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Journeys
The Baccalaureate Address
July/August 2007
by Richard Levin ’74PhD
Richard Levin ’74PhD is the president of Yale University. This speech was delivered three times, to three different groups of graduating seniors and their families, May 26–27 in Woolsey Hall.
Three years before you arrived here, on the eve of
this university’s 300th birthday, we took the bold step of declaring that Yale
would transform itself into a truly global institution in its fourth century.
You and your successors deserve no less. Like your predecessors, you will lead
lives of consequence, but unlike them, you enter a world that has become
increasingly interdependent economically and geopolitically. The world, and not
merely this nation, will be the stage on which your lives and your careers play
out.
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Since 2000, the number of international applicants to Yale College has more than doubled. |
Many of you have been the beneficiaries of our
recent efforts to internationalize the university. We have strengthened the
curriculum in international studies and extended to international students our
policy of awarding full need-based financial aid to all students admitted to
Yale College. The year you were admitted, we announced our intention to offer
to every undergraduate an overseas experience, and, a year later, we introduced
a new financial aid program to ensure that every student would have sufficient
resources to spend a term or summer abroad.
Today, the fruits of these initiatives surround us.
Since the year 2000, we have added 47 new scholars in international studies to
the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, and the number of international applicants to
Yale College has more than doubled. You are the first class in Yale’s history
in which the number of nations represented equals the number of states of the
union; you come from 50 nations and 50 states. And you are the first Yale class
in which a majority took advantage of overseas study programs, independent
research grants, or work internships.
Dean Salovey and I have just returned from an
extraordinary journey to China. We led a delegation of 100 Yale students and
faculty, invited by China’s President Hu Jintao as a gesture of friendship when
he visited our campus a year ago. The invitation was no accident. Yale has a
long association with China, dating back to 1850 when the first Chinese to
study in a Western university enrolled in Yale College. And today we have the
broadest and deepest set of collaborations and programs in China of any Western
university.
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The visit of the Yale 100 was reported daily in the press. |
On our first evening in Beijing, we were received by
President Hu in the Great Hall of the People and treated to an exquisite
banquet. In the days that followed, the Yale 100 met with top government officials,
visited four universities, dined with families, explored a rural village, and
saw many of China’s most significant historical sites—the Forbidden City,
the Great Wall, the ancient Terra Cotta Warriors and bronze chariots of Xi'an,
and the soaring postmodern skyscrapers of Shanghai. We witnessed the sunset
from a pavilion in the northwest corner of the Forbidden City, overlooking
dozens of fifteenth-century buildings as if we ourselves were the dinner guests
of some bygone Ming emperor. We were accorded an extraordinary level of respect
and visibility; the visit of the Yale 100 was reported daily in the press, and,
for the first two days, we were the top story on the evening news. Eighty-five
members of our delegation had never before been to China, but after this
magnificent introduction I imagine that most will return.
In a curious way, this trip, which provided such a
rich education for faculty and students alike, reminded me of the experience
that all of you have had during your time here in New Haven. Just as you were
challenged by new ideas in the classroom, those encountering China for the
first time were challenged by a relentless barrage of new ideas and new
experiences. And, just as you found in your first weeks and months in New
Haven, prejudices were shattered and preconceptions replaced by observation and
analysis. As one Yale student walked with my wife Jane along Chang'an Avenue,
12 lanes wide, after lunch with Chinese students at an elegant hotel adjacent
to a shopping mall filled with boutiques representing the finest French,
Italian, Japanese, and American designers—he remarked, “I thought that
China was still a backward country, where everything would be primitive and
disorganized, and that the Olympics next year would be a fiasco.” The next
day, with the rest of us, he gaped in awe at our close-up view of the
magnificent new Olympic stadium, perhaps the most beautiful sports arena
constructed in modern times. Similarly, many of our faculty, expecting China's
universities to be miles behind Yale and its peers, were amazed by the
state-of-the-art new laboratories at Tsinghua and Fudan universities, and the
deputy dean of our School of Management, who is in the midst of planning a new
campus, said, upon seeing Tsinghua’s new business school, “Let’s just hire
their architect and get started!”
As impressed as we were by China’s rapid
development, the trip also gave us some proud and poignant moments, as we heard
about Yale from the perspective of the Chinese. An undergraduate at Peking University,
Zhang Xinyue, spoke to our group, describing her experience at Yale last summer
in terms that I am sure resonate with your own. “The experience,” she
said, “opened a door to a wider mind and a brighter future. … Yale is
a place [that] encourages independent thinking and [the] courage to pursue
dreams. … Yale students believe in a better world, and they are making
efforts to achieve that.” She went on to conclude: “Yale is not only
a name. It is a kind of spirit handed down from generation to generation. Yale
not only provides knowledge, it gives you confidence, courage, and a caring
heart. The Yalies care about life, their nation, and the whole world."
Zhang Xinyue’s emphasis on the importance of independent thinking was echoed by
both her university’s president and the vice minister of education, who
recognize that encouraging the free inquiry that has been the essence of your
experience here at Yale is the surest way to realize the full potential of
China’s human resources.
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Our group, in its way, resembled your class. |
It was not only the new ideas and experiences we
encountered that reminded me of your journey through Yale. Our students and
faculty were also exhilarated by making new friends within the group, just as
you were when you first met your Yale classmates. Our group, in its way,
resembled your class. We were a diverse assembly—two or three students from
each residential college, two from each professional school, a half dozen from
the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, and about three dozen faculty and
staff from all over the university. Very few people knew more than two or three
others. Yet, just as you did in your first days at Yale, most discovered new
friends with whom they shared a lot, as well as those whose perspectives and
interests differed sharply from their own.
Remember how amazed you were to discover the
astonishing talents of your otherwise unpretentious and friendly classmates? I
was reminded of this when I happened to overhear a fragment of conversation
between a student in the directing program at the Drama School and a professor
in the School of Music. The student-director said, “I am considering doing
a production next season about a musician, so I need an actor who can really
play an instrument, preferably the cello.” And the music professor gave
this astonishing reply: “There are two brilliant cellists on this trip,
one of whom is standing next to you!” The cellist in question was a
six-foot, three-inch young man who might easily have been mistaken for a
varsity football player. China’s modernity was not the only stimulus that
shattered our preconceptions on this trip! The wealth of talent and human
potential throughout this university never ceases to astonish me, and I am sure
that each of you will leave here with vivid memories of extraordinary people,
many of whom will remain your lifelong friends.
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Chinese citizens remain subject to arbitrary arrest and detention. |
As remarkable as the development of modern China is,
all is not bliss. There are many paradoxes. What appeared to us as rampant
capitalism is still officially described as “socialism with Chinese
characteristics.” And even as students and university leaders advocate
freedom of inquiry and independent thinking, one very successful Chinese
businessman—a capitalist through and through—told us that he thought the
Communist Party had become too democratic, too prone to compromise in the face
of public opinion, rather than simply “doing the right thing."
Chinese citizens remain subject to arbitrary arrest and detention, and, though
the press is noticeably freer than it was a few years ago, the Internet is heavily
censored. Still, there have been some major achievements in advancing the rule
of law. Recently, private citizens have won court judgments against the state.
And, as a powerful example of how we all might use our education to advance the
public good, the vice president of China’s Supreme Court, a graduate of the
Yale Law School, told us how he, amazingly, introduced into the Chinese
courtroom the practice of cross-examination!
Some of China’s problems are unique, but some are so
inextricably bound up with those facing the United States that neither nation
can succeed without the other. Protecting our environment is one such example.
Global warming cannot be avoided unless both China and the United States take
dramatic action. Yale is doing its part, with its commitment to reduce
greenhouse gas emissions. But it will fall to your generation, acting as global
citizens in concert with your counterparts in China and around the world, to
show the way.
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You might ask: Why have I given you a travelogue as my final parting words? |
You might ask: why have I given you a travelogue as
my final parting words? The answer is: to reassure you, and to encourage you.
It is natural to feel sad right now about the Yale you are leaving behind, but
I hope that my narrative suggests that there will be many more journeys in your
lives.
Women and men of the Class of 2007: Everywhere you
go, you will encounter new experiences and new people, some of whom will become
fellow travelers on your journeys. If you leave here, as we know you will, with
open minds and generosity of spirit, you will find every one of life’s journeys
a new adventure—not unlike your four years at Yale College, but rather just
like it. And on every journey, you will need to employ the powers of critical
thinking you developed here to learn as much as you can, and the passion and empathy
you displayed here to give to others more than you take. As you go forth from
here, I urge you to use your natural gifts and the education you have been
given to seek fulfillment in your own lives, and to seek the betterment of life
for all with whom we share this small and shrinking planet.  |
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