吸引國際頂尖人才，除了“硬性指標(biāo)”還有什么？

文/杰弗里·雷蒙（Jeffrey S. Lehman)

2008年至2012年，我在深圳度過了我在中國的前四年。在深圳，我?guī)椭本┐髮W(xué)創(chuàng)建了國際法學(xué)院。我與時任北京大學(xué)校長許智宏是舊識，他向我提出北京大學(xué)想建設(shè)一所培養(yǎng)國際法人才的法學(xué)院，并滿足國際質(zhì)量標(biāo)準(zhǔn)。許校長說，憑北京大學(xué)的牌子要招到中國最好的學(xué)生不成問題，但他想要的是能招到像我為密歇根大學(xué)法學(xué)院和康奈爾大學(xué)招聘的那樣水平的教授，讓中國學(xué)生不用出國也能師從世界級名師。

之后，在2012年當(dāng)國際法學(xué)院走上正軌以后，我又受我的老朋友、時任紐約大學(xué)校長John Sexton和時任教育部副部長郝平的邀請，投入到了上海紐約大學(xué)的建設(shè)。在上海我的搭檔是華東師范大學(xué)前校長俞立中。上海紐約大學(xué)同樣致力于培養(yǎng)最優(yōu)秀的學(xué)子，但和國際法學(xué)院不同，除了中國學(xué)生以外，上海紐約大學(xué)有一半的學(xué)生是國際學(xué)生。交給我的最重要的一項任務(wù)還是在全球范圍內(nèi)招聘和組建世界一流的教師團隊。

所以在過去的十年中，我一直致力于招募世界一流的教授到這兩所中國的學(xué)校任教。我指的任教不是來幾天，作幾個講座。這一點都不難，錢到位了，任何人都愿意花一周的時間來中國教書。但我的任務(wù)是招聘那些真正能夠致力于培養(yǎng)學(xué)生創(chuàng)新能力的世界級名師，并按我們理想的方式安心教學(xué)。他們要能夠激發(fā)學(xué)生積極學(xué)習(xí)，用諸如“蘇格拉底式”教學(xué)法等先進(jìn)的方法培育和指導(dǎo)學(xué)生。這樣的招募工作就需要大量的時間和耐心了。這些一流外國教授要愿意接受至少3個月（一個學(xué)期），或8個月（一個學(xué)年），或連續(xù)三個學(xué)年的聘期。當(dāng)然最理想的是他們能長期在中國工作和生活。

2018年11月22日，上海紐約大學(xué)常務(wù)副校長Jeffrey Lehman在2018中國國際人才交流與開發(fā)研究會年會上作主旨演講（倪天勇 攝）

從最開始，北京大學(xué)國際法學(xué)院和上紐大就是一種實驗和嘗試，由教育部批準(zhǔn)，是中國建設(shè)世界一流大學(xué)、吸引世界一流師資的實驗和嘗試，我對這樣的大膽嘗試表示由衷的贊賞。習(xí)近平主席提出要把中國建設(shè)成為“創(chuàng)新型國家”，以及堅持對外開放，強調(diào)“開放帶來進(jìn)步，封閉必然落后”。而創(chuàng)辦這兩所學(xué)校所體現(xiàn)出的精神正是實現(xiàn)習(xí)近平主席的這兩個要求所需要的。

這兩所學(xué)校辦得怎么樣，大家可以去看看在職教授名錄。在我看來，相當(dāng)可以。當(dāng)然，我們在招聘上還沒有辦法做到例無虛發(fā)，有一些我們非?？春玫哪繕?biāo)最終花落別家。但實事求是地講，無論北京大學(xué)國際法學(xué)院還是上海紐約大學(xué)在招募世界一流人才方面都可以算是非常成功了。

北京大學(xué)國際法學(xué)院的長聘教授包括歐洲大學(xué)學(xué)院法學(xué)院前院長，賓州州立大學(xué)法學(xué)院前院長，耶魯大學(xué)法學(xué)院前副院長，和兩名美國最高法院前法官助理。在國際法學(xué)院全職授課的訪問教授當(dāng)中還有另外三位世界一流法學(xué)院前院長，兩位美國律師協(xié)會前主席，以及來自哈佛大學(xué)、斯坦福大學(xué)、密歇根大學(xué)、紐約大學(xué)、弗吉尼亞大學(xué)、喬治城大學(xué)、馬斯特里赫特大學(xué)的資深法學(xué)特聘教授。

在上紐大的長聘教授名單上有來自耶魯大學(xué)、康奈爾大學(xué)、西北大學(xué)、紐約大學(xué)的講席教授，和芬蘭埃博學(xué)術(shù)大學(xué)的一位前院長。全職訪問教授更是涵蓋了更多的世界一流大學(xué)的資深特聘教授，包括一位諾貝爾獎得主。更重要的是，我們成功組建了一支十分優(yōu)秀的年輕教師隊伍，他們現(xiàn)在開展的研究工作會在10年、20年或30年之后為他們贏得學(xué)術(shù)界的重要獎項和榮譽。其中相當(dāng)一部分人曾追隨世界頂尖學(xué)者開展博士后工作，并成為各世界一流大學(xué)追逐的目標(biāo)。

我們是怎么做到的？

我先從“硬性指標(biāo)”開始介紹，這也是比較容易受大家關(guān)注的點，包括薪資待遇、住房、子女教育、醫(yī)療、飲食、空氣、水等。對于這些指標(biāo)，我們的策略是彌合差距。我們付的工資不比我們的競爭對手高，但也盡量不少給。我們不提供免費住房，而是用合理的住房補貼來保證教師的住房負(fù)擔(dān)不比他們在本國的時候重。PM2.5特別嚴(yán)重的時候我們會提供空氣凈化器。另外還盡量保證教師的其他福利，比如醫(yī)保等，都和他們在其他世界一流大學(xué)能拿到的在同一水平。

但硬性指標(biāo)上的差距實際上沒辦法完全消除。在這樣的情況下，另兩個因素就成了我們成功的秘密武器，那就是“創(chuàng)造新事物的滿足感”和“軟性指標(biāo)零差距”。

要理解創(chuàng)造事物的滿足感，就要先了解教授們的心理，了解他們是什么樣的人。我們常說教授不是一個職業(yè)，而是一種“使命的召喚”。這些人通過科學(xué)研究來發(fā)現(xiàn)新的知識，通過教學(xué)來引導(dǎo)學(xué)生踏上成功的人生旅程。這些人希望帶來影響和改變。所以在為北京大學(xué)國際法學(xué)院和上紐大招募學(xué)者的時候，我們和他們談創(chuàng)造的滿足感：創(chuàng)造一個全新學(xué)校的滿足感，創(chuàng)造中國與世界溝通橋梁的滿足感。對學(xué)者而言，這些比金錢更有意義和吸引力，可以彌補硬件的差距。

那足以影響一位世界級學(xué)者到中國工作的“軟性指標(biāo)”又是什么呢？教授們受到“使命的召喚”，以開展突破性研究、塑造學(xué)生的思維為己任。他們選擇去哪里，取決于他們覺得哪里最有利于他們開展科研和教學(xué)工作，作出成績。我們往往把學(xué)術(shù)界比作“象牙塔”。但其實教授、學(xué)者不是不食人間煙火的隱士。他們的工作當(dāng)中當(dāng)然有孤獨的成分，但也有和外界溝通的必然需要，兩者循環(huán)往復(fù)。世界上最早的大學(xué)，意大利博洛尼亞大學(xué)和英國牛津大學(xué)都把自己稱為“學(xué)術(shù)團體”，很形象地體現(xiàn)了學(xué)者“獨”與“群”的統(tǒng)一。他們需要獨自探索新知，又需要集體討論來驗證和提高。

決定一個學(xué)術(shù)團體的吸引力的關(guān)鍵要素有兩點：第一是高水平的同事。鶴立雞群對一流學(xué)者而言不是好事，棋逢對手才能磨合出真正優(yōu)質(zhì)的學(xué)術(shù)成果。第二是高標(biāo)準(zhǔn)的學(xué)術(shù)環(huán)境。

世界一流的學(xué)術(shù)環(huán)境必須具備兩點：學(xué)術(shù)自由和學(xué)術(shù)卓越。關(guān)于學(xué)術(shù)自由的著作很多，我個人最欣賞歷史學(xué)家卡爾·貝克爾在79年前所寫的《康奈爾的傳統(tǒng)：自由與責(zé)任》一書。學(xué)術(shù)自由指每個學(xué)者都可以投入他們真正感興趣的科學(xué)研究，而不是由領(lǐng)導(dǎo)或資深教授做主；可以獲取全球?qū)W術(shù)信息和資源，包括那些不太可行或有差錯的研究。學(xué)術(shù)自由還指可以對所謂“權(quán)威”知識的正確性或全面性提出質(zhì)疑，用貝克爾教授的話講就是“有不同的想法”。不同的想法是實現(xiàn)突破性創(chuàng)新的唯一途徑。

同樣重要的還有學(xué)術(shù)卓越。以質(zhì)量作為決定學(xué)術(shù)貢獻(xiàn)的唯一準(zhǔn)繩，不因年齡、種族、國籍、性別、觀點等因素而區(qū)別對待。不迷戀文章的數(shù)量或引用數(shù)，而是通過嚴(yán)謹(jǐn)?shù)耐性u議。讓世界級專家從三個維度來評判學(xué)術(shù)成果：原創(chuàng)性、嚴(yán)謹(jǐn)性、重要性。做出這些成果的學(xué)者才是我們所尊重并支持的。

綜上所述，過去十年我招募世界一流教授的策略就是：盡量彌合硬件差距，激發(fā)創(chuàng)造的滿足感，并以我的信用擔(dān)保同事水平、學(xué)術(shù)自由、學(xué)術(shù)卓越這些軟性指標(biāo)零差距。而在將來的工作當(dāng)中，我們?nèi)匀粫堰@樣的策略繼續(xù)貫徹下去。

北京大學(xué)國際法學(xué)院和上海紐約大學(xué)的實踐雖然不是實現(xiàn)創(chuàng)新和開放的唯一途徑，但確實是行之有效的，我鼓勵其他中國的高等院校借鑒、嘗試。

I spent my fi rst four years in China, from 2008 to 2012, living in Shenzhen,where I helped Peking University to establish its School of Transnational Law. Earlier in my career I had become friends with Beida’s president Xu Zhihong, and he had asked me to create a new kind of law school for Beida. He wanted a school that would focus on the study of transnational law and that would satisfy international quality standards. President Xu promised me that, simply because of the Beida name, STL would attract the most talented students in China. But he wanted them to be taught by professors like the ones I had recruited to teach during my days at Michigan and Cornell. He asked me to make it possible for these students to study with the very best professors in the world, without ever having to leave China.

And then, in 2012, after STL was well launched, I was asked by my friends John Sexton, the president of New York University, and Hao Ping, the Vice Minister of Education, to move to Shanghai to create NYU Shanghai. My partner in this project would be Yu Lizhong, the former president of East China Normal University. The idea behind NYU Shanghai was that we again would teach a student community that includes the most talented students in China. But NYU Shanghai would be different from STL in that Chinese students would make up only half the student body; the other half would come from all over the world. But once again, it was up to me to ensure that these students would have the chance to study with the very best foreign talent, with the most gifted professors in the world.

For ten years now, I have worked to bring the very best professors in the world to teach inside these two Chinese universities: Peking University and NYU Shanghai. But when I say “teach,” I mean more than just spending a few days here and giving a few lectures. That is not so difficult; if you offer enough money, almost anyone will be happy to spend a week teaching in China. No, I have understood my job as being to recruit foreign talents to come and be a true teacher for our students,someone who teaches in the style we expect. These are teachers who are dedicated to nourishing our students’ capacities for creativity and innovation. That requires the teacher to help students engage in aprocess of active learning, not passive learning. Teachers who will use the socratic method or supervise students’ own research projects. And that takes time.

I wanted to recruit world-class foreign professors who would come to China and teach for a 3-month semester, or an 8-month academic year,or three consecutive academic years. In the best cases I wanted to recruit world-class foreign professors to live here in China for an indefinite period of time. Both STL and NYU Shanghai were de fi ned from the start as experiments. They were endorsed by the Ministry of Education as part of a broader effort to build, here in China, truly world-class universities that include world-class foreign talent. I wholeheartedly support this effort by the Ministry of Education. Indeed, I believe it is vital to achieving two of the goals that President Xi articulated in his work report to the nineteenth Party Congress in 2017. In that report, President Xi challenged China to become “a country of innovators” with a “culture of innovation.” And he reminded the nation that “Openness brings progress, while self-seclusion leaves one behind.”

So how have we done with these two experiments? You should judge for yourselves by looking at the faculty lists on the STL and NYU Shanghai web sites. But when I make my own judgment, I would say, “So far, so good. To be sure, we have not succeeded with every recruitment we wanted. There have been some wonderful “ fi sh that got away.” But I think that any fair analysis would say that, both STL and NYU Shanghai have enjoyed remarkable success in recruiting some of the top talents in the world to teach in China.

At STL, the small permanent resident faculty includes former Deans of the European University Institute Law School and the Penn State University Law School, the former Vice Dean of the Yale Law School, and two former law clerks to Justices at the United States Supreme Court.Members of the STL visiting faculty who have taught full courses there include three more former law school deans, two former presidents of the American Bar Association, and distinguished senior faculty members from Harvard, Stanford, Michigan, NYU, Virginia, Georgetown, and Maastricht.

At NYU Shanghai, we have successfully recruited permanent faculty who previously held so-called endowed chairs at Yale, Cornell, Northwestern,and NYU, along with former dean at Abo Akademia University in Finland. Visiting professors who have come to teach full courses include many distinguished senior faculty members from top universities all over the world, including one Nobel Prize winner. Perhaps more importantly,we have succeeded in recruiting the best young new faculty, the Assistant Professors whose current research today will win them the big prizes in ten, twenty, or thirty years. This group includes some of the most highly sought-after young talent in the world, recognizable because they have just completed so-called postdoctoral fellowships with the very top professors in their fields.So how did we do it?

I want to start with the so-called “hard factors,” the ones that seem to get the most public attention. These factors include salary levels, quality of housing, quality of education for their children, quality of health care,and quality of food, air, and water. In each of these areas, our strategy has been, “close the gap.” We do not pay higher salaries than our overseas competition, but we try not to pay too much less. We do not provide free housing, but we try to provide large enough subsidies so that they won’t have to pay more than they would pay to live in comparable housing in the United States. When PM 2.5 levels got really bad we provided air fi ltration machines. And we have done our best to ensure that they will have access to health insurance and health care along the lines of what they would have at an overseas competitor institution.

But we cannot make this gap go away entirely. Honestly, there is still some “hard factor gap.” Whenever we recruit the best talents we stress two features of our schools – the “satisfaction of building” and a policy of“zero soft factor gap.”

It is important to focus on the psychology of a professor. We often say that being a professor is not a job, it is a “calling.” People are “called” to become professors because they want to have an impact on the world around them. Through their research they want to provide original insights that explain the world in new ways. And through their teaching they want to prepare hundreds and thousands of young people for lives of satisfaction and contribution. When we recruit foreign talents to teach at STL and NYU Shanghai, we talk about the satisfaction of building. The satisfaction of building new world-class universities. And the satisfaction of building powerful cultural bridges between China and the west. These transcendent values can mean more to the professors we are recruiting than money. They can make up for the hard factor gap they will face if they choose to come join us.

What about the “soft factors”? What affects a foreign professor’s decision about whether or not to come to China? Being a professor is a calling.Professors are called to engage in pathbreaking research, and they are called to transform the hearts and minds of their students. The most important factor affecting where they choose to work is whether they believe they are coming to a place where their research and teaching can succeed. The work of a professor is not solitary. Notwithstanding the popular image of an “ivory tower,” professors do not in fact work in splendid isolation. The reality is that a professor’s work involves a constant movement back and forth, between isolation and engagement with others. The very first universities – in Bologna, Italy, and Oxford,England – described themselves as “communities of scholars.” The structure of those universities made it easy for professors to engage in this back and forth movement. They would work in solitude to produce creative, original insights. And then they would engage other membersof the community in discussion and debate, in order to test their insights and improve upon them.

In order for a community of scholars to be attractive to a professor, it must have two features. It must offer the professor world-class colleagues,people with the talented, disciplined minds that can understand their work, criticize it, and help them improve it. And it must offer the professor a world-class academic culture.

A world-class academic culture has two indispensable elements: genuine academic freedom and genuine academic meritocracy. Many, many books,articles, and speeches have been written about the concept of genuine academic freedom. My own favorite was an address delivered 79 years ago by the historian Carl Becker, entitled, “The Cornell Tradition: Freedom and Responsibility.” Genuine academic freedom includes the freedom to choose the problems one will study; they are not assigned to you by a senior colleague or the dean. Genuine academic freedom includes the freedom to read and hear information and ideas from all over the world,including bad ideas, false ideas, and even dangerous ideas. Genuine academic freedom includes the freedom, and the responsibility, to, in the words of Professor Becker, “think otherwise.” Thinking otherwise involves trying to imagine how the accepted wisdom, the beliefs that everyone else thinks are true, might be incorrect or might tell only part of the story. Thinking otherwise is the only path to insight. Thinking otherwise is the only path to disruptive innovation.

Genuine academic meritocracy is every bit as vital to a world-class academic culture as genuine academic freedom. It means recognizing and supporting intellectual contributions for their quality, without regard for the professor’s age, race, nationality, gender, or political orientation.Instead of counting articles in key journals or obsessing over impact factors, it employs international peer review. Top leaders in the academic discipline carefully evaluate a scholar’s best contributions along three critical dimensions: originality, rigor, and importance. The professors who produce research that is original, rigorous, and important are the ones we honor and support.

To summarize, in order to recruit world-class faculty these past ten years,I have pursued a three-part strategy: close the hard factor gap, stress the satisfaction of building, and give my personal promise that there will be no soft factor gaps in the domains of quality colleagues, genuine academic freedom, and genuine academic meritocracy.

The experimental strategy we have pursued at STL and at NYU Shanghai may not be the only way for universities to help promote the national goals of building a culture of innovation and openness. But I do believe it has been successful so far, and I encourage all of you to explore whether some features of this strategy might be helpful to other academic institutions in China. (Jeffrey Lehman is the Vice Chancellor of NYU Shanghai)