News Release

Local angle: Nashville, Tenn.
Photo note: To download a photo of Lundin, see end of release.

UNC senior Ben Lundin 
wins Rhodes Scholarship

CHAPEL HILL — Ben Lundin of Nashville, Tenn., a senior at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, has won a 2007 Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford University in England.

Lundin was one of 32 U.S. scholars chosen after interviews Friday and Saturday (Nov. 17-18) by selection committees in 16 districts. He interviewed in Birmingham, Ala., for the U.S. district encompassing Alabama, Florida and Tennessee.

Each district chose two recipients. Together, the districts had invited 207 candidates from 94 different colleges and universities to the interviews, chosen from among  896 candidates nominated by 340 schools.

Worldwide, approximately 85 Rhodes Scholars are selected annually in 14 jurisdictions worldwide.

A religious studies major, Lundin, 21, will use the scholarship to earn a master’s degree in international relations. He will study the political influence of religious movements and write a thesis on religion in global conflict.

“Eventually, I would like to develop my interests in religious dialogue through a research professorship in religious and ethnic conflict resolution,” Lundin said. “These are some of today’s most pressing issues, and I could pass my passion on to the next generation of researchers and public servants in this developing field.”

Lundin is the 40th UNC student to be named a Rhodes Scholar since the program began in 1902, and the 17th since 1980. This is Carolina’s fifth year in a row with a Rhodes recipient.

The scholarship funds tuition, fees and living expenses for two years, plus a third year at Oxford if needed for the degree desired. Its value varies, depending on the student’s course of study, but the average value is $45,000 per year.

“We are so proud of Ben for his many accomplishments at Carolina, and for this well-deserved recognition from the Rhodes committee,” said Chancellor James Moeser. “We expect great things from Ben in the future. His selection for the Rhodes is another indication of the high caliber of students we have at Carolina competing for major academic honors at the international and national levels.”

Last year, Carolina led its public university peers in the number of students winning distinguished scholarships including the Rhodes.

The son of Keith Lundin and Linda Lundin of Nashville, Lundin graduated from the University School of Nashville in 2003. He won a Morehead Scholarship to UNC, a full, four-year merit award modeled after the Rhodes.

Of 24 Rhodes Scholars from UNC since the first Morehead Scholars graduated in 1957, 21 have been Moreheads. The Morehead funds four summer enrichment experiences for its scholars. One of them changed Lundin’s life.

Previously, he said, “I left for college with my mind made up that religion was a joke without a place in the serious world.”

But the summer after his freshman year, the Morehead sent Lundin to intern with a human rights group involved with prisons in Peru. There he interviewed a man accused of being a member of the Shining Path terrorist group.

The prisoner seemed near despair, Lundin wrote in his Rhodes application. “But what struck me most was his conviction that faith had kept him alive in isolation … Peru was my glimpse of faith’s powers of inspiration and sustenance in the lives of believers.”

Back at Carolina, Lundin took an honors seminar about religious ideals, chose to major in religious studies and eventually became a teaching assistant for a freshman honors course in the subject.

In his sophomore year, Lundin had begun to observe religion’s role in national debates about prayer in public schools, reproductive rights and conflict in the Middle East.

This led him to found Carolina Crossfire, a student group dedicated to discussing difficult religious questions, personal and political. The group sponsored a public dialogue by an agnostic professor and a local pastor, asking what they considered to be attractive and unattractive aspects of organized Christianity.

“One might call Ben Lundin a public intellectual, particularly interested in issues where controversies loom between reason and faith, or between differing political views relating to fixed religious positions,” said Dr. George Lensing, director of the UNC Office of Distinguished Scholarships.

“He thrives on creating dialogues between those differing voices and adding his own. Part philosopher, part theologian and part social activist, he will undoubtedly play a prominent and mediating role in this unfolding new century, where religious differences define our own history as never before.”

Last fall, the Teagle Foundation of New York City held a national conference for presidents, chaplains and professors of major universities to discuss religion on campuses. Lundin was one of four students and the only UNC representative invited to speak.

This fall, through Carolina Students Taking Academic Responsibility Through Teaching – C-START – Lundin is designing an undergraduate course on the theory of creation by intelligent design.

Falling between evolution and the Biblical story of creation, intelligent design holds that some aspects of the natural world resulted from an intelligent cause rather than from unguided natural processes. Lundin will teach the course next semester, encouraging students to critically examine and debate the concept.

“The syllabus likely will include visits from vocal advocates and critics of the intelligent design movement,” he said.

C-START is open only to outstanding seniors, and Lundin fits the description. He has a cumulative grade-point average of 3.98, has made the dean’s list every semester and was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa, the nation’s highest undergraduate honor society, as a junior.

Besides academic achievement, Rhodes Scholars also are expected to demonstrate physical vigor. Morehead Scholars at Carolina must complete outdoor leadership courses the summer before their freshman year. Lundin’s came in the form of a backpacking course in Alaska, where he learned wilderness survival, navigation and leadership skills.

He has started as midfielder all four years in UNC Club Lacrosse and this year is a player-coach for the team. His sophomore year, Lundin coached a local middle school lacrosse team.

Lundin’s activities have included serving on the UNC Honor Court his freshman year and teaching English to Spanish-speaking UNC employees for three years, having become nearly fluent in Spanish while in Peru.

He helped expand the latter program to an off-campus UNC facility, recruited tutors and supervised dozens of pairs of tutors and employees. Lundin also helped teach an honors section of “Advanced Spanish Grammar and Composition,” facilitating service-learning internships for all 20 of his students.

But it is primarily in religious studies that Lundin hopes to make meaningful contributions, he said: “The next generation of academics in the field of religion must explore its role in global conflict and develop new ways of discussing that role with the wider public.”

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For more information on Rhodes Scholarships, visit: http://www.rhodesscholar.org
For more information on Morehead Scholarships, visit: http://www.themorehead.org

UNC Office of Distinguished Scholarships contact: Dr. George Lensing, (919) 260-6302, or lensing@email.unc.edu
News Services contact: L.J. Toler, cell (919) 219-6374; office (919) 962-8589