Gorgeous Wizards

Salman Khan. No, not the actor. I meant the guy who formed Khan Academy, the non-profit educational website with free videos on pretty much any subject. He gave a commencement address at his alma mater, MIT.

I was very amused by two parts of his address.

The first was when he mentioned that among his close friends from MIT, “90 percent are married to each other”. Snobs, you assume. Not so, says Khan:

“In fact, so extreme is the coupling that I have observed here that I have sometimes suspected that this whole place is just a front for a DARPA-funded human breeding project.”

Or perhaps the explanation is much less sinister:

“However, there are simpler explanations for all of this MIT-MIT love. The most likely of which is that the admissions office here has a somewhat unhealthy habit of only accepting incredibly attractive people.”

The other part I loved was his comparing MIT with “Hogwarts — Harry Potter’s wizarding school”!

“The science and innovation that occurs here looks no different than pure magic to most of the world. The faculty here are the real-world McGonagalls — that’s you President Hockfield — and Dumbledores. There are secret tunnels and passages with strange wonders and creatures around every corner — some of whom may just finish their thesis this decade. The names of history’s great wizards surround us here in Killian Court — from Aristotle to Galileo, Newton to Darwin.”

And MIT kids share this with Hogwarts kids:

“Also like Hogwarts, MIT brings young people from around the country and world who are a little bit off-the-charts in their potential for this “magic.” Some come from environments and communities that celebrated their gifts. Others had to actively hide their abilities and passions for fear of being ostracized and ridiculed. Students come to MIT from every religion, every ethnicity. Some from educated, affluent families, others from ones that live at or near poverty. But they — you, we — shared a common passion. Something that made us feel a little different. We sensed that MIT might be a place where there were others like us.”

There’s also a lot of MIT worship in his speech. But if you can get past that, there’s also a lot of good advice. Check out the entire speech here.