For George Boardman, history was never just a subject—it was part of the fabric of his everyday life.
His mother earned a Ph.D. in diplomatic history and spent years teaching and researching the field, his father ran for U.S. Congress in the ’90s, and his grandfather served as a senior U.S. foreign service officer stationed in Latin America and India. Boardman’s earliest memories are shaped by stories of diplomacy, public service, and conflict.
“I always grew up hearing about diplomatic history, these family histories, and both of my parents’ direct involvement in American political history,” Boardman recalled. “As I grew older, these stories shifted from stories—albeit historically accurate ones—into genuine historical accounts.”
History offered Boardman a way to understand not just what happened, but why, and how those decisions continue to shape today’s world. After taking an honors U.S. government class during his senior year of high school, he also developed a passion for law.
“I had a young teacher who just graduated from Notre Dame highlight various Supreme Court opinions during in-class discussions,” he said. “The way he discussed the internal logic of the opinions piqued my interest. It seemed to rise above modern political discourse, which is just two people talking past each other. I read McDonald v. City of Chicago in preparation for an in-class debate, and I was hooked.”
From that point on, he set his sights on law school.
Boardman graduated high school during the pandemic and decided to take a gap year before attending Vanderbilt. During that time, he started a court reporting and transcription company, allowing him to listen to criminal, immigration, zoning, and security clearance hearings on both the federal and state level. This experience only solidified his desire to pursue a career in law, but Boardman still wanted to maintain his connection to history.
Now a senior graduating magna cum laude in the College of Arts and Science, Boardman has done just that by double majoring in law, history, and society and political science. In the classroom, courses such as European History and Culture Through Immersive Roleplaying: French Revolution, taught by Mellon Foundation Chair in the Humanities and Professor of French Holly Tucker, The U.S. as a World Power, taught by Professor of History Thomas Schwartz, and Constitutional Law: Civil Liberties and Rights, taught by Principal Senior Lecturer of Political Science Carrie Russell, helped Boardman connect historical inquiry with legal reasoning and provided him with the skills necessary for law school.
Outside of his coursework, Boardman served as editor-in-chief of the Vanderbilt Historical Review, a print publication dedicated to publishing long-form original research papers submitted by students around the country. He was also a member of the Phi Beta Kappa honors society and a recipient of the Phi Beta Kappa Centennial Award, which recognizes an outstanding Vanderbilt senior or seniors each year.
He conducted research on nation-state cyber power and nuclear weapons through the Research on Conflict and Collective Action (ROCCA) Lab. He was part of the first cohort of students to complete his Immersion Vanderbilt project with the Institute of National Security and he helped work on a proxy problem for the U.S. National Security Agency as part of the National Security & Emerging Threats: AI & Cybersecurity cohort. He also competed on, and served as the treasurer for, Vanderbilt’s Moot Court national law competition team, which promotes legal education and develops students’ oral communication and writing skills.
“The College of Arts and Science helped shape my academic and professional journey both inside and outside of the classroom,” Boardman said. “The depth of the relationships that I have formed with both College of Arts and Science faculty and my peers is unparalleled. Every one of these interactions has helped prepare me for the research, writing, reading, management, leadership, and oral advocacy skills that I will utilize in my future career as a lawyer.”
One such opportunity came in the form of his senior history honors thesis, a project that challenged him to move beyond the classroom and into the archives. Titled “The Ambivalent Kingmaker: Kissinger and U.S. Foreign Policy During the Cyprus Crisis,” the thesis examines the complex American and Anglo-American diplomatic landscape during the 1974 Cyprus crisis, in which a Greek-military-staged coup against the democratically elected government of Cyprus prompted a Turkish military intervention that partitioned the island. The thesis focused on the way Henry Kissinger, a chief figure of the U.S. government at that time, attempted to balance Cold War politics, manage the U.S. relationship with the British government, and promote the efficacy of NATO.
For Boardman, the topic was more than academic.
“It’s funny because my honors thesis encapsulates all the different aspects of history that piqued my interest in it from a young age,” he said. “I got to explore diplomatic history, political history, and the personal aspect of history since my grandfather worked under Kissinger in the State Department and met him on several occasions in Mexico.”
In conducting his original research, Boardman traveled to the British National Archives in London, where he had only four days to navigate an immense collection of primary source material. Working against the clock, he developed a system, scanning documents, photographing key records, and identifying patterns across diplomatic correspondence. The experience was both intense and transformative, pushing him to think like a historian.
“I had to learn how to locate sources in the massive database and secure a proper call number,” Boardman said. I had to learn which documents to pull, where to find them, how to order them, and which ones were worth my time. I probably pored over several thousand telegrams, scanning each to see if there was any salient information for my thesis.”
His diligence paid off when he was able to uncover previously undocumented evidence on the topic, which he presented in his 151-page thesis.
Boardman’s research challenges the notion that the U.S. deliberately sought to partition Cyprus, instead portraying a government struggling to manage a rapidly evolving crisis, and introduces the idea of “misaligned solidarity” between the U.S. and Britain, contributing to the conflict’s outcome. Additionally, Boardman found new primary evidence from the archives that revealed Kissinger understood the Cyprus crisis through the lens of his recent diplomacy following the 1973 Yom Kippur War, treating it as an analog and model for his approach. Boardman utilized this evidence to support his claim that Kissinger pursued a strategy of deliberate neutrality and constructive ambiguity between his two feuding NATO allies, Greece and Turkey.
Boardman received highest honors in history for the project, but the process itself left a deeper impression.
“My experience writing the thesis was both extremely challenging and rewarding,” he said. “I learned that consistency is key. When I was consistent and worked on the thesis a little bit every day, I was able to make astounding advances across a large amount of time. I also learned that I should stick with something that I am passionate about. No paper or thesis or article can ever be perfect. Don’t try and make it perfect, since it could always be better. Strive for your best.”
After graduation, Boardman will continue his journey at Notre Dame Law School, where he plans to pursue a J.D. He hopes to clerk for a federal judge in the future before pursuing a potential career in constitutional law and appellate litigation. Boardman sees his time in the College of Arts and Science as both expansive and grounding, allowing him to explore widely while sharpening his sense of purpose.
“My time in the College of Arts and Science at Vanderbilt has truly been transformative,” he said. “It has allowed me to grow professionally and intellectually in a manner that I think is probably unparalleled at any institution throughout the country.”