[Too Long; Didn't Read: Aldo at Harvard 2020-24, By the Numbers]
[public service and funding]
$0K
cumulative total of public service fellowship funding I was offered to help support my public service work at places like a federal judicial chambers in SDNY and the U.S. Senate
0%
percentage of cost of attendance paid by a merit-based Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation scholarship towards my undergrad; I'm graduating debt-free!
[side projects]
3 exhibitions 🖼️
that I developed on-campus (2 conceptual; 1 in-person) as part of my interests in art history, provenance, and presentation
3 years ⛷️
of serving as a ski instructor for minority K-12 youth in Boston
[law]
6 HLS courses/profs
who taught me in lecture and/or seminar during my four years here
1 YLS prof/reading seminar
a close mentor of mine is a law professor in New Haven
[senior year]
0+ miles traveled
to-from Harvard and the Pacific Islands in service to writing my senior thesis in History
1 thesis in History
on the intellectual history of the Antipodean "Question"
As a Harvard undergrad, I worked for a federal judge at the nation's premier federal trial court alongside law clerks.
@ City of Boston Election Department
As a Harvard undergrad, I served as the sole Spanish-speaking translator for the City of Boston's Election Department. Calls from precincts were sent to my ad-hoc office in City Hall.
@ Commonwealth of Massachusetts Attorney General's Office
As a Harvard undergrad, I helped return $10K to defrauded Commonwealth consumer. See the attached internal memo from the Mass. Attorney General's office.
@ The United States Senate
As a Harvard undergrad, I worked in the office of the senior U.S. Senator from Indiana (I had been the 2020 senior Indiana delegate to the U.S. Senate Youth Program.)
Public Service (On-Campus)
@ Student Government Election Commission
I supervised Harvard undergrad student government elections.
Public Service (Funding)
[Class of 2024 Distinctions: I was an on-campus finalist for the national Truman Scholarship ($30K; top ten students for public service at Harvard). I was nominated by a General Counsel official in the City of Boston; a Harvard History professor; and the Roosevelt Scholars Program director.]
[I also received the following public service fellowship offers below.]
[total offered since 2020: $32.75k total accepted since 2020: $18.75k]
The Harvard Institute of Politics [$18,000 offered]
Director's stipend, Years 1, 2, and 3 (declined Years 1 and 2). Year 3 was applied towards an internship at the U.S. Senate.
Center for Public Service and Engaged Scholarship $12,750 offered]
Chan-Zuckerberg '06, stipend, Years 1 and 2. Year 1 was applied to a summer at the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and Year 2 was applied to a summer at the Southern District of New York. Mindrich '88 stipend, Year 1 and 2 (declined both years)
Fong '77 stipend, Year 1
The Franklin Delano Roosevelt Foundation at Harvard University [$2,000 offered]
Roosevelt Scholars Program, supplemental stipend offered (declined Year 1)
**I accepted the Roosevelt Scholar distinction and still participated in the program even as I turned down the stipend portion of the award.**
Professors Taken (Law + History)
Harvard Law School
Sunstein, Cass
University Professor
Feldman, Noah
Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law
MacKinnon, Catherine James Barr Ames Visiting Professor of Law
FAS Dept of History
Blair, Ann
Expertise: Intellectual history
Jasanoff, Maya
Expertise: Imperial history, the British Empire
Smail, Dan
Expertise: Deep history
Kloppenberg, James
Expertise: Intellectual history
Deloria, Philip
Expertise: American-Indian history
Professors Taken (Other)
Other FAS Departments
Chetty, Raj Economics Department Founding Director, Opportunity Insights
Schneider-Enriquez, Mary History of Art and Architecture Department
Former Houghton Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Harvard Art Museums
Cummins, Tom History of Art and Architecture Department
Director, Dumbarton Oaks
Kelly, Sean Philosophy Department Faculty Dean, Dunster House
Lewis, Harry Computer Science Department Former Dean, Harvard College
Yale Law School
Amar, Akhil Reed
Yale Law School
Papers Graded (Law + History)
"What's In a Name? On the Politics of Nomenclature and Remembrance." FAS Dept. of History w/ Jasanoff. 🇬🇧
[GRADE: A-level, senior]
"Power and Ethics." Harvard Law School w/ Feldman. ⚖️
[GRADE: N/A, cross-registered; junior]
"The Constitution in American History." Harvard Law School w/ Lepore and Mack. 📜
[GRADE: A-level; junior]
"The Judicial Philosophy of Sherman Minton, 1949-1950." FAS Dept. of History w/ Blair. 🧑⚖️
[GRADE: A-level, sophomore]
"“Helen Hunt Jackson, Standing Bear v. Crook, and American-Indian Reform, 1879-1881”" FAS Dept. of History w/ Deloria. 🪓
[GRADE: A-level, sophomore]
"1920-1933: More Than Just Bar Trivia. (Recent Developments In The Historiography of Prohibition) " FAS Dept. of History w/ Blair. 🍺
[GRADE: A-level, sophomore]
" 'A Digital Dollar? Issued By My American Central Bank?' (It's More Likely Than You Think.)" FAS Dept of Econ. 💵
[GRADE: A-level, freshman]
Talks Attended (Law)
"Constitutional Conservatives and Natural Rights; Libertarians and Natural Law" by Professor Randy Barnett at GULC. Hosted by HLS Federalist Society.
[TALK] [2024]
"Causes and Consequences" by Professor Penslar and Professor Feldman at HLS.
[TALK] [2023]
"Trial by Jury: Does the American Jury System Bring About Justice?" Hosted by D. Mass.
[TALK] [2022]
"The Rule of Law: A Conversation w/ Justice Breyer." at Harvard IOP.
[TALK] [2022]
"The Original Scalia" by Professor Vermuele through the Herbert W. Vaughan Academic Program. I sat behind Professor Breyer, who was in the audience.)
[TALK] [2022]
"Moral Readings versus Originalisms in Obergefell and Dobbs" by Professor Fleming, at HLS Law and Philosophy.
[TALK] [2022]
"Inequality, Present and Past | A Roundtable Discussion of the Dawn of Everything: A New History of Inequality." w/ David Wengrow at Mahindra Humanities Center.
[TALK] [2022]
"Debate between Professor Stephen Sachs and Professor Noah Feldman." at HLS Federalist Society.
[TALK] [2021]
"Central Bank Perspectives on Central Bank Digital Currencies" by Federal Reserve Bank of Boston President Rosengren at Harvard Law School, Program on International Financial Systems.
with my HLS/HKS classmates as part of a Congressional simulation (I was ranking member)
In Photos (2020)
my first day at Harvard, in Winthrop House. (my eventual-upperclassman residency, Eliot House, is in the background.)
In Photos (2021)
shaking hands with Professor of Philosophy Sean Kelly moments after taking up his challenge to recite Kierkegaard's Part 1A of "From Sickness Until Death" entirely from memory
i still have people come up to me recalling that they remember me from this class
In Photos (2022)
my likeness as a learning aide during an HLS/HKS lecture - the topic was party dynamics within a PR electoral system
Special Thanks
My undergraduate education is funded on last-dollar external merit-based scholarship from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. I did not apply to any other full-ride scholarships besides the Gates Scholarship due to equity concerns.
(cost of attendance at Harvard: around $80,000/yr.)