The Blessing Or the Curse?

One of the rare opportunities Harvard provides its students is the chance to meet famous people--or, perhaps more accurately, to catch a glimpse of the upper left side of a famous person's face. Since I began my college career, our campus has been blessed--or cursed, depending on one's political position and the speaker in question--with the presence of everyone from Hillary Clinton to Boutros Boutros-Ghali to a whole slew of figures whose names on those red and beige Institute of Politics posters need to be preceded by phrases like "His Majesty" or "Her Royal Highness." (The Dalai Lama was actually billed as "His Holiness," which I thought was pretty cool.)

These people generally don't have much to say, but that isn't the point. The hundreds of people who await each dignitary's arrival don't come for the speeches, but to stand in these people's presence, to see what they look like without the filter of a camera's lens, to be able to say that they saw them. But the real reason these figures draw such crowds is because they are people to whom we feel a need to react. They represent something important to us, whether something we admire or something we scorn. For that reason, of all the highnesses and holinesses that have appeared on our campus in recent years, two were exceptional: Nelson Mandela and Jiang Zemin.

By the looks of it, most of us were there in Harvard Yard last Friday when Nelson Mandela received an honorary degree. The day was shining, the Yard decked with flags and flowers, and the grass still hasn't recovered from the weight of the 25,000 people who heard Mandela speak. The ceremony was essentially Commencement in the fall: seniors were given reserved seats, the dais was lined with Harvard's specialists in appropriate fields and the program, rife with preliminary speakers and musical interludes, was as reflective and inspirational as a Commencement valedictory. And, of course, just like all Harvard Commencements, it did not rain.

Anyone who claims to actually remember what Mandela said is probably lying. What was truly moving was not his speech or even his voice, but the physical moment of his arrival on the dais. We were asked to rise, and suddenly, we heard the sounds of African drums reverberating through the Yard. As we caught sight of him, a cheer swept across the crowd like a rush of wind, as if we were standing at the coronation of an ancient king.

Last winter, when a Chinese instead of a South African flag flew over Harvard Yard, no one was giving Jiang Zemin any honorary degrees. He came on a cold day with rain falling like freezing spikes, and thousands of protesters greeted his fleet of black limousines before he was safely delivered to Sanders Theatre. Like Mandela's speech, the content of Jiang's was largely irrelevant. The Chinese president's visit, also like Mandela's, was preceded by speeches from a flock of Harvard professors.

The difference was that during these speeches, Jiang wasn't there. In fact, when he finally did appear, his arrival seemed to take everyone by surprise, including the professor whose speech he interrupted. What I mostly remember of the moment Jiang appeared on stage at Sanders was the instantaneous silence. It was as astonishing as the suddenness of the drumbeats that greeted Mandela, if not more so. After a hour of explanations from world-renowned professors, these experts, face-to-face with the real thing, suddenly became speechless, and so did everyone else.

Indoors and outdoors, winter and summer, rain and sun, silence and music, protesters hounding the speaker and fans fighting to get in, the cold shoulder received by one guest and the honorary degree received by the other--these elements of the two leaders' visits made me see the two men as something much larger than either of them actually were. Instead of two political figures, one a freedom fighter and the other fighting freedom, Nelson Mandela and Jiang Zemin became the avatars of Good and Evil. To the aspiring future leaders in the audience, it was as if some higher power had sought out our student body, telling us in a biblical voice: "I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse: Choose life, so that you and your descendants may live."

Of course, the parallels were not perfect. We are all aware that Nelson Mandela is not Mother Theresa and Jiang Zemin no Pol Pot. But the effect was nonetheless achieved. We who witnessed both Mandela and Jiang pass through our campus have been forced to ask ourselves: Which will we choose, the blessing or the curse?

The answer is not so obvious. Unless one has plans to become a malevolent dictator, the choice between good and evil does not come up once in a lifetime, but dozens of times each day. When we near the end of our lives, if we are lucky enough to live as long as Jiang and Mandela, it is unlikely that thousands will converge upon Harvard Yard to bless us or to curse us.

But Mandela and Jiang remind us of a simple fact: When we do grow old, there will indeed be thousands of people scattered around the world who will have met us, whose lives we will have touched, for whom our own lives have been either a blessing or a curse. They may never meet one another, but they are our legacy; it is they who will beat their way in to protest against us or to cheer for us or to award us their honorary degrees. Because they remind us of this fact, we are privileged to have famous people join us on campus. And to catch a glimpse of what someone's legacy might look like, the upper left side of a famous person's face may be worth looking for after all.

Dara Horn '99 is a literature concentrator in Eliot House. Her column will appear bi-weekly.