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June 18, 2011
Future Leaders, It is hard for me to believe we are coming to the end of our second Leadership Workshop. It has been my honor to stand here, to build upon all we have learned together. Each class only happens once. Take advantage of what you have. We began this class talking about the power of words. We read a poem by Meena. The poem ends with these words: Along with you I’ve stepped up to the path of my nation, To break all these sufferings all these fetters of slavery, Oh compatriot, Oh brother, I’m not what I was I’m the woman who has awoken I’ve found my path and will never return. It is my hope that at the end of every Leadership Workshop we too have “awoken” in some small way. We’ve learned that words have the power to inform, educate, motivate, and inspire us to take action. We know that words also have the power to make us sheep, or worse, slaves. We have listened carefully to the words of George Orwell, to the dream of old Major that gave him the song, “Beasts of England”, a simple song that inspired all the animals to change their world. We listened to characters named Snowball and Napoleon at the same time that we learned about revolutionaries named Robespierre and Marat. We talked about revolution, and counter-revolution. We learned about something called the Rights of Man and how these words brought the end of tyranny. We also learned about something called propaganda, how it was used in the past and how it is used today, here in Afghanistan, how propaganda has become one of the most important weapons for all sides engaged in war, not only to fight a war but even more dangerously to lead people into war. We learned how words can be changed from doing good to doing bad, how all of us are equal, while some can be more equal than others. Then we learned about another kind of revolution, that of non-violence. We learned about Civil Disobedience and how the words of a man named Thoreau were read by a man named Gandhi and then by a man named Dr. Martin Luther King. We learned about a group of young students who put Civil Disobedience into action by getting on buses and taking “Freedom Rides” into the heart of segregation in the deep south of America. We saw in the beginning how alone the students were, abandoned even by the leaders of change, and we saw how their solidarity and the media gave them the momentum they needed to change the most powerful country in the world. We didn’t stop there. We followed the words of Thoreau as they arrived in Egypt, how organizers of a peaceful revolution have pointed toward the Freedom Riders and Dr. King as guiding lights. We watched as these young people managed to remove a dictator named Mubarak. There was violence, but nothing compared to some of the other revolutions in this “Arab Spring”. We watch all of these revolutions now, and we see how so much of what we learned in this class plays out like a movie before our eyes. And through it all we asked the question, “What about the women?” There was Marie Antoinette, and then there were the peasant women who stormed her palace. There was a woman named Charlotte who changed history by killing Marat. There were the women who took those Freedom Rides, and the women who have been martyred in revolutions from Iran to Libya. We were introduced to four women who each in her own way devoted her life to the inalienable rights of all people. First a slave named Sojourner Truth, then a woman born into privilege named Benazir Bhutto. We met a little woman named Suu Kye who was compelled to honor the death of her hero-father and turned a military coup upside down. Finally we listened to an American named Susan B. Anthony, how her words demanding the right to vote ring loud and clear even today, a hundred and forty years later. We learned that not all revolutions must occur from the outside. We looked at the Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan. There in Article 7 we found a full endorsement of the International Declaration of Human Rights. We read all 30 Articles of that Declaration, and we could not believe our eyes and our ears. We discussed if it is possible to make such words come true in Afghanistan, to seat Judges and Members of Parliament who are scholars of Islamic Law that can point to these words and enforce them, who understand that the Islam of 1,400 years ago established that woman is equal to man, that she has the right to work, to independence, to choose a husband and own property. We discussed how these Islamic scholars would need to be joined by scholars of Civil Law who promote the ideas of secularism. But these new judges and MPs would have to battle contradictions within the very same Constitution, where it still says that two women are required to equal the testimony of one man. At the beginning of this workshop I asked you what percent of your life you believe is destiny, and what percent is self determination, what percent of you is the Idealist, and what percent the Realist. Mostly you say you are realists, but none of you give destiny more than fifty percent. In fact most of you said that 70 to 90 percent of your life is self-determined. I watch you on the football field, I watch you in karate class, I watch you in the library, and I watch you in class. I believe you. The determination I see makes me proud to know you, and proud to have the chance to be your teacher. As always, I am compelled to leave you with a story. A long time ago I was in Scotland, a country north of England where my ancestors came from. I had just finished the last exam of my semester at Oxford. My professor had given me a 95%. That was the first time I ever scored such a high mark. I was very happy and proud, so I decided I would climb the highest mountain in Scotland, a mountain called Ben Nevis. I was only half way to the top of the mountain when a very old lady passed me on the trail. She had white hair and used a crooked walking stick. I could not keep up with her, though I tried very hard. An hour later I reached the top of Ben Nevis and the old lady was just getting ready to walk back down the mountain. I nodded to her, breathing heavily. She smiled. Then she pointed her stick at me, and this is what she said: “No matter where you go in the world, there you are.” That was all, and she disappeared down the trail and I never saw her again. I believe within these eleven words are many lessons, but most of all they tell us we can never run away from our weaknesses, nor are we ever without our strengths. The struggle to find your path is not unlike the struggle for freedom. It is a great risk to take, but the fact is you are already on your way. You are no longer the same students who first walked into this class, just as you are no longer the girls who first stepped into the parwarishga. The question of whether you are living your life or life is living you is not so important, once you find your path. Like in Meena’s poem there is a moment of great joy in finding this path, and without fear taking the next step, celebrating the realization that you will never return.
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