Baccalaureate Address, Yale College Class of 2024
致耶鲁本科学院2024届毕业生的毕业演讲
Love and Compassion
爱与慈悯
Peter Salovey, President of Yale University
耶鲁大学校长苏必德
May 19, 2024
2024年5月19日
Graduates of the Class of 2024, family members, and friends: It gives me great pleasure to greet you today and to offer a few words on this celebratory occasion.
2024届毕业生们、家长们和朋友们，今天我很高兴欢迎各位到来并在这个庆贺的场合发表演讲。
But first, there is a wonderful Yale tradition that I’d like to honor right now:
不过首先，请允许我遵从耶鲁的一个宝贵传统：
May I ask all the families and friends who are here today to rise and to recognize the outstanding – and graduating – members of the Class of 2024?
请今天在座的所有毕业生家属和朋友们起立，向2024届杰出的毕业生们表示祝贺。
And now, may I ask the Class of 2024 to consider all those who have supported your arrival at this milestone, and to please rise and recognize them?
现在，请2024届的全体毕业生感念所有曾支持你们走到今天这一里程碑的人，请起立向他们致敬。
Thank you!
谢谢！
I remember well the pomp and pageantry of my commencement weekend. And I share in the many emotions you are likely feeling right now after being part of this community for several years, and as you consider how your roles will soon change from students to alumni – and mine from president to faculty member.
我还清楚记得自己那时周末毕业典礼的盛况。在成为耶鲁一员这么多年后，如今你们可能感慨万千，而我和你们一样——你们在想自己很快将从学生变为校友，而我将从校长转为教员。
Like the Class of 2024, I graduated as my university president was completing his service. Unlike the Class of 2024, my first years in college had not been disrupted by a pandemic. Presumably like you, I wondered what message the president would impart for his final words. Of course, as I thought about what to say here today, I considered this same question. What came to mind was how each of us had different journeys to arrive at this day. Here is mine: Like many immigrants, my father’s parents were poor, poor in means but rich in culture and spirit. They came to the United States by way of Warsaw and Jerusalem – and later met each other on a ship crossing the Atlantic, between their worlds, old and new.
和2024届的同学们一样，我毕业时大学校长也即将卸任。与你们不同的是，我上大学的头几年并没受到流行病干扰。大概和你们一样，我当年也想知道校长最后的毕业演讲会传递一些什么信息。当然，在我准备今天典礼的演讲时，我其实也在思考同样的问题。我脑海中浮现的是，我们每个人如何走过了不同的历程才走到今天。我的历程是这样的：像许多移民一样，我的祖父母很穷——经济拮据但文化富足、精神充实。他们经由华沙与耶路撒冷来到美国，后来在横渡大西洋的一艘轮船上相遇，在旧世界与新世界之间相遇。
When my grandfather arrived in New York, he not only had a new country but a new name. No longer Yitzchak Leib Soloveitchik, in America he became Louis Salovey. He changed his family name in an effort to fit into his new surroundings, but he made sure to retain four letters – l-o-v-e – “love,” which I like to think of as a tribute to the family he left behind and a foundation for the one he would build.
祖父来到了纽约，他不仅有了一个新的国家，还有了一个新的名字。在美国，他不再叫伊扎克·莱布·索洛维奇克，而是叫路易斯·萨洛维。为了融入新环境，他改了姓，但他有意保留了四个字母——“l-o-v-e”——爱（love）,我愿意把这看作是他向已告别的旧家族的致敬，同时也是他为即将建立的新家庭奠定的基石。
Love and compassion were creeds by which he lived. It was about these virtues that I spoke with you four years ago as you entered Yale – and now, here today, that I want to emphasize as you prepare to depart it.
爱与慈悯是他生活的信条。四年前，你们刚刚来到耶鲁时，我曾对你们谈过这些品质。今天，在你们即将离开耶鲁时，我想再次强调这些品质。
One of the earliest, if not most striking, demonstrations of compassion I recall took place soon after my seventh birthday, when a rabbi and a reverend marched together toward justice alongside other faith leaders. Cradling a Torah in his arms – and humanity in his heart – Rabbi Everett Gendler joined the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. through the streets of Selma, Alabama on what became known as “Turnaround Tuesday” in March 1965. One of Rabbi Gendler’s greatest contributions was involving American Jews in the civil rights movement. And many, including my parents, heeded that call.
关于慈悯，我记忆中最早或许也是最震撼的事发生在我七岁生日后不久，当时犹太教的一位拉比和基督教的一位牧师与其他宗教领袖一起参加为正义而举行的游行。1965年3月，心怀仁慈的拉比埃弗雷特·詹德勒怀揣犹太教《妥拉》（即《摩西五经》），与牧师马丁·路德·金一起走过阿拉巴马州塞尔玛的街道，这一天后来被称为“回返星期二”。詹德勒拉比的最重要贡献之一就是呼吁美国犹太人参与民权运动。很多人响应了他的号召，包括我的父母。
The extraordinary image of Dr. King and Rabbi Gendler marching alongside one another is seared in my memory. Theirs was a coalition of different faiths but a shared morality against forces devoid of it. And, if I might add a postscript, not long after participating in the Selma campaign, Rabbi Gendler welcomed his first daughter into a world he was working to repair. And today, she sits behind me as dean of Yale’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences.
金博士与詹德勒拉比并肩行进的那一幕如此不凡，深深印刻在我的记忆中。他们虽然是不同信仰的联盟，但在为共同坚信的道德观抗争。在此请允许我补充一点，就在参加塞尔玛运动后不久，詹德勒拉比迎来了他的第一个女儿，她诞生在了这个他正努力修补的世界。今天，她就坐在我身后，现任耶鲁大学文理学院院长。
As Rabbi Gendler noted at the time, “The effects of love, thought the ancients, were not simply personal, [but] social as well.” “Love may not be all we need,” he added, “but neither is it entirely beside the point.” Dr. King echoed these sentiments while speaking to Rabbi Gendler in what would be his final public interview in 1968. “We need a movement now to transmute rage,” he said, “into a positive, constructive force.” Those words resonate today. They remind us that we need to reject hate and rage – and instead find our common love for life, for community, and for peace.
正如詹德勒拉比当时所说的：“先辈认为，爱不仅仅影响个人，也影响社会。”“爱可能不是我们所需的全部，”他补充说，“但它也并非毫无意义。”1968年，金博士在与詹德勒拉比对谈时回应了这些观点，那是金博士接受的最后一次公开采访。他说：“我们现在需要一场运动，将愤怒转化为一股积极的、建设性的力量。”这些话在今天依然适用。它们提醒我们，应该摒弃仇恨与愤怒，而去寻找我们对生命、对集体、对和平共同的爱。
Now, to be sure, the challenges before us – climate change, racial injustice, armed conflict, and extremism, to name only a few – stoke the indignation of any individual of conscience. And across this country, we’ve seen rising antisemitism, Islamophobia, and other forms of bigotry. Without anger, we would be reconciled to accept the unacceptable, to tolerate the intolerable, and thereby consign ourselves to a status quo in need of repair. Without anger, we would be bereft of the fuel necessary to fight against prejudice and violence around the globe.
如今，毋庸置疑，我们所面临的种种挑战——气候变化、种族不公、武装冲突和极端主义等等——会激起任何有良知的人的愤慨。在这个国家，我们看到反犹主义、伊斯兰恐惧症和其他形式的偏执行为日益猖獗。没有愤怒，我们便会甘心接受不可接受的事物、容忍不可容忍的行为，从而让自己陷入一种需要挽救的现状。没有愤怒，我们就会丧失在全球抗击偏见与暴力的必要力量。
So, what, then, are the grounds that support the translation of outrage into compassion, as Dr. King advised?
那么，金博士所倡议的将愤怒转化为慈悯的依据是什么呢?
In thinking about the answer to this question, I am reminded of these lines of poetry from the Reverend Dr. Pauli Murray, eminent Yale graduate, civil rights icon, and namesake of one of our residential colleges. She said:
在思考这个问题的答案时，我想起了保罗·默里牧师的几行诗。默里博士是耶鲁大学的杰出毕业生、民权运动的标志性人物，我们的一所住宿学院还是以她的名字命名的。她是这么写的：
But love, alas, holds me captive here
Consigned to sacrificial flame, to burn
And find no heart’s surcease until
Its more enduring uses I may learn.
但爱，啊，将我禁锢于此
囚禁于牺牲的火焰，被灼烧
我的内心无法平静，直到
它更永恒的作用被寻到
In the fall of 1963 – at a pivotal moment in the civil rights struggle – the Yale Political Union invited George Wallace, Alabama’s hate-spewing governor, to speak on campus. The invitation ignited controversy at Yale – and provided occasion for activists like Pauli Murray to respond to his bigotry measure for measure. But that’s not what she did. Instead, she showed the strength of her commitment to “destroy segregation by positive and embracing methods.”
1963年秋天，在民权运动的关键时刻，耶鲁政治联盟邀请了有着仇恨言论的阿拉巴马州州长乔治·华莱士到学校发表演讲。这个邀请在耶鲁引发了争议，也让像保罗·默里那样的积极分子有机会对他的偏执进行反击。但是她没有那么做。相反，她决心“通过正面和包容的方式摧毁种族隔离制度”并展示了这一决心的力量。
Wallace, of course, personified Southern hostility to integration. Earlier that year, he had famously stood on the portico of the Alabama State Capitol and declared in his inaugural speech, “Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever!” And just days before he was invited to Yale, Klansmen bombed the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, killing four Black schoolgirls and wounding 22 others – an act of domestic terrorism for which Wallace was blamed as an instigator.
华莱士无疑是南方敌视种族融合的典型代表。那年早些时候，他站在阿拉巴马州议会大厦门廊上发表了就职演说，其中那句“今天隔离、明天隔离、永远隔离”后来人尽皆知。而就在他受邀前往耶鲁的几天前，三K党炸毁了阿拉巴马州伯明翰市第16街浸信会教堂，造成4名黑人女学生死亡、22人受伤——这是一起国内恐怖主义事件，华莱士被指责为煽动者。
So perhaps it comes as no surprise that Kingman Brewster, Yale’s president, urged students to rescind their invitation. New Haven Mayor Richard Lee, meanwhile – also concerned about the tensions Wallace would inflame – deemed him “officially unwelcome” in the city of New Haven. More surprising is that Pauli Murray, a law school student at the time, disagreed. In an astonishing display of “drawing a circle of inclusion” large enough to incorporate George Wallace, she wrote to President Brewster in support of his right to speak at Yale.
所以，时任耶鲁大学校长金曼•布鲁斯特敦促学生们撤回邀请或许不足为奇了。同时，时任纽黑文市长理查德·李也担心华莱士可能引发冲突，所以将华莱士视为纽黑文“不被正式欢迎”的人。出人意料的是，当时还是法学院学生的保罗·默里反对这样的做法。她给校长写信，支持华莱士在耶鲁讲话的权利，展现出了惊人的包容态度——她“画了一个包容的圈子”，大到足以容纳乔治·华莱士。
To be sure, Dr. Murray loathed what Wallace represented. “By every cultural, spiritual, and psychological resource at my disposal,” she wrote, “I shall seek to destroy the institution of segregation…[but] I will not submit to segregation myself.” Dr. Murray, rather, maintained an abiding belief in the power of redemption over retribution – even, and most especially, for a man who threatened the principles to which she had dedicated her life.
可以肯定，默里博士痛恨华莱士所代表的想法。她曾写道：“我将利用我所掌握的一切文化、精神与心理资源，努力摧毁种族隔离制度……（但）我自己不会走上隔离的歧途。”相反，默里博士始终坚信救赎的力量胜过报复——即使且尤其是对于一个威胁到她一生所求原则的人。
The division sowed by Wallace stands as one of this country’s darkest chapters. But his story has a postscript – one that affirms the might of Pauli Murray’s approach.
华莱士引发的分裂是美国历史上最黑暗的章节之一。但他的故事还有一段后记——这正肯定了保罗·默里所坚信的力量。
About a decade later, Wallace – then a candidate for president – was paralyzed after an assassination attempt and spent the rest of his life in a wheelchair. As he was recovering in the hospital from the shooting, he had an unexpected visitor: Shirley Chisholm, the first Black woman elected to the United States Congress and a rival to Wallace in 1972 presidential politics.
大约十年后，当时的总统候选人华莱士在一次未遂暗杀中瘫痪，并在轮椅中度过了余生。他在医院接受康复治疗时，一位不同寻常的访客来看望他：雪莉·奇泽姆，当选美国国会议员的第一名黑人女性，也是华莱士在1972年总统竞选中的竞争对手。
Understandably, Chisholm’s visit left her staff concerned. How could she sit by the bedside of someone she stood so fervently – so virtuously – against? “Sometimes,” she told them, “we have to remember we’re all human beings. And I may be able to teach him something, to help him regain his humanity, to maybe make him open up his eyes to make him see something that he has not seen.” And so she went.
可以理解，奇泽姆的探访令其助手担心。她如何能坐在一个与她观点和道德都极端对立的人的床边呢？她告诉助手们：“有时，我们必须记住我们都是人。我也许能教他一些东西，帮他重拾人性，也许能让他睁开眼睛看到一些他没有看到的东西。”于是她去探望了华莱士。
In a remarkable expression of compassion and common humanity, Chisholm told Wallace, “I wouldn’t want what happened to you to happen to anyone.” The callous George Wallace wept. And to this day, his daughter maintains, “it was after [this] visit that he started to change.” “Shirley Chisholm,” she continues, “planted a seed of new beginnings in my father’s heart,” culminating in the record number of appointments of African Americans he made to state positions during his final term as governor.
奇泽姆对华莱士说：“我不希望发生在你身上的事发生在任何人身上。”这极好地传达了悲悯和普遍的人性。一向冷酷的乔治·华莱士潸然泪下。直到今天，他的女儿仍然表示，“就是在那次探访之后，他开始改变了”。她说：“雪莉·奇泽姆在我父亲心中播下了一粒种子，预示新的开始。”——在担任州长的最后一个任期内，华莱士任命了很多非裔美国人担任州政府职务，数量创了纪录。
Wallace would later earn an honorary degree from the historically Black Tuskegee University – and he would earn the forgiveness of civil rights leaders like John Lewis, himself a recipient of an honorary degree at Yale, “because to do otherwise – to hate him,” Lewis posited, “would only perpetuate the evil system we sought to destroy.”
华莱士后来获得了历史悠久的黑人大学塔斯基吉大学颁发的荣誉学位，还赢得了民权领袖约翰·刘易斯等人的原谅。刘易斯本人获得过耶鲁大学的荣誉学位，他表示，“因为如果不原谅而去憎恨他，只会让我们试图摧毁的这个邪恶制度永久存在。”
Philosopher Hannah Arendt, on whom Yale also bestowed an honorary degree, eloquently advocated for this doctrine decades before Shirley Chisholm exemplified it. The “faculty of forgiving,” she wrote, “is the exact opposite of vengeance…whereby far from putting an end to the consequences of the first misdeed, everybody remains bound to the process, permitting the chain reaction…to take its unhindered course.” “Forgiving, in other words, is the only reaction which does not merely re-act but acts anew and unexpectedly, unconditioned by the act which provoked it and thereby freeing from its consequences.”
哲学家汉娜·阿伦特也获得了耶鲁大学授予的荣誉学位，她在雪莉·奇泽姆成为榜样几十年前就强烈提倡这样的态度。她曾写道：“宽恕的力量与报复截然相反……报复绝不会消除最初的错误行为造成的后果，每个人只会依旧困在报复的过程中，导致连锁反应……无休止地一报接一报。”“换句话说，宽恕不仅仅是一种反应，它还是唯一一种能产生意想不到的新变化的反应，它不受激发行为的条件限制，因而也不受其后果的影响。”
Dr. King called this redemptive approach the Strength to Love, declaring in a refrain with which you are no doubt familiar that “returning hate for hate [only] multiplies hate.” So, we can take pride in the fact that precisely sixty years ago, Yale presented Dr. King an honorary degree with a citation that extolled his “steadfast refusal to countenance violence in resistance to injustice.”
金博士称这种救赎方式为“爱的力量”，借用的一句老话你们肯定都很熟悉：“以恨还恨[只]会恨上加恨。”因此，我们可以引以为傲，就在60年前，耶鲁大学授予了金博士荣誉学位，在颁奖时赞扬他“坚决拒绝以暴力反抗不公”。
For our part, as we face complex challenges that call out for concerted action, we would do well to heed his example, which requires us to inhibit our desire to dismiss those with whom we believe we cannot develop common purpose.
对我们而言，当我们面临需要协调一致应对的复杂挑战时，我们应当以他为榜样，这要求我们控制住冲动，不去压制那些我们认为无法与之建立共同目标的人。
It is not enough to retreat into silos alongside those who are already inclined to agree with us. Nor is it effective to ostracize, call out, shame, or silence well-meaning others who do not.
只和那些已经愿意跟我们并肩的人待在一起是不够的。孤立、批评、羞辱或压制心怀善意的异见者也毫无意义。
Progress depends on our willingness to work together to solve common problems: to extend love and grace, compassion and cooperation, with one another, and, through these means, to build consensus.
进步依靠的是我们合作解决共同问题的意愿：相互传递爱与关怀、慈悯与合作，并通过这些建立共识。
By bridging differences – by daring to choose love and compassion over rage and hate – we can bring about the meaningful, sustainable change needed in society.
勇敢选择爱与慈悯而舍弃怒与仇恨——以此弥合分歧，我们就能为社会带来所需的有意义且可持续的改变。
We can bring the world you will soon enter a little closer to the one we desire.
我们可以让这个世界——你们即将踏入的这个世界——更接近我们理想中的那个样子，哪怕只有一点点。
Let’s get started together. Let’s get started today.
让我们一起开始吧。让我们从今天开始。
And for me personally: At moments like this, speakers of Hebrew (my grandfather’s native language) don’t like to say “good-bye” but, rather, L’heit ra-oat; until we meet again.
就我个人而言，在这样的时刻，说希伯来语的人（我祖父的母语）不愿说“再见”，而会说“后会有期”。
Congratulations, Class of 2024.
祝贺你们，2024届的毕业生们。