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| Vol. 24., No. 12 | January 21, 1999 |
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| Vol. 24., No. 12 | January 21, 1999 |
BY HANNAH FAIRFIELD
When Patrick Keefe (CC'99) learned in early December that he won a Marshall Scholarship, he felt that he had fulfilled a childhood dream.
"I've been thinking about studying in Britain since I was little," said Keefe, a Boston native. "My parents met at Oxford, so going to a university in Britain feels like a homecoming."
Keefe, a history major with a concentration in modern European history, is planning to pursue his M. Phil and D. Phil, akin to U.S. master's and doctorate degrees, in international relations at Cambridge.
"I love history, but I feel compelled to shift my concentration to a field I can apply outside of academia," he said. "I think if a subject becomes too academic, it can become indulgent." His green eyes dance when he talks about the challenge of convincing the Marshall Scholarship committee-mostly academics-of his determination to use his history background to pursue international relations.
Studying at Columbia-like studying in Britain-had also been a goal Keefe doggedly pursued. He graduated from Milton Academy in 1994 with his heart set on attending Columbia. He applied that year, but he was not accepted into the incoming class. Instead of settling for another school, Keefe postponed college to spend a year in Boston working for AmeriCorps' City Year program, similar to a domestic peace corps. With a team of college graduates, he did construction work on homeless shelters and housing projects in the mornings and spent his afternoons teaching young Puerto Rican and Dominican children how to read English.
"It was a really valuable experience to work closely with a group of people who had just graduated from college because I was able to become more focused in my own goals and the things I wanted to get out of college," he said.
After his year with Americorps, with determination and newly found focus, he applied to Columbia again-and was accepted.
His dedication to academics has earned him consummate praise. Last summer he won a Columbia Robbins Prize, which enabled him to travel to London to research his thesis. He spent most of his time in the archives of the Imperial War Museum, reading the diaries of soldiers, monographs and parliamentary records in order to write his thesis on how the British government's denial of German war atrocities in 1916-1917 caused the general reluctance of British citizens in 1942 to believe the savagery of the Holocaust.
In addition to his thesis research, he has worked closely with University Professor Simon Schama on a BBC documentary on the history of England-from the Romans to present time. He has exhaustively researched 17th century Britain for one of the 17 segments of the documentary, and is now scouting locations to film the segment on Britain's colonial ties.
The Marshall Scholarships were created in 1953 to thank the United States for the assistance it provided to the British Government with the Marshall Plan after World War II. This year, scholarships were given to 37 American students to study for two or three years at the British university of their choice.
"Patrick is an extremely focused, articulate student," said Kathleen McDermott, the dean of student affairs. "He's going to be a policy maker who truly makes a difference."
Keefe, who chose Cambridge because of its strong program in international relations, is looking forward to the opportunity to study areas that are relatively new to him. "I can take my background in international history and apply it to our present time," he said. "I want to look at Africa, which is a continent in crisis right now. People will have to take notice and make a sustainable commitment to it in the future."