In November 1972, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf—then an up-and-coming assistant minister of finance in Liberia—returned to her old high school to deliver a graduation speech.

As she stood before the prospective graduates of the College of West Africa, Sirleaf gave a commencement address that was both nontraditional and life altering.

“Most graduation speeches are an opportunity to look back fondly on one’s days at a school, to commend the students for their achievement and extol their academic excellence before urging them to go out and do some vague, undefined good in the world,” she later wrote in her autobiography.

“But I was not interested in that.”

In lue of a traditional commencement address, Sirleaf criticized her government’s lack of urgency and inefficiency in bringing social change to the people of Liberia.

She also warned the graduates of the consequences of increasing economic stratification, imploring the graduates to reject materialism and seek national unity.

Sirleaf—who would eventually rise to the highest political office in her war-torn nation—later described this moment in her autobiography as “an important turning point, one at which I set my feet upon a path from which there was no turning back.”

On May 26, nearly forty years after that first pivotal graduation speech at her old high school, Liberian president Ellen Johnson Sirleaf will be the principal speaker at Harvard’s 360th Commencement.

BECOMING ‘MA ELLEN’

Born in Monrovia, Liberia in 1938, Sirleaf’s ascent to the presidency was never easy.

At the age of 17, she married James Sirleaf and moved with him to the United States to complete her education.

The couple would have four children and later divorced.

Sirleaf went on to earn an accounting degree from the University of Wisconsin and an economics degree from the University of Colorado at Boulder.

After returning to Liberia to work in government, Sirleaf would complete her formal education at the Harvard Kennedy School, where she was an Edward S. Mason Fellow.

Paulina Gonzalez-Pose, who is director of the Edward S. Mason Program at the Kennedy School, said she thinks Sirleaf’s government experience prepared her for the program.

“I think she came here with a very strong political knowledge,” said Gonzalez-Pose, who said she did not know Sirleaf as a student.

“She was very much somebody with a solid technical knowledge of what development entails,” she said.

Sirleaf graduated with a Masters in Public Administration from the Kennedy School in 1971.

After graduation, Sirleaf returned once again to Liberia, where she became assistant minister of finance and delivered her pivotal high school commencement speech.

She quickly rose through the ranks, but was forced to go into exile after surviving a military coup in 1980. During this period, she worked for the World Bank in Washington D.C. and Citibank in Kenya.

In 1985, Sirleaf returned to Liberia to run for vice president on a ticket that opposed the existing regime. Her ticket lost to Samuel Doe, who became president of Liberia. Later, after criticizing his regime in one of her speeches, Sirleaf was convicted of sedition and imprisoned for a month. She was later pardoned.

She would again be imprisoned—this time for eight months—in the wake of an attempted coup against the Doe regime.

Exiled during the First Liberian Civil War, Sirleaf returned to her country to run for president in 1997. She placed second in a controversial election.

She was exiled once again during the Second Liberian Civil War, but returned once again to Liberia to run for president in 2005.

This time, she was victorious, beating soccer player George Weah in a disputed run-off election.

When she took office in 2006, Sirleaf became the first elected female head of state in Africa.

During her presidency, Sirleaf has dramatically reduced Liberia’s foreign debt, cutting the foreign deficit from $4.9 billion in 2006 to $1.7 billion in 2010, according to Newsweek.

She has also established a compulsory public education program, instituted a new supreme court, and increased access to health care and nutrition.

Sirleaf is called “Ma Ellen” by some Liberians, who say that she is the beloved mother of their nation.

But Sirleaf’s presidency has not been without controversy.

In June 2009, Liberia’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission—intended to curb government corruption—recommended that Sirleaf be banned from holding public office for 30 years because she financially supported the corrupt president Charles Taylor in the first days of the First Liberian War.

In July 2009, Sirleaf apologized for her support of Taylor.

“When the true nature of Mr. Taylor’s intentions became known, there was no more impassioned critic or strong opponent to him in a democratic process,” she said in an Independence Day speech.

In late 2010, Sirleaf dissolved her entire cabinet and reassembled a new administration in the midst of allegations of corruption in the Liberian government.

A SIGNIFICANT SPEECH

The University’s selection of Sirleaf to deliver this year’s commencement address—which was announced March 10—has been well-received among faculty.

“As the first female elected head of state on the African continent, President Sirleaf has worked tirelessly to improve economic and political conditions in Liberia, and to improve the lives of all people in her country,” Harvard Kennedy School Dean David T. Ellwood said in a statement.

“We at the Kennedy School are very proud of her many accomplishments, and continue to support her efforts to bring about positive change in Liberia.”

Kennedy School Lecturer John W. Thomas—who met Sirleaf when she was a student at the Kennedy School and has interacted with in the years since—said he thinks Sirleaf’s selection speaks to her outstanding personal qualities.

“Here is a woman who has stepped in to try to reconstruct a truly failed state when she could be working at an investment bank,” Thomas said, referring to Sirleaf’s work at the World Bank and Citibank.

“We certainly have [had] commencement speakers with less courage and accomplishments than she has,” he said.

Thomas added that he thinks the selection of Sirleaf as commencement speaker reflects the rising prospects of Africa.

“For the first time, people are beginning to say hopeful things about Africa,” he said.

“I think she represents the kind of leadership that’s going to be necessary to try to make that happen.”

Gonzalez-Pose echoed Thomas’s sentiment.

“I think she was chosen as a strong woman and president who has managed to keep democracy and the values she believes in,” she said.

“[Sirleaf] is a symbol, something that the world needs right now.”

Gonzalez-Pose—who met Sirleaf in her most recent trip to Harvard in 2008—said she found the Liberian president to be “very accessible” and “very much down to earth.”

PREDICTIONS

Faculty predict that Sirleaf—who in 2008 delivered commencement addresses at Dartmouth College and the Kennedy School—will highlight the process of rebuilding Liberia after years of civil war in her upcoming speech.

“The central theme of her speech has got to be building a state from the ashes,” said Thomas.

Thomas said he also expects Sirleaf to mention the progress and future of Africa, as well as the contributions of international aid donors.

Gonzalez-Pose said she expects Sirleaf to give “a very encouraging speech about what leaders can accomplish,” recalling Sirleaf’s “empowering” 2008 commencement speech at the Kennedy School.

Gonzalez-Pose added that she does not think that Sirleaf’s commencement speech will have political ramifications in Liberia.

Sirleaf, who has nearly completed her first six-year term as president of Liberia, will be up for reelection in October.

However, Gonzalez-Pose said she does think that Sirleaf’s speech may garner attention in the United States.

“I think it might influence the American community in [Sirleaf’s] favor,” she said.

—Staff writer Rebecca D. Robbins can be reached at rrobbins@college.harvard.edu.