中央电视台国际频道的《今日话题》节目主要由海内外知名人士或专家学者就时事热点和典型的社会文化现象进行对话。我们的“对话”频道—Channel
D栏目就是从该节目中撷取最精彩的片段进行加工整理，在浓缩其中智慧的同时也保持了其原本的口语特色，使你如同亲耳聆听他们的谈话。
Interview
with President of Harvard University
与哈佛校长对话
■逸云 整理编写
Z: Zhao Bin, hostess of the CCTV "Dialogue" program
S: Lawrence H. Summers, president of Harvard University
S: When I first came to China it was not possible
to make phone calls to the US. When I first came to China, I met few
people who could speak English. When I first came to China, nobody was
talking about watching TV. People were hoping to get access to radios.
When I first came to China there was no idea in anybody's mind of anything
like the Internet or email. So the world has changed a great deal in
twenty years, and China has changed even more. I believe when the history
of the last part of 20th century is written 200 years from now, the
fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War would be the second
story.1 The first story in that history book would be the dramatic rise
of countries where billions of people live. That's the story that would
start in China.
2
S: Yes, I think it's a very important initiative3
between Harvard and Tsinghua University to train 30 scholars in public
administration. People who actually work in local governments all over
China will learn the tools of public management in everything from the
proper measurement of costs, to thinking through the challenges of regional
economic development, to dealing with environmental problems. These
kinds of issues are very important for China. They are very important
for the US. And there is a lot we can learn in both directions. The
program, which is involved with the university and also the Development
Research Council of the Chinese government, will give the students the
chance to study for 6 weeks here in Tsinghua University with some of
Harvard faculty participating in their instruction. They will come to
the US and study at Harvard for 5 weeks. So we give them a combination
of international perspectives. And I think it will be very very valuable
for the students involved. And I know we in the university will deepen
our understanding of Chinese issues from participation and the program.
And I know also that we'll learn from some of the very important successes
that Chinese officials have had, for example, success issues like making
literacy nearly universal, issues in reducing mortality among mothers
and children.4
56
S: It's a very good question--whether you can teach the leadership,
whether you can teach management. And it's probably true that the greatest
leaders have some special intangibles7
that they are born with, that are probably very hard to teach in the
classroom. But you know, if you talk to anyone who's been a successful
leader, they think they've gained a lot from experience told by people
who were mentors8
to them. They think they've gained a lot from their experience in practical
situations. And all those are things that we can hope to do in classes.
Not by lecturing to people but by providing them with alternatives to
work through case studies9,
to engage in discussions with people who grappled10
with these problems before, to work together as a group, to find common
solutions. If you look at the success that training in business administration
has had around the world and the way that the kind of training has been
provided in business administration, using a case method is now emulated11
all over the world. That wouldn't be happening if there wasn't some
useful knowledge being conveyed. So I believe the program like this
can make an important contribution.
I certainly found when I was in the government that I could learn very
important things from those who were in the academic sector at a particular
point. And I think many people find that as well. So I suspect that
if you look at universities in the future, you are going to find even
more than at present that they are involved in educating people who
are in the middle of their careers. You know we've had a traditionally
what I'd like to call the "fill-tank" theory of education.
You fill yourself up with knowledge when you are young, you gradually
run through the knowledge, you run out of gas and you retire. In a world
where people are living longer than they were, in a world where more
and more people are changing careers, in a world where changes are happening,
there is more need for continuing education throughout life. And I think
that's going to change those who are in the business in producing and
disseminating12
knowledge. It's going to change our work in very important ways.
S: Harvard has a number of projects. We have a very exciting project
under way of environmental cooperation that is going to seek to bring
new techniques to measuring environmental pollutants13,
so that we can come to the most accurate judgments as to what their
sources are and how they can be reduced in China. Some of the early
research for that project is really quite troubling. It suggests that
there're maybe 200,000 people who die prematurely14
each year in China as a consequence of particular air pollution. If
that's right, it certainly has very important policy implications.
Another project we've engaged in between Harvard Business School and
Tsinghua University focuses on the training of business leaders, and
focuses particularly on the needs of those who are moving from middle
positions to top positions, the needs of selling an overall strategy,
the needs of managing finances as well as the needs of managing a company
in an effective way. These are all aspects that are covered in the course.
I hope that in the years ahead we'll broaden our cooperation in all
kinds of areas. Of course we have very strong cooperation and I'd like
to see it get stronger in the study of the Chinese language. I am convinced
that because of China's rising importance in the global system more
and more Americans are going to need to study Chinese if they are going
to take their full part in the global economy.
1516
S: We've recently had an important change in our policies and that is
students have the opportunity to study abroad. We feel it's important.
We come to realize that spending time in a different country is an important
part of becoming an educated young adult. So we want our students to
be doing more of that. And I want them to be doing it consistently with
the liberal arts tradition. And that will mean more students studying
literature, more students studying the experience of different groups
in the society. And it would mean something else for the university
over time. Traditionally in the university art has been westernized,
but increasingly works that come from the east, works that probably
come from China will be a larger part of the canon17
that scholars and graduate students of our university study.
S: I can't prescribe18
for Chinese higher education. I have enough trouble figuring out what
Harvard should consider doing in different areas. I would say that if
one looks at the great leaders of history, so many of them were people
who were deeply steeped19
in history, were deeply steeped in literature, were people who thought
about lessons for today. I think the kind of reading that Abraham Lincoln
did as a young man or the kind of reading that Churchill did was a great
deal of literature. So I think a society that wants to prepare people
for positions of important leadership, a society that wants to be wise
in the years ahead, needs to be a society that has committed to not
only the instrumental use of knowledge, whether it is accounting or
engineering, but also to thinking of the eternal questions, questions
of what it is to know, of what it is to love, of what is human nature.
And I think that's very very important for higher education, for everyone.
20
S: I think if you look at where value resides in the economy you find
that for centuries value resided principally in land. For the most recent
century, it resided most in machinery, in buildings. Increasingly if
you look at the value today, it resides in ideas, intellectual property.
It resides in organizations that bring people with knowledge. So knowledge
is in many ways the stuff21
of today's economy, in the way machinery was the stuff of earlier economy,
and land was the stuff of the still earlier economy. And of course the
production of knowledge is what university is all about. You know people
often say that universities are ivory-tower22
institutions. If you think about other organizations, even the government
of China, they are slowly becoming more like universities. People feel
free to argue with their bosses in a way that they once didn't. Hierarchy
is giving way to teamwork.23
The effort is increasingly to find the best possible ideas from whatever
sources. These are becoming greater values very broadly. So it seems
to me that the knowledge economy is a quite different economy and will
be more different in the future. But it seems to me to be one where
academic traditions and the one we do in universities can make a particularly
great contribution.
1. Berlin Wall: 柏林墙。1961年，原东德于东西柏林间筑起了柏林围墙，两区关系也日渐紧张。1989年11月，围墙被推倒，两国统一；
Cold War: （第二次世界大战后为争夺世界霸权的）美苏冷战（时期）。
2. public administration: 公共行政（学）。
3. initiative: 主动的行动；倡议。
4. literacy: 识字，有文化； mortality:
死亡数；死亡率。
5. MBA: (Master of Business Administration)
工商管理学硕士。 MPA: (Master of Public Administration) 公共行政学硕士。
6. civil servant: （一国政府或国际组织的）文职官员，文职公务员。
7. intangible: 无形的东西；无形资产。
8. mentor: 导师，指导者。
9. case study: 个案研究。
10. grapple: 努力克服（或解决、完成、对付）。
11. emulate: 仿效；模仿。
12. disseminate: 传播。
13. pollutant: 污染性物质，有害物质（尤指工业废物、废气、放射性物质等）。
14. prematurely: 比预期（或正常）时间早的，提早的，过早的。
15. pragmatic: 讲求实际的；实用主义的。
16. the humanities: 人文学科（通常包括语言、文学、哲学、美术、历史等）。
17. canon: 正式名单。
18. prescribe: 规定，指定。
19. steep: 使沉浸，使沉湎。
20. elaborate on: 详述。
21. stuff: 要素，基本的东西；特质，本质。
22. ivory tower: 象牙塔（指脱离实际生活的文学家或艺术家的小天地）。
23. 等级制度正让位于团队协作。
Z:
Nowadays in China the study of the humanities is undergoing a difficult
time because a lot of money is being spent on more pragmatic areas.
What do you think can be done about this?