Long Island Man Named 2021 Rhodes Scholar

HICKSVILLE, NY — A Hicksville High School graduate has been named a 2021 Rhodes Scholar. He is one of just 32 students from across the nation to receive the honor.

Devashish Basnet is a senior at Hunter College and is majoring in political science. The Rhodes Scholarship will pay for him to attend Oxford University starting in October 2022, where he plans to pursue masters degrees in refugee and forced migration studies, as well as public policy.

It is the second year in a row a Long Island resident has won the scholarship. Last year, Danielle N. Grey-Stewart, of Westbury, a student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was a winner.

"I am fairly certain that I'm the first Rhodes scholar in history from the country of Nepal. And so I just felt honored to represent my nation, my culture and my heritage," he told Newsday. "I'm one of the first few Rhodes scholars that is a former [Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals] recipient. I come from a public university."

Basnet and his family came to the United States from Nepal when he was a child, seeking political asylum.

Hunter College said that he came to the school as a Roosevelt Scholar, which is an honors program for public policy students. He won a Watson Fellowship his first year there. He founded a college collective focused on migrant worker rights, and also serves as the Student Government President for the undergraduate class.

He also volunteered in a labor activism program in Mississippi and worked to advocate for immigrant rights along the southern border.

In addition to his volunteer work and activism, Basnet is an operatic baritone, and will be performing as The Count in the Hunter College Opera Theatre Project’s production of "The Marriage of Figaro" this fall.

The Rhodes Scholarship provides all expenses for two or three years of study at England's Oxford University. More than 2,300 students applied for this year's scholarship. Committees from 16 districts around the country then conducted interviews with a select pool of candidates, and each committee selected two winners.