Back

Paul Dodyk

Michigan & Magdalen 1959

LISTEN TO THE INTERVIEW

Paul as a child

The picture shows Peter with two other men. They are all in suits and are talking to each other.

Paul trying to explain the law to Justice Potter Stewart.

Paul in 1961

A black-and-white picture showing Paul at a dinner with several other people. The table is laid out with crockery and cutlery.

Paul trying to impress some girls on the SS United States bound for Oxford.

The picture shows Paul in a leather jacket with trees in the background.

Paul trying to enjoy the English weather on a stroll along the Cherwell.

The picture shows Paul sitting with his law partner at a table with thick books in the background.

Paul and his law partner in 1979.

Born in Hamtramck, Michigan in 1937, Paul Dodyk attended Amherst College before going to Oxford to read for the MPhil in Economics. After Harvard Law School and clerking for the US Supreme Court, he began to teach and also later practise law, bringing cases that helped to make crucial advances in the US welfare system. As Chair of what is now the National Center for Law and Economic Justice, he maintained this focus on helping the less advantaged. He has also generously contributed his time and expertise to supporting the work of both Americans for Oxford and the Rhodes Trust. This narrative is excerpted from an interview with the Rhodes Trust on 16 November, 2023.

‘I grew up in a radical household’

My parents were both automobile workers and, more importantly, union members. They were, frankly, Marxists. My mother was, for a time, a salter for the Teamsters and my father was at times an officer of Dodge Local 3 of the UAW. On Labor Day, I would march in the parade with my parents, so the union movement was a very large part of my life. In fact, since I was born nine months after my father emerged from the 1937 sit down strike at Dodge Main, you could say I am the result of the union movement. Both of my parents were Ukrainian-speaking immigrants and Ukrainian was my birth language, and that background was an important part of my childhood. I still remember sitting with my father every Sunday while he taught me the Cyrillic alphabet alongside the Latin alphabet, and taught me to read in Ukrainian.

My father was very keen that my brother and I attain a higher education, because he had been denied that as a child. My parents were clear that they wanted us to have an education for education’s sake and to live a civilised, value-laden life, not for material gain. I went first to the public school in Hamtramnck, and this was in an area that was largely worker housing and, I would say, roughly 80% Slavic immigrant and 20% Black. My high school experience was radically different and that was largely to do with my brother. He was quite a bit older than I and had had a full scholarship to Harvard but had struggled to fit in there. He encouraged me to study and to read widely and he also told my parents that it was imperative that I go to boarding school so that I would be able to fit in socially at college. And so, I went on to live at the Cranbrook School, a beautifully situated Episcopalian boarding school in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, where I really thrived. I had dedicated teachers, and I was an eager student.

My brother also started me playing tennis, and in Hamtramck, I was lucky enough to encounter Jean Hoxie whose mission was to teach tennis to working class children to enable them to attain athletic scholarships, most often to the University of Michigan and Michigan State. I became part of her programme when I was around ten. By the time I entered Cranbrook, I was sufficiently proficient that I became captain of the Cranbrook team that won its interstate league championship twice in successive years. At Cranbrook, a number of my teachers had gone to Amherst, and they suggested that I should apply there, because they thought I would be happier there than at Harvard. So, I wound up going to Amherst, which I loved.

On applying for the Rhodes Scholarship

I had wonderful professors at Amherst, one of whom, Earl Latham, suggested I should apply for the Rhodes Scholarship. The idea of going to England and studying had great appeal for me, though when I applied and encountered my high school classmate Peter Dawkins (Michigan & Brasenose 1959) at the interview, I remember thinking my chances weren’t great, given that he had won the Heisman Trophy at West Point! But to my surprise, I was chosen alongside him.

Living conditions in England at the time we arrived there were still pretty straitened, because it wasn’t that long after the end of the Second World War. In my rooms at Magdalen College, there was no central heating, so we all developed an elaborate routine for hanging our clothes over the electric heater and then starting a hot bath running while we got back into bed and tried to stay warm until we could submerge ourselves in warm water and emerge to jump into our by-then heated clothes. I have to say, though, I thought it was wonderful, with the long foggy, coal-scented winter nights and my electric fire, sitting there and reading Keynes General Theory and many other economic treatises in the evenings. I have a very romantic memory of those times.

Because I was doing graduate work rather than an undergraduate degree, I worked with only one tutor, David Worswick, who was very brilliant. I was a strange quantity to him, because I had a good economics education but was radically inclined. He took a great interest in my youthful radicalism and prodded me gently toward a more mainstream view of the economy. We got to know each other very well, and when he came to Boston for a time, I saw him there too, and then back in England whenever I would return to Oxford in later years for events related to my work for the University. It was such a close relationship that I wound up giving the eulogy at his memorial in Magdalen chapel when he died.

I did so many things at Oxford alongside my academic work, including playing tennis for Magdalen. One of the highlights of my time as a Scholar was the travel. Friends and I went to Europe and travelled east into Hungary. We had a plan to go to Russia, and I wanted to visit my grandfather’s farm in Ukraine. It wasn’t quite as simple as that. After being stopped once on the road at the point of a machine gun, we were later arrested and then given a notice of expulsion. Apparently, I was a danger to the security of the Soviet Socialist Republic of Ukraine. I mean, really? Me, a student?

'Establishing the legal right to aid’

Because of the radical household I grew up in, I was always interested in politics. I was also very interested in economics and employment, not least because we had gone through periods of time where my parents had been laid off and the family’s economic resources, always marginal, were even tighter. I thought that by being a lawyer you could work to affect society in a positive direction. So, after Oxford, I went on to Harvard Law School. I had a good time there and did very well, although the harshness of the Socratic method sometimes reduced classmates of mine to tears. Later, when I began to teach law, I was determined to do things differently.

I was lucky enough to find myself clerking for Justice Potter Stewart of the United States Supreme Court, one of 19 such positions at the Court, becoming the first Stewart Clerk who was not a graduate of the Yale Law School. The clerkship was a wonderful introduction to working in the law. Justice Stewart relied heavily on his clerks to assist him in a wide range of tasks, including the analysis of the cases, researching the relevant law and preparing initial drafts of his opinions. Perhaps the most important case of that term was Griswold v. Connecticut in which the Supreme Court struck down a Connecticut law penalizing the purchase of contraceptives, holding that the law infringed a constitutional right of privacy. It was the first case recognizing the right of privacy which ultimately led to Roe v Wade. On a more personal note, Justice Stewart. much to his chagrin, became widely known for his dictum in a pornography case in which he said: "I can't define it, but I know it when I see it." Confronted with a pornography case, I asked Justice Stewart: "I know you can't define it, but can you at least tell me what it looks like?" So now I am the keeper of Justice Stewart's secret. Being in that atmosphere was a wonderful experience. Afterwards, I went on to teach at Columbia Law School, which I really enjoyed. I taught the first course in any American law school on law and poverty. I also became the faculty director of what is now called the National Center for Law and Economic Justice. That is when I started doing litigation on behalf of welfare recipients.

Of all the things I have done, the work I am most proud of is my involvement in extending the reach of Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC). During the late 1960s and early 1970s, we won a string of cases in the Supreme Court which established that qualified persons had a legally enforceable right to AFDC, not a gratuity subject to bureaucratic dismissal; that those rights could not be cancelled without a prior due process hearing, (that in the famous case of Goldberg v. Kelley which is taught in law schools throughout the country) as well as a number of cases striking down arbitrary limitations on an AFDC recipient’s right to assistance. In cooperation with the nascent Welfare Rights Movement, we also worked to purge the social stigma then besmirching the receipt of welfare resulting in a significant expansion of the effectiveness of AFDC. Although I pursued a variety of cases on behalf of a multitude of clients in my later career, my work for the Center, on whose board I continue to serve, has embodied my life-long commitment to making the world a better place for those most in need.

Toward the end of my career in litigation, I was recruited by Nick Katzenbach to join Americans for Oxford (AFO) and served as Chairman from the late 1990s through the first decade of the 2000s. The work I did there was part of a wider effort to boost alumni contributions. The AFO prospered, so that from a position in late 1990s and early 2000s when we raised about $5 million a year, in 2013 we raised as much as $40 million a year. The AFO has continued to secure ever increasing contributions for Oxford to the point where contributions from the United States at times exceed those from England. The work to make that happen was a sort of contribution to the welfare of Oxford, which I was very glad to be able to make.

‘Pursue your dream, but understand that you are the recipient of a great privilege’

I look back on my time at Oxford as a very important part of my intellectual maturation. I think much of the world view that I came to after I left home was formed during those years. In my view, the Rhodes Scholarship gives people a unique opportunity to realise their talents and to go on and be effective in the roles they choose to play.

To current and future Scholars, I would say, pursue your life’s dream, but with a continuing understanding that you are the recipients of a great privilege. Fighting the world’s fight involves primarily, most importantly, working for the benefit of those most in need of the kinds of significant support and social change which those of us who have been privileged to receive a Rhodes Scholarship can achieve.

Now that I am fully retired, my focus is very much on my family – my wife, Delight, our daughters Phebe and Michaela and our grandchildren. After our children were launched, Delight went on to get her Masters and PhD and pioneer, teaching and writing, in the then-emerging field of Women’s History. My daughter Phebe is a nurse and my daughter Michaela is a schoolteacher, and one of our grandchildren, Jack, is an ambulance driver who now organises for the Teamsters. So, I suppose you could say that the values I inherited from my parents and developed at Oxford have been transmitted down the family tree!

Transcript

Interviewee: Paul Dodyk (Michigan & Magdalen 1959) [hereafter 'PD'] Moderator 1: Jamie Byron Geller [hereafter 'JBG']

Date of interview: November 16, 2023

[begins 00:02]

JBG: This is Jamie Byron Geller on behalf of the Rhodes Trust and I am here with Paul Dodyk (Michigan & Magdalen 1959), and we are starting the oral history interview process, having a conversation today to inform our conversation at a later date, to formally record Paul's oral history interview. So, thank you, Paul, for joining us in the project.

PD: My pleasure.

JBG: Would you mind stating your full name for the recording? PD: My name is Paul Michael Dodyk.

JBG: And do I have your permission to record this interview today? PD: You do.

JBG: So, Paul, just to set the stage, where are we having our conversation today? PD: In our apartment on the Charles River Cambridge, Massachusetts.

JBG: Okay. And is that home?

PD: That is, along with a house in the Berkshires in a community where my wife's family settled in the 1920s and where we built a new house in the same area. So, this is our home now, but prior to that, we lived for 50 years in Ridgewood, New Jersey.

JBG: So, starting at the beginning, Paul, will you tell us about when and where you were born?

PD: I was born in Hamtramck, Michigan, in December 1937. JBG: And do you have any siblings?

PD: I have a brother who is 13 years older than I am, whose name is Roman. He is deceased. JBG: And what was your family life like, growing up in Michigan?

PD: It was quite different. We lived in a second-floor flat, for which my mother paid $12 a

month, and we had a boarder to help us with the rental, Phillip, whom I was told to address as my uncle. My parents were both automobile workers and, more importantly, union members. My mother was, for a time, a salter for the Teamsters, which meant that - she was a seamstress - she would get a job in a factory and talk up the Teamsters. And then, when I was a little boy, in the evening, some men would show up at our apartment and say, 'Lena, is it time? ls it time?' And she would either say, 'Yes, it's time,' or 'No'. And if it were time, then these men would go in to the owner of the factory and say they were going to have an election, to have a union. And mother did that for a number of years. The family was afraid that she would be hurt eventually, and so, she became a seamstress at the Cadillac motor company and sewed seat covers for the Cadillacs and was no longer as active in the union movement. It was, however, a very large part of her life, illustrated by the fact that, as she was nearing the end of her days, she was hallucinating about Jimmy Hoffa, and it took a number of weeks for us to dispel those hallucinations about her relationship with Jimmy Hoffa from her memory, so she could rest easy. My father belonged to the Dodge Local number 3 of the UAW. Walter Reuther was a hero in our household. My father was on what's called the 'Flying Squadron' of Dodge Local 3, and they took the joy out of strike-breaking for the UAW. On Labour Day, I would march in the Labour Day parade with the unions and my parents, so the union movement was a very large part of my life. Uncle Phillip was very kind to me. He taught me how to play poker, which we would do when my mother was not around, because she disapproved, and he also loved to play the ponies, and if he won, he would slip a quarter into one of my pockets without my mother noticing. And when he died, he left me all of his belongings, which consisted of a $1,000-dollar bond and some used clothes.

JBG: Wow.

PD: So, that's how I grew up, and my parents were, frankly, Marxists, and so, I was raised on a very leftish type background, very pro-union. In fact, my birth is related to the union movement, because in 1937, there was a sit-down strike in Dodge and my father was in the plant. My mother used to go down and hand food through the fence for the workers. And I was born in December of 1937, exactly nine months after the sit-down strike ended, when my father came home.

JBG: And had your parents lived in Michigan for quite some time before?

PD: My father, when he left the Ukraine in 1912, went first to Canada, because his older brother, who had left in 1910, had settled in Manitoba. And my father worked for about ten years laying track for the railway and working on combine crews and construction. And then, my mother was a nurse's aide, working in the hospital in Winnipeg, and they met each other and married within a period of about six weeks and then came to Detroit, because Ford was paying $5 a day, which was considerably more than my father was making at his various itinerant jobs. And so, they came to Detroit. My father went to work for Ford initially. He was being shaken down by the foreman for part of his wages and my father struck the foreman in the head with a car door and was, of course, fired. He then got a job at Dodge Main, where he stayed for 40 years.

JBG: Wow. And would you mind sharing, Paul, a little bit about your earliest educational experiences?

PD: Yes. My earliest educational experience, and I still have the first book I read-, my birth language is Ukrainian, not English, and I have a book that's called 'Bukvar i persha chitanka', which is a Ukrainian alphabet and first reader. And every Sunday, late morning or afternoon, I would be sat down by my father at about the age of four and taught the alphabet, and also taught the Latin alphabet, but chiefly the Cyrillic alphabet, and taught to read in Ukrainian, which I could do, sort of, when I went to public school. And I went to the public school in Hamtramck, Michigan, which was a town of about 50,000 which is inside the city of Detroit, which is largely worker housing. It was, when I was there, about 80% Slavic and 20% black, and we lived about half a block east of one of the major north-south roads which divided where the whites lived from the very few places that African Americans could live in Detroit at the time. There was about a block of housing on the other side of the road where they lived, which deteriorated into shacks which abutted a railroad yard where there were homeless people living. And so, our classes were about, I would say, 80% Slavic immigrant and 20% black, and I had some very good friends who were both white and black when I was a kid growing up.

JBG: And what about your high school experience?

PD: My high school experience had to do with my brother. He is 13 years older than I was, and he had a full scholarship to Harvard, because we both tested well and my father was very eager that we attain a higher education, because he was denied that when he was a child. He did quite well in primary school and told his mother that he wanted to go to the gymnasium, which was the high school in Eastern Europe, and his mother said that she had to go talk to the village priest. And she came back, my father was eagerly waiting, of course, and she said that the priest said that for people like him, he should be a soldier in the king's army and be a farmer like his father and not go to the gymnasium. So, he had an intense interest in his sons' being educated, not for material purposes [10:00]. Tt was, you know, for knowledge alone, not really related to how much money you might make. Anyway, my brother had a full scholarship and he went to Harvard, and unfortunately, he could not adjust socially, so after three years, he returned to live with my parents in Hamtramck, and he's the one who undertook the supervision of my education, which meant from the age of about nine or ten, I'd read 50 pages a day, four nights a week. And it was largely classic English literature, sometimes non-fiction. I remember reading a long history of the First World War. And Roman would quiz me about it.

The other thing that he did was to tell my parents that it was imperative that I go to a boarding school, so that I would be able to fit in socially to the culture of whatever college I might go to. And he prepared me to basically go to Cranbrook, which is an Episcopalian boarding school outside of the boundaries of Detroit, in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. And in addition to my reading, one of the other things he did was to say, 'Paul, if you 're going to get a scholarship, you have to have a sport.' So, he started me playing tennis. Now, fortuitously, Hamtramck had a woman by the name of Jean Hoxie, who made it her practice to teach immigrant kids how to play tennis, and she was extremely successful, and I became part of her programme from the age of about ten or 11. And I basically spent my summers on her tennis court, first learning and then teaching in her school, which was in a public park in Hamtramck, Michigan. So, by the time I got to high school, I was a pretty good tennis player. I can remember going to take the tests and sit for an oral examination with my brother. He told me not to let the cat get my tongue, I remember, which I didn't. And so I wound up on a full scholarship to Cranbrook School, where I really thrived. It was a beautiful school, they had dedicated teachers, and I was an eager student. It was perfect for me. So, I became a senior prefect, in charge of one of the dormitories, when I was a senior, and captain of the tennis team, and I had a generally excellent time there. And it turned out that my housemaster, my tennis coach and two of my English teachers had gone to Amherst, and the idea was that I was going to go to Harvard, like my brother did, but my tennis coach, in particular, said, 'You know, you really shouldn't go to Harvard, because you're not going to be as happy there as you would be at Amherst. You should go someplace where you'll know everybody and they'll know you and you'll have a community that you can, sort of, belong to.' And since Cranbrook worked very well for me, I opted to go to Amherst, and I did get a full scholarship.

My parents were disappointed, but by that time, they viewed their sons as probably being better suited to orchestrate their assimilation into American society, so they didn't give me a hard time about it at all. And so, I wound up going to Amherst, which I loved, and I did very well there academically and had wonderful professors: Earl Latham in political science and Ben Ziegler in political science, Collery in economics, Kennick in philosophy, and so I very much enjoyed studying there. I was also president of my class and my fraternity and I played on the tennis team for the college and also ran cross-country there, and was, in my senior year, chosen to be the First Citizen of the college, which is the award given to the person whom the faculty deems best incorporates the values of the college with respect to learning and treatment of other people. So, it was a terrifically appropriate selection that my tennis coach had urged on me, and it was Earl Latham, who was my thesis advisor, who first of all got me a job working for Senator Hubert Humphrey the summer after my junior year, and then said I really ought to apply for the Rhodes Scholarship, which I did, and I can remember going to Ann Arbor, and to my great surprise, meeting my classmate, Peter Dawkins (Michigan & Brasenose 1959), which I took to be probably not a great indication for my prospects, because Peter won the Reisman Trophy at West Point. But anyway, we went to Ann Arbor together, and much to our surprise, or my surprise, I should say, we were both chosen as Scholars there and again in Chicago.

JBG: So, I just want to clarify. When you say that Pete Dawkins was your classmate, you mean your high school classmate?

PD: Yes, my high school classmate. Exactly. There were about 60 kids in our class, and Peter was on the football team, obviously, and I was captain of the tennis team, and we were friends, but not close friends. And then, we celebrated that night in Chicago and basically went home and prepared to go to England.

JBG: Would you mind if we jump back for a moment, Paul, to your childhood growing up in Michigan. I'm curious if at the time if you had an expectation of the direction that your career might bring you.

PD: Yes. For whatever reason, I always thought I was going to be a lawyer. JBG: What attracted you to being a lawyer?

PD: Well, I was very interested in political matters, as you might suppose, because I was part of a very radical household, and I, sort of, inherited those values. And I thought that by being a lawyer you could accomplish significant work that was not only limited to the particular instance that you were working in, but more generally to affect your society in a positive direction, and that's the reason I chose being a lawyer. I was also very interested in economics, because my parents did go through periods of time when they were laid off and we didn't have any money, or much money, and so, I was very interested in employment, unemployment and the business cycle. So, I sort of minored in economics when I was at Amherst, which became the focus of my studies at Oxford, because, unlike a lot of the folks in my class, who took PPE, I took a master's in economics, rather than do the PPE degree.

JBG: And you touched on some encouragement to apply for the Rhodes. Would you mind sharing a little bit more about that?

PD: Yes. Earl Latham said that he thought I would benefit from further education and that the Rhodes was a very important and distinguished award, and he thought, in light of what I had done at Amherst, that I was pretty well positioned to secure one. And the idea of going to England and studying there of course had great appeal, and so, I was delighted to take his advice.

JBG: And what do you recall from the journey to Oxford?

PD: Well, my journey was a little bit different than most. I really didn't realise the significance of the joint sailing, and so, I went early to Europe on the SS United States and travelled in Scandinavia with two people from my Amherst class who were also studying in England, Joe Tulchin and Charlie Yeagen, and we travelled in Scandinavia before I took up residence at Magdalen College, to which I had been admitted at Oxford.

JBG: Okay. And did you live in college, in Magdalen? PD: I did. Both years. Yes.

JBG: Okay. And what do you recall about that experience?

PD: Well, it was an extremely fortuitous experience for me, because as a graduate student, unlike [20:00] undergraduates, you get one tutor, and David Worswick was my tutor, one of the Magdalen tutors in economics. And I was a very strange quantity to him, because I had a fairly good economics education at Amherst, but I was also very radically inclined, and David, I think, took a lot of personal interest in me, because while he also was leftish, he was a little bit concerned about how leftish I might be. So that, not only was he my sole tutor, but I was invited to his home and got to know him, and fortuitously, after I took my degree, he came to Boston when I was at the Harvard Law School, and so we spent another year together. And I've had opportunities, particularly since I became the chairman of Americans for Oxford, to go back to England, and I would see him on every occasion. It was a relationship such that I would up giving the eulogy at his memorial in chapel when he died.

JBG:Wow.

PD: And his daughters always told me how fond he was of his role in my tutorial experience. I remember particularly an incident where I took a four-field to qualify for my MPhil exam, and I was prepared to go in for my oral examinations, and the chairman of my board looked at me and said, 'Mr Dodyk, thank you for your examination. We all enjoyed reading it.

You're awarded an MPhil in Economics with distinction.' And that was the sum and substance of my oral examination. I was, of course, delighted, and I went back to tell David, and David said to me, 'Well, you know Paul, that's very nice and you should be proud of that, but I think in all honesty, I should tell you that I told your examiners that if they gave you the least opening, it would be a very long afternoon.' I take that as a lesson in humility.

JBG: I'm curious. Was living in Oxford your first experience living outside the US? PD:Yes.

JBG: Okay. What was that experience like?

PD: Well, you have to realise that when we got there in 1959, it was not that long after the Second World War, so conditions in England were really still pretty straitened, and it was a

different place. Just to give you an example, there was no central heating in those buildings, and so, in the mornings, your routine was, you would get out of bed and tum on your electric heater and you would have your clothes hung over a chair near the heater, and then you would tum on the water in your bathtub, and then you would get back into bed, under your covers, because it was so cold. And then, when you heard the water in the bathtub being about where it should be, you would leap out of bed and jump into the bath, right, to get your body temperature up a little, and then dress in front of this electric fire, and then, sort of, be off on your day. And also, the air in London and often in Oxford was very foggy and, you know, tinged with coal smoke, and I remember in particular there were long nights, and some people might find that difficult in the winter-time, with something called Seasonal Affective Disorder. Well, I didn't have that at all. I thought it was wonderful, to be in the dark and to have my electric fire and to read my economics books and to prepare for being with David later in the week. So, I have a very, sort of, romantic memory of those times when conditions in England were still pretty stringent.

JBG: And did you continue playing tennis? Did you participate in other activities?

PD: I did, and I played tennis for Magdalen, and I made some very good friendships when I was there too. In particular, Deane Terrell (South Australia & Magdalen 1959) was in my graduate economics programme. He was also at Magdalen, and he's an Australian, a Rhodes Scholar, who became provost of ANU in Canberra, ultimately. And since he and I were studying the same course, we were, of course, very close, and every afternoon, to make sure we didn't spend all our time reading, we would play squash against each other. And then, there was another student from the United States at Magdalen, whom I became quite friendly with, by the name of Stephen Breyer, who was a Marshall Scholar from California, and Stephen and I actually spent six very formative years together, because we were two years together at Oxford, during the middle summer of which, he and I travelled Europe together, wherein lies another tale. And then, we were both in the Harvard Law School. I very cleverly arranged to have my first child two weeks before my first-year exams, so when my mother in-law moved in to my half of the bed in the attic that we were living in in Cambridge, I slept on Steve Breyer's floor. And we had a lunch or two and commiserated about how well we had done so far but not really feeling very confident about what was happening in law school. But we both, fortunately, wound up on the Law Review, which positioned us, in addition to other aspects, to both clerk on the Supreme Court, I for Potter Stewart, and he for Arthur Goldberg.

JBG: Wow.

PD: So, Steve and I spent six very formative years together, during which time we formed a very close friendship, and I was pleased to be able to assist in a minor way when he was appointed to the Supreme Court of the United States.

JBG: Amazing. You alluded to some travel. Was this during your Oxford experience? PD: Yes.

JBG: And you travelled to Scandinavia prior to starting?

PD: Right. And then the first summer, what happened was, Steve and I - he had a beat-up old Simca - travelled through France, down to the Mediterranean and we travelled east into Hungary. This was after the rebellion in 1956. There was a student at Magdalen whom we befriended, so we went to Budapest and stayed with his parents, who told us about the

difficulty of living under the communist regime in Hungary. And then, we were going to Russia. I wanted to visit my grandfather's farm. And I had applied for a visa to do that in London, but I was told that I could get that when I was in the Ukraine. So, Steve and I went from Hungary into Czechoslovakia and then into the Ukraine. When I got to Lviv, I was told that I should have applied for the visa to visit my grandfather's farm in London, contradictory to what they had told me. So, being an American post-adolescent with a fair amount of confidence, I was going to go to the farm anyway. So, Steve and I and two of my cousins who were in the back seat drove east toward Rovno and then turned north towards the village of what had been Smorzhiv but was destroyed during the Second World War. And what should I see on the road ahead of me but a machine-gun on a truck, pointed at my direction. So, I of course stopped the car and got out, at which point, four soldiers came out of a ditch with their rifles pointed at me and Steve, who was on the other side of the car. And so, we put up our hands and backed against the car. We were put under arrest for deviating from the road to Kiev.

JBG: Wow.

PD: And so, we were taken to the village, and I started speaking Ukrainian to one of the passers-by while the sergeant-at-arms went into the police station. And then I found another person and by the time he got out of the police station there were about 15 people talking to me, some of whom knew my family, and the [30:00] police officer looked at what was happening and he came down to me and he said, 'You get out of here right now. Get back in your car and leave before we have trouble.' So, Steve and I resumed our travels to Kiev where we were for a few days living in a tent city on the banks of the Dnieper River, and Stephen, as was his wont, had been flirting with one of the Ukrainian girls and one afternoon, we were in a tent and the girl came up to me and said, 'Be careful. They're coming. They're coming.' And so, the suits showed up again, arrested us, and took us to an office in Kiev and gave us a notice of expulsion, claiming that I was a danger to the security of the Soviet Socialist Republic of the Ukraine. I mean, really? Me? A student?

JBG: Wow.

PD: So, we were given 24 hours to leave the Soviet Union, which we did, and we went down to the embassy in Vienna, our embassy, to report what had happened so that no false stories could be told about what we were actually doing. I then took the train-, well, we went, actually, to a town in Austria -- Klagenfurt -- to recuperate for a while and then parted, and I took the train to Amsterdam and stayed there for a little bit before returning to Oxford and beginning to study in August for the second year. So, that was, sort of, the sum total of my travels in Europe, because after I graduated from Oxford, I went back to the United States, married Delight, whom I had dated while I was at Amherst, and then we made tracks for the Harvard Law School. So, we lived in Cambridge back then from 1961 to 1964.

JBG: So, had you applied to Harvard from Oxford? PD:Yes.

JBG: Okay, so you knew you were coming here. PD: Yes, I did.

JBG: And what was your law school experience like?

PD: Well, it was actually great. However, they practised what the students called 'Socratic brutality', meaning that it was not a lecture form but a question-and-answer form of teaching, and it could be quite harsh. Now, Steve and I had no difficulty. We, in effect, had had a graduate education and we were fully prepared to joust with the professors. That was not true of everybody, and there were instances in which classmates of mine were reduced to tears because of the harshness of the interchange. But Steve and I did very well in law school. We were on the Law Review, we had a good time, we acquired friends at the law school. And then it was customary to take a federal clerkship, and typically, your first clerkship is in the Court of Appeals, but there is an off-chance that you might get to the Supreme Court. Not a very great chance. But, in any event, I interviewed with Justice Stewart and Justice White, and had a very good interview with both people. Justice White, in particular, took quite a shine to the fact-, he knew who Jean Hoxie was, who was my original tennis teacher in Hamtramck, because she was a legend, and rather than talk about the law, he wanted to talk

about Jean Hoxie and tennis, which was fine. And then, very much to my surprise, because up until that time, Potter Stewart had only taken clerks from Yale, he offered me a clerkship. And I have to think that my Oxford experience probably played a role in that, because obviously, at that point, I had had the distinction of being a Rhodes Scholar, and one of Stewart's clerks, Alan Novak, had gone to Oxford as well. So, I suspect, although I do not know, that that was probably influential in getting this extraordinary opportunity to clerk for Potter Stewart.

JBG: Wow. And so, you mentioned that your first daughter was born during your first year of law school?

PD: During my first year. Indeed.

JBG: Okay. And so, tell me more about that clerkship experience.

PD: Well, Potter Stewart was wonderful to work for. There were two clerks. Monroe Price, from Yale was my co-clerk, and we became fast friends, and we divided the cases between the two of us in half, and you would work with the justice. First of all, you would make recommendations as to what cases they should hear. The justice would go to conference and he would come back after the conference and tell us what had happened at the conference and most importantly what opinions he had to write and what votes he had and how the cases came out. I remember in particular one of the cases I was working on became famous. It was called Griswold v. Connecticut, which involved a Connecticut statue which made it unlawful to purchase contraceptives. And the Supreme Court, in the first of the set of decisions that resulted in Roe v. Wade, decided to hold that law unconstitutional. But Potter Stewart, who was quite a literalist, decided that since there was nothing in the Constitution which directly read on the subject, that he would dissent. And I remember that Justice Black also dissented. The vote was seven to two. And during that period of time, Justice Black, whose chambers were adjacent to ours, would walk down the hall in the afternoon, and he wouldn't come in-, He came into Stewart's offices through the door that opened directly into the clerks' office, not through the secretary's office which was the entrance to Justice Stewart's chambers. And he'd come over to me and say, 'Paul, how is Potter? Is he strong? Is he strong?' meaning, was he wavering on the dissent? And I would say, 'Justice Black, you have nothing to worry about. He is strong.' So, Justice Stewart gave us ample opportunity to draft opinions, to do research. Of course, the final product was his. He would edit conscientiously. But he was a very kind and supportive justice to work for, so it was a wonderful experience?

JBG: Wow. How long was that clerkship?

PD: Well, you had the option then of being there for a year or two years. But by that time, that year, we decided we'd have our second child. I felt the need to, you know, start getting established in the law, and so I decided I wanted to teach rather than practise, because I was very interested in the way they taught at Harvard but I thought it could be done in a kinder, gentler way. And so, I applied to-, I didn't apply, but in those days, the deans of the law schools would come through, or a representative, and try to get Supreme Court clerks to come teach, and my best offers were at Columbia and Stanford. And so, because we didn't' want to go to the West Coast - Delight, my wife, and I - I took a position as an assistant professor at the Columbia Law School.

JBG: Okay. If you don't mind, I'm curious to pause for a moment, because you shared the emphasis that your father put on education growing up, and I'm curious about your family's thoughts around your journey from Amherst, to Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar, to Harvard Law, to a Supreme Court clerkship, and what their feelings were about that.

PD: Well, you know, my parents spoke Ukrainian, and they spoke English only with a heavy accent, and, while they were, as you might imagine, proud of what their sons had done, I don't think they really understood, in any granular sense, the significance of that. They were, kind of, bemused that I should go to Oxford, although when we went originally, they thought it was a fine place, very attractive [40:00]. But to give you some sense of what my parents knew, when we passed a sign to Mount Holyoke College, my mother said to my father, 'I didn't realise that Holochko had that kind of money.' Holochko being a Ukrainian whom she knew, because of the similarity of his name and 'Holyoke', and the prospect that Holochko could have anything to do with Holyoke was, sort of, comic, right? So, they didn't really fully understand, but they knew it was an achievement. And as I said, my parents never, never pressed us to make money. They wanted us to have an educated, civilised, value-laden life, period. Yes.

JBG: Okay. And so, you moved to New Jersey, yourself and Delight. And how old are your children at this point?

PD: At this point? Phoebe was born in '62, so in '65, she was three, and Michaela was a newborn.

JBG: Okay. And what was that experience at Columbia like?

PD: It was wonderful. I had the best time. I really enjoyed teaching. I taught taxation, corporations, and then I started teaching the first course in any American law school on law and poverty. Given my background, I was very concerned about the condition of people who were less advantaged, and so, I was enabled to teach that course. And this was also during Johnson's War on Poverty, so I became affiliated with something which is now called the National Center for Law and Economic Justice, but was then called The Center for-, I don't have the exact name. I'd have to look it up. And I started doing litigation on behalf of welfare recipients through my relationship with the Center. The Center at the time was centred in the School of Social Work under a couple of famous professors there by the name of Cloward and Piven, and Ed Sparer, who went on to achieve considerable fame was the director of the Center and I did a great deal of litigation for them in my years at Columbia, trying, basically, to reform what was called AFDC, Aid to Families with Dependent Children. And Ed got a tenure-track job down at UPenn, and so, he left New York and somewhat to my surprise, I got a call from the folks in Washington, saying unless I took over the Center myself and moved it into the law school, they were going to close it.

So, I became the director of the Center for Law and Economic Justice, which was then a centre in the law school. And the Center was a group of half a dozen lawyers, funded by the federal government, which was devoted at the time to the representation of welfare recipients, and our goal was to increase the reach of AFDC so it reached more people. That was the focus of the Center's activity. And I should say that it was probably the most exciting period ofmy time in the law, because we succeeded beyond all expectations. I remember, first of all, a case I worked on called King v. Smith. Over the years, the social welfare administrations had assumed that they had the power to grant or withhold aid to a recipient, and my reading of the statute was that no, that's not right, that you have a legally enforceable right, if you met the requirements, to receive AFDC. And so, the first case established that right, that it was a right of a welfare recipient. Then the most famous case that we had in those years was called Goldberg v. Kelly, which established that before you could take a welfare recipient's rights away, you had to have a hearing, which satisfied the elements of due process. You couldn't just revoke it on the basis of an administrative decision.

Then there were numerous restrictions on the attainment of welfare and limitations which disadvantaged some welfare recipients, which we believed to be unfair. So, we pioneered a lawsuit against the two-year residence requirement, which was common in the United States, that you had to live in a state for two years before you could get welfare, and in a brilliant opinion by Justice Brennan, he voided that, because it denied equal protection to the women and children whom they excluded who had not been resident for two years. So, the states were required to give welfare to a woman as soon as she moved to the state. So, we were using the equal protection clause to expand the range of welfare by striking down various restrictions, like the residence requirement. From there, we moved on to something called the family maximum. In many states, welfare to a family was capped if you had four children. If you had five or six children, it wouldn't increase. So, we attacked the validity of the family maximum as denying equal protection to the fifth, sixth and seventh children, and we won, and there was a brilliant opinion by Brennan which enforced the notion that you had to treat all these children equally.

So, it was a very exciting time to be engaged in that kind of litigation. There were other

issues which we litigated which I won't, sort of, bore you with, but during that period of time, the welfare rolls exploded by millions and millions, because it had become not, sort of, something that you apply for in shame, but a legal right, just like unemployment compensation. Then, unhappily, in the early '70s as the Court was drifting right, we sustained a very substantial defeat in an opinion unfortunately written by Potter Stewart, which basically said that we couldn't use the equal protection clause any further to expand the right of people to receive AFDC. That decision came on the heels of a remarkable case that we had in Iowa, Porter v. Dimery, in which a judge in Iowa actually said, 'Well, you know, you're right. You can't arbitrarily exclude people from AFDC. As a matter of fact, you can't exclude a family just because the woman remains married.' And so, it makes no difference whether there was a couple or a single parent applying for AFDC, and the law had limited it to single parents for AFDC. We thought that a magnificent expansion.

JBG: Yes.

PD: But it all went down the tubes when the Stewart opinion said, basically, 'Yes, it is a legal right' but these policies, such as imposing a family maximum, were within the discretion of the social welfare administration, and that, sort of, brought a halt to that pattern a litigation.

About that time-, I had worked after my second summer for the firm ofCravath, Swaine & Moore in New York City, which is a big New York City law firm, and I had taught for four

years and taken a leave to try to get some more practical experience. And as it happened, Cravath's largest client at the time was the IBM Corporation, which had been sued by the United States Government in a lawsuit to break up IBM into a number of different pieces, and I was about at the end of my two years there when the firm looked around and decided that they were not happy with the number of younger litigation partners they had. So, I was made a partner [50:00], with the understanding that I would work on the IBM litigation, and that was at the time the biggest case in the federal system and had huge ramifications for the computer industry.

JBG: And how old were you at that point, Paul? PD: I was- let me see- 35.

JBG: Wow.

PD: 35. Right. So, Tom Barr was the lead attorney and Dave Boies and I were his lieutenants, and what we didn't know at the time was that it was going to take ten years to win that case.

JBG: Wow. Wow.

PD: So, from 1973 to, in my case, to the late 1970s, I worked on the IBM litigation, and toward the end of my tenure there, I was drafted to be the recruiting partner for the law firm, and came back to the general practice of the law firm. We won the case in 1981, and during this period of the time, I had to recede from my duties as head of the Center for Law and Economic Justice, as you might imagine, because I was engaged in other things. Now fortunately, my pro bona work at Columbia got me a lot of opportunities to continue to do pro bona work of a principled kind. But then what happened was in the 1990s, the head of the Center for Law and Economic Justice came back to me and it turned out that in the revision of the welfare approach that was taken when Clinton and Newt Gingrich made this deal to change AFDC into Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, they also took away the funding from the Center. It had been a federally funded institution. So, I became the chairman of the Center at that point and reconstituted it as a privately funded organisation, which exists today with a budget of about $2 million, and I was chair of that from the mid '90s into the early years of this century, as my seniority at the law firm permitted me to take on other responsibilities, and that was one of the principal things we did was to save the Center after it lost its federal funding, and we continued to litigate on behalf of poor clients, as it does to this day.

It was also during that period of time when I got a call from Nick Katzenbach (New Jersey & Balliol 1947). Nick had been the general counsel of IBM when we were defending IBM and we became close friends, and Nick recruited me to join Americans for Oxford, which is the institution which oversees Oxford's fundraising in North America. Unbeknownst to me at the time, it was Nick's plan to resign as chairman, and so, about a year after I joined the board, I found that I was the chairman and Nick had resigned, and the Americans for Oxford had just gone through a capital campaign and its activities had declined, so that we were raising about

$5 million a year. And so, I became chairman of that and was determined to increase the activities of that organisation, and of course, largely due to the work of the people whom we hired, the AFO prospered and I think I showed you the chart that showed that we increased contributions in the '90s and early part of the century, so that from a position where we had around $5 million, in 2013 we raised as much as $40 million in a year, which was, of course, our objective.

JBG: Amazing.

PD: And then, as time went on, I realised that both the Americans for Oxford and the Center would be better off to have younger leadership, so I recruited Jennifer Selendy to become the next chair of the Center for Law and Economic Justice and then Neil Simpkins to be the chairman of Americans for Oxford, as I was, sort of, deep in my retirement years.

JBG: Wow. So, I just want to make sure I understand the timeline correctly. PD: Right.

JBG: You said your work on the case with IBM ended in the late '70s?

PD: Well, I continued to work some on the case, but the case itself ended in 1981. JBG:Wow.

PD: And I was by that time the recruiting partner at Cravath and had left that litigation. Yes.

JBG: Okay. And what did the years up to your retirement look like?

PD: Well, the years up to my retirement looked like a variety of cases which involved working for different clients. Obviously, after we won the IBM case, we didn't have to recruit for clients. They came to us. So, I represented a number of large corporations during my tenure there, including General Motors, CIBA-Geigy, Cummins Engine, Mannesmann, PPG, and Crane Plumbing. But perhaps more interesting were a couple of cases which I was asked to do, one of which involved the death penalty in the United States. My dates are going to be a little fuzzy here, but in the '80s, the Supreme Court had struck down the death penalty statutes in the states and the federal government, because they allowed the juries too much discretion in deciding who was going to die. The Federal Government had passed a new death penalty statute and, much to my surprise, I was called up by someone at the Southern Poverty Law Center who was heavily engaged in death penalty litigation and he asked whether I would be interested in representing Ronald Chandler who had been sentenced to death under the new federal law.

[Part 1 recording ends 57:31. Part 2 recording begins 00:06]

I had represented the New York City Bar Association in challenging the constitutionality of the new federal death penalty statute, in a case called United States v. Pitera in the eastern district of New York, and the folks who were really spearheading the attack on the death penalty litigation in the Southern Poverty Law Center called me up to represent Ronald Chandler, who had been sentenced to death in connection with a murder in Alabama.

JBG: Wow.

PD: And so, I became Chandler's lawyer, and we sued to have his death penalty conviction overturned. And there was an amusing side note to this. The motion was denied in the district court, and I was arguing the case on appeal in the eleventh circuit and Judge Edmondson was the chief judge, and Edmondson had obviously studied the work I had done for the Center for Law and Economic Justice, and he said to me, 'Mr Dodyk, I hope you haven't come here to peddle any of your equal protection stuff.' And I, of course, said, 'Your Honour, only to the extent you may think it relevant to this case.' But I was pleased that he remembered that I had

been involved in the welfare litigation involving the equal protection clause. Unhappily, the eleventh circuit sustained the decision of the district court, so we were unable to get the statute declared unconstitutional. But fortunately, Clinton commuted my client's sentence to life imprisonment as a presidential pardon.

JBG: Oh, wow.

PD: So, in that sense, it was successful. Apart from that, another case that came to me which I found intriguing came to me from the Yale Law School, and I was hired by the faculty of the Yale Law School, because the federal government was threatening to cut offYale's funding. What had happened was, there was a statute called the Solomon Amendment which was passed which enabled the federal government to stop its payments to a university if the university did not cooperate with recruitment by the military, and because of the way the military was treating gays and lesbians, the law school distinguished between the facilities afforded to military recruiters as compared to private employers.

JBG: Okay.

PD: And under the Solomon Amendment, the federal government was threatening to cut off about $300 million of Yale funding. So, I was hired by the Yale Law School to challenge that case, that provision. So, we had a trial in the district court in Bridgeport, Connecticut, and thankfully, I got an injunction against the federal government, saying that they could not do that. Now, there had unfortunately been another case which had gone up from the University of Pennsylvania, which, by the time I got to the Court of Appeals, had been taken up to the Supreme Court and resulted in a decision upholding the Solomon Amendment, which would support the government's right to take away that funding. So, by the time the appeal got to the second circuit and I was representing Yale, I had a Supreme Court precedent going against me, so I was trying to distinguish the case, and it was the first case in which I had a panel that consisted of three female judges, right? Two of whom I knew, one of whom I had actually hired. One of the judges I knew because she was the judge who heard my attack on the constitutionality of the death penalty statute in Pitera, Reena Raggi, and so, the two folks who were on the bench whom I knew were actually more conservative than the Chief Judge Shirley Pooler, and they were giving her a very hard time. When you stand there arguing before the second circuit, there are lights that tum from green to yellow to red, to tell you when you're done, and when the red light comes on, you're done, right? And so, the red light came on, and I was about to step down, and Reena Raggi said, 'I'm not done with him yet.' So, she got to beat me up for another five or ten minutes, and despite my best efforts, we couldn't distinguish the Yale case, although the government backed off its threat to take away the funding at Yale. And I was walking down the steps to the courthouse and I said, to myself, 'You remember, Paul, you were going to retire when you were 70 years old?' and I was 70 years old, and having been beaten up by two of the most effective judges on the second circuit, I decided that was probably the time to retire. End of story.

JBG: And this might be an unfair question. I'm curious reflecting on your career. So, two things. One, if you feel that there was a theme throughout the work that you did.

PD: Yes, I think the theme was to attempt to protect the least advantaged citizens in the country. Particularly, I was concerned about the fate of children, who through no fault of their own, grew up in a deprived condition. I remember when I was to give my address at Amherst College when I was made the First Citizen of the College, my talk was reviewed by George Kateb, who was one of the political science professors, and he told me to tone it down. He thought I should tone it down, because I was a little too strident in my concern for the

children, saying, 'Think of the children.' I didn't tone it down, because I really believed that many children in the United States were not properly taken care of, and that we should do whatever we could to improve their condition. And that's, really, what was at the root of the welfare litigation that I pursued for a good portion of my career.

JBG: And my second part of the question, and this is the question that might be a little unfair, if you had to choose a moment or an experience in your career that you are most proud of, what would that be?

PD: Well, I don't think it would be a moment, but I think I'm most proud of the work we did to expand the reach of Aid to Families with Dependent Children, because it affected so many people over the years, and people who really needed help, people who were in distress. And I regret that in the end, our campaign was blunted, but by that time, we had accomplished a great deal in terms of establishing the recognition that people had a right to welfare assistance, that it was not a matter of administrative discretion, and that people should feel alright about applying for AFDC. Of all the things I've done, that set of decisions which expanded the reach of AFDC was the most important.

JBG: Wonderful. And so, you retired at 70. Were you still living in New Jersey at that time?

PD: We lived in New Jersey until 2019 and during that period of time, I was heavily engaged with the APO and with Center, as well as serving as the secretary for one of the Rhodes selection committees. I was also recruited by [10:00] Oxford to sit on the board of the Headstrong Corporation, which was formed by James Martin, which was a computer consulting organisation which had made a great deal of money. And Jim Martin had given a substantial amount of funds to Oxford, so I became a director of Headstrong, representing the interests of Martin and Oxford, which led to a relationship of some years with Jim Martin before he died of a heart attack down in Bermuda, at his place down there. So, toward my retirement, really, the Center, working for Americans for Oxford, working for the Rhodes Trust, protecting Martin's interests in Headstrong after he sold the majority to a Wall Street outfit, took a good deal of my time, and I was happy to be able to do that.

JBG: And thank you for doing all of that. I know you have been a tremendous friend to the Trust over the years. Would you mind sharing a little bit about that relationship and what you can share about the work that you did for the Trust?

PD: Well, I had, as you can gather, a wonderful time at Oxford University. And you know, in the United States, we have this tradition that alumni support their institutions. It was a little different at Oxford, because it had been a state-supported institution, and so, the pattern of giving was not established the way it was in the United States. And it was my great pleasure to be able to participate in doing what I could to strengthen the operations of Americans for Oxford and as I indicated, our annual contributions were less than $5 million when I started and $40 million a year when I left, and that's not thanks to me, but thanks to the people we recruited to work in the United States. And I believe it is the case that Oxford now, at times, gets more charitable contributions from the United States than it does from England.

JBG: Wow. Wow.

PD: So, I think it is a contribution to the welfare of Oxford which I'm proud of JBG: Well, thank you. Do you consider yourself fully retired now?

PD: Yes, I do. I do. I'm nearing my 86th year and focusing on concerns of family and grandchildren and such. I should say my grandchildren have come full cycle. Because my grandson, who is an ambulance driver her in Cambridge, is organising the drivers to join the Teamsters.

JBG: Wow.

PD: So, my mother would be very proud of what he's doing.

JBG: Wow. And are both your children and your grandchildren local?

PD: Well, not so. My two grandsons, their parents live in Cambridge, but one is at the Art Institute in Chicago, and the elder, Jack, who is an ambulance driver in Cambridge, is organising here in Cambridge. My other daughter, who is a schoolteacher in Colorado, has our granddaughter, who is 18, Lily, and I have to say that, you know, the traditions that I inherited from my parents are fully transmitted down the family tree, because my daughter Phoebe is a nurse and is interested in working with people, healing people. She works for One Medical Group and she's now in charge of their complex care cases. And Michaela's first job, when she graduated from Barnard, was to work in the homeless shelter in Boulder, Colorado.

JBG:Wow.

PD: Indeed, she once called me and said, 'Guess what, Dad?' I said, 'What, Caela, what?' And she said, 'I'm dating someone from the homeless shelter.' So, summoning all the calm I could, I said, 'Michaela, would that be a client of yours or a colleague?' and, to make a long story short, she wound up marrying the person who ran the homeless shelter. And she's a schoolteacher who's dedicated to, particularly, kids who have problems with reading, and Phebe is, of course, a nurse. And now, in our grandchildren's generation, Jack is an ambulance driver caring for the people in Cambridge who need such assistance, and organising for the Teamsters.

JBG: That's remarkable. That's remarkable. What a legacy of public service and advocating for disadvantaged individuals.

PD: We do what we can.

JBG: Thinking back on the Rhodes Scholar experience and the Oxford experience, what influence do you think that had on your journey afterwards?

PD: Well, I think it was a very important part of my intellectual maturation. As you probably have gathered, my relationship with David Worswick was extraordinarily close, and I think, you know, much of the world view that I came to after I left home was formed during those years, both at college and at Oxford, but largely, I think, at Oxford, and largely in conversation with David.

JBG: And what motivates you and inspires you today?

PD: I think my primary concern is with the welfare of all people, but particularly with the welfare of people who are less advantaged.

JBG: And we're at a moment where the Scholarships have just celebrated their 120th anniversary this summer, and it's a natural time to think about the next chapter of the Scholarships, and I'm curious about what your hope for the future of the Rhodes Scholarship is.

PD: Well, my hope is that it continues to give people opportunity to realise their talents, the way it has for me and for my classmates. And those, of course, do vary, but whatever they may be, I think the Rhodes Scholarship makes a uniquely important contribution to people's intellectual maturation and their ability to be effective in the roles which they have chosen to play.

JBG: And what advice would you give to current or future Rhodes Scholars?

PD: I think my best advice would be to pursue their life's dream but with a continuing understanding that they are the recipients of a great privilege, and that fighting the world's fight involves primarily, most importantly, working for the benefit of people who need the contribution of folks who have been privileged to receive the Scholarship.

JBG: And before we close, Paul, I'm curious if there is anything else that you would like to speak to in your interview so that we can be sure to work that into our guiding questions.

PD: No, I think we've covered pretty much what I had in mind. Yes. I hope you find it useful. JBG: Certainly. Thank you so much for the conversation.

PD: Sure.

[ends 19:12]

Share this article

Back