R is for Rhodes Scholars

Philip Ziegler’s book Legacy gives an enthralling account of the first hundred years of Rhodes Scholars. As the subtitle indicates, this is the story of ‘Cecil Rhodes, The Rhodes Trust and Rhodes Scholarships’. Yet Ziegler hardly mentions sport. So there is much more to Rhodes Scholars than simply that phrase in Cecil Rhodes’ will which gave, as one of the original four criteria for the selection of a Scholar, ‘his fondness of and success in manly outdoor sports such as cricket, football and the like’. Rhodes referred to this quality as ‘brutality’ when suggesting that it should count for about two-tenths of the decision but it was put more elegantly (not only in correcting his ‘of’ to ‘for’) when it was presented by Selection Committees to prospective scholars as ‘energy to use one’s talents to the full, as exemplified by fondness for and success in sports’. Nowadays, candidates can illustrate the energy in other ways and there is no specific reference to sport. 

Nevertheless, Rhodes Scholars have over one hundred years given Oxford an enormous boost in sport, including in giving an advantage over Cambridge in certain varsity contests, such as basketball, ice hockey, swimming and water polo. This is not the only way in which their legacy is part of the story of Oxford sport. Sometimes, their fame after Oxford, combined with their sporting prowess before or after their time here, means that Oxford is drawn into a compelling narrative even when a sporting Rhodes Scholar has not even sought a Blue. Some have instead concentrated on their studies or experimented with sports other than their main one or just not been allowed to play, for instance because they had played professionally in an era when the sports here were only open to amateurs or because, given their future professional commitments in sport, the insurance would be prohibitive.

Cecil Rhodes had studied at Oriel, without playing sport. As the nineteenth century came to an end, he received an honorary doctorate from Oxford. As the twentieth began, his will provided for scholars to attend Oxford from the English-speaking world, with the addition of Germany once the Kaiser had insisted on English as a compulsory subject in German schools. Initially there were 52 each year, 32 from the USA with others from South Africa, what was then Rhodesia, parts of Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Bermuda and Jamaica. Rhodes envisaged that they would all be men but the trustees eventually allowed women.

For many years, the four criteria for selection were:

• ‘literary & scholastic attainments;
• ‘energy to use one’s talents to the full, as exemplified by fondness for and success in sports;
• ‘truth, courage, devotion to duty, sympathy for and protection of the weak, kindliness, unselfishness and fellowship;
• ‘moral force of character and instincts to lead, and to take an interest in one’s fellow beings.’
  

The Will stated that ‘no student shall be qualified or disqualified for election to a Scholarship on account of race or religious opinions.’ The Rhodes Trust and the University go further in requiring now that selection for a Scholarship and admission to the University will be ‘without regard to marital status, race, ethnic origin, colour, religion, sexual orientation, social background, or disability’.

So a scheme set up with a predisposition to ‘manly outdoor sports’ has come to provide Oxford with some wonderful Paralympic sportswomen. Bonnie St John won two bronze medals at the 1984 Winter Paralympics in Innsbruck in the slalom and the giant slalom, plus the silver medal for the overall fastest skiers. At the age of five, she had a leg amputated above the knee because of a condition she had had since birth. She is well-known in the USA as the first African-American Olympic or Paralympic medal-winner in skiing. She was part of the official opening ceremonies for the 2002 Games in Salt Lake City. 

As a Rhodes Scholar at Trinity, she started by getting up at 5 o’clock to train for rowing but when it seemed that the university would insist on this Harvard graduate studying for PPE rather than her preferred M Litt in Economics, she decided to forego sport and other extra-curricular activities to focus on her Masters, which she duly received before working in the White House during the Presidency of another Rhodes Scholar, the basketball–playing Bill Clinton.

Bonnie St John has written about her gratitude for her Rhodes Scholarship: ‘The poor, little, crippled, black girl that the San Diego School District wanted to send to a “special” school, was granted this illustrious honour – to “fight the world’s fight” as a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford– and it wasn’t going to cost me a penny! You have to understand that I never had enough money to do anything. Our family sometimes had to eat canned soups and powdered milk for a few days until Mom got her next paycheck because there was nothing left for groceries. I went through Harvard in three years instead of four because I was afraid that we would run out of money before I graduated, despite the generous scholarship. Even when I made it to the Olympics, I wore other people’s cast off ski clothes and mismatched gloves that I had gotten out of the “lost and found” at ski areas. I almost didn’t even make it to the Rhodes interview because I was broke. Now, thanks to the generous legacy of an early 20th Century philanthropist, all my bills would be paid... with a liberal stipend to boot! For the first time in my whole life, I didn’t have to worry about money at all.’

A more recent Rhodes Scholar, Jennifer Howitt, came to Oxford for an M Phil in Development Studies as a Paralympian gold medal winner. Jen had won gold at the Athens 2004 Games in the USA wheelchair basketball team. She was encouraged by her experience of the opening ceremony of the Sydney 2000 Paralympics. She studied international politics at Georgetown and was determined to create more opportunities for other people with disabilities around the world to enjoy using their talents to the full. Under her married name, Jen Browning, she is now one of Team GB’s leading coaches, guiding this country’s wheelchair basketball team, coaching also at Filton Academy near Bristol and working for Motivation, a charity which enables her to apply her sport and studies to good effect, for instance recently in Uganda on a project supported by Comic Relief. Young people with disabilities there can often be hidden away inside their family homes, with no access to sport. Motivation enables simple but effective wheelchairs to be made locally and to give the children a sporting chance. 

There have been some 7000 Rhodes scholars so far. One, Eddie Eagan of New College, has the distinction of becoming the first person in history to win Olympic gold medals in both Summer and Winter Games. He won gold in boxing as a light heavyweight in Antwerp 1920 and in the four man bobsleigh in Lake Placid in 1932. A lawyer, he studied at three other universities, Denver, Yale and Harvard, served in both world wars and contributed to the administration of sport as the chair of boxing’s New York State Athletic Commission. He toured the world as an amateur boxer with an Oxford friend, Douglas Douglas-Hamilton, the Marquis of Clydesdale. Eddie Eagan was a late substitute for the 1932 Olympics, had never been in a bobsleigh before and never competed in the sport afterwards. 

There have been Nobel Prize-winning Rhodes Scholars. For example, Howard (later Lord) Florey of Australia won a Nobel Prize for Medicine through his pioneering work on the development of penicillin. He had played for his undergraduate university, Adelaide, in two sports: tennis and football. As a Rhodes scholar at Magdalen, he wrote to his girl-friend back in Australia that, ‘I play hockey for the college, ran in the relay races, and get the odd game of golf’. He went skiing in the Black Forest with other Rhodes Scholars and participated in the Oxford University Arctic Expedition. Another Adelaide Rhodes Scholar, a couple of years ahead of him, Hugh Cairns of Balliol, who rowed for Oxford, played a part in securing the funding needed by the University on Florey’s return as a professor to develop medical research. 

Another entry in this Z to A will tell the story of the American Pete Dawkins, a Rhodes Scholar at Brasenose College and Vietnam war hero. Many other Rhodes Scholars have made extraordinary contributions to public life in their own countries and sometimes around the world. Bill Bradley, also of the USA and a Worcester student, features elsewhere in this Z to A as a politician and as an Olympian. Norman Manley, the Jamaican Prime Minister, arrived at Jesus College on his Rhodes Scholarship with an outstanding reputation as a sprinter. Tony Abbott, the leader of the opposition Liberal Party in Australia, was a student at Queen’s College, winning a boxing Blue and the final fight of a varsity match that was poised at 4 bouts each. 

Arthur (later Lord) Porritt of New Zealand was a distinguished surgeon, doctor to the Queen and to her father, the first New Zealander to be Governor-General there, president of the OUAC and an Olympic medal-winner, taking bronze to Harold Abrahams’ gold in the Paris 1924 100 metres immortalised in the Oscar-winning film, Chariots of Fire. Jack Lovelock, also president of the Oxford University Athletics Club, won New Zealand’s first Olympic gold in the 1500 metres at Berlin in 1936. Famous All Black rugby players who were Rhodes Scholars include Chris Laidlaw and David Kirk who was the first person to lift the rugby union world cup when he led New Zealand to victory in the inaugural tournament. 

Byron ‘Whizzer’ White, of Hertford College and Justice of the US Supreme Court, was an extraordinary scholar athlete. Sadly, he is among those Rhodes scholars who did not pursue their main sports while at Oxford. As he had already been a professional player of American Football, he would have been considered ineligible for the amateur world of Oxford sport. Myron Rolle is the latest Rhodes Scholar to be a first class professional American Footballer, among other accomplishments, who took a sabbatical from his sport while at Oxford.

Byron White graduated from the University of Colorado top of his class, with a Rhodes Scholarship, while being the outstanding college footballer of his day (or possibly any other day), in which capacity he was known through the media as Byron ‘Whizzer’ White. He similarly finished first in his class at Yale Law School while leading the National Football League in rushing. Byron White wore steel-rimmed glasses in the library where, as mentioned in the previous chapter, his ‘combination of intensity and concentration was eerie’. His Yale and Supreme Court contemporary, Justice Potter Stewart, said of White that he was ‘both Clark Kent and Superman’.

White was another Rhodes Scholar to be a war hero, in his case in the Second World War. He also displayed great courage in personally facing down racist protesters who were obstructing the civil rights movement, after being appointed by President John F Kennedy as Deputy Attorney General to Robert Kennedy, Yet, at the time of this appointment, when he gave a rare interview to a sports journalist, he used the opportunity, out of all his life experiences, to explain the importance of college sport: ‘This business of performing under some kind of pressure and being willing to face up to requirements proves its utility in other activities of life ... I am in favour of exposing young people to situations that require the highest performance on a regular basis. While athletics are a manufactured environment, there comes that moment when you stand face to face with doing. The moment – perhaps a fraction of a second – comes when you either do or don’t.’ This ranks as one of the best explanations of the value of sport in university and wider life.

Rhodes Scholars who have become famous in other walks of life will often, given the selection criteria for the awards, turn out to have played sport at Oxford and to Olympian levels, including sports which do not always receive due attention in media coverage. For instance, while rowing is perhaps the most well-known of varsity sports, there is less awareness of prowess in the pool. Yet Edwin Hubble was a master of various sports, including playing water polo for Oxford, as well as being a master of the universe as an astronomer. Rhodes Scholars whose main sport was swimming include Nato’s Supreme Allied Commander Europe, General Wesley Clark of Magdalen. A more recent Rhodes Scholar, Meghana Narayan of Oriel, held Indian swimming records, represented her country and also won a Blue. Annette Salmeen of St John’s had won Olympic gold in Atlanta 1996 in the 4x200 metres freestyle relay before studying for her doctorate in biochemistry as a Rhodes Scholar. A glance at the website of the Oxford University Swimming Club will confirm that she still holds various Oxford swimming records. She has combined her sport and her science as a leading figure in the US Anti-Doping Agency. Another to feature in those record lists is a current Rhodes scholar, Justine Schluntz, an engineering student who also won America’s National College Athletic Association ‘Woman of the Year’ award in 2010 for her swimming and community volunteering.

This illustrates the point that the essence of the Rhodes Scholarships is leadership, not sport for its own sake so much as one indicator of qualities that can be applied to make a difference in the world. Cecil Rhodes could not have anticipated the limited life-span of the British Empire, still less the changes that have happened, after a long struggle, in the south of Africa, but his scholarships have made a significant contribution to the education of a range of leaders. While these 7000 have been students at Oxford, they have also touched the lives of the rest of us. As they succeed in their chosen spheres, their Rhodes Scholarships and therefore their time at Oxford are constantly mentioned. This attracts other students to Oxford. It encourages others to combine sport and study. It has also inspired other scholarship schemes, not only to Oxford. In terms of pure sport, the Rhodes Scholars have brought much to the university, competing at all levels and, in the nature of coming from different countries with different favourite sports, bringing a spirit of adventure and innovation across sports as well as across the world.

Current and very recent Rhodes Scholars who continue this tradition of sporting excellence include Mari Rabie of St Catherine’s, who competed in the Beijing 2008 Olympics for South Africa in the triathlon, and Rosara Joseph, a lawyer of St John’s and New Zealand, who was an Olympian cyclist in Beijing 2008, Commonwealth Games silver medallist in Melbourne 2006, and is now, at the end of her doctorate, likely to feature in London 2012. Given that Mari Rabie is from South Africa and that Rosara Joseph’s sport is cycling, which seems such an appropriately Oxonian activity, it is tempting to conclude this introductory note with these two Rhodes Scholars as epitomising the combination of academic and sporting excellence.

If we think about the origins of the Rhodes Scholarships, however, it is the USA’s current Ambassador to the United Nations, Susan Rice, a New College doctoral student who continued to play basketball while at Oxford, whose prize-winning dissertation brings the Rhodes Scholar story full circle. In her doctorate, Ambassador Rice analysed what Time magazine called ‘the transformation of white-ruled Rhodesia’, named after Cecil Rhodes himself, ‘into black-ruled Zimbabwe’.

Simon Lee, Balliol 1976-1979, Cricket Captain, Rugby Secretary, Sports Editor of Devorguila; Emeritus Professor of Jurisprudence, Queen’s University Belfast; Chairman, Level Partnerships Ltd; Chairman, John Paul II Foundation for Sport.