 I feel extremely lucky to be graduating today. I see bans rising, borders rising, tuition rising. And I realize that I would not be standing here had it not been for a chance given to my dad as a young Syrian boy with necks to nothing, to break free from debilitating circumstances with an education in Germany that would in some way enable mine here. A possibility so transformative to us and to our families and that draws people to these shores. A possibility shut out to more and more each day. Growing up in my home in Kuwait, for as long as I can remember, the news was forever on narrating my existence. My parents had the ingenious idea to turn CNN into our morning alarm clock. Since the surrounding Middle East had no shortage of political crises at six in the morning, this was a sure method of waking us up for school. And in an act of ultimate evil, my parents hid their remote control so we had no choice but to get out of bed. The sirens so loud they woke us from our sleeps and woke our consciousness to the world. And with it came a strong desire to stop the sirens and change our world. One morning, seizing machete of TV remote control in hand, I rebelliously turn off the TV in a short-lived coup d'etat to take control over that ceaseless narrative of cynicism, killing our dreams in their sleeps. A young revolutionary, I declare from the square of our living room to an audience of one, my grandmother, I want to change things. This can't continue. But time progressed and things regressed and the tyranny of the TV prevailed. I watched the TV screens before leaving for college. My father, Sirius, sinking into the sea. Seeking refuge among the refugees, I searched the screens for a narrative lifeline of hope to cling on to as I watched a wave of radicalism, racism, nationalism, every ism and its cousin rise in the backdrop and pull our world back. As my consciousness expanded to the world, it shrunk my sense of possibility. I had my purpose. I had my desire to make a difference. But having lost two countries to war, my father, Syria, and my mother's palace sign, could I affect change? How could I? And from what platform? It's against a sea of internal doubts that I crossed the Atlantic and land here with my backpack of dampened dreams. When I arrived to Berkeley, fresh off the boat, my parents in disbelief that I had gone past the rigorous vetting of border control at Berkeley admissions snapped every possible picture of me with a golden bear outside of Memorial Stadium. To them, it was a statue of liberty, liberating them from their eternal fear for my future. There, the four-year younger version of me, a newly arrived immigrant to Berkeley, stood in the bear's all-encompassing embrace, uncertain about the future, but pulled by possibility as tutors waved welcome to the land of opportunity. Four years of discovering this new world, I've lived and breathed and seen what pulls people to these shores. This place welcomed and embraced our diversity. It valued us not because we were Muslim or Christian or Jewish or Sikh, not for our caste or our creed, but for our contributions. Valuing us, it unleashed the best in us to enrich this community. Meanwhile, all over the world, we see prejudice masked as patriotism, the divisive masked as a divine, provoking people to fear and hate under the guise of making countries or religions great. And here, we were empowered to think freely and to aspire freely with ideas that gave us the ability to transform our world rather than be defined by them. Growing up, I had searched the TV screens for a new narrative with which to break free from that ceaseless script of cynicism, insisting to conscript the young revolutionary in me to it. Learning how Martin Luther King had pushed and pushed and pushed on the institutions from the outside until he reshaped them from the inside. These ideas shattered the confines of the mind and liberated us to dare to conceive of the different, to be visionary rather than to be pacifist to the present. They put that remote control back in my hands, our hands, to take control over our own narratives. A friend of mine in a very different place had been asked to provide his opinion on an exam. He provided it only to have his opinion returned with a big fat X on it. How could it be wrong if it's my opinion, he asked? It's your opinion, but it's not the opinion we're looking for. Compounded across the classrooms of the nation, across the press rooms of the nation, in places that dictate rather than educate, that oppress the press. This takes the leadership out of leaders, the thought out of thinkers, the inventiveness out of inventors. It saps politics of pith and economies of innovation. How different this was from my experience in international and area studies. How different from the environment of dynamic debate in Professor Bartou's class on the Gulf States that engaged each opinion and its opposite with panelists from a liberal satirist to a conservative activist. An environment that simulated lively discussion rather than silenced it. Sitting there, I saw that this is where democracies are built, where free societies are built, or dictatorships. In our classrooms, before our Congresses, in the smallest of crevices. And every day, our education here created access to this idea of changing the world. That it was not the confine of ivory towers or one man in power, but open to us all to make and to participate. Every day, you showed me that we did not need big spaces to make big things happen. But like those who did on airport pavements at Washington's National Mall, you marched into movements outside of these halls, transforming the smallest of spaces into powerful stages from which the world watched and listened, from which you shaped culture and conscience and law. Surrounded by this, I felt empowered by it. You showed me every day that powerful platforms resided in us to change our world. That we, the people, were ourselves powerful countries. Nations resided in we, the people. And in a world calling on our active citizenship and global responsibility, this place was awake to the world and engaged. And students who were never idle in their ideals. You stood up and spoke up on the steps of Sproul when Security Council sat silent, reminding us that these are not other people's problems, but our shared challenges because they affect the world we are collectively a part of. We stood up against apartheid, against war for civil rights. We are that eternal clamor for change. Bits of Rosie and Rosa and Martin and Mario and the values they fought for. Ever restless for justice, a campus pulsating with purpose. It's these things that make this place so great. That pull talent year after year across seas of treacherous SATs in pursuit of the Berkeley dream. That consolation of people and ideas and stories that personify opportunity, equality, liberty and justice. It's these things so much of the source of our success, most of threats in the world outside today. Four years and so many uncertain citizenship exams later, I was never sure I'd pass. With passports of possibility in these degrees, from uncertain immigrants, today we become citizens of this place, of these values. And now we walk out of here and into the world, let these be the understandings with which we build our worlds. And the challenges will be great, but we can't allow them to submerge our idealism in a sea of cynicism. When I got here, my belief in my ability to bring about change was confined and contained. I thought I had to wait for some other country or some other time I thought from what platform? From the rubble and debris of what country? This education gave me a country. It's created the country in me in these ideas on which to stand and face the challenges of the world. This place created a powerful platform in us. It showed us to find a powerful voice inside us to transcend the borders and boundaries and countries that attempt to confine us and to reach the world with these passports of possibility, to pass through adversity, to find ways where there are walls to build bridges over borders to conceive of new worlds when old ones fail us. It gave me something so much more powerful than country because they might have taken away countries and shut off institutions, but they cannot take away our education, these resilient worlds on which we stand within us, with which we could rebuild countries over destroyed countries and create the paths where they are shut off to us. I stand on the stage before you today, but we are each standing on stages in the powerful platform this education has given us to impact our worlds and make our voices heard. Ever true to the cow bears embrace and to the spirit of this place? Let us rush to use this enormous power to empower. Let us rush to use these microphones to bring out the voices that go unheard and let us rush to use these spotlights to cast light in darkness that we may let there be light and create a path for so many others where there is none. That path that allowed my father to be, that allowed me to be, and that is so much a part of our collective story, these United States of Berkeley. Thank you.