Robert J. Kubala ’09 (left) and Kuong Ly ’08. Photograph: Frank Curran

Kuong Ly ’08 and Robert J. Kubala ’09 are among the 40 U.S. recipients of this year’s Marshall Scholarships. Commemorating Secretary of State George C. Marshall and the post–World War II redevelopment program for Europe that bears his name, the award was created in 1953 by an act of the British Parliament and provides for two years of graduate study in the United Kingdom. Past recipients include Supreme Court justice Stephen Breyer and New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman. Thomas Kempa ’04 was the most recent Boston College Marshall Scholar.

Ly graduated with a major in philosophy and minors in studio art and in faith, peace, and justice. He was selected to the 2008 USA Today All-USA College Academic First Team and received the Edward H. Finnegan, SJ, Award, the highest honor presented to a graduating senior by Boston College. Born in a refugee camp in Vietnam and now a resident of Massachusetts, Ly has been working for Health Care for All, a Boston-based consumer advocacy group. He wants to “focus on relief policy and human rights law in a holistic way, putting all the pieces together and seeing how various issues affect one another.” He will spend next year at the University of Essex Human Rights Centre and then pursue migration studies at Oxford University.

Kubala, a philosophy major with a particular interest in the relationship between philosophy and the natural sciences, is a member of the Boston College Presidential Scholars Program and the College of Arts & Sciences Honors Program. He served as senior editor at Boston College’s undergraduate essay journal, Dialogue. Twice the recipient of advanced study awards—taking him to Germany and then Iceland—the Texas native will study philosophy, first at St. Andrews University in Scotland for a year and then at Cambridge University.

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