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Cheng Fellows are invited to to a wider audience at the end of the spring semester. 

“Authoritarian governments around the world continue to commit genocides and erase cultures. We cannot allow Uyghur culture to be next. That’s why I created My Uyghur Origin.”

Abdull focused on developing My Uyghur Origin as a Cheng Fellow in the , an accelerator program that supports students working on social innovation projects. His work centered on three areas: collecting testimonies of Uyghur people; using media to share those testimonies; and advocating for policies that benefit the Uyghur people. To date, Abdull has collected the testimonies of more than 90 Uyghurs, written a short film script, raised more than $100,000, and advocated for the Uyghur Policy Act, which passed the House in February 2024 in a 414–6 vote.

His family members’ testimonies were among his favorite to collect. 

“One of the testimonies that was beautiful to capture was my dad’s story,” Abdull says. “He told me the importance of staying true to my faith, my culture, and to never forget my roots. It’s mind blowing to think he never went to school and never learned how to read, yet here I am graduating from Harvard Kennedy School.” 
 

“I believe there are two things that can really change the world for the better: policymaking and storytelling.”

Abdull learned the art of storytelling in his role at Google, but he wanted to come to ����vlog���� to better understand policymaking. As a refugee, he realized he benefitted from policies enacted by policymakers, and he sought to learn how to protect and enhance those policies for future waves of refugees. 

He explored the intersection of policymaking and storytelling by taking MLD-326: Principles and Politics When Running for Office with Former Massachusetts Governor Professor Deval Patrick and DPI-891M: Engaging the Media with Adjunct Lecturer in Public Policy Margaret Talev. He also found API-205: Politics and Policies: What is the Impact of Data and AI with Professor Deborah Hughes Hallet to be instrumental in understanding the intersection of AI and policy.
 

“As the world found out about the Chinese government’s labor and education camps for Uyghurs—where women are forcibly sterilized, where Uyghur children are removed from their homes and taken to state-run schools to be stripped of their culture, where our religion is prohibited—I felt called to speak about these issues.”

News began to surface about the Chinese government’s treatment of Uyghurs. In , the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein wrote: “My Office continues to receive urgent appeals regarding arbitrary detentions, enforced disappearances, ill-treatment and discrimination, emanating from human rights defenders, lawyers, legislators, booksellers, and members of communities such as Tibetans and Uyghurs.”

As a Uyghur, Abdull felt compelled to channel his interest in activism toward learning more about Uyghur issues. He sought to raise awareness of what was happening to Uyghurs in China, including to his own family members still in the region.

Sayid Abdull’s parents faced persecution as Uyghurs, a predominantly Muslim ethnic minority group from East Turkistan, a vast region of deserts and mountains now known as the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region and occupied by the Chinese government. They fled to neighboring Kyrgyzstan, where Abdull was born and spent his childhood. He was drawn to activism from an early age, creating Kids Helping Kids, an organization that provided programming for children with disabilities, and volunteering with youth civic leadership organizations.

Abdull came to the United States as a refugee when he was 15 years old with just $30 in his pocket, settling with a host family in Tucson, Arizona where he quickly got involved with human rights and refugee causes.