Farida Shaheed is the second Pakistani woman after Benazir Bhutto invited by the Harvard Radcliffe Institute to deliver the prestigious Rama S. Mehta lecture. Who was Rama S. Mehta and what was Benazir Bhutto’s connection with her?
I wrote this article recently on the Harvard Radcliffe Rama Mehta talk published in Global Southasia, for which I had reached out to well known former U.S. diplomat, author, and politician Peter Galbraith for his comments. I didn’t hear from him in time, but sharing below his email the day after the piece was published, for the record.
On Thu, Oct 29, 2026 at 9:57 AM <Peter Galbraith> wrote:
Dear Beena,
My parents established this lecture to honor their friend and my mother’s co author, Rama Mehta.
While Benazir Bhutto was not the first to give the lecture, my father asked Radcliffe to invite her each year that she was in prison starting in 1981 or 1982. (Zia had imprisoned her in brutal conditions from March 1981.) My father’s purpose was simple: He wanted the Pakistani dictatorship to know that Benazir had prominent friends in the United States who cared about her well being and treatment.
This came at a time when the Reagan Administration prohibited US diplomats from having contact with the Bhutto family but also when the Reagan Administration needed congressional approval to make Pakistan the second largest recipient of US military assistance. Benazir’s fate had become an important issue in the congressional debate over US assistance.
Rama Mehta’s daughter Vijay Mehta was at Smith while we are at Harvard. She and Benazir spent New Year’s 1971 together in our farm in Vermont just days after the 1971 Indo-Pakistan War. They remained friends until Benazir’s death. Rama’s son Vikram was our classmate at Oxford (where Benazir and I went after Harvard) and also remained her friend. Interestingly Rama Mehta’s husband, Jagat Mehta, was a prominent Indian diplomat at the time and later Foreign Secretary.
Peter Galbraith
Article copied below
the article below
Continue readingFiled under: Education, Human rights | Tagged: Benazir Bhutto, classact73, dialogue, farida shaheed, galbraith, harvard radcliffe, history, Pakistan, peter galbraith, Politics, right to education, Shirkat Gah, un special rapporteur, writing, Zia ul Haq | Leave a comment »
