Last fall, the Harvard Gazette profiled the university’s 10 2024 Rhodes Scholars. One will study “counseling patients on abortion.” Another will explore how US involvement in the Philippines relates to “settler colonialism on the North American continent.” A third, citing interest in Islamic and Marxist thought, will ask how progressive political messaging “can intersect with local and religious epistemologies.” Not one winner espoused even fleeting interest in an issue typically regarded as right-leaning.
The ideological uniformity of the winners struck a chord, given that many observers tend to think of the Rhodes program as relatively apolitical. After all, alumni number a mix of prominent Republicans and Democrats—including former President Bill Clinton, former Secretary of the Air Force Heather Wilson, Senator Cory Booker, former Supreme Court Justice David Souter, Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg, and former Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal. Indeed, the Rhodes program has made clear that it thinks assembling an inclusive and intellectually diverse community of scholars is central to its mission.
The near-absence of right-leaning thought is a problem for programs that work closely with public … [+]
The Rhodes scholarship and its U.S. government-funded counterpart, the Truman scholarship, have long served as prestigious launching pads into America’s political, social, and economic elite. That’s why Truman scholars receive $30,000 in federal funds for graduate studies, access to mentoring and special programs, and preferential hiring for federal jobs. And it’s why, in the case of both programs, public colleges and universities devote time and resources to supporting student applications and celebrating their winners.
The presumption is that these programs constitute a much-needed effort to cultivate a diverse community of future leaders who can help promote understanding and bridge our divides. But it’s worth asking how well these programs continue to play this role—a question with special salience when it comes to the taxpayer-funded Truman scholarship.
In a new analysis, AEI’s Joe Pitts and I tallied the past five years’ worth of Rhodes scholars and the past three years’ worth of Truman winners (published biographies for Truman winners only went back to 2021). We then examined their biographies to examine their research interests.
What did we find? Over the past five years, just one of 157 American Rhodes scholars expressed interest in a conservative issue. Just six of 182 Truman scholars did. Among these scholars, interest in prominent progressive issues dwarfed interest in conservative ones—by a ratio of 20 to one. For instance, while 98 scholars cited an interest in immigrant rights or in DEI/racial justice, just seven noted an interest in religious freedom, free markets, or pro-life advocacy.
The progressive tilt swamped even pressing “centrist” concerns like cybersecurity, mental health, and national security, with more scholars focused just on immigrant rights than on all three of these issues, combined.
Even the bare handful of scholars with putatively conservative interests aren’t obviously right-leaning in any conventional sense. The single Rhodes winner with an interest in an identifiably conservative issue (religious freedom) focused on advocating for Muslims in India. The half-dozen Truman scholars with conservative interests included those focused on “protecting women’s right to bodily autonomy,” “alternatives to incarceration,” the need to combat anti-Muslim discrimination, and expanding rural education accessibility. These topics are obviously valid areas of study, of course. It’s just that they’re not especially conservative, which makes it telling that they constitute the rightmost reaches of the Rhodes and Truman programs.
Asked for comment, Dr. Terry Babcock-Lumish said, “The Harry S. Truman Scholarship Foundation’s rigorous selection process is based solely on applicants’ demonstrated commitment to public service, leadership potential, and academic excellence.” She continued, “The annual competition requires nominations from undergraduate institutions, so the Truman Scholars selected are reflective of the pool of candidates before us. If students are not nominated or do not apply, we cannot select them.”
The near-absence of right-leaning thought is a problem for programs that work closely with public institutions (or utilize public funds) to cultivate tomorrow’s leaders, in order to prepare these leaders to tackle big challenges in a distrustful and polarized nation.
Both programs need to take the challenge of recruiting students with diverse perspectives much more seriously.
Board members and institutional partners should ask hard questions, demand more transparency around recruitment and selection processes, and insist that these programs do more to produce leaders who can speak to the whole nation. This is especially true for the Truman program, which is governed by a bipartisan board of trustees.
Public institutions that engage with these fellowship programs—by promoting them, supporting student applicants, or celebrating their scholarship winners—should reassess their relationships if the status quo is not addressed.
When it comes to the publicly funded, federally sponsored Truman scholarship, elected officials should insist that recruitment and selection reflect the program’s commitment to identifying and recruiting a pool of applicants true to the nation’s breadth of perspectives, views, and values.
If these prestigious scholarship programs operate primarily as training grounds for advocates of a particular ideological perspective, they will cease to deserve public support, publicly sponsored prerogatives, or their exalted public image.
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