The highly selective Rhodes Scholarship is a full-time, fully funded postgraduate award to study at the University of Oxford in England. Since the prize was first handed out in 1903, 43 Rhodes Scholars have hailed from the Green Mountain State.
And a new Vermonter is on the list for the first time in nearly two decades.
Before she starts that work, Lena Ashooh of Shelburne is about to graduate as Harvard University’s first-ever animal studies major.
Lena recently caught up with Vermont Public's Jenn Jarecki to share more on the significance of becoming a Rhodes Scholar from Vermont. This piece was produced for the ear. We highly recommend listening to the audio. We’ve also provided a transcript, which has been edited for length and clarity.
Jenn Jarecki: So I understand you were one of just 32 students selected out of over 3,000 applicants. What did it feel like to learn you'd been chosen as a Rhodes Scholar, and what were you doing when you got the news?
Lena Ashooh: I actually was in a room with all the other finalists when the decision was made about which two of us of 14 finalists from the Boston region would be named. When I received the news of being a Rhodes Scholar, it felt like a collective victory. And I immediately, in the moment — my mind dispersed to all of the people who had supported me and who were with me in that room in spirit and I was just so excited to imagine calling them and delivering the news and reveling in that feeling of collective joy.
Jenn Jarecki: Lena, what does it mean to you to represent Vermont on this international stage?
Lena Ashooh: One thing that has been important to me throughout this experience — in which I have the opportunity to introduce myself as a Vermonter — is how Vermont is perceived by people I'm talking to, not only at the national level, but at the international level. And one thing that's very interesting to me, and something I think about, is the image that people have, or that seems to be conjured by Vermont being mentioned. I think the image of a beautiful state — a kind of mysterious state, one where many artists reside and people who are creative and innovative and forward-looking individuals — is a reputation that is important to me, and one that I want to carry with me and do justice to in my work.
Jenn Jarecki: Well, speaking of your work, and maybe we can look forward a little bit, I'm curious what you're interested to study while at Oxford.
Lena Ashooh: I plan to study philosophy, and I'm interested specifically in legal philosophy. You mentioned in your very kind introduction my animal studies major. I'm interested in animal ethics and animal studies more broadly because I've found that it provides a lens to understanding broader philosophical dilemmas as well as broader social justice issues, such as concepts about what makes someone morally considerable, and how those concepts can play a role in facilitating the mistreatment or enabling complacency or inaction in the face of suffering. So, I hope to explore those questions. I'm very excited, I can't wait.
Jenn Jarecki: How far back does your interest in animals go? I mean, you grew up in a farming community, right?
Lena Ashooh: I grew up as a member of the 4-H and would spend my summers exhibiting dairy cows at county fairs in Vermont. And I spent about 10 years doing this, but I actually think my interest in animals extends even further back and has a variety of different origins. But one of them being growing up in an area where I was surrounded by wildlife. And I had a mom who was very attentive to and recognized the individuality of the animals that lived around us. Seeing her have a real affinity for animals and be moved by their suffering was significant to me.
And then I also think I had a very early interest in justice and how it comes to be that some groups of people are mistreated, and their mistreatment is justified. And that led me to be interested in looking at, I think, some of the most extreme forms of suffering, and to ask how it is that we can look at these extreme forms of suffering and decide not to act.
Jenn Jarecki: Well, your degree at Harvard has come up a few times. You know, you’re Harvard's first animal studies major, as we mentioned. I'm curious, how did this unique degree come together and what disciplines comprise it?
Lena Ashooh: So animal studies is a wide-ranging field that convenes many different disciplines, including philosophy, ethnography, religious studies, ethology or the study of animal behavior, critical theory, economic theory. What animal studies enables me to look at is the way that animals as a group have been historically and continue to be deemed less worthy of moral concern. And this is a very important question for me to address in my broader interest in social injustice and how that occurs.
Jenn Jarecki: So Lena, you've been studying in Cambridge. You've worked in California, Washington, DC. I'm curious, where do you think you'll land?
Lena Ashooh: My current plan after attending Oxford is to return to the U.S. to pursue law school.
Jenn Jarecki: Could you ever see yourself living in Vermont again?
Lena Ashooh: Yes, I definitely feel an affinity with Vermont, and could see myself returning.
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