaders, we must and we will.
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