首页分享康奈尔大学第154届毕业典礼校长致辞 (完整版)

康奈尔大学第154届毕业典礼校长致辞 (完整版)

来源：花匠小妙招时间：2025-01-15 05:11

President Martha E. Pollack

大家早上好！祝贺毕业生们！

今天在这里与大家一起庆祝优秀的康奈尔2022届毕业生的显著成就，感觉好极了。

不论天气如何，毕业这天总是阳光明媚的，所以，像每年一样，我要戴上我的墨镜。(笑声)

各位毕业生，在我发表讲话之前，我想花几分钟说说你们都已经知道的一件事：这就是我们今天在这里庆祝的成就不是靠我们个人得来的。

今天要毕业的每一位，无论将获得什么学位，你们能顺利毕业，是因为另一些人的关爱、帮助和支持，包括父母、祖父母、兄弟姐妹、原生家庭和非原生家庭、教职员工、同学和朋友等等，是他们让你们得以圆满地完成在康奈尔的学业。

我知道，他们中的许多人今天来到了现场，正坐在看台上。所以现在，我请每一位毕业生起立，转过身去。如果你知道你的家人和朋友们坐在哪里，就请面朝他们；如果不知道，转过身就好。大家先什么也不要做，先向后转。

好的，以下是我想让大家做的：

我数到三，无论你在家说什么语言，英语、西班牙语、印地语、约鲁巴语、汉语、卡尤加语或者其他的语言，我希望你们每个人都大声喊一声“谢谢你！”，声音要足够大，好让支持你的人在几千名毕业生的喊声中听到你的声音。

大家明白了吗？一，二，三：(学生人群的感谢声浪)

谢谢大家！

在讲更多之前，我想我们暂停一分钟，一起怀念今天只能在我们的心中与我们一起庆祝毕业的人--本来也该参加这场毕业典礼的同学，以及过去一年因新冠离世的每个人。

今年是康奈尔大学第154届毕业典礼，也是新冠大流行以来的第三届毕业典礼。关于2022届同学们自疫情开始以来共同面对的挑战，我能讲很多。但说实话，我觉得你们从我这里收到的关于疫情的讯息已经太多了，够一辈子回忆的了。

所以，我要向你们做一个承诺，我之前对2020届毕业生也做了同样的承诺，他们去年秋天返回康奈尔，参加了一个被推迟了多次的毕业典礼。我的承诺是：在今天我余下的讲话中，不会包括任何以下词语：前所未有、不确定、新常态、物理距离、社交距离、公共卫生、戴口罩、Zoom会议、线上活动、超级传播事件、常规检测、密接者追踪、检疫隔离、传播、调整、隔离、疫苗接种或大流行。

还有，我也不会说：你静音了。

作为康奈尔大学2022届同学，你们是第一届几乎所有成员都出生在21世纪的大学毕业生。也就是说，几乎你们每个人都是数字世界的原生代，这意味着你们在一个技术无处不在的世界中长大，你们生活的方方面面都被由包括互联网在内的现代技术所带来的通信、服务、娱乐和职业所塑造。无论今天你获得是什么学位，不论你的未来计划是什么，几乎你们每一个人都将投入在一定程度上为技术所推动的职业。

但是，有一种由技术推动而出现的职业，我们没有一套课程与之匹配。这个职业让我这个非数字原生代花了一点时间才搞懂。

这个职业就是“网红(influencer)”。

作为大学校长，当我第一次意识到这是一种新职业的时候，我想知道，需要什么样的培训或教育才能从事这个职业。

没用多长时间，我就发现，没有这样的专业。

虽然有惊人数量的网站纷纷解释，如何按照五个、七个，或者十二个简单步骤成为一名网红。

但是，这些网站都没有回答一个关键问题：什么使网红具有影响力？我决定我需要一些例子，所以，虽然我并不热衷排行榜或是各种十大榜单，我还是搜索了“十大网红”。

1700万个搜索结果当然没法全看，但是在第一页上，我在一个我从没听说过的网站上看到了一个声称十大“真正”网红的榜单。它也提供了“真正网红”的定义。这个定义排除了政治家、音乐家、运动员、演员、公众人物、名人等等类别，基本上把因为在线下的作为而出名的人都排除在外了。

这个榜单说，一位“真正”的网红，是仅仅通过使用社交媒体而出名的人，比如制作关于他们穿什么、吃什么、化什么妆的视频，让人们注意到他们家里的装修、他们的晚餐等等。所有这些的目的，在我看来，是创造一个你的生活的公众版本，来让别人希望也过那样的生活，但并不是你的实际生活，而只是你所呈现的那个生活版本。如果他们足够喜欢那个版本，那么也许你就影响了他们.....去购物。

说到这里，我想冒个险提出一个大胆的论断。

衡量你的影响力的，不是你如何呈现你的生活，而是你用它做了什么。

如果这样做让你无缘某个人的十大“真正网红”榜单，你也大可不必在意。

在座的每一位即将成为康奈尔大学毕业生的同学们，你们有非凡的潜力在真实的世界中成为真正的影响者。

今天在座的每一位、以及将参加下午场典礼的毕业生们，和这个月从位于纽约市的威尔康奈尔医学院和康奈尔科技校区毕业的各位毕业生，2022届康奈尔毕业生代表了横跨几乎所有人类创造活动的领域、专业和范畴的知识、专长、技能和潜力。

你们将成为艺术家、工程师、律师、医生、兽医、音乐家、演员、银行家、企业家、科学家、社区组织者。在今后的日子里，你们将学习、传授、发明、创新、写作、创造、建设与领导。

你们大家将能作出的贡献是Ezra Cornell在为让任何人都能找到想学的专业而创办这所大学时所无法想象的。

作为康奈尔第154届毕业生，你们将以我们尚不能预知的方式改变世界，分享你们康奈尔教育的果实，就像大学建立以来每一代康奈尔人一样。

从这里无论走向何处，请记得康奈尔人的工作和创新，是啊，这就是康奈尔人的影响，它会一直伴你左右：从每一杯巴氏法消毒的牛奶、每一个有空调的房间、每一台数字电脑、到每一个植入心脏的起搏器。如果你吃过纽约州的苹果、蓝莓或葡萄，你可能得感谢康奈尔人的功劳。下一个感恩节你坐下来吃火鸡，或者吃炸鸡块，没错，那也有康奈尔人的贡献。

如果你观看了“毅力号”探测车登陆火星，或者小时候喜欢过《夏洛特的网》，或者最近一年注射过两三针预防某种我承诺不再提及的病毒的物质--所有这些对世界的贡献，都有康奈尔人的参与。

将来，康奈尔人将为世界带来更适应环境的水果、蔬菜和谷物品种；找到种植和保存食物的更好方法；推出更好地保护土壤和水资源的农业实践。因为康奈尔人，我们会有更高效的电池和太阳能板、有停止塑料进入生态系统的包装、和更好的可再生能源的产能与储能方法。我们会发现人工智能的新的突破性应用，并建立在对技术的人性化理解的基础上。我们会有更宜居的城市、更平等的社会、和更可持续的地球。我们会享受到康奈尔人创作的艺术、音乐、文学和诗歌作品，以丰富我们的生活，以及慰籍我们的灵魂。

你们来到康奈尔，不仅是为了获得学位，而是为了接受教育。且不是任何教育，是为了获得你知道你将在这里找到的，独特的康奈尔式的教育：它不仅给予你技能和知识，还让你在能力、精神气质、和思维习惯上做好为影响世界作出一份自己的贡献的准备。

我要对今天在座的每一位同学提出一个非常简单的要求。

运用你的康奈尔教育，做出有意义的影响。

不仅运用你在课堂上获得的知识，还有你在这里养成的思维习惯和康奈尔精神：

质疑和探索的勇气，

对科学和真理的不懈追求，

对文学、艺术的欣赏，

对自然的热爱，

对多元价值和不同观点的尊重，

明白拥有好友和为人友的重要，

以及坚韧不拔地前行，即使你为自己设定的道路和你所面对的环境会有曲折和变数。

我对大家的期望是，无论从事什么行业，以你自己的方式，做一个真正的影响者(influencer)。让你们对这个世界的影响是真实的、持久的和善意的；让你在这里结识的朋友们继续分享路途中的甘苦；让康奈尔永远在你心中，正如你将永远是康奈尔的一分子。

再次祝贺2022届同学们圆满毕业！

英文原文：

Good morning everyone, and congratulations graduates!

It is so great to be here, and to be celebrating with all of you the remarkable achievements of the remarkable Cornell Class of 2022.

Whatever the weather is like, Graduation Day is always a sunny day—so, as I always do, I’m going to put on my shades.

Graduates, before I say anything else, I want to take a few moments to say something all of you know already—which is that none of the achievements we’re here to celebrate are solo achievements.

Everybody who is graduating this morning, whatever degree they’re receiving, is graduating because of the care and help and support of others—the parents, grandparents, and siblings, the family by birth and family by choice, the faculty and staff, classmates and friends, who together made your Cornell education possible.

And I know that many of those people are up there in the stands today. So right now, I want every one of our graduates to stand up and turn around. If you know where your family and friends are sitting, face them, but if not, just turn in the general direction. Don’t do anything else yet, just turn around.

All right, this is what I want you to do:

On the count of three, in whatever language it is you speak at home—whether it’s English, or Spanish, or Hindi, or Yoruba, or Chinese, or Cayuga, or anything else—I want each of you to yell “thank you” so loudly, that the people here supporting you will hear your voice over all the thousands of graduates who are also going to be yelling.

Got that? One, two, three:

Thank you!

Before we go any further, I want to pause, for this next moment, to acknowledge the people who are with us today only in our hearts—the students whose graduation this should have been, and everyone we’ve lost over the last year to COVID-19.

This year marks Cornell’s 154th commencement, and our third since the start of the COVID pandemic. There’s a lot I could say about the challenges the Class of 2022 has faced together since the pandemic began. But frankly—I think you’ve had enough pandemic-related communications from me to last a lifetime.

So I’m going to make the same promise to you that I made to the Class of 2020, when they returned for their rescheduled, and re-rescheduled, commencement last fall—

that the rest of my comments today will not contain any of the following words or phrases:

unprecedented, uncertain, new normal, physical distancing, social distancing, public health, mask-wearing, Zoom meeting, virtual event, super-spreader event, surveillance testing, contact tracing, quarantine, transmission, adaptation, isolation, vaccination, or—pandemic.

Oh, and I won’t say “you’re muted.”

As the Cornell class of 2022, you’re the first graduating class in which almost everyone was born in the 21st century. That means that almost all of you are digital natives—meaning that you’ve grown up in a world of ubiquitous technology, and your lives have been shaped in countless ways by the communication, services, entertainment, and careers that modern technology, including the internet, has made possible. And whatever degree you’re graduating with today, whatever your future plans, nearly all of you are looking ahead to careers that will be enabled in some way by technology.

But there’s one tech-enabled career that we don’t have a course of study for. And it’s a job it took me, as a non-digital native, a while to get my head around.

That is the career of “influencer.”

When I first realized that this was a new profession, being a university president, I wanted to know what training or education you needed to qualify for it.

It didn’t take me long to discover that there is no major for this—

although there are a surprising number of websites explaining how to become an influencer in five, or seven, or twelve easy steps.

But none of those websites answered a key question: what makes influencers influential? I decided I needed some examples, so even though I’m not really a fan of rankings or top ten lists, I googled “top ten influencers.”

I didn’t look at all 17 million hits, but on the first page I found, on a site I’d never heard of, there was a list that claimed to rank the top ten “real” influencers. Helpfully for me, it also offered a definition of a “real influencer.” This definition excluded, among other categories, politicians, musicians, athletes, actors, public figures, and celebrities—basically, anyone who had become famous for something they had done off the internet.

A “real” influencer, according to this particular list, was someone who had become famous only through their use of social media: by making videos about the clothes they wear, or the food they eat, or the makeup they put on—and getting people to pay attention to anything from their home renovation, to their dinner. The goal of all this, so far as I can tell, is to create a public version of your life, that will make other people want their lives to be, not like your actual life, but like that curated version of your life. And if they like that version of your life enough, then maybe you’ll influence them… to buy things.

At this point, I’d like to go out on a limb and make a bold assertion.

That your influence should be measured, not by how you present your life, but by what you do with it.

And if that disqualifies you from someone’s top ten “real influencer” list—that’s probably just fine.

Each of you, as Cornell students who are soon to be Cornell graduates, has an extraordinary potential to be a true influencer—in the real world.

Between the graduates on the field today, and those who will be here this afternoon, and those who graduated from our Weill Cornell Medicine and Cornell Tech campuses in New York city last week, the Cornell Class of 2022 represents knowledge, expertise, skill, and potential, across nearly every field, and discipline, and realm of human creativity.

You will become artists and engineers, lawyers and physicians and veterinarians, musicians and actors, bankers and business-owners and scientists and teachers and community organizers. In the years to come, you will learn and teach, invent and innovate, write and create, build and lead.

Together, you will make contributions that Ezra Cornell could never have dreamed of when he imagined this institution for any person, and any study.

And together, as the 154th graduating class of Cornell, you will change the world in ways none of us yet know—sharing the fruits of your Cornell education, as have generations of Cornellians before you, since our very beginnings.

Wherever you go from here, know that the work and innovations, and yes, the influence of Cornellians will be all around you: in every glass of pasteurized milk, every air-conditioned room, every digital computer, every implanted pacemaker. If you’ve eaten an apple, or a blueberry, or a grape in New York state, you probably have a Cornellian to thank for it. And the next time you sit down to a Thanksgiving turkey, or a chicken nugget—yep. Also Cornell.

If you watched the Perseverance rover land on Mars, or loved Charlotte’s Web as a kid, or had your life changed last year by two or three doses of a certain virus-preventing substance I promised not to mention—all of those contributions to our world were brought to you, in some part, by Cornellians.

In the years ahead, Cornellians will bring the world more resilient varieties of fruit, vegetables, and grains; better ways to grow and preserve food; and farming practices that preserve our soil and our water. Because of Cornellians, we’ll have more efficient batteries and solar panels, packaging that will keep plastics out of our ecosystem, and better ways to create and store renewable energy. We’ll find new and pathbreaking applications for artificial intelligence—developed with a human understanding of technology. We’ll have more livable cities, more equitable societies, and a more sustainable planet. And we’ll have art, and music, and literature, and poetry, to enrich our lives and feed our souls, created by Cornellians like you.

Each of you came to Cornell, not just for a degree, but for an education. And not just for any education, but for the uniquely Cornellian education you knew you would find here: one that would prepare you with not only the skills and the knowledge, but also with the competence, and the ethos, and the habits of mind, to add your own contribution to the influence on the world that this university has had, through every one of its 154 graduating classes.

What I ask each of you today, is something very simple.

Use your Cornell educations, to have an influence that will matter.

Build on both the specific knowledge you gained in your classes, and the habits of mind and the Cornell ethos you developed here, which include:

the courage to question, and to explore;

a commitment to science, and to truth;

an appreciation for literature and the arts;

a love for the natural world;

respect for the value of diversity, and of different perspectives;

the importance of good friends, and of being one;

and the resilience to keep moving forward, when the paths you laid out, and the landscape you knew, bend and shift before you.

My wish for all of you is that each of you will become, in your own unique way, a true influencer. Someone whose influence on the world—whatever it may be—is real, and lasting, and good; that the friends you made here will always share your journey; and that Cornell will always be a part of you, just as you will always be a part of Cornell.

Congratulations, Class of 2022!

译、编：康奈尔中国中心

视频来源：Cornell University

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