In an era of great transformation, we should all the more uphold our School’s culture
School culture defines the fundamental values of the School and the basic principles we must adhere to in realizing these values. Its role can be summarized in at least three aspects: providing stability for ourselves, fostering consensus and collective strength, and facilitating the School’s extensive external collaboration.
In an environment full of uncertainty, our thoughts can easily become unsettled, leaving us confused or drifting with the tide. The Great Learning emphasizes that “those who wish to cultivate themselves must first rectify their minds.” Wang Yangming lamented that “it is easy to defeat bandits in the mountains, but difficult to defeat the bandits in one’s heart.” Journey to the West metaphorically illustrates the same truth through the taming of the “restless monkey mind” and the vanishing of the “six thieves.” All these point to the same principle: School culture represents our understanding of the fundamental values of the School and the underlying logic of how they are to be realized. While we cannot control the external environment, as long as we grasp the underlying logic beneath the shifting appearances, we can see through phenomena to their essence and cultivate the patience and confidence to refine our abilities in pursuit of these values. Whether it is fundamental and forward-looking research that requires the perseverance of “sitting on the cold bench,” or social engagement that demands courage to take initiative, with inner stability we can act with composure, face setbacks without despair or resignation, and remain resilient. Self-cultivation requires vigilance in solitude, and only culture can truly support us in achieving this vigilance.
In the coming years, the School will inevitably face a series of major reforms. The reshaping of disciplinary directions, the adjustment of work strategies, the restructuring of organizational systems, and the optimization of personnel allocation mechanisms will affect each and every one of us. Without a shared understanding and recognition of the School’s core values, it will be difficult to grasp the purpose and direction of these reforms. Without clarity on the fundamental principles we must follow, our policies and strategies risk shifting with changes in leadership, making it hard to consolidate our resources and strengths. In an era of great transformation, agile approaches to research, teaching, and social engagement are becoming the norm. Yet reform is not the same as turmoil. Reform is like “the wind blows, the banner moves, but the heart remains still”: limited flexibility within a framework of strict principles. Turmoil, by contrast, often arises from unrealistic romanticism, short-sightedness, and lack of systematic thinking—and sometimes conceals self-serving “golden ideas.” The former is constrained by culture; the latter relies on the uncertainty of personal authority. The former unites strength, while the latter tends to dissipate it.
Whether in interdisciplinary integration, industry–education collaboration, or international expansion, we must work with people from diverse knowledge backgrounds and with different interests. Broad and effective collaboration is the School’s fundamental strategy for responding to a changing environment in a relatively controllable and sustainable way; relying solely on learning and self-innovation is far from enough. As the saying goes, “Those united by profit will disperse when the profit is gone.” The effectiveness and efficiency of cross-boundary collaboration must be bound by culture. Economic interests alone may bring people together to work on tasks, but they are insufficient for facing the uncertainties ahead. School culture is not only about consensus within, but also about recognition from outside. Our collaborators are not limited to those familiar with us, but also include those we have never met. For them, culture serves as a quick identifier of the School’s values and a foundation of trust in the reliability of collaboration. An organization without a distinct culture will find it difficult to build truly meaningful partnerships.
Practice is the criterion for testing truth. The accumulated practices of the past forty years in scientific research, talent cultivation, and social service form the foundation of the School’s cultural development. Without this accumulation, cultural construction would be nothing more than imagination or empty rhetoric detached from the School’s reality. At the same time, without a vision for the future, cultural development risks becoming rigid adherence to tradition, incapable of inspiring confidence and enthusiasm in realizing our ideals. Our cultural development, therefore, aims to peel back the layers, uncovering the underlying logic behind both the successes and failures of the past four decades, and projecting these insights onto the management scenarios required by the nation’s future development.
School culture is not a soft moral restraint but a firm value orientation; not a method that shifts with circumstances but a set of steadfast principles; not an empty slogan but a declaration and commitment to our collaborators. More importantly, culture is the very gene of the School’s growth—something that will be passed down to the generations of students we nurture.
Building a well-defined cultural system is not only a major priority for the School at present, but also a key safeguard for its long-term development.
