The Boston Traveler

Remembering Harvard University Alumna Benazir Bhutto

by Chandra on December 28th, 2007

As has been widely reported, two-time former Pakistani prime minister and opposition leader Benazir Bhutto was assassinated yesterday at a political rally held in honor of her return to her homeland after eight years of self-imposed exile. The 54-year-old member of the Pakistan Peoples Party received a top-notch Western college education at Harvard and Oxford Universities before becoming the first woman and youngest person ever to lead a predominantly Muslim nation when she was elected the first time at the age of 35 in November 1988.

A number of U.S. publications have devoted space to the recollections of Bhutto’s former classmates, especially those from her tenure at Harvard in Cambridge. All appear to remember a simultaneously inexperienced yet worldly scholar who quickly blossomed and exerted independence after she enrolled at Radcliffe College as a sixteen-year-old in 1969. An assortment of links to some of those revealing articles and others follows.

Remembering Benazir Bhutto

• Before and After the Assassination, in Photos [Wonkette]
• Benazir Bhutto, 54, Lived in Eye of Pakistan Storm [New York Times Obituary]
• Benazir Bhutto: A Killing and Three Funerals [The Huffington Post]
• Benazir Bhutto: From the Oxford Union to Her Last Rally in Rawalpindi [The Huffington Post]
• Benazir Bhutto Led Tumultuous Life in Politics [NPR]
• Benazir Bhutto Through the Years [Boston.com]
• The Benazir I Knew [Los Angeles Times]
• Classmates Recall Bhutto’s Intensity [Boston.com]
• Harvard Classmates, Local Pakistanis Mourn Bhutto [New York Times]
• My Night with Benazir Bhutto [Anderson Cooper 360° Blog/CNN]
• Obituary: Benazir Bhutto [BBC News]
• Shock and Sadness over Death of Pakistan’s Benazir Bhutto [Cape Cod Today]

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