今天来到西点军校，我倍感荣幸。我的家庭和军队有着很深的渊源，我的曾祖父1883年毕业于西点军校，我们家里一直以此为豪。
我曾祖父叫Lawrence Davis Tyson，我最近拿到他的成绩单，我才发现，他在他的年级里排名51。 这可能听起来不算差，但其实当年他所在的年级只有52人。他的成绩比1861年毕业的George Armstrong Custer（美国内战著名将军卡斯特）好，卡斯特是1861年毕业那届倒数第一；但是没有Ulysses Grant（尤里西斯·格兰特，美国第18任总统）好，1843年毕业的39人中，格兰特总统排名第21。格兰特总统曾说过，当时在西点军校时，他常常花很多时间看小说。最近我在读我曾祖父的遗稿，我发现他和格兰特总统相似，都喜爱文字。
我的曾祖父年轻时是少尉，曾在美国西部驻扎。就是当时，他遇到了我的曾祖母，开始给她写各种深情款款而又充满诗意的情书。他甚至在其中一封中这样写道，“我怕我写的太频繁你会厌烦。”在他们认识以后的第一个圣诞，二人互送礼物，是剑形的围巾扣。我的曾祖父把这看做二人结合的信物，他说，“再也没有争吵，没有战争……我们两个人已经对彼此缴械投降。”后来，我的曾祖父在第一次世界大战中升任将军，当选为美国参议院的参议员，在任上去世。
而今天来到西点，我想谈谈，语言对于领导力，富有感染力的言论对于一个领袖，以及人文科学及艺术对于培养这些品质的重要性。
在西点谈领导力似乎有点“班门弄斧”，毕竟西点从1802年就开始成为领袖训练营了——尽管可能不为世人所知。“领导力”一词，从19世纪末开始，大量地出现于书中——亚马逊上关于它的书有18万多本，哈佛大学的图书馆里关于领导力的索引也有170多万条。
但是我们看到，这么多关于领导力的书，真正成为领袖的人却很少。所以我们会问：是什么造就了一位领导人？领导人是坚定果敢的，还是灵活多变的？他们应该有远见，还是应该更务实？他们应该多考虑自己，还是多考虑他人？我们如何才能培养出更多的领导人？
对于这些问题的回答可能难以达成一致，然而有一点就是，领袖们往往可以激励其他人挑战自己，做他们觉得做不到的事情。同时，当我今天站在这儿，在这儿全球最好的领袖训练营，我似乎找到了问题答案：西点军校不仅是全国第一所工程学院，也是一所致力于人文教育的高校。
西点军校致力于人文教育，是有原因的。最近英国文化委员会一项调查显示，在国际上，超过半数的领导人持有人文学科或社会科学的学位，而75%的商界领袖表示，最重要的职场技能都与人文学科有关，即：分析问题的能力、人与人之间沟通的能力和写作能力。
然而，为人们传授这三种能力的人文学科，正在面临危机。一些立法者认为人类学、艺术史和英语专业的学位不实用。他们呼吁“多要电焊工、少要哲学家”，从财政上削弱对各个高等院校人文学科系部的支持力度，更对人文学科造成了伤害。
尽管在这种情况下，西点军校的人文科系却发展势头正好，这又是为何？当其他高校都在降低人文教育要求的时候，军事院校却在加强。在过去的50年间，西点军校已经将其课程转变为通识性质的人文教育，其毕业生具有广博的科学与人文知识，拥有将这种知识应用于变化无常的世界中的能力。在这里，人文学科正是构建自我意识、性格特点，以及真知灼见的源泉，也是保证领导人与他人交际的内在动力。
人文科学对于领导力的影响，主要有以下三方面：
成为一个领袖需要洞见。小说家Zadie Smith说，作为一个领导人，有洞见很重要，洞见是一种“天赋”，是能够聆听多种声音，能够对不同情况充满敏感度。西点军校对于领导力发展的诠释是“一个人认知自己的能力，多视角看待世界的能力”。这种能力就像“护照”，能让我们穿越时空，多元思考。
我研究历史，通过研究过去，历史给了我多种认识自我、认识他人的视角。数据单独存在并没有价值；历史也不能告诉我们一切。正如巴顿将军给1944年在西点上学的儿子信中所写，“要成为一个杰出的军人，你一定要懂历史。日期还有详细的战术策略没有什么用，你需要知道，人的行为。打仗并不是要打败一个人的手上的兵器，而是打败他的灵魂。”
我的偶像，历史学家J.H.·富兰克林这样说道，“以知识武装自己，”以史为鉴，抗击种族歧视。“直面历史，正视过去，”他这么说过。一些历史遗留的传统，仍在控制着我们的思想与行为。富兰克林通过矫正这些传统中的错误改变传统，他对于事实与真相有着清晰的认知，尽管这些真相当时并不为人所知，亦或不为人所承认。
他花了一生的时间做这件事。写作需要耐心与毅力。但是回报也是巨大的。用历史破除愚昧，当我们有勇气挑战所谓的“真相”，就为我们的过去提供了一种不同的诠释。正如富兰克林2003年所说，“正确的历史，是美好的现在与明天的基础。”
除了洞见，领袖要有随机应变的能力。我常常说，教育和上岗培训不同。工作中，实际情况千变万化。战士知道，在战争中，我们一定要灵活，瞬间了然复杂局势。如果说洞见让我们看清情况的话，多视角就是给了我们创造性应对挑战的能力，而随机应变则能助我们应对意外之事。
在西点，我知道训练学生的方法是将其置于他无法控制的情况下，这叫做“Friction”。这样你的思考能力会超出你本身原有的能力。文学、艺术、音乐、历史–这些都是“Friction”，因为他们或令人费解或引人深思或激动人心，都会让我们质疑，前进，以全新的方式，重塑自我与世界。
我想说的第三点是，领袖如何运用语言变得更有说服力。丘吉尔从很年轻的时候就深知语言的力量。在桑赫斯特军事学院上学的最后一个学期，他做了人生中第一个公共演讲。他站在伦敦街头，集合众人，反对禁酒运动。数十年以后，在二战中，丘吉尔向英国人民发表演说，坚持抵抗德国侵略。所以，他最后拿到诺贝尔文学奖而不是和平奖，再合适不过了。
语言的力量是无法抗拒、无可争辩的。很多时候，给我们生活带来翻天覆地变化的，往往是那些将语言视为行动的领袖们。正是这些领袖，激励人们，战胜内在惰性，敢于冒险。这些领袖有一个共同点，那就是他们都有语言天赋，都可以通过语言来鼓励他人。
所以，只有通过学习人文学科，才能够理解往昔决策者的智慧、灵活多变且能够作出正确决策，才能培养激人奋进的语言能力。
最后，我希望大家，代表你我，负起责任；代表国家，肩挑重担。同时，我也希望大家要代表人文学科，走在前列——因为人文学科代表着人类经验和人性洞见的传统。希望大家认识到人文所赋予各位的特质，在生活中重视人文，向他人宣扬人文。让《伊利亚特》成为你的枕边书，让自己成为人文的力量，成为人类未来的力量。
原文：
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It is a supreme honor for me to be here today at West Point. I come from a family with deep roots in the military, and it is a great source of family pride that my great-grandfather graduated from West Point in the Class of 1883. His name was Lawrence Davis Tyson, and it wasn’t till I recently received a copy of his transcript that I discovered he was 51st in his graduating class.
Now that doesn’t sound too bad, except that in the Class of 1883 there were 52 students. Great-Grandfather Tyson must have been deeply grateful for Clarence B. Edwards, cadet number 52, who saved him from being the “goat.” Now, of course, his ranking was better than that of George Armstrong Custer, who was the goat in 1861, but worse than that of Ulysses Grant, who was 21st out of 39 in the Class of 1843. And Grant confessed to spending a good deal of his time here devouring novels.
Now, in fact, as I found reading through my great-grandfather’s papers, he seems to have shared with Grant something of an affinity for language. As a young second lieutenant, my great-grandfather was stationed in the West, where he met my great-grandmother and began writing her passionate and quite poetic love letters. He confessed in one: “I fear I should weary you if I wrote oftener.”
For their first Christmas of knowing one another, they sent each other identical scarf pins in the shape of a sword—and they crossed in the mail. My great-grandfather took this as an “omen” of their unity, a bond that would bring him, he said—in his words, “No more quarrels or wars … each of us has surrendered to the other his sword.”
He was trying to win with the pen what he had not yet won with the sword. His advances—on all fronts—raise a larger question. West Point cultivated in my great-grandfather a considerable capacity for leadership: He commanded a regiment in the Spanish-American War, and then in 1918 he served as a general on the Western Front, where his brigade took terrible losses as it broke through the Hindenburg line. While he was with his troops in France, his only son, a naval aviator, was killed when his plane crashed into the North Sea.
Only after the Armistice did General Tyson go to England to claim the body. Tyson was later elected to the United States Senate, where he was serving at the time of his death. Now, given his low marks as a cadet in almost every subject, the evidence provided by his eloquent letters might suggest that his way with words played a role in his eventual successes. Including, of course, with my great-grandmother, who he clearly hoped would surrender more than her sword pin. And here I am.
I want to focus for a few minutes here today on the importance of language to leadership, on the interpretive and empathetic power of words on which leaders rely, and on the necessity of the humanities and the broad liberal arts education that nurture these indispensable qualities.
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How, then, do we explain West Point, and its thriving humanities departments? As other institutions drop liberal arts requirements, military academies have been adding them. Over the past 50 years, West Point has transformed its curriculum into a general liberal arts education, graduating leaders with broad-based knowledge of both the sciences and the humanities, and the ability to apply that knowledge in a fluid and uncertain world. Here, the humanities are resources that build “self-awareness, character, [and] perspective,” and enable leaders to compel and to connect with others. I want to touch on how that happens, in three crucial ways.
First, leaders need perspective. Novelist Zadie Smith, quoted in Professor Elizabeth Samet’s new anthology on leadership, calls the capacity for perspective, and I quote her, the “gift” of the “many-colored voice, the multiple sensibility.” The West Point system for leadership development describes it as “the expansion of a person’s capacity to know oneself and to view the world through multiple lenses.” We might call it a passport to different places, different times, and different ways of thinking.
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My own field of history offers perspective on ourselves and others, through interpretation of the evidence of the past. Data does not stand on its own; history does not actually “tell us anything.” Historians tell us. General Patton wrote to his son, then a West Point cadet in 1944, “To be a successful soldier you must know history … [D]ates and even the minute details of tactics are useless,” he continued. “What you must know is how man reacts … To win battles you do not beat weapons—you beat the soul of man.”
One of my own heroes is John Hope Franklin, a historian who—as he put it—“armed with the tools of scholarship,” deployed the past as a weapon against persistent racial injustice. “To confront our past and see it for what it is,” to use his words. The past lives, in what we see and do every day, in what he called the “historical traditions” that “have controlled … attitudes and conduct.”
Franklin helped to change those traditions by overturning their falsehoods, by training a clear-eyed gaze at facts and evidence no one had yet dug out or wanted to admit. It took him a lifetime. Writing requires patience and resolve. But the rewards can be great. History shatters the dark glass of ignorance, it gives us the courage to challenge accepted truths and to open new paths to the meaning of our past. As John Hope Franklin remarked in 2003, “Good history is a good foundation for a better present and future.”
But, gaining perspective is not always easy. It can cost those who are brave. Chinese journalist Yang Jisheng documented the history of 36 million deaths from a human-caused famine in his recent book Tombstone. His employer forbade him to travel to the United States to accept an award for conscience and integrity in journalism, so instead he sent the speech he would have given.
He wrote: “I want people to remember man-made disaster, darkness, and evil so they will distance themselves from man-made disaster, darkness, and evil from now on.” History not only tells us that things were once different, it tells us that they can and will be different again. And it reminds us that the nature of that difference is in large part man-made. It is up to us. If we can see contingency, we can identify the opportunity to act, and to change.
Second, beyond perspective, leaders need the capacity to improvise. I often point out that education is not the same thing as training for a job. Jobs change. Circumstances evolve. Certainly, soldiers know, in the chaos of battle, that our knowledge needs to be flexible, as we grapple with complexity in an instant. If perspective opens eyes, its multiple lenses give us the ability to act creatively, to improvise in the face of the unexpected.
Craig Mullaney, West Point Class of 2000, writes in his gripping book The Unforgiving Minute that the first rule of warfare in Afghanistan was this, and I quote him: “The closer you look, the less you understand.” One sergeant’s motto, he says, became “Semper Gumby” because of the flexibility each new crisis required from the troops.
Mullaney writes: “Problem: no armor. Solution: drive faster. …We did what every infantryman in history has had to do in combat: We improvised.” Improvisation. Flexibility. Contingency. The art of the possible. This lies at the heart of why we pursue the liberal arts. Where there is no rulebook, turn to philosophy, turn to history, to anthropology, poetry, and literature. Take the wisdom and inspiration of the great thinkers and leaders who went before you, and then create your own.
At West Point I understand that you are trained through what some here call “friction”—being in a situation that you realize is beyond you. This is how you learn to think past where you are. Literature, art, music, history—these are forms of friction because they are meant to be unsettling, stirring, mind-bending experiences that force us to question and push and to reinvent ourselves, and the world, in a new way.
Winston Churchill, one of the 20th century’s greatest leaders, was a war correspondent before he turned 21. He recognized warfare as a kind of performance, wherein success can depend on the capacity to imagine ourselves into our roles. He wrote: “The courage of the soldier is not really contempt for physical evils and indifference to danger.” It is instead “a more or less successful attempt to simulate these habits of mind … to be good actors in the play.”
Churchill soon found himself devouring books on history, philosophy, economics, and religion, driven by what he called “the desire for learning,” and because, as he put it, “I … had a liking for words and for the feel of words fitting and falling into their places like pennies in a slot.” Churchill put pennies in that slot again and again, delivering some of the most compelling words in the history of warfare.
Which brings me back to now a third point—how leaders use the persuasive power of language. Churchill understood this powerful tool of leadership at a very early age. In his last term as a cadet at the Royal Military College at Sandhurst, he gave his first speech, standing on debris outside a row of London bars, rallying a rioting crowd against a movement to prohibit liquor.
He said, to rapturous applause, “You have seen us tear down these barricades tonight, see that you pull down those who are responsible for them at the coming election.” Now, another young man had started the protest by poking holes in the barricade, but Churchill finished it by telling them what it meant. Decades later, he did the same for England in World War II, creating a narrative of resistance that defied German bombs. How appropriate that his Nobel Prize was not for peace, but for literature.
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We have been telling war stories for millennia, endeavoring to understand, to reconcile the inhumanity of war with the humanity of words. As literature has struggled to capture war, its leaders have armed themselves with literature—because leaders necessarily strive to understand well enough to know and to explain why and where, and to what end, and what next. According to Plutarch, Alexander the Great slept with two things under his pillow: a dagger, and a copy of Homer’s Iliad.
The power of language is undeniable, and irresistible. In no small part, changes that fundamentally shape the world we live in today resulted from leaders for whom language itself was a form of action. Those who inspire others to abandon the innate human resistance to change and risk a better future so often share an important common trait: a gift for language, and a capacity to compel others through the power of the spoken word. A leader must inspire others to believe in possibility in order to be able to motivate them to follow and to act.
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And Lincoln. Lincoln, whose ability to make a compelling case for the war and for the United States as the “last best hope of earth,” was no small part of why 2 million Northerners were willing to leave their homes and families to risk their lives for the Union. The Gettysburg Address, 272 words spoken in November 1863, created a different America.
We know their cadence like a national poem: “dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal,” and that “government of the people, by the people, and for the people shall not perish from the earth.” War defined a landscape of unimaginable death. Lincoln defined the purposes of the war. He said what he wanted it to mean. As historian Garry Wills has put it, “Words had to complete the work of guns.”
Lincoln’s relationship to words illustrates another important aspect of language and leadership: the dynamic interconnection between the creators of words and their own language. Language often takes on a life of its own. Lincoln used the process of writing to clarify his thinking; to explore and pursue the logic and implication of ideas. I am sure you have had this experience in writing papers: Who has not written the introduction to a paper last?
You finally know what it was you wanted to say once you’ve worked out all the intricacies of the language of saying it. As one novelist has put it, “How do I know what I think till I see what I say?” Lincoln embraced the emancipation of slaves gradually, through the words he shaped in a dialogue with himself. “I thought about it and studied it in all its phases,” he is said to have told a Union Army sergeant, “long before I began to put it [down] on paper.”
A lifelong conversation is not a bad way to describe the study of the humanities, a path of discovery where we set our inner compass as we go. The ability to have a dialogue with oneself is also the ability to have dialogue with others, across time and space. Lincoln’s words live long beyond their delivery date, leading on without him. Words have implications—and consequences. We are still trying to live up to the Gettysburg Address.
No one is in a position to know the power of language and leadership better than all of you, the women and men of West Point.
In 2008, before the ROTC program officially returned to Harvard’s campus after the end of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” I spoke to five graduating Harvard seniors commissioned as officers that year. I thanked them for their service and their sacrifice, and I told them, “I wish that there were more of you.” I spoke that day in the spirit of inclusion, in the spirit of Douglass and Stanton and Lincoln, on behalf of every student who should have the opportunity to serve in the military regardless of background or sexual orientation.
But to you at West Point, especially those of you who are cadets, I say those same words today in a different and renewed spirit: According to a recent Gallup poll, the military is the last institution in which Americans have high confidence. Not organized religion, not government, not newspapers, not banks. You. You and all you represent. We need you now more than ever—as thoughtful, disciplined improvisers, educated broadly in the arts and sciences, as leaders who include and create new spaces for the humanities. I wish there were more of you.
In Homer’s Iliad, a tutor comes to Achilles and his task is to teach the young man two vital things: “To be both a speaker of words and a doer of deeds.” A page on the West Point Department of English and Philosophy website opens with this quotation, and then adds, “This was Achilles’ ideal, and could be yours.”
We share this call to action: To be speakers of words and doers of deeds. To lead, as my great-grandfather might have said, toward no more quarrels and no more wars.
In closing, I ask you to heed that call. Lead on behalf of each other. Lead on behalf of the nation. Lead, also, on behalf of the liberal arts—of the traditions of human experience and humane insight that they represent. Recognize the importance of the attributes they have given you, mark their presence in your lives, advocate for them in the lives of others. Keep your own Iliad under your pillow. Be the world’s best force for the humanities—and thus for human possibility.
Thank you.