迈克尔布隆伯格在哈佛大学2019年毕业典礼英语演讲稿Thank you, Katie – and thank you to President Faust, the Fellows of Harvard College, the Boardof Overseers, and all the faculty, alumni, and students who have welcomed me back to campus.I’m excited to be here, not only to address the distinguished graduates and alumni atHarvard University’s 363rd commencement but to stand in the exact spot where Oprah stoodlast year. OMG.Let me begin with the most important order of business: Let’s have a big round of applause forthe Class of 2019! They’ve earned it!As excited as the graduates are, they are probably even more exhausted after the past fewweeks. And parents: I’m not referring to their final exams. I’m talking about the SeniorOlympics, the Last Chance Dance, and the Booze Cruise – I mean, the moonlight cruise.The entire year has been exciting on campus: Harvard beat Yale for the seventh straight timein football. The men’s basketball team went to the second round of the NCAA tournament forthe second straight year. And the Men’s Squash team won national championship.Who’d a thunk it: Harvard, an athletic powerhouse! Pretty soon they’ll be asking whether youhave academics to go along with your athletic programs.My personal connection to Harvard began in 1964, when I graduated from Johns HopkinsUniversity in Baltimore and matriculated here at the B-School.You’re probably asking: How did I ever get into Harvard Business School, given my stellaracademic record, where I always made the top half of the class possible? I have no idea. Andthe only people more surprised than me were my professors.Anyway, here I am again back in Cambridge. And I have noticed that a few things havechanged since I was a student here. Elsie’s – a sandwich spot I used to love near the Square –is now a burrito shop. The Wursthaus – which had great beer and sausage – is now an artisanalgastro-pub, whatever the heck that is. And the old Holyoke Center is now named the SmithCampus Center.Don’t you just hate it when alumni put their names all over everything? I was thinking aboutthat this morning as I walked into the Bloomberg Center on the Harvard Business Schoolcampus across the river.But the good news is, Harvard remains what it was when I first arrived on campus 50 yearsago: America’s most prestigious university. And, like other great universities, it lies at theheart of the American experiment in democracy.Their purpose is not only to advance knowledge, but to advance the ideals of our nation. Greatuniversities are places where people of all backgrounds, holding all beliefs, pursuing allquestions, can come to study and debate their ideas – freely and openly.Today, I’d like to talk with you about how important it is for that freedom to exist for everyone,no matter how strongly we may disagree with another’s viewpoint.Tolerance for other people’s ideas, and the freedom to express your own, are inseparable valuesat great universities. Joined together, they form a sacred trust that holds the basis of ourdemocratic society.But that trust is perpetually vulnerable to the tyrannical tendencies of monarchs, mobs, andmajorities. And lately, we have seen those tendencies manifest themselves too often, both oncollege campuses and in our society.That’s the bad news – and unfortunately, I think both Harvard, and my own city of New York,have been witnesses to this trend.First, for New York City. Several years ago, as you may remember, some people tried to stopthe development of a mosque a few blocks from the World Trade Center site.It was an emotional issue, and polls showed that two-thirds of Americans were against amosque being built there. Even the Anti-Defamation League – widely regarded as the country’smost ardent defender of religious freedom – declared its opposition to the project.The opponents held rallies and demonstrations. They denounced the developers. And theydemanded that city government stop its construction. That was their right – and we protectedtheir right to protest. But they could not have been more wrong. And we refused to cave in totheir demands.The idea that government would single out a particular religion, and block its believers – andonly its believers – from building a house of worship in a particular area is diametricallyopposed to the moral principles that gave rise to our great nation and the constitutionalprotections that have sustained it.Our union of 50 states rests on the union of two values: freedom and tolerance. And it is thatunion of values that the terrorists who attacked us on September 11th, 2019 – and on April15th, 2019 – found most threatening.To them, we were a God-less country.But in fact, there is no country that protects the core of every