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Well to me betraying the age means exposing its conceits, its foibles; its phony moral certitudes. It means telling the secrets of the age and facing harsher truths. Every age has its massive moral blind spots. We might not see them, but our children will. Slavery was one of them and the people who best served that age were the ones who called it as it was--which was ungodly and inhuman. Ben Franklin called it when he became president of the Pennsylvania Abolition Society.
對我來說，背叛時代意味著揭露它的自負、缺點和偽善的道德信條；它意味著揭露時代的秘密，直面更為殘酷的事實。每個時代都有許多道德盲點。我們也許看不到，但我們的下一代卻能看到。奴隸制就是一個盲點，只有為那個時代做出偉大貢獻的人們才會如此稱呼它，因為他們了解這種制度的荒唐和野蠻。本·富蘭克林成為賓夕法尼亞廢除奴隸制委員會主席時就稱其為奴隸制。
Segregation. There was another one. America sees this now but it took a civil rights movement to betray their age. And 50 years ago the U.S. Supreme Court betrayed the age. May 17, 1954, it says here, Brown vs. Board of Education came down and put the lie to the idea that separate can ever really be equal. Amen to that.
種族隔離，這是另一個盲點?，F在美國已經意識到了這一點，但卻是從全國的民權運動開始背叛那個時代的。50年前，美國最高法院背叛了時代。1954年5月17日，布朗訴求教育委員會案勝訴，揭穿了“隔離但平等”這一謊言。阿門。
Fast forward 50 years.--May 17, 2004. What are the ideas right now worth betraying? What are the lies we tell ourselves now? What are the blind spots of our age? What's worth spending your post-Penn lives trying to do or undo? It might be something simple. It might be something as simple as our deep down refusal to believe that every human life has equal worth. Could that be it? Could that be it? Each of you will probably have your own answer, but for me that is it. And for me the proving ground has been Africa.
50年很快就過去了。今天——2004年5月17日，我們要背叛哪些思想呢？我們對自己說了什么謊呢？我們這個時代的盲點是什么？離開賓夕法尼亞大學后，什么值得去做什么不值得去做？答案也許非常簡單，就像我們在內心深處拒絕相信每一個生命都有相同的價值一樣簡單。是我說的那樣嗎？是那樣嗎？你們每個人也許都將會有自己的答案，但對我來說確實是這樣的。非洲就是最好的證明。
