3 Harvard College Seniors Named Marshall Scholars

Laila A. Nasher '25 Is First-Gen

Three Harvard College seniors — Laila A. Nasher ’25, Ryan H. Doan-Nguyen ’25, and John Lin ’25 — were named Marshall Scholars on Monday, per a British consulate press release.

A total of 36 students were selected from a pool of 983 applicants as recipients of the 2025 Marshall Scholarships. Stanford University had the greatest number of awardees with five Marshall recipients, followed by Duke University and Harvard, which each received three.

Winners came from 25 universities across 16 U.S. states.


 

(L-R: John Lin ’25, Laila A. Nasher ’25, and Ryan H. Doan-Nguyen ’25)

The Marshall Scholarship, which was established in 1953 as a memorial to former U.S. Secretary of State General George C. Marshall, awards American students with up to three years of graduate study at any university in the United Kingdom. Previous Marshall scholarship recipients include Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch and Harvard Medical School professor Dan H. Barouch ’93.

Nasher, who lives in Mather House and concentrates in History and Anthropology, was previously named as a 2024 Truman Scholar. Nasher, who founded Harvard’s First-Generation Low-Income Task Group, has led efforts to expand programming for FGLI students at Harvard. She also served as director of diversity and outreach for the Institute of Politics.

Nasher said her interests in education and history drive her future goals to “enshrine education as a recognized civil right.”

“I came to Harvard from an environment where I really couldn’t have access to schooling, period,” said Nasher.

Nasher first traveled to the U.K. to do archival research and conduct oral history interviews for her senior thesis on history of feminism and nationalism in South Yemen from the 1940s to the 1990s.

She said she was proud to be “the first Yemeni to be selected for this honor.”

“Marshall is not only an award, but a very deep responsibility in making sure that I continue to do everything in my power to take the resources that I get from these very prestigious institutions,” Nasher said, “and bring them back to the communities that need the most.”

See this link to Harvard Crimson newspaper for full story: https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2024/12/16/marshall-scholarship-2025/