A digital home
rgmenziesharvard.org holds the history of the award, the full Honour Roll since 1968, guidance for applicants and news from the community, in one authoritative place.
Initiative · Australia and Harvard
The Menzies Alumni Group.
A Lifelong Community of Public Purpose.
Since 1968, more than one hundred exceptional Australians have studied at Harvard as R.G. Menzies Scholars, on one defining expectation: that they bring what they learn home.
The Rouben Malian Memorial Foundation fully funds the R.G. Menzies Scholarship to Harvard Alumni Group, the community that keeps those scholars connected to one another, to the applicants who follow them, and to the purpose that sent them.
The Scholarship
A national investment, made one scholar at a time
The R.G. Menzies Scholarship to Harvard was inaugurated in 1967 as the flagship philanthropic initiative of the Harvard Club of Australia, with early champions who included Sir James Wolfensohn, later President of the World Bank. It honors Sir Robert Gordon Menzies, Australia’s longest-serving Prime Minister, who transformed the nation’s universities and believed deeply in the alliance between Australia and the United States.
The award is administered by the Australian National University. A joint panel of the ANU and the Harvard Club of Australia selects scholars for intellect, leadership and a credible plan to contribute to Australia’s future. Menzies Scholars have studied across Harvard’s graduate schools, from law, government and business to public health, education, design, medicine, engineering and the arts and sciences, and each accepts the award’s defining expectation: to return, and to put that expertise to work for Australia.
- 1967Inaugurated by the Harvard Club of Australia
- 100+Menzies Scholars since the first award in 1968
- 9Harvard schools attended by Menzies Scholars
- US$60,000Maximum award for each year of study
What the Foundation funds
Where the scholarship keeps compounding
A scholarship lasts a year or two. Its return accrues over decades, after scholars come home. The Alumni Group exists to make that return larger.
The Scholar Network
A private network where past and present scholars keep their profiles current, decide how they appear on the public Honour Roll, and find one another by field, city or Harvard school.
Mentoring the next cohort
Scholars who opt in speak with prospective applicants and newly named scholars about applying, about life at Harvard, and about the return home.
Connection across generations
Introductions and convenings that link scholars across disciplines and decades, so that a jurist from the 1980s and a policy graduate from the 2020s can find common cause.
The alumni
A record of return
The Honour Roll reads as a cross-section of Australian public life. Menzies Scholars include Hilary Charlesworth (1982), now a Judge of the International Court of Justice; Michael Hiscox (1990), the founding director of the Australian Government’s Behavioural Economics Team; Esther Charlesworth (1994), founder of Architects Without Frontiers; and Tracy Slatyer (2006), a theoretical physicist at MIT.
Others have gone on to lead in the courts, in federal and state government, in business and medicine, in universities and in the not-for-profit sector. What unites them is less a discipline than a disposition: the belief that an exceptional education is a debt owed to one’s country, and repaid in service.
Why the Foundation
A shared conviction
Rouben Malian believed in backing people early and expecting much of them. The Menzies Scholarship makes the same bet: it invests in individuals of exceptional promise and asks, in return, for a lifetime of contribution. Rouben’s own life ran between continents and ended in Sydney, and the Foundation’s work in New York, Armenia and Australia follows the same lines.
Funding the Alumni Group allows the Foundation to strengthen what the scholarship builds without touching what makes it rigorous: the independence of its selection and the integrity of its standards.
Get involved
For scholars, applicants and partners
Menzies Scholars can join the Scholar Network and offer to mentor applicants. Prospective applicants can ask to speak with a past scholar. Institutions and individuals who wish to support the community can write to the Alumni Group directly.
The R.G. Menzies Scholarship to Harvard is funded by the Harvard Club of Australia and administered by the Australian National University, which selects scholars through a joint panel. Applications are made through the ANU. The Rouben Malian Memorial Foundation funds the Alumni Group and has no role in the selection of scholars or the terms of the award.