If a girl who skips school out of fear of harassment, that threatens my dignity. If a little boy dies in a war that he didn’t start and never understood, part of me dies with him.
But today, that promise of a connected world is giving way to division, fear, and conflict. We’re starting to believe those who think differently, vote differently, or pray differently, whether they are across the ocean or sitting right next to us, are not just wrong. We mistakenly see them as evil. But it doesn’t have to be this way.
What I’ve gained most from Harvard isn’t just calculus or regression analysis. It’s to sit with discomfort, listen deeply, and stay soft in hard times. Because if we still believe in a shared future, let us not forget those who we label as enemies, they too are human. In seeing their humanity, we find our own.
In the end, we do not rise by proving each other wrong. We rise by refusing to let one another go.
Last summer, when I was doing my internship in Mongolia, I got a call from two classmates in Tanzania. They had a very urgent question, how to use their washing machine. Because all the labels were in Chinese… and Google kept translating a big button as spinning ghost mode. There we were, an Indian and a Thai, calling me, a Chinese in Mongolia, to decipher a washer in Tanzania. And we all studied together, here at Harvard.
That moment reminds me of something I used to believe when I was a kid, that the world was becoming a small village. I remember being told we would be the first generation to end hunger and poverty for humankind. My program at Harvard is international development. It was built on this exact beautiful vision that humanity rises and falls as one.
When I met my 77 classmates from 32 different countries… the countries I knew only as colorful shapes on a map turned into real people with laughter, dreams, and the perseverance to survive the long winter in Cambridge. We danced through each other’s traditions and carried the weight of each other’s roles. Global challenges suddenly felt personal.
If there’s a woman anywhere in the world who cannot afford a period pad, it makes me poor. If a girl who skips school out of fear of harassment, that threatens my dignity. If a little boy dies in a war that he didn’t start and never understood, part of me dies with him.
But today, that promise of a connected world is giving way to division, fear, and conflict. We’re starting to believe those who think differently, vote differently, or pray differently, whether they are across the ocean or sitting right next to us, are not just wrong. We mistakenly see them as evil. But it doesn’t have to be this way.
What I’ve gained most from Harvard isn’t just calculus or regression analysis. It’s to sit with discomfort, listen deeply, and stay soft in hard times. Because if we still believe in a shared future, let us not forget those who we label as enemies, they too are human. In seeing their humanity, we find our own.
In the end, we do not rise by proving each other wrong. We rise by refusing to let one another go.
So, Class of 2025, when the world feels stuck in spinning ghost mode… just remember, as we leave this campus, we carry everyone we’ve met, across wealth and poverty, cities and villages, faith and doubt. They speak different languages and dream different dreams, and yet they’ve all become part of us. You may disagree with them, but hold on to them, as we are bound by something deeper than belief. Our shared humanity.
Congratulations, Class of 2025.