杨澜访谈录：李·鲍林格.在美国当校长
Lee Bollinger: I believe being a university president, at least in the United States, is one of the most difficult jobs.
L: When you are defended in a lawsuit, it's very hard to find friends.
L: I think the great success of American higher education is this proliferation of many different kinds of universities.
Y: Welcome to China again.
L: Thank you very much.
Y: We know that you have set up a committee for “Global Thoughts”. What have you found so far and what kinds of inspirations has China given you for this trip?
L: Right. So as you said, we set up a committee on "Global Thoughts", and the idea is centrally that we are facing, in this world today, changes that we are just not adequately stud
ying and educating students on. And what's happening in I mean, I visited here every few years. It's extraordinary. I mean, to the United States, it is simply stunning how China has developed. This poses an enormous set of questions for the world and for China and the United States. We need to have students educated in those issues and we need faculties to be doing research on them. That is what the committee of "Global Thoughts" supposed to do.
Y: Colombia ranks as No.9 in the National Ranking of American Leading Colleges, 2 positions advanced than a year ago. Congratulations first! But then, how much do you care about ranking and what do you think has contributed to the improvement?
L: First of all, we don't care about those rankings. Secondly, we do care about the rank. We don't care because most of these rankings take account of things that we don't particularly value as signs of whether you are a great university or not.
Y: Such as?
L: Well, I mean, we value alumni’s contributing to the university, but I don't think that's a real major of how well a student has been educated. So, universities are very complicated places that, you know, it's very hard to rank them in these ways. And we do care about them because so many people pay attention to them.
Y: And it does matter for the new application.
L: Yes, right. Exactly. So it has become kind of new thing in the United States.
Y: Mr. Henry King, the former Chairman of Columbia Board of Trustees once said there were very few people in this country who were capable of running a major university. For first of all, it requires a person to have vision for education. He has to be recognized as a scholar to win the faculty and you know, he/she has to be a good CEO and has to win over politicians, donors, alumni students. You know, in appealing to all these totally different groups of people, which part of the job prove to be the most difficult for you personally?
L: Well, it’s a ridiculous job. I mean nobody in their right mind will take this job.
Y: Well, why did you take this ridiculous job?
L: Right, right, right. That is also a question I often ask myself. Er, I think, being a university President, at least in USA is one of the most difficult jobs. I meet a lot of people from other fields tell me that they see it as, perhaps, the most difficult job. What universities want, I believe, is to become better and better. And what that means is to know more about the world, and I really mean quite serious about this, and to figure out how to do what we do, which is to teach students how to discover new knowledge and how we can do it even better. And that means giving money. It means building buildings. It means hiring the right faculty. It means creating a culture which is … And I love doing that. I would say it is also one the most thrilling jobs, one of the most exciting. If you like to learn, and I love to learn, there’s no better vantage point than, I think, being university president, because I can learn more nerve science and talk to the great scientists about what’s happening. It is absolutely right that there are millions of different groups that you have to involve, in a positive way, in order to help university be really successful. And each one of those groups has slightly different desires. And I would say they are equally wonderful and equally difficult. And I thin
k we are making progresses on every front. So I actually don’t feel there’s any one group that is especially difficult or even more difficult that others. I’m not being political about…
Y: OK
L: There’s some controversy a year ago. And some students claimed that they had been intimidated by certain faculty members for expressive viewpoints that the faculty members didn’t want to hear. So it was important to adjudicate what were the facts. We set up a committee and faculty and they looked into it and they found that in one case there had been an incident of intimidation. And that was probably condemned. In my view, inappropriate, it’s unprofessional for faculty members, for professor and to turn a classroom or a department or a school into a political agenda. We are scholars, and that means being independent of ideologies. And it also means developing is very special capacity for considering lots of different people in…and ..sort of … giving students that …to give that ability to consider many new points. And I think we established the right principles and I think we acted in a right way.
defending
Y: well, you are still teachers, you still teach?
L：yup.
Y: you still teach.
L：Right. It is still the best part of my week…I mean I love doing this.
Y: How many classes or such…you have to do?
L：It is two times a week, an hour and a half each class. Now I think American students now are appearing they are very serious about learning. They’re really prepared for class; they like to learn generally about things, they are still willing to have a liberal education. They are not so professionally oriented that all they want to do is to get trained for a job. They are really so…it is really a great thing. They’re also very socially engaged, they volunteered for many programs to help people and do good things. Many people criticized the current student generation for not being engaged enough for politics. And I think that’s unfair. They may be much more active helping than my generation did, that is, we may hav
e been more politically active but we didn’t do as much in a way of volunteering. And I think they really are quite politically aware and conscious.

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