JokersUpdates.com: Current Affairs - Abdul El-Sayed’s Oxford years: PhD, political influences and sporting distinction (A flex, they named a sandwich after him when he was studying for his PhD)

Michigan senator-elect’s former peers recall his time at university in Britain – and his love of coronation chicken sandwiches

Abdul El-Sayed
Abdul El-Sayed’s Oxford years: PhD, political influences and sporting distinction
Michigan senator-elect’s former peers recall his time at university in Britain – and his love of coronation chicken sandwiches

Sammy Gecsoyler
Sammy Gecsoyler
Sun 8 Nov 2026 10.26 EST
In the cold, twilight days of 2008, inside the University of Michigan’s fortress-like Fleming administration building, one student was given a particularly adulatory sendoff.

Mary Sue Coleman, president of the university at the time, convened a ceremony for the latest Rhodes scholar heading to the University of Oxford: Abdul El-Sayed. “There is no doubt among anyone who crosses his path that he will achieve all he sets out to accomplish and more,” she declared to a room full of the university’s leaders, calling the medical PhD student the “epitome of the engaged intellect”.

She even recalled Bill Clinton’s response to a speech made by El-Sayed in 2007, with the former US president remarking: “I wish every person in the world could have heard you speak today.”

For those who ran into El-Sayed months later in autumn 2009 when he finally crossed the pond, these words of praise rang true. “He always seemed very driven,” says Elias Rothblatt, who played lacrosse alongside Michigan’s senator-elect more than 15 years ago. El-Sayed was captain of Oxford’s lacrosse team and student journalists at the time described him as a “defensive master” in the sport.

Rothblatt, 36, who works in fintech, says El-Sayed was a “very fierce competitor” on the field and a “wonderful” captain. “He had a great sense of humour. He struck a really good mix of being friends with other people on the team but also setting the tone and helping lead the team and keep things, keeping serious.”

Off the field, Rothblatt says, El-Sayed was equally “fun and friendly”. He says: “It was always a pleasure to run into him. He was with his wife sometimes and she was wonderful too.” El-Sayed also had a fixation on a resolutely British sandwich: coronation chicken. Speaking to the Times, Ricardo Chasebi, owner of a now-closed cafe in Oxford’s covered market, recalled El-Sayed’s order as a grilled ciabatta filled with coronation chicken, cheddar, peppers and red onion that was topped with lettuce and tomato.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/nov/08/abdul-el-sayed-michigan-senator-oxford-university-years-phd?shem=aimgspe,