Ejdemyr volunteered at a school and children’s home in Chennai, India, last March.
main thing about him was leadership, and how much he cared about others.” Those traits probably didn’t hurt in the voting to make him ESPN The Magazine Academic All-American of the Year in 2009, the only men’s Lobo soccer player in history to win the national honor. Ejdemyr was also a four-time Mountain Pacific Sports Federation all-conference performer and Lobo Club Male Student-Athlete of the Year for 2009-10, not to mention winner of the L.F. “Tow” Diehm Inspirational Award that same year. What makes this track record all the more impressive is that the lanky Swede was also pulling straight As in his classes. He graduated with a 4.15 cumulative GPA, and wrote his senior honors thesis during the summer so he could focus on soccer during the school year. That paper was “one of the best I have ever read,” according to his thesis advisor, political science professor Christopher Butler, “and was given highest honors by the department.” The student athlete, for his part, credits his advisor with sparking an interest that would eventually eclipse his passion for sports. This was not just political science, but a quantitative, statistical approach to it that puts the emphasis on “science.” Intrigued by the differences in the Swedish and American political systems, and how they influence people’s well-being, Ejdemyr discovered in Butler’s classes a way to analyze those differences “in a more systematic way,” rather than just having opinions. “I also just found it fun to work with data,” he adds. His doctoral research at Stanford University investigates what motivates politicians to fund basic public services such as education and health care,
or not—and especially the role played by ethnic favoritism. By number crunching and mapping, Ejdemyr has been able to demonstrate bias at work in specific cases. His website at Stanford (stanford. edu/~ejdemyr/), where he is a teaching assistant, offers some high-level tutorials on statistical analysis, along with some intriguing maps and charts showing child mortality patterns as well as government response rates and the ecological footprint of various nations.
Ejdemyr says he chose Stanford because its poli-sci department welcomes such a social-scientific approach, and the university’s close ties to the tech industry offer multiple employment possibilities in the private sector if his ambition to become a professor does not pan out. With a history of facing too many options, Ejdemyr benefited from his experience at UNM, according to his mentors.
“He was thinking about some secondand third-division teams in Europe, and was going back and forth between that and law school and grad school,” Butler says, “and at one point grad school was last on his list.” Fishbein saw Ejdemyr take full advantage of the chance to engage with top professors and classes, and “he was unique, getting into a doctoral program at Stanford,” even if it meant giving up the chance to play pro ball. “I think he made a good decision.” “Soccer is way more fun,” Ejdemyr admits, “and I still literally dream of being in professional games.” But after two knee surgeries and two concussions, he saw the practical value of “something to fall back on.” Though he still plays on an intramural team, soccer has given way to a hierarchy of priorities that now includes a girlfriend and the possibility of raising a family, either here or in Europe. Weighing two political systems that are so often set at odds in contemporary debate, Ejdemyr takes a characteristically detached view. Americans should treat politics more objectively, he says, evaluating specific policies instead of resorting to personal attacks and vitriol. Even a liberal haven like Sweden has its drawbacks, he notes. “Because the state provides so much for you, the family structures have kind of withered” compared with less-generous states. He was impressed by the strength and resilience of family ties in New Mexico. Back at sea level and no longer split between body and mind, teamwork and individual achievement, Europe and America, the native son of Borås and UNM appears to have found his peace with either/or. ❂
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