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. Bill Gates addresses the Harvard Alumni Association
in Tecentenary Theater at Harvard University’s 2007 Commencement Afternoon Exercises. 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.
