UNLV student commencement speaker champion of peace, diversity

Daniel Waqar, a Muslim and a man of peace, will speak to his fellow UNLV graduates at Saturday’s 2 p.m. commencement. His theme will be diversity, which is appropriate for a university where half the students are minorities.

“Most people know UNLV is the second-most ethnically diverse among major universities,” he said, referring to racial and ethnic diversity. But UNLV is diverse in other ways, with high numbers of part-time students and students who have served in the military.

One of his favorite lines from his commencement speech: “If we’ve learned anything from our time at UNLV, it’s that our strength, as individuals, is fortified by our collective diversity. In a world that shirks this progress and diversity with increasing levels of distraction and dysfunction, we, the class of 2016, are ultimately rebels against this mentality.”

Waqar, 21, is so smart that in 2015, when he was a junior majoring in history, he was one of 58 students nationwide to win the Truman Scholar Award.

He studied in Israel for four months. The subjects included Peace and Conflict Studies, Arabic Culture and Civilization, Islamic Fundamentalism in the Arab World, Contemporary Israel and Arms Control in the Nuclear Realm.

No wonder Waqar’s long-range career plan includes foreign service in the State Department.

Marta Meana, the dean of the Honors College at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, recommended Waqar as a student commencement speaker. “Daniel always puts himself out of his comfort zone,” she said. When he went to Israel, he had to challenge his perceptions, beliefs and assumptions.

In an interview at the Honors College at UNLV, he spoke of his 15-year plan.

He leaves soon for Washington, D.C., for an internship with the Brookings Institution. He will provide research support to Martin Indyk, former U.S. ambassador to Israel, who is writing a book on Secretary of State Henry Kissinger’s role in the 1970s Middle East peace talks.

After that, Waqar will attend Georgetown University to obtain his master’s degree in foreign service studies. Then he plans to join the State Department’s foreign service and defend American values — no matter who the president is.

Waqar, the son of Pakistani immigrants, admitted that he’s nervous about Saturday’s speech, which will last less than five minutes. “I’m a perfectionist, so nervousness causes me to do better.”

I hope there is no pushback at his selection as the student commencement speaker because of his faith. Clearly he is no radical Muslim. His studies reflect his interest in peace. The lifelong Las Vegan wants to improve the world, not destroy it.

“I’ve always tried to live my life peacefully and inspire people to be a changemaker for peace,” he said.

He has faced discrimination. “There was an incident in the fifth grade, someone insulted me and I was so struck by it. I had never seen it before, living in this bubble in Las Vegas.”

With his 3.9 grade-point average and his student and community activism, Waqar could have gone to any school he liked. Yale. Harvard. Stanford. All would have jumped to have him as an undergraduate.

He decided he could get a strong education by attending UNLV Honors College and joining a class of 50 who thought the same. He believed that by taking tough classes, he could get a strong undergraduate education and save money by staying in Las Vegas. Smaller classes and more individual study appealed to him.

I’m embarrassed I didn’t know anything about the Honors College. It was started in 1985 and tucked within the Lied Library. When Meana was named dean in 2012, she worked to raise the college’s profile. Honors College students “are high-achieving students who recognize this is an incredible program who don’t want to leave home,” Meana said.

Leaving home has, at times, been uncomfortable for Waqar. Occasionally, he is stopped and searched in airports. “I try not to make too big a deal of it. I treat it as a learning experience.”

“Sometimes you’ll have professors who will say things that they don’t intend to be hurtful, but because of the troubled times we live in, they can be interpreted that way,” Waqar said. “Yes, there’s a lot of hate in the world, but I prefer to look at the love and the peace in the world.”

I hope Waqar gets the cheers he deserves Saturday. If he can help make this world a more peaceful one, then he deserves nothing but accolades.

Jane Ann Morrison’s column runs Thursdays. Leave messages for her at 702-383-0275 or email jmorrison@reviewjournal.com. Find her on Twitter: @janeannmorrison