In the second half of her speech, titled 'The Fringe Benefits of Failure, and the Importance of Imagination,' Rowling shifted to the theme of empathy. She described her work at Amnesty International in her early twenties, reading smuggled letters from political prisoners and hearing a scream of pain behind a closed door that she would never forget. She argued that imagination is not just the fount of invention — it is the power to empathize with those whose lives we have never shared. She closed by telling Harvard's graduates that their privilege carried a burden: to use their status to raise voices on behalf of the powerless.