It is a great honor and pleasure for me to stand here to express my warmest congratulations to you, the Class of 2021, for the achievements you have made in the past four years and for the preparations you have made for the next stage of your life. I also want to express my most sincere gratitude to the parents of the graduating students, to my NYU Shanghai colleagues, and to all of NYU Shanghai’s sponsors, supporters, and partners, for the love, care, and support you have provided for the graduates of NYU as a whole and NYU Shanghai in particular, especially this fifth group of graduates from NYU Shanghai, including those who are now together with us online.
Since 2017, I have attended all the commencements held here, but this year is different. It is of course the first time for me to stand here as the Chancellor of NYU Shanghai. But more important is the fact that today’s heroes and heroines have arrived on this stage after standing exceptionally tougher tests than students of many other classes. If you choose to be more optimistic than perhaps Dr. Zhang Wenhong would advise you to be, you can call yourself the first group of “post-pandemic” college graduates; or, at least you can call yourself the first group of college graduates after the outbreak of the current pandemic of whom many can attend their commencement ceremony in person.
Frankly speaking, we were not sure whether a ceremony like this was possible until two months ago. Thanks to the heroic efforts made by so many people in this part of the world, especially those medical and public health professionals like Dr. Zhang Wenhong, we have happily ended up being able to experience this extremely exciting and special moment together in person, though, unfortunately, not for every single one of you. Those of you who are abroad and unable to join us in person know, I hope, that you are in our hearts today.
For this moment, I know you all have spent tremendous efforts. In addition to what you are conventionally required to accomplish as undergraduate students, one particularly important lesson you have learned in the past four years, I guess, is how important it is in our times for society and its individual members to be served and protected by people like Dr. Zhang Wenhong, who are both professionally and morally well-prepared for their mission, a mission to address uncertainties that sometimes have life-or-death effects on members of the species called humanity.
Even though we have often been told that nothing is as certain as uncertainty in our world, before the Covid-19 pandemic, few of us knew the possibility that so many possibilities could disappear. So, I guess another great gain for you as graduates this year is a perhaps deeper understanding of possibilities in this world full of uncertainties. We should be prepared as sufficiently as possible for so many possibilities, including the possibility of the unexpected disappearance of some of our favorite possibilities.
“Possibilities” is a concept many philosophers like to elaborate on, including the one I want to mention today, an American philosopher who spent two years in China one century ago. I am referring to John Dewey. Those of you who have been to my office would have seen a Chinese language set of 《杜威全集 》or The Collected Works of John Dewey on my bookshelf. Altogether 39 volumes, this is the only non-English version of the Collected Works by John Dewey in the world, co-edited by me, and published by East China Normal University Press. Partly in order to impress my American colleagues who know so much about my country – from how to make Chinese tea properly to the history, literature, poetry of many many years back in the history of China,and food and drink of course, I have tried quite hard to know more about American philosophy, particularly John Dewey.
“Possibilities,” according to Dewey, “are more important than what already exists, and knowledge of the latter counts only in its bearing upon possibilities.”
杜威认为，“可能性比已经存在的东西更加重要，了解现存事物的意义仅在于其对可能性会产生影响。”
Why are possibilities more important than what already exists? Dewey’s explanations can be very abstract and very philosophical. But his main idea is quite simple in my view: possibilities are important because ideals are important, because ideals are based on possibilities, and none of us can live as human beings without at least some ideals in our life.
All I want to share with you here is the idea that, in this world full of uncertainties, the best mentality is to see uncertainties as possibilities, to look for ideals in possibilities, and to work for our ideals – including our ideals of personal excellence and communal well-being – with creativity and perseverance.
NYU Shanghai was established as a joint venture by East China Normal University of China and New York University of the USA, and we are lucky to be able to benefit from the great traditions both of ECNU, whose founding ideas are “Creativity, Character and Community,” and of NYU, whose motto is “To Persevere and to Excel.”
In the process of benefiting from our inherited traditions, we are accumulating our own learning achievements and are creating a tradition of our own. To this dynamically growing tradition, dear Class of 2021, you have made great contributions with your unique efforts, unique experiences and unique achievements. For this, I cannot thank you more. But from now on, I will count on you for new contributions to this tradition, to the glory of our tiny but great university, by your efforts to turn those possibilities that are regarded as ideals into those realities that will pave roads for realizing more ideals, especially those ideals shared by all human beings across the world.
All ideals can possibly be realized in the future only on the basis of efforts made now and from now on, or as John Dewey said, “the present activity is the only one really under control”. In this sense I would like to conclude my speech with a quote from one of your GPS (Global Perspectives on Society) textbook:
“A young person’s aim should be to advance from the present. Our life is an eternity within Time, an eternity expressed in the present moment, not in the past or the future. A person who grasps the present grasps eternity.”