BEFORE I LEARNED that Secretary of State Madeleine Albright would be
sharing the stage with me as UC Berkeley's keynote speaker for convocation
exercises on May 10, I had submitted to the Committee on Prizes a packet
of application materials in competition for the school's highest honor,
the University Medal. The last question that the eight-person panel of
professors posed to me was: "If you had a chance to address your
graduating class, what would you talk about?"

   I told them that I wanted my speech to have a global perspective and
that I intended to impart a serious, but not somber, message to my
colleagues that while we are living in an age of exploding dot-coms,
"stock options" and outrageously high salaries out of college, the truth
was the United States' tremendous wealth as the strongest superpower in
world history comes at the expense of a great deal of human suffering
elsewhere. By way of examples that I would draw based on my own interests
as an Arab and as a history major, I would remind my fellow graduates that
our world extends beyond Berkeley, and certainly beyond the borders of the
country to which my parents immigrated from Palestine almost three decades
ago.

   That Madeleine Albright would also address my class added an
interesting, though not terribly influential, dimension to my plans. I
could not imagine speaking at my convocation, in the spring of the new
millennium, without mentioning what I consider to be the greatest human
tragedy of our time: the obliteration of the modern state of Iraq and the
death of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi people from preventable illnesses,
starvation and bombing since the imposition of U.S.-backed economic
sanctions after the Persian-Gulf War. Indeed, I would have used Iraq to
illustrate a larger point about the arrogance of power.

   I also could not imagine that I would not take the opportunity to
confront Madeleine Albright with the damning quote that has haunted her
for four years ever since she appeared on "60 Minutes" and told Lesley
Stahl -- who had just returned from Iraq -- that the "price was worth
it" to advance U.S. policy in the region, even if it meant the death of
half a million Iraqi children.

   Albright had suffered a humiliating political setback in February 1998
at the hands of Ohio State University students at a CNN International Town
Meeting. Like me, the students were outraged that a genocide of this
magnitude could continue unchallenged for nearly 10 years. And less than a
week after she left Berkeley, she faced a crowd opposing U.S. sanctions at
the more conservative George Washington University's commencement.

   Albright did not hear my own condemnation, because she fled from
Berkeley unexpectedly after the university administration switched the
order of speakers at the last moment when we were all already sitting on
stage. It's unfortunate, but in many ways telling, that she could not
bear to sit through my speech and give me an opportunity to say what all
the hundreds of voices who met her -- black and white, Arab and non-Arab,
Muslim and atheist were saying, as they "spoke truth to power."

   I watched as the protesters were expelled one by one for speaking out
about injustices in Iraq. By then, the speech that I had prepared -- which
was not entirely political and had included a substantial portion about
what I learned from my class on Sproul Plaza -- not only encouraged me to
give the impromptu speech that I did, which was solely about Iraq, but
dictated that I do so.

   I talked about how the sanctions were "infanticide masquerading as
policy," in the words of House Minority Whip David Bonior; that basic food
supplies and medicines are blocked from entering Iraq in sufficient
quantities and the U.S. government bombs Iraq still, nearly every day,
with depleted uranium, which causes tremendously high cancer rates. Even
though Saddam Hussein is a dictator, I told them he has historically been
sustained by U.S. dollars and weapons and that innocent Iraqi civilians
should not have to pay with their lives for that sordid relationship.

  Had I said nothing, the protesters would have remained a spectacle --
misunderstood, loud, irritating and disruptive -- instead of a brave and
inspiring voice of justice.

   Some outspoken critics fault me for using the podium to advance my
political opinions, and for ruining what in their mind is a celebratory
occasion. Madeleine Albright's presence itself was a political statement,
and her not mentioning the atrocities in Iraq was a more resounding
statement still. It is crucial, too, to see a convocation as an event that
challenges graduating seniors with issues that they will likely face as
this country's future leaders. Celebrations and congratulations aside, I
was talking about another holocaust. Though my focus might have been on an
Arab country to which I am connected by culture, nationality, and, of
course, humanitarian concern, by no means was the larger point I tried to
communicate confined to any one region or any one people.

   My fellow students have causes of their own about which they are
passionate, and there is no monopoly on the recognition of human
suffering. Neither is there an inappropriate time to expose injustices
wherever we might find them.

   Though Albright may not have heard my message, hundreds of supporters
throughout the world did. The letters of solidarity that I received mean
more to me than the University Medal itself, whether they came from
classmates and professors, academicians at Harvard, Yale, MIT, and
Stanford, or written in broken English from Germany, South Africa, France,
Bangladesh, El Salvador, Iraq and Palestine.

   As one letter read, "Sometimes the smallest victories vindicate the
larger injustices."
 
 
 

   Fadia Rafeedie, who will begin pursuing her studies at Yale Law School
this fall, served as a board member for the Bay Area chapter of the
American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee. The group is coordinating a
campaign to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the sanctions on Iraq this
August. For more information, go to www.amaal.org.