What Just Happened Here

Mark Zuckerberg returned to his old stomping grounds on Thursday to deliver a commencement address to Harvard University’s graduating seniors. There, the Facebook co-founder moved himself and a bunch of what appeared to be a group of frontier mayors and Monopoly Men to tears with a story about an undocumented immigrant he’d met while volunteering with the Boys and Girls Club. It was…really something.

The young man was worried about being able to go to college because of his status, but he apparently asked Zuckerberg for just one thing: a book on social justice. Cue tears from Zuck and crowd, including one very emotional man in a literal top hat.

“It says something about our situation today that I can’t even say his name because I don’t want to put him at risk,” a visibly teary-eyed Zuckerberg said. But if a high school senior who doesn’t know what the future holds for him can do his part to move the world forward, then we owe it to the world to do our part too.”

Zuckerberg did not say if he—a man who could almost certainly pay for this anonymous young man’s immigration lawyer, full Ivy League tuition, and, sure, a book about social justice to boot—had done anything else to help the kid besides tell an emotional story about him at Harvard.