A Message to Women of Generation Z

I am so honored and delighted to be here.

When the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet established the Mount in 1925, they had the vision, the dedication, and the faith to know just how far it would go.

They were right. Over the decades, Mount Saint Mary’s has become a beacon for women’s education – and diversity.

In 1952, the Mount awarded the very first Bachelor of Science nursing degree in California. And that class included a Japanese American and an African American student. At that time hospitals were segregated, and the sisters fought hard for integration so all their graduates could serve.

Ann, thanks in large part to your hard work and dedication, those traditions continue. Women of every race, class and faith graduate every year, committed to serving others, and confident they can make a difference.

What happens here at the Mount illustrates a principle that should be the starting point of every conversation, policy discussion, and democratic decision made around the world.

“This is our world.” Not His world. Not Her world. Not Their world. Our World.

I want you all to imagine something.

You’re a young woman who has graduated. You have been appointed to serve in your government. You are especially proud to be part of the National Security Council in the White House.

On this particular day, you have been invited to a meeting in the White House Situation Room. The topic is Youth Recruitment. More pointedly, it’s youth recruitment in the face of terrorism.

There you are in the Situation Room. Experts and advisers all seated round the large rectangular table. The meeting begins. At some point, you speak.

You share your perspective. And as you look around the room, you notice you are the only woman there.

The topic couldn’t be timelier. It affects us all. But of all the problem solvers the White House can summon, they have only invited one woman.

Yes. I was that woman. It was in the NSC at the White House in the early 2000s. And I shared this story for several reasons.

First, it had a real impact on me – not only back then but now. And the experience forever changed the way I look at every decision- or policy-making table since, whether I’m on it or not.

Second, what I experienced was – and remains – symptomatic of what’s still happening globally. Even though the numbers are slowly improving, women only account for between 10 and 20 per cent of the seats in any state or national legislative body around the world.

Having greater representation for everyone isn’t only about human rights and bedrock principles. It’s about making sure we can maximize our chances of success.

If we’re going to tackle the greatest challenges of our time, we need to assemble the widest selection of smart thinkers we can find. We need to hear from people with different perspectives, experiences and strategies. We need everyone’s voice around those policy and other decision tables.

Changing our world means that we – all of us – must participate in the decisions affecting our lives. Changes that we may not even know about yet.

In 2011 Secretary of State Hillary Clinton recognized that. She launched a movement to do just that. It was called the Women in Public Service Project.

Its mission was – and remains – to encourage more women into public service around the world, more women around those policy and political tables.

I am thrilled that Mount Saint Mary’s University is one of the leaders that joined the Women in Public Service Project. And I am equally delighted that today we celebrate these proud, brilliant and accomplished young women – and men – who will soon go into the world to claim their rightful place, however and wherever they choose to define it.

I would like to ask everyone – friends and family members, faculty and staff at Mount St. Mary’s – to show their love, support and appreciation for the next generation of Unstoppables.

The Class of 2017.

As I said, I am honored to be here today.

And I want to talk about the importance of having a voice and allowing others to have their voice too.

Pope Francis gave a TED Talk recently. Did anybody see it? He said: “Life flows through our relations with others.”

He also said that life is “about interactions” and that: “Each and everyone’s existence is deeply tied to that of others.”

I couldn’t agree more.

Too often, we make the mistake of listening to the loudest voices. But very often, the most powerful voices – by that, I mean, the ones that have the greatest potential to make positive change – are drowned out.

It is our duty to make sure our voices are heard, but it’s also our duty to make sure that other voices are heard.

We need to look around the policy table, around the board room table, and ask ourselves: Are we listening to ALL the voices of the community we serve or that we are part of?

Listening to everyone’s important – you never know who’s going to teach you something, change your viewpoint, help you see things differently. That was the point of a story I have always remembered from Robert Fulghum.

You may have heard of him. The Unitarian minister who wrote the book: “All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten.”

As he told the story, he was a pastor who found himself in charge of looking after about 80 young children one day. He knew he needed to come up with

some kind of game to entertain them. So he told them to break up into three different groups: Giants, wizards or dwarfs.

There was a big buzz around the room as 79 kids tried to sort themselves into three groups.

79 – not 80.

As the pastor was watching all this, he felt a tug at his leg. He looked down and saw a little girl. She looked up at him and said: “Where do the Mermaids stand?”

The pastor scratched his head and said: “But there aren’t any Mermaids.” “Oh, yes, there are,” said the little girl. “I’m a mermaid.”

You see, that little girl knew she had a voice. She knew that the giants, wizards or dwarfs labels did not describe her.

So she asked.

She asked where the Mermaids went.

I am here to tell you, no matter what your path is, whether it’s nursing or neurological plasticity, business or biology, creative writing or chemistry, your trajectory is like no one else’s.

It’s your path – and yours alone. You must not only follow it but demand a world where everyone can do the same, mermaids included.

At his TED Talk, the Pope was talking about you when he said: “Each and every one of us can become a bright candle, a reminder that light will overcome darkness, and never the other way around.”

Thanks to the course that my life has taken, I have been able to meet, listen to, and support a lot of bright candles ... A lot of young voices – a lot like yours – around the world.

Those voices lifted me up. They confirmed what I always knew in my heart:

There are more good voices out there than bad. More advocating for peace. More calling for mutual respect and understanding. More working to deepen trust, build bridges, and enrich communities.

I learned about this in a very powerful way when I was in college in the late 1980s. You know, in ancient times ...

At that time, college campuses were experiencing racial incidents everywhere – from the west coast to the east. From private colleges to big public universities. There was graffiti. There were anonymous hate notes. There were fights.

At Smith, where I went to school, a woman had a note placed on her dorm room door. It was one of the vilest things I have ever read in my life. The campus erupted. And I had just been elected student body president.

That spring was my trial by fire.

It was Smith tradition for the student body president to give a speech at the Opening convocation.

So in the fall of 1989, my senior year, I wanted to talk about that incident a few months before. I wanted to share my feelings about the importance of community, with diverse people who care a lot about each other and support dignity, mutual respect, diversity and understanding.

I delivered that speech. And it so happened that Barbara Bush – the First Lady of the United States – was the headline speaker. And she listened.

The next day the White House called me. They said, the First Lady really liked your speech. She wants a copy of it and permission to quote from it.

Of course I said yes!

For the rest of my senior year, we exchanged letters – yes, real handwritten letters. And when it was time to graduate, I asked her if she had any advice for me.

She invited me to meet with her and her Chief of Staff at the White House. She never asked where I was born, or what party I was from. She didn’t ask me what race I was, or what religion. She did not ask if I had worked on her husband’s campaign. She had connected to what I had said in my speech about diversity and community – and that was enough.

Thanks to her, I enjoyed a career that took me to the US Agency for International Development, the National Security Council, and the State Department. And I had the honor to serve my country in a deeply personal way in the aftermath of 9/11: Learning, listening and interacting with Muslim communities throughout Europe and pushing back against extremist ideology.

Since the events of September 11, 2001, the world has become gripped by a toxic extremist narrative. It was a world of Us Versus Them.

Thanks to my position at the State Department, I had the opportunity to listen to young, like-minded people who were working for mutual respect and understanding.

Thanks to the power and resources of the US Government, we were able to help them convene, and communicate with one another. They shared their positive messages around the world, pushing back against those negative narratives.

And we made sure those bright candles weren’t snuffed out by the winds of hatred and division.

In 2009, President Obama was elected. I figured my work had come to a close. Before I left I was invited – along with my colleagues – to brief the new Secretary of State – Hillary Rodham Clinton – about what we had been doing in Europe.

I remember thinking: This is a one-hour meeting. The Secretary is going to focus on big ticket items like NATO and Russia. She’s not going to focus on Muslims in Europe.

As my colleagues talked about these and other subjects, I listened. And then after about 45 minutes, Secretary Clinton stopped the meeting and said “We’ll have a lot of time to go deeper into these issues. But I want to make sure that everybody that came to the room today has a chance to speak.”

She looked directly at me and said, “Farah, why are you here?”

I said “Madame Secretary...” and then I started telling her about the things I had learned on the ground ... how extremist narratives were impacting 44 million Muslims across western Europe ... and how this bombardment of images in the media about Islam and extremism was making them question their identity, and what it meant to be modern and Muslim.

The more I talked, the more Secretary Clinton moved forward. And the larger her eyes became!

When my boss leaned over to the Secretary to tell her I was leaving my job, she cut him off and asked me where I was going. There was pin drop silence in the room. I told her where I was going and she said: “We will see about that.”

She wasn’t kidding. The next day there was a call from her office asking me what it would take to keep me. When the Secretary of State asks you to serve your nation, let’s just say you revisit your plans!

Eight years before that, the tragic events of September 11 took place. And on that day, I promised myself I would do something to push back against the poisonous ideology that was trying to define my country and my religion.

Secretary Clinton swore me in, at a ceremony at the State Department on September 15, 2009. Eight years later, almost to the day. I became the first ever Special Representative to Muslim Communities for the United States Department of State. And my mission was to advance President Obama’s initiative to launch what he called a “new beginning” with Muslim communities.

Now there’s a whole conversation to be had about the things I got to do in that position. How I visited 80 countries, meeting with Muslims around the world from Stockholm to Sao Paolo; Lagos to London, Brussels to Baghdad.... What I heard from them.... And the initiatives we created.

But there are two points that I’d rather make about my encounters with First Lady Barbara Bush and Secretary of State Clinton.

I made sure my voice was heard. But I was lucky enough to have two special women who made sure they heard me.

Both factors worked for me – and both are essential for this world.

It’s so important that we do everything to make sure our own voices are heard. Our voice is our best friend. Our greatest asset. Our spiritual GPS. We need to stick it forever to the windshield of our soul so we know where to drive!

The more we speak for ourselves; the more we take actions that work best for us, the greater our chances of being heard. And making a difference.

But the second point is equally important.

It’s not enough to only speak up for ourselves. It’s our responsibility to make sure ALL voices are heard.

That’s not always easy. Too often, the easier path is to listen to the loudest voices. The ones that like to create a world of Us versus Them. The ones that tell us who to hate and fear.

The ones that demean us. Diminish us. Define us into labels, like giants, wizards or dwarfs.

But when we listen to all voices, we can learn about all the nuances and perspectives of a person. We can find out more about the historical context that informs them. We can find out what they really think as individuals – not just labels. We can fill out the picture of what is really happening.

When we find out about other people, we can also benefit from their perspectives. When we do that, we can all become better citizens, leaders, thinkers and problem solvers. We can do our part to make sure the world is safer, smarter and saner – at home, across communities, on the internet, everywhere.

We can all move closer to making this Our World.

Growing up, my high school had a tradition of starting the day with a morning hymn. And we sang from a hymnal that was old and lovely – filled with music that had been sung for generations.

At some point, even though it wasn’t in the hymnal itself, they added the hymn “Lift Every Voice” to the offerings. I think I was in 9th grade when I heard it for the first time.

You may have heard that hymn – and its history.

James Weldon Johnson wrote it first, as a poem for President Lincoln in 1900. But over the years, it was set to music, and became an anthem for African Americans as they struggled for dignity and equal rights.

When I listened to it, I heard a hymn about what was possible when you lift EVERY voice.

I heard that when you hear EVERY voice, and when “the white gleam of our star is cast,” remarkable things happen.

That song meant a lot to me as an American ...

As someone who was born in India, who moved as an infant to Massachusetts, and spent my whole childhood and adolescence there.

It told me that it is essential that we open up all our voices and make sure we are taking the time to bring other voices to the table.

It told me that EVERY voice needs to fulfill their god given potential.

Voices like you. Voices like me. And voices like Sister Margaret O’Rourke, who’s now in her 80s.

I happened to see a video about the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet. And Sister Margaret shared her story. When she told her parents she wanted to devote her life to God, her mother begged her not to. She even offered to buy her a car.

And when her high school boyfriend called her “My Girl, my Chica,” it sounded to her like she was just a possession.

“I didn’t want to be possessed,” Sister Margaret said. “I wanted to be free.” She knew the path she wanted to take. And she took it.

Between Sister Margaret’s story and yours and mine, there are more than 7 billion different stories. As many stories as there are people in this world.

So when you go from here, please live your story as powerfully and authentically as you can.

You’ll get opportunities to make your voice a force for a better world in whatever way you define it.

It happened to me. It will happen to you.

Congratulations on graduating today. Congratulations on graduating from Mount Saint Mary’s.

And congratulations on the great days that I know you still have ahead. Thank you.