Harvard Law School Commencement Speech: Watch Preet Bharara and Mindy Kaling

Preet Bharara, US Attorney for the Southern District of New York, was invited to address students and faculty at the prestigious Harvard Law School on its 2014 Class Day last week. He is one of Time magazine’s 100 most influential people in the world and was recently involved in the Indian diplomat Devyani Khobragade fraud incident.

Bharara, who graduated from Harvard College in 1990, has spent his career focused on preventing large-scale financial fraud by creating the Complex Frauds Unit. This agency has collected close to $500 million in settlements since its inception.

He said to an audience of students, faculty, and staff, “You don’t really want or need me to read or quote from legal scripture. Instead, what I thought I would do, rather than speak esoterically about the law, is that I would speak more pragmatically about how to be successful and happy in law practice.”

“Be the guy who does his job,” Bharara said, “whether you are a law clerk, an assistant D.A., public defender, or anything else. Nothing else matters but doing your job, and doing it well—even when it’s hard, even when it’s tedious, even when it’s dull, even when the work seems small and beneath your brand-name schooling and your God-given talent.”

Later, in the ceremony, comedian Mindy Kaling—best known for her sitcom The Mindy Project—took to the stage, expressing her excitement and disbelief at being asked to speak. Kaling discussed her background as an American, whose parents were born in India. She said that her family’s tryst with the American dream was possible only because of “the fairness” that exists only in the US. “My parents believed that here you can aspire and succeed to levels of success not possible anywhere else in the world—and that fairness that my family and I have taken for granted, that many Americans take for granted, is in many ways resting on your shoulders,” Kaling told her law-school audience. “You represent those who make laws and affect change, and that is truly an amazing thing.”

Watch the complete speech ceremony here