It's so interesting to me how real life has very little to do with what you've learned here, and yet, what you've learned here, what you've struggled to achieve, will help you. I can't exactly say how: It's not something I think can neccessarily be defined. When I first went to war in Somalia I was surrounded by teenagers with guns and grenade launchers, there was nothing particular that I've learned at Yale that allowed me to survive. When I was in Rwanda in the genocide and was surrounded by bodies and had seen terrible things, there was no one particular class that I've taken that helped me get through. And yet something about the experience here--the friendships, the accumulating of facts and theories, the confidence I gained over the course of four years--allowed me to go to those places and helped me chart my own course.
让我觉得非常有趣的是，你们在这里所学到的东西与现实生活的联系微乎其微，但是你们在这里学到的、经过努力得到的一切都将会让你们受益匪浅。我无法说清它会如何帮助你们，这不是可以轻易下结论的。当我首次深入索马里战地时，被一群荷枪实弹的青少年围住，而耶鲁教给我的知识无法帮我逃生。在卢旺达种族大屠杀时，我周围满是尸体和一些恐怖的东西，但没有一门特定的课程能教我如何安然度过。但在这里所经历的一些东西，如友谊、事实和理论的积累以及大学四年中所建立的自信，让我有勇气走向那些地方，规划自己的事业生涯。
At Yale I met some of the smartest people I know but that kind of academic success really means very little once you've left this campus. I've never been asked what my grades were at Yale; that only happens if you run for president, and frankly, as we've all seen, it doesn't even matter. No one has ever asked me to talk about my senior thesis paper and I've never gotten a job because I was on the lightweight crew team. All those things were hugely important to me at the time, but right now, in truth, they are kind of dim memories for me. And I'm not saying they're frivolous or unimportant, they're not, and I treasure all the opportunities I had here at Yale.
在耶鲁，我确实遇到了一些绝顶聪明的人，但这种学术性的成功一旦离开校园就不会有太多的意义。从没有人问过我在耶鲁时的成绩，只有在竞选总统时，这些才会被关注，但众所周知，即使对总统竞选来说，这些也不是很重要。也从没有人要我谈谈自己的毕业论文，我也从没有因为自己曾是轻量级拳击手而得到一份工作。所有这些在大学时对我都非常重要，但是现在，这些对我来说只剩下了模糊的记忆。我并不是说这些毫无价值或无关紧要，相反，我珍惜在耶鲁所拥有的一切机会。
But when you graduate, the slate is wiped clean. Outside of college campuses, I think we're encouraged today to see things through a very limited lens. On cable news, anchors have become caricatures, wearing their politics on their sleeves or their lapels, claiming that they're looking out for you and if you only watch their show or read their book, you'll be able to understand how things really are. It would be kind of humorous if it weren't, frankly, dangerous. On reality TV shows you watch people swapping lives, but a genuine swapping of ideas is something you rarely see outside of the college campus. We're fighting not just a war of terror but a war of ideas, and I think it's important that as a class, we all understand the importance of understanding other people's ideas, our enemies' as well as our friends'.
但是当你们毕业后，这一切就一笔勾销了。我认为，在大学校园之外，人们鼓励我们用有限的视角去看待事情。有线电视新闻主播出现在讽刺漫画中，在他们的袖子和西服翻领上都布满了政治色彩。他们声称在密切关注着你，你们只需看看他们的节目或读读他们的作品，就可以了解事情的真相。坦白说，如果这种声称不算是危险，至少也是滑稽的。事实上，电视节目中你可以看到人们交流生活，但是你很少在校园之外看到真正的思想上的交流。我们不仅仅是在跟恐怖行为做斗争而是在跟思想做斗争。我认为作为一个集体，理解其他人的观点，不管是敌人的还是朋友的观点，都很重要。
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