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NEWS RELEASE
12/13/94
Two alumnae win Rhodes, Marshall Scholarships
STANFORD -- Two recent women graduates are Stanford's 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 master's 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 stude ho 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 st udies 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 po litically. 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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