The letter received more than 38,000 hits on The Crimson’s website and elicited more than 130 letters to the editor in response. Portman says her concern for the political situation in the Middle East compelled her to write.
“I love Israel and wish, as many do, for peace and dignity for all in the region,” she says. “It angers me when events are inaccurately depicted for political purposes.”
Though not as vocal as some campus personalities, Portman has undertaken some quiet activism throughout her college career.
She has volunteered hours as a teacher for CityStep, a program that aims to empower middle-school students in Cambridge public schools through dance and improvisation.
During her sophomore and junior years, she was also active in Harvard’s Concert Commission, an Undergraduate Council-sponsored effort to bring popular live music to the University.
The Commission experienced a series of setbacks, beginning last year, due to misunderstandings between its organizers and College administrators, and it eventually became “too much” for Portman, she explains.
“It got to be such bureaucracy,” she says. “I didn’t feel like being a businesswoman or anything. I just wanted to have shows at school.”
Yard to Yearbook
Portman lived in Grays West during her first year at Harvard, moving to a Lowell House suite as a sophomore. By her junior year, she says, she felt she needed more personal space than the House system would allow.
“I really needed to have my own bedroom, and I don’t think that would have been possible,” she says as Charlie wanders toward the opposite end of the bench where she sits. “I loved living in the House. It was just really difficult to be 21 and not be able to, you know, sleep in a room on my own.”
Portman spent the year living alone in an apartment in the Square. Since returning to Cambridge this past semester, she has been living near the Yard with her “best, best friend”—a fellow senior, not just Charlie.
Now, as she prepares to leave the College, not to return in the fall, she says she is grateful for the friends whom she’s made within—and without—Harvard’s gates through what she calls “a surprisingly nice social life.”
“I have great friends whom I’ll be friends with for a really long time,” she says. “That’s one of the best things about being here. And of course there’s always time to meet more people. I’m sure Harvard will have us coming back for many years to come and mingle”—she chuckles—“as they try to get money out of us.”
Charlie squirms in Portman’s lap as she reflects on her graduation and the plain of years beyond. Her largely unmapped future, she says, remains open to any changes in interests and priorities that time may bring.
“I’m just following my instinct as I go along. I’ve already been working for 10 years. In 10 more years I might be ready for something new,” she says. Charlie blinks.
“I hope I’m happy and I hope I have a family by that point,” she adds. “Those are my goals.”
—Staff writer Nathan J. Heller can be reached at heller@fas.harvard.edu.