Shabana Basij-Rasikh, Remarks As Delivered

Thank you, Dr. Rosenbury.

It’s an honor to be here with all of you today — distinguished faculty and staff, distinguished alumnae, Board of Trustees and friends of Barnard College, and my fellow medal recipients, Helen and Judith and Jeanine.

But of course, the greatest honor is to be here with you today, the Class of 2025. To be here with you and all of the people who love you, everyone who’s here in person or joining us online, all the people who have supported you on the path you’ve walked to where you are today.

Thank you for inviting me to step onto this path with you.

Thank you for inviting me to celebrate a day that, if we were together in Afghanistan, simply wouldn’t be happening. It would be impossible. It would be illegal. 

Women don’t graduate college in Afghanistan because women don’t go to college in Afghanistan. Girls don’t go to high school. Girls don’t go to school at all beyond sixth grade.

Sixth grade. Puberty comes, and education ends. That’s how it is in Afghanistan. That’s the Taliban’s law. And it’s been like this since 2022. Men graduate college, and women don’t. Boys graduate high school, and girls don’t. This is the Taliban’s law, and this is how a nation and a society spirals down into desolation.

That’s my country. That’s my home. And it’s important to me that you know about this.

And I don’t say it because I want to darken the mood of a beautifully bright day. I say it because I have a challenge for you.

My challenge for you, Class of 2025, comes in the context of two data points.

The first one comes from a report from the Pew Research Center, a report they released last year. They tracked the gender gap in college degrees earned in America across the past three decades, from 1995 to 2024.

Here’s what they found.

In 1995, 25% of U.S. women between the ages of 25 to 34 held a bachelor’s degree. And so did 25% of men. Complete parity.

But that’s when the gap began to form, and it widened, until last year, in 2024, Pew found that 47% of U.S. women between the ages of 25 to 34 held a bachelor's degree. But only 37% of men did.

A 10% gap in college degrees between American women and American men. That’s the first point.
The second point is from you. It’s from Barnard College.

And I’ll be more specific: It’s from your website, from the page that talks about the history of your school, your founding, your accomplishments for more than a century.

You’ve probably seen it, but for everyone who hasn’t: When you visit that page that details the history of Barnard, the creation of this place where women could receive the same rigorous education that men could receive — right at the top of the page, there is a single sentence.

And the sentence reads: “The idea was bold for its time.”

It really was, wasn’t it?

That sentence struck me when I read it. And I’ll tell you why. My school, SOLA, wasn’t always what it is now. Originally, we focused on securing scholarships for Afghan students to study overseas — but over time, we decided we wanted to focus on bringing quality education to Afghanistan itself, providing it to young Afghan women within their own country.

And so, we settled on a new model. A boarding school model. A boarding school exclusively for girls. A place where girls from across Afghanistan could live and learn together safely. Girls from all ethnic groups, girls from all economic backgrounds, girls from every region of the country — we wanted them all.
We were going to create a place where girls would meet sisters they never knew they had, and together, they would grow to become members of some of the best-educated generation of women that Afghanistan had ever seen.

Nothing else like SOLA had ever been tried in my country. Ever. Not until SOLA.

This was our idea, and I remember how I would go into meetings with high-level politicians in Kabul, telling them why we wanted to create a boarding school, our reasoning behind it, our belief in what could come of it.
These men weren’t extremists, they weren’t Taliban — these were elected government officials, and I remember them being very interested in what my team and I had to say to them.

And I will never forget what one of them said, at one of these meetings.

He said, “It’s a remarkable idea you’ve got, very powerful. And it’s such a shame that you’re wasting it on girls.”

That really happened. 

And I’ll tell you something else that happened: I proved him wrong. I did, and SOLA’s teachers did, and SOLA’s global village of supporters did — and more than anyone else, our students and their parents did. Afghan girls, and Afghan mothers and fathers, who believed in a bold idea.

Educating girls shouldn’t be a bold idea. But it is, in Afghanistan.

Equality shouldn’t be a bold idea. But it is, in Afghanistan.

Bold ideas challenge. Bold ideas frighten. And some bold ideas, like the one that motivated the creation of SOLA and the creation of Barnard College — some bold ideas have the power to benefit not just some of us but all of us.

Educated girls become educated women, and educated women have agency. They can uplift economies, they improve the health of their families, they neutralize the threat of extremism. They can do all these things and benefit everyone on Earth.

It seems straightforward and easy to accept. But bold ideas need bold champions. And in a time when gaps are widening in educational achievement … in a time when gaps are widening between those who see equality as a pathway to mutual benefit and those who see equality as a threat to individual gain … in a time when gaps are widening between those who hold traditional opinions of gender roles and the “proper” place of women in a society and those who see different arcs of possibilities — in these times, in these days, we look for bold champions for our bold ideas.

And that’s my challenge for you today, the Class of 2025.

Be the ones who are bold enough to bridge the gaps.

Gaps are dangerous places. Gaps are places we fall into. Gaps are dangerous places — I have to emphasize. And these are places that we fall into when no bridge has been built to link those two sides. No path has been laid between them. And wherever your path may lead you after today, I challenge you to innovate ways to bridge the gaps that divide us.

I don’t know where your path will take you — but it inspires me to think about the path you have walked in the days up until now. In a way, you and I have walked paths laid side by side.

In the late summer of 2021, you arrived at Barnard College.

In the late summer of 2021, SOLA and I arrived in Rwanda.

Over the past four years, we have been building. You’ve created your life on campus and the extraordinary potential of your new life that begins today. I’ve used the time to build something that I promise you will never vanish from the Earth: a place of permanence for Afghan girls, a school and a home that will always be theirs, a place where they will learn to be leaders and where they demonstrate to all who see them that leveling women and girls up does not mean leveling men and boys down.

The girls of SOLA will help create the future for Afghanistan. The women of Barnard have their own future to create. And all of you are the bold champions the world has been looking for.

Those are the paths we have been on. And now here we are. The paths that were laid side by side are crossing here today, at Radio City Music Hall, which I’ve come to learn is not a bad place to have your celebration.

And so, Barnard Class of 2025, you graduates of a school built upon a bold idea — you extraordinary, extraordinary women — my final words to you today are these:

Be the ones who are bold enough to bridge the gaps. Be the inheritors of the hope and the strength that made this day possible, and pass that hope and strength on to the young women who follow you.

The tools you need are the tools you already have. You have honed them here. Now build the bridge and walk the path across it. I will join you. So will the girls of SOLA, the girls who see you from Rwanda with such admiration, the Afghan sisters that you never knew you had.

It starts today, and I’m so proud to spend today with you.

Thank you, and congratulations. And may you always take this right for granted.