Rhodes Trust Says There Are Too Many White Rhodes Scholars
In a recent announcement CEO of the Rhodes Trust Elizabeth Kiss and the members of the board of Trustees of the Rhodes Trust announced that they will violate Cecil Rhodes’ will in order to reduce the number of white South African Rhodes Scholars in the name of equity and justice. Remarkable about this statement is that it is explicitly using demographic quota as justification for violating the Will of Cecil Rhodes. In his Will, Cecil Rhodes stipulated that a small number of scholarship for South Africa are reserved for graduates of certain high schools, e.g. the Paul Roos Gymnasium. The Trust acknowledges that these schools do not discriminate based on race, but nevertheless claims that the scholarships have to be taken away from these schools because they have too many white students. Since about 2019, the first full year of current Rhodes Trust CEO Elizabeth Kiss’ term, there has been a remarkable demographic shift of scholars selected from the US and Canada, with some recent selection years having had incoming classed with up to 2/3 women and a majority of non-white scholars. The Trust denies that this is because of racial and gender discrimination. The text of the announcement, made on May 16, 2024, is below:
Dear Rhodes Scholars,
Statement from the Rhodes Trustees on the South Africa Schools Scholarships
We are writing to update you on new developments concerning the South Africa Schools Scholarships.
Following a unanimous vote by the Rhodes Trustees, earlier today the Rhodes Trust lodged an application with the U.K. Charity Commission for permission to amend the Schools Scholarships under Section 280A of the U.K. Charities Act 2011 (as amended). The Trustees also voted unanimously to suspend selection of new School Scholars pending resolution of this matter. We want to explain the reasons behind this decision, the process the Trust has pursued in reaching it, and next steps.
Background and History
In his Will, Cecil John Rhodes allocated four Rhodes Scholarships to past pupils of four named South African secondary schools (‘the Schools’). These are the only Scholarships which Mr Rhodes allocated to past pupils of specific institutions. At the time of drafting the Will, there were no universities in South Africa and the four nominated schools were among the only institutions providing higher education to students in preparation for them to attend university in the UK and Europe.
South Africa has changed profoundly since the time of Rhodes’ Will. In particular, the structure of South African tertiary education has been transformed with the establishment of many new universities, including several that grew out of the four Schools. The Rhodes Scholarship has also evolved, with the creation of the four South Africa-at-Large Scholarships and with efforts around the world to ensure that, as the world’s pre-eminent merit scholarship for postgraduate students, we are selecting students in each of our geographic constituencies, regardless of background, who best exemplify our selection criteria.
The Schools Scholarships have produced many impressive Rhodes Scholars. But they have also been contentious for decades. The four Schools are relatively small, single-sex (male), fee-paying institutions, and, for parts of their history, they were barred as a matter of South African law from admitting non-white students. In the 1980s the Trust pursued legal action to challenge these Scholarships as discriminatory on racial grounds, since Rhodes’ Will explicitly states that Scholars shall be eligible regardless of race. But that effort was overtaken by events in the late 1980s and early 1990s as the South African government implemented successive changes to the law which allowed schools to drop their racial exclusion clauses. Latterly, with the Trust’s agreement, the four named Schools have informally partnered with a group of other local schools, so that their students are treated as students of or from the named School for the purposes of selection. Most of these partner schools are single-sex (female) schools and only one is outside historically white areas.
The Trust has been concerned for some time that, three decades after the end of apartheid and notwithstanding the addition of partner schools, the applicant and winner pools for the Schools Scholarships remain predominantly white. That does not reflect the South African student population. It is also at odds with the Trust’s mission to create an international community of extraordinary future leaders without regard to race, based squarely on talent and potential alone.
The Data and a New Legal Context
In 2021, the Trustees appointed a Task Force to carefully consider the Schools Scholarships. As a first step, we completed a data analysis exercise to gain better insight into the composition of the four Schools Scholarships in comparison to South Africa-at-Large within the context of South Africa’s overall tertiary student population. This analysis confirmed that the pool of applicants for each of the Schools Scholarships is very small, with just a handful of students applying each year. This stands in sharp contrast to the South Africa-at-Large applicant pool, which last year received 40 applicants per Scholarship place.
The demographic data shows that, with the addition of partner schools, the gender makeup of the Schools Scholarships has improved markedly over recent years and is approaching overall parity. However, a very high proportion of those who apply for the Schools Scholarships are white, and the recipients are overwhelmingly so in a country where white people represent 7% of the population overall, and 11% of the tertiary school population. There are thus stark differences between the Schools Scholarships and South Africa-at-Large, in the size as well as the racial composition of the applicant pool and the subsequent winner cohort.
After reviewing this data, the Trust sought legal advice on whether the Schools Scholarships remained lawful under English law, in particular given that recent changes in the law potentially provided a new pathway towards change.
The Trust instructed leading Counsel teams with expertise in equality law and charity law to advise on the position. Two independently produced opinions concluded that the Schools Scholarships are indirectly discriminatory on grounds of race for the purposes of the Equality Act 2010 (both with and without the inclusion of the partner schools) and are therefore unlawful. Consequently, the Trust is under a legal duty to amend the terms of the Schools Scholarships so as to bring them into line with equality law and, as it cannot act unlawfully, it must suspend the Schools Scholarship programme in the meantime. The Trustees are satisfied that it is expedient in the interests of the Scholarship trusts, as well as being consistent with Rhodes’ overarching mission, to amend the particular charitable trusts that relate to the Schools Scholarships so as to reallocate the Schools Scholarships into the South Africa-at-Large pool.
Consultation with the Schools and our application for Charity Commission approval
The Trust respects our long historical association with the four Schools, and it has been our hope that we could work together with them to create a new chapter of our partnership, one focused on broadening educational opportunity. Accordingly, since early 2023, the Trust has been engaged in an extensive consultation with the four Schools about this issue. Unfortunately, so far it has not been possible to reach a consensual solution.
Having received clear legal advice from two independent sets of leading Counsel that the Schools Scholarships contravene English law, we must take action to bring the Trust within the requirements of the Equality Act. The Trustees have therefore formally resolved to amend the School Scholarship trusts so as to reallocate the Schools Scholarships into the South Africa-at-Large pool, and we have now lodged an application with the Charity Commission under Section 280A of the UK Charities Act 2011 (as amended) for regulatory approval of that amendment. It may take some time to hear from the Charity Commission, but we will of course update the community once the outcome is clear.
If that approval is granted by the Charity Commission, the Alumni of the Schools and those of their partner schools will of course be welcome to apply and compete for the Rhodes Scholarships through the South Africa-at-Large provision.
It is important to emphasise that the Trust does not allege that the policies or operations of the Schools are intentionally discriminatory. Rather, the indirect discrimination arises from the requirement that the four Scholarships are, in practice, restricted to a very small group which is for historic and socio-economic reasons not representative of South Africa.
Next Steps
We want to assure all of you that there will be no change in the Trust’s support for School Scholars currently in Residence, and those selected in 2023 who will join us in Oxford as members of the Class of 2024 this Michaelmas Term.
For the upcoming selection round for the Class of 2025, the Schools Scholarships have been suspended generally. We therefore invite Alumni of the Schools to apply through South Africa-at-Large.
In order to avoid truncating opportunities for our South African applicants, including those from the Schools, the Trustees have taken an interim step and authorised the addition of four South Africa-at-Large Scholarships for the Class of 2025, bringing the total for South Africa-at-Large to eight. A generous donor has offered to separately fund these four additional one-off scholarships. In the longer term, if the Charity Commission approves of our application, there would be a permanent amendment to the School Scholarship trusts so that the four School Scholarships would effectively become South Africa-at-Large Scholarships on an ongoing basis.
We are also pleased to let you know that, as part of the Trust’s broader fundraising efforts to secure the endowment necessary to increase the number of Scholarships awarded to African applicants to 32 per year, a dedicated fundraising drive is underway to endow one additional South Africa-at-Large Scholarship, with 40% of the funds raised. Once completed, (and if the Commission approves our application), this endowment will bring the total number of Scholarships available per year to South African applicants (including KwaZulu-Natal) to 10. We are excited about this expanded investment in the next generation of leaders for South Africa and the wider world.
We will continue to keep Rhodes Alumni informed about our efforts, and any significant decisions reached by the Charity Commission on the Trust’s application.
The Rhodes Trustees
