While critics charge that the HLF is a terrorist front organization, Yasin staunchly defends it, saying the work he saw the group doing there was marked by dedication and professionalism, and that they had provided “excellent care in such difficult circumstances.”

Despite the controversy, at this point Yasin said he was glad he was going ahead with the speech, and its title, even if he “didn’t expect this kind of acrimony.”

“Some things are too important not to be talked about,” he said. “I would rather bring up difficult issues that we have to deal with...than to let them simmer in a much more subtle and a much more hurtful manner.”

The Next Week

Over the next week, the media frenzy intensified. As with any number of stories this year involving Harvard and controversy, the media took the story and ran with it, except this time it was already amplified by its Sept. 11 context. Yasin, Levey and Galper were featured on various talk shows and in reports, and The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Boston Globe all filed stories.

University faculty and officials defended the choice of Yasin’s speech, and decried the personal attacks made on him.

“I think it’s disgraceful and think it’s criminal,” said committee chair and classics department chair Richard F. Thomas, discussing the death threat. “I hope legal action will be taken.”

Despite student criticism and concerns about the content of the speech, Thomas also said the tradition of not releasing Commencement speeches beforehand would not be changed while he is on the committee.

“It’s never happened before,” he said. “I don’t see why it should happen this time, unless the student orator wishes to release it.”

Meanwhile, following discussions earlier in the controversy between Yasin and committee members, as well as e-mail communication between Yasin and some students, Yasin met with Galper and Leverett House Senior Tutor Catherine Shapiro Wednesday morning, May 29. He also met that day with Thomas—the meeting at which, according to Shinagel, Yasin agreed to change the title of the speech. He also agreed to add a sentence condemning violence in the name of jihad, including a condemnation of the Sept. 11 attacks. He had condemned both publicly before.

The next day, Yasin met with Galper, a former president of Hillel, and Thomas. Galper said the changes were “a step in the right direction,” although he said he still had concerns about the speech—that Yasin, for example, had still not specifically condemned groups that fund or actively participate in violent jihad. Petitioners also said they were considering handing out flyers on Commencement Day explaining their opposition to the speech and the way in which it was chosen. But the controversy, clearly, was dying down.

The Second Interview

Still, the question remains: why didn’t Yasin issue a public statement to try and defuse the situation sooner? Thursday night, over the course of a second, half-hour interview, a fuller picture of Yasin emerges, hinting at the answer.

His father, a Bangladeshi immigrant, came to the U.S. in 1971 and met Yasin’s mother, who is mostly of Irish-American descent, at UCLA. Yasin was born in Chicago, and has subsequently lived in Indonesia, suburban Chicago, Southern California, and finally Scituate, Mass., where he attended the small town’s public schools from the sixth grade onward.

“A lot of things I really value about life—having a family, having a strong and close community—were definitely influenced by living there,” he says, his head leaning on his hands, clasped together in the air behind him.