Harvard Suffers Marshall Drought

For the first time since the Marshall Scholarship was established in 1953, no Harvard student will receive the prestigious award this year.

The final list of this year’s 40 winners had not yet been publicly announced as of yesterday, but a representative from the Boston British Consulate confirmed the news.

“Although there have been years when Harvard has had only one winner, this is the first year in which there have been no Harvard Marshall scholars,” said Teri Adams, political, press and public affairs officer at the British Consulate.

Harvard has averaged over five Marshall scholars annually since 1993, and last year there were two Harvard winners.

The last time the scholarship—which funds two years of study in the United Kingdom—was awarded to only one Harvard student was in 1988.

Students were notified last week that they had won the prestigious scholarship, and several university dailies, including the Yale Daily News, ran profiles of their institution’s winners.

It became apparent that Harvard had probably not received the award when no students came forward to announce they had won.

Dean of the College Benedict H. Gross ’71 said he was disappointed when he heard the news, but insisted that it did not reflect poorly on either the candidates or the University.

“We put forth a number of excellent candidates,” Gross wrote in an e-mail. “The fact that no one from Harvard was selected this year does not, in anyway, diminish the quality of the candidates.”

While there was a chance that one of the 40 recipients would decline the scholarship, allowing another student, possibly one from Harvard, to claim the award, Adams said that all of the scholarships have been accepted.

The Marshall Scholarship was founded by the British Government as a gesture of thanks for American assistance received after World War II under the Marshall Plan. The aim of the scholarship is to give students “an understanding and appreciation of British values and the British way of life,” according to the its website.