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?”
The American High School Theatre Festival has invited the Harker Conservatory’s musical theater program to perform their production of “The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee” at the 2023 Edinburgh Festival Fringe, the world’s largest international arts festival. More than 450 schools applied to be one of the 25 selected, making this one of the most competitive seasons in AHSTF’s history. Harker has performed at Fringe every four years since first being invited in 2007.
“Director [Laura] Lang-Ree’s program at The Harker School once again shines as one of the best applications we have seen this year,” said a spokesperson for AHSTF. “Hundreds of schools around the world have applied this year and while we have an extensive waiting list, this theater program is one of 25 that immediately got through as a finalist for AHSTF once again.”
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 weekend, the Harker Research Symposium welcomed attendees to the upper school campus for the first time since 2019. This annual celebration of the sciences, organized by the students of Women in STEM, invites the Harker community to view presentations and hear talks by Harker students and experts in a variety of fields, as well as get a glance at the exciting innovations on the horizon.
In her morning welcome address, science department chair and symposium founder Anita Chetty remarked that more than 60 poster presentations were being given by Harker middle and upper school students, a new record for the event. Attendees spent much of the day perusing the spaces in the athletic center and Rothschild Performing Arts Center where the presentations were being hosted.
The theme of this year’s symposium, “STEM Will Save Us,” dealt with the many ways that STEM disciplines are responding to current and upcoming challenges. Kamini Varma, VP of genetic testing solutions R&D at Thermo Fisher, was the first morning keynote speaker. Her talk, titled “The COVID-19 Diaries,” covered her experience during the COVID-19 pandemic working in molecular diagnostics. It was a project that began not long after shelter-in-place orders were enacted, which Varma described as feeling like a diary or book. “I started to put together the COVID-19 diaries actually in April of 2020, when I was asked to present a talk, she said. “I had no clue that two years later, we would still be adding new chapters.”
Artificial intelligence was a major topic at this symposium, with Helm.ai demonstrating its self-driving software outside Nichols Hall for much of the day, while Harker’s AI Club gave a presentation on ethical and unethical uses of AI in the present and beyond. Also discussing this topic was the second morning keynote speaker, Yanbing Li, senior VP of engineering at Aurora, developers of the Aurora Driver self-driving system that has vehicles in testing in the Bay Area, Pittsburgh and Dallas. “Self-driving technology has been the pursuit of our generation,” she said. “It always feels so close, but it also feels still far away.” Li’s presentation covered the ways Aurora’s technology is addressing safety concerns while also bringing self-driving technology closer to being a fully realized commercial product.
At a special alumni panel, Steven Botte ‘82, Ashley Morishige ‘07 (via Zoom), Amy Rorabaugh ‘10, Simar Bajaj ‘20, Daniza Rodriguez ‘13, Jasmine Wiese ‘20 and Allison Sommers ’21 covered important topics in diversity, equity and inclusion, including changes that must be made in corporate culture to increase diversity, how the Harker community helped and supported them in affirming their identities and what improvements the community can make for a more equitable environment. Each of the panelists were given the opportunity to talk at length about their unique experiences and how to approach conversations about race, sexuality and gender identity.
Senan Ebrahim ’08 and Hassaan Ebrahim ’11, this year’s alumni keynote speakers, gave a presentation on their journey to co-founding Hikma Health, a nonprofit that provides free health data systems to organizations providing health care to refugees. Their path included partnerships with groups around the world and engaging with their network to find people who could help build the technology. The primary goal of Hikma Health is to provide readily accessible and up-to-date information to clinicians so that they can offer refugees “the kind of personalized care that they truly deserve as compared to what we had been observing routinely on the ground,” Senan said.
Throughout the day, guests visited the exhibitor area where companies including Google, Nvidia and Microsoft demonstrated some of their products. They also made their way to the Nichols Hall rotunda, where several stations of fun activities were set up for the younger science enthusiasts in attendance.
The first afternoon keynote speaker was Hari Mix, assistant professor of environmental studies and sciences at Santa Clara University and an experienced climber with a total of five months on Mt. Everest. Mix surveyed the various environmental, social and economic changes that have been brought to the area around Mt. Everest, as well as possible solutions to the problems posed by human waste and climate change, including those that have affected the people indigenous to the area of Nepal where the mountain stands. Mix, whose current goal is to reach the summit of Mt. Everest without the assistance of supplemental oxygen, advised the students in the audience to learn to appreciate the journey. “My lesson for The Harker School students today is to really focus on the process more than the achievement or the outcome,” he said.
Speaking last for the day was Upendra Mardikar, chief security officer at Snap Finance, who advised guests on how to be “Cyber Smart,” summarizing the different types of security risks presented by the growing presence of smart devices in our daily lives. These include threats from online predators, cyberbullying and the acquisition and sale of personal information. He also discussed some proper and improper ways to respond to these risks. Despite the many threats people should be cognizant of, Mardikar advised caution, not panic. “The idea is not to scare you,” he said. “Don’t be scared, just be careful.”
This story was submitted by Harker speech and debate chair Jenny Achten.
Last weekend, senior Anshul Reddy won the prestigious National Debate Coaches Association Championship, one of the big three speech and debate championships attended by teams from across the United States. Reddy had a perfect record in preliminary rounds and lost just one ballot in elimination rounds. The national topic was “Resolved: The appropriation of outer space by private entities is unjust.” Senior Deven Shah, junior Muzzi Khan and sophomore Kabir Buch also qualified for Lincoln-Douglas elimination rounds. Junior Carol Wininger and sophomores Max Xing, Sasha Masson and Adrian Liu represented Harker in public forum debate elimination rounds, debating the desirability of organic agriculture.
Late last month, this year’s Near-Mitra scholars held virtual salons, which consisted of a presentation summarizing each scholar’s research followed by a Q&A session. Each of the student scholars was mentored by faculty members who received grants from the Chen Lin Family Endowment. The salons were well-attended, averaging 35 people for each talk and 250 overall.
Salons were held on three separate days, starting on March 22 with Caden Lin’s presentation on the International Monetary Fund’s role in destabilizing Sierra Leone’s economy, which eventually led to civil war. Lin, mentored by speech and debate chair Jenny Achten and upper school librarian Meredith Cranston, began with Sierra Leone’s independence from Britain in 1961. When the country’s initial economic strength had begun to wane, the IMF offered aid, initially with promising results. However, Lin pointed out, IMF also devalued Sierra Leone’s currency and made its exports cheaper, leading to economic disaster over the next two decades.
Three more salons were held on March 24, the first of which featured Michelle Liu, who analyzed American painter Mary Cassatt’s use of techniques inspired by Japanese woodblock prints, a style known as ukiyo-e. Liu, whose mentors were Cranston and upper school history teacher Donna Gilbert, noted Cassatt’s affinity for mother-and-child themes, pointing out the similarities of her renderings of children and those of Japanese woodblock artist Kitagawa Utamaro. Liu also highlighted Cassatt’s use of domestic scenes, which reflected prevailing viewpoints on gender in the late 19th century.
Senior Dawson Chen, mentored by Cranston and upper school history teacher Katy Rees, analyzed the films of documentarian Pare Lorentz and their impact on documentary filmmaking. Famously known as “FDR’s filmmaker,” Lorentz made several films to promote then-President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal. Chen demonstrated how in works such as “The Plow that Broke the Plains,” Lorentz documented the over-farming that eventually led to the Dust Bowl, powerfully advocating for the restoration of the land.
Under the mentorship of upper school history teacher Chris Gatto and library director Lauri Vaughan, Riyaa Randhawa’s presentation covered the role teachers played in establishing the public health system during the American occupation of the Philippines. Filipino students, Randhawa explained, had a unique relationship to the teachers in the American schools they were required to attend, which led to greater knowledge of public health measures. Nevertheless, schools often enforced racial hierarchies by teaching students that their culture and customs were inferior, and education was designed to only qualify them for low-level jobs.
The final group of salons took place on March 28, beginning with Nicole Tian’s presentation on the Brandeis Brief’s influence on law practice and lawmaking in the progressive era, and how it furthered the idea that legal decisions should consider their societal impact. Tian also connected the brief to widely held beliefs about women at the time, particularly that women were the virtuous and moral center of the American family, while men provided economic stability. Lawyer Louis Brandeis successfully argued in Muller v. Oregon that 10-hour workdays for laundry women threatened the nation’s moral character. Tian conducted her research with the mentorship of upper school history teacher Carol Green and upper school librarian Amy Pelman.
Alina Yuan, mentored by Vaughan and upper school English teacher Beth Wahl, covered the work of Japanese author Osamu Dazai, whose work was a cornerstone of the buraiha (“decadent school”) literary movement that became popular in post-World War II Japan. Following the shock and horror of the atomic bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the subsequent societal transformation that took place due to heavy American influence, Dazai depicted the struggle of adjusting to post-war Japanese society Dazai also became admired for his decadent lifestyle, another sign of shifting cultural attitudes.
Finally, William Zhao, whose mentors were Pelman and upper school history teacher Byron Stevens, compared and contrasted the development of liberal democracies in Spain and Portugal in the 20th century. The fall of Spain’s authoritarian Francoist regime and the subsequent transition to democracy, Zhao said, was the result of a top-down process by which opposition and reformist forces in the government dismantled the Francoist political infrastructure. Portugal, by contrast, experienced a coup d’etat by a military fed up with prime minister Antonio Salazar’s insistence on maintaining colonial operations in several African nations.
Last week, 21 students were recognized in the National Center for Women & Information Technology’s (NCWIT) 2022 Award for Aspirations in Computing. This award recognizes “women, genderqueer or non-binary students for their computing-related achievements and interests, and encourages them to pursue their passions,” according to the NCWIT website. Students (all of them in grades 9-12) enter by submitting an application containing essay and multiple-choice questions.
Senior Alice Feng and juniors Ashley Hu, Ella Lan, Nidhya Shivakumar, Deeya Viradia, Sabrina Zhu and Sally Zhu all won National Honorable Mentions – the second-highest tier of award – and were all regional Affiliate Winners. Senior Alina Yuan was named an Affiliate Winner. Amiya Chokhawala, Amrita Pasupathy and Ariya Reddy, all grade 11; Ella Yee, grade 10; and ninth graders Melody Yin and Sophia Zhu each won an Affiliate Honorable Mention. Junior Michelle Jin, sophomores Harshini Chaturvedula, Claire Luo and Saloni Shah, and ninth graders Ainslie Chen, Chiling Han and Kashish Priyam were named Affiliate Rising Stars.
Last week, junior Aneesha Asthana was on a panel of speakers as part of a parallel event to the United Nations’ 66th Commission on the Status of Women (CSW). The virtual event was hosted by Rose Academies, an organization that provides health care education to people in rural Uganda. Asthana, who is the global youth ambassador for Rose Academies, spoke on the experience of being a trans non-binary person and how it shaped her view of the importance of access to health care.
“My experience … was not only about the more well-known processes of coming out but it also sparked a years-long search for vital information about my health and my identity,” Asthana said. Her findings indicated that misconceptions of the LGBTQ+ community were still widespread, even in the supposedly forward-thinking Silicon Valley. She added that living in a wealthier part of the world granted her enormous privilege, noting that she has much greater access to important information about her own health than rural Ugandans. Asthana also delved into the importance of health education for Ugandan women, which makes up a large part of Rose Academies’ work.
Audrey Kwong ’07, a Harker Conservatory graduate who currently works as artistic operations manager for the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, has been producing virtual concerts during the COVID-19 pandemic. “I score call for cameras during the filming itself, and then work with a video editor to produce the videos themselves once we get into post-production,” she said. Her latest project is a performance of Edward Elgar’s “Sea Pictures,” Jake Heggie’s “The Work at Hand” and Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Scheherazade,” featuring mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke and cellist Elizabeth Chung. It is available to purchase at the SLSO website.
Harker student publications have won four Crown Awards from the Columbia Scholastic Press Association for their work during the 2020-21 school year. Harker received two Gold Crowns – one each for the student news website Harker Aquila and the Talon yearbook – and a Silver Crown each for the Winged Post newspaper and the student literary magazine HELM. The CSPA Crown Awards are given to digital and print publications that demonstrate overall excellence, based on evaluations of their design, photography, coverage and writing. In all, 817 publications were evaluated.