Lao Dongyan | “Learn a little self-defense, and strive to be someone who is not easily deceived” – Lao Dongyan, Faculty Representative of the Tsinghua Law School Graduation Ceremony

Screenshot of the speech page of Lao Dongyan from Tsinghua University’s official website at the 2016 graduation ceremony.

At this moment, standing here, my feelings are almost the same as those of the students present, with some excitement, some trepidation, and a strong sense of parting. I am excited because I finally got the opportunity to give a speech at the law school graduation ceremony. You know, this is an opportunity that only comes once every sixty years. According to convention, the teachers take turns giving speeches at the graduation ceremony every year, and there are more than sixty teachers in our school. I am apprehensive because I lack enough wisdom and intelligence to teach you how to navigate your future life paths, and I also lack the necessary sharpness and depth to make my speech thought-provoking; at the same time, playing the emotional card is not my forte, and I cannot give various humorous jokes or online buzzwords to make everyone spend these ten or twenty minutes in a pleasant atmosphere of laughter.

Every graduation season, the air is filled with the taste of parting. This year, for me, this parting feels even more intense, because the Class 2 students of the law department, whom I have been the homeroom teacher for four years, are also leaving Tsinghua Garden. Four years have passed in a flash. The scene of me speaking to the freshmen of Law 2 in the mock court is still vivid in my mind, and in the blink of an eye, it’s time to say goodbye. Seeing how the once green and ignorant teenagers have transformed into confident and steady young people, I feel both sad and gratified. During these four years, I have always hoped to treat all students equally and without discrimination, but objectively, I have had more interaction with some students and less private contact with most students. This is mainly related to my personality, which is more reserved and passive, and I don’t have the affinity to get along with the students. Here, I want to apologize, I should and could have given more students active care. At the same time, I want to apologize to all the Law 2 students that my “General Theory of Criminal Law” exam papers were a bit difficult, and the scores given for this course are estimated to be the lowest of all courses. Most students’ scores are between seventy and eighty points, which has lowered the students’ GPA. As a teacher, I deeply apologize, although I may still be unable to resist giving such difficult exam papers in the future.

At the time of parting, there are always some words to give to you students, either to encourage, remind, or advise, which is also one of the basic functions of a graduation speech. After careful consideration, I want to give you all a sentence from Mr. Hu Shi, and also give it to myself: “Learn some skills to protect yourself, and strive to be a person who is not deceived by others.”

First, let’s talk about “learning some skills to protect yourself”. In all professional courses, the cultivation of legal thinking, the emphasis on systematic thinking, legal interpretation ability, and reasoning ability are all to lay a necessary foundation for you students to “learn some skills to protect yourself”. In this regard, Tsinghua Law School has always done a very good job. Our students are much stronger than the graduates of many law schools in terms of solving difficult cases and techniques. Professor Zhang Mingkai has a famous saying, the gist of which is that legislation is not an object of ridicule. Instead of ridiculing legislation, it is better to reflect on one’s own interpretation ability. Interpretation ability is the basic skill of legal professionals. The same legal provisions, people who have received legal training can interpret more content. “Learning some skills to protect yourself” requires everyone to study hard at school and work diligently after entering society. In every position, for every job assigned to you, whether you like it or not, I hope that you can take it seriously and try your best to do it well, at least to the point of being qualified. Emphasizing hard work and diligence is not to pursue success in the secular sense, but to give you more freedom of choice in the future. If one day, you feel that the environment around you is not suitable for you, having some skills to protect yourself will at least prevent you from losing the courage to “laugh to the sky and go out the door”, without having to endure or wrong yourself, and live a life of looking up to others.

Next, let’s talk about “striving to be a person who is not deceived by others”. Mr. Hu Shi always emphasized that we should “study more problems and talk less about doctrines”. This is because any doctrine will have a certain degree of seductiveness. While accepting a certain doctrine, if you do not conduct the necessary reflection, you will most likely become a “person who is deceived by others”. “Not being deceived by others” means having independent judgment and not easily believing anything that is instilled. The liberal arts education or general education in universities is to prevent you students from being deceived by others. I repeatedly emphasize in and out of class to try to attend some courses in humanities and social sciences, read more books in humanities and social sciences, learn more knowledge including philosophy, political science, sociology, economics, history, literature and other disciplines, and try to internalize this knowledge into your own cultivation. The intention is also the same. It must be admitted that compared to professional training, the liberal arts education in Tsinghua Law School is not very successful. To “not be deceived by others”, it is far from enough to just learn relevant knowledge in school. After entering society, you students need to continue to spend time and energy to think about this issue and pay some attention to politics. Many people may feel that politics is far away from them, so they don’t care about politics, but you must know that politics never forgets to care about us. The ultimate purpose of caring about politics is not power, but freedom; therefore, although politics is a profession for a few people, it should become a side job for everyone. In the final analysis, “not being deceived by others” means becoming a true citizen, which means refusing to be shaped into a docile person. What is a true citizen? I strongly agree with this sentence: to be able to express one’s own views independently, but not to be arrogant; to obey politics, but not to be servile. To actively participate in the country’s policies, to know compassion when seeing the weak, and to know anger when seeing evil, I think he is a true citizen.

For legal professionals, to achieve the basic goal of “learning some skills to protect yourself, and striving to be a person who is not deceived by others”, you students must pay attention to four points:

1. Be a normal, humane person. The reason why the leftists in China are annoying is because they say how wonderful the systems of North Korea and the former Soviet Union are on the one hand, and on the other hand, they send their children to study in Western countries such as the United States, Britain, Germany, and France, and even let their wives and children immigrate there. Everyone with sincere faith deserves respect. However, with a positive mouth and a negative heart, under the banner of a certain doctrine that they themselves do not believe in, they engage in various political opportunism and deceive people. Such people will eventually become clowns in the long river of history.
2. Uphold the common bottom line and be able to make reasonable value judgments. There is no room for debate about which is worth pursuing: democracy and autocracy, the rule of law and the rule of man, freedom and slavery, constitutionalism and autocracy. As some scholars have pointed out, in Chinese society, the common bottom line is not the compromise and reconciliation of the “fairness” and “efficiency” advocated by the left and right factions, nor is it to find a third way between “too much freedom” and “too much welfare”, but to strive for the minimum freedom rights and social security. This is the basic value consensus of modern civilization. No matter how efficient slavery is, it cannot be accepted by modern civilization because it deviates from the setting of freedom and forces others to be in a forced position. I hope that after you students leave school, you can read more history books, especially the modern and contemporary history of China, and try to learn more about the real situation abroad. On this basis, make your own judgment on what should be adhered to as the bottom line. When others face injustice, perhaps we cannot expect ourselves to become heroic figures, but at least we can avoid being accomplices; even if we do not have the courage to stand up, we can at least give moral support. This is the bottom line that people need to uphold. A society without a bottom line will be an extremely defeated society, and we have witnessed such a defeat in the Cultural Revolution. At the same time, an individual who cannot uphold the bottom line will inevitably have a life of continuous decline, because every step down will become easier, until finally there is no bottom line to uphold.
3. Recognize the development trend of Chinese society and combine your excellence with the progress of society. Mr. Tang Degang once said that it will take China about two hundred years to get out of the historical Three Gorges and transform into a free, democratic, and rule-of-law country. Counting from 1840, there is not much time left for two hundred years. Believe that Chinese society will definitely get out of this historical Three Gorges. In this process, please be sure to combine your own excellence with the progress of society. Excellence does not only mean becoming an elite in the industry (especially the mainstream industry), excellence means responsibility and duty, which means conforming to the historical trend of social development, rather than going against the trend. For today’s China, what we need are elites from all walks of life who actively promote the smooth passage of Chinese society through the historical Three Gorges. If Tsinghua Law School hopes to contribute to China’s rule of law cause, it should regard the cultivation of such elites as its own responsibility.
4. Mastering legal techniques is very important, and at the same time, always remember that technology is ultimately for serving reasonable value judgments. As a qualified legal professional, and also as a citizen, you students should not only be proficient in various legal techniques, but also have independent thinking and judgment ability. Please do not think that the justice of individual cases is not important, especially in sensitive or influential cases, you should be able to make reasonable value judgments that conform to the spirit of the times, and have the ability to use the legal techniques you have learned to practice and promote such values. In my opinion, those who play with technology in the palm of their hands but cannot or deliberately ignore reasonable value judgments are simply experts without souls; on the contrary, those who can make reasonable value judgments but cannot implement such value judgments through legal techniques are not qualified legal professionals, at best, they are just angry youths. Qualified legal professionals must be able to combine superb legal techniques with reasonable value judgments.

You students are about to leave Tsinghua Garden and go your separate ways, and you need to face a more complex social environment and interpersonal environment. In your usual dealings with people, I have three pieces of advice: First, please broaden your life’s horizons, be less calculating, complain less, it’s normal to have negative emotions, but you should still actively do things. You should spend your time and energy on constantly enhancing your own strength (including inner strength), rather than wasting it on the personnel struggles within the unit. Second, if you believe that freedom, equality, and fraternity are worth pursuing, please implement these ideas in your daily life, and don’t say one thing and do another. Third, handle the relationship between upholding principles and knowing how to compromise. When I was young, I would like Hai Rui, like his adherence to principles, and admire his uncompromising attitude. At this age, it is difficult for Hai Rui to become the object of my admiration. Leaving aside the example of him forcing his five-year-old daughter to starve to death for the sake of so-called chastity (just because she accepted a pastry handed over by a boy), he never accomplished anything in his life, but was only regarded as a phantom moral standard-bearer. Now, I certainly admire Zhang Juzheng more, and I admire Lincoln more, although they are not the so-called saints, and they have the same shortcomings and weaknesses as ordinary people. The movie “Lincoln” directed by Steven Spielberg tells the last period of Lincoln’s life. In order to pass the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution (the famous abolition clause), Lincoln spared no effort. He was angry, frustrated, and shed tears, and even used three lobbyists to persuade the Democratic Party members by means of bribery. Of course, I am not advocating taking any means to achieve the goal, but I just want to tell you that you should properly handle the relationship between principles and compromise. In many cases, compromise is to better realize the adherence to principles.

As a woman, I also want to say to the girls present: Please strive to be brave and responsible women. Our most important identity is not someone’s wife or the mother of a child, but first of all an independent individual, who should have the courage to take risks and pursue their dreams. I believe that many girls have watched the American drama “The Good Wife”. This American drama tells the story of how a woman who has been betrayed by her husband and publicly humiliated starts her new life and regains control of her destiny. This drama reminds us that “never expect marriage to save a you who has not improved.” The greatest meaning of marriage is not loyalty, but the great friendship between adults: “not to penetrate each other, not to seek proof, not to show loyalty, to gain respect through professionalism, and to gain trust through personality. Great friendship is not to participate in each other’s lives in every detail, but to maintain harmony and difference in mutual appreciation.” Ladies of the Law School, I wish you to become better selves in the future; at the same time, please gentlemen of the Law School, help your other halves to become better selves in the future.

Finally, borrowing a sentence from the movie “Zootopia”: Change the world, starting from me, starting from you, starting from everyone. If you are dissatisfied with this world, dissatisfied with this society, please start by changing yourself while complaining.