EUNICE MWABE: As a little girl, growing up
in a farm just outside of Nairobi, Kenya,
I spent a lot of time wondering how about the world outside.
I spent my weekends watching TV and listening to music.
I watched old '60s movies on school nights
when I was supposed to be asleep and I read a lot of books.
I mean, a lot of books.
I devoured media because I was thirsty to understand the world
outside the confines of my otherwise simple, comfortable,
and incredibly joyful upbringing.
So it was no surprise that everything
I knew about America, I knew from media.
And this was before social media.
So the variety of images I had of the United States
was limited to what movies wanted me, an outsider,
to know about this land of the free and home of the brave.
I watched movies about American high schools in particular
and I found them absolutely fascinating.
And I learnt a lot for example, I learned that in America you
could walk out of classes before teachers dismissed you just
as long as the bell had rung.
And I thought to myself, indeed this is the land of the free
and the home of the brave because that kind of behavior
wouldn't fly where I'm from.
In America, becoming homecoming King and homecoming queen
was a big deal, but I never understood where home was
or where people had gone enough to become me.
I also learned that in America everyone was always
looking for a prom date.
And that if you dropped your books and someone picks them up
for you and gazed into your eyes,
then at the end of the year they would become your prom date.
To date, I find it utterly impressive
that the content was that consistent across the board.
You watched Mean Girls and it was like you
had watched everything.
Yet these thoroughly analyzed case studies of my peers
could never have prepared me for the past four years
as an international student at Harvard.
In fact, in a way I held a lot of misconceptions
about the United States because of them.
Now, I know more often than not, this phenomenon
happens the other way around.
For instance, if I walk into a room
and I say, hi, my name is Mwabe and I'm from Nairobi, Kenya,
a lot of things might go through your mind like,
wow, she speaks such good English.
Or perhaps you might ask yourself the age old question
and what I am sure we are all wondering today,
I wonder whether she's listened to Ariana Grande's music.
Yet in the same way I too had my own stereotypes
about the United States.
There were stories I had heard throughout my life that
had embedded plenty of assumptions in my mind.
Racial stereotypes, stereotypes about people
from different socioeconomic backgrounds,
stereotypes about American preferences.
At times, I wouldn't realize I had
these perceptions in my mind.
But I always found myself holding on to them
ever so tightly whenever I encountered
something new or different that I wasn't willing to try.
The thing with stereotypes that makes them so powerful
is that they menacingly appear to be true.
And that it can be so comfortable to hold on
to them because predictability is easy to work with.
Nuance makes things complicated, nuance
doesn't fit into policy or captivating film narratives.
And once you're comfortable enough in what you know,
there's no reason to step out of it.
I have always been fascinated by people, cultures,
history, why we think the way we think based on where
we grew up, or our experiences.
And it was this fascination that led me
to the anthropology department.
I was excited at the prospect of a concentration
where for the most part I got to observe people and theorize
about why they do what they do.
At first, this started as a self-centered process.
In the midst of my debilitating homesickness and reluctance
to adjust, I needed an excuse to get out
of having to engage with this new country and its people.
By delving deeper to understand myself, my roots,
and my culture.
When any lovely Wednesday afternoon,
you'd find me at a section in Tulsa
either finding a way to connect every possible theory
to the African continent, or vehemently retorting
to something a peer had said.
And it always sounded like, well,
I just want to push back on that for a little bit.
And say that that is based on a very Western framework
of thinking.
Around my friends I started statement
in with in my culture, especially when
I didn't want to try something new.
Like in my culture, we don't eat quinoa.
Or in my culture, we don't ask professors about their weekends
or agreed to call them by their first names.
I'm sorry, Dean Khurana.
I mean, Rakesh.
And while this transformative liberal arts education
has given me--
has given me the tools to explain where I'm from
or why you would find me running by the child's in the window
and no one is chasing me, self-centered intellectual
pursuits can get incredibly dissatisfying
and ultimately, lonely.
And so I began observing Americans instead.
Away from the images that had for so long filled my head,
I promptly began my fieldwork outlining the rituals
among American 20-year-olds.
Their sociality, their tribal customs, and norms,
what they found taboo to talk about in public.
Their different kinship systems and values for concepts
like personal space, and how how's it going
isn't actually a question about how it's going.
Eventually, I too began to participate
in the natives rituals, annual festivals like the Super Bowl
and this collaborative activity that was creating a march
madness bracket.
I started watching American news as an empathy exercise really.
And slowly but surely, my eyes began
to open to certain realities about the American experience
through the lens of Harvard class of 2019
that bring it on one, two, and three could never have taught
me not even in a million years.
There were experiences that brought us together
as a community and reminded me of the universality
of our experiences.
It was in the looks of all in amazement and chagrin
for some when we witnessed Adams house rise like a Phoenix
from the ashes blessing us with what
had to be the greatest housing video of all time.
[CHEERING]
[INAUDIBLE]
It was in your faces every time you
worried about the inequalities of your education system.
It was in your pain when another unarmed black man was shot.
It was in the face of an understaffed homeless shelter
in an increasingly gentrifying town.
Now, I know Harvard is not representative
of the entire United States.
In fact, if anything this heavily
endowed bubble is far from the reality
faced by millions in this country.
But if there is anything I'm thankful for,
it has been the opportunity to have
been part of class of 2019.
A class of strong, talented, beautiful, smart, ambitious
young people who have shared with me
little snippets of where they're from and where they hope to go.
So at the end of this anthropological study,
I'd like to share with you all my findings based
on the statistical sample that has been my interactions
with the class of 2019.
The most important of them being that people are people,
and joy is joy, and pain is pain everywhere.
And we cannot limit ourselves to what we know based on where we
come from.
In the same vein, let it not be that this Harvard experience
becomes our culture if you will.
That we get so attached to bleeding of this crimson blood
that we are so unwilling to step out and be challenged
to learn something new or presently
engaged when we encounter something or someone different.
Statistically speaking, those who have left these grounds
have had a palpable impact in the world.
Those who have gone ahead of us have
disrupted culture, transformed global politics,
revolutionized economies, and we will most probably go ahead
and do equally significant things if not more.
But these accolades, these achievements,
do not make us any better.
Our lives anymore valuable, our joy any more valid,
our anger any more justified than the man across the street
from whom every dollar counts.
And this is in no way meant to devalue all wealth.
If anything, it takes away this pressure
that we need to prove a point to the world.
That we need to prove that we went to Harvard
and did enough with this opportunity.
Class of 2019, you graduate from Harvard
but you're worth so much more in and of yourself.
And so I implore you in the words of the great philosopher
of our day, Pulitzer prize winner Kendrick Lamar,
sit down, be humble.
Humility not being defined by how much we downplay the power
that comes with a name.
Humility not being saying to those who ask
that we went to a school in Boston.
But humility being the willingness
to see all humanity as equal, Harvard degree notwithstanding.
Humility being the willingness to learn as much as we can
about those different from us outside of what we know.
And then using this Harvard degree to, as we say in Kumba,
do what we can with what we have to leave a space better
than we found it.
The world is in need of more people who walk through life
with this sense of wonder.
People courageous enough to engage
with that which is different or strange or even unacceptable.
Willing enough to step out of what they think they know
and humble enough to learn from each experience.
More than ever, our generation needs a leadership
that is willing to love and serve
within this rare blend of courage and humility.
Courageous enough to secure the bag.
Humble enough to do it without letting it define you.
It is my hope class of 2019, that it
shall be said of us that we embodied this in the years
to come.
Thank you and congratulations.
[APPLAUSE]