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By PHILIP MARCELO and DEEPTI HAJELA, Associated Press
BOSTON (AP) – The latest generation of American researchers in Rhodes has more women than any other class, and nearly half of the recipients of the prestigious Oxford University Scholarship in England are either immigrants or first-generation Americans, the Rhodes Trust Sunday announced.
Among the 32 winners, Jin Park, of Harvard University, is the first beneficiary covered by the DACA, the Obama era program that protects young immigrants from deportation.
Park, 22, from the New York City of Queens, arrived from South Korea with her parents at the age of 7, studied molecular and cellular biology at Harvard and founded a non-profit organization. lucrative to help undocumented students enroll in the university.
He hopes to become an advocate for the rights of immigrants, stressing that it is important that he takes the opportunity to improve others and not just himself.
"When you grow up as an undocumented immigrant in America, with this understanding that your talents do not really belong to you in the traditional sense of the word, you have to share the fruits of your work with others," he says. It's just something you learn, "Park said.
Alaleh Azhir, 21, of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, emigrated from Iran at the age of 14. She is also one of 21 female students named Sunday. The resident of New York City hopes to become a doctor and will study women's health and reproduction in Oxford.
"I'm just a passionate defender of women in general and it's mainly because of my past," she said. "I thought I could defend women's rights by advocating for their health."
At Chapman University in Southern California, 21-year-old Vidal Arroyo reflected on the unlikely path that he had chosen to become the first Rhodes Scholar at his school.
"As a Latino, a first – generation student and traveling by train to go to university, this scholarship is so important to me, as it gives hope to students from all over the world. backgrounds like mine, which have to overcome many obstacles in their higher education and a better future, "said Arroyo, who plans to study engineering sciences in Oxford.
And 23-year-old Eren Orbey of Yale University in Connecticut, whose parents emigrated from Turkey, hopes to study at Oxford to bring more "context and clarity" to his writings. He regularly contributes to The New Yorker magazine and works on writing a book about his father, killed in Ankara while he was only 3 years old, and the murderer.
"I am interested in studying the ethics of revenge and forgiveness," Orbey said Sunday by e-mail. "I think our culture and our media coverage often condescend to immigrants and trauma survivors.In my writings, I hope to repost tragedy and conflict as opportunities for growth and heroism."
The Rhodesian American researchers join a separate international group of researchers representing more than 60 countries.
Rhodes Scholarships cover all expenses of at least two years of study at Oxford. They were created in 1902 by Cecil Rhodes, British businessman and Oxford alum, prime minister of the Cape Colony in present-day South Africa.
Hajela brought back from New York.
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