Georgetown Senior, Advocate for Prison Reform Wins 2025 Rhodes Scholarship

Noa Offman is a senior in the College of Arts & Sciences.

Noa Offman (C'25), an advocate for criminal justice reform, has won the 2025 Rhodes Scholarship - the oldest and most competitive international scholarship.

Offman is among 32 recipients of the Rhodes Scholarship in the U.S. She joins more than 30 other Georgetown students and alumni who have received the scholarship, including last year's three recipients: Thomas Batterman (C'22), Asma Shakeel (SFS'24)and Zhicheng (Charlie) Wang (SFS'22).

The scholarship selects promising young people from around the world who demonstrate integrity, leadership, character, intellect and a commitment to service to study at the University of Oxford.

"We are so proud of Noa Offman's accomplishments, both academically and in service to others. I congratulate Noa on her outstanding achievement," said Provost Robert M. Groves. "Noa has been an instrumental leader on and off campus, one who demonstrates resolve, integrity and an unwavering commitment to fight for justice. We know she will continue to make an impact for good in our world."

At Oxford, Offman will pursue her master's degree in criminology and socio-legal studies. Ultimately, she wants to return to the U.S. to advance prison reform.

"I am forever grateful to my parents and to Georgetown for its endless opportunities and support," Offman said. "And most of all, to Colie, for being the most wonderful mentor I could ever ask for. I hope this privilege allows me to ensure that the world doesn't miss out on more incredible people like him."

A Chance Meeting

Offman's journey to reform the criminal justice system began when she met Colie "Shaka" Long, a program associate in Georgetown's Prisons and Justice Initiative. After being sentenced to life in prison at the age of 18, Long had served 26 years of his sentence before he was released in 2022 through Washington, DC's Second Look Amendment Act.

Long spoke to Offman's first-year theology course, The Problem of God, while he was still incarcerated in 2021. After that class, Long became, in Offman's words, an "unofficial mentor," who gave her reading suggestions and personal insight into America's criminal justice system.

"Like most of my peers, I might have gone my entire life without crossing paths with a single incarcerated person. Their reality is kept separate from our own, hidden in America's most remote recesses," said Offman. "Talking to Shaka shook me to my core. His story tore away the blindfold of willful ignorance, laying bare the horrors of the 'inside.' The more I looked, the more I could not unsee."

After their initial conversation, Offman changed her major from global health to justice and peace in the College of Arts & Sciences. Since then, she has committed her time in and out of the classroom to working on prison reform.

Restorative Justice

On campus, she helped found the Georgetown Restorative Initiative, a task force within the university's Division of Student Affairs that seeks to advance restorative justice and community healing for students. In this role, Offman partnered with school administrators to design and implement restorative programming, assisted with revising the Student Code of Conduct and led trainings for senior administrators.

"Noa's active participation and creative ideas in germinating restorative response options led her to be selected as the inaugural restorative justice student coordinator in the Office of Student Conduct," said Erika Cohen Derr, associate vice president for student affairs. "Noa far exceeded expectations for even the best student clerical assistant. She helped grow the Restorative Georgetown collective from a small group of mostly administrators to more than 50 people - students, faculty and staff - through proactive outreach and collaborative invitations."

In October, Offman helped create and promote the Restorative Open House, an on-campus event where members of the Georgetown community were invited to gather and explore how to build friendships that could endure the strain of political differences.

"Noa approaches these conversations and her relationships with principled empathy and kindness, an openness to learning and understanding, and a vision for a more peaceful world that begins at the level of individual human relationships," said Cohen Derr.

Off campus, Offman has interned with two law firms and the Washington Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs, a civil rights organization where she worked with hundreds of incarcerated individuals, gathered testimony for litigation and continually advocated for the rights of those behind bars.

"Despite the overwhelming challenges she faces in her work on prison reform, Noa remains deeply optimistic - a quality that informs both her leadership and her commitment to change," said Lauren Tuckley, director of the Center for Research & Fellowships. "Her ability to maintain hope is rooted in her deep belief that progress, though incremental, is worth fighting for."

Offman hopes to apply her knowledge from her Rhodes Scholarship to build a better prison system in the U.S.

"I refuse to remain complicit in a system that thrives on hidden suffering," she said. "Instead, I seek to help rewrite the terms of our social contract - dismantling the cruelty of our carceral state and bringing the buried truth of the 'inside' into the light where it can no longer be ignored."