又到开学季，全世界各大高校的新生也纷纷进入了一个崭新的世界。2017年8月26日，耶鲁大学官网发布了一篇校长彼得·沙洛维(Peter Salovey)给新生的致辞。彼得·沙洛维用狐狸和刺猬的故事，表达了自己对求学的一些看法，演讲内容犀利，引用多个名人轶事，多方面多角度阐述了学习方法的多样性。下面美国林登中学上海分校小编就带大家一起来感受一下。

Good morning and welcome—to my colleagues here on stage, to the family members who are with us today, and most of all, to the Class of 2021! And a special shout-out to Marvin Chun, beginning his first year as the new dean of Yale College.

A few years ago, I helped a friend—a member of the Yale College Class of 1982, in fact—teach a Yale College seminar called “Great Big Ideas.” Each week, students in the seminar considered a “big idea” from a different field of study. For homework, they watched video lectures delivered by various experts and read primary sources. Then they came to class ready to debate each week’s “big idea.” By the end of the course, they had become conversant in major debates and questions in art history, political philosophy, evolutionary biology, and other fields. My friend described the educational impact of the course as “a mile wide and an inch deep.”

I was thinking about Great Big Ideas over the summer. Reflecting on the goal for the course reminded me of the story of the fox and the hedgehog. Now, this is a distinction attributed to Archilochus, the seventh century B.C. Greek poet and warrior, who said, “a fox knows many things, but a hedgehog one important thing.” When threatened, the fox remains flexible, coming up with a clever way to deal with that particular matter. The hedgehog, however, responds the same way to every threat: it rolls up into a ball. The fox is wily and resilient. The hedgehog consistent but inflexible.

The philosopher Isaiah Berlin popularized this distinction in a 1953 essay.Berlin described the hedgehog as a thinker who sees the world through a single, grand idea—a focused lens. Someone like Karl Marx or Ayn Rand might be considered a hedgehog. The fox, on the other hand, becomes knowledgeable about many different things. It draws on a multitude of ideas and experiences depending on the situation or issue at hand. Perhaps Confucius and Aristotle are best described as foxes.

As Berlin says, “there exists a great chasm between those, on one side, who relate everything to a single vision…a single, universal organizing principle”—the hedgehogs—and “those who pursue many ends, often unrelated and even contradictory, connected, if at all, in some de facto way.” These are the foxes.

This dichotomy is an over-simplification, as Berlin himself recognized. I am reminded of the joke about there being two kinds of psychologists: those who believe that humanity can be divided into two types of people, and those who do not. Yet the story of the fox and the hedgehog may help you today, right now, as you consider how to approach your time at Yale.

Your education in Yale College will expose you to some grand ideas that may seem compelling as unifying life philosophies. You will learn about and from some brilliant hedgehogs and brilliant foxes. But at this stage of your education, I want to urge you to emulate the fox. As inspired as you might be by a single idea or way of looking at the world, I suggest that you entertain many different ways of thinking and consider various points of view. Try them all on; see what fits you best.

The beauty of a liberal arts education—the education Yale College offers—is that it liberates you from having to pursue a narrow, vocationally-oriented program of study. I hope you will take advantage of—and enjoy—this intellectual freedom. You will be able to choose from a wide variety of courses, learning about how people in many different fields think and understand the world. Your professors will introduce you to a panoply of ideas and ask you to think critically about all of them. You will be expected to question conventional orthodoxies rather than subscribe to a single view of the world. This work will be challenging—have no doubt—but it will also be exhilarating and, yes, liberating.

There will be plenty of time later to hone your focus, to specialize and develop your expertise. Perhaps you will decide to pursue a doctorate or attend professional school. And there may even be times here at Yale when you will delve deeply into a certain topic for a paper or a project. When I received my graduate education here at Yale, for example, there were times when I had to be a hedgehog. Hedgehogs, too, have many fine qualities.

But over the years, I have loved seeing generations of Yale College students embrace the opportunity to think broadly and study widely. You also will develop as flexible thinkers and clear communicators. These foxlike attributes will serve you well no matter what you do after graduation.

In fact, there are good reasons to believe that learning to think like a fox may pay important dividends. As many of you know, I am a psychologist. My research and teaching have been focused in the field of social psychology. And there is a social psychologist named Philip Tetlock at the University of Pennsylvania who has studied the ability of foxes versus hedgehogs—the human kind—to predict and prepare for the future. (Tetlock completed his doctoral work here in Yale’s psychology department, by the way.)

Tetlock’s research is focused on political judgment—the accuracy with which politicians, experts, pundits, and others predict outcomes in the world and how various actions might affect those outcomes. So, for example, would a hardline foreign policy by the United States with respect to North Korea weaken Chairman Kim’s iron-clad grip on that country? Yes or no? Will President Assad’s regime in Syria fall in the next year? Yes or no?

Tetlock studied 284 prognosticators, experts who are paid to offer answers to questions in which they must predict the future about various world events. He analyzed 82,361 probability estimates made by these individuals in response to 27,450 forecasting questions, studying as well how they came to these judgments, how they reacted when they were wrong, and whether they revised their forecasts in response to new evidence.

He found that specialists in making predictions about such situations are about as accurate as you or I would be. Consider that: highly trained, well-paid experts are no more likely to be correct when predicting future events than ordinary people. Well-established talking heads are worst of all. They often stubbornly and overconfidently adhere to their original theories—the ideas most associated with them—even in the face of overwhelming evidence that they are wrong. Like hedgehogs, they stick with the point of view that made them famous and are dismissive of new information that contradicts their beliefs.

However, Tetlock did find some individuals who were better at predicting the future. As he describes them, these are “thinkers who know many small things (tricks of their trade).” They “are skeptical of grand schemes,” and they are willing to “stitch…together diverse sources of information.” Perhaps most important, they are not overly confident in “their own forecasting prowess….”In other words, they are humble, critical, well-informed, and flexible thinkers; in short, they are foxes. Foxes are the best prognosticators.

So, what does the fox say? (I leave it to you to explain that contemporary cultural reference to your parents.) The fox says, “I want to listen carefully, engage, explore, use my natural curiosity, and perhaps—in the end—outwit the others!” Foxes don’t get information only from sources with which they agree. When confronted by contrary ideas, the fox says, “bring it on.” Foxes are resilient. And they not only respond better to challenges—they may even be able to predict what challenges they will face down the road better than their hedgehog friends.

All around us, we are surrounded by foxes who have shaped our lives and our world. In the last few days, some of you moved into one of Yale’s two new residential colleges, Pauli Murray or Benjamin Franklin. I am thrilled that we can offer a Yale College education to 15 percent more students in each cohort, starting this year with the Class of 2021. It is amazing how lovely and “Yale-like” the new colleges are; yes, you can still create Gothic architecture in 2017. Others of you are the first to live as freshmen in Grace Hopper College; you also are part of something new and exciting. Benjamin Franklin, Pauli Murray, and Grace Hopper—our three new college namesakes—share some common attributes. All three were curious individuals who never stopped learning new things. And all of them were exemplary foxes.

It is probably obvious to you that Ben Franklin had a foxlike intellect, which he drew upon as an inventor, statesman, and writer. His response to seemingly insurmountable challenges? Invent something. And so Franklin, witnessing the destructive power of electricity, develops the lightening rod; has difficulty seeing both near and far in middle age and so invents bifocals; needs a source of indoor heating less smoky than a fireplace and therefore builds what we now call the Franklin stove. And I don’t even want to know what problem he was trying to solve when he invented the flexible catheter!

As a diplomat, Franklin’s contributions to international relations were characterized less by ideology (the hedgehog’s approach) and more by flexible statesmanship (a foxlike strategy). He gained the support of France for the cause of American independence by articulating Enlightenment ideas to an appreciative audience, endearing himself and his insights to his French counterparts. Moreover, Franklin was perfectly willing to change his mind, as evidenced by his embrace of the abolitionist cause later in his life.

Two centuries hence, Pauli Murray arrived at Yale to complete a doctorate in law. By this point she was already an accomplished attorney and a civil rights pioneer. While Murray was at Yale, her friend Eleanor Roosevelt tapped her to serve on the President’s Commission on the Status of Women. It was during this time that Murray developed the novel approach of using the 14th Amendment to combat sex discrimination, doing the research to support her ideas right here in Sterling Library. Legal scholars up until that time had viewed this amendment as providing due process and equal protection under the law regardless of race, religion, or heritage, but Murray saw in it another path for the advancement of civil rights. A short time later, while working on her thesis in New Haven, Murray wrote a memorandum that helped ensure the inclusion of protections on the basis of sex in the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Pauli Murray was many things: a poet and writer, an attorney and legal scholar, an advocate for racial justice, and one of the founders of the National Organization for Women. She never stopped learning or trying new things. At the age of 62, she entered General Theological Seminary in New York and three years later became the first African American woman to be ordained as an Episcopal priest. Throughout her life, she listened, learned, and adapted to new challenges with astonishing success.

Finally, Rear Admiral Grace Hopper epitomizes the fox’s flexible intellect. She received her Ph.D. in mathematics from Yale, and after Pearl Harbor, she enlisted in the Navy, where she was assigned to work on one of the world’s first computers. Although her preparation in mathematics was important, Hopper had to think beyond what she had learned in school. Yale had not taught her to be a computer scientist—the profession didn’t even exist yet—but she had learned to think and solve problems. Hopper loved to say, “The most damaging words in the English language are, ‘It’s always been done that way.’” So, a lifelong maverick, Grace Hopper relied on her curiosity and her willingness to take risks, and in the process, she transformed the way we use computers, influencing all our lives.

Members of the Class of 2021: I am proud and delighted that you will be able to pursue an education here at Yale. Like Franklin, Murray, Hopper, and a host of other foxes, you will develop your intellect in broad and flexible ways. You will learn to be careful thinkers, suspicious of easy answers and received wisdom. You will hone these skills so you may work effectively with others and—in the words of Yale’s mission statement—“[improve] the world today and for future generations….” I know that you will experience great pleasure in becoming foxes yourselves.

Welcome to Yale!

中文全文：

各位同事、各位家长，尤其是2021届的本科新生们，大家早上好!欢迎你们!特别是马文(Marvin Chun)，今年将正式担任本科生院院长一职。

几年前，我帮1982届耶鲁大学的一个朋友上了一门名叫“伟大的思想”的课(实际上是研讨会)。

每周，研讨会上的学生都会学习不同领域的知识，从不同领域理解何为“伟大的思想”。学生的家庭作业就是观看不同专家的视频讲座，并读取主源资料。然后，他们又聚集在一起，就“伟大的思想”进行新一轮的探讨。到课程结束时，他们已经能非常熟悉艺术史、政治哲学、进化生物学等领域的主要内容与问题了。

我的朋友将这门课程所带来的教育影响，形容为“涉猎广泛但浅尝辄止”。

那年整个夏天我都在思考着“伟大的思想”，反思其课程目标，这让我想起了狐狸与刺猬的故事。

公元前七世纪，希腊诗人阿尔奇洛克斯(Archilochus)提出，“狐狸知道很多的事，刺猬则只知道一件大事。”

当受到威胁时，狐狸表现得非常灵活，它想到一个聪明的办法，能够灵活巧妙地去应对这件事情。

然而，当刺猬受到威胁时，它永远只会以一种方法来对应：卷成一个球。

狐狸机巧百出、通晓百科，而刺猬一计防御、见解深刻。

身兼哲学家及知识史学家的以赛亚· 柏林(Isaiah Berlin)爵士于1953年出版了一册86页的小书，将这两种形象普适化。

柏林将刺猬描述为一个思想家：以某个观点来认识现实，并以此观点为中心来“感受”现实中的一切，包括自己的俯仰呼吸，喜怒哀乐。总之，可称为万事诉诸于某观点的“归位狂”。 卡尔·马克思(Karl Marx)与安·兰德(Ayn Rand)都是刺猬。

另一方面，狐狸可谓是百科全书，知道许多事情，会根据当前状况汲取大量他人的想法和经验。孔子与亚里士多德(Aristotle)就是的代表。

正如柏林所说，刺猬坚持一种普遍原则，万事万物都坚持用一种理念来解释。而狐狸追求更多知识，无论是相互矛盾的或是连接的。

柏林自己也意识到，这种二分法过于简单化了。我想起一个心理学家的笑话，他们就人类是否能够分成两种而产生了争论。不管怎样，希望狐狸与刺猬的故事，能够让每一个在耶鲁学习的人有所思考：要以何种方式度过在耶鲁的这段时间。

耶鲁大学校长彼得·沙洛维 来源：Yale News

在耶鲁，你将接触一系列伟大的人生哲学，从一些“伟大的刺猬”与“伟大的狐狸”身上学习到很多知识。但是在这个阶段，我希望能够督促你们多效仿狐狸。

通过学习，你可能会用某种观念或方式来观察这个世界，但是我建议，你们多学习不同人的思想、多考虑不同人的观点。尽量都去尝试一下，然后找出什么是最适合自己的。

耶鲁大学提供的人文教育，最厉害的一点是将你从追求狭隘的、以职业为导向的学习计划中解放出来。

我希望你们能够好好享受这种思想自由。你们可以选择各种课程，了解不同领域的人是如何思考并理解这个世界的。你们的导师会给你们介绍一些别人的观点，并且要求你们进行批判性思考。导师们更期望你们能够对一些正统观念提出质疑，而不是一味地认同某种观点。

这项工作将充满挑战，但是解放思想、令人振奋。

之后，你们会有很多时间来学习专业知识。也许你将继续深造，攻读博士学位，也许会进入一些专业学院。在耶鲁，也有许多可以深入研究某篇论文或是某个项目的机会。比如，我在耶鲁读研究生的时候，很多时候都必须是刺猬。刺猬也有许多优良的品质。

多年来，我看到了一代又一代的耶鲁学生抓住机会，广泛地思考与学习。你们也将变得宽思广学。无论你们毕业后从事什么样的工作，这些狐狸的属性都能够对你们有所帮助。

实际上，像狐狸一样学会思考有很多好处。

你们都知道，我是一个心理学家。我的研究范围和教学领域都集中在社会心理学方面。

在宾夕法尼亚大学，有个人名叫菲利普·泰特洛克(Philip Tetlock)，他在耶鲁心理学系完成了博士课程。他在《狐狸与刺猬：专家的政治判断》中研究了狐狸与刺猬的能力，以预测未来。

泰特洛克的研究重点是政治判断 —— 政治家、专家和其他人预测世界结局的言论的准确性，以及各种行为会如何影响这些结果。

泰特洛克研究了284名预测者，他们都是有偿提供问题答案的专家，所以必须预测未来的各种世界事件。泰特洛克分析了这些人针对27,450个预测问题做出的82,361个概率估计值，研究他们如何做出这些判断，在发现错误时做出如何反应，以及他们是否会根据新的证据修改预测结果。

他发现，这些专家在这种情况下做出的预测，与你我做出的预测结果是一样的。注意这一点：在预测未来事件时，那些训练有素且高薪酬的专家也没有做出比普通人更为准确的预测。

一些谈话高手更是固执。他们常常对自己之前的理论过于自信，即使面对看压倒性的证据，他们也不愿意相信自己是错误的。如同刺猬一样，他们坚持着让他们成名的某种观点，不屑于了解与信仰相悖的新信息。

然而，泰特洛克确实找到了一些能够很好地预测未来的人。他将他们描述为“知道许多小事情的思想家”。他们对一些大计划保持怀疑态度，他们愿意将各种信息拼凑在一起。也许，更重要的是他们对自己的预测能力不够自信。换句话说，他们是一群谦虚、会批判性思考、消息灵通且思维灵活的思想家。简单地说，他们都是狐狸。

狐狸就是的预言家。

那么，狐狸说了什么呢?

狐狸说：“我想仔细地倾听，去参与、去探索，用我的好奇心，最终超越别人!”

狐狸不仅从他们认同的观点中获取知识，对于一些他们不同意的观点，狐狸也会说“带走”。

狐狸是灵活的。面对挑战时，他们不仅可以做出更好地反应，甚至可以预测到将来可能会遇到什么困难。

在我们周围到处都是狐狸，他们塑造了我们现在的生活和世界。

前几天，你们中的一些人搬进了耶鲁两所新的寄宿学院，或是保利·默里(Pauli Murray)学院，或是本杰明·富兰克林(Benjamin Franklin)学院(耶鲁大学针对本科生实施学院住宿制，耶鲁大学的住宿学院系以其著名校友命名，目前共有15所住宿学院)。

我很高兴能跟2021届的学生们一起开启新的一年。新学院多么可爱，多么充满“耶鲁”风;是的，即使在2017年，你们也还可以入住哥特式建筑中。

你们当中也有人是入住格雷斯学院(Grace Hopper College)的批新生。本杰明·富兰克林(Benjamin Franklin)、保利·默里( Pauli Murray)和格蕾丝·霍珀( Grace Hopper)。

我们的新学院以他们三个的名字命名，他们三个人有着共同的特征——充满好奇心，从未停止学习新事物。 他们都是典型的狐狸。

很显而易见，作为一名发明家、政治家兼作家，本·富兰克林(Ben Franklin)有着狐狸一般的智力。对于那些看似无法克服的挑战，他都能发明出一些东西来应对。

富兰克林见证了电的破坏力，因此发明了避雷针;

到中年视力受阻时，发明了双光眼镜;

人们需要一种比壁炉更少烟熏味的室内采暖工具时，发明了我们现在所称的“富兰克林炉”。

我甚至已经不想知道他在发明柔性导管时想要解决什么问题!

作为一名外交官，富兰克林对于国际关系的意识形态方面(刺猬的方法)贡献较少，更多表现为一个灵活的政治家(一种狐狸般的策略)。他获得了法国对美国独立事业的支持，向启蒙运动的观众表达了启蒙思想，向法国同行表达了自己的深刻见解。此外，富兰克林完全愿意改变他的想法，正如他在晚年接受废奴主义一样。

本·富兰克林

两个世纪后，保利·默里( Pauli Murray)来到耶鲁大学完成了法学博士学位。现在，她已经是一位有成就的律师和民权先锋了。默里在耶鲁时，她的朋友埃莉诺·罗斯福(Eleanor Roosevelt)鼓励她担任总统妇女地位委员会( the President’s Commission on the Status of Women)的委员一职。

正是在那段时间，默里提出了使用第十四修正案来反对性别歧视的新方法，并在斯特林图书馆进行研究以支持她的观点。

那时，法律学者认为这项修正案是在法律上为种族、宗教或传统，提供正当程序和平等的保护，但在默里看来，这是促进公民权利的另一条道路。不久之后，默里在纽黑文(New Haven)撰写论文时，写了一份备忘录，帮助确保在1964年《民权法》中纳入基于性别的保护。

默里有多重身份：诗人、作家、律师、法律学者、种族正义的倡导者、以及国家妇女组织(the National Organization for Women)的创始人之一。

她从未停止学习，一直在不断尝试新事物。在她62岁时，她在纽约进入了美国圣公会总会神学院( General Theological Seminary )，三年后，她成为位被任命为圣公会牧师的非裔美国妇女。在她的一生，她善于倾听、学习、适应新的挑战，最终取得了惊人的成功。

最后，我们讲的是有着狐狸般灵活智慧的格雷斯·霍珀少将(Grace Hopper)。

格雷斯·霍珀少将

她在耶鲁大学获得了数学博士学位，在珍珠港事件之后，便加入了海军，在那里被分配到世界上台计算机上工作。在数学方面的知识储备固然重要，但霍珀不得不思考超出学校课堂所学到的内容。耶鲁没有教她成为一名计算机科学家，这个职业在那时甚至不存在，但她已经学会了思考如何解决问题。

霍珀常说，“英语中破坏性的一句话就是，‘它就是这样。’”

因此，作为一个终身特立独行的人，格蕾丝·霍珀(Grace Hopper)凭借她的好奇心和喜欢冒险的精神，最终改变了人类使用电脑的方式，影响了我们的生活。

2021届的所有学生们：我为你们能在耶鲁大学接受教育而感到自豪和高兴。像富兰克林、莫里、霍珀和许多其他的狐狸一样，你们将以广泛而灵活的方式开拓思维，将学会谨慎地思考，怀疑简单的答案并获得知识。你们将接受磨练，学会如何有效地与他人合作。用耶鲁的宣言来说：“改善当今世界和未来……”

我知道你们会很高兴自己变成狐狸的。

欢迎来到耶鲁!

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