2022 Distinguished Undergraduate Essay Competition

Senior Fellow Russell Berman (center), chair and organizer of the Hoover Distinguished Undergraduate Essay Competition, with Hoover Institution director Condoleezza Rice and six of the Stanford students who were recognized.

Senior fellow and Stanford humanities professor Russell Berman presides over a ceremony in the Traitel Building’s welcoming pavilion, where seven Stanford students were recognized by the Hoover Institution for outstanding essays.

Hoover Institution director Condoleezza Rice speaks with students who were recognized at a ceremony of the Hoover Distinguished Undergraduate Essay Competition.

In her winning essay, Yuanlin Yu (’25) provides an analysis of the musical expression conveyed by composer Dimitri Shostakovich in his Fifth Symphony, created in Stalinist Russia.

Rahsaan McFarland II (’25) wrote his winning essay about African Americans’ experiences migrating from poor conditions of the Eastern and Southern United States to the San Francisco Bay Area, where they continued to face discrimination.

Lindsey Williams (’23) demonstrates in her winning essay how the framers of the US Constitution envisioned constraining the US Supreme Court and lower courts via “the political question doctrine,” which says that these judges shouldn’t hear cases that they find raise political issues more properly addressed by the legislative and executive branches.

Barbara Sanford (’23), in her essay that received honorable mention, explores the career of Petras Daužvardis, the consul of Lithuania in Chicago from 1937 until his death in 1971. The majority of Daužvardis’s diplomatic service in the United States occurred while his country was under Soviet occupation. Nevertheless, as Sanford observes, Daužvardis was a powerful voice for his nation’s sovereignty.

In his essay that received honorable mention, Pedro Carvalho (’23) explains how widespread credit card acceptance is harming small businesses. The competition between major credit card companies in convincing banks to issue their cards have resulted in increased swipe fees, which are ultimately refunded to these banks and absorbed by vendors.

In an essay that received honorable mention, Ryan Beyer (’25) describes the destructive impact of the Khmer Rouge on Cambodian society starting in the 1970s. Using source material from the Hoover Institution’s Library & Archives, he argues that American intervention in Cambodia in the early 1970s destabilized that country and led to the rise of the murderous Khmer Rouge regime under dictator Pol Pot.