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B1 中级 英语 25:49 Educational

Author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie addresses Harvard's Class of 2018

Harvard University · 2,976,222 次观看 · 添加于 3 周前

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字幕 (438 片段)

00:00

[APPLAUSE]

00:01

CHIMAMANDA NGOZI ADICHIE: Good afternoon.

00:04

Harvard Class of 2018, hello.

00:11

Thank you so much for asking me to be here today.

00:14

It meant a lot to me to that you, the students,

00:19

select the class day speaker.

00:21

Thank you.

00:23

[APPLAUSE]

00:29

Congratulations to you and to all your loved

00:32

ones who are here.

00:34

I spent a wonderful year at the Radcliffe Institute

00:38

here at Harvard doing a fellowship in 2011,

00:43

and I fell in love with Cambridge.

00:45

And so it's very good to be back.

00:49

My name is Chimamanda.

00:51

In Igbo it means "my personal spirit will never be broken."

00:57

I'm not sure why, but some people

00:59

find it difficult to pronounce.

01:01

[LAUGHTER]

01:04

A few years ago, I spoke at an event in London.

01:07

The Englishwoman, who was to introduce me,

01:11

had written my name phonetically on a piece of paper.

01:14

And backstage, she held on tightly to this paper while

01:19

repeating the pronunciation over and over.

01:23

I could tell she was very eager to get it right.

01:27

And then she went out to the stage and gave a lovely

01:30

introduction and ended with the words, "Ladies and gentlemen,

01:35

please welcome, Chimichanga."

01:37

[LAUGHTER]

01:44

I told the story at a dinner party shortly afterwards,

01:49

and one of the guests seemed very annoyed

01:53

that I was laughing about it.

01:55

That was so insulting, he said.

01:59

That Englishwoman could have tried harder.

02:03

But the truth is, she did try very hard.

02:07

In fact, she ended up calling me a fried burrito because she

02:11

had tried very hard and then ended up

02:14

with an utterly human mistake that was the result of anxiety.

02:20

So the point of this story is not to say that you can call me

02:23

"chimichanga."

02:24

[LAUGHTER]

02:26

Don't even think about it.

02:29

The point is that intent matters, that context matters.

02:35

Somebody might very well call me "chimichanga"

02:38

out of a malicious desire to mock my name,

02:41

and that I would certainly not laugh about.

02:44

But there is a difference between malice and a mistake.

02:50

We now live in a culture of calling out,

02:53

a culture of outrage.

02:55

And you should call people out.

02:57

You should be outraged.

02:59

But always remember context and never disregard intent.

03:07

If I were asked the title of my address to you today,

03:11

I would say above all else, do not lie.

03:18

Or, don't lie too often, which is really to say,

03:23

tell the truth.

03:25

But lying, the word, the idea, the act,

03:30

has such political potency in America today

03:35

that it somehow feels more apt.

03:39

Above all else, do not lie.

03:42

I grew up in Nigeria through military dictatorships

03:47

and through incipient democracies.

03:50

And America always felt aspirational.

03:55

When yet another absurd thing happened politically,

03:59

we would say, "This can never happen in America."

04:05

But today, the political discourse in America

04:09

includes questions that are straight

04:12

from the land of the absurd--

04:15

questions such as, "Should we call a lie, a lie?"

04:21

"When is a lie a lie?"

04:24

And so, class of 2018, at no time has it felt as urgent

04:31

as now that we must protect and value the truth.

04:38

Now, before I tell you about not lying, I must first admit--

04:42

[APPLAUSE]

04:51

So before I tell you about not lying,

04:53

I must first admit to lying.

04:56

I routinely lie about my height, even at the doctor's office.

05:00

[LAUGHTER]

05:02

In Lagos, when I'm meeting friends for lunch,

05:05

I lie about being stuck in traffic when I'm really still

05:08

at home, only just getting dressed.

05:10

[LAUGHTER]

05:11

Now, there are other lies.

05:13

Sadly, however, I cannot tell you about them without having

05:18

to kill you afterwards.

05:19

[LAUGHTER]

05:21

But what I know is that I have always felt my best

05:25

and done my best when I veer toward truth, when I don't lie.

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