Prisha Bhadra said her journey to graduate from UC Berkeley began long before she set foot on campus. Her parents, who immigrated from India, “left behind familiarity, security, and every single loved one they had” to give her the chance to choose her own path. For students with immigrant roots, she said, “This moment feels bigger than just us. It’s the product of generations of hope. … This degree doesn’t just belong to me. It belongs to them.”
Bhadra, who majored in political science and minored in South Asian studies, represented more than 1,000 undergraduate and graduate students as the student speaker for the Class of 2024 Winter Commencement in Haas Pavilion on Dec. 21. Nearly 9,000 guests cheered the graduates on as their names were called and they walked across the court — often pausing to dance, take a selfie, or wave to proud onlookers.
Later in the ceremony, Chancellor Rich Lyons presented the Elise and Walter A. Haas International Award to Khadija Bakhtiar, who received a master’s degree in public policy in 2010. The award annually honors a UC Berkeley alum with a distinguished record of service to another country. Bakhtiar founded Teach For Pakistan, which has recruited 600 talented young Pakistani graduates to teach more than 30,000 students in high-need public schools. She has also catalyzed a national movement to eliminate educational inequity and push for government investment in teacher-leadership models.
Commenting on her journey — which began at Berkeley, where she learned about Teach For America — Bakhtiar said that people didn’t think the program would work in Pakistan “because children from low-income backgrounds can’t make such rapid progress, or because public schools and school systems are too far gone to change,” she said. “It felt like I could see what lies beyond the mountain but others couldn’t.”
But staying the course has reaped rewards. “I would have missed the moment where students are no longer ‘beneficiaries’ of a teaching program but ask in every school and classroom I visit, … ‘Tell us how we can help the larger movement,’” she said. “I might not have seen the young people who were floundering and overwhelmed in their first months teaching grow to become school leaders, teacher trainers, entrepreneurs, [or] government advisers supporting learning for hundreds of thousands kids.”
In his remarks, Chancellor Lyons encouraged graduates to consider all that they will carry with them. “You value truth and know it must be protected. You believe in science. You know that conventional wisdom and the status quo can and must always be challenged in order to find a better way,” he said. “I can only hope you share the gratitude I feel for these attributes, values, and aspirations that form the foundation of all that Berkeley is and stands for.”