President Kim: So in closing, Mayor Bloomberg, you’ve told our students that they should
party a lot, swim in the Connecticut, [Bloomberg: To-ga, To-ga, To-ga] But let me let you redeem
yourself with this question. [Laughter]
We talk a lot, and we’ve been talking a lot, about particular habits of the mind.
You mentioned independence, innovation, persistence. What is one of the habits of your mind? A
persistent habit that you’ve cultivated over the last years of your career, that you
think has been most important to you? And what direct advice would you give these students
in terms of habits that they should cultivate? Major Bloomberg: I went to Hopkins to study
physics and it turned out there was a German requirement. So after thirty days I became
an engineer where there was no language requirement. And I think looking back, an engineering background
was perhaps the transformative thing in my life. Because in science it would have worked
if I stayed a physicist too, I suppose in science you have to be able to look in a mirror
and answer the question. You can’t just say something and believe it. You have to
be able to show people that you’re right. The essence of science is that somebody else
independently can verify what you claim you saw. And that discipline of not just taking
people’s word for it, or not just automatically falling into what’s generally accepted,
has forced me to step back and say, “Why?” and to question.
And if you question why we’re doing things, I think you’ll find yourself targeting your
energies much more efficiently, appropriately, and in a much more satisfying way. So if somebody
says, “Well, this works,” well that may be, but stop and think. Does it make any common
sense to you? Listen to what people are telling you what to do. Think about what they say
in the newspaper. Does it make any sense? Do you want to be part of it? Could you do
it better? It’s that mental discipline of questioning, which I guess is the scientific
method, you could call it. There was a great story, a great letter to
the editor, I think it was the chairman’s letter in the Smithsonian magazine about five
or six years ago. Where the chairman of the Smithsonian wrote a letter saying he had a
lot of friends who had studied liberal arts who were proud of the fact that they knew
nothing about science and bragged about it. But he had other friends who had graduate
degrees in the sciences and they never bragged about their lack of knowledge of Shakespeare.
And I’ve always thought that tells you that sciences force you in ways to, the discipline
forces you in a ways, to really reflect, look at it and make sure that you want to go in
that direction and that you understand the implications of it.
And I guess in addition to that it’s just, it isn’t not caring, it’s just being confident
enough in yourself. That gets back to your question, the guy that said I take unpopular
positions and nobody likes me for it. The question is not do they like you for it. The
question is, do you think it’s right? It is great to be loved by everyone but the
thing that’s most important is that you respect yourself. I’m not suggesting you
go out and yell and scream at others and deliberately try to provoke. Sometimes discretion does
make sense, to not say things. Because you don’t want to hurt other people. And you
could respect their views or not respect their views, but they do have a right to their views.
I’m getting tied up in New York, there’s a group that wants to build a mosque, replace
an old building two blocks from ground zero. And there are some people that think that
this should be prohibited, and we should investigate where the monies that they hope to raise will
come from, and have some restrictions on what they can preach in the mosque. And I have
said, so many times I’m getting tired of it, I’m not winning a lot of friends in
doing so, but I just think it is the most outrageous thing that anybody could suggest.
Here we have 9/11, the actual site where some people felt that our freedoms to practice
our religion were so abhorrent to them they were willing to take 3,000 people and their
own lives. If there’s any place that we should be proud to show the world that we
are an open country and an open city, if somebody wants to practice their religion, whatever
that religion is, they should have the right to do it. And I happen to think this is a
very appropriate place for somebody who wants to build a mosque, because it tells the world
that America, and New York City, which is what I’m responsible for, really believes
in what we preach. We all say freedom of religion. Well, it’s not just freedom of your religion,
it’s freedom of everybody’s religion. And I don’t think this country wants to
go in a direction of questioning … A lot of people that didn’t applaud, if
you’ll notice. I happen to feel very strongly that those values that I was taught in Civics
101, 102, that my parents taught me. If you want freedoms you’ve got to give other people
their freedoms. And this is a perfect example of standing up. And those people that died
in 9/11 actually died so that we can, and the people I talked about going overseas and
fighting and dying for us, they’re doing that so that we can practice our religion.
And if you care about religion, you should make sure that the government doesn’t get
involved in religion.