After a summer of hosting the bright young minds of Oxford Royale Academy, Lady Margaret Hall may be set to receive yet another distinguished guest this autumn ―we speak of Malala Yousafzai, the Nobel prize-winning activist who has accepted an offer to study Politics, Philosophy and Economics at LMH, and will do so if she makes the triple-A standard.
We likely all know Yousafzai’s story by now, but it’s worth hearing again: after surviving an assassination attempt at the hands of the Taliban in 2012 for writing a blog advocating for girls’ education, she rose to global prominence as a campaigner for education equality. By age 16, she had delivered her first speech in the United Nations, and written an autobiography, I Am Malala: The Girl Who Stood Up for Education and Was Shot by the Taliban. On her 18th birthday in July 2015, she opened a school for Syrian refugee girls in Lebanon. At the event, she proclaimed, “Today on my first day as an adult, on behalf of the world’s children, I demand of leaders we must invest in books instead of bullets.”
Universal education is a cause that should, morally and logically, be held and striven for by every other person on the planet ―heck, it even makes economic sense. Malala’s story shows us how much we need strong leadership from the younger generation if we are to work together through the world’s problems. So let’s have ORA channel Malala ahead of her first term at LMH this autumn!