哈佛女校长的讲演（转贴）

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But the search for meaning is a never-ending quest that is always interpreting, always interrupting and redefining the status quo, always looking, never content with what is found. An answer simply yields the next question.
但对意义的找寻，是没有尽头的探索，它在不断地阐释，不断地干扰和重新阐释现状，不断地在看，从不会满足于已有的发现。

This is in fact true of all learning, of the natural and social sciences as well as the humanities, and thus of the very core of what universities are about.
事实上，这就是所有学问的真谛，自然科学、社会科学和人文学科，概莫能外，因此，它也就成为了“大学是干什么的”之核心所在了。

By their nature, universities nurture a culture of restlessness and even unruliness. This lies at the heart of their accountability to the future.
就其本质而言，大学培育的是一种变化的文化甚至是无法控制的文化。这是大学为未来承担责任的核心。

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Education, research, teaching are always about change – transforming individuals as they learn, transforming the world as our inquiries alter our understanding of it, transforming societies
教育、研究、教学常常都是有关变化的----当人们学习时，它改变了个人；当我们的疑问改变我们对世界的看法时，它改变了世界；

as we see our knowledge translated into policies – policies like those being developed at Harvard to prevent unfair lending practices, or to increase affordable housing or avert nuclear proliferation – or translated into therapies, like those our researchers have designed to treat macular degeneration or to combat anthrax. The expansion of knowledge means change.
当我们的知识运用到政策之中时，它改变了社会。知识的扩充就意味着变化。

But change is often uncomfortable, for it always encompasses loss as well as gain, disorientation as well as discovery. It has, as Machiavelli once wrote, no constituency.
但变化常常使人感到不舒服，因为它在你得到的同时也会失去，在你发现的同时也会迷失方向。

Yet in facing the future, universities must embrace the unsettling change that is fundamental to every advance in understanding.
然而，当面对未来时，大学必须去拥抱那不稳定的变化，它对人类理解世界的每一点进步都至关重要。

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We live in the midst of scientific developments as dramatic as those of any era since the 17th century.

Our obligation to the future demands that we take our place at the forefront of these transformations.

We must organize ourselves in ways that enable us fully to engage in such exploration,

as we have begun to do by creating the Broad Institute, by founding cross school departments, by launching a School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.

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We must overcome barriers both within and beyond Harvard that could slow or constrain such work,

and we must provide the resources and the facilities – like the new science buildings in both Cambridge and Allston – to support it.

Our obligation to the future makes additional demands.
我们对未来的责任还对我们提出了更多的要求。

Universities are, uniquely, a place of philosophers as well as scientists.
大学既是哲学家也是科学家的所在地，这是独一无二的。

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It is urgent that we pose the questions of ethics and meaning that will enable us to confront the human, the social and the moral significance of our changing relationship with the natural world.

Accountability to the future requires that we leap geographic as well as intellectual boundaries.
对未来承担责任要求我们，要跨越地理与智力的界限。

Just as we live in a time of narrowing distances between fields and disciplines,
正如我们生活在田野与学科正在缩小差距的时代，

so we inhabit an increasingly transnational world in which knowledge itself is the most powerful connector.
我们所居住的是一个逐渐跨越国家的世界，在这个世界里，知识本身就是最有力的连接体。

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Our lives here in Cambridge and Boston cannot be separated from the future of the rest of the earth:

we share the same changing climate; we contract and spread the same diseases; we participate in the same economy.

We must recognize our accountability to the wider world, for, as John Winthrop warned in 1630,

“we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us.”

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Harvard is both a source and a symbol of the ever expanding knowledge upon which the future of the earth depends,

and we must take an active and reflective role in this new geography of learning.

Higher education is burgeoning 蓬勃发展 around the globe in forms that are at once like and unlike our own.

American universities are widely emulated, but our imitators often display limited appreciation for the principles of free inquiry and the culture of creative unruliness that defines us.

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The “Veritas” in Harvard’s shield was originally intended to invoke the absolutes of divine revelation, the unassailable verities of Puritan religion.

We understand it quite differently now. Truth is an aspiration, not a possession.
真理是渴望达到的目标，而不是占有物。

Yet in this we – and all universities defined by the spirit of debate and free inquiry – challenge and even threaten those who would embrace unquestioned certainties.
而在这其中，我们----和所有以思考和自由询问精神显示其特色的大学一道----向那些拥抱不容争辩的确定性的人们提出挑战乃至是提出警告。

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We must commit ourselves to the uncomfortable position of doubt, to the humility of always believing
我们必须将自己置于不断质疑这种令人不舒服的状态，使自己保持谦逊的态度，不断地相信：

there is more to know, more to teach, more to understand.
还有更多的知识需要我们去了解、更多的知识需要我们去讲授、更多的知识需要我们去理解。

The kinds of accountability I have described represent at once a privilege and a responsibility.
上述所承担的种种责任既代表着一种特权，也代表着一种责任。

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We are able to live at Harvard in a world of intellectual freedom, of inspiring tradition, of extraordinary resources, because we are part of that curious and venerable organization known as a university.
我们能够生活在哈佛这样一个理性自由、传统激扬、资源非凡的王国，因为我们正是被称为是“大学” 的这样好奇而神圣的组织的一部分。

We need better to comprehend and advance its purposes – not simply to explain ourselves to an often critical public, but to hold ourselves to our own account.
我们需要更好地去理解和推进大学的目的----不单单是向总持批评立场的公众加以解释，更要为了我们自身的价值而坚持自我。

We must act not just as students and staff, historians and computer scientists, lawyers and physicians, linguists and sociologists, but as citizens of the university, with obligations to this commonwealth of the mind.
我们必须要付诸行动，不仅是作为学生和教工、历史学家和计算机科学家、律师和医生，语言学家和社会学家，更是作为大学中的成员，我们对这个思想共同体负有责任。

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We must regard ourselves as accountable to one another, for we constitute the institution that in turn defines our possibilities. Accountability to the future encompasses special accountability to our students, for they are our most important purpose and legacy.
我们必须把彼此看作是相互负有责任的，因为由我们所组成的这个组织，反过来界定了我们的潜在价值。对未来承担责任包含着我们对学生所承担的特殊职责，因为他们是我们最重要的目的和财产。

And we are responsible not just to and for this university, Harvard, in this moment, 2007, but to the very concept of the university as it has evolved over nearly a millennium. It is not easy to convince a nation or a world to respect, much less support, institutions committed to challenging society’s fundamental assumptions.
想要说服一个国家或是世界去尊重----不要说去支持了----那些致力于挑战社会最根本的思维设定，这很不容易。

But it is our obligation to make that case: both to explain our purposes and achieve them so well that these precious institutions survive and prosper in this new century.
但这，恰恰就是我们的责任：我们既要去解释我们的目的，也要很好地去达到我们的目的，这就是我们这些大学在这个新的世纪生存和繁荣的价值所在。

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Harvard cannot do this alone. But all of us know that Harvard has a special role.
哈佛大学不能孤独地为此奋斗。但我们所有人都知道，哈佛在其中扮演着特殊的角色。

That is why we are here; that is why it means so much to us.
这就是我们今天在这里的原因，这就是她对我们意味深长的原因。

Last week I was given a brown manila envelope that had been entrusted to the University Archives in 1951 by James B. Conant, Harvard’s 23rd president.
上一周，我拿到一个深黄褐色的信封，它是在1951年由哈佛的第23任校长詹姆斯·柯南特（James B. Conant）委托给哈佛档案馆保存下来的。

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He left instructions that it should be opened by the Harvard president at the outset of the next century “and not before.”
他在留下的简短说明上称，请下一世纪开始时而“不是之前的”哈佛校长打开它。

I broke the seal on the mysterious package to find a remarkable letter from my predecessor.
我撕开了这封神秘信件的封口，发现里面是我的前任留下的一封不同寻常的信。

It was addressed to “My dear Sir.” Conant wrote with a sense of imminent danger.
它的抬头是“我亲爱的先生。”柯南特写作时给人一种危险迫在眉睫的感觉。

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He feared an impending World War III that would make “the destruction of our cities including Cambridge quite possible.”
他担心第三次世界大战一触即发，这将 “很有可能使我们所居住的城市包括剑桥在内遭到破坏。”

“We all wonder,” he continued, “how the free world is going to get through the next fifty years.”
“我们都想知道，”他继续写到，“自由世界在未来的50年里会如何发展。”

But as he imagined Harvard’s future, Conant shifted from foreboding to faith.
但是，当他想象哈佛的未来时，柯南特就由不详之兆转向了坚定的信念。

If the “prophets of doom” proved wrong, if there was a Harvard president alive to read his letter, Conant was confident about what the university would be.
如果“厄运的预言”证明了是错的，如果有一位哈佛校长能活着读到这封信，那么，柯南特就对哈佛的未来有信心。

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“You will receive this note and be in charge of a more prosperous and significant institution than the one over which I have the honor to preside ... That ... [Harvard] will maintain the traditions of academic freedom, of tolerance for heresy, I feel sure.”
“你会收到这封信，会带领一个比我荣幸地执掌时更加繁荣、更有影响的大学。……[哈佛]将坚持学术自由、容忍异端的传统，我确信是如此。”

We must dedicate ourselves to making certain he continues to be right; we must share and sustain his faith.
我们必须致力于此，确信他在未来也是正确的，我们必须共同拥有和支持他的这种信念。

Conant’s letter, like our gathering here, marks a dramatic intersection of the past with the future.
柯南特的信，就像我们今天在此聚会一样，标志着在过去与未来之间，有一块引人注目的交汇地。