School Notes: Yale College
January/February 2016

Three named Rhodes Scholars

Yale seniors Jared C. Milfred, Isaac M. Stanley-Becker, and Mason Y. Ji are among the 32 recently named US Rhodes Scholars. They were chosen from a pool of 869 applicants nominated by 316 colleges and universities.

Jared C. Milfred (PC) worked as a speechwriter for US attorney general Loretta Lynch and is editor-in-chief of Yale’s Journal of Political Thought, as well as the ethics editor of the Yale Philosophy Review. He volunteers as an EMT for Yale Emergency Medical Services and as a reader for blind students at Yale’s office on disabilities. At age 17, Milfred became the youngest licensed nuclear reactor operator in the US. He will pursue an MPhil in political theory at Oxford. 

Isaac M. Stanley-Becker (JE) is an award-winning journalist who has served as editor-in-chief of the Yale Daily News and interned at the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Stanley-Becker also founded the Hillhouse High Journalism Project to teach journalism to New Haven public high school students. At Oxford, he intends to complete an MPhil in economic and social history.

Mason Y. Ji (MC) studies multicultural dispute resolution mechanisms. A Udall Scholar, he coauthored a document that influenced the 2014 US-China joint statement on climate change. He has interned at the White House and for one of China’s largest law firms; is a competitive table tennis player in the United States and China; and is principal oboe for the Yale Concert Band. He will study international relations at Oxford.

Discussing race and free speech

President Peter Salovey and Yale College dean Jonathan Holloway addressed the AYA assembly on November 20 to discuss race, diversity, and free speech at Yale. President Salovey told the assembly that he was ready to have those conversations on a national level and wanted Yale to take a lead on these powerful issues underlying a movement that is taking place across the nation. Dean Holloway spoke from his perspectives as an administrator; as a historian who studied civil rights and is currently teaching a lecture course on post-emancipation African-American history; and as a black man who had experienced some of the same things when he was an undergraduate. Video of the president’s and dean’s remarks is available on the Yale News site: news.yale.edu.