Maria Ressa's speech at the 2024 Harvard commencement ceremony

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https://www.rappler.com/voices/thought-leaders/full-text-maria-ressa-speech-2024-harvard-commencement-ceremony/

Maria Ressa’s speech at the 2024 Harvard commencement ceremony

MAY 24, 2024 9:00 AM PHT
MARIA A. RESSA

Nobel laureate and Rappler CEO Maria Ressa received an honorary doctor of laws degree at Harvard University on Thursday, May 23. She also addressed the Harvard’s Class of 2024 during the commencement ceremony.

Below is the full text of Ressa’s speech delivered in Massachusetts.

(Audio link on site)

…

We live in a dystopian science fiction world, where everything can change in the blink of an eye, when you have been forced to turn crisis into opportunity. No one knows this better than the Class of 2024. A pandemic meant no high school graduation; your first year here in lockdown, wearing masks, afraid of contact. You laid out all the existential problems we face today.

We were pushed online in the virtual world, and that made things worse because the accelerant to conflict and violence, to us against them, to wars that have killed tens of thousands, sparking historic campus protests. That accelerant is technology. It turned what once used to be our civilized Harvard thinking slow public discussions into what’s become a gladiator’s battle to the death.

…

Well, today’s equivalent, an alarm that’s made me feel like Cassandra and Sisyphus combined because I’ve been shouting since 2016, when I watched our institutions crumble quickly in the Philippines, and I will say it now: “The fascists are coming.”

In 2023, the global democracy index fell to its lowest level ever. Today, 71% of the world lives under autocratic rule. We are electing illiberal leaders democratically. And once in power, these autocrats not only crush institutions in their countries, but form alliances and create Kleptocracy, Inc.

…more…

(Very wise. Very powerful. Calls out fb specifically as Zuck’s Harvard beginnings, how fb and tech broke democracy.)

(Btw she’s out on bail and had to ask permission from Supreme Court to travel.)