The prestige of the Rhodes scholarship.
One of the most prestigious academic awards, the Rhodes scholarship is also the oldest international scholarship program, offering college students from across the world the opportunity for postgraduate study at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom. In addition to the academic benefits of studying at Oxford, part of the allure of the Rhodes scholarship is being in an elite group of highly accomplished scholars. Past Rhodes scholars have gone on to illustrious careers in politics, journalism, science, mathematics and international affairs. Here are 17 famous people who were awarded a Rhodes scholarship.
Cory Booker
Cory Booker has represented his home state of New Jersey as a junior senator since 2013 and was the mayor of Newark from 2006 to 2013. He played football at Stanford University in California, where he earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees, then studied history at Oxford on a Rhodes scholarship. He later studied law at Yale University in Connecticut before launching his political career. His unsuccessful 2002 campaign for mayor of Newark was the subject of an Academy Award-nominated documentary called “Street Fight.”
Bill Bradley
Bill Bradley starred for the basketball team at Princeton University in New Jersey, averaging more than 30 points per game over three seasons. He led the team to three straight Ivy League championships and was named an All-American each season. He helped the U.S. win a gold medal at the 1964 Olympic Games in Tokyo and delayed a pro basketball career to study at Oxford on a Rhodes scholarship. He later joined the New York Knicks, helped them win two NBA championships and was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 1983. He later went into politics, serving as a New Jersey senator for six years. He sought the Democratic nomination for president in 2000, but lost to Al Gore.
Pete Buttigieg
After serving as mayor of South Bend, Indiana, Pete Buttigieg was appointed the U.S. Secretary of Transportation in the Biden Administration after unsuccessfully seeking the Democratic nomination in 2020. He had served for seven years as an officer in the U.S. Navy Reserve and took a leave of absence from the mayor’s office while deployed in Afghanistan in 2014. Buttigieg earned a bachelor’s degree in history and literature from Harvard University in Massachusetts and a master’s in philosophy, politics and economics from Oxford.
Bill Clinton
Bill Clinton served as the 42nd U.S. president, holding office for the majority of the 1990s. Prior to that, Clinton served as governor and attorney general for Arkansas, his home state. He was impeached in 1998 after allegations of an improper relationship with a female White House intern, but acquitted of the charges by the Senate. Clinton was awarded a Rhodes scholarship following his undergraduate degree at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., but his time at Oxford was clouded by U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War and the potential for him to be drafted into service, a fate he said he hoped to avoid. He was able to remain at Oxford but never earned a degree.
Ronan Farrow
The son of filmmaker Woody Allen and actress Mia Farrow, American journalist Ronan Farrow attended Oxford on a Rhodes scholarship and graduated in 2018 with a doctorate in political science. He had previously earned a bachelor’s degree in philosophy at Bard College in New York and a law degree from Yale. Farrow’s investigative reporting for The New Yorker exposed sexual abuse and assault allegations against film producer Harvey Weinstein. His reporting paved the way for the “Me Too” and “Time’s Up” anti-abuse movements, and he won a Pulitzer Prize in 2018 for his work. He also won a George Polk Award and a National Magazine Award for other investigative stories.
Howard Florey
Australian pharmacologist Howard Florey won a Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1945 for his work isolating and purifying penicillin, which was discovered by Alexander Fleming and is now used widely to treat infections caused by bacteria. Prior to that honor, which he shared with Fleming and German biochemist Ernst Boris Chain, Florey received his medical training at the University of Adelaide in Australia and at Oxford as a Rhodes scholar. He embarked on a career as a professor and university administrator, spending time at the University of Cambridge, the University of Sheffield and Oxford, where he was eventually appointed provost of the Queen’s College.
James William Fulbright
After earning a bachelor’s degree from the University of Arkansas, James William Fulbright studied political science at Oxford on a Rhodes scholarship. He was elected to the House of Representatives in 1943 and credited his time at Oxford for helping him gain valuable perspective when considering international relations in legislation. The Democrat later served five consecutive terms in the U.S. Senate from 1945 to 1974. The Fulbright Scholarship was established in 1946 and has helped more than 400,000 scholars “study, teach and conduct research, exchange ideas and contribute to finding solutions to shared international concerns,” according to the U.S. Department of Education.
Edwin Hubble
The Hubble Space Telescope has provided the world with a lens into outer space since it was launched in 1990. The man for which it’s named, astronaut Edwin Hubble, earned a law degree at Oxford on a Rhodes scholarship, largely at the behest of his father. But his passion for studying the cosmos persisted, and that’s where he chose to focus his career. He earned a doctoral degree in astronomy from the University of Chicago, where he previously earned a bachelor’s degree in astronomy and mathematics. Hubble later discovered that other galaxies exist beyond the Milky Way, a landmark discovery in cosmology.
Bobby Jindal
Republican Bobby Jindal served as governor of Louisiana from 2008 to 2016, and prior to that represented the first district of Louisiana in Congress for two terms. He graduated with honors from Brown University in Rhode Island, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in biology and public policy, before studying at Oxford on a Rhodes scholarship. He served as the president of the University of Louisiana system from 1999 to 2001, when he was was appointed by President George W. Bush to serve as assistant secretary for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
Kris Kristofferson
American singer Kris Kristofferson may be best known as a Grammy Award-winning musician, but his career spanned a variety of sectors. He played football at Pomona College in California, acted in movies, and was a Golden Gloves boxer and a Rhodes scholar. While at Oxford, he studied the works of English poet and painter William Blake and earned a master’s degree in 1960. He returned to California to serve in the Army and was later sent to teach literature at the United States Military Academy at West Point in New York. He visited Nashville, Tennessee in 1965 and decided to resign from his professorial position and stay in Nashville to pursue a songwriting career.
Terrence Malick
Known for his work directing critically acclaimed films such as “The Thin Red Line” and “Badlands,” Terrence Malik was awarded a Rhodes scholarship in 1966 after graduating from Harvard. His plan was to study philosophy at Oxford, but disagreements with faculty about the content of his thesis caused him to “give up in disgust” and leave the university without earning a degree, according to The Harvard Crimson. He briefly worked as a freelance journalist, writing for Life, Newsweek and The New Yorker, and as a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Susan Rice
Susan Rice served as the national security adviser under President Barack Obama as well as the U.S. representative to the United Nations. She earned a bachelor’s degree in history from Stanford and master’s and doctoral degrees in international relations from Oxford, where she was a Rhodes scholar. She was awarded the Chatham House-British International Studies Association Prize “for the most distinguished doctoral dissertation in the United Kingdom in the field of International Relations,” according to the U.S. Department of State. She serves as a distinguished visiting research fellow in the School of International Service at American University in Washington, D.C.
Myron Rolle
After being recruited by just about every major college football program in the country, Myron Rolle attended Florida State University, where he became a First Team Freshman All-American, the Atlantic Coast Conference Defensive Rookie of the Year and a Third Team All-American. He was projected to be a first-round pick in the NFL draft after his college career was over, but that same year was awarded a Rhodes scholarship. He put his football career on hold to study medical anthropology at Oxford. He was drafted in the sixth round of the 2010 NFL draft and played three seasons before entering the medical field full time, currently working as a neurosurgery resident at Massachusetts General Hospital.
David Souter
David Souter served as associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court from 1990 to 2009. Upon graduating from Harvard in 1961, Souter attended Oxford on a Rhodes scholarship and graduated in 1963. He returned to Harvard to earn a law degree in 1966. Two years after graduating law school, Souter became an assistant attorney general in New Hampshire and then attorney general in 1976. He was appointed to the New Hampshire Supreme Court in 1983 and nominated to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit in 1990 by President George H.W. Bush, a fellow Republican. A few months after that appointment, Bush nominated him to the Supreme Court.
Bonnie St. John
After having her right leg amputated at the age of 5, Bonnie St. John went on to become the first African American to win a Winter Olympics medal when she won a silver and two bronzes at the 1984 Winter Paralympics in Innsbruck, Austria. Her story paved the way for her to become a sought-after keynote speaker as well as an author of six books, including two Amazon No. 1 bestsellers, “Live Your Joy” and “How Great Women Lead,” which was co-authored with her daughter, Darcy Deane. NBC Nightly News selected her in 1996 as one of the five most inspiring women in America. She earned a bachelor’s degree from Harvard and then a master’s degree from Oxford while on a Rhodes scholarship.
George Stephanopoulos
Political commentator George Stephanopoulos, known for his time as anchor for “This Week” and “Good Morning America” on ABC, earned a master’s degree in theology from Oxford while on a Rhodes scholarship. He earned a bachelor’s degree in political science from Columbia University in New York, and after graduating from Oxford moved to Washington, D.C., to begin a career in politics. He served as an aide and eventually chief of staff for Ohio Congressman Ed Feighan. He joined the unsuccessful presidential campaign for Michael Dukakis in 1988 and served as a deputy manager of Bill Clinton’s successful presidential campaign in 1992. He served on Clinton’s staff as an adviser before resigning in 1996, paving the way for his career in broadcasting.
Heather Wilson
An 11-year veteran of the Air Force and graduate of the United States Air Force Academy in Colorado, Heather Wilson earned master’s and doctoral degrees from Oxford on a Rhodes scholarship. While there, she was a member of the rowing team. Wilson has been president of the University of Texas–El Paso since 2019 and previously served as president of the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology. She also represented New Mexico in Congress for 10 years as a Republican — the first woman vet elected to a full term — and served as director for defense policy and arms control on the National Security Council under President George H.W. Bush from 1989 to 1991.
Well-known Rhodes scholarship winners
— Cory Booker
— Bill Bradley
— Pete Buttigieg
— Bill Clinton
— Ronan Farrow
— Howard Florey
— James William Fulbright
— Edwin Hubble
— Bobby Jindal
— Kris Kristofferson
— Terrence Malick
— Susan Rice
— Myron Rolle
— David Souter
— Bonnie St. John
— George Stephanopoulos
— Heather Wilson
More from U.S. News
How to Find and Secure Scholarships for College
Avoid These 7 Mistakes When Applying for Scholarships
10 Sites to Kick Off Your Scholarship Search
Famous Rhodes Scholars originally appeared on usnews.com
Update 01/11/24: This story was previously published at an earlier date and has been updated with new information.
