Dance to the Revolution

Taobao, Alibaba Group’s online retail platform that saw over $63 billion worth of transactions in the past year, is caught in several controversies recently. It started in October when Alibaba’s attempt to raise fees met with furious protests from the small vendors on Taobao Mall. It was not until China’s Minister of Commerce stepped in that the protests ended and Taobao rolled back on its fee hike and released its revised fee plan. Digital East Asia summarized the new plan and the changes from the original fee plan:

1. The current annual “technical service fee” of RMB6,000 (US$945.2) that had applied to all sellers would be split into two new packages — based on the vendor’s category of goods — with costs of RMB30,000 (US$4,726) and RMB 60,000 (US$9,452), a 400% and 900% increase respectively.
2. Vendors would be eligible to receive a year-end refund of part or all of their technical service fee based on business criteria such as operational scale, service quality and other positive merchant indicators.
3. Merchants must contribute a “liability deposit” which could be forfeited if they are found to have violated their contract in some way. This requirement arises out of an Alibaba scandal that had some premium merchants taking money for goods they never shipped to customers.
        A. The liability deposit set aside by merchants ranged from RMB 50,000 (US$7,876) to RMB100,000 (US$15,753) to as much as RMB150,000 (US$23,629).
        B. Depending on the extent of a violation , the merchant will incur a one-time deduction of at least RMB10,000 (US$1,575) that can then be used to compensate cheated customers.

This is not the end of Taobao controversy, however. Less than two weeks after the “Occupy Taobao” saga, China Daily (Nov. 1st) reported that the Ministry of Commerce was investigating Taobao for suspected monopoly. Yet one day later (today),  the Ministry refuted the China Daily report, saying Taobao was not under investigation. What’s interesting is that in the Chinese report where the Deputy Commercial Counselor denied the report, he said that on the issue of “whether Taobao is engaged in monopoly, it needs to be communicated with NDRC (National Development and Reform Commission) and SAIC (State Administration for Industry and Commerce).” So is this retraction a result of inter-agency (dis)coordination?

It is hard to believe that China Daily, the country’s designated mouth piece, would “invent” a Ministrial level investigation out of thin air. I’m inclined to think that a secret investigation has been under way, most likely spearheaded by NDRC and SAIC, thus the Ministry is not willing to go public as the one carrying out the investigation, but China Daily jumped the gun on this one.

China’s online shopping market hit 2 trillion RMB ($315 billion) in 2010 and with its rapid growth, the market is expected to reach 12.5 trillion RMB (about $2 trillion) by 2012. This market, however, is largely unregulated. There is little e-commerce legislation to speak of, especially on the retail market. The recent Taobao controversies is but one reminder of the urgency to provide a legal framework for e-commerce.

It’s easy to blame China for the failure of U.S. solar firms, but SolarWorld and other six unnamed U.S. companies’ anti-dumping and countervailing duty case against Chinese solar panel manufacturers has the potential to hurt, rather than help, the green economy in the U.S. Here is why:

Solar panel manufacturing is a highly capital intensive industry, that is, its capital-to-labor ratio is extremely high. The capital cost of a solar panel manufacturing company is usually at several hundred million dollars, and because of mechanized production, the employee number is usually around a couple of hundreds. China has heavily subsidized its solar industry, and these low-cost Chinese solar panels had fueled the installation of solar in U.S. and other developing nations.

This comes to the second part of my argument. Solar sales, distribution, installation and maintenance, unlike manufacturing, are not capital intensive. If only we shift a little down to the value chain, we’ll see an industry that employs (mostly) local people. It is really this simple: when solar panels are cheap, more people would be able to afford them, and there would be more local distribution/ installation / maintenance jobs.

According to the National Solar Jobs Census Oct. 2011 report by Solar Foundation™ and BW Research Partnership, 52.4% of all solar workers work at installation firms, that is, 52,503 jobs in installation in 2011, and the installation sector expects to add 13,068 workers over the next 12 months. The solar manufacturing companies in U.S. employs 24,064 workers, among them, sales occupation leads the job growth at 66.1%, not production. These are not the jobs that are “stolen” by the Chinese, because Chinese solar companies would have to hire U.S. distributors, marketing firms, local sales force, rather than shipping thousands of Chinese to North America attempting to sell to American consumers. Sure enough, the Census found 17,722 jobs in solely solar sales and distribution firms (that is, not including the sales personnel at manufacturing firms).

Scott Lincicome of White & Case made some very good comments about U.S. government subsidies to solar firms and called this row “subsidy envy” – this is true to some degree, though we should bear in mind that the extent of U.S. subsidy has no affect on the legal merit of the allegation against China. For more on the legal aspect (more, more) of the case, I suggest following IELP blog.

All I’m saying is simply this: if you are one of the many many Americans who are supporting this case, supporting tariff on Chinese solar panels because you think the Chinese companies are stealing American jobs, please think again. Only when the price of solar panels (or other renewable energy components such as wind turbines) goes down, can there be more local sales, distribution, and installation/maintenance jobs for the American people.

Commenting on China’s energy and carbon policies, Yuhan Zhang of Columbia University wrote:

Worse yet, China still does not perform very well in collecting and reporting energy and carbon emissions data, despite attempts to improve their monitoring of energy use and emissions. There are two major reasons behind such problems. At the national level, official data records suffer from periodic revisions from a variety of agencies in China, leading to inconsistency and uncertainty. At the local level, Chinese local officials sometimes misreport data or inhibit transparency so as to please higher-ups or make for more favourable employment evaluations. Notably, among all of China’s energy use data, coal is well known as the least accurate, partly because China has more than 1,100 counties with operating coal mines. Take coal data in 2002: after two revisions,  the final consensus increased coal consumption by more than 9.2 per cent from the original estimate.

This rings true to me. How do you even start on emission reduction if you don’t even know how much the current level is?

I’ve been helping Center for Global Development updating CARMA, a database of emission data from nearly 50,000 power plants owned by 4,000 companies around the globe. Due to the lack of information transparency in China, it is extremely difficult to gather China’s emission data. So this is what I did:

1. Find the annual power output data of individual power plants around the country (below are statistics from two biggest power companies in China):

2. Get the electricity consumption and coal consumption data of the generators (below are testing results of two kinds of coal at Huaneng’s coal power plants)

Coal and power consumption rate of each generator unit (Below are estimations of Huaneng’s generators)

3. For other types of plants, I would use CARMA’s own estimation. (Below: regression results from David Wheeler and Kevin Ummel’s working paper “Calculating CARMA: Global Estimation of CO2 Emissions from the Power Sector”)

4. Now just plug in the carbon rate estimation into the original power output spreadsheet, and you’ll get the carbon emission data — hooray! (Below are my own estimations of two dozens Huaneng plants, still working on data for other plants. Click for bigger picture.)

[numbers on the left shows thousand tons per year total emission]

The database update will be completed in several months. What I think will be very interesting besides looking at the trend of emission production, is to compare the data with these company’s own carbon targets in their sustainability report.

I will report more findings on this.

Continuing the previous post on the legal concerns surrounding the operation that killed Osama bin Laden, this just came in:

Retired Justice John Paul Stevens – one of my favorite Supreme Court Justices – said that killing Osama Bin Laden was legal (WSJ reports):

“It was not merely to do justice and avenge Sept. 11,” but “to remove an enemy who had been trying every day to attack the United States,” Justice Stevens said at a dinner in Chicago, according to former Stevens law clerk Diane Amann, a University of Georgia professor who attended the dinner, which capped a Northwestern University symposium on the justice’s jurisprudence.

In 2004 and 2006, Justice Stevens wrote Supreme Court opinions holding that Guantanamo prisoners could challenge their detention before neutral judges, and that while in custody were entitled to the minimal protections of the Geneva Conventions. His rulings stressed that the laws of war—of which the Geneva Conventions, ratified by the U.S., form a principal part—cannot be ignored simply because the government found it “convenient” to do so.

But on Thursday, Justice Stevens indicated that those same laws of war permit the armed forces to kill an enemy commander who remains engaged in active hostilities against the U.S., as Navy Seals did on their May 2 operation inside Pakistan. “I have not the slightest doubt that it was entirely appropriate for U.S. forces to do,” Justice Stevens said, according to Ms. Amann’s account.

1. Word cloud of the speech

2. Ratings

Mashable reports that it received the highest TV rating since his election:

3. On “I can report… I directed… I determined…”

You might noticed that in the middle of the speech when describing the operation, President Obama used more “I”s than normal. The Fabius Maximus blog criticizes the personalized tone in Obama’s speech and takes it to mean that Obama was taking credit for this operation:

“It is unusual for an America President to so personalize something about which he obviously had so little role — and which more properly a national accomplishment. “

James Fallows echoes that it “was more personalized than it should have been”.

I don’t know anything about presidential speech writing, however I think that the “overuse” of first person pronoun here is very appropriate and discreet. My estimation is that it has nothing to do with taking credit for the “achievement”, let along attempting to score a few points for the 2012 election.

I think it is because that President Obama, as a former law professor, is well aware of the legal murkiness of “targeted killing” and therefore he had to take sole responsibility in commanding this operation.

From a legal perspective, terrorism itself raises the question of whether to address it as crime, or as war. No matter how “right” it feels to kill Osama bin Laden, we have to recognize that a government’s use of deadly force has to be constrained by both domestic criminal law as well as international human rights norms. In law enforcement, individuals are subject to the due process clause – the guilt of an individual must be proven in the court of law. Killing without trial is only allowed in very limited circumstances such as self-defense (note that Bin Laden was unarmed when he was shot). In almost any other case, it would be tantamount to extrajudicial execution or murder.

In addition, President Gerald Ford signed Executive Order 11905, which states, “No employee of the United States Government shall engage in, or conspire to engage in, political assassination.” Presidents Carter and Reagan renewed the prohibition in Executive Orders 12036 and 12333 respectively. And Reagan expanded this prohibition slightly in Executive Order 12333: “No person employed by or acting on behalf of the United States Government shall engage in, or conspire to engage in, assassination.” The exception, of course, would require a presidential finding.

In order to distinguish the prohibition of assassinations and targeting of individuals or groups who pose a direct threat to United States, the Bush Administration largely relied on a December 1989 memorandum of Law issued by W. Hays Parks, Special Assistant for Law of War Matters to The Judge Advocate General of the Army. Parks asserted that the prohibition did not preclude the targeted killing of enemy combatants in wartime or the killing in self-defense of individuals who pose a direct threat to U.S. citizens or national security in peacetime.

Public international law is ambiguous on “targeted killing”. Article 23b of the Hague Convention of 1899 outlaws “treacherous” attacks on adversaries. Though “treachery” is not explicitly defined, is it often construed, as in Army Field Manual’s interpretation(in paragraph 31), to mean that assassination falls into this category.

The justification of “targeted killing” is that terrorism is war and  jus in bello allows the killing of “enemy combatants.” Yet terrorist groups such as Al Qaeda pose problems for the “enemy combatant” paradigm because they do not abide the laws of the war on combatants such as wearing uniforms and distinguishable insignia. The Bush administration therefore deemed terrorists to be “unlawful combatants” despite that no category other than “combatants” and “civilians” are recognized in the international realm – as illustrated in Israeli High Court of Justice’s ruling on the Israeli practice of targeted killing operations in Gaza and West Bank.

While the killing of Bin Laden sounds like nothing but an achievement to his domestic audience, President Obama is acutely aware of the legal responsibility on no one but himself in ordering this operation.

For this reason  I believe that the multiple first person pronouns are evident of just how nuanced and crafted Obama’s speech is. I truly think that this is the best speech of his presidency so far.

A  joke is spreading on the Chinese Internet sphere in the form of a fake obituary, titled “Bin Laden: Old Friend of the Chinese People“, in some versions, “of the American People.”

It imitates the pretentious tone often seen in official Chinese obituaries of foreign leaders, starting with: “Comrades, we are gathered here today, solemnly and ceremoniously, to mourn, deeply and bitterly, the great soldier of terrorism…”

Of course, the Chinese leaders never acknowledged that Bin Laden has any kind of friendship with China. And the Chinese people have some mixed reactions to Bin Laden’s death – there are rejoicing as well as concerns. See a rundown here.

The joke reflects a sense among the Chinese netizens that they’ve been misrepresented by their government. And the way they express their discontent is through sarcasm. The Chinese officials have used the term “an old friend of the Chinese people” to call many foreign leaders despite what the Chinese people actually think. The list of over 600 “old friends” includes people like Edgar Snow, Henry Kissinger, Jacques Chirac and Antonio Samaranch, whom the Chinese people ( the ones who know who these people are) generally have a favorable impression about, but it also includes Fidel Castro, Robert Mugabe, Pervez Musharraf, to whom most Chinese would  respond: “WTF? When were we ever friends?”

As a result of the proliferated use of the term “old friend of the Chinese people” and the number of dictators on this list, Chinese netizens cannot be entirely sure whether someone was once termed an “old friend” or not. (real test of friendship here!) A good example is that recently, a number of Chinese press have refuted the wide spread “misunderstanding” that the Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi is also one of the “old friends.”

So what do all the “old friends” jokes tell us?

First and foremost, people are frustrated that not only their freedom of speech is strictly circumscribed in China, but also their voice has been hijacked by the authorities for political expediency.

Second,  Chinese officials have, historically, misused the term many times on foreign leaders proven to be not worthy of any friendship at all. The ideological struggle between socialism and capitalism was a thing of the past that the new leaders have difficulty in sweeping under the rug completely.

Third, in pointing out that the dictators (some of whom the Chinese officials have endorsed at one point) ended in failure, netizens who circulate these jokes feel a sense of defiance. Because they are evidence that dictators who treat their own people with an iron fist and leaders who rule with fear and intimidation will ultimately be toppled and condemned – a hint to the current Chinese authorities.

So this is the origin of the joke – probably not a good joke, but it’s meant to be sarcastic. Not every day do Chinese get a chance to make jokes at the expense of a fallen villain.

刚刚完成论文的最后一稿，回首这两年为了论文忙碌的日子，总结了5条我写论文的法则。大家有什么经验，欢迎补充。

1. 首先完成任何相关的程序性行政审批

如果你们学校有什么 Board 或者 Committee 管你论文的某一方面，先把这个搞定。我已经在 Use of Human Subjects Committee 上栽了两次跟头了，也有朋友因为这个审批不通过，不得不大规模改动研究项目。

2. 论文文件夹分类整理

根据个人需要，就我这个研究，我先在总文件夹下建立了：资料，数据，采访，附录，写作中 5个文件夹。

其中我认为最重要的是资料按关键词组再建分文件夹。大家做文献分析都有经验，就是有大概 10 个左右相关的关键词，有些互相还很接近。在网上的资料库一搜，每组关键词都有个几十篇相关论文。我用过 Papers 但是还是觉得不方便。只要自己把保存的时候多一步，把文章名保存为文件名，其实这样分文件夹的方法也很清楚，而且可以少开一个软件。更重要的是，如果你像我一样在多台电脑上工作，那么我还不知道怎样把一个电脑上的 Papers 数据库在多台电脑上同步。但是用传统的文件夹分类，就很容易同步。

3. 备份，每次另存为新文件

A. 从前面的同步开始说。我是使用 Dropbox 自动同步我整个论文文件夹。这样方便在多台电脑上工作。

B. 把 Word, Excel 或者其他相关的软件改成每分钟自动保存

C. 每次写作完，可能是一天半天或者几个小时，选择另存为，保存文档，或者你的数据库成一个新的文件，文件名以日期时间结尾。这样有需要的时候，比如你突然发现你做的一个巨大改动可能不恰当，你随时可以翻看几天前保存下来的东西

4. 想法比什么都重要

对着空白的电脑屏幕，想着要写人生中也许最重要的一篇文章，而且要写个几万字是一件很恐怖的事情。我一开始看了电脑屏幕几天都没能写一行字。后来才意识到一开始写得很烂也无所谓，不要纠结于字句，应该把整体的想法用最简单语言写下来，这个时候唯一的目标是看的人能理解我的想法。不要扯高深。尤其是大学研究生以上的论文，研究的对象往往是连导师们都不是很熟悉的，所以心里要想：第一稿的目标是让导师们理解我在研究什么（包括有什么突破和意义），我的立场和观点是什么，凭什么/为什么，仅此而已。

5. 引用文献(包括页码)整理清楚

我第一稿交上去才发现我几百个注释和引用居然从第二页开始顺序就错了－－我差点没吐血。我至今还没有发现完美的整理注释和引用的软件，所以我觉得还是得用传统的手工做。新建一个文档，把所有的引用文献全部放上去（这个时候可以用软件）然后具体什么地方插引用，引的是哪几个文献的哪几页，还是手工做比较放心一点。我发现有些软件它出错了一个地方，整个都会 update 导致我全文件的引用全部重新做过。实在是很头痛的一件事情。

嗯。就这样。如果大家谁有好的方法，请分享一下。祝所有奋斗在论文路上的人好运！

首先，非常感谢推友们填写我前段时间发出的“中国推特圈问卷”，下面我将简单地介绍一下调查结果。

!!! 还没有填写问卷的朋友，希望您能够帮忙，抽出几分钟时间，填写这个问卷，再看下面的结果!!!!!

因为这样您可以比较客观, 不受影响地对比您的答案和之前问答这个问卷的716位朋友。

也因为我建立的几个 model , 尚需要更多的问卷答案去进行测试，所以您的回答将对我的研究起很大的帮助作用。谢谢您的支持！

—— 再次强调，如果您没有填写问卷的朋友，请线写这个问卷（约花1-3分钟），再看结果. 谢谢了！！！—————-

－－－－－－－特别注意：如果您是接受国家薪水的网络评论员、管理员（俗称五毛），我真心请求您看在我是很认真，熬了很多夜想对于绝大多数自愿使用推特的中国人做研究的份上，不要填写上面这个问卷。我请求您接受一个匿名采访。采访申请单在这里。谢谢您高抬贵手！－－－－－－－－－－

以下结果来自前699份答卷.

男女比例：

年龄分布：

教育程度：

地理位置分布：

主要行业分布： 除了这些以外，还有自由职业，教师，NGO，法律，设计，广告，公务员，等等多种行业。

工资水平：

使用推特之久:

每天使用推特的时间长短:

中国国内微博产品的使用:

其他网络工具的使用:

在各种公民组织的活动:

以下是我的模型的 Regression result. 由于是初步的 regression 结果，还需要大量的数据去试验我的模型， 所以希望大家能够帮忙继续填写问卷， 用于测验！谢谢！

在我的模型正式出来之后，我将详细解释我的研究结果。再次衷心感谢大家热情的帮忙！

Never before have we confronted the environmental and energy challenges with such urgency, and never before has U.S.-China cooperation on clean energy in both public and private sector been more crucial. This is the reason why Harvard, MIT and our friends on the West Coast serendipitously decided to hold a conference on this issue on the same date: Harvard’s China Energy & Environment Conference and Berkeley-Stanford Cleantech Conference.

Register now for China Energy & Environment Conference, or come to Harvard’s Northwest Science Building on April 9th and register on site!

For China Energy & Environment Conference, we will have the wonderful Susan Tierney, Managing Principal of Analysis Group, as our keynote speaker. Among her impressive list of experiences and credentials, she is a former Assistant Secretary for Policy at the U.S. Department of Energy, chairperson of the board of the Energy Foundation and a co-chair of the National Commission on Energy Policy. In Massachusetts, Sue is previously Secretary of Environmental Affairs, Chair of the Board of the Massachusetts Water Resources Agency, Commissioner of the Massachusetts Department of Public Utilities, and executive director of the Massachusetts Energy Facilities Siting Council. She also serves on the China Sustainable Energy Program’s Policy Advisory Council, which, for the past decade, has been supporting China’s policy efforts to increase energy efficiency and promoting the use of renewable energy sources. As a Director for the conference, I can’t think of a better person to address our audience on U.S. – China nexus in renewable energy and we are really lucky to have Sue coming.

In addition, we will have Secretary Steven Chu addressing us through a video-feed from Stanford and have a Q & A session with our audience. The title of his talk would be “Sputnik 2.0? The Pursuit of Green Jobs in China and the U.S.”. As United States Secretary of Energy, Dr. Steven Chu is charged with helping implement President Obama’s ambitious agenda to invest in clean energy, reduce our dependence on foreign oil, address the global climate crisis, and create millions of new jobs.  Dr. Chu is a distinguished scientist and co-winner of the Nobel Prize for Physics (1997). He has devoted his recent scientific career to the search for new solutions to our energy challenges and stopping global climate change – a mission he continues with even greater urgency as Secretary of Energy.

We are going to have six panels, five in English and one in Chinese. They are:

Rural Environmental Issues: Coping with Rapid Development

This panel will address issues in environmental systems management in China’s rural areas, drawing connections between public health and the urgent need to begin cleaning and protecting rural environments.

Moderator

• Charles Chester, Lecturer in Environmental Studies, Brandeis and Tufts University

Panelists

• Diane Gold, Associate Professor, Department of Environmental Health, Harvard University
• Saleem H. Ali, Director of the Institute for Environmental Diplomacy and Security, The Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources, University of Vermont
• Rachel Stern, Harvard Society of Fellows, Harvard University
• Ma Haibing, China Program Manager, WorldWatch Institute

The Future of Transportation: Motor Vehicles

This panel will address current transportation policies in China and the opportunities and challenges facing the private sector as it seeks to deploy clean vehicles in the domestic market.

Moderator

• Henry Lee, Senior Lecturer at Public Policy, Harvard Kennedy School

Panelists

• Feng An, President and Executive Director, Innovation Center for Energy and Transportation (ICET)
• Hongyan He Oliver, Former Research Fellow at Harvard Kennedy School
• Pricilla M. Lu, Chairwoman, Zap Jonway Electric Vehicle

Shifting from Coal: The Future of Renewable Electricity

This panel will address the efficacy of the Chinese government’s subsidies and incentives for clean technology, focusing on renewable electricity.

Moderator

• Joel Eisen, Professor of Law, University of Richmond

Panelists

• David Mohler, Senior Vice President and Chief Technology Officer, Duke Energy
• David Lam, Managing Partner, WI Harper
• Mitchell Dong, Serial Entrepreneur and CEO, Mohave Sun Power
• Chris Dann, Managing Partner of Energy Practice, Booz & Compan

在国内的时候，就知道这句：我不同意你的观点，但我誓死捍卫你说话的权利。掷地有声的一句话，在中国却很难有直观的认识；而在哈佛却是几乎每天都可以体验到：

今天 Einat Wilf 代表以色列工党来哈佛肯尼迪政府学院做讲话，内容是以色列的政党布局，当然不可避免地最主要都在讲巴以冲突问题。

讲话开始大概才五分钟，讲到以色列建造的墙很有效地保护了墙内的犹太人，一个西装革履的学生站了起来，大声说：“这是自我防卫吗？我刚从巴勒斯坦回来，看到了他们的人民生活在什么样的困境里。。。”一边说一边从包里拿出一面巴勒斯坦国旗。这时教室里有两个人鼓掌。

今天的组织人是 Nick Burns 大使，他对这个学生说：“我们这里要遵守文明的对话，你有任何意见都可以在之后的自由交流阶段提出，请不要打断Wilf 博士的讲话。” 那个学生问：“那我可以拉着这个国旗吗？” 大使说：“可以。但是请你不要打扰其他人听讲话。”

Wilf 也不是第一次遇到这种情况，不紧不慢，不动声色地又讲了下去。讲到以色列政客都支持与巴勒斯坦分离建国的时候，那个学生又插话说：“这是种族隔离政策”。Nick Burns大使严辞批评说：“我们在这里举办这样的讲座是给每个人文明地沟通的场地，现在她在讲话，你就要尊重她的发言。如果你再出言打断，我们只能请你出去了。” 这个学生道歉。主讲人又继续讲下去。

过了一会儿，学校的警察闻风进来，要把这个学生带走。这个学生还没有开口抗议，Burns大使上前制止了这个警察，对他说：“我们这里在进行思想对话与意见交流，他已经答应了不打扰别人，所以他有权利在这里拉着他的旗帜。”

讲座又进行了一会儿，一个打扮得有点邋遢的人晃悠了进来，他的帽子上满是写有支持巴勒斯坦口号的勋章，还围着一个典型的巴勒斯坦围巾。他走到举着巴勒斯坦国旗的同学旁边（两个人都在阶梯教室的最后面），非常低声地打了个招呼。然后就这么站着。不久，又来了两个警察，也没有把这两个人带走，而是静静地站在后面。

讲座又过了一个多小时才结束。提问环节有很多人举手要发言，大使一一点名。有多个人提出了很尖锐地问题，主要围绕以色列侵犯巴勒斯坦的人权。那两个抗议者没有被点到名，却也没有发出一句话，只是在后面一个拉着国旗，一个带着帽子和围巾。结束的时候，本以为他们会大声抗议，或者演讲，企图与人辩论；但没有，他们只是很平静地说：请到某某网站来了解关于巴以冲突更多的内容。

这件事情在哈佛几乎天天都在上演，我们经常邀请一些很有争议却也很有影响力的人来讲话。这种 civil dialogue “文明的对话” 每天都是我们生活和学习的一部分。以前读着伏尔泰的话，虽然也觉得心潮澎湃，却没有太多切身的体验。而现在我却是真真正正地体会到：只有当所有人表达意见的权利都平等，不管是穿西装，还是拖着拖鞋，不管是政党的领袖，还是普通学生，甚至无业游民，都能够在一个 civil space “文明的空间” 表达自己的立场的时候，人的尊严，思想和自由的尊严才体现出来。