In May, Vignesh Panchanatham ‘18 was presented with the Halbert White ‘72 Prize in Economics during the Princeton University economics department’s Class Day celebration, which recognized the achievements of the year’s graduating seniors. This honor is awarded to the year’s highest-performing senior economics major, who demonstrates excellence in their coursework as well as their Junior Paper and Senior Thesis.
Wolfgang Pesendorfer, Princeton economics department chair, said that Panchanatham “forged an intellectually challenging path throughout his Princeton economics education by consistently taking and mastering demanding courses and excelling in his Junior Independent Work and Senior Thesis.”
After winning the 2022 National Economics Challenge in June, Class of 2022 members Zach Clark, Harsh Deep, Shahzeb Lakhani and Rohan Thakur collected another major win at the International Economics Olympiad, held remotely last week. Their win in June earned them the opportunity to represent the United States at IEO. Deep and Thakur each won gold medals, ranking them top 20 in the world, while Clark and Lakhani each earned a silver, landing them both in the top 50. Another gold medal was won by Sam Lieman, a member of their team from Mt. Hebron High School. The team edged out three-time IEO champions Brazil by less than half a point.
In October, three outstanding alumni — Alex Abarca ’09, Amanda (Polzin) Sullivan ’06 and Daniza Rodriguez ’13 — will be inducted into the Harker Athletic Hall of Fame, along with the entire roster of the 2007-08 girls varsity volleyball team, one of Harker Athletics’ greatest success stories. All of these athletes will be honored for their stellar athletic performance as well as their dedication to becoming well-rounded student athletes. The induction ceremony will be part of the annual Harker Day celebration, which will also include the Homecoming football game and the Family & Alumni Picnic.
In May, recent graduate Brooklyn Cicero was selected to be featured in the Global Online Academy’s 2021-22 Catalyst Exhibition Showcase. Cicero’s presentation on the unique mental health challenges faced by teens of color was one of more than 500 submitted for inclusion in the exhibition; just over 20 were published.
The Global Online Academy, of which Harker has been a member school since 2012, offers a wide variety of online learning opportunities to member schools all over the world. It holds the Catalyst Exhibition every year to highlight how GOA students use the ideas they have learned in their course work.
Alexa Gross ’17, who just graduated from Wellesley College with a double major in studio art and neuroscience, was awarded the senior prize in studio art with a series of multimedia pieces that “explore themes of intergenerational memory, relationships, and identity through a scientific lens,” her statement on the exhibition reads. Drawing on the experiences of her mother and grandmother, Gross brought together printmaking, photography and drawing, using materials such as string, used gloves and a video she filmed of herself, her mother and her grandmother discussing their lives while taking apart the gloves that were used in the exhibit.
Recently, Adi Parige ’11, now working as a filmmaker in New Zealand, was interviewed for a documentary on the diversity of the city of Wellington’s film industry. Parige was a cast member of the 2011 upper school spring musical, “Pippin,” whose cast and crew performed at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe that year. In the interview, he discusses his current projects, growing up in the Bay Area and his connection to diasporic Indian communities.
Tanya Schmidt ’08, who is currently a Ph.D. candidate at New York University, was recently named one of the two winners of the 2022 Anne Lake Prescott Graduate Student Conference Paper Prize by the International Spenser Society, an organization devoted to reading and studying the works 16th century English poet Edmund Spenser. According to Schmidt, this award is presented to authors of “distinguished papers on any aspect Spenser’s life and works.”
Schmidt’s advisor, Susanne Wofford, spoke highly her work before she was presented with the award. “It was truly a surreal moment for me when a Spenserian whose scholarship I greatly admire started talking about my dissertation research as ‘witty and far-reaching,’” Schmidt said. “I had to pinch myself!”
Author and columnist Wajahat Ali MS ’94 – who recently published his book, “Go Back to Where You Came From” and whose work has been seen in the The New York Times, The Atlantic and The Daily Beast – made a series of appearances via Zoom for middle school students last Friday to talk about his life growing up in a South Asian Muslim family, how his life changed after the events of 9/11 and how he ended up in his career as a writer.
Born and raised in Fremont, Ali described feeling left out of the dominant American narrative from a very young age. “School is oftentimes the first place where you learn your rank in the American hierarchy,” he said. “You realize that no one else speaks Urdu, you realize that no one else has lentil stains on their shirt. …You realize, oh, I’m not the protagonist of the narrative. I’m not even the co-protagonist. I’m the punchline, the sidekick, the villain.”
Growing up, Ali frequently felt pressured to conform to whiteness in an effort to be considered “mainstream,” he said. “You realize … whiteness is centered in America and brownness and Blackness and Asianness are on the fringes, and our job is not to rock the boat, but row the boat and smile with our white teeth showing and nod our heads and be grateful for a sidekick role.”
Ali discovered his gift for writing and oration in grade 5, where a teacher encouraged him to share a short story he’d written with his classmates, inspired by the Moorish Muslim character Azeem from the film “Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves,” played by Morgan Freeman. “They laugh at all the right parts. They applaud at the end. Their eyes widen,” he recalled, “and for the first time ever, my class … embraced me.”
Ali found that his parents were supportive of his desire to develop his talent even though seeking a career as a writer ran counter to what Ali called the “checklist of success,” which he described as: “You went to the best school, you got the best GPA, you got the best wife and husband, you got the best job, you got the best car. Sure you might be miserable and you might be popping Xanax and you might hate your spouse and you might hate your job, but smile with your white teeth showing, and if you suffer, suffer well.”
He went on to attend UC Berkeley, remaining undeclared until his senior year. As an officer in the Muslim Students Association, Ali found himself directly exposed to the anti-Muslim sentiment that rose rapidly after 9/11. “I got emails telling me, ‘Go back to where you came from,’” he said. “I got emails telling me, ‘you terrorists.’”
The role Ali found himself in was one he and his peers had no experience with. “There was no training, no one held our hand. There were no lessons in how to be an ambassador,” he said, later describing how the aftermath of 9/11 left him standing on “two islands. I was American through citizenship, but I was ‘them’ because I wasn’t white. I was ‘us’ because I had a passport and was born and raised in this country, but I was ‘them’ because I am Muslim or looked Muslim-y.”
Moved to activism by the political and social climate, Ali began speaking more and writing more, inspired in part by one of his teachers, the poet and novelist Ishmael Reed, who told Ali that he could fight back through art and storytelling.
At the age of 21, just before graduating and while considering law school, Ali’s parents were arrested as part of an FBI anti-piracy initiative called Operation Cyberstorm. Nearly any sense of security he and his family had gained suddenly disappeared. “Everything was gone overnight,” he said. He was now in the position of having to take care of his family while managing his parents’ legal calamity. Following a torturous legal process, his parents ended up going to jail for four years.
Ali mentioned this chapter of his life as an example of how “the checklist at times blows up. Things don’t go according to plan. You won’t get into the school that you want to get into. You don’t do the major you want to get into. You won’t marry the person you want to get married to.” These circumstances, he added, also happen against a background of social problems such as climate change, which further add to the demands that younger generations must adapt to, but which can also become opportunities. “In a strange way, if [my parents’ arrest] had not happened, I would probably be miserable, going through my first divorce, realizing I married the wrong woman and probably popping Xanax every day,” he said.
“Oftentimes, if we’re going to be honest with ourselves, we get handed down a script and a checklist that we have not written or created,” he said. “And so the test … is how do we create our own checklist? What happens if that checklist blows up?”
At Wednesday’s Leadership Donor Celebration, held at the middle school campus, Neil Mehta ’02 announced the establishment of The Mehta Endowment in Support of Scholarships and Entrepreneurship. This new endowment will provide financial assistance in the form of scholarships to qualified students who otherwise could not attend Harker. It also will support Harker’s business and entrepreneurship program with the creation of the Mehta Scholar Program, developing Harker’s network of student, alumni and parent entrepreneurs and investors.
A member of the first Harker upper school graduating class, Mehta said at the event that finding a way for more students to receive the unique kind of high-quality education he received at Harker has been a dream ever since he wore the cap and gown 20 years ago. “Harker changed my life in remarkable ways, and ever since I graduated, I’ve been looking for opportunities to pay it forward,” said Mehta, who is now the founder and managing director at Green Oaks Capital. “Today, I’m pleased to share that at least five students each year will be able to attend the upper school with a scholarship specifically designed to support young people of diverse socioeconomic and ethnic backgrounds.”
The endowment will be established with an initial gift of $5 million, and every amount donated to the Harker capital fund as part of the donors’ 125th Anniversary Gift will be matched, up to an additional $5 million. The full transcript of Mehta’s announcement speech at the event has been provided below:
Dear Fellow Members of The Harker Community,
I won life’s lottery the day I was born. I was fortunate to grow up with remarkable parents who cared deeply about who I would become, and who provided me with a set of values and priorities that allowed me to flourish within and beyond the walls of the classroom. Harker took this luck and amplified it. Since its earliest days, Harker has had an ability to bring out the best in young people – to push them to achieve things they don’t think themselves capable of; to expand the horizons of their minds; to remind them that hard work matters, and that to whom much is given, much is also expected. All of those things were true for me.
Harker changed my life in remarkable ways, and ever since I graduated, I’ve been looking for opportunities to pay it forward. Today, I’m pleased to share that at least five students each year will be able to attend the upper school with a scholarship specifically designed to support young people of diverse socioeconomic and ethnic backgrounds.
It’s no exaggeration to say that whatever personal or professional accomplishments I’ve enjoyed in my life wouldn’t have been possible without the opportunities that I was afforded at Harker. I had extraordinary teachers who challenged me intellectually. I had sports coaches who put in time and effort to shape the person I would become (and encouraged us to play on, even as a new varsity program that was sometimes hilariously overmatched). And I had exceptional peers who were by my side throughout high school, many of whom remain my closest friends even today.
As more time has passed since graduation, I’ve come to appreciate a few things. First, while raw talent is evenly distributed, the opportunity to make the most of it remains largely limited to the well-off. Too many brilliant young people never attain their greatest potential simply because their families lack the resources to give them the best shot at it. Second, education is one of the highest leverage ways to amplify opportunity. When you are able to influence someone positively, early on in their development, you can profoundly change the arc of their life. And third, Harker provides the kind of education that gives talented students a springboard to become people of consequence – not just learners, but doers. A Harker education is an investment that pays lifelong dividends.
The Harker School is an exceptional place in the truest sense of the word. At a time when many schools in California are shuttering programs that let students aim for and achieve their grandest ambitions, Harker remains an exception, cultivating talented minds and affording them the conditions to flourish. It’s a place where you succeed because of what you can do.
Nowhere is there more human potential than in the young minds of our future. Their talent and energy are more urgently needed today than ever before. I’m confident that Harker is the right steward for those minds and hopeful that the Mehta Scholarship will help open its doors to anyone who can make the most of it, regardless of their ability to pay. My aspiration is for this scholarship to change the lives of its recipients, and also for its recipients to change the face of Harker, helping build a school that represents the technicolor of our community.
If you’re a high-achieving young person with big dreams, I hope you take the time to apply, even and especially if you don’t think that you could afford a school like Harker. I’m supporting this scholarship because the greatest talents, those that can really put a dent in the world, are vanishingly rare. To miss out on your potential simply because some are born lucky and others aren’t, is a loss not just for you, but for all of us. The Mehta scholarships are a small step towards ensuring that more talented students will have the opportunity to make the most of their abilities. We can’t wait to see what you’ll do.
P.S. One person in particular deserves special gratitude for his work with me on this gift is Joe Rosenthal. Joe took a keen interest in me as an unremarkable 14 year old. When I felt like giving up, he wouldn’t let me. He encouraged me to dream big when it felt irresponsible to do so. Thank you, Joe.
Last week, senior Ishaan Mantripragada was named the Central Coast Section Male Scholar-Athlete of the Year. The four-year soccer player was named WBAL All-League and WBAL Forward of the Year and was a valued member of the 2020 CCS championship team. He was also recognized for volunteering for Kicks Against Cancer, participating in the Synopsys Science & Technology Championship and receiving a 2020 President’s Gold Volunteer Service Award, all while maintaining strong academic performance. Mantripragada was one of several athletes honored at a special luncheon on Tuesday.
In other CCS news, six Harker athletics teams were named winners of 2021-22 Spring Season Scholastic Championship Team Awards last week. These awards recognize the top five varsity teams from each sport that have maintained the highest collective GPA in their respect sports during the spring athletic season. The boys baseball, boys volleyball, girls swimming, boys tennis, boys track and field and girls track and field teams were all selected to receive this award.
The American Volleyball Coaches Association named Jarrett Anderson ’19, who currently plays for Springfield College, their NCAA Division III Men’s National Player of the Year last week. A first-team NVA/AVCA All-American for three straight seasons, Anderson was a major factor in Springfield’s appearance in the NCAA Division III National Championship semifinals this year. This season he recorded 264 kills, 107 digs, 78 aces and 46 blocks.