Nicholas B. Dirks

伯克利大师讲堂开幕式嘉宾，世界著名历史学家，世界著名人类学家，加州大学伯克利分校 (University of California Berkeley) 第10任校长，麦克阿瑟奖得主，葛根汉姆奖得主，清华大学荣誉博士，美国文理学院院士，美国外交关系委员会委员，特里林最佳图书奖得主。

Nicholas Dirks教授为加州大学伯克利分校第十任校长 (任期2013-2017)。作为一名国际知名的历史学家、人类学家和高等教育的先驱，Dirks教授致力于打造高质量的本科教育、推动教育全球化、提倡跨学科合作以及大学和社会组织间的创新合作，并因此而闻名。在其校长任职期间，Driks教授发起的本科生跨学科合作项目开启了多个本科院系之间的史无前例的紧密合作，同时设立了第一个专职负责本科教育的副校长职位。Dirks 教授极为关注神经科学和基因组学的研究工作，与加州大学旧金山分校就此领域建立了密切合作关系。在他的帮助下，伯克利成功加入了价值6亿美元的陈-扎克伯格Biohub（Chan Zuckerberg Biohub）研究项目。在来到加州大学伯克利分校之前，他在哥伦比亚大学担任执行副校长。他推动学院的多样化改革，极大促进了跨学科合作和国际合作。

Photo Credit: University of California, Berkeley

Nicholas B. Dirks (加州大学伯克利分校第十任校长)：

早上好，欢迎来到伯克利。听说大家昨晚刚刚抵达，感谢你们带来的好天气，现在的湿度应该比福州小一些。我非常荣幸可以在这里迎接你们。非常感谢张亘先生邀请我来参加这个开幕式。张亘先生的毕业证是由我签发的。虽然我日程很紧张，但是我必须要接受他的邀请。我与中国交往密切。四年前我们与清华大学合作，在深圳建立了一所名为清华伯克利深圳学院（Tsinghua-Berkeley Shenzhen Institute, TBSI）的机构，旨在联合培养研究生并深化科研合作。在座的你们很可能也会考虑去读研究生。清华伯克利深圳学院（TBSI）在精准医疗、大数据分析、新型材料、纳米材料扩展、人工智能、机器人、机器学习等领域卓有建树。清华伯克利深圳学院（TBSI）是一种与伯克利交往的好方式。

张亘先生希望我可以聊聊伯克利的历史，以及伯克利作为一所美国顶尖的公立高校的独特性。在中国，大多数学校都是公立的，这意味着他们会受到国家的支持。在美国，最早的几所大学都是私立的，他们大多数都是由教会、社会团体和机构建立。事实上，清华大学也是在教会支持下建立的。当然，绝大多数的中国大学是公立院校。美国公立大学系统始于19世纪30年代。美国时任总统托马斯·杰斐逊——美国史上举足轻重的人物之一，建立了弗尼吉亚大学。他当时想要建立的是一所可为普通民众提供求学机会的大学，他称其为人民的大学：由人民建立，为人民服务。

在那个时候，学校里只有男性，没有女性，并且大多数人是来自拥有土地的家庭。随着19世纪的发展，人们认为，美国需要一所真正为人民提供通识知识与技能的大学。在1862年伊始，亚伯拉罕·林肯（Abraham Lincoln）总统建立了一种叫做“政府赠地大学（Land-Grant University）”的模式。“政府赠地”事实上是美国政府提供支持的一种方式。赠予的土地成为每个州大学的收入来源，这样普通的民众就可以负担的起上学的费用。当然，那个时候已经有了很多著名的大学，包括哈佛大学，耶鲁大学，和一些新建的大学，比如芝加哥大学、约翰霍普金斯大学、加州理工学院（19世纪建立的私立院校）。1862法案是美国历史上是一个非常重要的法案。

加州成立于1849年。这是一个经常被提及的日期，比如，我们的橄榄球队被称为49ers。但与其说在这一年我们成为一个州，不如说在1849年，淘金热开始了。1849年前后，人们在加利福尼亚中部的河流和山丘中发现了黄金。来自美国各地的人为获得财富涌入加州。有些人一夜暴富，但是更多的人没有。

无论如何，很多人都来了。足够的新增人口数量促成了加州的成立。加州的创立者明白，如果加州没有大学，它就无法获得持续的生机。这些创立者们努力工作、努力争取支持，最终在1862《土地授予法》颁布6年之后，加州大学 (University of California) 成立了。当时它并不叫伯克利，它只是加州大学。伯克利最初的建校地并没有城市，伯克利的名字来源于一位对在美国创办大学怀有热忱的英国主教 George Berkeley (乔治·伯克利)。这座城市也以伯克利的名字来命名。在英国，他们将“伯克利”发音为“柏克莱”。所以当你穿着伯克利的T恤走在伦敦时，也许会有人跟你打招呼说，“嘿，你来自柏克莱”。你会回答 “是的”。因为虽然读音不同，他们所指的是一个地方。所以 1868，是伯克利的一个小小的开始。

两年后，执政者决定让女性和男性一样获得入学机会。之后的三十年内，伯克利迅速成为美国最伟大的大学之一。到1910年，伯克利已位列美国前十名。在第二次世界大战之后，美国政府和州政府决定投入大量资金支持伯克利的科学研究，这所大学得以真正起飞。张亘先生和我第一次见面是在劳伦斯伯克利国家实验室 (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory)。欧内斯特·劳伦斯 (Ernest Lawrence) 是一位非常杰出的材料科学家，他在伯克利山上安装了世界第一台加速器，用于观察核裂变和粒子运动。他从美国政府那里获得一大笔应用物理的科研经费，用于在山上及伯克利校园内建立科研设施。伯克利很快成为美国排名前三的大学之一。

今天，伯克利的工程学排名前三，与MIT和斯坦福齐名。我们与斯坦福之间的竞争关系，使我们不太谈论他们。尤其在某些特定日子里，你不能在伯克利校内穿着红色衣服。比如每年11月的某一天，我们和斯坦福橄榄球比赛 (Big Game) 的日子，如果你在校园里穿红色衣服，很可能会有人来威胁你把它脱掉。所以如果你在11月来伯克利，你需要小心一点，穿上你的伯克利校服。当然，如果你去斯坦福游览并穿着伯克利的衣服，你要随时准备说 “打败斯坦福！” (Beat Stanford)。这个是伯克利这个角色所赋予的职责。

伯克利如何发展成如此优秀的大学呢？部分因为成立时执政者的决定。当时的法案认为，教授美国人实用技能是非常重要的事。当时绝大多数的学校只教授哲学，历史和文学。法案认为，美国的繁荣取决于民众拥有的科学，数学和工程学的知识。在加州，黄金的重要性决定了我们第一批开设的学院是采矿与工程学院 (School of Mines and Engineering)。采矿与工程学院就是工程学院 (College of Engineering) 的前身。采矿学院最开始主要研究如何开采加州剩余的黄金和其它贵金属。科研与实践相得益彰，使得采矿学院迅速发展成为工程学院，并跻身成全美前三的工程学院。所以当政者决定建立向全加州学生提供学习机会，并讲授多门学科的加州大学，为伯克利发展成如此优秀的大学奠定了基础。

你们其中一些人可能是经济专业的。我们有排名前五的经济系，排名前五的历史系，排名前三的英语和文学系，排名前三的人类系。我们有最顶尖的物理系，以及排名第一的化学系。你可以继续在排名榜单上读下去。伯克利有能力在任何专业都做的非常出色。事实上，联邦政府和州政府给伯克利提供了大量的资源。如果没有这些顶尖的资源，伯克利很难成为一个如此伟大的学校。与此同时，从美国东海岸招聘来的优秀师资也帮助了伯克利成长。我们在二月份写信给他们，那时的东海岸白雪皑皑，冰冻三尺。寒冷的天气与四季如春的加州形成鲜明对比。我们成功吸引了很多出色的教员。天气当然不是唯一的原因，更重要的是在这里，他们能够在最好的实验室里工作，与最棒的同事共事，辅导那些最优异的学生。这些学生绝大多数没有精英背景，他们很多人出身卑微。在公立大学体系下，只要这个学生在中学里足够优秀，即使他没有足够的学费，也可以获得在公立大学学习的机会。

伯克利发展的愈发壮大。时至今日，学校里有近三万名本科生，一万名研究生，总计四万余名学生在校园里就读。有些公立学校规模更大，比如同样著名的加州大学洛杉矶分校 (University of California Los Angeles)。当时随着加州扩张，伯克利已经无法容纳如此多学生。当政者决定建立所谓的“加州大学的南部分校”。当学校建成后，他们决定把它变成一所独立的大学，但是通过加州大学公立系统与伯克利联系在一起。加州大学洛杉矶分校非常优秀，经常被评为美国第二的公立大学。但毋庸置疑的，伯克利是第一的公立大学：过去是，现在是，未来也会依旧如此。

为期两周的伯克利大师讲堂将成为你们人生重要的经历。你们会一辈子铭记它。你们会记得来到美国，坐在伯克利教授俱乐部 (Berkeley Faculty Club)，在一个有如此之多诺贝尔奖和菲尔兹奖获得者的校园里听讲座。菲尔兹奖是颁给40岁以下的最卓越的数学家的奖项。事实上，伯克利各种奖项获得者数量在世界都名列前茅。你们将会与世界最伟大的学者擦肩，并深度体会伟大前辈们在伯克利建立的学术传统，追求学术的卓越，找到自己的道路，尽最大努力做到最好，并为世界做出贡献。公立大学和私立大学的区别，在于对世界的责任。伯克利的学生来自不同背景。有些是被哈佛大学拒绝的学生，也有些是拒绝了哈佛大学的学生。他们来到这里，不仅为了学习，更为了和诺贝尔奖得主一起共事，与伟大的科学家一同探索，和优秀的同学一起成长，用在伯克利获取的知识让世界变得更美好。

加州大学伯克利分校涌现出了很多的创业公司，但几乎所有创业公司的初衷都是为社会做贡献。学生们当然想要获得个人成功，但他们都有着更大的追求。稍后你们可以问张亘先生，让他来讲讲他和他的许多同学创业的共同目标。当伯克利的学生拥有了一个想法后，他们会和其他伯克利同学一起，为实现目标而共同努力。他们会为气候变化寻找解决方案，会为治疗全球疾病作出贡献，让技术更好地优化新能源和可再生能源的使用，开发新型教育技术，更广泛地传播他们在伯克利所获得的知识与理念，促进全球教育公平。

促进教育公平的重要性在于，虽然伯克利是一所很大的大学，加州大学也有十个分校，仍然有很多学生无法进入加州大学进行学习。政府近年来减少了对于加州大学的经费支持，更让局面雪上加霜。我们无法录取所有极具竞争力的优秀学生，比如你们。很多优秀的学生需要伯克利的优质教育资源。因此，这里的学生一直在研发更先进的教育技术，将伯克利的优质资源共享给全世界。

在我担任校长期间，我非常热衷于建立伯克利与其他高校的合作。我可能没有去过你们的大学，对此我感到遗憾。我在任职期间几次前往中国的清华大学，并最终建立了清华伯克利深圳学院。中国像美国一样拥有着优秀的高校资源。我们致力于与中国高校建立以学术为中心的密切联系。有时国家之间可能存在紧张关系，比如贸易战和政治分歧，但这些都不会影响学术合作。国际社会的政治环境一直在变化，但是政治与学术无关。在学术交往高度发达的今天，无论你从中国来到美国，还是从美国前往中国，你总会发现一些你认识的人。这些人可能是你论文的合著者，校友，也可能是一起共事过的研究员和教授。

高校间的学术合作其实也是国家间的一种外交渠道。美国已经意识到了中国高校的进步：新的大学如雨后春笋一般地被设立，传统名校也获得了更多更好的研究资源。在当前的全球大学排名中，有一个甚至是由上海的一所高校设立的（上海交通大学的ARWU排名）。这个排名让我们意识到，如果我们要提升知识水平，我们需要充分利用多所大学间的资源，这种合作形式不应仅局限在我们美国，更应该扩大到全球范围。中国现在是学术研究的中心，在一些诸如人工智能和机器学习的领域，中国正在进行一些最顶尖的研究。伯克利在这些领域也卓有建树，我们之间有很多可以互相学习借鉴的地方。因此，我继续为清华伯克利深圳学院做工作，因为它代表了大学之间合作的未来与愿景——如果大学间共同努力，共同合作，我们不仅可以促进学术研究，更可以促进相互理解。

我希望在接下来的两周里，你能够深受启发，希望你们能在这两周里结识伯克利著名的教授。我也希望你们能把这看做是一个探索伯克利的机会。大家不远万里来到这里。中美两国间共识多与分歧，我们之间虽然存在语言和文化上的障碍，但我们依然可以求同存异，拓展交流与合作。

现在我回到中国并继续我在那里的工作。我和我的团队在包括深圳在内的中国不同地区建立学校，我希望这个团队能够帮助中国学生在世界各地学习不同的语言，并为他们在大学里的学习提供不同的机会。最为重要的是，这是一种对中美现有的伙伴关系的完善与扩展。未来无论政治形势多么紧张，无论我们面临的问题有多么严峻 -- 气候变化、全球疾病、自动化及新型数字经济带来的失业，这些都将成为全球性的问题，而不再仅仅是一个区域的问题。为了解决这些问题，我们需要从两个不同的层面来解决：技术科学的层面，以及政治文化相互理解的层面。

从某种意义上来讲，伯克利大师讲堂这两周非常重要。你们在这两周的经历，认识的人，学到的新的知识，将把你们变成全球大使。你们将不仅代表自己的学校，自己的家乡、在中国的城市，你们也将代表伯克利，以及其它的美国大学。我非常希望你们可以在这里享受一段美妙的时光。我也希望你们铭记自己的使命，解决未来世界的重任在你们肩上。

在我结束前，我想跟你们分享一点小知识。文化非常重要。如果你不知道如何说“谢谢”，或者“火车站怎么走”，人们或许无法给你提供帮助。在伯克利，我们有一个口号，如果你使用它，你将立刻和其他伯克利的人拉进距离。你在校园里会看到不同的雕像，但最经常看到的是金熊。如果你看过加州的旗帜，你会发现上面也有一只熊。熊是加州的吉祥物，更是我们伯克利的吉祥物。

在我做校长时，每次演讲结束时，我都会说两个词，今天也不例外，我也想与你们分享它。这两个词是 “GO BEARS”。它是一个口号，也是打开沟通的一个机会。无论你在何时何地看到伯克利文化衫，你都可以说“GO BEARS”，他们将回应你“GO BEARS”。这是属于伯克利的校园文化。现在，让我们试试。左边的同学说“GO”，右边的同学说“BEARS”。让我们重复三次，最后一次我希望你们喊得足够响亮。一、二、三——“GO BEARS! ”谢谢大家。

原文版权：Nicholas B. Dirks 教授

翻译版权：伯克利大师讲堂

Nicholas B. Dirks (10th Chancellor, University of California Berkeley):

Good morning! Welcome to Berkeley. So you arrived at midnight last night? Very good. We have very good weather for you so thank you for bringing it. Maybe less humid than Fuzhou at this time of the year. it's a great pleasure for me to be here welcoming you. I got an invitation from one of my students who I signed the commencement certificate for. I cannot say no. I almost had to say no because I actually have been doing some work in China, in Shenzhen, Where Berkeley established, about four years ago, a joint research and graduate training institute with Tsinghua University. We set up something called TBSI, Tsinghua-Berkeley Shenzhen Institute. Some of you might even think about it for your graduate study. It's doing very exciting work in areas from precision medicine, data analysis, new materials and expanding nano materials, AI, Robotics, and Machine learning. So keep that in mind as there is another way to stay in touch with this university.

Gen asked me to say a few words about the history of the university, and about the fact that it is somewhat unique in the U.S. in being one of the top ranked academic institutions at the same time it is a public University. In China most of the universities are public universities. That is to say, they are supported by the state that is what I meant by public. In the US the first universities were actually private. Many of them, in fact, were set up by church, groups and organizations. That is in fact how some of the colleges and universities in China also began with missionary support and it's also the case with Tsinghua university. But most universities in China are public universities and here the public university system only began with the formation of the University of Virginia in the 1830s and 40s that was set up by the President of the United States by the name of Thomas Jefferson, very important figure in the history of United States, and he wanted to have a university which could be accessible to the people. He set up what he called the university of the people, by the people and for the people.

But of course, at that time, people were all men, and no women, and most of them are from the land grant families. So the 19th century went on, people decided that, in the U.S., they need public universities that would really be for the people that could teach them a variety of skills both general and practical. So beginning in 1862 when Abraham Lincoln was the president of the United States, we established something called the "Land-Grant University". “Land-grant University” was effectively a way in which the US government provided a endowment: the granted land that would become a source of income for universities in each state to be set up and to become the universities that everyday people could go to. Of course there are a great number of universities already: Harvard, Yale, and other new universities like Chicago, Hopkins, Caltech (only in the 20th century came up but it's a private) and and so the 1862 acts was a very important act in U.S. history.

California became a state in 1849. That's a date that we use a lot here. Our football team is called the 49ers, but that's not so much because we became a state, it is because in 1849 we had something called the gold rush. Gold was discovered in the rivers and hills of central California and so people came from all over the United States to get rich. Some did, most didn't, but many people came. 

Enough people came to establish a state. But the founders of the state of California knew that you could not have a vital state without a university. So they worked and worked and worked to try to get support and they did so, in fact, only six years after the land-grant Act, in 1868 the University of California was established. Now in those days it wasn't called Berkeley: it was just the University of California. There was one campus and the actual reason why it became called Berkeley was that it was established here on this beautiful campus and there was no City. They decided to name the city after Bishop Berkeley, a Britisher who was interested in setting up universities in the US, and they pulled his name out of his hat and they called it Berkeley. In British they will say Berkeley[柏克莱，英音], in us we we call it Berkeley so if you wear that shirt and you're in London somebody will come and say are you from Berkeley[柏克莱，英音], and you say yes, because it is the same place anyway. So 1868, a small beginning.

In two years, a decision was made to bring women in as well as men. It became within the first thirty years, one of the great universities in the United States. By 1910 it was considered to be one of the top 10 schools. But it was only after World War II when the state and the government of the U.S. decided to invest heavily in research that the university really took off. Gen and I first met in fact at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Ernest Lawrence was a very eminent material scientist who set up the first accelerator up on the hill for looking at nuclear fission and particle movement and he was able to get a large set of grants from the US government for scientific research in Applied Physics and because of the investment in the laboratories on the hill and in the research facilities here on campus, Berkeley quickly became one of the top three universities in the U.S.

Today if you look at our engineering, we are ranked in the top three with MIT and Stanford. We have a rivalry with Stanford so we don't always talk about them, but it's okay. If you wear red on Berkeley's campus, because as you know we are blue and yellow, if you wear red on certain days of the year it's not a good thing. Particularly when we play football against Stanford that is what is called the big game. Every year in November one day you simply cannot wear red on campus because somebody will come and actually threaten to take it off. I just give you that warning if you come back in November: be careful and wear your Berkeley shirt. If you go and pay a visit to Stanford, that's okay but if you wear your Berkeley shirt you have to be prepared to say "Beat Stanford". That's part of the roles.

So how did Berkeley have become such a good university? Partly it because the decision at that point, the bill at that point said, it was important to teach people in America about the practical skills. Most of the universities were only teaching philosophy, history, and literature, but it was decided of course that the prosperity of the U.S. depended on our knowledge of science, mathematics, and engineering. In California, because of the importance of gold, one of the first schools that was set up just over there across the way, was the School of Mines and Engineering. The mining school was actually where the first engineering took place and of course the idea was how to mine the reserves of gold in the state but also other precious metals. One thing led to another and the school of mining became the College of Engineering which of course is one of the top three colleges of engineering in the US. The decision to make Berkeley into a public university was to open it up to many many students from across the state and to make sure that we weren't teaching only one thing that we would actually be good in everything.

Some of you are majoring perhaps in economics. We have a top five department of economics; we have a top five Department of History; we have a top three Department of English and Literature; we have a top three Department of Anthropology; we have a top one Department in Physics; we have a number one Department in Chemistry and you can keep going across the board. Berkeley was able to become good at everything. The truth fact is that the government gave plenty of resources. Without that it's hard to make a great university where you can have some of the best researchers come.  It also helped because we recruited faculty from the East Coast and we would write them a letter in February. In February on the East Coast the snow is heavy, ice is thick, it's very cold and it's like this in California and so we were able to attract many good faculty but, not only because of the weather, also because they could come and have the best laboratories in which to work, the best colleagues to work with and also the best students. The students, many of them were not from elite backgrounds: many of them came from very humble origins. There was no tuition and the idea was that if you did well in high school you could go to the public university.

It became bigger and bigger and bigger. Today we have, this will not surprise you from China because the numbers are very similar in China, but today we have 30,000 undergraduate students and we have about 10,000 postgraduates: students doing professional degrees and also PhDs. So around 40,000 students are on campus. Now other public universities are bigger, like the University of California Los Angeles. UCLA is also a great University and it was formed when the state of California became so big that Berkeley wasn't big enough so they set up what is called the “Southern Branch” of the university and once they set themselves up as a southern branch they decided to make themselves into a completely separate University but linked through the university system. They also are great University and they are often ranked as the number two public university in the US. But I'm quick to say that Berkeley is the number one public it always has been it always will be.

Your two weeks here for The Berkeley Lecture are gonna be very important.I think you will remember this time for the rest of your lives. I think you'll know that you came and you sat in this Berkeley Faculty Club and you listen to lectures on a campus that has so many Nobel laureates, so many winners of the Fields Medal, which is the award in mathematics for the best mathematicians under the age of 40. It has the most winners of other prizes and virtually every field. You are going to be rubbing shoulders both with the people who are here today, but also with the traditions that have been established by their presence here. What that tradition entails is a commitment to academic excellence, to finding your path, to do the best possible work you can do. But also, and this is where there is a difference between a public university and a private university, but also to make a difference in the world.People who come to Berkeley, partly because they come from so many different backgrounds. They're not assuming that they can get into Harvard although many of them in fact find that it's harder to get into Berkeley and then to Harvard sometimes. But they come here and they want to learn and they want to learn with Nobel laureates and they want to learn with great researchers and they want to have experiences with fellow students but they also want to use their knowledge to make the world a better place.

We have many many startups that emerged out at this university but almost all the startups are designed to do some good. Students of course want to make a success for themselves but they have a bigger interest in them. You can ask Gen about this later. He will tell you that so many of his fellow students had an idea. They pulled together with fellow Berkeley students.  They set something up. They want to do something about climate change. They want to do something about global disease. They want to do something about finding ways that technology can better organize different kinds of things from the use of new and renewable energy, to the development of new kinds of technological aids that will help spread the benefits of education to an even wider group than can come here.

One of the reasons for that in the United States is that even though Berkeley is big and we now have ten campuses of the University of California, still many students are unable to attend because now the state provides less funding so there is some tuition and now we actually can't accept all the good students who apply, like universities you come from. They're very competitive to get here. So we have many many more students who need the advantages of the education we offer here. So there are students here who want to take new education technologies, and find ways to spread the great knowledge that is available here on this campus to many more people not just in the United States but around the world.

When I was Chancellor I was very keen to set up international partnerships. I regret I might not have come to some of your universities and I didn't make it to Fuzhou. I did spend some time in in Beijing and particularly with Tsinghua and as I said we set up this joint Institute. The idea there was to recognize there are huge resources in China as well as the U.S. We have many many connections and in some respects our connections are best realized through the partnerships and the collaborations around research and around knowledge. Sometimes there may be tensions between countries. There may be trade wars that are set in motion. There may be other kinds of misunderstandings. This is the nature of the political world that we live in and the political world I've been around on this planet long enough to know that things common things go things change. But throughout all these different political changes what is extraordinary is that when you go to a university, whether you come from China to the US, whether you go from the u.s. to China, you find people you know: people who are co-authors of research papers; students or alumni I should say who have studied it here in university; researchers and faculty who have spent time going back and forth.

We have almost a kind of diplomatic channel that is made available through the great universities and of course it is also something that you know well, that I think only in the United States, people are becoming aware of that universities in China are getting better and better: many new universities are being established, but the traditional universities are also getting resources for better research and now in the global rankings by, even one of which is the ranking that was set up by a university in Shanghai, the Shanghai Jiao Tong ranking, we realized that if we are to advance the state of knowledge, we need to take advantage, we need to leverage the resources that exist in multiple campuses and multiple universities, not just in our own countries but in other countries as well.

China is now a center of research. We know in fields like artificial intelligence and robotics and machine learning, that China is doing some of the most advanced research. We at the Berkeley campus are also doing very state-of-the-art research. We have much we can learn from each other. So I came back to the Tsinghua-Berkeley Shenzhen Institute because it represents for me the future of collaboration between universities. It shows to me that if the universities will work together, we can not only advance knowledge: we can advance mutual understanding.

I hope your two weeks here you have very stimulating lectures. I hope during your two weeks here you meet other people who are on the Berkeley campus. I hope you get to meet some of the great professors here. But I also hope that you see this as an opportunity to explore a little bit about how place like Berkeley, in California, all the way across the Pacific Ocean, a very long way even if you are going on a very fast jet. Share far more than what are different. We have many more commonalities than we have differences. You may have some difficulties understanding my English. I have some difficulties understanding your Chinese languages, whether Mandarin or Chinese, I apologies.

I am now going back to China and continue to work there. I am working with a group that is setting up some schools in different parts of China including in Shenzhen, and it would hopefully be there to help train their students to learn different languages around the world,  and to prepare themselves different opportunities to College and University studies. But most of all, it’s opportunity to try to build on the partnerships that already exist, and to expand them further. Because the future, however tense certain kinds of politics may become, however challenging certain kinds of global issues will become, climate change, environment pollution, global diseases, problem of automation sometimes displacing jobs and the need to find new forms of employment that are in line with the new kind of digital economies that we are building, these are all problems that are no longer local problems. In order to solve them we need to solve them at two different levels: Both the level of technology and science but also the level of politics and culture and mutual understanding.

So in a way this two weeks is especially important because as you have these experiences, as you develop these relationships, as you learn the things you learn, you are becoming ambassadors for not only from universities, not only from your home towns and cities in China, but you're also becoming global ambassadors for Berkeley, for U.S. universities and for the commonalities that we have. So I hope very much that you have a wonderful time here. But I also remember that this is a really important time. We are counting on you to solve some of the big world challenges in the future and to use your time in your university and in this university to find new solutions for those problems.

Now as I close, one thing I want to leave you with, is a little bit of a local knowledge. A culture is very important. If you don't know how to say “thank you”, or “please can you tell me how to get to the train station”, these are things that are going to be difficult and and people won't necessarily be able to help you. At Berkeley, there's a phrase we use. If you use it you will establish an immediate bond with other Berkeley people. When you go around campus you'll see different statues but you'll always see statues of bears. If you look at this the flag of the state of California there's a bear on the flag as well. So it is the mascot for the state, and it is also the mascot of the University of California at Berkeley.

So at the end of every speech that I give as Chancellor, I have to say two words. But when I speak to students, I have to get you to say it as well. So the two words are “GO BEARS”. It's a cheer. It's a chance. It's also if you meet a Berkeley sweatshirt somewhere if you're traveling and you meet them in London you might just say “GO BEARS” and they'll say “GO BEARS”. It's like a secret greedy. So this is what we're gonna do. This group here is going to say “GO”, and this group here is gonna say “BEARS”. I want to do it three times and by the last time I want this really to be loud. One Two Three “GO BEARS”. Everyone three times “GO BEARS”! Thank you.

Copyright & Credit to: Professor Nicholas B. Dirks

Translation Copyright: The Berkeley Lecture