CAMBRIDGE, Massachusetts: A day after her emotional speech at Harvard University\u2019s commencement, Yurong \u201cLuanna\u201d Jiang kept running into classmates who praised her message that people should see everyone\u2019s common humanity rather than demonize others for their differences.
\n\u201cWe\u2019re starting to believe those who think differently, vote differently or pray differently \u2014 whether they\u2019re across the ocean or sitting right next to us \u2014 are not just wrong. We mistakenly see them as evil. But it doesn\u2019t have to be this way,\u201d she said in her address, which drew wide applause.
\n\u201cThe message itself, if I have to put it into one sentence, will be humanity rises and falls as one,\u201d Jiang told The Associated Press on Friday. \u201cWe are living in a very difficult time. There\u2019s a lot of divisions in terms of ideas, ethnicities, identities. This is a time where we can use a little bit more moral imagination and imagine ourselves being connected with one another.\u201d
\nThe 25-year-old Jiang\u2019s speech never directly mentioned the Trump administration nor its multi-pronged attack on the nation\u2019s oldest and richest university. But she said the turmoil beyond their campus and its impact on her classmates was on her mind as she delivered her speech.
\n\u201cStudents can be very emotionally charged because they care deeply about a lot of issues,\u201d said Jiang, who comes from China and graduated with a masters degree in public administration in international development. \u201cWhen you are emotionally charged and activated, it\u2019s very easy to demonize another person.\u201d
\nShe said the relentless attacks from the Trump administration on the school\u2019s funding and threats to detain and deport people studying in the US on student visas have left her unsettled, adding huge uncertainty to her future plans.
\n\u201cIn terms of the plan going forward, I would say everything is up in the air at this point,\u201d Jiang said, who had hoped to remain in the United States for a few years but now is open to working in international development overseas. \u201cAt this point, it\u2019s difficult to say what will happen.\u201d
\nThis week, the Trump administration asked federal agencies to cancel about $100 million in contracts with the university. The government already canceled more than $2.6 billion in federal research grants, moved to cut off Harvard\u2019s enrollment of international students and threatened its tax-exempt status. Then it widened the pressure campaign, suspending visa applications worldwide and threatening to deny US visas to thousands of Chinese students nationwide.
\nThese actions resonate with Jiang and her classmates \u2014 about 30 percent of Harvard\u2019s students are international, and China has among the highest numbers.
\n\u201cThe anxiety is real,\u201d said Jiang, who knows two international students from China who are weighing whether to travel for work in Kenya and Rwanda.
\n\u201cBecause of the uncertainty of their visas, they are facing a very tricky situation,\u201d she said. \u201cThey can either go abroad, go to Kenya and Rwanda to do their internship and work on poverty alleviation and public health but risking not being able to make it back to campus safely. Or they can stay on campus and do their internships remote.\u201d
\n\u201cIt\u2019s pretty heartbreaking,\u201d she continued\u201cThey wanted to help humanity and, to see them entangled in politics they didn\u2019t choose, is hard.\u201d
\nJiang, who went to high school in the United Kingdom and earned her undergraduate degree at Duke University, said there should be more, not fewer, academic exchanges between China and the United States.
\n\u201cHumanity is facing a lot of crisis,\u201d she said. \u201cThere are conflicts. There is climate. There are a lot things that not only one country can tackle. China and the US are the two most powerful economies or countries in the world. They have to work with each other to be able to combat the problems or the issues that affect every single human being.\u201d
\nJiang also defended the importance of international students at Harvard, recalling how 60 percent of the students stood up at the Kennedy School of Government commencement when the dean, Jeremy Weinstein, asked how many came from outside the United States. Then he asked if they had learned something from their international classmates, and most everyone stood.
\n\u201cA lot of us clapped and cheered. A lot of us were in tears,\u201d she said, as Weinstein told them to \u201clook around, this is your school.\u201d
\nWithout international students, it would be a challenge for Harvard to achieve its mission, Jiang said. Campus culture depends on its globally diverse student body, studying and hanging out together.
\n\u201cHarvard wants its students to go and change the world and you can\u2019t change the world without understanding the world,\u201d she said. \u201cYou can\u2019t understand the world without truly having a personal connection with people from all sorts of countries.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
CAMBRIDGE, Massachusetts: A day after her emotional speech at Harvard University\u2019s commencement, Yurong \u201cLuanna\u201d Jiang kept running into classmates who praised her message that people should see everyone\u2019s common humanity rather than demonize others for their differences. \u201cWe\u2019re starting to believe those who think differently, vote differently or pray differently \u2014 whether they\u2019re across the …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":81851,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-81837","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81837","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=81837"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81837\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":81857,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81837\/revisions\/81857"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/81851"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=81837"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=81837"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=81837"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}