Hadi Kamara ’26 has been selected as a Rhodes Scholar and will begin graduate study at the University of Oxford next fall. Kamara is one of 32 Americans to receive the prestigious scholarship this year and the sole U.S. recipient from Princeton University. 218 Rhodes Scholars have studied at Princeton since 1907.
At Oxford, he will pursue an MPhil in international relations. Raised in northern Virginia, Kamara is an Air Force veteran who transferred to Princeton after earning an associate’s degree in business administration from Northern Virginia Community College. At Princeton, he is a politics major, primarily focusing on international relations with a regional interest in Africa.
A member of Mathey College, Kamara is an active member of the Princeton Transfer Association and Princeton Student Veterans community, saying both groups include a “robust community of people” with unique backgrounds before matriculating to Princeton.
“Having a space where I could live shared experiences with both people who were older community college students and veterans made the transition a bit simpler for me,” he recalled.
Kamara, whose mother emigrated from Sierra Leone, also found community in the Princeton African Students Association and the Princeton Black Student Union.
“I’m an African American man and I’ve lived and navigated the U.S. and the world as such, so having that community as kind of a rock to sit on and as a pillar of support for my journey up until this point was also extremely invaluable,” Kamara said.
From each of the country’s 16 districts, the Rhodes Trust invited a total of 238 applicants for interviews. Each finalist was required to travel to their home district for the interview, during which a regional panel selected the two Rhodes Scholars for that area.
Khamara received the news in a room with 15 other finalists after a two-day interview process that split the candidates between the two days. When his name was announced, Kamara said he “paused for a moment just to take it all in.”
“It’s such an honor that it takes you back,” he said about the shock, although he knew he had prepared extensively. After the finalists congratulated Kamara, he stepped outside to call his mother. He described her reaction as “very tame,” adding “she had more confidence than I did in my ability to achieve this.”
Kamara is the second Princeton recipient of the scholarship this year, following Isam Mina ’26, a Rhodes Scholar from Jordan. The Rhodes Trust selects scholars from over 70 countries, and participating countries release their recipient lists on varying schedules.
In 2024 — for the first time in two decades — a Princeton student was not selected for the Rhodes Scholarship. Compared to peer institutions such as Harvard, MIT, and Yale — all of which produced three Rhodes Scholars this year — Princeton had just one recipient, placing it on par with other Ivies like Columbia, Dartmouth, and Penn, which also had a single scholar, and just behind Brown, which had two.
Kamara received a University endorsement in September and submitted materials for the scholarship in October. Later that month, he was invited for an interview, which he attended last week in Washington, D.C.
“I think for most people, the most rigorous part of the application is likely the letters of recommendation, because you need a minimum of five, maximum of eight,” Kamara said.
One of Kamara’s letters came from School of Public and International Affairs Professor Jacob Shapiro, a veteran of the United States Navy who taught Kamara in his Fall 2023 seminar on violent politics.
“Hadi has been great to work with over the years,” Shapiro wrote. “He’s ambitious and humble at the same time, and driven to learn and understand more about the world.”
Kamara enlisted in the Air Force shortly after high school. He served as a crew chief on the C-130 Hercules, responsible for the aircraft’s mechanics and safety.
“It’s not the type of job that you can mess around,” he said. “If you’re not doing your due diligence … you’re putting people’s lives at risk.”
Kamara simultaneously attended community college classes via Zoom during the COVID-19 pandemic. Kamara said he applied the discipline he acquired in the Air Force towards his education, eventually earning an associate’s degree in business administration from Northern Virginia Community College.
During the 2021 evacuation of U.S. allies from Afghanistan, Kamara and his fellow junior enlisted airmen were deployed from Germany to Afghanistan nearly immediately. He was part of the team responsible for coordinating the movement of supplies and ensuring that thousands of arriving refugees received meals and basic support.
As he later described in his Rhodes application, “What started as an overnight scramble became something historic.”
For his work during the evacuation, Kamara received the Humanitarian Service Medal — one of six commendations he earned during his military service.
“When handed an incredibly difficult job in the military, one he had not been trained for, he did it with energy and compassion, traits he will surely bring to future endeavors,” Shapiro continued.
In 2021, Kamara applied to Princeton.
“I didn’t think I was going to get into Princeton, but I had also gotten to a point in my life where I was like, ‘Hey, I’m willing to take a chance,” he said.
It worked out.
When he arrived, Kamara knew he wanted to see more of the world, having had exposure to international experiences early in life. He has completed four study abroad programs at Princeton. In the summers of 2023 and 2024, he studied Swahili and East African politics at Maseno University in Kenya.
In a letter of recommendation, Mahiri Mwita, a lecturer in Swahili in the Program in African Studies, and a faculty supervisor during his semesters in Kenya, wrote that Kamara is “mature, brilliant, disciplined, and highly motivated in class — always punctual, completing assignments on time, and following up to ask what more he could do.”
Kamara also spent Spring 2024 at the University of Sydney and this past spring at Oxford.
“I think the best part of my time here at Princeton was the access to opportunity,” he said. “Even in the midst of [my] education, I was able to travel to places and learn in spaces that I could have never imagined.”
His senior thesis — advised by Politics Professor Christopher Blair — also examines international relations, analyzing U.S. foreign policy in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Rwanda from independence in 1960 through the post-Cold War realignment.
“I think that it’s one of the most under-researched parts of U.S. foreign policy. It’s a region that historically hasn’t been deemed as critical as other parts of the world,” Kamara said.
Kamara is excited about the international graduate community he will join at Oxford. Two-thirds of Oxford’s graduate students come from outside the U.K.
“Things that I can teach them and things that they can teach me is probably what I’m most excited to do at this point in my journey,” he said.
Hayk Yengibaryan is a head News editor, senior Sports writer, and education director for the ‘Prince.’ He is from Glendale, Calif. and typically covers breaking news and profiles. He can be reached at hy5161[at]princeton.edu.
Please send any corrections to corrections[at]dailyprincetonian.com.
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