U of A Grad Student Earns Prestigious Boren Fellowship

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Harry Chenault

U of A graduate student Harry Keatts Chenault Jr. will represent the U of A internationally as a Boren Ambassador in India through the prestigious Boren Fellowship, which funds research and language study proposals by U.S. graduate students in world regions critical to U.S. interests.

Boren scholars and fellows from diverse backgrounds and fields of study are awarded up to $25,000 to further their research and the opportunity to immerse themselves in the cultures of various world regions that are often underrepresented in study abroad programs, such as Africa, Eurasia, Latin America, Asia and the Middle East. While in these locations, they study a variety of languages, including Chinese, Portuguese, Swahili and Arabic. Chenault will be studying Hindi.

Chenault, who is pursuing his master's degree in operations management, is a diversely accomplished scholar who was also a Fulbright scholar and spent that time studying Arabic at the Arabic Language Institute at American University at Cairo. He also studied at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and earned his Ph.D. in the Department of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies on U.S. presidential foreign policy in the Middle East.

"I studied Arabic at the Arabic Language Institute at American University of Cairo. The Fulbright Binational Commission in Egypt gave me a very rare extension. That allowed me one-on-one time with an Egyptian professor of jurisprudence. He worked with me for two months, taking me all through the beginnings of Islam. The next fall, he was very instrumental in assisting me getting admitted into the Arabic Studies Department at American University-Cairo, where I studied in a graduate program on Islam."

For his Ph.D. at Hebrew University, he took exams in Arabic, Hebrew and French. After graduating, Chenault published his dissertation, Hope and Destiny: Truman, Eisenhower and Fulbright and U.S. Presidential Foreign Policy in the Middle East, 1945-1958.

In his book, he sheds as much light on Fulbright as on Truman and Eisenhower, showing Senator Fulbright's ties to both the U of A and the work he did on U.S. foreign policy in the 1950s.

"At Hebrew University, one of my professors advised me that I better be able to justify putting a US senator on the same level as two US presidents. I, of course, was bursting with great joy, as Senator Fulbright's name will live many centuries."

His current research will be on Kennedy and Nehru and will refer back to Truman and Eisenhower in the Far East.

Additionally, he has also received a Marjorie Kovler Fellowship at the Kennedy Library for International Relations and a Kathryn Davis Fellowship at Middlebury for Arabic. Chenault has studied for three summers at Middlebury for Arabic and the past seven summers at Wisconsin for advanced Arabic, Farsi and Hindi. This year he has taken graduate courses at the U of A. After his Boren experience in India, he is looking forward to a career in public service.