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Yara Shahidi Will Join Malia Obama at Harvard
She chose the Ivy League college after being accepted to all four schools to which she applied.
By Hilary Weaver
Her decision is in: Black-ish star Yara Shahidi is going to Harvard in 2018. Shahidi, who was accepted at every college to which she applied, had to face the same difficult choice of every incoming freshman: where should she spend the next few formative years of her life? But this decision might not have been a hard one for her. One of Shahidi's mentors—and the author of one of her recommendation letters—was none other than Michelle Obama, Harvard alumna and the mother of incoming Harvard freshman Malia Obama, who will start there this fall after her own gap year.
On Tuesday, Shahidi announced her decision on Instagram with a quote from James Baldwin: "The paradox of education is precisely this—that as one begins to become conscious one begins to examine the society in which he is being educated."
Shahidi's passion for education has no doubt been influenced by Obama, a double Ivy League graduate (she attended both Princeton and Harvard Law). During a March interview with Jimmy Kimmel, Shahidi told the late-night host a little more about her special recommendation letter.
"I heard you got a recommendation letter from the First Lady, from Michelle Obama . . . How did you get that?" Kimmel asked the actress, who said she would graduate from high school this year.
"Um, hard work," Shahidi, said, simply, before adding that she was also especially flattered to receive a recommendation from her A.P. calculus teacher at the Dwight School in New York City.
In truth, some of her hard work has been on the First Lady's education initiative, Let Girls Learn, which is how she got to know Obama. Yes, this is the same program that the Trump administration is reportedly planning to cut, although the White House denied this is the case in early May.
Regardless of what happens under the leadership of this new White House, be comforted to know that Harvard will now be home to not one but two more Michelle Obamas in the making.
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