I AM sincerely happy to be here with you on this occasion and to become personally acquainted with this old and most prestigious University. My congratulations and very best wishes to all of today’s graduates.
Harvard’s motto is “Veritas.” Many of you have already found out and others will find out in the course of their lives that truth eludes us if we do not concentrate with total attention on its pursuit. And even while it eludes us, the illusion still lingers of knowing it and leads to many misunderstandings. Also, truth is seldom pleasant; it is almost invariably bitter. There is some bitterness in my speech today, too. But I want to stress that it comes not from an adversary but from a friend.
Three years ago in the United States I said certain things which at that time appeared unacceptable. Today, however, many people agree with what I then said...
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I AM very sorry to announce that Professor Mieczysław Jerzy Künstler, 金斯德, died on December 27th 2007. For the last few weeks I have been contemplating the loss of not only my personal tutor and mentor but most of all of a dedicated academic and a great Polish sinologist.
Professor Mieczysław Jerzy Künstler was born in Słupca, Poland, on March 26th 1933. He studied sinology at the University of Warsaw where he obtained a Master’s Degree (magister) in linguistics in 1956, followed by a PhD title (in 1962) with the thesis entitled “Les formations adverbiales à quasi-suffixe en Chinois archaique et dans la langue de l’epoque des Han” and a post-doctoral degree with the book, Ma Jong–vie et oeuvre” (1969). In the course of his studies he was a student of Professor Witold Jabłoński and Professor Janusz Chmielewski, renown Polish sinologists. Künstler’s doctoral and post-doctoral theses...
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