McAuley is Sole Marshall Scholar

James K. McAuley ’12, a senior in Currier House and Chair of the Crimson’s Editorial Board, was the only Harvard student awarded a Marshall Scholarship this year.

The prestigious scholarship is open to U.S. citizens who will have graduated from a four-year college or university once they matriculate into a masters program in the United Kingdom. They must also hold a minimum GPA of 3.7.

The Marshall Scholarship is awarded to up to 40 students each year. Of the 36 scholarships awarded this year, five of the recipients are from Princeton, two are from University of Pennsylvania, one from Columbia, and one from Yale.

McAuley has written extensively for the Crimson’s Arts, Editorial, and News sections, but his journalistic ambitions have not stopped there.

He worked at the International Herald Tribune during the summer of 2010 as a Jaromir Ledecky International Journalism Fellow. “It was great being in the office there. The people were just really inspiring if you want to be a journalist,” McAuley said.

Last summer, he interned at the New Yorker, which not only gave him experience in research and writing, but also acted as a “hall of fame” of sorts for some of his favorite writers. McAuley also spent much of his summer working as a research assistant for biographer Doris Kearns Goodwin.

A member of Phi Beta Kappa, McAuley is a History and Literature concentrator from Dallas, Texas. He is currently writing his senior thesis on a Spanish diplomat who in 1940 gave visas to Jews who were trying to leave occupied France. He intends to maintain his focus on modern European history as he pursues a Master of Philosophy degree at Oxford beginning in the fall, where he hopes to continue working on the topics covered in his thesis.

McAuley’s thesis advisor, French History Professor Patrice L. R. Higonnet ’58, has been working with him as he studies the questions of how European diplomats handled the very complicated and difficult situations they were faced with in Vichy France. When asked about McAuley, Higonnet praised both his academic and personal attributes.

“He’s a very intelligent and brilliant young man, but particularly he has a wisdom beyond his years that is very curious,” Higonnet said. He was “not surprised at all” when he found out that McAuley had been named a Marshall Scholar.

When asked about the personal significance of his achievement, McAuley expressed gratitude above all else for the opportunities that the Marshall Scholarship will provide him.

From an early age, he knew that he loved history and that it was something he wanted to pursue.

“I’m so grateful for the opportunity to get to pursue a study of history in the UK of all places.,” he said. “I can’t thank everyone who has helped me along the way enough for getting me to where I’ll be going.”