Captain Harvard returns
Do you remember where you were on May 24, 2015? I was in Cambridge, Massachusetts on a trip from Seoul, speaking at the Harvard Extension School about my activities with North Korean refugees.
I had not visited Harvard for more than a decade. I spoke at both the Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE) and Harvard Law School in 2003. That 2015 trip wasn’t prompted by nostalgia, though. It was critics who brought me back.
In this column, I reflect on how criticism nudged me back to Harvard and why it was so meaningful to receive an award last month from the Harvard Extension School.
In early 2015, as I began receiving attention for my work empowering North Korean refugees, I started reading and hearing snide comments. Rather than respond to their lies and half-truths, I did something else: I embraced my Harvard connections.
At the time, I was co-founder of an initiative in South Korea called Teach North Korean Refugees. It had no legal status, no office, no paid staff, no budget. But it had momentum from a growing number of North Korean refugees who were eager to improve their English and begin telling their stories. I hadn’t yet decided if this would be a long-term commitment. I had received lucrative job offers stateside from established organizations, in contrast to trying to build a project from scratch in a foreign country.
That May 2015 visit to the Harvard Extension School helped set a new direction as I re-engaged with Harvard in ways I had not expected and began building an organization.
Looking back, I now see three things clearly. One, it was another example of criticism being a gift. The critics who questioned my credentials or motivation didn’t know they were inspiring me to greatness. Looking to re-engage, I was named a Goodwill Ambassador at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, joined Harvard’s Student Alumni Mentoring Initiative (SAMI) as a mentor to Harvard students, became an Admissions Alumni Ambassador and was appointed to the HGSE Alumni Council in 2024.
In the last decade, I have given about 25 to 30 speeches across Harvard’s schools, online, and at Harvard alumni events in Washington, D.C., Seattle, Hartford County, Broward County, and Naples. I was interviewed for the Harvard Extension School’s Author Spotlight Series, featured in HGSE’s Ed. Magazine, and welcomed back to the Harvard Crimson for its 150th anniversary. I doubt any of that would have happened if not for negative comments from trolls and critics inspiring me to speak at the Harvard Extension School a decade ago.
Building is harder than reacting, but it has more lasting potential. It would have been easy and fun to focus on replying to critics and trolls. Looking back, any snappy comebacks, responses, or rejoinders would have been long forgotten, in contrast to the organization I have built with Lee Eun-koo. We took what had been an informal volunteer project and transformed FSI into an award-winning nonprofit organization that is becoming known internationally for empowering North Korean refugees as speakers and writers.
I co-authored the book “Greenlight to Freedom” with Han Song-mi and co-edited “Escape from North Korea, New Beginnings in South Korea” with Lee Eun-koo as part of the five books we have published since 2022.
I’m writing this column from the U.K., where I’m spending a week with three North Korean refugee speakers. This follows 10 days in Poland with three North Korean refugee authors. In between those trips, I made a special trip to Harvard University. We will be headed to India in August; last December, we went there to receive a Global Peace Award. In October, we will be back at Harvard University for our 22nd English Speech Contest.
Recognition is not the goal, but it can affirm the path. On May 27, 2025, I returned to the Harvard Extension School as the recipient of the 2024 Michael Shinagel Award for Service to Others. Standing there at the annual banquet reminded me that the decision I made 10 years earlier to keep building had grown into something meaningful and visible.
I have heard other snide comments over the years, and I embrace them. In particular, thanks to the troll who called me “Captain Harvard.” I have reserved the website “CaptainHarvard” for a possible autobiography.
Without realizing it, my trolls and critics inspired me to embrace my Harvard background. I thought about those critics and trolls as I accepted the Michael Shinagel Award for Service to Others from the Harvard Extension School on May 27. Do any critics and trolls have anything else to say? I promise, I am reading and listening.
Casey Lartigue Jr. (CJL@alumni.harvard.edu) is the co-founder of Freedom Speakers International with Lee Eun-koo, and co-author with Han Song-mi of her memoir "Greenlight to Freedom: A North Korean Daughter’s Search for Her Mother and Herself.”