Dear Members of the Harvard Community,
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.
“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.”
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
|
|
|
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment