Good morning, colleagues and friends. This is a week of beginnings, as new students arrive on campus, continuing students return, and we work together to advance Harvard’s mission. This moment of renewal is an opportune time to pause and consider the meaning of all that we undertake here, powered, as ever, by human intelligence.
I speak often of our excellence. The work that we do across fields and disciplines pushes the boundaries of knowledge, enlarging the landscape of understanding and creating opportunities to make the world a better place, and to do what we can to make life better.
What does that mean? It means that we seek to solve the biggest problems: approaching climate change from a wide range of vantage points, battling cancer with ever-more-powerful tools of our own design, and racing the clock to untangle the origins of degenerative neurological disease. It means we preserve life as we lengthen and improve it while marveling at the majesty and mysteries of the plants and animals that share our planet. It means that we go to extremes—from parsecs to Planck lengths—to explore the measurable, eagerly plunging into the unknown, seeking to understand the meaning of time and space. And, through the many forms of beauty and meaning held in the arts and humanities, we contend, too, with the immeasurables and the immutables—grief, joy, and love among them.
I am convinced that advances in knowledge—essential to human progress, and at the core of our excellence as a research university—will soon be made more rapidly than at any other time in human existence. Last month, a faculty member wrote me with observations about how artificial intelligence is, as he put it, “radically transforming research.” “With AI tools,” he said, “I’ve accomplished in the last 6 months what I thought would take the next 10 years…and built out new ideas that had been little more than dreams.”
When I think about the new age now unfolding, I tend to focus on the costs, risks and benefits of the changes to come, and what they mean for our mission and our community. I rarely think about dreams. But, perhaps, as we continue to ponder challenges and possibilities, we should give ourselves greater license to imagine the future that we hope to inhabit.
What do we dream of at Harvard?
Greatness, of course. Discovery is exciting and uplifting, to say nothing of the exhilaration of being the first to reach an intellectual destination. The race is always on. But—beyond greatness—above and beyond the promise of acknowledgement, glory, and success—we are motivated by the good inherent in our work and the good that comes from it. Here, there is compassion and selflessness. Humility and wonder. We persist in our efforts because we love the work itself—because we know that the work itself holds meaning, not only for those of us who are fortunate enough to be part of this institution but to countless others everywhere. We dream of making a difference.
The ability to dream—the courage to try—these are aspects of our community worth acknowledging and celebrating, especially now. In the Jewish tradition, our capacities for creativity and curiosity—for judgment and reason—can be traced to divine origins. As we are told in the book of Genesis—known in Hebrew as Bereshit, or “In the beginning…,” humanity was not simply made but created “in His image.” That verse tells us human life is sacred, each human is unique, and humans have distinct capabilities. Among them is the ability to choose freely, not by an algorithm. For Rabbi Akiva, the possession of self-knowledge was especially important: he commented that “it was made known to him that he was created in the image [as it is said “for in the image of God did He make the human.]” [Mishna Avot 3:14] Thus human intelligence is not only precious. It is distinct from any intelligence that humans have created, as astounding as the unfolding technical advances are.
Learning is at the heart of what makes us human. It begins at our beginnings and persists as long as each of us does, an unceasing process of discovery and insight. Learning is not only lifelong. Learning is life. And the preservation of learning, the work to which Harvard has set itself for centuries, is more than just a path to greatness or even to goodness. The preservation of learning—the elevation and celebration of learning—is the preservation of human life itself. Our University is, at its heart, an affirmation of humanity, an affirmation of our unique and wondrous capacities and the care and skill they beget. May we proceed this year with gratitude toward one another and with appreciation of all that we are together. May we approach the future confidently and fearlessly, armed with knowledge and moved by ambitious dreams of a better world that each of us can help build.