Harvard junior Laila A. Nasher ’25 has been awarded a Harry S. Truman Scholarship for 2024, according to a press release issued by the organization on Friday morning.
According to the scholarship website, Nasher is one of 60 “aspiring public service leaders” who received the grant for their “outstanding leadership potential” and “commitment to a career in government or the nonprofit sector.”
Nasher will be awarded up to $30,000 in financing for graduate studies, “leadership training, career counseling, and special internship and fellowship opportunities within the federal government.”
Nasher, a History and Anthropology dual concentrator at Mather House, stated in a statement that her experiences with “inner-city school closures and child marriage” have encouraged her to “pursue a JD/PhD to change the social, educational, and legal landscape for Arab and inner-city communities.”
Nasher stated in an interview that she was inspired to fight a lack of education in her neighborhood after watching “the privatization of education” being “utilized against low-income Black and brown bodies.”
Nasher has stated that she intends to use her degree to connect “academia, policy, and legislation with direct community organizing and directly with the communities who fall behind in the cracks, like the Yemeni American community.”
On campus, Nasher expressed her passion in education through research and activism for first-generation students.
Nasher described her experience launching the First-Generation Welcome Ceremony and First-Generation Visibility Week through the Harvard Foundation for Intercultural and Race Relations as “incredibly pivotal” to her leadership on campus, allowing her to find a voice and a first-generation community.
“I feel so privileged to be able to work with and for them,” she said.
For her, becoming a Truman Scholar was a “full-circle moment.”
Nasher claimed she was browsing through her email to discover her office hours on Thursday morning when she noticed the congratulations email and was “immediately in a state of shock.”
“My immediate thought was, ‘Oh my god, I can’t wait to tell my friends and I can’t wait to tell these community members,'” Nasher went on to say.
While it paid off in the end, Nasher admitted that applying for the Truman Scholarship was difficult.
“It was by far the most intense application process I’ve ever gone through,” she told me.
Nasher stated that her next objective is to establish a scholarship for Yemeni girls attending college.
“I remember when I got here, I felt so alone and I ultimately just want to be this inspiration for other Yemeni American girls and Yemeni women generally,” she went on to say.
