Two alumnae win Rhodes, Marshall Scholarships
STANFORD -- Two recent
women graduates are Stanford¹s latest winners of Rhodes and Marshall
scholarships for advanced study in Britain.
Rachel Maddow, a 1994 Stanford graduate and radical lesbian AIDS
activist from Castro Valley,
Calif., has been named a Rhodes
Scholar for 1995. She plans to pursue a master’s degree in politics at Oxford University.
Julia Novy,
a 1993 alumna from Portland,
Ore., is a multilingual
conservationist who conducted three very different research projects in
developing countries while an undergraduate, and won a Marshall Scholarship
for 1995. She intends to pursue a master¹s degree in development studies at Sussex University,
focusing on environmental issues affecting developing nations, especially
those in East Africa.
Maddow celebrated her award by
fulfilling a promise made to her roommates: She shaved most of her hair and
dyed the remainder blue. “It came out purple but I did it again to get it
blue,” she said, laughing.
It was a symbolic gesture
to prove she has not sold out to the establishment, she explained.
Novy’s celebration will be more
conventional: She will be honored at a small “surprise” gathering on Sunday,
Dec. 18, her mother confided.
Maddow, 21, earned a bachelor’s degree in
public policy with a concentration in health care policy, and completed an
honors thesis in the Ethics in Society program.
Maddow said she found it “difficult to
be out as a lesbian and out about being radical” in Stanford’s Public Policy
Program, which she labeled as conservative.
“It was hard to be who I
was in that kind of academic setting, but I also think that taught me how to
articulate my positions clearly and argue for myself in a way that I might
not have done otherwise,” she said.
John Cogan, senior fellow
at the Hoover Institution and former Reagan administration official who
teaches in the program, said Maddow was “one of the
dozen best students I have taught at Stanford. I have never met any student
who has her level of commitment and dedication to public service, bar none.”
Political science
Professor Susan Okin said that “Rachel has a sense
of purpose and strength of character that I am confident will carry her far.
She has increased my faith in the next generation.”
Maddow’s father, Robert, is an attorney,
and her mother, Elaine, is a school program administrator.
Maddow said she became interested in the
HIV/AIDS issue in high school. She was active with the Stanford AIDS
Education Project, and she currently is a policy assistant with the AIDS
Legal Referral Panel in San
Francisco.
On campus, Maddow worked at the Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual Community Center
and was involved with its speakers bureau. She also
worked on issues involving worker and immigrant rights, homelessness policies,
support for ethnic studies programs and prisoners’ rights.
She won a John Gardner
Public Service Fellowship and a Ludlam Health
Policy Fellowship. She also earned a Robert M. Golden Medal in the Humanities
and Creative Arts for her senior honors thesis and an honorable mention for
the Elie Wiesel Prize in Ethics.
In 1992, Maddow spent a term studying health policy from an
international perspective at the London School of Economics. She said she
fell in love with London
and was impressed with the school, where students are very active
politically. Stanford students are politically involved to a certain extent,
but in London
“it was integral to what they were studying and doing in school,” she said.
Maddow also won a Marshall Scholarship,
but turned it down in favor of the Rhodes.
She is only the second person in 10 years to win both awards.
After study in Britain, Maddow plans to work in the field of health policy in the
nonprofit or public sector.
Maddow was one of 32 Americans selected
from 1,253 applicants nationwide, and is Stanford’s 72nd Rhodes Scholar.
Rhodes scholarships were established in
1902 by the estate of Cecil Rhodes, the British colonialist and
philanthropist, who hoped the scholarships would contribute
to world understanding and peace. They provide fees and living expenses for
two years of graduate study at Oxford
University.
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