An Arab-American graduate speaking at Harvard graduation, 2014

This is quite an annoying (and boring) speech, I must confess.  It begins with the typical story of how stifled she was in the Middle East before she breathed freedom to American, all the way to pay tribute to the private school that she could afford.  She credits Harvard for teaching her things that are easily taught to people who never went to Harvard.  I hate the sense of loyalty that private schools instill among its privileged graduates (do you think that I would even contribute a penny to Georgetown or American University of Beirut where I believe that one learns not because of what they teach you but despite of what they teach you).  Finally, the worst part is toward the end when she tells the brats, I mean the graduates, that all of them would be launching revolutions in the world by virtue of having gone to Harvard.  She would have been more accurate had she told them that they now belong to the elite group of people who often play instrumental roles in counter-revolution around the world. 

PS the speech is so contrived and so rehearsed and so memorized and so intended to please the Harvard Corporation that it is jarring.