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The American Rhodes Scholars for 2021 were elected virtually this year for the first time as the coronavirus pandemic swept the world, although that did not dampen enthusiasm among the 32 students who won scholarships at the University. from Oxford.
The Rhodes Trust announced the winners early Sunday, which includes 22 students of color. Ten are black, which equalizes the record for the most black students elected in a single year.
Shera Avi-Yonah, a 22-year-old Harvard University student, said she discovered her victory Saturday night while sitting in her parents’ basement in Lincoln, Massachusetts.
“A wave of gratitude washed over me,” Avi-Yonah said, adding that she had run upstairs to tell her parents. “I’m having a very happy Thanksgiving.”
The winners were chosen from a pool of over 2,300 applicants – of which 953 were approved by 288 different colleges and universities to study at the University of Oxford in England.
Avi-Yonah plans to study history at Oxford, comparing the libel laws of the United States and the United Kingdom. She is a reporter for Harvard Crimson, the campus newspaper, and has been the subject of several lawsuits for various stories – which prompted her to take an interest in the limits of press freedom.
Sixteen Rhodes Trust committees invited the strongest candidates to virtual interviews. The committees then selected two students from each district.
Asma Rahimyar, 20 at Southern Connecticut State University, is the first Rhodes winner from that institution. The University of California at Santa Cruz was also featured on the list of Rhodes Scholars for the first time.
The daughter of parents who emigrated from Afghanistan, Rahimyar grew up in Trumbull, Connecticut and grew up listening to her parents’ stories about war-torn Kabul. She hopes to earn two master’s degrees, one in Forced Migration and Refugee Studies and one in Global Governance and Diplomacy, for a career in international human rights law.
Rahimyar said she was still in awe of winning the scholarship 24 hours after receiving the call. “This is all still very new and very surreal to me,” she said.
Hattie Seten, senior at South Dakota State University, was her university’s first Rhodes Scholar in 68 years. She said she was not sure “if I would suit what a Rhodes Scholar looks like” and felt some trepidation about applying from a public university in a predominantly rural area.
But she focused her candidacy on what she called “a strong moral sense of character” and highlighted the leadership she had taken on campus, including navigating the coronavirus pandemic.
When the selection committee named her one of the fellows at a Zoom meeting, she said: “I was so surprised that I started to cry. I would never have thought of something like this.
The winners are 17 women, 14 men and one non-binary person.
The fellows expressed disbelief upon hearing that they would be Rhodes Fellows, a distinction that launched the careers of famous politicians, academics, scientists and journalists.
“I think I’m still in shock,” said Brian Reyes, 21, of the Bronx. “It’s good to see my name on the Rhodes website and have her confirm it’s real.”
Reyes, a history student at Yale University, is the son of immigrants from the Dominican Republic. He is a student counselor who is living on campus this school year and taking his classes online. It provides for a two-year program in comparative social policy and a career in government or the non-profit sector.
For many students, the pandemic has given new urgency to their research and career goals. Amytess Girgis, a student at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, is writing a dissertation with honors on informal community aid groups that have formed in Detroit.
She said there was a mismatch between the way political candidates operate, with so much time spent fundraising for example, and the needs of people, especially in low-income communities or for people from color.
Fellow Vijayasundaram Ramasamy has spent the last few months as a political advisor in the Kansas governor’s office, helping to draft the plan to reopen that state during the coronavirus pandemic. The experience gave the 2018 Johns Hopkins University graduate a passion for public service through government, and he plans to pursue a Masters in Public Policy and a Masters in Social Policy.
But for now, he’s enjoyed how the virtual format gave him a chance to celebrate with his family.
“It’s actually kind of a beacon of hope from COVID. I was at home and my whole family was here – my two brothers, my nieces – and we were all in the same room when they made the announcement, ”Ramasamy said. “Coming from an immigrant family that came to the United States, to be with them when it was announced was absolutely surreal.”
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Karen Matthews and Sophie Rosenbaum in New York, Ron Todt in Philadelphia and Sophia Tareen in Chicago contributed to this report.
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