How to Make a Hard Decision

in a Dark Time

——梅赐琪院长在澳门大学何鸿燊东亚书院成立十五年周年

暨2025年毕业高桌晚宴上的讲话

编者按

新雅书院院长梅赐琪受邀出席澳门大学何鸿燊东亚书院成立十五年周年暨2025年毕业高桌晚宴，并作为主讲嘉宾发表以“How to Make a Hard Decision in a Dark Time”为主题的演讲。

Distinguished Vice President and Professor Mok, College Master and Professor Luo, faculty and staff members of the college, dear students, alumni and honorable guests,

It is such a great honor for me to be invited by Stanley Ho East Asia College to speak in this remarkable High Table Dinner. As the Dean of Xinya college of Tsinghua University, I always consider to dine together is THE most important part for a residential college. Back three years ago, when I was appointed by University as the Dean of Xinya， in awe of the culture of residential college, I went back the great movie series of Harry Potter and learned that to share food together in Great Hall of Hogwarts always marks a turning point of the story. Indeed, dinners like this are not merely meals; they are powerful educational medium, where ideas simmer alongside the aroma of food, and conversations spark transformation.

Events of sharing and conversation like this are especially important at this moment. We currently live in a time of profound crossroads—geopolitical, environmental, and existential. I would not call it dark, but it is definitely a difficult time unforeseen for a while after prosperity of almost a century. So tonight, let us use this shared table not only to nourish our bodies but to reflect on a question that haunts our age: How do we make hard decisions in difficult times?

Let me begin with a true story in a dark time.

In 1938, Nazi Germany annexed Austria, hundreds of thousands of Jews in Austria faced imminent persecution. Most nations shut their doors to Jews trying to leave. Yet a Chinese diplomat, Dr. Ho Fengshan, yes, the same Ho with Stanley Ho, then Consul-General in Vienna, issued thousands of life-saving visas to Austrian Jews to Shanghai, defying orders from his own government and threats of Nazi amid Japanese invasion to China. In 2001，Dr. Ho was awarded the title of Righteous Among the Nations by the Israeli organization Yad Vashem. I heard this story last week directly from Dr. Ho’s daughter in Beijing. While historians have used all good words to praise Dr. Ho’s humanitarian actions, such as “China’s Schindle”,etc.,a question came to me while sitting in the audience was that what has driven such a hard and righteous decision in a dark time like that.

After reading more about the whole story of Dr. Ho, two important qualities come to my mind. The first is wisdom. In a dark time, how to act smartly is as vital as the action itself. Dr. Ho faced a very difficult position when deciding to issue visas for Jews. Nazi of course didn’t want him to do it to save Jews. His own government did not want him to do it, either, in the fear of ruining the already shaky relation between Nationalist government and Nazi Germany. And even more ironic, Jews also didn’t want visas to China. Indeed, why anybody would want to go to a country under invasion? Such difficult situation witnessed Dr. Ho’s wisdom. He decided to issue visas to Shanghai for Jews in desperation. For one, Shanghai, although under the control of Japan invasion army, remained to be the only free port for international travelers until very late in WWII. For the other, as everybody later understood, a visa is not a pass to a perfect refuge, but life-saving pass to leave atrocious Nazi. The wisdom seeing what others have dismissed paid off.

The second quality I want to mention is courage. True courage is not recklessness, but the resolve to make a moral judgment about what is right and what is wrong against the so-called “common sense” at the time. In the 1938 international conference for refugee , the common sense was that all 38 countries but Dominican Republic chose not to take Jewish refugees. According to the order Dr. Ho received, the common sense was that China’s diplomats should avoid trouble. When Dr. Ho chose to help, he certainly hadn’t foreseen the day of medal awarding to come in 2001. What helped him to make the decision, in spite of possible punishment and imminent threat, must have been the courage deeply rooted in a moral conviction, the conviction that those waiting in despair deserved dignity, even if the whole world has looked away.

Immediate questions to our educators and the educated would be the following: Can we teach wisdom and courage? Is there a formula to become a person of wisdom and courage? My simple answer is a big NO. No in the age of Aristotle, no in the age of AI. To seek a fixed and finite method for wisdom and courage, no matter how good it looks, is to seek blindness. To add a little more to the simple answer, the path to wisdom and courage lies in openness, and probably only in openness, the openness of education, of thought, of heart. Openness is what allowed Dr. Ho to quickly identify to loophole of Nazi’s control and created a lifeline when others saw futility. Openness is what let him hear the cries of strangers over the roars of blind common sense.

A closed system, being educational, ideological, algorithmic, could look very good for providing certainty and solution. But, any closed system would for sure breed blindness. It is openness that drives us to ask questions like, what if there is another way to do things? What if there is another way to think of things? These questions give birth to wisdom and courage, but not the other way around.

Now, let’s go back to the dinner tonight. As I mentioned early, high table dinner is a medium for education. And as Marshall McLuhan famously said, “The medium is the message.” So, the message on the table, besides the magnificent setting and delicious food to come, is openness. The openness of sharing bread together, the openness of imagine better choices, the openness of listening across all our differences.

In closing, let me thank the College for welcoming me, my colleagues, and my two students into your community. To all here: May we leave tonight not just full, but more open. And when your journeys bring you to Beijing, our doors at Xinya will be open in return.

Thank you.

图片丨张煜

审核丨张伟特