Malala Yousafzai, an outspoken proponent of girls’ education who was attacked by the Taliban, was given the 2013 Peter J Gomes Humanitarian Award at Harvard on Friday.
Harvard President Drew Gilpin Faust said she was pleased to welcome Malala because of their shared interest in education.
Malala was shot in the head in October 2012. Militants said she was attacked because she was critical of the Taliban and not because of her views on education.
Speaking at the ceremony, 16-year-old Malala said she hoped to become a politician because politicians can have a vast influence.
She spoke nostalgically about her home region, the Swat valley, and said she hoped to return someday. She called it a “paradise” but described it as a dangerous area where militants blew up dozens of schools and sought to discourage girls from going to school by snatching pens from their hands. Students, she said, reacted by hiding their books under their shawls so people would not know they were going to school.
“The so-called Taliban were afraid of women’s power and the power of education,” she told hundreds of students, faculty members and well-wishers who packed Harvard’s Sanders Theater for the award ceremony.
Malala highlighted the fact that very few people spoke out against what was happening in her home region but said that “the voice for peace and education is powerful”.
Norwegian Nobel Peace Prize Committee Chairman Thorbjorn Jagland paid a special tribute to Malala saying, “Your courage is sending a strong message to women to stand up for their rights, which constitutes a precondition for peace.”