Tomorrow, I’ll graduate from Harvard University for the second time. The first time, 35 years ago, I earned an A.B. (undergraduate degree). This time, I’m getting a Master in Public Administration from the John F. Kennedy School of Government, after an intensive one-year course of study. Last night, on a yacht sailing slowly around the Boston Harbor, I delivered a five-minute speech to my cohort. The following is a version of that speech – a valedictory address and a love letter to my classmates.
308 days ago I walked into the courtyard of Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government wearing my sharpest outfit, took a few selfies at a poster that read “Ask What You Can Do,” and started shaking hands.
After two years of the pandemic, I was hungry to forge connections and make new friends. In the next few weeks, I met an Argentine congress member and a Danish climate expert. I met a Navy fighter pilot and a German infantry officer. I met an Emmy nominated documentarian, a national librarian, an FBI agent, a stand-up comic, and civil servants from half the states in India. I made new friends from Kazakhstan, Indonesia, South Africa, Israel, Brazil, Mexico, Hawai’i, and Dorchester.
This far-flung tribe were all candidates for the Kennedy School’s Master of Public Administration – a year-long, mid-career version designed for successful professionals who came back to school to retool and build skills. We ranged in age from 29 to 63 and came from more than sixty countries. We converged on Cambridge, Massachusetts motivated by the belief (or was it chutzpah?) that we could change the world for the better.
We had our work cut out for us. The day we started class, 70 civilians died in the war in Ukraine. 1,300 people around the world died from COVID. 800 million survived on less than $2 a day, and two billion weren’t sure where their next meal was coming from. Greenhouse gases were melting the glaciers and the oceans were filling with plastic. Democracy was in jeopardy if not outright retreat in countries around the globe. As the mom of six kids, I woke up every day worrying about the world my children would inherit.
If ever there was a time that called for public service, this was the time.
And so we came to the Kennedy School in much the same spirit that aspiring doctors across the river matriculated at Harvard Medical School – to learn how to heal. In our case, the patient is our world.
In the daily life of an entrepreneur, school board member, diplomat, army captain, UN officer, advocate for immigrant rights, or even (as in my case) a lowly non-profit grant writer, the challenges come thick and fast. The last ten months gave me and my classmates the chance to step back from the push and pull of daily events, get off the dance floor, and observe the action from the balcony. We learned from skilled practitioners, eminent scholars, and the most rigorous empirical methods known to our instructors in quantitative methods, so we could tackle the challenges facing our countries and our shared planet.
But most of all, we learned from each other.
A class on Urban Economic Policy introduced me to the concept of agglomeration economies. Agglomeration describes the benefits that flow from proximity: when people and businesses cluster together (as in a city or an industry hub like Silicon Valley), everyone becomes more productive. Innovation flourishes. Profits increase. The same worker transplanted from a small town to a bustling city will develop more skills and earn higher wages. Economists can quantify this effect, although I confess I kind of skipped over the R-squared part of that paper.
But even without the data, my classmates and I all experienced agglomeration benefits this past year. Being closer made us smarter. Being together made us better. We learned from each other’s ideas, experiences, hopes, and dreams. We learned in class, and we learned at our weekly happy hour (called “quorum call”) over goldfish crackers. We learned while drinking at local bars, volunteering at the Harvard Square homeless shelter, and hiking in the Middlesex Fells.
For classmates who took educational group treks to other countries over winter break or spring break, we learned in foreign airports, restaurants, and tour buses. We even learned from the constant banter of our WhatsApp group, where we navigated Harvard’s bureaucracy, announced our countries’ independence days, debated world politics, and shared an endless stream of group photos from classrooms and parties.
Our proximity made the world smaller. Together with our Brazilian classmates, we followed the drama of the presidential election that replaced Bolsonaro with Lula. With our Israeli classmates, we watched the protests against Netanyahu’s efforts to weaken the judiciary. When an earthquake struck the Middle East, a Syrian classmate shared images of her hometown in rubble. Our Ukrainian classmates helped us follow the war ravaging their beautiful land. Together we commemorated ANZAC day (which mourns the massacre at Gallipoli of Australian and New Zealand soldiers in World War One), Holocaust memorial day, and the 1994 Rwandan genocide against the Tutsi.
There were tragedies during the year. One classmate was diagnosed with cancer. Another friend’s husband suffered a heart attack and subsequently died. Over winter break, a beloved classmate took his own life. Our cohort became closer as we cried together.
But we also laughed together. Some classmates fell in love. Just last week, two of them announced their engagement, and in a few days, they will be married, with many of us in attendance. There was a string of weddings. And every few weeks, another proud parent would share pictures of their beautiful new baby on the WhatApp group.
Classmates hosted sessions of Bollywood dancing and salsa dancing and belly dancing. In the spring, as daffodils bloomed along the Charles, we celebrated together the festivals of Holi, Ramadan, Passover, and Easter.
And now, crazily, it’s time to disperse again.
We arrived shaking hands, we leave with hugs. We arrived brandishing our own resumes; we leave treasuring a sense of shared purpose. We arrived as 241 individuals; but we leave as a community. And in a world where rampant individualism and the polarization of “us versus them” fuel racism, oppression, and war, our experience of belonging to a more expansive group – a group that crosses lines of age, race, nationality, and religion – may be this year’s most important legacy.
The world will be better off for the mad skills of this Class of 2023. Whatever you may think of Harvard in general or the Kennedy School in particular (fit subject matter for another conversation), this graduating class is fanning out across the globe fueled by love and passion and sense of humor and great dance moves and trivia talent and dedication to justice and a mission to heal our hurting world.
The world needs you, Class of 2023! Go out there and slay!