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]