Category:Master of Arts Graduates
Unlike the Bachelor of Arts, which almost every American college graduate holds, the Master of Arts in this roster is usually a step rather than a destination: it appears in the same education line as a doctorate more often than it appears alone. Janet Yellen took hers at Yale alongside a PhD, Jeane Kirkpatrick hers at Columbia alongside a PhD in political science, Mark Carney his at Oxford alongside a DPhil, Dave McCormick and Derek Kilmer theirs at Princeton and Oxford in the same pattern. The category collects biographical entries recorded as holding the degree.
Background
Two distinct things are labelled Master of Arts in this membership and readers should not conflate them. One is a taught or research master's degree in a social science or humanities subject, usually taken on the way to a doctorate or to a policy career. The other is the Oxford and Cambridge Master of Arts, a status conferred on holders of the bachelor's degree after a period of years rather than earned by further study, which is why some British entries carry it without any corresponding graduate work.
As with the other degree categories on this wiki, the membership skews toward American elected officials, whose official biographies record education completely where comparable figures elsewhere have no sourced entry. Political science, public policy and education are the dominant subjects.
Economists, national security and the policy track
The strongest occupational cluster in this category is people who moved between economics and government. Janet Yellen chaired the Federal Reserve and served as Treasury Secretary; Jason Furman took a Master of Arts and a doctorate in economics at Harvard; Douglas Diamond took his at Yale alongside a Master of Philosophy and a doctorate, after a bachelor's degree at Brown; Jeffrey Sachs and John W. Snow sit in the same group. Condoleezza Rice took hers in political science at the University of Notre Dame in 1975, between a bachelor's degree and a doctorate at the University of Denver, and went on to the National Security Council and the State Department. Jeane Kirkpatrick followed a comparable route to the United Nations. Dick Cheney took his in political science at the University of Wyoming, and Dean Rusk took his at St John's College, Oxford, between Davidson College and a Berkeley law degree.
The judicial and civil rights membership is smaller but old. Benjamin N. Cardozo earned his at Columbia in 1890; Edward Terry Sanford took an additional bachelor's degree and a Master of Arts at Harvard; Eleanor Holmes Norton took hers at Yale alongside a law degree; Jody Williams took hers at Johns Hopkins before the campaign work that brought a Nobel Peace Prize. Andy Biggs took his at Arizona State University, and Julio Frenk took his in sociology alongside a Master of Public Health and a joint doctorate in 1983.
See also
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