Jalloul

DEARBORN — Four years ago, Mariam Jalloul spoke at her high school commencement at Fordson. Next month, she will speak at Harvard’s 365th commencement.

Jalloul, who graduated as the valedictorian of the Fordson class of 2012 with a 4.3 GPA, went on to excel at Harvard.

The Ivy League university student, who is receiving her degree in sociology and global health and health policy, will be one of two students to speak at the ceremony on May 26.

Jalloul will share the podium with renowned filmmaker Steven Spielberg, the keynote speaker at the commencement.

“Through his art, Mr. Spielberg has challenged us to dream and to see the world anew; and I am very much looking forward to welcoming him back to Harvard and to honoring him during our 365th commencement exercises,” Harvard President Drew G. Faust said in a press release last month.

While attending the alma mater of the likes of W.E.B. DuBois, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Barack Obama, Jalloul remained true to her Arab heritage. She penned several editorials in Harvard’s student publication, “The Crimsons”, about social and ethnic justice issues.

In 2014, she wrote an article titled, “Lebanese. Muslim. American.”, where she shared incidents in which she was the victims of verbal harassment and
Islamophobia.

“I do not share these stories for pity,” she wrote. “These moments are representative of the many experiences I’ve had whenever I’ve stepped out of my community in Dearborn, Mich.—home to the second-largest concentration of Arabs outside of the Middle East, most of whom are Muslim.”

Before heading to Boston, Jalloul pledged to always be a Dearbornite.

“I just love Fordson and my Dearborn community,” Jalloul told The Arab American News in 2012. “Even when I graduate from Harvard, I’m definitely going to give back to this community. It’s what raised me, and it’s my home.”