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2018 Rhodes scholars include some firsts
Latest group includes a record 10 African-Americans, a transgender man. .
The latest group of U.S. Rhodes scholars includes 10 African-Americans — the most ever in a single Rhodes class — as well as a transgender man and four students from colleges that never had received the honor before.
The Rhodes Trust on Sunday announced the 32 men and women chosen for postgraduate studies at Oxford University in England.
“This year’s selections — independently elected by 16 committees around the country meeting simultaneously — reflects the rich diversity of America,” Elliot F. Gerson, American secretary of the Rhodes Trust, said Sunday in a news release announcing the winners. The scholarships, considered by many to be the most prestigious available to American students, cover all expenses for two or three years of study starting in October.
The 10 African-Americans in the class include Simone Askew, of Fairfax, Va., who made headlines in August when she became the first black woman to serve as first captain of the 4,400-member Corps of Cadets at the U.S. Military Academy — the highest position in the cadet chain of command at West Point. Askew, a senior, is majoring in international history. She focused her undergraduate thesis on the use of rape as a tool of genocide and plans to study evidencebased social intervention at Oxford. Several of the winners have devoted efforts to racial, social and economic justice. Harvard College senior Tania N. Fabo, of Saugus, Mass., created and codirected the first Black Health Matters Conference at the university. An immigrant who was born in Germany to Cameroonian parents, she plans to research oncology at Oxford.
Samantha M. Mack, the first winner from the University of Alaska Anchorage, is an Aleut woman who was born in a remote village before her parents brought her to Anchorage for better educational opportunities. She studies political theory from an indigenous and feminist perspective.
Thamara V. Jean, of Brooklyn, N.Y., completed her senior thesis at the City University of New York on the Black Lives Matter movement.
And JaVaughn T. “J.T.” Flowers, of Portland, Ore., who graduated this year from Yale University with a degree in political science, helped start an organization at Yale that provides mentors, tutors and summer stipends to make sure lowincome students receive the same academic opportunities as others.
Calvin Runnels, of Baton Rouge, La., is the second self-identified transgender Rhodes scholar from the U.S., following Pema McLaughlin, who was named a winner last year. A senior at the Georgia Institute of Technology, he has organized rallies in solidarity with the immigrant community and led efforts to increase the number of gender-neutral bathrooms on campus.
Matthew Chun, of Arlington, Va., the captain of the MIT’s wrestling team, researches the impact of intellectual property law on innovation and has worked as a patent technology specialist.
He plans to study jurisprudence at Oxford.