Harvard should “embrace our western values that have built one of the greatest nations in the world” and ask students “to manifest these values throughout the rest of their life”, the billionaire hedge-fund manager and Harvard donor Ken Griffin recently told the FT. As to what exactly “western values” are, Mahatma Gandhi’s reputed dictum about western civilisation springs to mind: “I think it would be a good idea”. Never mind, though. Griffin expressed the view that a university should be a sort of tribe, whose members share the same ideals. The counterview is that a university ought to be a forum for ceaseless debate, with no final arbiter.
哈佛(Harvard)应该“拥抱我们的西方价值观，这些价值观建立了世界上最伟大的国家之一”，并要求学生“在他们的余生中体现这些价值观”，亿万富翁对冲基金经理和哈佛捐赠者肯•格里芬(Ken Griffin)最近对英国《金融时报》如是说。至于“西方价值观”究竟是什么，我想起了圣雄甘地(Mahatma Gandhi)关于西方文明的名言：“我认为这是个好主意”。不过，这并不重要。格里芬表达了这样的观点：大学应该是一个部落，其成员拥有共同的理想。而另一种观点则认为，大学应该是一个无休止辩论的论坛，没有最终的仲裁者。