She would ask, “How can you come to this great University and not know that there was this great movement against colonialism that led to the birth of my country?”

Bhutto’s Muslim beliefs made her different as well. “Everyone would see this young lady going around saying ‘Is this bacon? Because I can't have it if it is?’” she recalls.

In politics, Bhutto diverged from her peers concerning China, which was the great bugbear of American politics at the time. Having met Chinese leaders like Chuen-Lai and Lu Sha Chi, Bhutto says she found herself at odds with many of her friends in her admiration for and understanding of the Chinese nation.

A Modern Young Lady

Coming from a conservative Muslim country, Harvard marked the first time Bhutto found women competing as equals with men.

She says she saw students, both men and women, making their own decisions and leading their own lives. In contrast, Bhutto says that although she came from a relatively Westernized background, all of her decisions were made for her by her parents.

Even the decision to come to Harvard rested not with Bhutto but ultimately with her father, Zulfiqar.

“[He] told me ‘I’m not sending you to California because the weather is too warm and you won’t study. Instead I’m going to send you to Cambridge, Massachusetts, where there’s so much snow that you’ll have no alternative but to stay inside and work.’”

Even her undergraduate concentration required the parental seal of approval, Bhutto says. “When I was an undergraduate, I very much wanted to study psychology, but my father was very interested that I study government, so I studied government to please him.”

Later on, Bhutto would also mount a successful run for the campus-wide, popularly elected presidency of the Oxford Union, the university’s debate team, primarily to please her father, who wished to pass the political mantle on to his talented eldest child.

Despite — or perhaps because of — the example set by her parents, Bhutto plans to allow her children to make their own decisions about college.

“Of course, I’d love it if my children followed in my footsteps and went to Harvard,” she says. “But if they want to go to another university, I’ll let them do what they want. I learned at Harvard that it’s important to let young people make up their minds.”

Continuing the political strain, Bhutto also comped The Crimson, hoping to write for its editorial page.

But Crimson executives pressured Bhutto to write sports stories, as her House, Eliot, was the home of many of the College’s best athletes at the time.

She made all but the last of three cuts. Crimson editors told her she could be elected, but only if she would cover sports. It was an offer Bhutto refused.