研究生英语第十单元

2021年1月25日发(作者：参谋长)
The role of the academy in times of crisis
1.

Today
the
academy
holds
a
highly
privileged
place
in
American
society
because
of
a
long-standing

national
consensus

about
the
value
of
education.
One
of
my
predecessors,
President
Harold
Dodds,
said
in
his
inaugural
address
in
1933
that
“
No
country
spends
money for education, public or private, so lavishly as does the Unites States. Americans have
an almost childlike faith in what formal education can do for them.
”
That faith is base on a
conviction
that
the
vitality
of
the
United
States,
its
creative
and
diverse
cultural
life,
its
staggeringly
inventive economy, its national security and the
robustness
of its democratic
institutions owe much to the quality of institutions of higher education.

2.

Our
society
’
s
confidence
in
its
institutions
of
higher
education
is
expressed
through
the
generous
investments
of
the
federal
and
state
governments
in
basic
and
applied
research,
investments that wisely
couple
support for research
with
support for graduate education. It is
also
expressed
through
federal
and
state
investments
that
subsidize
the
cost
of
higher
education
for
those
who
cannot
afford
to
pay,
investments
by
private
foundations
and
charities
who
see
colleges
and
universities
as
the
best
routes
for
achieving
their
strategic
goals, and investments by individuals and by the private sector, who see universities as the
incubators
of future health and prosperity. In return for this broad support, society rightfully
expects certain things from us. It expects the generation of new ideas and the discovery of
new knowledge, the exploration of complex issues in an open and
collegial
manner and the
preparation of the next generation of citizens and leaders. In times of trouble, it is especially
important that we
live up to
these expectations.

3.

The
medieval
image
of
the
university
as
an
ivory
tower,
with
scholars
turned
inward
in
solitary
contemplation,
immunized

from
the
cares
of
the
day,
is
an
image
that
has
been
superseded

by
the
modern
university
constructed
not
of
ivory,
but
of
a
highly
porous

material, one that allows free
diffusion
in both directions. The academy is of the world, not
apart
from
it.
Its
ideals,
crafted
over
many
generations,
are
meant
to
suffuse

the
national
consciousness.
Its
scholars
and
teachers
are
meant
to
move
in
and
out
of
the
academy
in
pursuit of opportunities to use their expertise in public
service, in pursuit of creative work
that
will
give
us
illumination

and
insight
and
in
pursuit
of
ways
to
turn
laboratory
discoveries
into
useful
things.
Our
students
engage
the
world
with
a
strong
sense
of
civic
responsibility, and when they graduate they become alumni who do the same. This is as it
should be.

4.

The
search
for
new
ideas
and
knowledge
is
not
and
cannot
be
motivated
by
utilitarian

concerns. Rather it depends on the ability to think in new and creative ways. When the Nobel
laureate
John Nash developed the mathematical concepts
underlying
non-cooperative game
theory as a graduate student at Princeton, he could not foresee that those concepts would be
used today to analyze election strategies and the causes of war and to make predictions about
how people will act. When Professor of Molecular Biology Eric Wieschaus set out as a young
scientist
to
identify
genes
that
pattern
the
body
plan
of
the
fruit
fly

embryo
,
he
could
not
know
that
he
would
identify
genes
that
play
a
central
role
in
the
development
of
human
cancer.
We
have
learned
that
we
cannot
predict
with
any
accuracy
how
discoveries
and