Each year, through the James C. Gaither Junior Fellows program, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace offers approximately 15 one-year fellowships to uniquely qualified graduating seniors and individuals who have graduated during the past academic year. They are selected from a pool of nominees nominated by participating universities and colleges. James C. Gaither Junior Fellows work as research assistants to Carnegie’s senior scholars. UConn’s 2024 nominee is Lucas Ruiz. Learn more about Lucas below.
Lucas Ruiz ’23 (CLAS) is from East Hartford, CT. He graduated from the University of Connecticut in May of 2023, earning a B.A. in history with Cum Laude honors. During his time at UConn, he conducted six months of independent research that he used to write his thesis, “Wrong Horse: Kim Koo & The Tragedy of U.S. Foreign Policy in Korea, 1945-1946,” which he presented at the Southwest Conference on Asian Studies in Houston, TX, and which was accepted into the Kim Koo Foundation Archive in Seoul. Lucas was the UConn History Department’s 2023 Roger N. Buckley Award winner and, during his senior year, served as the Secretary for the Korean Student Association. In the future, Lucas intends to attend law school before initiating a career in international and national security law to work on topics in U.S. foreign relations such as nuclear policy, peace-building, and Northeast Asian diplomacy. Lucas is a 2024 recipient of the Scoville Peace Fellowship – the first UConn student ever to be selected for that program.
