last summer in a grand celebration of
literature Harvard Square and Harvard
Yard historically known as the place for
hallowed halls filled with books was
transformed into Hogwarts Square this
summer festival celebrated the midnight
release of Harry Potter and the Deathly
Hallows the seventh and final
installment in the wildly popular series
hoards of people children and adults
alike dressed in elaborate wizard
costumes stood in line for hours at the
coop to purchase copies of the book
dozens of restaurants and stores stayed
open late and posted Harry Potter themed
specials and a three hour concert capped
off the evening and impact true
centenary theater today tercentenary
theatre is once again packed with
children and adults and we are pleased
to welcome one of the most successful
authors of our time her books have set
sales records and have won many awards
probably because the Harry Potter
stories provide a familiar backdrop for
readers who can empathize with the young
protagonists adrift in a sometimes cruel
and challenging world in addition to her
vast contributions to literature
she is also noted for the social moral
and political inspiration she has given
her fans
a notable philanthropist she has
established the Volant charitable trust
which donates millions of dollars to aid
women and children and to combat poverty
and social inequality the
the fund also gives to organizations
that aid children one parent families
and multiple multiple sclerosis research
she herself has noted that a person has
a moral responsibility when you've been
given far more than you need to do wise
things with it and to give intelligently
and now I give you MS JK Rowling
president first members of the Harvard
corporation and the Board of Overseers
members of the faculty proud parents and
above all graduates the first thing I
would like to say is thank you
not only has half had given me an
extraordinary honor but the weeks of
fear and nausea I have endured at the
thought of giving this commencement
address have made me lose weight
a win-win situation now all I have to do
is take deep breaths squint at the red
banners and convince myself than up that
I am at the world's largest Gryffindor
reunion
delivering a commencement address is a
great responsibility or so I thought
until I cast my mind back to my own
graduation the commencement speaker that
day was the distinguished British
philosopher Baroness Mary Warnock
reflecting on her speech has helped me
enormous Lee in writing this one because
it turns out that I can't remember a
single word she said this liberating
discovery enables me to proceed without
any fear that I might inadvertently
influence you to abandon promising
careers in business the law or politics
for the giddy delights of becoming a gay
wizard
you see if all you remember in years to
come is the gay wizard joke I've come
out ahead of Baroness marijuana
achievable goals the first step to
self-improvement actually I have wrapped
my mind and heart for what I ought to
say to you today I have asked myself
what I wish I had known at my own
graduation and what important lessons I
have learnt in the 21 years that have
expired between that day and this I have
come up with two answers on this
wonderful day when we are gathered
together to celebrate your academic
success I have decided to talk to you
about the benefits of failure and as you
stand on the threshold of what is
sometimes called real life I want to
extol the crucial importance of
imagination these may seem quixotic or
paradoxical choices but bear with me
looking back at the 21 year old that I
was at graduation is a slightly
uncomfortable experience for the 42 year
old that she has become half my lifetime
ago I was striking an uneasy balance
between the ambition I had for myself
and what those closest are to me
expected of me I was convinced that the
only thing I wanted to do ever was write
novels however my parents both of whom
came from impoverished backgrounds and
neither of whom had been to college took
the view that my overactive imagination
was an amusing personal quirk that would
never pay a mortgage or secure a pension
I know the irony strikes with the force
of a cartoon anvil now but so they hoped
that I would take a vocational degree I
wanted to study English literature a
compromise was reached that in
retrospect satisfied nobody and I went
up to study Modern Languages hardly had
my parents car round at the corner at
the end of the road then
ditched German and scuttled off down the
classics corridor
I cannot remember telling my parents
that I was studying classics they might
well have found out for the first time
on graduation day of all the subjects on
this planet I think they would have been
hard put to name one less useful than
Greek mythology when it came to securing
the keys to an executive bathroom now I
would like to make it clear in
parentheses that I do not blame my
parents but their point of view there is
an expiry date on blaming your parents
for steering you in the wrong direction
the moment you are old enough to take
the wheel responsibility lies with you
what is more I cannot criticize my
parents for hoping that I would never
experience poverty they had been poor
themselves and I have since been poor
and I quite agree with them that it is
not an ennobling experience poverty
entails fear and stress and sometimes
depression it means a thousand petty
humiliations and hardships climbing out
of poverty by your own efforts that is
something on which to pride yourself but
poverty itself is romanticized only by
fools what I feared most for myself at
your age was not poverty but failure at
your age in spite of a distinct lack of
motivation at University where I had
spent far too long in the coffee bar
writing stories and far too little time
at lectures I had a knack for passing
examinations and that for years had been
the measure of success in my life and
that of my peers now I am not done
enough to suppose that because you are
young gifted and well-educated you have
never known heartbreak hardship or
heartache talent and intelligence never
yet inoculated anyone against the
Caprice of the fates and I do not for a
moment suppose that everyone here has
enjoyed an existence of unruffled
privilege and contentment however the
fact that you are graduating from
Harvard suggests that you are not very
well acquainted with failure
you might be driven by a fear of failure
quite as much as a desire for success
indeed your conception of failure might
not be too far removed from the average
person's idea of success so high
have you already flown ultimately we all
have to decide for ourselves what
constitutes failure but the world is
quite eager to give you a set of
criteria if you let it so I think it
fair to say that by any conventional
measure a mere seven years after my
graduation day I had failed on an epic
scale an exceptionally short lived
marriage had imploded and I was jobless
a lone parent and as poor as it is
possible to be in modern Britain without
being homeless the fears that my parents
had had for me and that I had had for
myself had both come to pass and by
every usual standard I was the biggest
failure I knew now I'm not going to
stand here and tell you that failure is
fun that period of my life was a dark
one and I had no idea that there was
going to be what the press has since
represented as a kind of fairytale
resolution I had no idea then how far
the tunnel extended and for a long time
any light at the end of it was a hope
rather than a reality so why do I talk
about the benefits of failure simply
because failure meant a stripping away
of the inessential I stopped pretending
to myself that I was anything other than
what I was and began to direct all my
energy into finishing the only work that
mattered to me had I really succeeded at
anything else I might never have found
the determination to succeed in the one
arena where I believed I truly belonged
I was set free because my greatest fear
had been realized and I was still alive
and I still had a daughter whom I adored
and I had an old typewriter and a big
idea
and so rock-bottom became the solid
foundation on which I rebuilt my life
you might never fail on the scale I did
but some failure in life is inevitable
it is impossible to live without failing
at something unless you live so
cautiously that you might as well not
have lived at all in which case you fail
by default failure gave me an inner
security that I had never attained by
passing examinations failure taught me
things about myself that I could have
learned no other way I discovered that I
had a strong will and more discipline
than I had suspected I also found out
that I had friends whose value was truly
above the price of rubies the knowledge
that you have emerged wiser and stronger
from setbacks means that you are ever
after secure in your ability to survive
you will never truly know yourself or
the strength of your relationships until
both have been tested by adversity such
knowledge is a true gift for all that it
is painfully one and it has been worth
more than any qualification I ever
earned so given a time Turner I would
tell my 21 year old self that personal
happiness lies in knowing that life is
not a checklist of acquisition or
achievement your qualifications
your CV are not your life though you
will meet many people of my age and
older who confuse the two life is
difficult and complicated and beyond
anyone's total control and the humility
to know that will enable you to survive
its vicissitudes now you might think
that I chose my second theme the
importance of imagination because of the
part it played in rebuilding my life but
that is not wholly so though I
personally will defend the value of
bedtime stories to my last gasp I have
learned to value imagination in a much
broader sense imagination is not only
the uniquely human
capacity to envision that which is not
and therefore the fount of all invention
and innovation in its arguably most
transformative and revelatory capacity
it is the power that enables us to
empathize with humans whose experiences
we have never shared one of the greatest
formative experiences of my life
preceded Harry Potter though it informed
much of what I subsequently wrote in
those books this revelation came in the
form of one of my earliest day jobs
though I was sloping off to write
stories during my lunch hours I paid the
rent in my early twenties by working at
the African research department of
Amnesty International's headquarters in
London there in my little office
I read hastily scribbled letters
smuggled out of totalitarian regimes by
men and women who were risking
imprisonment to inform the outside world
of what was happening to them I saw
photographs of those who had disappeared
without trace sent to amnesty by their
desperate families and friends I read
the testimony of torture victims and saw
pictures of their injuries
I opened handwritten eyewitness accounts
of summary trials and executions of
kidnappings and rapes many of my
co-workers were ex political prisoners
people who had been displaced from their
homes or fled into exile because they
had the temerity to speak against their
governments visitors to our offices
included those who who had come to give
information or to try and find out what
had happened to those who had they had
left behind I shall never forget the
African torture victim a young man no
older than I was at the time who had
become mentally ill after all he had
endured in his homeland he trembled
uncontrollably as he spoke into a video
camera about the brutality inflicted
upon him he was a foot taller than I was
and seemed as fragile as a child I was
given the job of hints courting him back
to the underground station after
and this man whose life had been
shattered by cruelty took my hand with
exquisite courtesy and wished me future
happiness and as long as I live I shall
remember walking along an empty corridor
and suddenly hearing from behind a
closed door a scream of pain and horror
such as I have never heard since the
door opened and the researcher poked out
her out her head and told me to run and
make a hot drink for the young man
sitting with her she had just had to
give him the news that in retaliation
for his outspokenness against his
country's regime his mother had been
seized and executed every day of my
working week in my early twenties I was
reminded how incredibly fortunate I was
to live in a country with a
democratically elected government where
legal representation and a public trial
were the rights of everyone everyday I
saw more evidence about the evils
humankind will inflict on their fellow
humans to gain or maintain power I began
to have nightmares literal nightmares
about some of the things I saw heard and
read and yet I also learned more about
human goodness at Amnesty International
than I had ever known before
amnesty mobilizes thousands of people
who have never been tortured or
imprisoned for their beliefs to act on
behalf of those who have the power of
human empathy leading to collective
action saves lives and frees prisoners
ordinary people whose personal
well-being and security are assured join
together in huge numbers to save people
they do not know and will never meet my
small participation in that process was
one of the most humbling and inspiring
experiences of my life
unlike any other creature on this planet
human beings can learn and understand
without having experienced they can
think themselves into other people's
places of course this is a power like my
brand of fictional magic that is morally
neutral one might use such an ability to
manipulate or control just as much as to
understand or sympathise and many prefer
not to exercise their imaginations at
all they choose to remain comfortably
within the bounds of their own
experience never troubling to wonder how
it would feel to have been born other
than they are they can refuse to hear
screams or peer inside cages they can
close their minds and hearts to any
suffering that does not touch them
personally they can refuse to know I
might be tempted to Envy people who can
live that way except that I do not think
they have any fewer nightmares than I do
choosing to live in narrow spaces leads
to a form of mental Agra phobia and that
brings its own terrors I think the
willfully unimaginative see more
monsters they are often more afraid
what is more those who choose not to
empathize enable real monsters for
without ever committing an act of
outright evil ourselves we collude with
it through our own apathy one of the
many things I learned at the end of that
classics corridor down which I ventured
at the age of 18 in search of something
I could not then define was this written
by the Greek author Plutarch what we
achieve inwardly will change outer
reality that is an astonishing statement
and yet proven a thousand times every
day of our lives
it expresses in part our inescapable
connection with the outside world the
fact that we touch other people's lives
simply by existing but how much more are
you Harvard graduates of 2008 lightly to
touch other people's lives your
intelligence
your capacity for hard work the
education you have earned and received
give you unique unique status and unique
responsibilities even your nationality
sets you apart the great majority of you
belong to the world's only remaining
superpower the way you vote the way you
live the way you protest the pressure
you bring to bear on your government has
an impact way beyond your borders that
is your privilege and your burden if you
choose to use your status and influence
to raise your voice on behalf of those
who have no voice if you choose to
identify not only with the powerful but
with the powerless if you retain the
ability to imagine yourself into the
lives of those who do not have your
advantages then it will not only be your
proud families who celebrate your
existence but thousands and millions of
people whose reality you have helped
change we do not need magic to transform
our world we carry all the power we need
inside ourselves already we have the
power to imagine better I am nearly
finished I have one last hope for you
which is something that I already had at
twenty one the friends with whom i sat
on graduation day have been my friends
for life they are my children's
godparents the people to whom I've been
able to turn in times of real trouble
people who have been kind enough not to
sue me when I took their names for Death
Eaters
at our graduation we were bound by
enormous affection by our shared
experience of a time that could never
come again
and of course by the knowledge that we
held certain photographic evidence that
would be exceptionally valuable if any
of us ran for prime minister
so today I wish you nothing better and
similar friendships and tomorrow I hope
that even if you remember not a single
word of mine
you remember those of Seneca another of
those old Romans I met when I fled down
the classics corridor in retreat from
from career ladders in search of ancient
wisdom as is a tale so is life not how
long it is but how good it is is what
matters I wish you all very good lives
thank you very much
you