Temple Grad Makes History As School's First Rhodes Scholar

PHILADELPHIA – Philadelphia native Hazim Hardeman has made history, as the Temple University and Community College of Philadelphia graduate has been named the first Rhodes Scholar from either schools.

Hardeman joins 31 other Americans who were announced as 2018 Rhodes Scholars.

Rhodes Scholarships provide all expenses for two or three years of study at the University of Oxford in England and may allow funding in some instances for four years.

A North Philadelphia native raised by a single mother just block from Temple , Hardeman graduated from Temple in May 2017 with a strategic communication and magna cum laude honors.

Hardeman's mother found a way to enroll him in a better elementary school two hours away by public transportation but he had to return to his inner city high school.

From there he attended the Community College of Philadelphia, where he graduated with High Honors.

Following earning his degree at CCP, he headed to Temple.

"This is a truly historic moment, for Hazim Hardeman and for Temple University," Temple President Richard M. Englert said. "Hazim has built an impressive academic and community-focused record. We could not be more proud of him and wish him the best as he leaves North Broad Street for Oxford and the next phase of his remarkable life."

He has written on hip hop music, gun control, and the prison abolition movement.

He is a substitute teacher in the Philadelphia School District, was a fellow in the Philadelphia Mayor’s Office of Community Empowerment, and took a course on death and dying with inmates in a prison hospice program.

He explains that “arriving at truth through letting suffering speak” has been a guiding ideal.

Hardeman intends to do the M.Sc. in Higher Education at Oxford.

"As a scholar, I hope to draw on the wisdoms of my community to intervene in our public discussions," he said. "As a practitioner, I hope to educate inside and outside formal spaces of learning—one of which is prisons."

After attending Oxford, he plans to pursue a doctorate in communications or education and continue his research in the areas of critical pedagogy, social movements, race and politics and African American intellectual history, according to Temple.

This year’s selections—independently elected by 16 committees around the country meeting simultaneously— reflects the rich diversity of America," Elliot F. Gerson, American Secretary of the Rhodes Trust, said. "It includes, among others, ten African-Americans, the most ever elected in a U.S. Rhodes class; African and Asian immigrants;other Asian, Muslim, and Latino Americans; an Alaskan Native (Aleut); a transgender man, the second self-acknowledged transgender Rhodes Scholar after Pema McLaughlin was elected last year; and four from colleges that have never before elected Rhodes Scholars in the 115 years of the United States Rhodes Scholarships."

Another Pennsylvania who was named a Rhodes Scholar is Alan Yang, of Dresher, who attends Harvard University.

Flags wave in the wind from a building on the at Temple University campus in Philadelphia, Tuesday, Oct. 10, 2017. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)