Elliot Gerson

Interviewee: Elliot Gerson (Connecticut & Magdalen 1974) [hereafter ‘EG’] 

Moderator 1:  Rachel Wood [hereafter ‘RW’] 

Date of interview: 1 February 2024 

RW: My name is Rachel Wood. I am with the Rhodes Trust conducting a Zoom interview with Elliot Gerson (Connecticut & Magdalen 1974). It is 1 February 2024. From 1998 to 2023, Elliot was the American Secretary of the Rhodes Trust, administering the 32 annual United States Rhodes Scholarships to the University of Oxford each year. The Rhodes Trust is absolutely indebted to Elliot for this unrivalled contribution to our core mission. And now, during the 120th anniversary of the Rhodes Scholarship, Elliot is helping us launch the first ever comprehensive Rhodes Scholar oral history project. We are so grateful to you, Elliot, for this gift to the community and to the future Rhodes Scholars, and I’d love to get started with just a few formalities and then turn it over to you. So, Elliot, do I have permission to record this interview? 

EG: You do.  

RW: And can you please spell your first and last names for me? 

EG: Elliot Gerson 

RW: Thank you. And finally, where are you recording this interview from?

EG: In my house, in Washington, DC.  

RW: Fabulous. Okay, now, if we can, Elliot, I would love to get us started by going back to the beginning. Can you tell us a little bit about where and when you were born? 

EG: Well, I was born almost 72 years ago, in New Haven, Connecticut, where my father had been in graduate school. So, New Haven is where it all began for me. 

RW: And tell me about the family you grew up with. Where did your ancestors come from, and then how did your parents meet?  

EG: Okay. My father was a late teenage immigrant from Poland – he came to the United States in 1938 – and my mother was an Irish orphan. They met in university and fell in love, despite their different backgrounds and different religions. And really, a wonderful story. They just viewed each other as American. That’s what they aspired to be and that’s what they were and so the differences in their backgrounds really didn’t matter. And in a sense, they were both almost alone. My father’s mother died shortly after I was born. My mother never really knew her parents. Her mother died in childbirth but she had aunts and uncles and cousins in New Haven and it was a tight family. I was the oldest of three children. My childhood continued to be in Connecticut, where my father, after his doctorate at Yale, spent his career teaching at the University of Connecticut. And my mother was a geriatric social worker in the latter part of her life, and tragically died too young herself. But that’s my family. 

RW: Tell me more about your other family members who lived nearby, and what was your community like outside of your family as well? 

EG: Well, again, I lived in a little college town in Eastern Connecticut, and it was a wonderful childhood. It was a college town amidst a rural, working-class area of Connecticut, actually a very large geographic area funnelled into the small public school system. So, I’ve often thought of all the benefits of coming from an environment like that. A lot of people associate Connecticut with the part of the state close to New York with a great deal of wealth, but I was from the corner of the state that was quite different. And you know, this is a year of anniversaries, my 50th anniversary of arriving in Oxford. Also, of course, my 50th anniversary for my college class. And then, not too long ago, twice delayed by COVID, of course, my 50th reunion for my high school. So, that was a fascinating experience, and a bit of depressing experience too.  Again, reflecting the demographics of my childhood home, you know, to find that many of my classmates had already died at what I think is a very young age, and then to look at the very different life paths of those who went on to university compared to those who did not. And essentially, it was a direct reflection of what I think we’ve experienced in at least my adulthood, with widening inequality, widening gaps in opportunity, and even in lifespan. And interestingly, many of my closest friends in high school were those who frankly did not go on to college and did not have a very easy life. 

RW: Right. Tell me, then, more about young Elliot before the high school years and the hobbies that you might have had as a kid in your neighbourhood. 

EG:  It was quite rural and my hobbies were very much focused on the outdoors, like most young boys. Sports was a big part of my life, but also just wandering in the woods. I could walk behind my house for what seemed like miles, probably was less than that, through farmland and fields with cows and streams and ponds that were isolated and not developed, and I would fish and bike. Otherwise, a typical boyhood of the time with sports and Boy Scouts and eventually girls. So, it was a wonderful childhood, happy family. I was close to my younger brother and sister, and I consider myself very lucky even though it was certainly not a childhood of privilege. 

RW: That’s wonderful. And when you moved into your high school, what are some reflections about those years. Did you have any influential teachers, classes or activities that helped define you? 

EG: You know, I haven’t thought about that much. I still remember the names of my first and second and third grade teachers, but I think some of the most influential teachers I had in high school. For example, Mr Marlin had a lot to do with cultivating my interest in American history and politics and public affairs. Of course, I also got some of that at home because my father’s academic field was political science. I was very engaged in my community and in my school. Probably like lots of people who ended up Rhodes Scholars I was president of my high school student council and enjoyed those kinds of activities. But I’d say, you know, a typical small public school experience, with some wonderful teachers. I remember my French teacher very well. My peak competency in French language was as a high school senior. You know, one of the disadvantages of being American [10:00], even with all the travel I’d do around the world is that more and more people speak English, and I really kick myself for not keeping up with languages, especially now that we have a home in Mexico. I’m a Mexican permanent resident, and my Spanish is grossly embarrassing. I keep thinking if I ever retire, I will lose that embarrassment and learn to speak Spanish. But no, I had dedicated high school teachers I remained close to for a number of years. I remember I also had a very good physics teacher. I was torn between science and social sciences as I went to college, in part because I had great teachers in chemistry, biology and physics there. I think I benefitted considerably by the fact that even though it wasn’t a rich area, it was a college town, so we had, I think, exceptionally good teachers. But it was a great time.

RW: It sounds wonderful. And tell me, as a high school kid, did you have dreams? I mean, you were clearly a dedicated student, who went on to Harvard. As a high school kid, what did you imagine yourself growing up to be? Did you have dreams or goals at that point in your life? 

EG: Now, that’s very interesting. You know, obviously, I don’t want to show any false humility. I was a good student, but I didn’t identify myself as a good student. You know, think about high schools and the ‘culture’ and sociology of high schools. It was much more important to my self-image being an athlete than being a student. But as far as goals go, getting back to the public service aspect of things, and again, with family influence and my parents’ deep engagement in local and state politics, from a pretty early age I aspired toward a public and political career. That’s probably what most of my friends would have said, even though I remember, I think in my high school yearbook, I said, ‘I plan to be a marine biologist,’ or something like that. I scratch my head and I say, ‘What was I thinking?’ But, you know, I still scuba dive and I like swimming around with fish. But I think I was clearly on a political, public service-related course from an early age, but was always distracted by so many other things that interested me. 

RW: Right. What were your sports, particularly in high school? 

EG: Oh, goodness. In high school, again, I was advantaged. You know, I can’t pretend that I was a world-class athlete, but in a small town, although it was a regional high school, I was able to play on varsity sports. I played soccer. Our school was too small to have a football team. I’ve always felt that was lucky. I think soccer is a much better sport, and I was captain of my team. I played basketball, and I played baseball as a young boy. That was my favourite sport, but then I started playing tennis and couldn’t play both in the same season, so I stuck with the tennis team. I played pickup football in people’s back yards. I would say soccer was really my main sport and tennis was the sport I played the best. I had some aspirations to play tennis in college, until I realised that there was no way I could compete at that level. 

RW: Well, let’s move on to college. Let’s talk a bit about your undergraduate years at Harvard. Tell me about successes and accomplishments and frustrations and challenges.  

EG:  I loved college. Harvard was a very late idea. You know, my father had gone to graduate school at Yale, and I was born in New Haven. I always thought I’d do that. It just happened that I had a cousin on my Irish side – not a close cousin – who went to Harvard on a football scholarship. And if anything, growing up in Connecticut, Harvard would be the last place I wanted to go. But I spent a weekend visiting him as a junior, he and all of his football roommates and again, reflecting on what kind of interests I had, they seemed to be having a hell of a good time. I said, ‘Gee, I think I would enjoy being here.’ So, I ended up going there, and I was very lucky with interesting roommates and lucky assignments and teachers. I had a freshman seminar in literature and politics with a wonderful, iconic professor and I became interested in too many things to possibly study. I couldn’t decide if I was going to be a biologist and I thought of medical school for a while. With the inability to decide what I really wanted to do, I majored in the history and philosophy of science.  

So, I had a combination of science and social science, and then became very interested in economics. And, you know, if we could have had a ‘minor’, I would have minored in economics, and, indeed, ended up applying to graduate school in economics. And we’ll probably come to this, but I often think about how careers change and interests change and how much luck and circumstance influences life. For example, I was awarded a Marshall Scholarship just literally days before my final Rhodes interview, and I had already been admitted to Cambridge University to do a PhD in economics, and goodness gracious, if I had done that, who knows what I would be doing today? I’m sure I’d still be having fun, but it would have been very, very different. Anway, I had a great time in college socially, wonderful friends, a wide variety of academic interests, I continued to play sports for two years, including intercollegiate, until I couldn’t really compete at that level anymore.  I was involved in student government, ran things in my own housing complex. But at the same time, I was also in their fraternity, called ‘clubs’ at Harvard, and I was president of a club. It is embarrassing to think back to most of the clubs and how opposite of inclusive they were. You know, nothing that I would have put on my résumé, but I had a wonderful time, and in retrospect, feel like I played a little bit of a role in opening that world up to people like myself who never would have been part of it. Overall had a great time. 

RW: Tell me more about that, though, about your experience in the clubs and your role in opening them. 

EG:  I think many of my best friends in college probably weren’t even aware I was in one of these, fancy, rich-looking institutions that the Harvard clubs were, and I certainly hadn’t been aware of them. But again, some of my friends in my freshman year, had been from families whose fathers – and this was, of course, all men, which we may come to in other contexts – had been members earlier, and had gone to fancy private boarding schools, which tended to be the feeders for these institutions, and some of those friends were my close friends [20:00]. They said, ‘This might be of interest to you.’ And lo and behold, I ended up getting involved and loving it and was president of my club. I think I was probably the first Jewish president of any of those clubs, and our club had a history of opening things up in ways-, you know, John and Bobby Kennedy were the first Catholic members of the same club, which shows how strange these institutions really were. But I brought a lot of other people in who also had gone to public schools. I had a black vice-president of my club, who remains a close friend. We also had many members from other countries. But again, also the smattering of the kinds of people one might have associated with places like that, household billionaire names. Another one who was the son of a major Central American dictator. So, it was a very unusual experience.  

It was a small part of my Harvard life, but, you know, I’d be dishonest to say it wasn’t something I enjoyed, although I spent much more of my time in my Harvard house, which of course were modelled on the Oxford colleges, and in a wide variety of other activities. I was on a university-wide elected student organisation focused on undergraduate education. And it was also an interesting and challenging time to be in an American university. I never really  personally felt the pressure of the draft, although I had a draft number. My cohort, I don’t think any of us ever felt that we were going to go to Vietnam, unlike those two to five years ahead of us. But, you know, there were major riots my freshman year, and takeovers of university buildings, and whether the issues were Vietnam or civil rights, or divestment from companies investing in apartheid South Africa, I was involved in all those kinds of things. Again, I was also there at an unusual time. I was the last all-male Harvard freshman class, Harvard Yard, that is. And then, Radcliffe was still a separate institution, but over my time there that, thank goodness, became modified, though not nearly as much as it was subsequently. I was a walk-on on the squash team which was, culturally, not something I’d ever really been exposed to before, but I’d been a reasonably good tennis player and played both my first two years until there was enough competition far better than I was. But I loved that and continued to play that at Oxford, actually. 

RW: Oh, did you? Wonderful. And so, during these what sound like very invigorating and yet slightly tumultuous times at Harvard, did you have any influential mentors that you reflect on, or was it mostly your friend groups that really impacted your life during that time?  

EG: I would say it was mostly my friends who impacted my life, but I had some professors who had very significant impact as well, of an intellectual nature. Stanley Hoffmann was an extraordinary man. I was privileged to take a freshman seminar with him, and it got me quite interested in political philosophy. And then, one of my favourite classes was taught by a man – most of these great people have passed away, sadly – Seymour Slive, who was a great art historian, and I developed a lifelong interest in art. One of the best classes I ever took was northern Renaissance art. And wonderful teachers in my concentration, which was, again, history and philosophy of science. My particular interest was the history of evolutionary biology. But again, I consider myself very lucky to have been influenced by people like that, but also, just to have a wonderful group of friends. And, you know, sadly, at the time, they were all male, although I did have – and I must mention, because she was so significant in my early life – my high school sweetheart was at college nearby, and so, I had a girlfriend throughout that period and, indeed, we got married after my first year at Oxford. So, I knew a lot of women, really, through her and her friends, and they became very good friends. But otherwise, you know, Harvard was a much too male institution. 

RW: But it sounds like you made it such a well-rounded experience for yourself. And now I want to jump to a comment you made earlier, which is that you have received a Marshall Scholarship towards your final days at Harvard and were planning on going to Cambridge and studying economics, and yet you also applied for the Rhodes Scholarship. Tell me about that decision and those memories. 

EG: Well, I had been aware of Rhodes Scholarships and for some time, I wanted to study in England. I didn’t know about the Marshall Scholarships – which are wonderful, and then, in my subsequent life, I’ve enjoyed building close relationships between the Rhodes and the Marshall fellowships and administrations. But in a funny way, I think the fact that I had this phone call from the British Consul General in Boston literally the night before my Rhodes final interview may have given me an edge, because I was so relaxed going into the interview, because I knew that I was going to England on someone else’s dime either way. But yes, I remember applying and there are things that are just so different. I mean, for example, my Rhodes essay. You know, we worry today, in the administration of the Scholarship about things like Artificial Intelligence, and we obviously are aware of all the guidance that students get in applying and writing, and of course, we had none of that. I mean, I don’t think my mother or girlfriend, or roommate ever saw my essay. I probably wrote it in three hours one day, and I don’t think it was different from anybody else. It was just not the drama and the process and the mentored engagement that it seemed to evolve to be in many places. But I was excited at the possibility. I certainly must say that unlike students at institutions without the historical number of Rhodes Scholars, it’s hard to go through Harvard and be a reasonably good student without knowing about the Rhodes Scholarships.  

So, you know, it was in my mind and I was encouraged to apply and there were many people who could serve as referees. And I’ve always been aware of that advantage that I had, again jumping ahead to my days as the American Secretary at the Trust. For example, I thought if I had stayed on and gone to where my father taught, at the University of Connecticut among thousands of students and without ever having had a Rhodes Scholar until just maybe eight or ten years ago, I’m not sure that I would have even thought of it. And so, that’s one thing that I think we’ve made just enormous progress in-- Not changing the criteria or the selection standards in any way but widening the funnel in equitable ways. But getting back to New Haven, I had the choice of applying in Connecticut or Massachusetts. It didn’t really much matter. We were in the same district, but [30:00] I applied in Connecticut, and in another life, I actually changed the tradition of the state interviews being in New Haven, because having not been associated with Yale and having the interviews in New Haven with a Yale person as secretary of the committee and Yale people dominating the applicant pool and probably – I don’t remember everyone sitting around the table interviewing me, but my guess is probably half had a Yale affiliation – I felt a little bit uncomfortable.  

And jumping ahead, one of the things I did as American Secretary was issue some guidance that interviews never be in places that could make anyone uncomfortable because of either an institutional association, or that’s either socially or economically or  racially exclusive in a way that could make a candidate feel uncomfortable. Because, you know, the process is so subjective, even being in an environment where one is not comfortable and all of one’s fate in the competition is depending on the questions you happen to be asked over a 20- or 25-minute period, whether you’re comfortable or not comfortable can have very serious implications. In any event, somehow I managed to survive New Haven – at that time there was a two-stage process – and then going on to the interviews in Boston, which were not at a Harvard-related institution, thank goodness. But again, getting the phone call from the Marshalls the night before, it was a much more comfortable process than I thought it might have been. But a funny thing – I’m just remembering this – there was a classmate of mine in Quincy House with me who received the same phone call the night before and his father was actually someone I had gone to lectures from, a rather well known economist named John Kenneth Galbraith. He told me that morning, before the Rhodes interview, that he was going to withdraw from the Rhodes and take the Marshall, which is something that happens very, very rarely. But he made the decision and then, just an amazing coincidence, as I got on the subway, the T, from Harvard Square to go into my interview in Boston, it was all very crowded. You can’t make this up, but it’s true, I came in, and I think the only time I ever saw him except in a large lecture hall, who is there but is father, John Kenneth Galbraith. And I’ve forgotten how we got into this conversation, but we did, and I said what I was doing, and he said that he thought his son had made a mistake and that he should have gone on. And interestingly, Jamie’s the son’s rationale was that he thought at that time, and arguably at that time it may have been the case, that the Marshall had the academically more distinguished reputation, at least in Harvard circles, than the Rhodes, with more of its all-rounded reputation, and he thought, as someone who planned to be a professional economist himself, that the Marshall would be a stronger indication to the public about his intellectual qualities and there would no element of potential nepotism or favouritism or fame that might have otherwise been the case. So, in any event, he was very happy to do the Marshall and has had a very distinguished career. But yes, that’s my recollection. I remember a lot about my Connecticut interview, less about my Boston interview, although I did end up putting some people on selection committees many years later, at least one of whom had been on my selection committee. 

RW: No kidding? That’s fantastic. But you do remember being much more at ease, because you knew you were going to the UK on someone’s dime, potentially? 

EG: I think so. But, you know, having those experiences, I think most of us never forget, whether it’s the reception or the interview or the other people in the room. But I was very sensitive when I became responsible for some of these things about the settings, the ambience, the balance of the committee, really from my own experience many years earlier. 

RW: And do you remember, walking into that interview, did you have a clear idea of what you wanted to do for the rest of your life at that point, or at least for the next five to ten years? 

EG:  I still thought that my career was most likely to be in government or politics, and so my thoughts about Oxford were to do PPE and then probably the default post-Oxford, if you wanted a political career, was law school. So that’s what I assumed I was going to be doing, and then I went off to Oxford. 

RW: You went off to Oxford. So, let’s talk about that. Let’s talk about that infamous transit to Oxford with other Americans in the class of 1974. 

EG: Well, it was infamous because I screwed up. Well, there was not much I could have done about it. The American Secretary at that time, Bill Barber (Kansas & Balliol 1949), who subsequently became a very good friend – when I was at Yale Law School, he asked me to be his Assistant American Secretary. But he had the custom of asking a member of the American class to act as, essentially, the travel agent to the class and make the arrangements for the sailing, which all the classes before us had done. And I’m not sure why he asked me. I think because he lived in a small town in Connecticut not too far from where I did. You know, there’s no other reason for it. But my luck, our class was the first one to miss the boat, because we had a booking-, there were really only two options, the QE2 and the SS France, and I think I’m right in remembering that the QE2 – whichever one we had a booking on – became unavailable, and then the other one was also unavailable, so we ended up having to fly. In one case, I think the QE2 was commissioned, somehow, in connection with the Falklands War, and I think the SS France, you know, was stopped by a strike, a labour action. But in any event, I failed in that endeavour. We had dinner in New York, but we never sailed together. We got on an airplane and so, we never bonded in the way that our preceding classes did, or we didn’t begin as bonded, but I think in the years since, we’ve made up for having missed that, and also assisted by,  a particularly energetic and skilful Class Secretary, Nick Allard (New York & Merton 1974), who has really engendered an enormous degree of bonding, even if we didn’t have it while we were in Oxford. Actually, one of my other great decisions in life, I was our Class Secretary for our first ten years, and I gave that up, thank goodness, because Nick was far more assiduous and far funnier and far more conscientious than I ever would have been. 

RW: So, how would you describe your time at Oxford, Elliot, as a Rhodes Scholar? 

EG: You know, it was perfect, actually. I loved it. And again, I had been privileged [40:00] in my education before and after, but it was, for me, magical. And I say all that knowing that it’s not magical for everybody, and I think it’s very hard for those Rhodes Scholars who don’t have a good experience – and there are not many, but there are some. I think it’s important for people, at least within the family, to be candid about it, and we learn a lot about why some experiences are better than others. I think being a Rhodes Scholar and coming back to the United States, people recognised the incredible privilege that it involves. If you really don’t have a great time, it’s not easy and it’s arguably, really, off-putting and, frankly, arrogant-sounding to say, ‘Well, I didn’t like it,’ as some people didn’t. You know, they may not have chosen the right course, they might not have liked their own college, they might have just broken up with their girlfriend, they might have hated the food or hated the weather – good reasons for both. But I loved it, every bit of it, even the inconveniences of Oxford life at the time, the drab, depressed nature of British politics at the time. I loved my college life, I loved my tutors. Again, as you know now from talking to me, I was at Harvard before, I was at Yale Law School afterwards, extraordinary institutions, but my educational experience – and it was terrific at both of those places, which I loved – but my educational experience at Oxford far surpassed my experience at either. I don’t think I could have had a better experience.  

RW: Tell me more about that specifically. You read PPE. What drew you to that area of study? 

EG: It was really the quality of the tutorial experience, and I was lucky. For whatever reason, Magdalen college, for those doing second BAs in PPE, treated us extraordinarily well, and I had the benefit of our own tutors, but also they ‘farmed us out’ for some of the papers in PPE to very distinguished tutors in other colleges. So, I had a tutor at Nuffield, a tutor at Queen’s and a tutor at St Hilda’s, in addition to the five tutors I had at Magdalen, and they were superb. And with two exceptions, all of them were one-on-one tutorials, and maybe the best of all was someone who would just not be, sadly, even today, at Oxford, but certainly not at in any other place at the time in the world, a don or a professor. I mean, he was a tutor, but he’d never got a PhD, he never wrote any books, I can’t remember if he ever even wrote any articles, but he was brilliant and he was a phenomenal teacher. And I had him teach me British institutions. I knew nothing about British politics, and he was phenomenal. I got to know him well and got to know his family, and then a series of tutors, some of whom I’m still in touch with. I had an email literally yesterday from – one of my papers was political sociology, whatever that is, and the tutor’s name, Bill Johnson (Richard Johnson (Natal & Magdalen 1964)). He was a South African Rhodes Scholar. He now lives there. He left Oxford and went back to South Africa. I could talk for hours about his career and the fascinating things that he’s been involved in. But he was fabulous.  

Philip Williams was an extraordinary man at Nuffield College. He was the biographer of Hugh Gaitskell. And I, along with one of my Magdalen Rhodes Scholar PPE buddies, had tutorials with him, and he became an enormously influential person in my life. He visited me when I was in New Haven, and he did this with many of his other tutees, many people who became very distinguished in the United States, as journalists, as politicians in business. He just had an extraordinary-, I mean, he never married. You know, his rooms in Nuffield were a stereotypical mess. You know, it was like a tornado – papers, books, newspapers, everywhere, nothing ever cleaned. He probably had signs of at least 100 dinners, the stains on his tie every day. And he was magical. Partially because there was probably nowhere to sit in this messy set of rooms, we would typically walk around the Worcester College lake and talk about whatever it was that I had written an essay about. I had an extraordinary woman at St Hilda’s tutor me in one of my economics papers, and that was wonderful because it gave me a slice of women’s life at Oxford. Again, this was another world then. It was all men at most of the colleges. There were only a small number of colleges for women. So, there were far fewer opportunities for women and sports were all male, the clubs. One just didn’t see women very much, and it was horrible, although we didn’t know anything else, we didn’t know how horrible it was, but this was a great opportunity to see another part of Oxford. And then I had a person I did tutorials with, as I said, in Queen’s College.  

I loved my life in the college, I had wonderful rooms, and I played sports. I was active in the Middle Common Room and it was very different from today. I revered, like most of my classmates, the Warden, Sir Edgar Williams, but we hardly ever saw him. I mean, we went into Rhodes House, we had our photo taken, we had a Coming Up Dinner, and we’d see him, maybe, once a year – I don’t think it was much more than that – where we’d walk into his office and he’d pour us a glass of sherry and he’d look down at some papers and mumble something about how our tutors thought we were all stupid and we would march on, and we revered him. But Rhodes House was not part of our life, as important as it was to us, and our lives were in our colleges. We had a wonderfully active Middle Common Room. I think it was the most internationally diverse, socially rich, academic experience I could ever have imagined. And to this day, Zimbabwean, Canadian, Australian, American friends. Very few British, which was actually a problem. There were very few British graduate students, and because my tutorials were one-on-one, the only British students I knew were the ones I rowed with. So, that’s a whole other set of stories and memories. And another thing, just thinking about it too, my friends then-, and again, I think we are so lucky that Rhodes House has become what it is for so many other students, but my best friends at Oxford – and I don’t know if too many Rhodes Scholars could say this today – yes, a few of them were Rhodes Scholars, and they remain my best friends today, but the vast majority of my closest friends were not Rhodes Scholars. They were fellow graduate students in my college, and I think of them very often. 

And another reflection on how different life was then: first, the absence of women, but it turns out that maybe my closest friend in my college – his name was Stephen Webster – was gay, but I had no idea he was gay. No one had any idea that they were gay at that time, and it’s one of the biggest changes, I think, between life then and life today. I think of him often because of the tragic life he led. First of all, hiding that from all of [50:00] us, including, ironically, a gay Rhodes Scholar a year ahead of me from Australia who also hid the fact that he was gay. And, that they didn’t discover that each other was until years later. Just unimaginable today. But I mean, you know, I visited his home. At the big commemoration balls, he would appear with a woman that he knew from his childhood and we all just assumed was his girlfriend and, of course, wasn’t. The tragedy there was – no one was coming out then, or could have, easily – that shortly afterwards, he won a scholarship to the United States and he was studying there. He went to Yale. And that was at a time when there were just the beginnings of liberation, but tragically, it was also the beginning of HIV and AIDS. He came out then, he abandoned all of us from his previous life. I mean, not that he had any reason to. He just moved into his exclusively gay life. Those of us were close to him were very hurt that he didn’t want to see us anymore, and then, you know, a year and a half later, he was dead. He died of AIDS, one of the first wave, and it was-, the fact that I never knew. 

RW: Tragic. 

EG: It was terrible. And he went to Saudi Arabia, I’d heard, for some imagined treatment, which of course didn’t work, and then he went home to Norfolk and died with his family. But there are people like Stephen whose lives were less tragic who were part of my life then and who remain a part of it today in a way that’s just disproportionately true compared to my educational experiences elsewhere.  

So, that was my college experience and my academic and tutorial-related experience. But, you know, as I said, I played squash, and I rowed for my college. That was the only way I got to know my English friends. Of course, they were much younger, they were 17 and 18, but that was great fun. And, you know, another reason, I enjoyed my time as much as I did is by then, I had married Lucinda. That was funny too. Of course, then, you could not be married as a Rhodes Scholar in your first year. And indeed, to get married in your second year, you had to get permission from the Warden. So, I went in to get permission from Sir Edgar, and by then he already knew her and of course he gave me permission. She worked there the first year. She, of course, couldn’t live with me in Magdalen, and she worked for Blackwells scientific publications. But frankly, having her there exposed me to things that if I had been a typical Rhodes Scholar unmarried or unconnected in that way-, she exposed me to a whole other world, because her colleagues were British. Her best friend was married to a British graduate student I got to know well. So, much of our social life came through that side of things and we saw what living in Oxford was like, we lived in married accommodation our second year, and so we did our own cooking and shopping.  

And then the other thing, because she had a full-time job, we didn’t travel as much as some of my classmates did. Also, it was harder to travel then, too. It was expensive. We didn’t have cheap flights so you could fly to, you know, Kyrgyzstan for the weekend, or whatever. And so, most of our time was spent in England, and even to this day – and when I was the American Secretary, among the many things when I had them captive before they would go off to England, I would tell them how sad it is for me when I meet Rhodes Scholars who come back from two or even more years in England and barely know England. You know, barely know London. They’ve never been to the Midlands, maybe not even to Scotland. And I thought one of the great experiences and opportunities we had then was the opportunity to really live in get to know another country, and it was facilitated for me by the fact that my wife worked, we didn’t have money to travel, travel was harder. So, our weekends, our vacations, were local, and we knew parts of the Cotswolds like the back of our hand. And I can still imagine driving – I’d borrow a friend’s car – to Minster Lovell and then to Blenheim and then to Lower and Upper Slaughter or going into London, which we did often. We discovered ballet during those days. Skiing, but not in fancy places in Switzerland or in Colorado, but in Scotland, of all places, in terrible conditions. But it was fun. So, that was another part of my life that I enjoyed very much. 

RW: That’s so interesting. And how did you stay connected to home and family during those years? 

EG: Oh, goodness. Well, that’s a very good question. It’s hard. You know, we stayed connected, but knowing what we know now-, I mean, first of all, even telephone was difficult. We didn’t have telephones. You know, there were these coin-operated phones in the Middle Common Room, and you’d hardly ever have the right shillings and there would be a line. You had to schedule all these things, and who knows if there would be people on the other line. But, it was letters, and occasionally you’d be lucky and your family would visit on a holiday if they could afford to. It was hard to keep up with our sports teams or American politics. Like much of the world, it was a critical time in American politics. There was a presidential election. But we had the International Herald Tribune and that’s where we would learn the next day. We’d go in the Middle Common Room and fight over that to see if the Red Sox won or what happened in a primary.  

There was no other way, and even communicating with Oxford-, obviously, it was long before cell phones, and forget the internet. But the way we would arrange meetings with people was through the pigeon post. We’d write handwritten notes and drop them in our porters’ lodge, and they’d be delivered to someone at another college, and who knows when they would get those? So, there was nothing spontaneous, but it worked. You know, we didn’t know anything else, and it was, I think, fun. I think the pace of all of that-, again, I look back and wonder how we could have done it, but I loved it. And then I contrast that with the constant connectivity with just about everything, including horrific things, that my grandchildren have. It’s really another world. And again, that’s among the many reasons why I think that period was magical. One of the things about Oxford-, and I’ve been privileged with my roles with the Trust over the years, to get back far more than most, and with my business and my non-profit work for the last 20 years, I get to England a lot for that reason too. But there is something very special about Oxford that’s evocative of memory, because most of it just doesn’t change. You know, when I go into Magdalen or walk around Addison’s Walk or walk through the cloisters, I mean obviously that hasn’t changed since the fifteenth century, some of it. But even just the town of Oxford, you walk down Merton Street or New College Lane and it’s the same as it was when I was there and centuries ago. I mean, the only things that change are the quality of the shops and the food. They get constantly better and more expensive. It was all terrible when I was there. But otherwise, it’s the same. So, you’re brought back. You’re sucked back, into those memories, in a way that I don’t know anywhere else that does that [1:00:00], because infrastructure there, supports your thinking that you could be 50 years younger, and that’s pretty special.  

RW: That’s really special, and beautifully said. And building on your impressions, can you reflect on some activities in the early 1970s while you were there that led to women being permitted to apply for the Rhodes Scholarship? Were you aware of what was happening at the time? 

EG: Well, I was aware. But again, I’m sort of embarrassed that I was not engaged myself in this. I remember, I think he was president of the Harvard Crimson my junior year, I didn’t know what his academic record was, but you figure, here’s someone who clearly could be a Rhodes Scholar or be a strong applicant, and I remember him not applying, in protest, because women were not eligible. When I think about that I think, ‘Well, why didn’t I feel that way,’ or why didn’t more of us feel that way? So, I was aware there was the beginning of a movement. There were a few incredibly principled classmates whom I have now enormous respect for retroactively – at the time, again, embarrassingly, it didn’t register for me – who were protesting. While I was in Oxford I was a little bit aware, but again, we weren’t together as a cohort like Rhodes Scholars are today. We weren’t really kept up with Rhodes business like they are today. So, it wasn’t until I was back at law school in 1976 that I became much more directly aware of how, over the previous number of years, with leading efforts by Bill Barber, who was my predecessor as American Secretary – it was Bill, then David Alexander (Tennessee & Christ Church 1954) and then me – in that role, but a very substantial part of his tenure was working on these issues. And then, when I became his Assistant American Secretary in 1977-78, he told me a great deal about what that process had been like, and frankly, how close we came to the Scholarships being suspended for a while, because of the opposition of the US Justice Department and the complications of American law and British law.  

But a lot was going on behind the scenes on the American side with my predecessor, with the Justice Department and at the Trust, and there was nothing easy about this. And there were also just supply problems, if you will. Remember what I said about how lucky I was to have a tutor at St Hilda’s. There wasn’t room for women at Oxford. There were just four or five traditional women’s colleges. When I was in residence at Oxford, though – with the wonderful name of ‘The Jesus Plan’ – there were four or five colleges that were traditionally men’s colleges that began admitting women. Jesus was one of them, hence ‘The Jesus Plan’. It was, I think, Jesus, Wadham, Brasenose. I’ve forgotten what the other was. I think there were at least four that began admitting some women while I was there. So, I saw that. But it wasn’t really until I got back that I realised all that was going on behind the scenes and how challenging that was, to finally open things up. As I remember, the first election that included women was 1976, I think, to enter in 1977. So, it was just after the time that I was there that it finally happened. And, of course, those early women, they could only go to the traditionally women’s colleges or those ‘Jesus Plan’ colleges, as people called them. 

RW: Sure. Fascinating. You touched on this, and I just want to build for a moment on recollections from your time as a Rhodes Scholar of being in Rhodes House and interacting with the Warden. You have such a unique perspective because you have stayed in contact with all the wardens since, spanning four decades now. 

EG: Actually, as American Secretary, I worked for seven wardens, and I knew three before that too. 

RW: Exactly. So, share the perspective of your experience of Rhodes House and your interactions with the Warden as a Rhodes Scholar, and some of the most significant changes that you’ve observed.  

EG: I think those changes are profound. But again, I can’t say that I got to know Sir Edgar Williams well. I mean, we always called him Sir Edgar. People then called him Bill Williams too. But we revered him, and he had this larger-than-life reputation, given his service in the war, his military service, his academic role. So, he was an intimidating figure, but also when necessary, a welcoming figure. I did have classmates or those in years just before me who had personal tragedy befall them. You know, the death of a father or a serious medical problem, and the Warden, and particularly the Warden’s wife, Gill Williams, was a wonderful, wonderful woman, and they opened Rhodes House for people in those circumstances. So, we knew we would always be welcomed if necessary. But it was just not part of our life. In fact, we were sort of signalled that it was not supposed to be part of our life. Our life was to be in our college and our course. And back then, the other major difference-most of us did BAs. So, in my class of 32, I think 24 of us did second BAs, whereas today, in recent classes, at most one or two would do a BA. And we could talk for hours about reasons for that, both the demand and supply side. It’s also, arguably, one of the hardest things to get admitted to, but there are many, many other things like the growth of one-year master’s degrees. You know, the University has changed in many ways.  

But Rhodes House, we weren’t there very often, there were no activities there. It was long before there was a Rhodes Ball. There weren’t Thanksgiving parties. There weren’t meet & mingles. We wouldn’t have had a clue what that meant. But again, it was not in our world, so it wasn’t a concern. But as far as the biggest changes go, when I think about changes in the life of Rhodes Scholars, clearly the role of Rhodes House is the biggest change. I mean, there are changes in other ways I alluded to, like far more people doing master’s degrees, very few doing bachelor’s degrees. My sense is that especially for those doing one year master’s degrees, two one-year master’s degrees, I don’t think there is quite as much connection to a college, on average, as when one was doing the BA, but there are still strong connections. But as an example of how things are different, I don’t know when the Trust started surveying Rhodes Scholars in Residence about their experience at Oxford. It’s just a good thing to do, but certainly in our time we were not given any surveys. But I’m guessing that they were started maybe 20 years ago, 30 years ago, I don’t know. But in the early days of the survey – and I’m pretty sure this is right – there was not even a question about how important Rhodes House was to your experience. It wouldn’t have made any sense to ask the question. But to show you how much the change is, my recollection of seeing some of those surveys in the last eight or ten years, is that not only is it a question, but for many Scholars, it’s the most important part of their experience. So, that speaks volumes and Rhodes House is now openly, actively welcoming and engaging with Scholars in ways that we never thought of. But, you know, everything else is still in place at Oxford as well. 

RW: That’s right. Thank you for that. What singular impact did the Rhodes Scholarship have on you personally, Elliot? 

EG: For me personally, it is the fact that it allowed me to be in a position to have been the American Secretary for almost 25 years, which has been the greatest privilege of my life.  I never applied for the job either. You know, today, thank goodness, it’s an open process, and like most things in the world, it’s all transparent. Not only did I not apply, but [1:10:00] in retrospect, I realise I was being interviewed for the job, but at the time I didn’t even know I was being interviewed for the job. I knew that there was a vacancy when David Alexander was no longer going to be the Secretary, and before I was American Secretary, I had been connected to selection one way or another for almost 50 years, because I served on the Virginia selection committee in 1978. But when David Alexander’s vacancy was evident and I was then a state secretary, I remember to this day writing a letter of recommendation, even though we weren’t solicited to do so. I wrote a letter suggesting a particular person and then I also remember explicitly in this letter saying that, ‘As you look at other people,’ – again sensitive to historical impressions and opportunities at different colleges and everything else – I said, ‘ideally the person should have had no affiliation with Harvard and not be from either the East Coast or the West Coast,’ and there were a few other things I suggested it should or shouldn’t be, all of which would have eliminated me. So, when a number of months later I got a letter from Tony Kenny, whom I barely knew, who had been the very distinguished Master of Balliol before he was Warden – and by the way, I’m still very close to Tony and Nancy. Tony is 94 or so. I mean, he wrote two books in his 90s and they live in Headington. Amazing, and I got an email from him the other day. But I got a letter in the mail from him, asking me to be American Secretary.  

But I mentioned how I didn’t realise I was being interviewed. One day, I got a call at my house – I then lived about five miles across the Potomac here in Virginia, up the river – and I was sitting in my library, and I remember having a hard time understanding the person. And he was sort of mumbling in a very aristocratic English way, and I couldn’t even make out his name, but I figured it out afterwards, because it was Lord something-or-other. And enough got out was that he was in Washington and he wanted to meet with me. So, I said, ‘Sure,’ and we had lunch and by that time I’d figured out his name and I’d looked him up and he was the Chairman of the Trust. And the Trust then was a much smaller institution and entirely British. We had a very lovely lunch, and he explained that he was in Washington because his wife was an interior designer and there was an interior design conference, or something. And I had been involved in selection and someone may have given him my name and I honestly thought that he just wanted to have lunch with someone because he didn’t want to look at fabric at some design conference for the whole day. So, we had a lovely lunch, we were talking about various things and then, lo and behold, I realised subsequently that that was a job interview, but he never mentioned the job. So, I don’t know how I got onto that, but it’s a good story. 

RW: It is a great story, and that’s the beginning, and you accepted this offer once you knew that’s what it was.  

EG: How could I not do it? But honestly, the Rhodes Scholarship is an enormous privilege, and it changed my life in many ways. I mean, just the academic experience-, I mean, forgetting the Rhodes ‘title’. The Rhodes ‘label’ can sometimes be problematic, because it’s so prestigious, and in some settings, it could be off-putting to people, but the experience, especially being an undergraduate and the kind of experience I had, I don’t think a week goes by-, maybe I’m lucky because I work in a non-profit world where I still actually have a programme under me, Philosophy and Society. We do a lot of the same things, and politics and economics, so in a funny way-, but even before my last 20 years of professional work where it’s quasi-academic, in a way relating to politics, economics and even philosophy, I don’t think there would be many days where my academic experience in Oxford wasn’t relevant in a direct sense to things I was thinking about. You know, to this day, my interest in and understanding of European politics or how different governments work, or economics, or political theory as we think about the state of the world and the state of democracy. I mean, I wrote essays for tutorials – not that I can remember a word I wrote – but they’re still of relevance and they have been throughout my life.  

Then, all the wonderful friends I have through Rhodes and Oxford. But I think the reason I got onto this other point is the fact that I’ve spent so much of my career helping the Trust in this very privileged volunteer way, you know, is just incalculably significant and valuable to my life, in so many ways. One, being that, as I’ve said on a number of occasions, the experience of dealing with young Rhodes Scholars is the greatest antidote there is to the cynicism or pessimism that sometimes can accompany ageing. You know, I also have now 10 grandchildren, so you can’t be pessimistic with so many grandchildren. But the world can be a very depressing, scary place, in my opinion, but being around the cohorts of young Rhodes Scholars who believe that they can change the world in usually very modest but significant ways, is the greatest thing I can imagine to feel good about the future. So, I wouldn’t have been able to have that experience and those exposures were it not for the fact that I had this opportunity myself. 

RW: That is beautiful, and truly, the words that you speak are the epitome of lifelong fellowship and devotion and commitment, and I love your reference to it being an antidote, personally, to the prevalent depression and pessimism that is part of our worldviews today. You’ve been in this role and selection spanning four decades, and specifically as the American Secretary since 1993, is that right? 

EG: Officially 1998, but I started in 1997, by shadowing David Alexander, if you will.  

RW: Okay. 

EG: And Joyce Knight, who accompanied me this whole time in this adventure, we went out to Pomona College where his office was, for the selections in November of 1997. So, we actually began moving the office starting in 1997. 

RW: Tell me, during the that time, aside from the antidote of working with these incredible change-makers, what else kept you continuing to serve in this role? Are there significant highlights throughout the years that you think of when you reflect? 

EG: Oh, look, I loved it. I mean, everything about it was great. The opportunity to connect obviously with the Scholars Elect, but even some of the outreach we did. And we’re lucky in the United States. The outreach challenge is much greater in the rest of the world. We’ve been here since the first elections in 1903, and most Americans, they might not be able to tell you exactly what a Rhodes Scholar is, or that it’s at Oxford, but the term ‘Rhodes Scholar’ has resonance more broadly in this country than anywhere else in the world – maybe Canada or Australia, it’s hard to compare – given the scale of them, and the history and the prominence of many of our people. But we still had reason to do outreach, to go to universities, colleges that may not have had [1:20:00] a historical connection. So, that part of the responsibility was fun, but it’s also been a privilege just to get to know so many Rhodes Scholars. Most of us don’t know many outside of our own class, but of course I had to put together selection committees, particularly when you consider the fact that the key to having a fair selection committee is a balanced selection committee, balanced in every conceivable way you can imagine. Although there is a limit: when you only have seven people, you can’t balance in every way, but you try very hard.  

So, I’ve gotten to know so many Rhodes Scholars that way and that’s been a great privilege. The opportunity to get back to Oxford. We used to have a Secretaries’ week. It used to be every year, and then when the Trust started having some financial difficulties around 2008, it moved to every other year. But we’d literally spend a week in Oxford, and frankly, it was more social than work, and I think it was a way to, if you will, compensate us. And we all stayed in Rhodes House with our spouses and we’d have dinner together, we’d make breakfast together, we’d meet with faculty. So, when you say you do it so long, I mean, why wouldn’t you want to do it so long? And in another sense, one element of it is actually easier than being a selector, because my counterparts around the world who are national secretaries, almost all of them serve on a selection committee. But because we used to have eight districts and now we have 16 districts, I can’t sit on a committee. I mean, I’m sort in what we call ‘The war room’ as questions come up or as the decision are made. So, I’m not involved. I had the easiest job of any selector . I only read the dossiers of the 32 winners. That’s a pretty easy job, and I don’t have to make the hard decisions, and particularly the disappointing decisions. I was a district committee member for many years, in New England, and I was a state secretary. I don’t think there was ever a year where driving home after the district committee meeting, I didn’t have some mixed feelings. I mean, I always felt wonderful about the people we selected, but more often than not, I really felt bad that ‘Mary’ or ‘Tom’, who might have been in the fifth or sixth place but I thought was just wonderful – and we always had respectful dialogue – just, you know, I wish we could have sent six. I don’t think I ever felt that we shouldn’t have sent ‘Jim’ or ‘Mary’, but it’s hard work, you know.  

And this is another thing, I think. Not all Rhodes Scholars are known for their humility, but I think it’s a critical factor to keep in mind. You know, if there any Rhodes Scholars that are not surprised or assume that of course they’re going to win a Scholarship, they probably shouldn’t win a Rhodes Scholarship. You know, the competition is intense, it is subjective, and ultimately, while we try to get consensus, it could be a four to three vote with respect to the person. So, those other people who are also finalists, you know, it’s hard to distinguish, and they’re all remarkable, and that’s difficult. And it could be different on a different day. You know, it’s not objective. It’s ultimately subjective, and it’s seven peoples’ subjective judgment. That’s why it’s worth spending a lot of time thinking about making the process as fair as possible, choosing the people as well as you can, and probably the most important criterion for a good selector is someone who is extremely conscientious and takes it seriously. It’s hard work, it’s difficult, because everyone they’re seeing is terrific. And I think it’s also helpful for all of us to understand how easily we could have been those in the room whose names were not read aloud at the end. And, you know, sometimes it could be just the luck of a different opening question, or not having been asked what you might have thought you might have been asked, or you might not feel well that day. Or, as I mentioned earlier, you might be in a physical environment where you’re not comfortable or you’re out of place, or is somehow alien to you. I mean, there are so many factors, and we do everything we can and, you know, the secretaries of these committees do an extraordinary job in creating an environment that’s as fair and comfortable and equitable as possible, but it’s hard work.  

RW: It is hard work, and in a typical Rhodes Scholar fashion, you are so humble around how much work it takes from the leader’s perspective to ensure the process is fair and that the composition of the committees is as ideal as possible and that the environment is as dieal as possible. So, let me take a moment to thank you for being the leader on these very, very critical parts of our objectives. Can you take a moment to share with us your impressions about how selection has changed or not changed over the past decades that you’ve been working in selection? 

EG: Well, I’d start by saying it hasn’t changed, honestly. Basic selection is remarkably similar to what it’s always been. The criteria have not changed. I mean, yes, the Trust a number of years ago recognised they needed to put Cecil Rhodes’s very nineteenth-century words more into a twenty-first century context, like the fondness for and success in ‘manly outdoor sports’. Its not like sports has been written out, but basically, the criteria are the same. It was the genius of the founder with respect to the criteria. You know, the foundational one is academic excellence, and after all, we’re not selecting leaders of the world. We’re choosing people who have the potential to be leaders to make a difference for others, especially a difference in the world in positive ways, but through the filter and experience of one of the world’s greatest universities.  

So, fundamental is the academic ability, but it’s not enough, and that’s where you get indications of leadership, character, service, activity and so forth. So, basically, the selection process, looking for this well-rounded excellence, foundational intellectual academic ability suitable to Oxford, with an ambition that ideally is a very other-directed ambition, you know, to make a better world. And it can be in any context. It can be as a poet, as a teacher, as whatever it is. The criteria are the same, the process is the same. It’s letters of recommendation. It’s an essay, that again, originally, I think we all wrote in a couple of hours without much worry. Now it’s a whole other process, which has been a challenge for us in selection. Once we knew that in some cases people would do 20 or 22 drafts, assisted by faculty. So, that’s one change I made, among many little tweaks, requiring an attestation that the work is exclusively that of the students. But the essay, multiple letters of recommendation. No other scholarship in the world or fellowship I know of requires five letters or as many as eight, and there is good reason for it, because we’re looking for all these dimensions and we take it very seriously. We take very seriously an understanding of the person, which is why the interview is so important as well. So, nothing has changed.  

You know, to bring up what I think is a very minority view, just recently, because of the extraordinary diversity of many classes over the last number of years, there is a very small number of very well meaning, [1:30:00] engaged Alumni who think that obviously diversity is now a factor for selection. Absolutely false. I mean, and transparently absolutely false. You can look at the selection guide and it explicitly says – which is my guidance and the Warden’s guidance – that balance of any kind is not appropriate whatsoever. I think what is confusing to that small number of people who have that criticism is that they don’t understand the role Rhodes House now plays in the lives of Scholars in Residence, and Rhodes House is playing explicitly a more engaged and inclusive role in the lives of Scholars in Residence, and appropriately recognising that, a student who wins a Rhodes Scholarship who comes from a not very well resourced university in West Africa or East Africa or wherever it may be may need some help in getting acclimatised – also the climate too, with the terrible climate in England – to the academic environment in England.  

Also, as we’re expanding in new jurisdictions, we need to do outreach and we need to do outreach particularly to groups and individuals who might not otherwise think that this is something they can aspire to. In some parts of the world, the assumption is unless someone goes to university X or unless someone is this-, so, the Rhodes Trust talks about those things, as they not only need to talk about them, but do things. But when it gets to the actual selection process, it is the same as it’s always been. And also, people need to remember, these are the decisions made by committees, primarily Rhodes Scholars themselves, who are making these judgements, and those judgments are based on the same criteria without any balancing considerations whatsoever. And in the United States, just as an example, we have 16 committees, and the people who’ve been with me on those selection nights know, we have no idea- I can’t think of another academic institution that operates like this. You know, most universities ‘build a class’. You know, they want a first baseman, they want a viola player, they want chemists as well as linguists. We don’t do that at all, and literally, we could have a class elected – and thank goodness it never happened on my watch, but it could. It would be a public relations issue to explain – but we could elect a class this November that is 32 men, you know, all from schools like Stanford University, all on the same sports teams and all whose parents live in places like Atherton or Pacific Heights but in different states. It’s entirely possible. And when a selection committee is meeting together and they’re choosing two people, there’s not even any suggestion that it’s a problem if they choose two people who are the same gender, the same major, the same university, from the same town. The diverse class that emerges is the product of an entirely, I think, scrupulously fair, decentralised process, managed by the individual decisions and judgments of Rhodes Scholars who are responsible for choosing strictly on merit and on the criteria that have guided the Trust since 1903. 

RW: Thank you. Thank you so much, and I want to restate on behalf of the entire Rhodes community, thank you for your leadership and your priceless contributions to the organisation’s core mission through your role as the American Secretary for the past three decades, nearly. Wow! That’s really, really special. 

EG: It makes me feel very old. I don’t want to feel old, so-, 

RW: I would love to turn for a bit towards your professional work, Elliot. You’ve had such an illustrious career as a lawyer, a business executive, a government official, and for the last two decades as an EVP at Aspen Institute and its international partners. How has your career trajectory unfolded? 

EG: Well, unfolding suggests that it somehow was predetermined and it’s just folded out. You know, I couldn’t have anticipated the things I was doing. As I said, to be honest, if there was something I aspired to, even when I was in Oxford, it was a political career, probably not unlike a lot of other Rhodes Scholars. Indeed, my first few jobs were premised on, I’m not embarrassed to say – I probably would not have admitted it then, but now, I find it almost amusing – where I wanted to live.  I even chose my first house in the congressional district as I thought I’d like to run for Congress in. But, things happen, or don’t happen. Back to this point of humility, I think in many cases, we just aren’t prepared to admit how much of a role luck plays in our career. For some people, privilege plays a role. But for almost all of us, luck also plays a role. Luck, serendipity, and I often say to people, if they’re planning for anything, they should plan to take advantage of things that may in fact be unpredictable and lucky.  

So, I didn’t plan for the career I’ve had, but I have pivoted with changes in circumstances and opportunities as I’ve seen them in ways that, for me, have, in almost all instances been great. Not all, you know, there were some choices I made, fortunately for very short periods of time, that were not the right ones. But there was no great plan. I just wanted to do interesting things, and I always wanted to make a contribution in ways that I could,. I must say, looking at Congress today, I think maybe the luckiest element of my career was when the congressional district that I thought I was going to run for office in proved not to be open for business for me. I certainly wouldn’t want to be in Congress today, I’m embarrassed to say. And at least in the last 20 years, I’ve been involved in non-profit roles that give me great opportunity to engage meaningfully in the things I care about, which mainly relate to opportunity, economic opportunity and equity, across not just the country, but the world. But I’m also still lucky that in my job, and I could have this if I were in academic institutions – and that was a decision I could have made a number of times, and I would have been very happy in an academic career – but I’m in a quasi-academic institution now, where I can get deeply engaged in not just policy, but at the Aspen Institute, we have programmes in philosophy, art and culture, even sport. Not for the sake of, how to be a better shortstop, but our focus even there is on equity. You know, the tragedy that all children don’t have an equal opportunity to what I think is the fundamental right to play, and you see in so many cases young people having no access to the benefits of sport. You think back to Cecil Rhodes and, you know, the playing fields of Eton, and why sport is one of the criteria at all. Also, I think he cared if someone was a good cricket player, but he felt that the participation, particularly maybe leadership-, whatever one’s theory about what he had in mind, I happen to believe that that kind of activity is important to human development and collaboration. It has a lot of bad features too, which we also study. So, I have a chance to participate in all those things. But no, unlike some of my friends I have great respect for and they knew what they wanted to do and they knew what the star was and they went right to it, my problem, which probably goes back to when you think about even in high school and college and the fact that I couldn’t decide if I was a scientist or a humanist or a social scientist or whether I wanted to be a lawyer or a politician or a teacher or a businessman, there are just so many things and I’m interested in most of them [1:40:00]. Maybe that’s a bad thing. I don’t know. 

RW: A lot of curiosity and too many interests, but that’s a good thing. Are there any personally significant projects that you’ve worked on that you want to speak to? 

EG: I’m proud of many things I do. I think just because we happen to be talking in early 2024, one thing I’m proud of that I’ve been involved in for the last, well, now 15 years, is actually Ukraine. I brought the Aspen Institute to do some work in Ukraine, and that led to an Aspen Institute being established there, and now, albeit very small and led by extraordinary women largely in temporary exile, because they have young children and don’t want bombs falling on them, has become one of the most, I think, respected civil society organisations in that much challenged country, but trying to build a democracy in the face of extraordinary evil and aggression.  We’ve more than doubled in the places in the world we are, the Aspen Institute, during the time I’ve had that responsibility. You know, in places like the United Kingdom, and it’s a fabulous organisation and I love it, but where I think I get the most inspiration is from the countries where we’ve expanded to where there are very few like us and the challenges are profound. Just last weekend, I was in Colombia. You know, a country that’s basically been at civil war for half a century, but a country of great beauty and wealth and potential that’s trying to build an equitable democracy from very difficult circumstances, and it’s inspiring to be around people trying to do that. So, I’m lucky. I’m at the age now where many of my friends now are retiring. You know, I did retire from the Trust, but I’m lucky because the work I do still gives me a lot of meaning and inspiration and my family puts up with me travelling as much as I do to do these things. But there’s no one thing. I’m proud of my family. Jessica and I have seven children and so far, ten grandchildren, living all over the place. And, you know, that’s probably the thing that’s most attractive about the thought of real retirement, is spending more time with them. But they come to see us often enough. But no, there’s no one thing, and there are still things that I aspire to that are in the future, so I don’t just look backwards.  

RW: A man of great interests. I’m curious, what are you looking forward to, Elliot? Anything in particular? 

EG: I’m looking forward to a better political environment. I mean, I’ve seen that in my lifetime. It’s very depressing, what I see around the world and it’s not just this country, it’s in many. And our institutions are not adequate to deal with the threats and problems that we have. Technology has extraordinary implications in ways that we can’t pretend to understand. One project that I’m proud of now that we have underway deals with just the nexus of Artificial Intelligence and election integrity. Some of the most important elections in the world are going to be taking place this year, and in a world that-, who could have imagined? You add Artificial Intelligence to foreign meddling and the power of social media, and my God. So, I’m glad that I can still play a role in these things, as challenging as they are. But I’m also glad for having had the experience I had and that I can still get meaning from the memories I have from living in England and being fully engaged in Oxford in the mid-70s, and there are so many parts of that that I still think back on.  

RW: Thank you. Critical work that you’re continuing to do. Elliot, at this point in our conversation, I would love to ask you if you have any words of wisdom or advice that you could pass on – and you do this on a regular basis as a mentor of so many Rhodes Scholars – to current or future Rhodes Scholars. What would you say to someone who asked? 

EG: Oh, my goodness. I mean, I actually do have a captive audience, or used to. Actually Ramona (Ramona Doyle (Alabama & Somerville 1981)), who’s wonderful, and I couldn’t be happier about my successor, she allowed me in the room when she had her first opportunity for this year’s Americans class before they-, well, they no longer sail, sadly. We still do a Bon Voyage Weekend, pretending that they may be sailing, and have a captive audience for 30 minutes or an hour, giving them advice. And there are lots of pieces of that. One bit of advice I have is not to plan as much, and to enjoy the time in Oxford as much as they can just for the intrinsic values of that experience. And, you know, to get off the treadmill and not worry about what’s next. As simple advice as, you go into your dining hall in whatever college you are, and you sit down, and people are talking about what law school they’re going to apply to or whether they’re going to work at McKinsey this summer, pick up your tray and move to another table. You know, what’s the rush? And I regret I didn’t stay more than two years. We didn’t think about it, we all did BAs, and the Warden wouldn’t have allowed us to stay on. But what’s the rush? And I do worry that there are some people are on such a ladder that they even are worried that, ‘Oh, my gosh, I’m going to be two years behind my classmates.’ Oh, my God. So, I think that’s fundamental.  

I think another bit of advice, again, in the context of Rhodes Scholars. We often have Rhodes speakers, and you’ve been there at the Bon Voyage Dinners, and I sometimes get a little upset when, as a number have said, ‘Well, travel as much as you can, and spend the weekends’ – I mean, not quite – ‘in Tunisia, or Paris, or this, or that.’ Well, that gets me upset. I mean, it is an opportunity to do some travelling, but remember I said earlier, one of the great opportunities is to get to know England. So, one of the things I say is, ‘If you can’t afford to take these trips, or you’re busy, or you have a partner who can’t do them, it’s actually maybe an advantage.’ Because you can get to know Oxford, you can get to know Oxfordshire, you can get to know the Cotswolds, you can get to know southern England. You can get to know a country and a culture in a way that very few people ever get to know more than their home. So, yes, it’s nice to be able to to go skiing in Switzerland, but you don’t have to do all things, and you can have a pretty wonderful time.  

And don’t have all your thoughts on what you’re going to do next and this path that you have to figure out; open yourself up to the possibilities of change. You know, you may decide that you want to do entirely different things. And get to know as many people as possible, because you’re going to be with an extraordinary group of people. Certainly the Rhodes Scholars, but as I also alluded to earlier, everyone else there too, and get to know them. I sometimes frankly worry that because of all the wonderful opportunities that Rhodes Scholars have in Rhodes House now, they’re not, perhaps, going to get to know as many of the other people that they would have in Oxford. But those are some of the pieces of advice.  

I also say sometimes, ‘Don’t go home on every vacation.’ I mean, not only don’t travel, but have people visit [1:50:00] you. Move a little bit out of your own comfort zones. You know, learn a new sport. If you haven’t been involved in music in your life, get to know music. It’s one of the most musically rich cities in the world. One thing that I did that was kind of crazy-, remember how I went from a tennis player to a squash player. At Oxford, I played for the University in real tennis, and you’re probably looking at me thinking, ‘What the hell is real tennis?’ Well, real tennis, which is called ‘Court tennis’ in the United States, where it’s even less played – there are only, like, 15 courts in the United States – is the original game of tennis. That’s the one that Shakespeare writes about, and it dates back to the twelfth or thirteenth century, and there is a court in Oxford, on Merton Street.  People talk about the Boat Race as the oldest continuous sporting competition, but there were competitions between tennis players – and it was just plain old tennis – at Oxford and Cambridge going back much earlier. But it’s a totally crazy, wonderful game, with a wonderful history, and it gave me a chance to travel around England and play. Hampton Court is sort of the home court, the greatest tennis court. The Tennis Court Oath and the French Revolution. You know, it wasn’t like a court at Wimbledon. It was an indoor, very different sort of game, and the Tennis Court Oath was in that kind of tennis court, and there are still three courts in France, and I’ve played in them. 

RW: No kidding! 

EG: So, that’s a fun, crazy thing, and occasionally when I’ve seen people who are pretty good at racquet sports, I say, you know, ‘Go play real tennis. It could change your life in all kinds of weird ways.’ I played cricket for my Middle Common Room, which was fun. So, the advice would be to relish what you have. Take advantage of it, don’t be preoccupied with what comes next, and enjoy it as much as you can. As simple as that. 

RW: Perfect. It’s so perfect. I’m going to ask my final question, but we will have time to readdress or expand on anything we’ve already discussed. My final question is, Elliot, do you have any hopes or dreams for the future of the Rhodes Scholarship? 

EG: I’m quite confident. I mean, I have to be honest. At one point, I was a little worried that the Scholarship and its value could be harmed if Oxford’s standing were to decline, but if anything, Oxford’s standing has gone up. I’m a little worried – I don’t want to make any political comments – I was worried about the potential long-term effects of Brexit on the attraction of Oxford. So, I think it’s very important when you bring this remarkable group of young people from around the world that the place you bring them to is a mecca for their academic and intellectual interests. And so, you know, there have been times when I have worried, can Oxford keep moving in a way in tandem with the reputation of the Rhodes Scholarship? But I’m right now not worried about that at all.  

I’m excited to see the Trust’s aspirations for growth, but I think it’s important to recognise it’s not exponential growth. It’s not just the limitations to the size of Rhodes House to a degree, whether you can have them all together, but the University must admit the people we select. I mean, people sometimes forget that. One of the involvements that I had as national secretary, you know, it doesn’t end on selection day. Most of the work, of course, goes to Rhodes House, but they still need to be admitted to a degree. And the standards for admissions have gotten ever higher. A little digression on that. One of the biggest differences when I think about my role as American Secretary, is 28 years ago, I never dreamed there would be a problem of admissions of a Rhodes Scholar. You know, maybe someone – especially given how Americans might major or minor in so many different things – they might not have enough qualifications on paper to do what they do. So, maybe for one of what used to be BPhils or MPhils, highly limited in number in a particular field where there are huge numbers, we always knew that that would be chancy, but basically, admission to Oxford was never an issue. In most cases, we knew they’d be admitted to a degree. Certainly, when they were doing an undergraduate degree. If you applied to PPE, you’re going to get into PPE. The only question was whether you’d get into your first-choice college, your second-choice college, your third-choice college, or some other college. But now, admissions is a major issue, and it is challenging for even the best academically to be admitted to some degrees. And if you really want to do a particular degree or two and are not willing to do some that are closely related, we’re going to have American Rhodes Scholars not admitted. And thankfully, that’s never happened on my watch. So, that is a huge difference. And also, simply, the growth of different courses. I would say in my first 10 or 15 years, three quarters of American Rhodes Scholars would be taking one of 10 to 15 different degrees. So, I actually was even equipped to be able to stay relatively knowledgeable about those courses and their faculties and admissions chances. Now, when there are more than 400 different degrees, I can’t even begin. And Ramona’s role is going to be very different from mine, and thank goodness we have in Mary Eaton and her staff as an extraordinary resource at Rhodes House to provide that kind of advice about courses. And there’s much less talk about colleges than there used to be. I mean, frankly, the experiences of Rhodes Scholars are great at all colleges, but because different colleges don’t accept people in different courses, the college discussions I used to have aren’t the same as they were.  

My hope for the Scholarship is just that it remains as special as it is, which I’m sure it will, within an extraordinary university that brings extraordinary people from everywhere in the world, whether or not Rhodes Scholars. You know, it would be nice at our next anniversary to have as many Scholarships as we have years of existence, but really, beyond that, I don’t see much opportunity for growth. After all, again, we don’t admit people to the University, and the University has huge interest outside of us. I understand the aspirations to create more of a lifelong experience. I actually have two very good friends in the new programme that’s just started last month, sort of, mid- and late-career, to think about their futures and changes. I think that’s incredibly exciting, and for those who don’t know, it’s a programme run out of Rhodes House with Harris Manchester and I’ve already gotten comments from my two friends who are incredibly happy doing that. So, I think there are opportunities there to add other dimensions to the experience. But the fundamental experience, to have an opportunity to be a student in another country, in another culture, where the quality of the university of renown, is itself, I think, quite adequate to last and with great meaning and value in perpetuity. But all these other things, I think, will be icing on the cake. 

RW: Thank you. So important to hear. Is there anything that we’ve discussed, Elliot, that you would like to readdress at expand upon at this point? 

EG: Let me just think about that for a second, because as I mentioned, I was in Colombia this weekend, so I had time to scribble some things that I was going to talk about, and if you give me a second to think about things that I didn’t mention that I might like to. 

RW: Certainly. [2:00:00] 

EG: You know, we didn’t talk much about Oxford at the time, not that we need to, but it was a very dark and depressing time for England, although it didn’t matter to us. You know, getting back to my point about how Oxford is mecca for memory, because the structure of the place hasn’t changed much, but you know, the fact that there are the same pubs, you know, that we would walk to The Trout, or go to the Turf Tavern, or have a drink at The Bear, or occasionally, when we had a parent or a friend, we’d get in a car and go to Woodstock and see Blenheim Palace or go to The Bear there. You know, the fact that those things are all the same is really quite wonderful.  

RW: Would you share about your involvement with Nelson Mandela and the centennial reunion in South Africa? 

EG:  My connection with Nelson Mandela was very minor but in my life I don’t think there is anyone I’ve ever met of greater impact, consequence, privilege. And there were three separate occasions where I met him, but most vividly and extraordinarily was in his home, in his neighbourhood in Johannesburg, and that is entirely thanks to two wonderful South African friends, David Cohen (South Africa-at-Large & Balliol 1983), who remains a wonderful friend, and the late and much missed Shaun Johnson (South Africa-at-Large & St Catherine’s 1982). This was before the Mandela Rhodes Foundation was established and it was the aspiration of the Trust to have a link with the greatest African of the twentieth century and a remarkable human being in every way in Nelson Mandela, and I was asked to go along with them to meet with him and to talk about the prospects of getting his name linked with that of Cecil Rhodes. Many people were deeply sceptical that that could ever happen, when you think of Cecil Rhodes and what he stood for, although at the time – again, in his time – his views were quite different from the norm, which were horrific.  

But nonetheless, we had a wonderful time sitting together, and we spent a lot of time talking about soccer and he was charming. I was amazed by how quickly he accepted the notion of a connection and joining in with the name of Rhodes to establish that foundation. And it’s been my privilege to have a little bit of involvement with the Foundation from the beginning. In the last couple of years and again now, I’m the chief judge for the entrepreneurship prize that is sponsored by David Cohen’s generosity, open to Mandela Rhodes Scholars and Rhodes Scholars for their work that makes a difference in Africa, particularly for those most marginalised, and it’s been a great privilege. I was there in Cape Town for the 20th anniversary. But among all those privileges, because of that opportunity I had to make the connection to where the money originally came from and where Rhodes spent the bulk of his professional career, and then having the chance to meet one of the great men of my era, when the planning was made for the 100th reunion, I suggested to the Warden at the time, why not also do a celebration in Cape Town? And so there were two different celebrations. I mean, I had nothing to do with the actual planning of it, but I do think I was the one who conveyed the idea that it would be an appropriate time. And for those of who went to Cape Town and not just Oxford and London, it was a pretty amazing experience and it’s still a great opportunity to get back and connected to where all of the wealth came from, whatever one thinks about how the wealth was obtained. And that link is important and that’s also why I’m so excited about the Rhodes priority as we add Scholarships – and there are only so many we can add – it seems to me that the most important place to add them is Africa. So, I’m glad just to mention that connection which is the heart and founding of the Scholarships.  

RW: I’m so glad that you shared that with us. And I have to say that anyone I’ve talked to that went to the centennial in South Africa, it was a such a powerful experience for them and a lifelong memory, so thank you, for encouraging that experience. I have to say Elliot, from my perspective, this conversation has been more rewarding than I could have expected. It was so important, so valuable to be able to hear from you and for you to be able to share your stories and perspectives and insights with us forever, because this will be a part of the Rhodes Trust archive in perpetuity. So thank you, so much.  

EG: Well, it’s been a privilege, and it’s been great working with you on various things, Rachel. We’re lucky to have you. Sorry about your skiing accident. 

RW: Elliot, you mentioned that you were both involved with state and district selection, and then under you, we moved to a single-tier system. Can you explain that? 

EG: Yes. Well, first of all, to put it into perspective, it wasn’t a new idea for me, and I think it’s important for people to understand the reasons for the change and actually, how longstanding they were. Bill Barber – as I mentioned, I was his Assistant Secretary in the 1970s – and he had maps on his wall in Middletown, Connecticut about the ideal selection system, and it was very clear, the ideal selection system  was not the one that we had inherited for many decades. He saw many flaws with that, and he thought there should be changes in the system for purposes of equity, and even fairness, including moving to a single system. Move on to David Alexander, who was my predecessor. Bill was, I think, American Secretary for 11 or 12 years, David, I think, 17 years, something like that. He had some of the same maps moved from Middletown to Claremont, and we spent time talking about it, and indeed – I forgot – one or both at some time or another had tried to make some changes and had made some initial changes, but there was considerable resistance from Alumni, and they didn’t occur.  

So, why the changes? Well, keep in mind again, the original system for many decades, and the one that I went through, had eight districts, but-, First of all, of course, Rhodes in his will assigned the Scholarships, not to the United States of America, but to the states of the United States of America, and that’s why you introduced me as ‘Connecticut & Magdalen’. Since 1904, people have had a state and a college, but it’s not the United States. And so, the state was the basis of the initial part of the selection, and in the first 15 or 17 years or  until they were suspended for the war, there was no district competition, and that process was changed. Because, let’s face it, the number of applicants and the number of qualified applicants vary considerably between you name a state and, say, New York at the time. So, there had been concerns for decades, and there were some changes, including the creation of a district system in the first place, which was to address the problem of equity across the country. But there were various things that were happening that led both my predecessors to feel the same way that I did, that the process still could be more equitable.  

And so, several years into my tenure, with the permission, of course, of the Trustees and active involvement of the Warden, we moved to a single tier system of 16 districts, and that immediately addressed most of the problem dealing with numerical equity. The districts are basically created to be of roughly equal size of applicant pools, and we adjust those, looking at the rolling average of applications over three years, and occasionally move a state or even a part of state. One of the sources of inequity was that California itself had so many more applications.  It had maybe ten times the number of applications as some other single state did, yet, for a reason I’ll mention, the inequity was exacerbated because even at the district system, the representatives of the other states in that district had a hard time year after year choosing even two of the four from the state of California. So, it was essentially, the odds for Californians, just from a numerical perspective, were even longer than they were.  

So, the basic goal was to create equity. There are also practical reasons. I think some people assume that the reason for the change was to save money. It was not. Because, as I said, it was going back to 30 years earlier. The fact that the Trust at that time was in a difficult financial position may have assisted the Trustees to decide this was something to be done at that time. I really don’t know. But the basic reason was equity. But there were additional reasons for unfairness before, aside from the fact that, you know, unless one believes, like the US Senate, that Wyoming and California deserve the same number of senators and accordingly deserve the same number of Rhodes Scholars – and some people might believe that way – but  there was no evidence that Cecil Rhodes thought that way. I mean, there are various apocryphal stories about what Cecil Rhodes knew about the United States and whether he knew there were more than 13 states, and there are all kinds of jokes about all of that. Then there’s the argument people could make, ‘Well, you know, the whole point-, he had in mind states’ – there is no evidence that this is true, but nonetheless – that he wanted people to go back to state X, and that’s why it’s important to keep the numbers the way they were. But in fact, over 100 plus years of experience, people don’t go back to state. You look at where Rhodes Scholars live and there are many who are not back in the states of their selection. But there were also administrative difficulties putting together selection committees. There are some states with, you know, fewer Rhodes Scholars than you could put on a committee. And then, there was the inequity of the fact that if you happened to live in state A, B or C and you were a Rhodes Scholar, you got to serve on a selection committee almost every year. And then, there were also problems getting balance on committees when there were state committees, unless you were going to spend a lot of money to bring people from other states. You know, you want a balance of academic disciplines, ages gender – especially academic disciplines – and institutions, and if you have in state X-, if there are only seven Rhodes Scholars who live there and five of them are lawyers and two of them are doctors and all of them are between 60 and 75 and male and white, it’s not exactly optimal. And then, to bring in people from other states, they would say, ‘Well, why? I actually live in state X. Why do you not have me?’ So, there was that practical problem, and then there was another degree of unfairness that I witnessed myself, serving on a district committee. You think about how challenging it is for someone from, say, a less popular state, who takes very, very seriously the role, and they spend, it used to be a Tuesday evening and a Wednesday evening getting to know-, there may have only been six applicants in the whole state. They get to know them extremely well, and then they send two on to bigger city in the bigger state for the district interview. Well, it’s very hard being that secretary, and four or five years in a row, coming back from the bigger city and calling your colleagues on the committee and saying, ‘Yet again, we didn’t have one of ours selected.’ And human nature being what it is, that’s very tough. These people are objectively remarkable, these young people, and so there was an assumption that there must be some kind of bias against the small state, which there really wasn’t.  

But what sometimes happened in addition to that was that – and you can talk to some people who were on committees back then, and many will tell you this – sometimes, essentially, without even having to do it consciously, people from those less popular states would choose the fourth person – and let’s say it’s between the big state in the region and someone from a small state in the region – you know, maybe put the thumb on the scale a little bit for the person in the other small state where it might be the case. But the final thing that sometimes happened that people don’t recognise-, and people say, ‘Well, at least it’s a more discerning process, because they’re going through two filters,’ and I would say, from my experience and that of David and Bill before me, that it’s not necessarily more discerning. It’s not like the same group of seven people meet on two separate occasions, reflecting more carefully, and make a more discerning set of decisions. It was two different sets [10:00] of seven people, different questions, different circumstances, different subjective factors, coming to different conclusions. They were not necessarily better conclusions, but different conclusions, and I experienced on several occasions when a state committee would choose two people after getting to know them extraordinarily well, and would send them off to the district with good wishes, and feel very strongly that they had a very strong number one and a not very strong number two, and then, the district would elect number two and not number one, and they would be really shocked by that. And again, a reflection that, you know, it’s just a different decision. It’s not necessarily a better decision, and it’s a subjective decision. So, for these combination of reasons-, and, you know, I shouldn’t dismiss the logistical reason, although it was never the controlling reason. It was a minor reason. Just the logistical challenge of putting together 58 committees and the costs of that. But that was never the driving factor. The Trust had never complained about that and had covered all of those expenses.  

But I think ultimately it was just me coming to agree with my predecessors and the Trust agreeing with me at the time that it was just a fairer system. And the numbers that the committees review with 16 committees are no greater than the numbers that people used to review in states like New York and Pennsylvania and Texas and California. You know, there are anywhere between 50 and 70 candidates, and that’s what the bigger single states used to have, whereas some of the smaller states might only have five. They would interview everyone. And the last thing, there were other odd inequities that were hard to explain, and I won’t mention the names of some of these colleges, but there are several instances where I can show you two liberal arts colleges of comparable selectivity and quality, maybe within 50 miles of each other, in two different states. And back in the old system, those states were in two different districts, maybe one a very small state and one a very large state. You look at those two colleges, and one of them has had – I’m making this up, but these kinds of numbers – perhaps 20 or 30 Rhodes Scholars over 100 plus year. The other may have had one or none. And again, the same size and everything else. Is that right? Maybe it is, if you really believe in a purely state-based system, but the other effect of that is, over time-, one of the reasons I’ve encouraged another little reform I made, and it was over the opposition of many of the state secretaries of selection, I started requiring that they interview at least 14 finalists. And a number of the secretaries said, ‘Look, numbers eight through 14, based on our careful paper review, they’re not likely to win. We want to spend more time with the ones likely to win.’ And first of all, I had done some empirical work, and sometimes, number 14 or even number 16, is chosen. Not a lot, but sometimes, based on the paper rating versus the after interview rating. But my argument for having at least 14, getting back to that comparison of those two colleges issue, is that it is clear that the number of applicants from comparable institutions of same size and selectivity that we used to see was based on very much on the number of winners or the number of finalists, and if a college, year after year after year, nominates people and they never get selected, they just stop doing it. And there is going to be a year for almost any of these colleges where they would have a winner, and it is not right for them to have given up because the odds were so high. On the other extreme, there were some colleges that just knew that at that college in state X, everyone was going to be a finalist, so of course they’re going to nominate a lot of people every year. So, I’ve said too much about this, but it’s a relatively minor factor, but there are still many people who, either because that’s what they went through or they think it’s more discerning, who were unhappy. But much to my surprise, there was hardly any opposition to this when it was announced. But occasionally, one still sees someone unhappy with some other aspect of the selection process or outcomes, and we alluded to one of those. They point to that as a change that they don’t like. 

RW: Thank you for that really valuable explanation around that important part of our history, and I’m so grateful for your insight.