Two Hunter alumni, Devashish “Dave” Basnet ’22 and Alexis Fisher ’21, have been chosen for the John Robert Lewis Scholars & Fellows 2025-2026 Fellowship that furthers the work of the late civil-rights hero, Congressman John R. Lewis.
Basnet and Fisher are the first Hunter graduates chosen for the program, which is in its fifth year and has 20 awardees annually.
“We are proud of Dave and Alexis, who have distinguished themselves as public-policy leaders at Hunter and beyond,” said Newman Office of Prestigious Scholarships & Fellowships Director Stephen Lassonde.
The announcement comes as Hunter College is celebrating Black History Month with, among other events, a symposium on Lewis. Author David Greenberg will discuss his book John Lewis: A Life with Rutgers Politics Professor Saladin Ambar on February 3 at the Roosevelt House Public Policy Institute at Hunter College.
Founded in 1870 as a teacher academy for women, Hunter welcomed students of all races, religions, and backgrounds — a visionary commitment to equality only a few years after the Civil War. It remains one of the most diverse colleges in the nation and nurtured civil-rights leaders such as the great Pauli Murray ’33. The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. spoke at Hunter twice, including his last speech in New York City before his 1968 assassination. Roosevelt House, where Basnet and Fisher studied, has well-regarded certificate programs on human and civil rights.
Lewis, one of the “Big Six” civil-rights leaders of the 1960s, helped found the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee and planned the 1963 March on Washington with King. He was the youngest speaker at the event. He was savagely beaten during the “Bloody Sunday” march on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Ala., suffering a fractured skull. Lewis entered Congress in 1987 and fought for civil and labor rights for the rest of his life. He died in 2020.
As John Robert Fellows for 2025–26, Basnet and Fisher will study the history of Lewis’s nonviolent philosophy with an eye toward applying its principles and strategies to the movements and issues of today.
Basnet, Fisher, and their fellow awardees will make two trips to Washington, D.C., to meet with government, business, and nonprofit leaders. They also will complete an oral history project and join Congress members on the annual pilgrimage to the Edmund Pettis Bridge and greater Alabama in March of 2026. Each participant receives a $2,000 stipend.
Basnet, a native of Nepal who grew up in Queens and is a DACA recipient, was Hunter’s second Rhodes Scholar and just completed his program at Oxford. He was a Roosevelt Scholar, Grove Scholar, and political science and public policy major at Hunter. He is making a film about his birthplace before attending law school next year.
Fisher, a JFEW Eleanor Roosevelt Scholar and Thomas Hunter Scholar, as well as a political science and human rights major, has been involved in labor rights’ struggles since high school. She just finished a master’s degree at SOAS, University of London. She is continuing her dissertation work from SOAS, which earned the highest honors, on the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire and its lasting effects.
Hunter’s Office of Prestigious Scholarships and Fellowships has a stellar record of accomplishment in preparing students for competitive scholarships and fellowships. In recent years, the college has produced two Rhodes, three Marshall, seven Schwarzman, five Luce, eight Goldwater, and 39 Fulbright Scholars, among many other prestigious awardees.
The John Robert Lewis Fellowship is a program of the Faith & Politics Institute, which carries on the legacy of its chairman emeritus John R. Lewis. The mission of FPI is to cultivate mutual respect, moral reflection, increased understanding, and honest conversation among political leaders to advance productive discourse and constructive collaboration.
