Zehra Imam Harvard Commencement Speech (with Transcript)

Speaker: Zehra Imam Event: 2025 Harvard Commencement Context: Harvard Divinity School graduate denouncing the university's role in Gaza No safe zones left in Gaza after 600 days and 77 years of genocide. I center these students with urgent desperation because time is running out. No meaningful aid has entered Gaza since March 2nd, and this is on our account. I center Palestine today not just because of its scale of atrocity, but because of our complicity in it. Class of 2025, Palestine is waiting for us to arrive, and you must be courageous enough to rise to the call because Palestine will keep showing up in our living rooms until we are ready to meet its gaze. Here I must acknowledge that together in the wilderness we have witnessed the risks that have come with speaking up for this very genocide to be far-reaching. Yet no matter how charged with punishments the scroll, again and again we witness to the enormous hearts, unwavering courage, and profound wisdom of students like Romea O