Speech by Bill Gates at Harvard

Excellent speech by Bill Gates at Harvard. Talks about

his single big regret on not recognising the highest

human achievement until quite late in his life and a

call to the most privileged to look beyond their own

narrow interests.



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June 7, 2007





President Bok, former President Rudenstine, incoming

President Faust, members of the Harvard Corporation

and the Board of Overseers, members of the faculty,

parents, and especially, the graduates:



I've been waiting more than 30 years to say this:

"Dad, I always told you I'd come back and get my

degree."



I want to thank Harvard for this timely honor. I'll be

changing my job next year … and it will be nice to

finally have a college degree on my resume.



I applaud the graduates today for taking a much more

direct route to your degrees. For my part, I'm just

happy that the Crimson has called me "Harvard's most

successful dropout." I guess that makes me

valedictorian of my own special class … I did the best

of everyone who failed.



But I also want to be recognized as the guy who got

Steve Ballmer to drop out of business school. I'm a

bad influence. That's why I was invited to speak at

your graduation. If I had spoken at your orientation,

fewer of you might be here today.



Harvard was just a phenomenal experience for me.

Academic life was fascinating. I used to sit in on

lots of classes I hadn't even signed up for. And dorm

life was terrific. I lived up at Radcliffe, in Currier

House. There were always lots of people in my dorm

room late at night discussing things, because everyone

knew I didn't worry about getting up in the morning.

That's how I came to be the leader of the anti-social

group. We clung to each other as a way of validating

our rejection of all those social people.



Radcliffe was a great place to live. There were more

women up there, and most of the guys were science-math

types. That combination offered me the best odds, if

you know what I mean. This is where I learned the sad

lesson that improving your odds doesn't guarantee

success.



One of my biggest memories of Harvard came in January

1975, when I made a call from Currier House to a

company in Albuquerque that had begun making the

world's first personal computers. I offered to sell

them software.



I worried that they would realize I was just a student

in a dorm and hang up on me. Instead they said: "We're

not quite ready, come see us in a month," which was a

good thing, because we hadn't written the software

yet. From that moment, I worked day and night on this

little extra credit project that marked the end of my

college education and the beginning of a remarkable

journey with Microsoft.



What I remember above all about Harvard was being in

the midst of so much energy and intelligence. It could

be exhilarating, intimidating, sometimes even

discouraging, but always challenging. It was an

amazing privilege – and though I left early, I was

transformed by my years at Harvard, the friendships I

made, and the ideas I worked on.



But taking a serious look back … I do have one big

regret.



I left Harvard with no real awareness of the awful

inequities in the world -- the appalling disparities

of health, and wealth, and opportunity that condemn

millions of people to lives of despair.



I learned a lot here at Harvard about new ideas in

economics and politics. I got great exposure to the

advances being made in the sciences.



But humanity's greatest advances are not in its

discoveries – but in how those discoveries are applied

to reduce inequity. Whether through democracy, strong

public education, quality health care, or broad

economic opportunity – reducing inequity is the

highest human achievement.



I left campus knowing little about the millions of

young people cheated out of educational opportunities

here in this country. And I knew nothing about the

millions of people living in unspeakable poverty and

disease in developing countries.



It took me decades to find out.



You graduates came to Harvard at a different time. You

know more about the world's inequities than the

classes that came before. In your years here, I hope

you've had a chance to think about how – in this age

of accelerating technology – we can finally take on

these inequities, and we can solve them.



Imagine, just for the sake of discussion, that you had

a few hours a week and a few dollars a month to donate

to a cause – and you wanted to spend that time and

money where it would have the greatest impact in

saving and improving lives. Where would you spend it?



For Melinda and for me, the challenge is the same: how

can we do the most good for the greatest number with

the resources we have.



During our discussions on this question, Melinda and I

read an article about the millions of children who

were dying every year in poor countries from diseases

that we had long ago made harmless in this country.

Measles, malaria, pneumonia, hepatitis B, yellow

fever. One disease I had never even heard of,

rotavirus, was killing half a million kids each year –

none of them in the United States.



We were shocked. We had just assumed that if millions

of children were dying and they could be saved, the

world would make it a priority to discover and deliver

the medicines to save them. But it did not. For under

a dollar, there were interventions that could save

lives that just weren't being delivered.



If you believe that every life has equal value, it's

revolting to learn that some lives are seen as worth

saving and others are not. We said to ourselves: "This

can't be true. But if it is true, it deserves to be

the priority of our giving."



So we began our work in the same way anyone here would

begin it. We asked: "How could the world let these

children die?"



The answer is simple, and harsh. The market did not

reward saving the lives of these children, and

governments did not subsidize it. So the children died

because their mothers and their fathers had no power

in the market and no voice in the system.



But you and I have both.



We can make market forces work better for the poor if

we can develop a more creative capitalism – if we can

stretch the reach of market forces so that more people

can make a profit, or at least make a living, serving

people who are suffering from the worst inequities. We

also can press governments around the world to spend

taxpayer money in ways that better reflect the values

of the people who pay the taxes.



If we can find approaches that meet the needs of the

poor in ways that generate profits for business and

votes for politicians, we will have found a

sustainable way to reduce inequity in the world.



This task is open-ended. It can never be finished. But

a conscious effort to answer this challenge will

change the world.



I am optimistic that we can do this, but I talk to

skeptics who claim there is no hope. They say:

"Inequity has been with us since the beginning, and

will be with us till the end – because people just …

don't … care."



I completely disagree.



I believe we have more caring than we know what to do

with.



All of us here in this Yard, at one time or another,

have seen human tragedies that broke our hearts, and

yet we did nothing -- not because we didn't care, but

because we didn't know what to do. If we had known how

to help, we would have acted.



The barrier to change is not too little caring; it is

too much complexity.



To turn caring into action, we need to see a problem,

see a solution, and see the impact. But complexity

blocks all three steps.



Even with the advent of the Internet and 24-hour news,

it is still a complex enterprise to get people to

truly see the problems. When an airplane crashes,

officials immediately call a press conference. They

promise to investigate, determine the cause, and

prevent similar crashes in the future.



But if the officials were brutally honest, they would

say: "Of all the people in the world who died today

from preventable causes, one half of one percent of

them were on this plane. We're determined to do

everything possible to solve the problem that took the

lives of the one half of one percent."



The bigger problem is not the plane crash, but the

millions of preventable deaths.



We don't read much about these deaths. The media

covers what's new – and millions of people dying is

nothing new. So it stays in the background, where it's

easier to ignore. But even when we do see it or read

about it, it's difficult to keep our eyes on the

problem. It's hard to look at suffering if the

situation is so complex that we don't know how to

help. And so we look away.



If we can really see a problem, which is the first

step, we come to the second step: cutting through the

complexity to find a solution.



Finding solutions is essential if we want to make the

most of our caring. If we have clear and proven

answers anytime an organization or individual asks

"How can I help?," then we can get action – and we can

make sure that none of the caring in the world is

wasted. But complexity makes it hard to mark a path of

action for everyone who cares — and that makes it hard

for their caring to matter.



Cutting through complexity to find a solution runs

through four predictable stages: determine a goal,

find the highest-leverage approach, discover the ideal

technology for that approach, and in the meantime,

make the smartest application of the technology that

you already have — whether it's something

sophisticated, like a drug, or something simpler, like

a bednet.



The AIDS epidemic offers an example. The broad goal,

of course, is to end the disease. The highest-leverage

approach is prevention. The ideal technology would be

a vaccine that gives lifetime immunity with a single

dose. So governments, drug companies, and foundations

fund vaccine research. But their work is likely to

take more than a decade, so in the meantime, we have

to work with what we have in hand – and the best

prevention approach we have now is getting people to

avoid risky behavior.



Pursuing that goal starts the four-step cycle again.

This is the pattern. The crucial thing is to never

stop thinking and working – and never do what we did

with malaria and tuberculosis in the 20th century –

which is to surrender to complexity and quit.



The final step – after seeing the problem and finding

an approach – is to measure the impact of your work

and share your successes and failures so that others

learn from your efforts.



You have to have the statistics, of course. You have

to be able to show that a program is vaccinating

millions more children. You have to be able to show a

decline in the number of children dying from these

diseases. This is essential not just to improve the

program, but also to help draw more investment from

business and government.



But if you want to inspire people to participate, you

have to show more than numbers; you have to convey the

human impact of the work – so people can feel what

saving a life means to the families affected.



I remember going to Davos some years back and sitting

on a global health panel that was discussing ways to

save millions of lives. Millions! Think of the thrill

of saving just one person's life – then multiply that

by millions. … Yet this was the most boring panel I've

ever been on – ever. So boring even I couldn't bear

it.



What made that experience especially striking was that

I had just come from an event where we were

introducing version 13 of some piece of software, and

we had people jumping and shouting with excitement. I

love getting people excited about software – but why

can't we generate even more excitement for saving

lives?



You can't get people excited unless you can help them

see and feel the impact. And how you do that – is a

complex question.



Still, I'm optimistic. Yes, inequity has been with us

forever, but the new tools we have to cut through

complexity have not been with us forever. They are new

– they can help us make the most of our caring – and

that's why the future can be different from the past.



The defining and ongoing innovations of this age –

biotechnology, the computer, the Internet – give us a

chance we've never had before to end extreme poverty

and end death from preventable disease.



Sixty years ago, George Marshall came to this

commencement and announced a plan to assist the

nations of post-war Europe. He said: "I think one

difficulty is that the problem is one of such enormous

complexity that the very mass of facts presented to

the public by press and radio make it exceedingly

difficult for the man in the street to reach a clear

appraisement of the situation. It is virtually

impossible at this distance to grasp at all the real

significance of the situation."



Thirty years after Marshall made his address, as my

class graduated without me, technology was emerging

that would make the world smaller, more open, more

visible, less distant.



The emergence of low-cost personal computers gave rise

to a powerful network that has transformed

opportunities for learning and communicating.



The magical thing about this network is not just that

it collapses distance and makes everyone your

neighbor. It also dramatically increases the number of

brilliant minds we can have working together on the

same problem – and that scales up the rate of

innovation to a staggering degree.



At the same time, for every person in the world who

has access to this technology, five people don't. That

means many creative minds are left out of this

discussion -- smart people with practical intelligence

and relevant experience who don't have the technology

to hone their talents or contribute their ideas to the

world.



We need as many people as possible to have access to

this technology, because these advances are triggering

a revolution in what human beings can do for one

another. They are making it possible not just for

national governments, but for universities,

corporations, smaller organizations, and even

individuals to see problems, see approaches, and

measure the impact of their efforts to address the

hunger, poverty, and desperation George Marshall spoke

of 60 years ago.



Members of the Harvard Family: Here in the Yard is one

of the great collections of intellectual talent in the

world.



What for?



There is no question that the faculty, the alumni, the

students, and the benefactors of Harvard have used

their power to improve the lives of people here and

around the world. But can we do more? Can Harvard

dedicate its intellect to improving the lives of

people who will never even hear its name?



Let me make a request of the deans and the professors

– the intellectual leaders here at Harvard: As you

hire new faculty, award tenure, review curriculum, and

determine degree requirements, please ask yourselves:



Should our best minds be dedicated to solving our

biggest problems?



Should Harvard encourage its faculty to take on the

world's worst inequities? Should Harvard students

learn about the depth of global poverty … the

prevalence of world hunger … the scarcity of clean

water …the girls kept out of school … the children who

die from diseases we can cure?



Should the world's most privileged people learn about

the lives of the world's least privileged?



These are not rhetorical questions – you will answer

with your policies.



My mother, who was filled with pride the day I was

admitted here – never stopped pressing me to do more

for others. A few days before my wedding, she hosted a

bridal event, at which she read aloud a letter about

marriage that she had written to Melinda. My mother

was very ill with cancer at the time, but she saw one

more opportunity to deliver her message, and at the

close of the letter she said: "From those to whom much

is given, much is expected."



When you consider what those of us here in this Yard

have been given – in talent, privilege, and

opportunity – there is almost no limit to what the

world has a right to expect from us.



In line with the promise of this age, I want to exhort

each of the graduates here to take on an issue – a

complex problem, a deep inequity, and become a

specialist on it. If you make it the focus of your

career, that would be phenomenal. But you don't have

to do that to make an impact. For a few hours every

week, you can use the growing power of the Internet to

get informed, find others with the same interests, see

the barriers, and find ways to cut through them.



Don't let complexity stop you. Be activists. Take on

the big inequities. It will be one of the great

experiences of your lives.



You graduates are coming of age in an amazing time. As

you leave Harvard, you have technology that members of

my class never had. You have awareness of global

inequity, which we did not have. And with that

awareness, you likely also have an informed conscience

that will torment you if you abandon these people

whose lives you could change with very little effort.



You have more than we had; you must start sooner, and

carry on longer.



Knowing what you know, how could you not?



And I hope you will come back here to Harvard 30 years

from now and reflect on what you have done with your

talent and your energy. I hope you will judge

yourselves not on your professional accomplishments

alone, but also on how well you have addressed the

world's deepest inequities … on how well you treated

people a world away who have nothing in common with

you but their humanity.



Good luck.



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