Ugaki, Lynch - Letter to AARS Members

Dear Fellow Rhodes Scholar,

Earlier this month, the Wall Street Journal published a piece by David Satter (Illinois & Balliol, 1968) that put forward a number of misleading and troubling claims about the Rhodes Scholarships and the US selection process in particular. While we understand that members of the Association of American Rhodes Scholars (AARS) have differing opinions in their response to Mr. Satter’s piece, we feel, as Co-Presidents of AARS, it is important for us to respond to his remarks.

First and foremost, we fully support the detailed response to Mr. Satter by the current Warden of Rhodes House and CEO of the Rhodes Trust, Dr. Elizabeth Kiss.

Further, we are concerned by Mr. Satter’s premise of a halcyon golden age when Rhodes Scholarships were awarded almost exclusively to white men. This lens distorts the fact that today’s competition is fiercer than ever. The fact is that as the selection pool has increased, so too has the number of high caliber applicants. Many older Rhodes Scholars were selected without having to compete against more than half of the population in their age cohort. That is because women were explicitly ineligible until 1977 and minorities were de facto excluded for decades by blatant discrimination. Whereas, in the past, applicants came from a smaller number of undergraduate institutions, the applicant pool today is much wider and deeper and better reflects the diversity of people and communities that our global scholarship is preparing leaders to serve.

Mr. Satter points to the diversity of the recent Rhodes class as evidence of a selection system gone wrong. What we see is a functioning, meritocratic system that identifies the most talented and promising scholars and future leaders of our nation.

Signed,

Janice Ugaki, Co-President

Nnenna Lynch, Co-President