ON THE RHODES

Sonita Alizada '23

Bard College students have won many of the academic world’s most prestigious awards and honors, but the Rhodes Scholarship has been elusive. Many have applied, and a few have been named finalists, but Sonita Alizada ’23 became the first to earn that fully funded award for postgraduate study at the University of Oxford while still an undergraduate. (Ronan Farrow ’04 won a Rhodes in 2012.) Alizada, who was born in Herat, Afghanistan, is one of only two applicants to receive a 2022 Global Rhodes, which is available to students from the approximately 170 nations that are not members of established Rhodes constituencies.

In addition to being an outstanding scholar and deeply engaged in the Bard community, Alizada is an outspoken human rights advocate, artist, and rapper. As a child, she and her family left Taliban-ruled Afghanistan, walking hundreds of miles to Iran. She grew up, as she describes it, “an impoverished, undocumented, refugee street child in Tehran.” At 10, she was sold into a forced marriage, but that contract fell through. She was unable to attend school until a local nongovernmental organization that provided basic education to undocumented Afghan children offered assistance. She learned to read and write, and developed an interest in music.

Her family tried again to sell her when she was 16, in order to raise funds for her brother to buy his bride, but rather than return to Afghanistan to meet her future husband, she recorded a song, “Daughters for Sale,” and uploaded a music video to YouTube. The video helped change her family’s mind, and it has been viewed more than 1.5 million times since she first posted it.

Alizada moved to the United States in 2015, and she has continued to advocate for change, addressing the United Nations; working with organizations such as Girls Not Brides, Global Partnership for Education, and Global Women’s Empowerment Network; and founding Arezo, a Trustee Leader Scholar–initiated project that raises money to support impoverished children in Herat.

Nawara Alaboud BCB '23

At Oxford, Alizada will pursue graduate study in public policy. “I want to make real change,” she says. “And that comes from changing the laws. Now it’s time for me to really take action by working with policymakers.”

Nawara Alaboud BCB ’23 became the first Bard College Berlin student to receive a Rhodes. She was awarded one of two Rhodes Scholarships—in partnership with the Saïd Foundation—for students from Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, and Palestine.

Alaboud is working toward her BA in humanities, the arts, and social thought, with a concentration in ethics and politics, through the Program for International Education and Social Change, a scholarship program for students from areas of crisis and conflict. She is interested in the processes of war termination, peace building, and democratization in post–civil war countries, especially in the Middle East region. Her Senior Project traces the effects of peace agreements on the success of democratic transitions. Alaboud, who was born in Syria, graduated from Woodstock School in India, and studied on an Erasmus exchange program at Sciences Po in France, plans to pursue an MPhil in politics (comparative government) at Oxford.

“The prospect of joining the wide community of previous Rhodes scholars, and the chance to join the outstanding academic community at Oxford, is incredibly exciting,” says Alaboud. “It is not lost upon me what a rare privilege this is; so many gifted young Syrians deserve such an opportunity but are hindered from receiving it by the severest of circumstances. I hope to be able to make the most of my time at Oxford and to contribute something of value to the field of post-conflict studies, especially for the people who suffer the consequences of war everywhere.”