Kansas student will keep advocating for refugees as Rhodes Scholar

A college senior from Wichita has been named a Rhodes Scholar, one of the top awards available to college students.

Shegufta Huma, a senior at the University of Kansas, plans to study refugees and forced migration when she begins her studies at the University of Oxford in England beginning next October.

Huma graduated from the International Baccalaureate program at Wichita East High School in 2013.

“I was particularly interested in this course of study because of my experience as a Muslim immigrant growing up in the U.S. and coming of age at a time when Muslims, immigrants (and) a lot of different communities are facing various types of persecution in our country,” she said.

“There is a real need for people, especially from those communities themselves, to work toward elevating ourselves and ensuring justice and equity.”

The Rhodes Trust announced 32 U.S. recipients of the 2017 awards on Sunday. The scholarships cover expenses for two or three years of study at Oxford.

Huma, majoring in political science and minoring in Spanish, emigrated to the U.S. from Bangladesh when she was 2. She attended Caldwell, Seltzer and Jackson elementary schools in Wichita, as well as Robinson Middle School and East High.

Her involvement at KU has included Student Senate, the Women of Color Collective, the Muslim Student Association and the University Honors Program. Last spring, she interned in Washington, D.C., with the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights.

Huma is the daughter of Mohammad Anwar and Anjuman Ara of Bel Aire.

She hopes to pursue a master’s degree in public policy and eventually would like to work for the American branch of the United Nations Refugee Agency.

“For me, a scholar who was selected from a state where my own legislators have worked tirelessly to disenfranchise and dehumanize people from my own communities, it’s really important for me to engage in this work,” she said.

Jennifer Fry, Huma’s junior IB English teacher at East High, said she was excited but not surprised to hear Huma had been awarded one of the country’s most prestigious scholarships.

“It’s not every day that a Rhodes Scholar comes along,” Fry said Monday.

Huma was involved in debate and forensics at East, and “her articulate nature partially explains her current successes,” Fry said.

“She’s just very principled, very considerate, empathetic and also extremely brave.”

Huma said she faced criticism and threats of violence in recent months at KU for speaking out against anti-immigrant rhetoric during the presidential campaign.

“For the first time, I really had to confront the idea of violence against me for the things I care about,” she said.

“I was inundated with hundreds and hundreds of messages of hatred, calling for my death and rape and deportation,” Huma said. “A pivotal moment for me was when I pretty much just accepted that this was something that’s important enough to me that I’m willing to face that backlash.”

Huma credited East High teachers and the IB program, as well as her parents’ support and encouragement, for her success thus far.

“Teaching high school students how to read and write and think critically, to engage critically with literature … that really prepared me for pretty much any academic hurdle I would have in college,” she said.

This story was originally published November 21, 2016 at 7:03 PM with the headline "Kansas student will keep advocating for refugees as Rhodes Scholar."