As prepared for delivery.
Thank you, President Garber - and thank you, former President Gay, who first extended this offer that has me in front of you today!
What an honor to address the distinguished Harvard faculty, the mysterious Harvard Corporation, and the loving friends and family who have traveled to be here. But most of all, I am thrilled to congratulate the battle-tested graduates of the Class of 2024!!!
We live in a dystopian science fiction world, where everything changes in the blink of an eye, when you have to turn crisis into opportunity.
The Class of 2024 knows this better than others: no high school graduation; your first year here in lockdown, wearing masks, afraid of human contact. 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 historical campus protests … turning what once used to be our civilized thinking slow public discussions into a gladiator’s battle to the death … that accelerant is technology.
I know this first-hand. I was born in the Philippines before moving to a strange and foreign land called New Jersey. I fell in love with the values of this nation, but never quite felt complete. So after I graduated college, I went back to the Philippines in search of roots.
The Philippines, America’s former colony, 110 million people, was social media’s petri dish. For a crucial six years, Filipinos spent the most time online and on social media … globally. And we became the testing ground for these American tech companies, its design exploited by power and money in information warfare.
If it worked with us, then the tactic was deployed against you. That’s what you felt in 2016, when 126 million Americans were touched by Russian disinformation before the election. And on January 6, 2021, in the violence on Capitol Hill when Silicon Valley’s sins came home to roost.
I had already survived information operations from my own government - 90 hate messages per hour in 2016. It fed me death threats for breakfast, attacked the way I looked, the way I sound. It dehumanized me.
According to social media, exploited and used by power and money for power and money, I was:
A criminal.
A communist.
A CIA agent.
Anti semitic
Anti Palestine
A Princeton grad.
I am a Tiger. The rest are lies. And the truth is simple. I’m a journalist.
I became a journalist because information is power. It brings justice, but the opposite is true. Disinformation brings injustice. We documented it in data. The end goal is chaos. A breakdown of trust. So disinformation networks seeded the concept that journalists are the enemy; journalist equals criminal. Then came the weaponization of the law.
Anyone else out here on bail? Just me?
In 2019, I was arrested twice in about a month. I posted bail 8 times in about 3 months - a total of 10 arrest warrants. I’ve paid more in bail and bonds than our dictator’s wife Imelda Marcos. (but she probably spent more on shoes)
I did nothing wrong. Except to do my job. To report facts. To hold power to account. For this, I had to be okay with going to jail for the rest of my life. For this - to be here today, I had to ask for permission to travel from our Supreme Court. The lesson I learned? You don’t know who you are until you’re tested, until you fight for what you believe in. That defines who you are.
The campus protests tested everyone in America. Protests are healthy; they shouldn’t be violent. Protests give voice; they shouldn’t be silenced. But administrators, like deer in headlights, also faced an unacknowledged danger: technology, making everything faster, meaner, more polarized. With insidious information operations online dividing generations.
So as you go out into our troubled world, at an extremely challenging time, move away from the performative online world. When Tech has atomized meaning, what’s important to you? What gives your life meaning?
I remember my graduation in 1986: I had no answers to those questions. So here are three ways you can live your way into the answers:
- Draw the line.
- Live the golden rule: do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
- Be vulnerable.
First, draw the line.
Set and stay focused on your goals, but know the values you live by. How far will you go to reach those goals? How important is power? How much money will make you happy?
Character is created in the sum of all the little choices we make. If you’re not clear about your values, you may wake up one day and realize you don’t like the person you’ve become.
Now while you’re sitting there, be clear - choose the values that define you. Do it now. Because when you’re tested - and it will come if it hasn’t already - you have to know the lines you’ve set.
Draw the line: on this side you’re good; on this side, you’re evil.
The only thing you can control in the world is you. Too often, we let ourselves off the hook, refusing to look at our own difficult or ugly truths. We rationalize our behavior.
So choose your best self.
Because you’re standing on the rubble of the world that was. An atom bomb exploded in our information ecosystem. Social media turned our world upside down, spreading lies while amplifying fear and anger, fueling hatred. By design. For profit.
Whether it’s the AI of social media or generative AI, we don’t have integrity of information, of facts. Without facts, you can’t have truth. Without truth, you can’t have trust. Without these three, we have no shared reality, no rule of law, no democracy. We can’t begin to solve existential problems like climate change, nuclear disarmament, biological war.
This outrage economy - built on our data, microtargeting us - transformed our world, rewarding the worst of humanity. Online violence is real violence. And people are dying - from genocide in Myanmar, fueled by Facebook according to Meta and the UN … to Ukraine, Sudan, Haiti, Armenia, Gaza.
The challenge today is whether our international rules-based order still works. The challenge is justice, core to our humanity. Too many powerful people are getting away with impunity - from countries to companies, and it is dividing us in ways that are literally destroying us … destroying democracy.
Destroying TRUST.
In Cambridge Commons just on the other side of that gate, there’s a marker to American patriot William Dawes, who like his more famous friend Paul Revere, rode through here sounding the alarm: “The British are coming.”
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 institutions crumble in the Philippines: “the fascists are coming.”
In 2023, the global democracy index fell to its lowest level ever. Today, 72% 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.
Harvard played a role in getting us here. Seven years ago, Mark Zuckerberg stood at this podium and said that his life’s purpose was to connect “one community at a time, keeping at it until one day we connect the whole world.”
Move fast, break things, said Facebook. Well, it broke democracy. In my book HOW TO STAND UP TO A DICTATOR, I compared the brutal Rodrigo Duterte to Mark Zuckerberg, a far more powerful global dictator because he, along with other tech bros, are insidiously manipulating us for profit.
But enough.
The battle to regain trust begins now. With all of you. Harvard boasts it educates the “future leaders” of the world. Well, if you future leaders don’t fight for democracy right now, there will be little left for you to lead.
2. Live the Golden Rule. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
When we were under attack, it was easy to demonize everyone, to take a scorched earth policy and attack our murderous leader who singled me out. And the others who stayed silent and enabled him. To blast our judicial system.
But we knew what fear could do. It’s real, and we gave our people the benefit of the doubt. I didn’t think our values had changed. After all, the Philippines was one of the first signatories of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
It didn’t mean that I wasn’t angry. We at Rappler decided to just do our jobs, and let our actions speak. Burying my anger at the injustice I had to accept may have been one of the toughest things I’ve ever done, but I lived by the golden rule.
For the protestors: when you hid your face in a keffiyeh, did you place yourself in the shoes of another student wearing a yarmulke just wanting to walk to class? Or the faculty administrator, who’s never faced this before and whose task is to protect every student or donor?
A key lesson from Rappler? Every crisis is an opportunity. Were there more nuanced and creative ways to handle these protests on all sides.
Did you listen?
Because it’s going to get worse.
Because of deep fakes, you can’t trust your eyes and ears.
Because of chatbots, you can’t trust that the person you’re communicating with is a person.
Because you’re going to get more propaganda and less news delivered to you.
In January 2023, Meta, the world’s largest distributor of news, decided to choke traffic to news sites, and in the first 6 months, traffic dropped anywhere from 50% to 85%.
Last week, Google announced SGE - search generative experience, which finally has publishers up in arms. While Google promises more traffic, in reality is a drop of at least 30-40% of traffic. That leaves only direct traffic, which isn’t enough to keep most digital news sites alive.
So people are getting less news in their feeds. And instead, the “enshittification” of the internet is in full bloom, more trash, more propaganda, more information operations that push our emotional buttons. Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo left X last year, calling it a human sewer.
We will have to struggle harder for agency, for independent thought.
And it’s not just the tech companies that abdicated responsibility for protecting you, it’s also democratic governments like the United States. Tech is the least regulated industry around the world. The European Union won the race of the turtles, but Big Tech just leapfrogged. It’s not enough.
That’s why we need to reform or revoke section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act, which has allowed these tech companies to manipulate and enable violence and genocide. We need to stop the impunity.
The golden rule pushes us away from fear, anger and hate, from tribalism, what sociologists call in-group and out-group. The more contentious the issue, the more we need to lower the temperature and do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
Yes, I’m Catholic - but a wayward one until Pope Francis called me to the Vatican two years ago. This month, we signed another declaration calling for peace. Now more than ever, it’s important to have faith. It’s the only way to find common ground. The only side to take in a war is peace.
It starts with compassion. There’s a word that goes beyond empathy in South Africa - ubuntu: I am because we are - a deeper faith in another person. In order to get there, we have to lower our shields.
3. Be vulnerable.
You’ve accomplished a lot to be here today. You’ve learned to be a particular way that makes you successful.
You’ve also probably learned not to trust, but in every relationship, in every negotiation, someone lowers their shields first. When you’re vulnerable, you create the strongest bonds and the most inspiring possibilities.
Sometimes the task at hand bonds you, requires vulnerability. My Rappler co-founder, Glenda Gloria traveled with me from the Philippines. We learned to trust when we were negotiating for the release of 3 of our journalists in 2008 who were kidnapped by the Abu Sayyaf, notorious for beheading their victims. We got them out safely in 10 days.
Or Leslie Tucker, whom I met Freshman year in our residential college. At least two Tigers among you today.
As a journalist, I walked into every interview ready to listen and learn, to be vulnerable. Every friendship, I took the risk. You have to prove that I can’t trust you - and many have over the years, but the rewards are worth the risk.
What’s the downside? None, because I’m strong enough. You’re strong enough. That’s real strength that brings meaning.
Remember it’s not about you. Your ego has to be strong enough to be confident, but avoid the arrogance of power. Temper it with humility because you don’t know what you don’t know.
So … Draw the line. Live the Golden Rule. Be vulnerable.
Meaning is not something you stumble across nor what someone gives you. You build it through every choice you make, through the commitments you nurture, the people you love, and the values you live by.
I’ve never felt as despondent about our world as I do today, but YOU give me hope.
This is it. This time matters. What YOU do matters.
We live in existential times.
The war isn’t happening just in Gaza, in Sudan, or in Ukraine. It’s in the phone in your pocket.
Each of us is on the frontlines of the battle for facts, for integrity. Because the dictator to be can zoom in and target each of us.
So let me end this by reminding you: we are standing on the rubble of the world that was, and we must have the foresight and courage to imagine - and create the world as it should be: more compassionate, more equal, more sustainable - a world safe from fascists and tyrants.
Alone we accomplish very little - no matter how bright or talented you are. It’s about what we can do together, to find what binds us together.
That is our common humanity. Remember the good. I wouldn’t be here today if not for the kindness of strangers. Don’t be cynical.
Our world on fire needs YOU.
Congratulations, Class of 2024!
