Among those who received the elite Rhodes scholarship to study at Oxford University next year is Duke student Charles R. Salmen, a Lebanese-American Jew from Glenwood Springs, Col.
Salmen majored in English and researched urology, but the Herald Sun reports that he also started an Arab-Jewish group called Peace or Pieces.

The coalition, which includes a number of Jewish, Arab and Muslim student groups on campus, has pushed for cross-cultural conversations and is raising money for Rotary International projects in Lebanon and Israel.
He also studied at the American University in Cairo in 2004.
“My experiences in the Middle East opened my eyes to the fact that so many people around the world do not have what is so available to us here,” he said in an interview Sunday. “I’m concerned about the health inequalities that now exist.”
“I’m interested not only in the biomedical explanations of disease, but in how various cultures deal with disease and provide care,” he said.

Another recipient was NYU’s Kevin Shenderov, pictured in The New York Times, above, sitting in front of Tisch Hall. Shenderov’s family came to Brooklyn as refugees from the town of Chernovsky in order to practice Judaism freely and to provide leukemia-stricken son Eugene with treatment after the Chernobyl catastrophe.
But Eugene’s story is already well-known: he won the Rhodes two years ago. Parents Faina and Peter must really be shepping nachas!

Photo Credit: Ozier Muhammad for the Times.