Learn English Fareed Zakaria Liberal Arts is NOT useless with BIG subtitles

it is a huge honor to be here to the

students I have to tell you you’re

already way ahead of me I did not

actually make my my graduation it was in

the morning and I I guess you have

something called super Saturday’s right

let’s just say I have a very super

Saturday and you know it wasn’t quite at

a sushi place but it was it was tough to

get up the next morning you know but I

remember very well that moment of pride

of nostalgia of regret but of

anticipation as you’re leaving this

extraordinary place and this beautiful

beautiful campus and I remembered so

well even though it was 30 odd years ago

and I remember that sense of

apprehension that you have wondering

about what the world is going to look

like I had it all because for me college

wasn’t just about college it was about

coming to America I grew up in India and

I went through the Indian educational

system and then came to to college on a

scholarship and I fell in love with

America and college and a liberal

education all at the same time and so I

I know how special this liberal

education that you have just gone

through is and how valuable it is and so

when I hear the attacks on it from

people who worry about whether you’re

gonna get a job who worried about the

the cost of it all I understand it all

but I really think this is one of

America’s greatest jewels and should be

preserved you’re part of

part of the attack I’m convinced is that

people don’t understand what the word

arts means in the in the liberal arts it

does not refer simply to the fine arts

to theatre to drama in its origins it

really meant the arts in a sense as

opposed to a specific craft like farming

or masonry in the Middle Ages and when

you studied the liberal arts you were

studying science geometry astronomy

rhetoric logic and those things were

seen as the acquisition not simply of a

specific set of skills but a broader

array of knowledge a kind of wisdom that

would take you through not just the

first job but the second job and the

third job let’s face it you are all

going to enter a world in which

technology and globalization are so

transforming life that it is quite

possible in five years you will be

working at a company that wasn’t founded

yet in ten years you may work in an

industry that didn’t exist today so what

exactly is the kind of training you need

it is that broad set of skills wisdom

knowledge that is imparted through a

liberal education we live in an age of

technology the the technological

capacity you have at your fingertips

literally is breathtaking president

Bronfman and I were marveling at the

fact that the the iPhone 7 or the

Samsung Galaxy equivalent is actually

more powerful than the three most

powerful computers in the world in the

1980s the Cray supercomputers owned by

IBM and the and the United States

government and you have in your pockets

a computer that is more powerful and

think about it all you do with it is

watch Netflix and snapchat alright but

the fact that we live in this

extraordinary age of technology doesn’t

mean that you still don’t need these

broader skills because one of the things

I’ve noticed in reading and reporting

and talking to the people who make this

world is that the fundamental insight

you still need to have to succeed in

this world is not just about technology

it’s about how human beings use

technology so Steve Jobs understood that

people wanted a computer to not simply

be a machine that did back-office

functions and adjusted payroll but they

wanted a personal helper that was in a

sense something that they could not just

use but fall in love with and that the

design and the ease of use was very much

part of what made his creations so

ubiquitous mark zuckerberg told me once

that he thought that the most important

insight he had that helped him found

Facebook was psychological not

technological that he realized that the

Internet at that point was still a world

of anonymity or pseudonymous handles and

that people wanted a place where they

could be themselves where they could

reveal their true identities and that

was one of the core inspirations behind

Facebook that you could actually be

yourself and communicate with your

friends as yourself he planned to be a

psychology major at Harvard before he

dropped out if you listened and talked

to Jack Jeff Bezos he will tell you that

he begins his senior strategy meetings

with something called study hall at

which people one person in from his

senior group is asked to write a memo in

the form of an essay six pages outlining

a proposed strategy and for 20 minutes

study hall people have to sit and read

that before the meeting begins because

as he said I don’t want anyone

pretending they’ve read the memo one

could actually adapt that for classes I

think sometimes but the point is that he

once it in that form because he thinks

that writing a clean essay is still the

most powerful way to think it is the

most powerful way to analyze and it is

the way in which this extraordinary

technology company plots its future you

know I’ve been banging this drum for a

few years but now people are catching on

and so I see

on Amazon books that are doing well with

names like the fuzzy and the techie why

liberal arts will rule the digital world

or you can do anything

the surprising power of a useless

liberal arts education useless I should

point out in quotation marks and I I

want to make clear I see in in in your

future and in everyone’s future the

importance of technology and science

look you know I’m a nation parent my

nine-year-old daughter Sophia is in the

audience here and she has to take extra

math on the weekends that her dad makes

her do so I’m true to form in that sense

but I do think that you will still

always need to marry those scientific

technological skills with the basic

understanding of human beings and that

understanding of human beings is

something you can get from a novel or a

poem or a work of history just as much

as you can get it from an engineering

class so try to think deeply and broadly

and don’t worry you know there’s a good

study out by the way by Brookings in and

Hamilton the Hamilton Institute that

points out that while liberal arts

majors start off with lower salaries by

the end of their lives they more than

catch up I think you could even do

imagine a a kind of Bucknell study where

we take the schools of engineering

management and the and the liberal arts

and keep tracking you guys for for the

next 10 20 30 years and we’d get some

interesting results out of that but I

wanted to talk today also about another

sense in which the liberal arts are

under threat and this is really the the

other word in liberal arts that is under

threat

liberal liberal by the way does not in

any sense refer to the modern political

notion of liberal it refers to liberal

in the original Latin sense

pertaining to Liberty and the entire

purpose of a liberal arts education was

to prepare you to exercise those skills

of citizenship and wisdom public wisdom

that would allow you

to live as free men and women and I

worry about it because in some ways this

is at the heart of the Western tradition

this is at the heart of what has made

the West unique and special for so many

years that ability to preserve protect

and defend Liberty

and at the heart of that idea of Liberty

was the Liberty to think speak believe

act but perhaps above all to speak and

that sense of Liberty of thought freedom

of speech does strike me as under some

considerable strain in the United States

from all kinds of sources but one source

that’s very important is on cam college

campuses you all have heard about and

read about the various cases where

people have been disinvited have been

invited and then booed or shunned or not

allowed to complete their talks the

protests that have taken place and these

strike me as fundamentally illiberal if

not an American the whole purpose of the

liberal tradition the whole purpose of

liberal arts has been to hear people out

to listen to opposing views you know

but at the start of the Enlightenment

Voltaire said famously said I disagree

with every word that you have said but I

will defend to death your right to say

it now this is one of those quotes which

in journalism we call to good to check

unfortunately I did have to check it for

this speech he never said that it it

does accurately inkay you know capture

what he his views but he never actually

said those specific words but let’s

imagine Voltaire said that but what I

will tell you what people did have said

and these are important words is Oliver

Wendell Holmes who said when we protect

freedom of thought we are protecting

freedom for the thought that we hate

this is very important

freedom of speech freedom of thought is

not freedom for people we like for warm

fuzzy ideas that you find comfortable it

is for ideas that you find offensive not

just wrong but offensive perhaps the

greatest exponent of the freedom of

speech and off freedom in general is

John Stuart Mill the great philosopher

of the 19th century who in some ways

articulated the idea behind the Western

tradition of Liberty best and he says

however unwillingly a person who has a

strong opinion may admit the possibility

that his opinion may be false he ought

to be moved by the consideration that

however true it may be if it is not

fully and frequently and fearlessly

discussed it will be held as a dead

dogma not living truth and that is

sometimes what I feel when I walk around

college campuses that you all believe

things passionately but as dead dogmas

not as living fruits because you don’t

argue about them enough you don’t

confront people who argue against you

you turn your back to them and I don’t

want you to turn your back to people I

want you to turn your your face your

mind debate with them argue with them

explain to them why you think you’re

right and why you’re wrong and guess

what you will discover in that that no

matter who you’re talking to

there’s something you learn from that

exchange there’s some way in which they

are addressing a concern that is real

there is some

argument that they have that you might

have overlooked that’s why mill says if

opponents of all important truths do not

exist it is indispensable to imagine

them and supply them with the strongest

arguments which the most skillful

devil’s advocate could conjure up you

don’t need to imagine these people just

invite them to your campuses just allow

them to speak and then argue with them

and in that contestation of ideas we

have always held somehow a greater truth

emerges there is we all know a kind of

anti-intellectualism on the right these

days the denial of facts of reason of

science but there is also an anti

intellectualism on the left an attitude

of self-righteousness that says we are

so pure we are so morally superior we

cannot bear to hear an idea that we

don’t like or disagree with there is no

such idea there is no idea that is

beyond the pale everything should be

within the arena and should be worth

contesting I talk about liberals because

campuses are invariably more liberal

than conservative and it is a real

problem to have this there’s this kind

of silencing of conservative voices

Michael Roth the president of Wesleyan

points out that at this point on college

campuses you perhaps need an affirmative

action program for conservatives to just

be able to hear what they’re saying I I

doubt very much conservatives would like

that idea but I think the spirit is one

that that is entirely right we we want

to celebrate every kind of diversity

these days except intellectual diversity

and it’s important to just remember some

some facts here 2016 Pew study found

that while Democrats are more likely to

view Republicans as close-minded when

you actually do the analysis each side

is about as the same in terms of their

closed mindedness and hostility to

hearing views that they don’t agree with

let me tell you the simple practical

reason why you should

fight actively against this when you go

on in your lives and you are find

yourselves in positions of some

authority or decision-making the most

dangerous thing you will find is the

ability to not imagine that things could

go wrong that your course of action

could be the wrong one and so the most

important skill you need is to ask

yourself what am I not seeing what is

the best argument against what I’m doing

and if you look back at the crises that

this country has faced that businesses

have faced almost always if the CEO of

the President had asked what could go

wrong what am I missing what is the best

strongest case against what I’m doing

things would have worked out better it

is the greatest danger I think you will

face over the course of your lives this

ability to close yourselves off into

some kind of bubble where you don’t

contemplate the possibility that you’re

wrong there’s a broader political

challenge it create creates I think

which is as a society we need that

ability to understand each other you

know we’re living at times as I was

describing technology capitalism

globalization all these things are

powerful but they are all driving us

apart they are segregating us in terms

of education in terms of the cities

versus the rural areas in terms of the

people who are able to surf this world

of globalization and technology and

those who aren’t all these forces are

pulling us apart and perhaps it is this

extraordinary force of a liberal

education that can try to bring us

together to bring us together by at

least having a common conversation by

talking about the things that we agree

with by talking about the things we

don’t agree with so that we can together

find a way to come together at least in

our understanding that we do actually

have a common destiny that is the

greatest gift that a liberal education

could give you as a person in your lives

in your career

in your personal lives but also in your

public lives as citizens that was in

many ways the point of a liberal

education from the start

if we invented in a way by the Greeks

when they invented democracy and they

decided we need to train people not just

to hunt and farm and fish but we need to

train them to be citizens and I think

this is even more important today as we

find ourselves in a world where we we in

many ways don’t think that we are

citizens of the same Republic citizens

of the same common space and so I I

plead with you not just in college

campuses but through life keep

yourselves open keep yourselves able to

listen to to argue with to engage with

people of wildly differing perspectives

even the ones that you cannot abide let

me close with one final thought you know

there’s a there’s wisdom that you gain

from books and from learning and from

history and from a great liberal

education but there’s also a certain

kind of wisdom that you gain just from

living life and let me give you this one

piece of advice which I have given

students in your position before but I

really do think it’s very important you

cannot know until you have gone through

the experience what it is like to be a

parent until you have children of your

own you will never know how much your

parents love you right now you look at

them with a mixed feeling I know yeah

you love them but you know there’s the

crazy phone calls the constant pestering

they trying to get you to do things the

you know the the worrying about you

it’ll all make sense once you have kids

trust me because you will do exactly the

same thing but here’s what I’m giving

you I’m giving you a 20-year headstart

don’t wait that long today of all days

make sure you thank your parents for

having helped you get to this point in

life congratulations to all the

graduates in Godspeed

[Applause]