【哈佛大学校长致学生们的一封信】所有人都有权去追求更好的教育！

8月23日，17岁的黎巴嫩学生Ismail Ajjawi在波士顿洛根国际机场（Logan Airport），被移民局审问拘押8小时后，以“发现他的朋友在社交媒体中，发表反美政治观点”为由，撤销了他的美国签证并将其遣返至黎巴嫩。

本周一（9月2日），Ajjawi重获美国签证，并顺利进入哈佛大学学习。

今日，和大家分享一封哈佛大学校长Lawrence Henry (“Larry”) Summers致哈佛所有教职员工与学生的一封信。（在此感谢哈佛学生提供邮件）

Dear Members of the Harvard Community,

我希望这个夏天为你提供了许多反思和放松的机会，也希望你和我一样，渴望新学年的开始。今年夏天，通过一些书籍，我对哈佛大学的历史有了更多的了解。在此，我想与大家分享一下哈佛大学前任校长 — Nathan Pusey对哈佛大学的一些观点。

I hope that the summer has provided you with many opportunities for reflection and relaxation—and that, like me, you are eager to begin a new academic year together. Some of my reading this summer took me deeper into Harvard’s history by way of personal anecdotes and recollections, and I wanted to share with you an observation about the role of the University made in 1957 by my predecessor Nathan Pusey.

Nathan写道：“在这个复杂又充满疑问的世界中，哈佛大学很有可能被视为黑暗中的希望之岛。我必须承认有时候我也会这样认为。但我知道哈佛并不真的是这样的形象，至少现在哈佛并不是一个为大多数人服务的‘希望之岛’。相反，哈佛大学更愿意与其所属的复杂文化紧密相连。唯一的特别之处在于，在哈佛，符合哈佛大学文化背景的学生，会变得更富有，更有竞争力，更具说服力。”

“In the complex and confused world in which we all find ourselves,” he wrote, “it is possible to think of Harvard as a kind of island of light in a very widespread darkness, and I must confess I sometimes do just this. But I also know that the figure is not really an apt one, for Harvard has never been an island severed from the broad concerns of men and is certainly not one now. Instead, it is rather intimately involved in the complex culture to which it belongs. Its distinction is that [here] intellectual activity has an opportunity to come into sharper focus, and so becomes richer, more vivid, more convincing, and more captivating than in society at large.”

我今天怀着紧迫感和关切的心情引用这些话。因为自5月份以来，获得美国签证和移民的过程只会越来越难。渴望在哈佛校园里开始新生活的国际学生和学者，发现自己被以“国家安全的名义”受到审查和怀疑。面对各种不能入境（美国）和被延缓入境（美国）的情况，他们开始重新考虑进入哈佛学习的价值。最近，我前往华盛顿与国会议员分享了我的想法，我还致函了国务卿和国土安全部代理秘书，表达了我对哈佛大学教职员工与学生入境问题的担忧。哈佛大学与其他学校，教育一直是美国的强项，并拥有长期的竞争力。当我们的政策制定者履行其权衡国家安全问题的必要义务时，我深深地希望他们能够充分认识到我们国家的大学，因为这些来自世界各地的人才而获利良多。美国国家的利益是由高等教育体系服务的，而高等教育的意愿是消除障碍偏见而非建立障碍偏见。

I recall these words today with a sense of urgency and concern. Since May, the obstacles facing individuals ensnared in the nation’s visa and immigration process have only grown. Various international students and scholars eager to establish lives here on our campus find themselves the subject of scrutiny and suspicion in the name of national security, and they are reconsidering the value of joining our community in the face of disruptions and delays. I recently traveled to Washington to share my thoughts with members of Congress, and I also sent a letter to the Secretary of State and the Acting Secretary of Homeland Security to express my concerns about the lasting effects the treatment of our friends and colleagues, here at Harvard and elsewhere, will have on the strength of our academic enterprise and on long-term American competitiveness. As our policy makers fulfill their necessary obligation to weigh issues of national security, I profoundly hope they will do so with full recognition of the ways that our country’s universities greatly benefit from the presence and participation of talented people from around the world, and the ways that U.S. national interests are served by a system of higher education whose strength rests on a willingness to transcend barriers, not erect them.

有一些东西，比我们大学社区构成更重要的支撑着哈佛。虽然我们的国家至今仍在努力兑现其建立初期的理想，但仍有无数来自世界各地的人，长期渴望着他们自己的“美国梦” — 一个在美国的机会，一个在美国过得更好更安全的机会。我的父亲与母亲曾是其中之一，他们告诉我这个国家很棒，因为美国向世界敞开了大门。

There is something even more significant at stake than the composition of our university community. Although our nation to this day still struggles to make good on its founding ideals, countless people from different parts of the world have long looked to its shores with hope—for the chance to learn, for the chance to contribute, for the chance to live better and safer lives. My father and my mother were two of them, and they taught me that this country is great because it opens its doors wide to the world.

不仅作为大学校长，而且作为难民的儿子和深信美国梦的公民，我对国家拟议的进入美国新标准的条例感到沮丧。他们（美国）为那些已经受过高等教育，会说流利英语，拥有高技能的人才提供进入美国的特权。然而，他们忽略了那些渴望更美好未来，并愿意为此目标奋斗努力的人。如果我的父母当初在移民时，遇到和现在相同的准则，我怀疑他们不会被接纳，而我也不会有机会写今天这份邮件。

Not just as a university president, but as the son of refugees and as a citizen who deeply believes in the American dream, I am disheartened by aspects of the proposed new criteria for people seeking to enter our country. They privilege those who are already educated, who already speak English, and who already have demonstrable skills. They fail to recognize others who yearn for a better future and who are willing to sacrifice and work hard to achieve it. Had these same rules been in place when my parents each immigrated, I doubt they would have been admitted, and I would not be writing this message today.

与大多数移民一样，我的父母因为有在其他地方成长的经历，而非常喜欢这个国家。他们感谢这个国家鼓励自由、给予所有人机会，并且从未将他们的理想视为理所当然。不过，我的父母对美国新准则也没有任何批评。他们希望它（美国）成为世界上最好的地方，这也是我们所有人都应该追求的目标。事实上，伟大的大学应该营造出一个鼓励对美国和世界提出不同意见的环境。通过我们的奖学金和教育，通过鼓励自由探究和辩论，我们不仅要问为什么事情是这样，而是应该思考如何变得更好。成为一名爱国者的同时，也作为一名批判者，一起挑战目前不可接受的现状。

My parents, like most immigrants, loved this country in part because they had the experience of growing up someplace else. They appreciated its aspirations of freedom and opportunity for all, and never took these ideals for granted. But they were also not uncritical of their new home. They wanted it to be the very best place it could be, a goal to which we all should aspire. Indeed, it is the role of great universities to foster an environment that encourages loving criticism of our country and our world. Through our scholarship and education, through our encouragement of free inquiry and debate, we ask not just why things are as they are, but how they might be better. To be a patriot is also to be a critic and not to accept the status quo as inevitable.

新的学年，是我们所有人共同创建一个欢迎和拥抱来自全国和世界各地人们的机会。那些来自不同国家和拥有不同声音的人，对我们的共同努力至关重要。校训“Veritas”指导我们的教学和研究，也唤起了我们作为人类社区的身份以及我们对所服务社会的义务。我们必须寻求真理，分享真理。我们绝不能忽略我们的说服力，我们应该通过提供丰富生动的知识，来改变（人们的）思想和心灵。

The new academic year is a chance for all of us to commit ourselves to creating a community that welcomes and embraces people from across the nation and around the world, people whose distinctive voices and varied experiences are essential to our common endeavor. Veritas guides our teaching and our research—it also evokes our identity as a human community and our obligation to the society we serve. We must seek truth and share truth. We must never lose sight of our ability to captivate and convince, to provide knowledge that is rich and vivid—knowledge that is capable of changing minds as well as hearts.

哈佛确实还不是希望之岛。我们必须致力于通过言行照亮世界的工作，我们必须继续肯定和捍卫这个非凡国家最优良传统的价值观（美国梦），特别是在混乱的时代。我希望你能和我一起，在接下来的几个月里，共同承担这份重要的工作。与此同时，对于我们的新学生，欢迎您的到来，也欢迎老学生回来一路顺风。

Harvard is, indeed, no island. We must devote ourselves to the work of illuminating the world through word and deed, and we must continue to affirm and safeguard the values that underlie the finest traditions of this extraordinary nation, especially in turbulent times. I hope you will take up that important work with me in the coming months. In the meantime, to our new students, welcome, and to the rest of you, welcome back—and Godspeed.

Larry