Rhodes: He Could’ve Been Worse!

After an almost unprecedented shutout in the stiff competition for the 32 Rhodes scholarships awarded to Americans last year, Harvard students rebounded with a vengeance, snagging over a fifth of the scholarships awarded for 2007. As prestigious as the scholarships are, however, they do not boast an innocent history.

When Cecil J. Rhodes died in 1902, he left behind the endowment that funds his namesake scholarships to this day and a legacy of exploitation in Southern Africa, where he made a fortune mining diamonds. A champion of British colonialism, Rhodes supported military expansions of British influence in Africa, earning the condemnation of many of his contemporaries.

Does the fact that the scholarships are funded from the coffers of Rhodes’ imperialist tendencies somehow diminish the award?

“What people do with the scholarship is very good, so I don’t see a direct connection,” says 2007 scholarship recipient Parvinder S. Thiara ’07.

Fellow winner Joshua H. Billings ’07 agrees, saying of Rhodes, “He definitely has some [legacies] that are less positive, but I don’t think that effects the legitimacy of the Rhodes scholarships.”

Former Rhodes scholar Robert I. Rotberg, author of a biography of Rhodes and a program director at the Kennedy School, echoed the sentiment of this year’s winners.

“Whatever one might think of Cecil Rhodes himself, he did leave money for the Rhodes scholarships, and there are enough Rhodes scholars at Harvard to demonstrate that it was a good gift.”