Two Brown students, one alum named 2026 Rhodes Scholars

Over the weekend, two Brown students and one alum were named 2026 Rhodes Scholars by the Rhodes Trust — the first time in over a decade that three scholars in the same year have been affiliated with Brown. The University’s U.S. Rhodes Scholars are Keidy Palma Ramirez ’26 and Nick Sanzi ’25, and they will be joined by international scholar Xuanjie (Coco) Huang ’26.

The Rhodes Scholarship is a post-graduate program aimed at developing leaders in public service. Every year, 32 of America’s top scholars and roughly 70 from dozens of other countries receive full funding to pursue a post-graduate degree at the University of Oxford in England.

The Herald spoke with Brown’s three 2026 Rhodes Scholars and professors who have influenced them during their time on campus. 

‘I’ve made history for my community’: Keidy Palma Ramirez ’26

Palma Ramirez’s father didn’t attend her middle school or high school graduations, and he won’t attend Commencement this May. 

In fact, he hasn’t been in the U.S. since he was deported when Palma Ramirez was in middle school, she said. The first of her graduations that he will be able to attend is when she graduates from Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar. 

Palma Ramirez is the youngest of five and grew up moving between El Paso, Texas, and Chihuahua, Mexico. For her, “the biggest joy is still knowing that I’ve made history for my community.” According to Palma Ramirez, she is the second Rhodes Scholar ever from El Paso, and the first woman from El Paso to receive the scholarship. 

At Brown, Palma Ramirez is a Royce Fellow at the Swearer Center for Public Service, where she is working on a potential collaboration with the Mexican American Cultural Center in El Paso to enhance college access for Mexican-American youth. She also co-founded Brown Dream Team, a student organization that supports Brown’s undocumented+ community — a group that includes people who are undocumented, people with undocumented relatives, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals recipients and others.

Palma Ramirez has also worked in the Immigrant Student Research Project Lab at Brown.

Her research is related to creating “equitable data systems and equitable technology that doesn’t harm immigrant communities,” she said. Over the summer, she interned at the Pew Research Center, using census data and data from the American Community Survey to learn about families with inconsistent immigration documentation statuses.

When Palma Ramirez was growing up, her mother lacked proper immigration documentation and wasn’t able to leave the U.S., Palma Ramirez said. Her mother didn’t have access to a stable job and “thought about self-deporting a lot of times,” but she stayed in the U.S. so that Palma Ramirez could “finish high school and have a better opportunity at going to college,” Palma Ramirez said.

Palma Ramirez credits her academic success to the value her family places on education.

“My brother went to Cornell completely undocumented, and he didn’t have a pathway to citizenship because DACA didn’t exist yet,” she said, referring to Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, an immigration policy that protects individuals who arrived in the U.S. as children from deportation. 

“He sat me down, and he saw all of my anger about my father’s deportation and told me that as a U.S. citizen, I have absolutely no reason not to go to the best schools and take every advantage that I can of my privilege,” Palma Ramirez recalled. 

“Keidy’s journey is a testament to the successes of her family and community,” wrote Kevin Escudero, an associate professor of American studies and ethnic studies who has worked with Palma Ramirez in the Immigration Student Research Project Lab, in an email to The Herald. 

Palma Ramirez “has been an integral part of the ISRP Lab research team and a passionate leader both on and off campus in support of immigrant rights,” Escudero added.

At Oxford, Palma Ramirez plans to get concurrent master’s degrees in migration studies and social data studies. She hopes to one day earn a doctorate.

‘I get to do something wonderful’: Nick Sanzi ’25

After Sanzi graduated from East Greenwich High School in Rhode Island, he started college at the University of Rhode Island before transferring to Brown for his remaining three years. At URI, a class about global crises drove him to study international relations, he said. 

Mark Blyth, a professor of international economics and international and public affairs at Brown, recalled meeting Sanzi in fall 2021. 

“He walked into my office hours and did what few students do anymore,” Blyth wrote in an email to The Herald. “He asked me if I wanted to talk with him about some ideas about economics that he had. I said, ‘Sure,’ and we began to talk.

Impressed, Blyth offered to be Sanzi’s advisor.

Sanzi is interested in the rehabilitation of liberal politics and policy. 

“A lot of my academic exploration in college was around the Biden administration’s industrial policy to rebuild the middle class,” Sanzi said. He worked at the Department of Commerce on expanding high-speed internet access in rural areas and allocating broadband grants before going to India as a Saxena Center for Contemporary South Asia fellow to “see how industrial policy works in an international space.”

He then returned to the U.S. and canvassed in North Carolina for former vice president Kamala Harris during her 2024 presidential campaign. 

Sanzi’s mother is a teacher, and his father is a police officer. For him, “public service was always foundational to what (he wanted) to do,” he told The Herald.

At Brown, Sanzi served as a managing editor for the Brown Journal of World Affairs, through which he “got to work with wonderful people and work on real scholarship with the Watson Institute (of International and Public Affairs),” he said.

“I can’t think of a better student to represent Brown as a Rhodes Scholar,” Blyth wrote about Sanzi. “I’m just glad to play a small part in his success to date. I’m sure he will achieve much more than this.”

Sanzi recalled feeling an immediate rush of gratitude when he won the scholarship. 

“When I found out, I just immediately wanted to call my parents, my professors, the people that wrote recommendations for me, the people that mentored me when I had internships (and) my friends,” he said. The award is “as much theirs as it is mine, and I’m so honored that I get to have this experience and I get to do something wonderful with it, hopefully.”

At Oxford, Sanzi will pursue a master’s degree in political theory, according to a Brown press release.

‘Allow yourself to dream boldly’: Xuanjie (Coco) Huang ’26

Despite now being on a clear path toward Oxford, Huang was not always sure of her goals. “Growing up, I was always told that I was too idealistic, that my dream of working in the humanitarian sector was naive — that I’d eventually ‘grow out of it,’” she wrote in an email to The Herald.

Huang credited a social entrepreneurship class taught by William Allen, a senior fellow in international and public affairs, with cementing her drive to do good.

“Seeing that idealism doesn’t expire changed everything for me,” she recalled. “It gave me permission to keep pursuing the work I care about.”

Allen remembered how during Huang’s first semester at Brown, his social entrepreneurship class had reached its enrollment limit. He suggested that Huang, who desperately wanted to take the course, wait until the next semester. 

“She insisted that I issue an override, that she was already an entrepreneur in China and would add considerable value to the class,” Allen wrote in an email to The Herald. “I said yes.” 

“It was one of the best decisions I’ve made since I started teaching at Brown in 2006,” he added.

At Brown, Huang studies international and public affairs, focusing her coursework on humanitarian action and journalism. She is a Social Innovation Fellow with the Swearer Center and studied abroad in Jordan with the School for International Training’s program on humanitarian action and refugee health.

“In the long term, I hope to dive deeper into the field of humanitarian journalism, reporting on war and displacement while developing ethical partnerships with local journalists,” wrote Huang. “Above all, I want to create platforms that center the voices and agency of affected communities.”

Huang has worked with Physicians for Human Rights, conducting “qualitative research and analysis of interviews with health care workers in Gaza, examining how conflict disrupts medical systems,” she wrote.

She also has her own podcast series titled “Frontlines and Headlines,” which features her interviews with “war journalists and aid workers about the ethics and narrative power of conflict reporting,” she noted.

At Oxford, Huang plans to pursue master’s degrees in refugee and forced migration studies and in global governance and diplomacy, according to a Brown press release. 

Huang “is creative, curious, serious, articulate, a deep thinker and problem-solver” who “sets high standards for herself,” wrote Allen. 

“I don’t always feel qualified to give advice, but if I’ve learned anything, it’s this: Allow yourself to dream boldly, even when it feels unrealistic,” Huang wrote. “The world already has enough people telling you to be cautious — so let yourself imagine the biggest version of what you want to do, and then take the first small step toward it.”

Correction: This article has been updated to accurately reflect Palma Ramirez's work as a Royce Fellow at the Swearer Center for Public Service.

Editors’ Note: This article was updated to reflect Xuanjie (Coco) Huang’s preferred name.