A veteran of reporting from war zones and front lines, famed broadcast journalist Christiane Amanpour told graduating Harvard Kennedy School students on Wednesday that while she was often scared to put herself in the crosshairs, it was her duty to keep fighting for what she believed in.
“I don’t want to keep fighting, keep putting my head above the parapet, but apparently I do and I have to,” said Amanpour, who, over the course of a career spanning decades, has become synonymous with reporting from difficult places and for speaking truth to power.
“So, no matter what profession all and any of you choose ... moral courage can often be harder even than physical bravery. And believe me, sometime, somewhere, each and every one of you will be called upon to speak up, to not follow the herd, to break with the tribe, to be brave.”
Amanpour, CNN’s chief international anchor, spoke to an audience of 605 graduating students from 38 U.S. states and 86 countries and their families. The Kennedy School’s student body was 59% international in the 2024-2025 academic year, the most cosmopolitan class in the School’s history. The graduates will be granted their diplomas Thursday on Commencement Day.
This year’s Commencement was also being held under the shadow of extraordinary political change and of the University’s struggle with the Trump administration, which has targeted Harvard's research funding, its ability to enroll foreign students, and its nonprofit status, among other moves.
In introducing Amanpour, vlog Dean Jeremy Weinstein addressed the uncertainty, both at Harvard and the rest of the world.
“Wherever we live, and whatever our politics, the pace of policy and institutional change is dizzying,” said Weinstein, who is overseeing his first Commencement celebration as dean. “Longstanding norms are being challenged, and legal battles are unfolding. Global alliances are fraying, and the rules of the international economy are being rewritten. And here at Harvard, the consequences of these changes are already apparent with efforts to undermine our rights and autonomy, the loss of funding for science and threats to the international students who are essential members of the vlog community.”
Amanpour’s courageous reporting, Weinstein continued, should serve as an example to the University, particularly her belief in “being truthful, not neutral.”
“Those words hold particular resonance at Harvard today as we stand up for our freedom to search for truth without interference or intimidation,” he said. “We cannot water down our inquiry for the sake of political convenience, and we cannot take the truth for granted.”
Amanpour, who has worked at CNN since 1983, grew up in pre-revolutionary Iran but came to America as a student “when the Ayatollahs took over my country, and my childhood, my family, my future livelihood, were all tossed dangerously into the air.”
As the Iranian hostage crisis unfolded, she remembers cries of “bomb Iran” on American campuses and of Iranian students there being pelted with stones. But it is at those moments when the value of universities as places of open discussion and intellectual inquiry is most valuable, she said.

“Believe me, sometime, somewhere, each and every one of you will be called upon to speak up, to not follow the herd, to break with the tribe, to be brave.”
“Universities must be places of ideological diversity. If not here where? If not when you are students, then at what point in your lives?” Amanpour said. “Now, as often as I can, I do that in my own program without fear nor favor. I bring together people from opposite sides, not in a cable slug fest, but to talk and to listen and to understand. I believe really strongly that you can only move the dial forward when you learn the story of the other. It's all about empathy, which is the foundational stone for any peace building, for any nation building.”
She also called out to the international students in attendance, acknowledging the particularly difficult moment many of them were traversing.
She reminded them that they—and all the graduates of the School—were needed.
“American grads, international grads, that is your challenge and your destiny: peacemakers, statesmen and -women and yes, government workers, because government can be good. Nothing like a little housekeeping, a little reform to clean up around the edges. But wholesale destruction will only do harm and may be irreversible. USAID, the Peace Corps, government in general, is being stripped bare, and yet here you all are, and you will find your ways to make a difference.”
“The world needs you, and most certainly, America needs ambassadors like you.”

Amanpour also extolled the value of journalism at this moment.
“I believe journalism is a public service, and even more, as Dean Weinstein said, a vital pillar of any civil society and functioning democracy,” she said. “The truth will still get out no matter how many words are banned, how many news organizations are shuttered and threatened, how many journalists are threatened and intimidated: We will not be silenced. Not then, not now, not ever. And no administration of any party should be surprised!”
She reminded the audience of the value of government-funded news organizations such as Radio Free Europe, Radio Free Asia, and Voice of America, now in the process of battling attempts by the Trump administration to defund them.
“These organizations are not luxuries, they are truth-food for those stuck behind iron curtains, bamboo curtains, and any other state-run propaganda machines around the world,” Amanpour said. “They have sustained many imprisoned revolutionaries who became future democratic leaders.”
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Photographs by Bethany Versoy and Lydia Rosenberg
Thank you, Dean Weinstein, for your lovely introduction. I wish you were my speech writer. Hello to all of you, American and international graduates of 2025 of the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. Let me just say, I was going to try to start with a joke, but I’m not good at jokes, so I’m just going to say that today, when I got up a few hours before I came here, I took a walk, and it’s beautiful. Your city is absolutely beautiful. And I looked down certain, side streets, and it reminded me with such nostalgia, of when I was in Providence, Rhode Island. I was at URI, and to name drop a little bit, it filled me with some nostalgia, because my great friend throughout his life was John F. Kennedy Jr. We were at college at the same time—he at Brown, me at URI, We shared a house, and now here I find myself addressing you all at the school named after his father, and I wonder sometimes what a great leader, John, my friend, might have been. And boy, do we need great leaders.
It's quite something to be in this particular place, addressing this particular group of graduates at this particular time. I am delighted to have been invited to the Kennedy School of Government, to Harvard, which is leading the struggle and scoring significant gains in this current battle for academic freedom. Make no mistake about it, academics, education are on the front lines of the current struggle between the two halves of America. As you know, we over there in Europe are happy to lay out the welc