HARVARD GAZETTE ARCHIVES

Eight Named Marshall Scholars

By Andrea Early

Special to the Gazette

The British government has awarded the 1997 Marshall Scholarships to six Harvard seniors, a Law School student, and a Medical School student. According to the Fellowships Office, this is the highest number of students from a single school to appear on the winners list.

"As far as I know, this is a record," said Paul Bohlmann, director of fellowships.

This year's Harvard recipients of the prestigious award, which allows students to study for two to three years in Great Britain, are Joyelle McSweeney '97 of Lowell House and Berwyn, Pa.; Debra Shulman '97 of Quincy House and Merion, Pa.; Joshua Oppenheimer '97 of Dudley House and Santa Fe, N.M.; Mark Greif '97 of Adams House and Newton, Mass.; Jeffrey Gell '97 of Winthrop House and Farmington Hills, Mich.; Reshma Jagsi of the Medical School and Waco, Texas; Julie Suk '97 of Dunster House and Great Neck, N.Y.; and Albert Lee of the Law School and San Mateo, Calif.

Of the 40 Marshall winners, 12 are women and 28 are men. The recipients represent 26 different U.S. universities. Over 800 candidates applied for the scholarships this year, all of whom maintained above an A- average.

The British Marshall Scholarships, awarded since 1953, enable academically outstanding American students to study at a British university for two or three years. Each scholarship covers tuition, books, travel, and living expenses. The scholarships represent the United Kingdom's national gesture of thanks to the United States for aid received after World War II under the Marshall Plan. In addition to intellectual distinction, Marshall selectors seek students who are likely to become leaders in their field and make a contribution to society.

An Economics Perspective

Jeffrey Gell, whose concentration is economics, plans to pursue a master's of philosophy in economics, and after mastering advanced microeconomic, macroeconomic, and econometric theory, would like to study corporate finance and labor economics, including any connections between the two fields

"As I pursue graduate studies in economics, I hope to continue to seek the solution to complicated theoretical problems while looking for real-world stories that illustrate the meanings of these abstract conclusions," Gell wrote in his Marshall application.

Eventually, Gell expects to pursue a career in business or law. Gell has worked as an intern at the Tokyo-based Kodansha Limited, Japan's largest publishing house, at the National Bureau of Economic Research, and at Kramer Food Co., a Troy, Mich., specialty food distributor. He is currently the senior editor of the Harvard Crimson, where he previously worked as a staff reporter. He was the recipient of a National Press Club/Institute of Politics Student Journalism Award and is a Phi Beta Kappa marshal for the Class of 1997.

A Critic and Writer

Mark Greif hopes to use his Marshall scholarship to "learn the crafts of a critic and writer alike and to continue my study of literature while maintaining my own schedule of scholarship and writing." Appropriately, he plans to study English literature while abroad.

An aspiring novelist, Greif realizes that the first step toward achieving this goal is to "improve my studies of literature, improve my craft, and practice decency. I wish to study English literature in England, where the links between books and the culture that produced them will be everywhere around me," he wrote in his Marshall application essay.

Grief, whose concentration is in history and literature, hopes to pursue a master's of philosophy in English literature at Oxford. At Harvard he has participated in a variety of writing activities, including serving as features editor of the Harvard Advocate and publishing fiction, articles, and reviews in the Harvard Advocate, the Harvard Crimson and the Harvard Independent. In 1996, he was a writer/researcher for the Let's Go travel guides.

Greif also tutors undergraduates in writing at the Harvard Writing Center, and makes weekly visits to housebound seniors through Harvard's Phillips Brooks House Elder Services. He has received numerous honors such as the Ralph Waldo Emerson Prize for showing greatest promise in the field of history and literature, the Le Baron Russell Briggs Fiction Prize for the best work of short fiction by an undergraduate, and several John Harvard Scholarships for academic achievement.

Serving through Medicine

Reshma Jagsi plans to study comparative social policy at Oxford while pursuing a master's in philosophy. She is interested in policies for rationing medical care in various societies, and says studying in Britain will give her the opportunity to see the effects of the 1991 reforms of the National Health Service.

Jagsi, who expects to graduate from Harvard Medical School in 1999, says she was first drawn to medicine through her passion for community service. She writes in her Marshall application, "As a volunteer at my hometown V.A. hospital during high school, I came to believe that medicine is one of the most worthy fields of human endeavor." These days, her focus is "not medicine alone, but health care in the broadest sense."

Community service has continued to be a major influence in Jagsi's life since her first days at the V.A. hospital. Her volunteer efforts have helped the uninsured find accessible medical care, and assisted public housing residents facing eviction retain affordable housing. At Harvard, she volunteered with the PHACE health education program, and served as a cabinet coordinator and board member at Philips Brooks House.

Jagsi is the recipient of numerous awards. A 1995 Harvard graduate with a concentration in government, she was a National Science Scholar and a Harvard National Scholar. She was also the recipient of the Sophia Freund Prize for the summa graduate ranked first in class and the Captain Jonathan Fay Prize for highest personal honor for a female graduate showing "greatest promise in conduct, character, and scholarship."

A Lawyer

Albert Lee, of San Mateo, Calif., hopes to work towards his Ph.D. in law at Cambridge, where he will study "the comparative antitrust implications of the recent global deregulation movement in the telecommunications industry." Lee says he has a strong interest in this emerging area of law.

Having received his undergraduate degree from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), Lee originally set out to become an engineer. But after realizing his true interests involved social policy, he decided to pursue a career in law instead. He is now at the Law School, and expects to finish his J.D. degree in May.

Lee cites his role as a co-founder of the China's Tomorrow Education Fund (CTEF) -- created at Caltech to help support elementary education for rural Chinese children -- as a driving influence in his ultimate interest in antitrust law.

"The ultimate challenge," he wrote in his Marshall application, "is to utilize antitrust laws to maximize social welfare of economic efficiency."

Lee recently participated in the summer honors program of the U.S. Department of Justice, where he worked in the Antitrust Division. He was also president of the Harvard Asia Law Society, and founding editor of the Harvard Negotiation Law Review. His academic accolades include Caltech Merit Awards, the Artur Mager Prize for most promising senior, and an appointment to the USA Today All-USA College Academic First Team.

A Poet

Joyelle McSweeney hopes to pursue a master's in philosophy in English studies in the 1880-1960 program at Oxford. She is particularly interested in studying the works of Yeats with Yeats scholars John Kelly and professor and poet Jon Stallworthy.

McSweeney, who is currently preparing a creative thesis in poetry, considers Yeats a fine example for a young poet.

"Yeats's poetry makes the momentary momentous, I want my poetry to do the same," she wrote in her Marshall application. "I want to write poems that convince people to notice the moments that make up their lives. I want parents to pause on the side of the road while carpooling their kids to SAT prep and point out the dark beauty of wet tree bark."

Her goal is to study Yeats's facility for opening people's eyes with his poetic vision as a model for doing so with her own poetry.

McSweeney has served as an editorial intern at Atlantic Monthly magazine and has served on the Executive and Poetry Boards of the Harvard Advocate, where she also coordinated poetry readings. She is also the associate chair and editor of the Harvard Crimson's Arts Board, where she is a drama critic.

McSweeney's awards include John Harvard and Elizabeth Cary Agassiz scholarships and the Detur Book Prize.

A Filmmaker

Joshua Oppenheimer plans to enroll in a two-year master's program at the Royal College of Art's Masters in Filmmaking School of the Moving Image, where he will pursue work on two British-commissioned documentaries.

The first film, How the War Was Lost, focuses on the World Health Organization's "devastating neglect of male-to-male HIV transmission in the Third World." The second film, Almost Heaven, is part of a broader film project exploring the militia and other far-right-wing movements.

Oppenheimer's main objective is to use moving images to "say things the written word would leave secret." In his Marshall application he wrote, "By making it possible for the audience to identify with the most extreme forms of hatred, I try to raise the most basic of questions: how do ordinary people, like you and me, become intolerant and hateful?"

Oppenheimer has a long list of film credits, as well as original performances and plays. He produced These Places We've Learned to Call Home, a 30-minute video screened at the London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival, the Northampton Film Festival, and the Amsterdam Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, among other places. His thesis film, The Entire History of the Louisiana Purchase, is about "aliens, militias, and infanticide." He also produced a 6-minute film called The Challenge of Manufacturing. He has received numerous grants and awards, including a Weissman International Internship Fellowship, and a Ford Grant for Undergraduate Research. He is an 8-time recipient of an Office for the Arts Grant for Innovative Projects in the Arts.

Policy and Culture

A deep concern for race issues prompts Julie Chi-hye Suk to pursue a master's in philosophy in economic and social history at Oxford, where she will focus on the historical development of racial ideologies.

The Great Neck, N.Y., native has a joint concentration at Harvard in English and American literature and language, and French language and literature. Suk's thesis involves archival research on France and America to historicize the poetry of the Harlem Renaissance and Negritude, and next year she plans to expand this global and comparative perspective on race by studying British imperialism.

"Government policy and public culture still work together to forge racial ideologies today," Suk wrote in her Marshall application. "Cultural forms, including television, cinema, music, and literature, are constantly emitting images and mythologies of racialized persons that shape public attitudes about minority groups. Learning the history of this interaction between popular culture, education and public policy will help me understand the resources necessary for today's struggle against racial stereotypes and discrimination."

Suk's Harvard achievements include Phi Beta Kappa, receiving the Center for European Studies Krupp Foundation Undergraduate Thesis Traveling Fellowship, the 1995 Radcliffe French Studies Prize, the 1994 Detur Book Prize, and being a John Harvard Scholar and Elizabeth Cary Agassiz Scholar. Suk has also been managing editor of the Perspective, and organizer and spokesperson of the Ethnic Studies Action Committee.

An International Diplomat

As a Marshall Scholar at Oxford, Debra Shulman plans to pursue a master's of philosophy in international relations, while choosing optional coursework on the Middle East. It is Shulman's goal to pursue a career in international diplomacy, and, in many ways, her early experiences have already provided a solid foundation in the field.

She has worked in the Israeli Government Press Office in Jerusalem, held research positions with East Asian and Middle Eastern scholars at the Foreign Policy Research Institute in Philadelphia, and served as a legislative intern for Sen. Claiborne Pell, then chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee.

Shulman, whose concentration is government, explains her interest in international diplomacy in her Marshall application as, "a feeling of historical and cultural connection with the Jewish state, accompanied by an interest in the conflicts that engulf the region. As the daughter of a parent born in a displaced persons' camp in Germany and the granddaughter of Holocaust survivors, the need to find solutions for such conflicts became a personal one for me at an early age."

At Harvard, Shulman has served as the director of the Harvard Speech and Parliamentary Debate Society's program, teaching debate to seventh- and eighth-grade students at Cambridge middle schools, was an editor of the Harvard Political Review, and authored a history of aliyah (Jewish immigration to Israel), published by the Israeli government. She is also a 1996 Truman Scholar, a John Harvard Scholar, an Elizabeth Cary Agassiz Scholar, and has won several debating awards.