Colby's 189th Commencement

Commencement 2009 Centered on Education in Afghanistan

Greg Mortenson, coauthor of the bestseller Three Cups of Tea, and senior class speaker Qiamuddin Amiry of Kabul, Afghanistan, cofounder the Afghan Scholars Initiative, emphasized the role of education in solving global problems when they spoke at Colby College's 188th commencement Sunday, May 24. Five-hundred nine members of Colby's Class of 2009 received diplomas from President William D. Adams as thousands watched on the Miller Library lawn.

In the years since his failed attempt to climb K2 led him to discover his mission, Mortenson has created approximately 80 schools, mostly for girls, through the nonprofit he cofounded, the Central Asia Institute. He encouraged graduates to make the most of failures. In Afghanistan, he said, "There's a very beautiful Persian proverb that says, 'When it is dark, you can see the stars.' And I think that's a good thing to hold onto." 

Audio, Video, and Text of Greg Mortenson's Address

Student-elected speaker Qiamuddin Amiry '09 gained perspective through the struggles early in his life, he said, including civil war in Afghanistan and later the Taliban regime. "During the civil war, survival became the number-one objective of life," he said. Later, at the United World College in Hong Kong and then at Colby, Amiry was able to look beyond survival and toward helping others.

"It was here that I had the chance to see that it is merely a different environment, different people that I had the good fortune to interact with, and different sources from which I took inspiration," he said, "that made the difference between a young suicide bomber from Kabul and the young man standing before you today."

Following Amiry's speech, President Adams awarded the Condon Medal, given annually to a senior with extraordinary qualities of constructive citizenship, to James Goldring '09. Goldring founded Luzicare, an organization to raise money for people affected by HIV/AIDS in Malawi. Audio, Video, and Text of Quiam Amiry's Address

Honorary degrees were awarded to outgoing chair of Colby's board of trustees Joseph F. Boulos, Tom's of Maine founders Kate Cheney Chappell and Thomas M. Chappell, astronomer Margaret J. Geller, Harvard law professor Jack Goldsmith III, and Mortenson.

Yilin Xu, a mathematics and economics double major from Beijing, China, led the procession of seniors as the class marshal and valedictorian.