Photograph courtesy of Harvard University.
Remember Linsanity? It’s returning to campus: Jeremy Lin ’10, the Harvard basketball stalwart (he was captain his senior year) who became a phenomenon in the National Basketball Association (NBA) which has few Asian American players has been named speaker for Harvard College’s virtual Class Day on Wednesday, May 26, during the online graduation and reunion exercises extending from May 25 through the Harvard Alumni Association’s annual meeting on June 4 and beyond.
Lin was the first American-born player of Chinese or Taiwanese descent to play in the NBA; he was on the Toronoto Raptors team that won the championship in 2019. In a year when assaults on and violent acts against Asian Americans have proliferated perhaps in part in response to former President Donald Trump’s labeling of the coronavirus as a Chinese invention the selection of Lin may be especially resonant. It is also evocative for student-athletes and fans of the Cri