President and CEO Uzra Zeya’s Remarks to Macaulay Honors College Commencement Upon Acceptance of Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters
Thank you, Dean Byrne, Director Sviridov, Provost Meeks, and distinguished faculty members for this extraordinary honor and one that I never imagined was possible. I’d like to think my late mother is looking down on us, beaming, upon hearing the words, “Dr. Zeya.”
And to the Macaulay Honors College class of 2026, congratulations on making your loved ones, mentors, peers and city so proud this Silver Anniversary year! I was thrilled to meet some of you as you started this journey in 2022, and your academic rise and outsize impact beyond the classroom and campus have been unstoppable. You surmounted a global pandemic, zoom classes through high school, a 27-year New York Knicks NBA finals drought, and countless hours of study to make breakthroughs in research across disciplines and give back to this city in acts of service and scholarship that will transform lives for years to come. So let’s hear it for the class of 2026, before we put them to work fixing all the problems we are handing off to them, and fingers crossed for the Knicks tomorrow!
Being here among you brings back memories of my own college graduation — in the ancient, pre-TikTok era. On that late May day in 1989, Chinese students demanding reform were building a Goddess of Democracy, resembling Lady Liberty, to be erected in Tiananmen Square. Nelson Mandela was in his 27th year of imprisonment, and the Soviet Union exercised an iron grip over its 15 republics and Eastern Europe.
In addition to giving birth to Bart Simpson and Taylor Swift, 1989 proved itself to be a year of profound rupture, with tanks crushing Tiananmen protesters days after I graduated, coinciding with an electoral victory for Poland’s Solidarity union that hastened the fall of Berlin Wall and the Iron Curtain within months. By 1990, Mandela was free, South African apartheid and the Soviet Union were on their last legs, and I began my diplomatic career in a new era that some called “The End of History,” a reference to a perceived triumph of Western liberalism over ideological foes.
Of course, we know that it was anything but, with armed conflicts and forced displacement now at levels not seen since World World II, and twenty-plus years of a global democratic recession that began just before many of you were born. I would be the first to say that the 1989 hinge point in history pales in comparison with the tectonic shifts we’re facing now – as technology transforms nearly every aspect of the human experience, including the very nature of scholarship and work itself.
But every rupture presents opportunities, particularly to break away from an unjust status quo. And young people have a vital role to play, as I’ve seen in Gen-Z driven movements from Bangladesh to Kenya, and having taken part in 1980s anti-apartheid campus protests that helped sway U.S. policy, belatedly. Little did I know when I was sitting where you are now that a few years later, I would be consulting Tiananmen student exiles to inform U.S. human rights policy towards China as a young diplomat and later lead that effort under President Obama. Little did I know as a twenty-something human rights officer in Hafiz al-Asad’s Syria, that Syrian youth tearing down posters of his son 13 years later would light the flame that eventually brought down over 50 years of dictatorship. So with the benefit of hindsight, I’d like to share three lessons from three-plus decades of navigating disruption and working to drive global impact, where learning from setbacks is as important as successes.
Number one: democracy is neither linear, inevitable, nor perfect, but it needs your active engagement to prevail. Regardless of whether you are pursuing STEM, business, arts, the law, or public policy, and no matter your background, zip code, immigration status, faith or lack thereof, your voice and active participation in our democracy matter, and are in fact, essential.
This isn’t just about voting, though it’s a good place to start. Less than half of eligible voters between the ages of 18 and 24 voted in the last U.S. presidential election. By way of comparison, 75% of voters 65 and older voted in 2024, which might help explain why septuagenarians cleaned up in both major parties over the last three elections. Of course, who’s running can make all the difference. Young New Yorkers propelled Mayor Mamdani to his historic election victory with a turnout for their age group more than three times what it was in 2013. It is crucial that young people turn out similarly for upcoming state, local, and federal elections, where those running will help determine the future of our brave experiment in democracy.
Because as we have seen firsthand in the United States, democracy doesn’t stop at the ballot box, and we are no exception to the global democratic recession. Steep U.S. democratic decline since 2025 is rooted in interconnected factors that I’ve witnessed in every region of the world: consolidation of government power for personal and political gain, linked to weakened checks and balances, and tied to erosion of core freedoms and the rule of law, alongside vilifying the vulnerable.
Because this is a familiar playbook, we know how to push back, and organizations like mine—Human Rights First—are doing our part. Leaning into decades of legal rigor, we’ve successfully defended non-profits, lawyers, and students targeted for First Amendment-protected activity, including a student here in New York facing detention and deportation simply for attending a protest in support of Palestinian and student rights. We’re working with veterans and NGO allies across the country to defend dissent on college campuses and to secure state-level protections after the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act in successive rulings.
And I believe this Class of 2026 has a special role to play in renewing our democracy as well. We know injustice has been ever-present in American history, and that City University has been a leader in combating it since inception. As Macaulay graduates, your leadership can help American democracy form a more perfect union and challenge inequity, starting here in New York. It’s only fitting that the university that incubated the cure for polio should take on the seemingly impossible. I’ve seen that audacity in this class—from cancer and public policy research that uncovered disproportionate impact on underserved populations, to urban planning to confront housing affordability, you’ve taken on daunting problems and sought cutting-edge solutions. In those and smaller, everyday acts—voting, writing your elected representatives, volunteering to better your community, subscribing to support independent journalism, peaceful protest—you can arrest democratic backsliding in its tracks.
This brings me to a second constant for navigating this disrupted world: welcoming the stranger and embracing our shared humanity. This city—the world’s most linguistically diverse metropolis—has been a beacon and safe harbor for those seeking safety or opportunity for centuries. This includes my extended family, who arrived in New York from Hungary, Ukraine, and Poland by ship, and from India, through JFK, roughly sixty years apart. Waves of new arrivals made incalculable contributions to this city and our nation’s growth, culture, and prosperity — and for many, with the help of CUNY degree. Fast forwarding to today, our very identity as a nation of immigrants is under threat, as an escalating federal crackdown sweeps up the highest numbers of civilians detained in our country since the unjust internment of Japanese-Americans in World War II.
But once again, we have the tools and the know-how to push back. Courageous Minnesotans, preceded by grassroots activists in Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington DC, Newark, and beyond, stepped up in support of targeted communities and the rule of law. Human Rights First joined them at the frontlines, suing the U.S. administration for denying due process to thousands forcibly sent to third countries where they have no ties and face arbitrary detention and abuse. We lead a pro-bono network of thousands of lawyers who, over decades, have won protection for tens of thousands of courageous refugee clients who endured the unthinkable.
One of them is onstage today: Dr. Lev Sviridov, whose journalist mother took the agonizing decision to flee threats in Russia, only to be thrust into the uncertainty of undocumented status in New York City with her young son. After Human Rights First helped them gain asylum, Lev achieved academic brilliance at City College, Oxford, and Macaulay, and continues to pay it forward for new generations of refugees as Vice Chair of our Board. We welcome your help turning the anti-immigrant tide by building a bigger tent that transcends faith, politics, or borough. In doing so, let’s recognize and celebrate our differences, and reject all forms of hatred that dehumanize others and are all too prevalent today.
This brings me to my final piece of advice navigating a turbulent present: hit the road. And I don’t mean seek refugee status in Canada. This is about getting out of your comfort zone to be a stranger elsewhere in the world, or even right here in the USA beyond the I-95 corridor. My first time abroad, studying in Egypt in my late teens, was a formative experience that set me on the path that brought me here today. I was welcomed like a long-lost relative by families ready to break their last piece of bread with a foreigner who spoke the Arabic equivalent of Olde English, and alternately was pressed to answer for the misdeeds of a president I didn’t vote for or represent. In doing so, I learned what it meant to me to be an American, that I belong here, and that what separates us as Americans or from other nations pales next to our commonalities, whether it is love for our families, a home-cooked meal, a good joke, or Bob Marley, then – or better yet today, Bad Bunny.
Almost four decades later, having worked to advance human rights in 70+ countries, I’m trying to reinforce those common threads that unite us, around a simple idea: All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. Those opening words from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights came out of a process kicked off here in New York 80 years ago this month, in the aftermath of global conflict. I have every confidence that you, the Class of 2026, can make that vision real, not just with respect to civil and political freedoms but also economic and social rights—a living wage, affordable housing, universal healthcare—that represent an unjust status quo long overdue for rupture and repair. So go forth, Class of 2026, with confidence, boldness, my allyship, and the wind at your backs!
