Stateswoman's Convictions Formed While at Harvard

Q.You seem to have been quite involved in life at Harvard. In terms of your involvement, what were your extracurricular activities and some of the classes that you enjoyed the most?

A.I was very interested in psychology, and I was very interested in interpersonal relations, so some of the courses that I took, which were not in my major, related to psychology and how people behave.

And I went to this amazing class where everybody sat around and the teacher didn't say anything, and then we all behaved in a particular manner. People would keep quiet for the first 50 minutes, and then in the last 10 minutes people would all start talking. And then there would be times when people would decide to all go and meet outside the classroom in one of the nearby country-side places. Later on, at the end of the class, we'd read a book which showed that everybody had behaved in the same way that we had, and that was really an eye-opener for me. An objective situation affects an individual, and if you put together a diverse group of individuals in the same objective circumstance, they will respond in a similar manner.

So I was very interested in psychology, but my major was comparative government. I did take a course on oil and politics.

Q.Have you been able to stay in touch with your friends from Harvard?

A.I do come across my friends when I go on lectures. I recently met two of the undergraduates who were with me at Eliot House. I did meet Kathleen Kennedy when I visited the United States on an official visit. I'm not a good telephone person or a letter person. But when I meet one of my friends from those undergraduate days, the years just seem to evaporate like we were meeting after one day. There's an instant rapport, an instant feeling of communication so I think that the bonds that are forged when one is an undergraduate are bonds that last a lifetime.

Q.Did you see yourself going into politics, and if not, what field did you hope to go into after college?

A.When I was an undergraduate, I very much wanted to study psychology, but my father was very interested that I study government, so I studied government to please him. But that was a time when I was very interested in journalism.

When I went on to Oxford, that was the time that I decided I wanted to join the diplomatic service, but when I went back to Pakistan, a coup took place within a week of my return, and that coup d'etat changed the course of my own destiny and took me into a field, that of politics, which I had never wanted to enter. Interestingly, everybody remembers that I am the first foreign women to become president of the Oxford Union, but nobody remembers that I'm the first female undergraduate of Harvard to become a chief executive.