Holy Cross Junior Named Harriman Foreign Service Fellow

One of Three College Students Nationwide to Receive Prestigious State Department Fellowship

Jared T. Bennici ’07, a junior political science major from Marlborough, Conn., will spend the summer working with some of America’s foremost diplomats in the U.S. Department of State in Washington, D.C. He is the recipient of the prestigious Pamela Harriman Foreign Service Fellowship, named after the late U.S. Ambassador to France during the 1990s.

The fellowship is sponsored by the College of William and Mary, in conjunction with the Department of State. It is intended to inspire and encourage students who wish to enter a career of public service, particularly with a focus on international affairs. Only three fellowships are awarded each year; one each for the State Department’s London, Paris, and Washington bureaus.

Applicants must first be accepted into the Department of State’s intern program. The College of William and Mary and the Harriman Advisory Board invites selected interns to apply, reviews applications, and conducts formal interviews in Washington, D.C. to select the three fellows. Selection criteria include academic merit, an institutional endorsement of the applicant’s college, references from faculty, and prior public and community service. Each fellowship includes a $5,000 award.

"I am honored to be selected as a Harriman Fellow," Bennici said, upon learning of his selection. "Ambassador Harriman’s example and contributions, her ideals, and her profound foreign service career serve as a remarkable legacy and inspiration. Her unyielding work ethic and dedication to the United States and the preservation of peace in the broader international community are deeply admirable. Ambassador Harriman lived her life with as sense of presence, purpose, and wonder; she was an ambitious and dedicated explorer, innovator, and lifelong learner who sought deeper avenues of understanding within the international community."

The International Herald Tribune hailed Harriman as "the most successful American political ambassador of the decade." After her death in 1997, French president Jacques Chirac, calling her "a great ambassador of the United States," conferred on her posthumously France’s highest award, a Legion of Honor medal.

Earlier this year, Bennici was selected by the College’s Center for Interdisciplinary and Special Studies as the Maurizio Vannicelli Washington Semester Away program award winner for his thesis, "9/11, Hurricane Katrina & The Missing Link: Why the Federal Response to Hurricane Katrina Failed." He presented his research at a public lecture last month.

While in Washington, Bennici interned for Senator Joseph I. Lieberman (D-CT) on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, assisting senior staffers and senior Committee attorneys in conducting investigations into the failed state, local, and federal responses to Hurricane Katrina. In particular, the team to which he was assigned focused on comparatively analyzing the Federal Emergency Management’s and the Department of Homeland Security’s natural disaster and terrorism response protocols, contingency plans, and statutory obligations and limitations specifically pertaining to the ability of the federal government to override state sovereignty in catastrophic natural disasters and major, multi-state terrorist attacks.

In addition to his political science major, Bennici is pursuing a minor in Middle Eastern Studies and a Peace and Conflicts Studies concentration. Bennici is on the men’s varsity crew team, volunteers at Saint Paul’s Food Pantry, and is an overnight host for prospective students in the Office of Admissions at Holy Cross. He also contributes political op-eds to The Crusader. He plans on pursuing graduate studies in international relations and law, with a focus on national security policy, international terrorism, and crisis diplomacy.