香港汇丰银行限制汇款:李开复:“保卫”自传

来源:百度文库 编辑:偶看新闻 时间:2024/04/29 17:35:00
作者: Bill Powell    时间: 2011年12月05日    来源:财富中文网
位置:商业>>传媒与文化
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打假人士方舟子日前指责著名科技经理人李开复自传注水,对与巴拉克?奥巴马、史蒂夫?乔布斯和比尔?盖茨等名流的关系添油加醋。今天,李开复见招拆招,发起了反击。
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方舟子是北京知名打假人士,以前他的影响力主要局限在学术圈内,他揭发了不少中国学者的学术造假和剽窃行为(两者都相当猖獗)。不过,最近他以笔作枪,把枪口对准了一个非同寻常的靶子:著名科技行业经理人李开复。李开复曾任谷歌(Google)中国区总裁,目前执掌知名天使投资基金创新工场(Innovation Works),后者已有多个大名鼎鼎的支持者,包括YouTube联合创始人陈士骏和富士康(Foxconn)首席执行官郭台铭。
上周爆发的这轮纷争以新浪微博(所谓的中国版Twitter)为主战场,以李开复的自传《世界因你而不同》(The World is Different Because of You)为焦点。方舟子称,李开复的简历有夸大其辞之嫌,而且他与许多名流之间的关系(具体来说包括:巴拉克?奥巴马、史蒂夫?乔布斯和比尔?盖茨)并不真实。
例如:李开复在自传中写道,他上世纪八十年代初在哥伦比亚大学(Columbia University)读书时,巴拉克?奥巴马是他在政治科学这门课上的同学,而且他和奥巴马都曾在教室里“睡觉”。方舟子援引这段话,指出李开复是计算机科学专业的学生,质疑他何以能跟奥巴马一起上政治科学课。作为回应,李开复贴出了他在哥伦比亚大学的成绩单,以证明自己确实上过政治科学课,但他撤回了“我跟奥巴马一起上无聊课”这一说法。他作了个多少有点牵强的修正,写道,他本人并不记得奥巴马也上了这门课,而是多年后奥巴马竞选总统之时,另一位同学对他说:“你还记得政治科学课上那哥们吗?”
至于盖茨与微软(Microsoft)——2005年加盟谷歌之前,他曾为微软效力——李开复曾写道,他曾是就产品开发和战略向盖茨提供建议的七人高层智囊之一。方舟子则指责李开复故意夸大自己的重要性,以及这个所谓智囊团的重要性。(不过,《纽约时报》(The New York Times)2001年曾发表过一篇关于该智囊团的文章,并明确提及了李开复。)方舟子表示,微软当时发布的年报中列出了21位高级副总裁,而李开复并未跻身其中。李开复本周回应道,他从来没有自称与盖茨关系有多密切,或者说对后者有多大影响力。“我从未说过我是微软最高级别的八位经理人之一。”他在微博中写道。
(值得一提的是,谷歌聘请李开复之后,微软高调提起诉讼,称李开复违反了竞业避止合同,官司最后庭外和解。由此看来,微软还是相当器重李开复的。)
方舟子还嘲弄李开复,指后者在书中自称史蒂夫?乔布斯的“学生”并不妥当,因为李开复在苹果(Apple)工作的时候,正值乔布斯被迫从苹果离职之时,而乔布斯重返苹果时,李开复已经离开。“何必以乔布斯的学生自居?”方舟子质问道。可是,在他的自传中,李开复只是提及“在过去的20年,我有幸在乔布斯、盖茨和施密特等人身边学习、成长”。无论李开复是不是真的曾在苹果已故创始人乔布斯“身边”学习,在李开复2005年接受谷歌聘请之前,乔布斯确实曾打电话给他,希望说服他加盟苹果。简单来说,二人之间确实有一些关联。至于说“学习”乔布斯,过去30年来,哪一位硅谷人士没有从乔布斯身上学到点东西呢——无论是在苹果与他并肩工作还是在其他什么公司与他竞争。就因为李开复书中这一句无伤大雅的话就公开对他大加抨击,似乎有些过分了。
考虑到方舟子在中国主要因为揭穿学术造假行为而闻名,他拿李开复在美国当教授的那段经历来做文章或许也是不可避免之事。方舟子指出,李开复曾提及自己在匹兹堡的卡内基梅隆大学(Carnegie Mellon University)计算机科学系当“副教授”,而且是这所声誉尊崇的大学“最年轻”的副教授。“如果我坚持(该工作)几年,”李开复在书中写道,“我就可以得到终身教授的职位。”方舟子对此也冷嘲热讽。他指出,事实上“这个所谓的副教授只是助理教授而已”。
这确实没错。如果方舟子写这段话抨击的对象是某个刚刚在某领域获得诺贝尔奖的教授,那或许这点儿简历注水之事可能还真的会有点影响。问题是,作为一个风头正劲的北京科技行业风险投资人,很难看出这对他有什么影响。不管李开复被指在其自传里犯了什么过错,他肯定没必要再去学术圈谋份差事。
与此同时,据《新京报》(Beijing News)报道,李开复已决定在亚马逊(Amazon)上免费提供其自传的英文版,让读者自己去判断是非曲直。
译者:小宇
A noted whistle blower in Beijing, Fang Zhouzi, who's main impact previously has been to call out academic fraud and plagiarism in China (both of which are rampant) has turned his rhetorical guns on an unusual target: high profile technology executive Kai-fu Lee. Lee is the former head of Google in China who now runs Innovation Works, a prominent angel investment fund with several notbale backers, including Steve Chen, cofounder of Youtube, and Terry Gou, CEO of Foxconn.
The controversy, which has played out this week on Sina Weibo, the so-called Twitter of China, focuses on whether in his autobiography, The World is Different Because of You, Lee exaggerates his resume and makes claims about relationships with famous people (specifically, Barack Obama, Steve Jobs and Bill Gates), which aren't quite true.
For example: Fang quotes Lee as saying that when he attended Columbia University in the early 1980s, he had a political science class in which one of the other students was Barack Obama. He says he and Obama used to both "fall asleep" in class. Fang notes that Lee was a computer science major and wonders how it was he could have taken a political science course with Obama. In response, Lee posted his transcript from Columbia showing he did indeed take a poli sci class but backs off the Obama-and-I-were-bored-together claim. He writes, somewhat lamely, that he himself actually didn't remember Obama being in class, but that other classmates later said to him, when Obama was running for President, "do you remember this guy from political science class?"
Regarding Gates and Microsoft (MSFT), where he worked before moving to Google (GOOG) in 2005, Lee wrote that while there was on a committee of seven executives who advised the CEO about product development and strategy. Fang accuses Lee of inflating his own importance and the importance of this group. (The New York Times, however, wrote a story about it in 2001, and specifically named Lee.) Fang writes that Lee's name doesn t appear in Microsoft's annual reports from that era, while 21 senior vice presidents are listed. Lee this week said he never made any claims about being particularly close or influential with Gates. "I never said I was one of the senior most eight executives at Microsoft," he wrote on his microblog.
(It is worth noting that Microsoft considered Lee important enough that when Google hired him, the company filed a high-profile lawsuit alleging that Lee was violating a non-compete agreement. The suit was settled out of court.)
Fang also mocks Lee for calling himself a "student" of Steve Jobs" in his book, pointing out that he worked at Apple (AAPL) after Jobs had left the first time around but before he returned. "So how can you call yourself a Jobs student," Fang asks. But in his book, Lee simply says in the past "20 years I m very honored and lucky to study and grow near to Steve Jobs, Bill Gates and Eric Schmidt." Whether Lee was "very near" to Jobs is not clear, but the late Apple founder did call Lee in Beijing before he took the Google job in 2005 to try to get him to come to Apple. Plainly, they had some relationship. And as for "studying" Jobs, well, who in Silicon Valley over the last 30 years didn't, whether working with him at Apple or competing against him elsewhere? To publicly flog Lee for that relatively innocuous sentence in his book seems a bit much.
Given that Fang is best known in China for his work illuminating academic fraud, it was perhaps inevitable that he would try to score a point about Lee's days as a professor in the U.S. Fang notes that Lee claimed that he had been an "associate professor" in the computer science department at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, and that he says the "youngest" associate professor ever at that prestigious school. "If I stuck to that for [job] several years," Lee wrote in his book, "I could get a tenured position." In truth, "the so called associate professor was merely an assistant professor," Fang sneers.
That's true. And if he were writing about some professor who had just won a Nobel Prize in something or other, maybe that little resume padding might matter a bit. As it is, it hardly seems of consequence for a high powered tech VC in Beijing. Kai-fu Lee, whatever his alleged transgressions in his autobiography, most certainly doesn't need a job in academia anymore.
In the mean time, Beijing News reports that Kai-fu Lee has decided to provide the English version of his biography for free on Amazon (AMZN) to allow people to decide for themselves.