CNN and PBS host Christiane Amanpour stopped by the Harvard Kennedy School on Wednesday to deliver what was billed as a commencement address, but was really just a plea for the graduates to find the courage to fight back against nameless forces—but understood to be President Trump and people who support him—who are pushing America into a 1984 or Mussolinian state of affairs.
Amanpour began by alluding to Trump’s battles with Harvard and suggested people who support Trump are simply against education: “I am delighted to be 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, and make no doubt about it, make no mistake about it, academics, education are on the front lines in the current struggle between the two halves of America.”
A few minutes later, Amanpour attacked Trump’s USAID cuts:
USAID, the Peace Corps, government in general is being stripped bare and yet, here you all are, you will find your ways to make a difference. You know that President Kennedy started USAID to launch America’s soft power, partly in response to a book that he had read. It was a political thriller, and it was called The Ugly American. We want, we need the beautiful American. The beautiful American. You are graduating from this school at a particularly fraught time. You are going to have to learn to play cat and mouse with the current crackdowns, and as I have witnessed civilians all over many parts of the world play cat and mouse with their own authoritarian regimes in order to advance their own freedoms and to be able to really strive for a future that they know they need. You will have to decide what and how you choose to lead. What to stand up for, what to believe in. The rule of law, freedom of speech, equal rights, constitutional democracy, civil rights, as Kennedy said in his own soaring inaugural, 'let public service be the very best service.'"
Reading from the book Who Is Government by Michael Lewis, Amanpour then claimed that, unlike the private sector, working for the government is noble and virtuous, “A former IRS commissioner who is quoted says, ‘The quality of life that we have, it’s all government. Government touches you a hundred times before breakfast, and you don’t even know it.’ The book shows how much safer, how much more secure daily life is today than it was even a generation ago, but more than that, the book is filled with thousands of reminders of why we have government because no one else will do this work. There is no profit motive in much of the work, no private business that will step and spend years or decades solving these difficult challenges. That’s true today, and it always will be, so you keep the faith.
In 2023, Amanpour gave another commencement speech, this one at the Columbia Journalism School, ripping former boss Chris Licht for daring to have a town hall with Trump. Now, she pretended to be someone who greatly values ideological diversity, “I also think, of course, universities must be places of ideological diversity. If not here, where? If not when you are students, then at what point in your lives? Now, as often as I can, I do that in my program without fear nor favor. Not in a cable slugfest, but to talk, 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 peacebuilding, for any nation building.”
Later still, Amanpour would touch on her favorite saying, “Reporting the genocide in Bosnia, which no Western nation wanted to stop until it was too almost late, I came up with my own code of objectivity and my mantra is to be truthful, and not neutral. That’s when I learned to refuse, to refuse to equate victim and aggressor and the glass is more than half full when it comes to journalism today.”
Of course, Amanpour often times confuses her own pro-abortion opinions with truth, and when it comes to her area of specialization—foreign affairs— she is not always truthful either. Nevertheless, she continued:
Everywhere we look, left, right, and center, we see democratic institutions, distressing signs of them bending, but guess who’s not bending? We the press. You, Harvard, academia. Some corporate owners of ours, maybe, and they are coming after us, but you can still find plenty of excellent, fact-based, evidence-driven, consequential, and even game-changing journalism right now. In the 1984, Animal Farm vortex that we are caught up in right now, the truth still will 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 should be surprised.
As if invoking Orwellian villains wasn’t enough, Amanpour concluded by bringing up Benitio Mussolini, “Thomas Jefferson warned freedom is lost slowly. Some have talked about the frog in the pot where the water is slowly turned up and the heat slowly comes to boiling before they recognize it. A hundred and fifty years later, Benito Mussolini crowed that ‘Democracy brings us so much freedom, even the freedom to destroy itself.’ Edward R. Morrow said on his programs holding Senator Joe McCarthy to account, “No one man can terrorize a whole nation unless we are all his accomplices. So, everybody, that’s my message to you. Let's get on with it, while the glass is still half full. Good luck to you. “
Comparing Trump’s America to Mussolini’s Italy. Now, that’s neither truthful nor neutral.
Here are portions of the May 28 speech:
Christiane Amanpour’s Commencement Address to the Harvard Kennedy School
5/28/2025
CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: It’s quite something to be in this particular place, addressing this particular group of graduates at this particular time. I am delighted to be 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, and make no doubt about it, make no mistake about it, academics, education are on the front lines in the current struggle between the two halves of America. As you know, we over there, in Europe, are happy to lay out the welcome mat for all those here who are having their roles taken away.
…
USAID, the Peace Corps, government in general is being stripped bare and yet, here you all are, you will find your ways to make a difference. You know that President Kennedy started USAID to launch America’s soft power, partly in response to a book that he had read. It was a political thriller, and it was called The Ugly American. We want, we need the beautiful American. The beautiful American. You are graduating from this school at a particularly fraught time. You are going to have to learn to play cat and mouse with the current crackdowns, and as I have witnessed civilians all over many parts of the world play cat and mouse with their own authoritarian regimes in order to advance their own freedoms and to be able to really strive for a future that they know they need.
You will have to decide what and how you choose to lead. What to stand up for, what to believe in. The rule of law, freedom of speech, equal rights, constitutional democracy, civil rights, as Kennedy said in his own soaring inaugural, “let public service be the very best service.”
…
A former IRS commissioner who is quoted says, “The quality of life that we have, it’s all government. Government touches you a hundred times before breakfast, and you don’t even know it.” The book shows how much safer, how much more secure daily life is today than it was even a generation ago, but more than that, the book is filled with thousands of reminders of why we have government because no one else will do this work. There is no profit motive in much of the work, no private business that will step and spend years or decades solving these difficult challenges. That’s true today, and it always will be, so you keep the faith.
…
I also think, of course, universities must be places of ideological diversity. If not here, where? If not when you are students, then at what point in your lives? Now, as often as I can, I do that in my program without fear nor favor. Not in a cable slugfest, but to talk, 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 peacebuilding, for any nation building.
…
And just a few years before that, in South Africa, Nelson Mandela emerged from 28 unjust years in prison. He modeled the ultimate in reconciliation and in peacebuilding. He almost single handedly and most certainly persuaded the radicals on all sides to protect their moment of liberation. He talked them down from the very real threat of civil war after he was released from jail and navigated his nation out of the oppression of Apartheid. I think of that when I see Afrikaner minorities, who were the perpetrators of Apartheid, being brought into this country as refugees. I think of that when I see Cyril Ramaphosa, who was the chief negotiator in the post-Apartheid reconciliation, have his time in the White House.
…
Reporting the genocide in Bosnia, which no Western nation wanted to stop until it was too almost late, I came up with my own code of objectivity and my mantra is to be truthful, and not neutral. That’s when I learned to refuse, to refuse to equate victim and aggressor and the glass is more than half full when it comes to journalism today. Everywhere we look, left, right, and center, we see democratic institutions, distressing signs of them bending, but guess who’s not bending? We the press. You, Harvard, academia. Some corporate owners of ours, maybe, and they are coming after us, but you can still find plenty of excellent, fact-based, evidence-driven, consequential, and even game-changing journalism right now. In the 1984, Animal Farm vortex that we are caught up in right now, the truth still will 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 should be surprised.
…
Thomas Jefferson warned freedom is lost slowly. Some have talked about the frog in the pot where the water is slowly turned up and the heat slowly comes to boiling before they recognize it. A hundred and fifty years later, Benito Mussolini crowed that “Democracy brings us so much freedom, even the freedom to destroy itself.” Edward R. Morrow said on his programs holding Senator Joe McCarthy to account, “No one man can terrorize a whole nation unless we are all his accomplices.” So, everybody, that’s my message to you. Let's get on with it, while the glass is still half full. Good luck to you.
