As you get to know your roommates and your classmates, please be slow to judge and quick to understand. One of the many reasons that we admit students literally from all over the world, people with many different life experiences and many different interests, is because we learn from our differences.
“Please don’t judge people quickly based on their outward appearances or your first impressions. “During your time here, please don’t overlook your Alan,” said Bacow. Yet their friendship took hold, Bacow said, because they focused on what they had in common rather than their differences, always respected and learned from each other, and helped one another out - it was Alan who fixed Bacow up on a blind date with Adele Fleet, now his wife of 47 years. Alan liked almost all New York sports teams. I liked Bob Dylan, James Taylor, and Joni Mitchell. He liked to listen to the Rolling Stones, The Who, and The Band. He brought his stereo to campus and loved to study with the music blasting. Bacow told the audience the story behind his 53-year-old close friendship with Alan, his freshman roommate at MIT, a relationship he would have thought unlikely because of their differences. And I hope you will master these skills while you are at Harvard so that you can devote your life to repairing a world that we all know is far from perfect.”īacow also called students to relish the first memories of their College years, including their first class, their first assignment, their first grade, their “very first burger at Bartley’s,” and the lifelong friendships they are about to form with roommates and classmates. “We are here to prepare you to deal with that world, a world that will challenge you and sometimes even offend you. “Our job is to prepare you for the world you will inhabit when you leave this yard,” Bacow said. The 1,649 members of the Class of 2026 hail from 49 states and 93 countries First-generation college students represent 20.3 percent and international students 13.9 percent. Harvard aspires to prepare students to live and work in a complex and diverse global community, Bacow said, by admitting students from diverse backgrounds in terms of countries, cultures, genders, races, and ethnicities. Only when you have this experience will you be well equipped to make a difference in the world.” Even more importantly, you need to be willing to change your mind in the face of a better argument or new information. If you really seek the truth, it’s important to engage with people who think differently from you. But truth needs to be tested and needs to be revealed and that can only happen on the anvil of competing ideas. It is the reason we exist, to seek the truth. “Our motto at Harvard is Veritas,” Bacow said. In his last Convocation address as Harvard president, Larry Bacow urged the Class of 2026 to take advantage of the University’s diverse environment to learn to listen to those with different views in order to begin repairing the world in a time of extreme polarization and echo chambers.īacow, who will step down in June 2023, spoke at Tercentenary Theatre Tuesday afternoon in a ceremony that officially welcomed the newest members of the Harvard community.
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