It is now my great honor to introduce our second Harvard
Medical School Class of 2019 speaker, Mubeen Shakir.
[CHEERING]
Born and raised in Oklahoma City,
Mubeen attended the University of Oklahoma,
where he majored in biochemistry.
Prior to HMS, he studied anthropology and public policy
at the University of Oxford as a Rhodes scholar.
At HMS, he has largely been known
to be interested in free food and making terrible jokes.
But he is also known to be a strong advocate
for marginalized communities with an interest in using
the bridge between medicine and policy
to help the under served.
He will continue his training this summer
in internal medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital.
His remarks are entitled, "Compassion is Justice."
Please join me in welcoming my first year table
mate and my good friend, Mubeen Shakir.
[CHEERING]
Thank you, Jesse, for that very kind introduction.
Good afternoon, everyone.
And especially to my classmates, the graduating class of 2019,
we did it.
[CHEERING]
I'm honored to be with you today.
And proud to say that, after years and years of work,
hundreds of feedback surveys that we never did--
sorry, Dean Hunter-- and countless moments where
we waited to ask that sacred question to our resident,
can we go home now?
We are finally going to be doctors.
Today, we are celebrating and grateful
for you, our families, friends, teachers, and mentors.
We would not be here without you, your tireless support,
and your countless sacrifices for us.
We are also grateful for the support staff, custodians,
security guards, cafeteria workers here at HMS.
[APPLAUSE]
Thank you for letting us learn and work
in a clean and safe place every day.
I also want to shout out the real MVP of Harvard Medical
School, a pass fail curriculum.
I would definitely not be up here without it.
Finally, I have to thank my own family, my three older
brothers, and especially my mother, who is here today,
and my dad, who we lost to leukemia eight years ago.
They flew across oceans over four decades ago
to build a better life, gave everything
to my three brothers and me, and they
are the reason I'm here today.
[APPLAUSE]
When I was visiting my family in Oklahoma City a few weeks ago,
I proudly told my six-year-old niece
that I was graduating from Harvard.
And she replied, "Where are the rest of my gummy bears?
Did you eat them again?"
As I finished the last of her gummy bears,
her astute question reminded me that today is not
about this esteemed school, but rather who we are
and what brought us here.
What brought us here is our compassion.
We have chosen a job where every day, the person in front of us
matters.
And their suffering matters.
We should be proud because this is not an easy job.
Even in our moments of ignorance of the last four or five years,
or for some of you MD PhDs, 27 years,
we have learned how important this compassion is.
Patients remembered us because we sat with them,
because we spent an extra minute at the foot of the bed
to learn from them.
No matter the circumstances, we can always
return to this, to be kind and care for those around us
unrelentingly.
In thinking about who we are, I'm
also grateful for all of you, my classmates.
We have learned around truly exceptional people here,
both in who you are and what you've done.
We have published seminal research,
built technology and new companies,
shaped policy and led protests.
One of us is a professional Spartan athlete.
[CHEERING]
And one of us once ate two Domino's pizzas by themselves
in one sitting.
[LAUGHING]
That was me last night.
But it's Ramadan.
I've been fasting since 3:00 AM.
So no judgment, OK?
[LAUGHING]
I am especially grateful for the activism
of this class in our efforts to repay our privileges.
So many of you have worked to open doors for others
as they were open for us.
Recruiting women and people of color into your fields
and into this school, where there are not nearly enough
in positions of leadership.
You have left this marble quad to give your time in service
to others, from caring for people in jails
to mentoring young people in the communities around us.
Yet, the demands of our coming training
may cause us to forget these larger
obligations of our privilege.
Amidst the long hours, we will face
the suffering of our patients.
And they will suffer despite our greatest efforts and medicine's
greatest innovations.
Our patients will suffer until society can care for our poor
as much as the rich, until we no longer discharge
our patients who are experiencing homelessness back
to the streets.
They will suffer until we eradicate systems of racism
and truly affirm that Black Lives Matter.
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They will suffer until we stop policies
that criminalize women's choices about their health
and their bodies.
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And our society will suffer as mass shootings
in schools and houses of worship continue
without political change from our leaders.
[CHEERING]
And our treatment of immigrants and refugees,
be they from south of the border, Syria, Palestine,
or Myanmar, will question our commitment
to caring for our neighbors with the dignity they deserve.
[APPLAUSE]
In these next few years, our time and energy
will be lacking when it comes to facing the many challenges that
affect us and our patients.
We have a duty to meet them, to speak out and act.
And I know we can and will, as so many of you
have done so already.
But I believe the most important choice
we have in these coming years amongst the many we'll face
is to return to what brought us here.
To care and to be kind to those around us,
not only with our patients, but with our friends,
our colleagues and to those around us who are suffering.
We have the choice to not judge our patients
for what brings them to us, to hold off
our criticism of our colleagues because we
don't know what they're going through, to spend
the extra minute at the foot of the bed
before checking the boxes on rounds,
and to reach out to a friend who seems down.
We always have this choice.
I'm reminded of a gynecology fellow
who at 4:00 in the morning, told us
that we needed to be efficient.
Not a moment later she was sitting
with a patient for 15 minutes, a young woman who had recently
had surgery for ovarian cancer.
As she walked out of the room, she looked at the team
and said, "We'll be late but it's
the worst week of her life.
So let's remember that."
I'm reminded of all of you, my classmates, who
stayed late to connect a patient with care, who checked
on a patient over a weekend when you weren't even working,
and who reached out to support friends
in the midst of hardship and loss.
Our profession is rooted in this compassion.
And our collective compassion, be it at the bedside,
in the OR, in the lab, or in our advocacy,
our collective compassion is truly
a form of justice for a suffering world.
Our speaker today, Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha
exemplifies this justice, how caring fiercely
for our patients can truly save the lives of thousands.
But despite the uncertainties and the challenges
we will face, today I am hopeful.
I'm hopeful because I know all of you.
I'm hopeful because, on our diverse paths,
if we continue striving for compassion
and striving for kindness in our work for the people
we know and those we don't, together we
can make this world a better place for those around us.
Class of 2019, it has been an honor to know you
and a privilege to learn alongside you.
Let us open the next chapter of our lives
and in remembrance of all things compassionate and all things
merciful.
God bless you all.
Good luck.
And thank you very much.
[CHEERING]