Two selected as Rhodes scholars

Seniors Libby Longino and Henry Spelman didn’t exactly hit it off when they met as freshmen in a poetry writing class.

“I didn’t really notice Libby, and she thought I was pretentious,” Spelman said.

Friends said Longino would come home after class and talk about a guy who the rest of the class couldn’t relate to.

“His poems were filled with all these references to ancient philosophers,” Longino said. “I was like, please, write something accessible to someone else.”

That was before they met up about two years later in Turkey while conducting research and before the talks over coffee about philosophy and literature. It was also before they started dating.

And it was long before Saturday, when they were both selected to receive the prestigious Rhodes Scholarship.

They will join 30 other Americans who will have full tuition, board and living expenses covered for two or three years of study at Oxford University. The scholarship is valued at an average of $50,000 a year.

Longino, a public policy and English double major, will use her scholarship to pursue a master’s degree in forced migration, an issue she has dealt with extensively during her four years at UNC.

She has traveled to Taiwan, Bosnia and South Africa working with human trafficking.

“She’s really had a quite deep and impressive commitment to that topic, and she has shown an extraordinary capacity for leadership,” said Pete Andrews, chairman of the public policy department and faculty adviser to the Roosevelt Institute, where Longino serves as the president.

Longino was partly responsible for restructuring the organization in the last few years, a move that helped UNC’s branch win recognition as “chapter of the year” this semester.

Spelman, a classics major with a minor in creative writing, will pursue a master’s degree in Greek and Latin at Oxford. He hopes to one day be a professor.

“He is the consummate academic,” said senior Thomas Edwards, who has known Spelman since they were freshmen. “But beyond that he’s just a really personable guy.

“He’s the kind of guy you can meet at a bar and just talk to.”

Spelman’s academic work with Greek and Latin earned him two of UNC’s highest honors last year.

“He has a real love, a deep profound love, of his subject,” said classics professor William Race, who has taught Spelman in three classes.

Outside of the classics, Spelman has done extensive work with the United Nations High Commission on Refugees. He has traveled to Tanzania twice to work with displaced people at refugee camps. He is also editor of the The Cellar Door, the campus literary magazine, and a member of Chi Psi fraternity.

Spelman said this odd blend of interests and talents — a quality friends referred to as “endearingly bizarre” — helped him in the selection process.

“I don’t think they get many squash-playing classics majors who do refugee work,” he said.

Both Longino and Spelman are Morehead-Cain Scholars, and both said they wouldn’t be where they were if it weren’t for the scholarship, which helped bring them to UNC and funded their travels.

Friends said the two complement each other well and push each other to succeed.

While they went through the Rhodes selection process together, the two said they rarely talked to each other about it until the end.

“You don’t have to mention the fact that it’s on your mind,” Spelman said.

Longino agreed.

“The time we were together was the time we didn’t have to talk about it.”


Contact the University Editor at udesk@unc.edu.