2005-2006 Ledecky Fellows

Harvard Magazine’s Berta Greenwald Ledecky Undergraduate Fellows for the 2005-2006 academic year will be junior John A. La Rue and senior Elizabeth S. Widdicombe, who were selected from a competitive evaluation of two dozen student writers’ applications for the position. The Fellows, who join the editorial staff during the year, contribute to the magazine as “Undergraduate” columnists and by initiating story ideas, writing news and feature items, and editing copy before publication.

Elizabeth S. Widdicombe and John A. La Rue

Photograph by Jim Harrison

La Rue, whose family now lives in Pittsburgh, resides in Quincy House and concentrates in government, with a particular focus on U.S. politics and social policy. As editor of SWIFT, a student-run satire magazine, he has supplemented his academic interest with an interest in comedy, and hopes one day to tell them apart. During the summer, he worked in Pittsburgh for Bob Casey, a Democratic candidate hoping to replace Rick Santorum in the U.S. Senate.

Widdicombe, who spent a year in Tibet, Nepal, and India before enrolling at Harvard, now calls Boston and Dunster House home. A concentrator in history and literature, she expects to write her senior thesis on Henry James. A past Crimson writer and current Lampoon member, she was a reporter in the Washington bureau of the New York Daily News this summer. Both Widdicombe and La Rue serve as tutors in the undergraduate Writing Center during the academic year.

The Fellowships are supported by Jonathan J. Ledecky ’79, M.B.A. ’83, and named in honor of his mother.