more than 18,000 degree candidates. It has 17 academic departments administered by nine faculties. Allied with them are 95 libraries, seven botanical institutions, two astronomical stations, more than 50 laboratories of science, engineering, and medicine, nine museums of natural history, medicine, art, and archaeology and numerous committees, hospitals, clinics, and foundations that devoted to advanced study and research. And such is its renown that its current enrollment includes students from almost 90 countries. Harvard has been at the very center of the gathering and dispensing of old and new knowledge that has affected people everywhere. But life on this ivy-covered campus is not just academics. Part of Harvard culture is that you need to be involved. Involved in what does not really matter, but you need to be involved. That's what gives you your identity. Nearly all the undergraduates participate in campus activities or do some type of volunteer work. That's what sets Harvard University students apart, that within such a rich intellectual climate, they are a very real part of the community life around them. Doing extracurricular really rounds out their Harvard experience. They will be rather than just advancing their own careers. They will be the kind of people who use their knowledge for the betterment of human kind. The four-year period students spend at Harvard is the most important of their lives; it shapes their future careers; the friendship they form here lasts forever.
Harvard University is firmly committed to a policy of
nondiscrimination against any person on the basis of sex, age, race, color, religion, creed, national origin, ancestry, marital status, handicap, and sexual orientation. It has stressed the University's commitment to excellence in undergraduate education, the importance of keeping Harvard's doors open to students from across the economic spectrum, the task of adapting the research university to an era of both rapid information growth and serious financial constraints, and the challenge of living together in a diverse community committed to freedom of expression.
Harvard has enjoyed remarkable financial support from its
dedicated alumni. Today it has probably the world’s biggest university endowment or private financial support fund. Harvard
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has had an important role in training Americans for national and public office and two important schools are the Harvard Law School and the John Fitzgerald Kennedy School. United States presidents who have graduated from Harvard include John F. Kennedy, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin D. Roosevelt, John Quincy Adams and John Adams. The fact that Harvard was founded before the United States of America testifies to its position in the American history.
Q: Thank you! You’ve come to China this time to participate in an opening
ceremony of an advanced training program in public administration. In the opening speech you talked about a global economy that is increasingly shaped around the knowledge, and you said that it is an extremely exciting time for higher education. Can you elaborate on this remark？ A: I think if you look at where value resides in the economy you find
that for centuries value resided principally in land. For the most recent century, it resided most in machinery, If you look at the value today, it resides in ideas, intellectual property. It resides in organizations that bring people with knowledge. Knowledge is power. Knowledge has been a kind of productive force. It is becoming the most important source of capital as well as productivity. The keys to a nation’s economic strength and cultural growth are successful generation, acquisition, diffusion, and exploitation of knowledge. Knowledge is in many ways the stuff of today’s economy, in the way machinery was the stuff of earlier economy, and land was the stuff of the still earlier economy. And of course the production of knowledge is what university is all about. People often say that universities are ivory-tower institutions. If you think about other organizations, even the government of China, they are slowly becoming more like universities. People feel free to argue with their bosses in a way that they once didn’t. Hierarchy is giving way to teamwork. The effort is increasingly to find the best possible ideas from whatever sources. These are becoming greater values very broadly. So it seems to me that the knowledge economy is a quite different economy and will be more different in the future. In the development of knowledge economy，the function of the higher education is unique. Our universities form a great intellectual community round the world. Science has no
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nationality；knowledge belongs to everyone. The development of social progress and knowledge economy needs much more knowledge. Our universities create new knowledge and teach this knowledge. They will certainly make an even greater contribution in this regard.
Q: In the 21st century, humankind is confronted with the challenges of
knowledge economy. How do you think the college students should deal with knowledge learning?
A: Knowledge – based economy has now become the main stream of
the world. With economic globalization, the world technological innovation on international scale has also become inevitable. While science and technology are developing rapidly, information science, life science and cognitive science will make important breakthroughs. People have generally come to know that humans should develop in an integrated way with nature, and the spirit of science and the spirit of humanity should incorporate with one another. The Oriental culture and the Western culture are gradually merging. As qualified people needed in the new century, university students must acquire new knowledge, broaden their horizons, and meet the requirements of knowledge economy and economic globalization. University students cannot be satisfied with merely memorizing knowledge, but they need all the more to train themselves with the ability and knowledge they have acquired. They should possess the abilities to learn, to make innovations, to start an undertaking and to do service. Employers want employees who have special skills，creativity and qualities to succeed. This is an essential part of the US learning experience.
Q: When I was studying at the university, there was a saying like this：“With
a good command of such science subjects as mathematics，physics and chemistry，you will worry about nothing wherever you go.” It means that mastering a special branch of knowledge, just like learning a trade, will release you from anxiety all your life. As a result, few people like to learn such science subjects as history, literature or philosophy. Nowadays in China the study of the humanities is undergoing a difficult time because a lot of money and energy are being spent on more pragmatic areas. What
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do you think can be done about this?
A: I have no much knowledge about China’s higher education.
However, I think I may talk about Harvard instead. Harvard believes that every student should have a broad education in addition to specializing in a particular field. Students must take two quarters of Freshman English and a yearlong course emphasizing philosophy and literature. In addition, they must take courses in the humanities, social sciences and natural sciences, regardless of their intended majors. These courses help the students round out their character. The spirit of science and the spirit of humanity should incorporate with one another. While it’s true that we all need a career, it’s equally true that our civilization has accumulated an incredible amount of knowledge in fields far removed from our own and that we are better for our understanding of those other contributions – be they scientific or artistic. When we talk about a good university, we normally mean that the qualifications of its teaching staff are good, and its buildings, teaching facilities, computer network and library resources are good. But these in themselves are not enough; we should discuss the qualities of the students. Universities are not just about teaching professional skills. The task of a university is to raise the all-round qualities of its students.
I would say that if one looks at the great leaders of history, so
many of them were people who were deeply steeped in history, literature and art, and thought about lessons for today. I think the kind of reading that Abraham Lincoln did as a young man or the kind of reading that Churchill did was a great deal of literature. China is a land of poems. The Chinese leaders often quote the sparking lines from Classical Chinese Poems, which make their speeches more profound and full of humanity. I know both President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao are all science and engineering majors when they study at college, but they are also good at literature and art. Mr. Hu’s paper-cut, a kind of Chinese traditional art, looks very nice and pretty, and Mr. Wen’s poem, Looking up at the starlit sky, leaves me deep impression. So I think a society that wants to prepare people for positions of important leadership, a society that wants to be wise in the years ahead, needs to be a society that has committed to not only the instrumental use
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of knowledge, whether it is accounting or engineering, but also to thinking of the eternal questions, questions of what it is to know, of what it is to love, of what is human nature. There is great humanity in all the writing of Tolstoy. I am fond of reading his
representatives War and Peace, Anna Karenina and The Resurrection. I think guaranteeing a human scale of values is very important for higher education.
In a university, there are many things, many traditions that will
come to know, but what I believe is most important about Harvard University is that it is a center for the development and transmission of new and original thought and ideas. And increasingly it is ideas that are ultimately most important in this world.
We’ve recently had an important change in our policies and
that is students have the opportunity to study abroad. We come to realize that spending time in a different country is an important part of becoming an educated young adult. Studying abroad is a way of life. It means more students studying culture, more students studying the experience of different groups in the world.
Q: Now would you please, as Harvard President and Professor, tell us your educational concept and your hope for your students.
A. William Buttler Yeats once said, “Education is not the filling of a
pail, but the lighting of a fire.” If I have but one wish for each of my students, it is that the years ahead they be set on fire, that their mind be captured by some area of human understanding, that they develop a passion for questioning, for exploring, for understanding, for comprehending, for progressing, that is so central to people everywhere. The University and its faculty have no more important goal than helping them in this quest.
Q: Since your first visit to China in 1979, this is the ninth time you are visiting
this country. Could you, please, summarize the changes you have witnessed over the years?
A: When I first came to China it was not possible to make phone calls
to the US. When I first came to China, I met few people who could speak English. When I first came to China, nobody was talking
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