Since high school, Matthew Peeler ’26 of New York City has kept a journal, filled not with personal reflections or daily musings but with legal analysis and close readings of the Constitution.
The hand-drawn charts, bullet points, and commentary in his “Constitutional Journal” are early clues to an uncommon devotion to law and the public good that has grown and deepened during Peeler’s time at Bates.
Recognizing his demonstrated commitment to pursuing a career in public service, Peeler has been named a 2025 Truman Scholar, making him one of just 54 students nationwide recognized by the Truman Scholarship Foundation for exceptional potential as future public leaders.
A politics major, Peeler plans to pursue a legal career in constitutional litigation, with a particular focus on solving the crisis of gun violence in the United States. “I want to do whatever I can to minimize the anguish of gun violence,” he writes in his Truman proposal.
Peeler is spending the 2024–25 academic year at Oxford University, where he earned first honors during the autumn and winter terms. While on a train to Berlin, he learned of his Truman Scholarship, straight from Bates President Garry W. Jenkins, who called him with the news.
“It was really just very hard to believe,” Peeler says. “I asked Garry to make sure he actually said it correctly and I was not wrong. I was very over the moon, and it was very unexpected.”
The news was, of course, the real deal. And a big deal. Peeler is the third Bates student since 2020 to receive a Truman Scholarship, considered the premier graduate scholarship for aspiring U.S. public service leaders.
“I am thrilled that the Truman Scholarship Foundation has recognized Matthew’s outstanding academic achievements, commitment to public service, and promise of future contributions to the greater good,” Jenkins says.
“His selection is a powerful testament to the potential of Bates students and the high quality of education we provide. As a Truman Scholar, he joins the ranks of U.S. senators and representatives, cabinet officials, governors and senior state government officials, prosecutors and public defenders, judges, diplomats, journalists, leaders of nonprofit organizations, and educators.”
This year’s Truman Scholars were selected from 743 candidates nominated by 288 colleges and universities. Each award includes graduate school funding, leadership training, career advising, and opportunities for federal internships and fellowships.
At Oxford, Peeler has continued to study constitutional law by learning how English law initially influenced and has diverged from the American constitution. After Bates, he plans to pursue a law degree and begin a career in public service, either by working with an advocacy organization focused on reducing gun violence or by shaping firearms policy through constitutional law.
Peeler’s experience as a student at Bates during the October 2023 Lewiston shootings solidified his commitment to take action to pursue gun reform through law. In his Truman application, Peeler wrote that “to create change, I must act. Leadership is a long road anchored by the will to combine action and the desire to serve others.”
Like thousands of others in the Lewiston–Auburn area, Peeler spent the three-day lockdown heartbroken, uncertain, and on high alert. Feeling “lucky” to have avoided harm, he says, is a troubling reality where gun violence is so common that basic survival is seen as fortune.
“The fact that being forced to wonder where a gunman is and constantly checking the news should be considered lucky, is inappropriate and should not be okay,” Peeler says.
Since the shootings, Peeler has developed a theory rooted in close constitutional study: that the right to security, embedded alongside the right to bear arms, offers a framework for gun control legislation that aligns with constitutional originalism and avoids framing the Second Amendment as inherently opposed to regulation.
“When you look in this right to security lens, it is two competing rights that need to be balanced,” Peeler says. “That doesn’t mean one right is more important than the other, but that they need to be balanced. And right now, there’s not much of a balance.”
As a sophomore, Peeler presented his ideas at Mount David Summit with the support of Visiting Assistant Professor of Politics Pavel Bačovský.
Outside of his academic work at Bates, Peeler has also served as the business manager of the Deansmen a cappella group. He was previously a member of the Brooks Quimby Debate Council and volunteered as a Book Buddy, reading with students at Montello Elementary School, through the Harward Center. At Oxford, he is a member of the St Catherine’s College rowing team.
Besides journaling about law, Peeler used to have fun as a kid memorizing Constitutional amendments and legal precedents. Not much has changed: A Friday evening might find Peeler curled up with a 1,000 page book on law or history, learning about the subject that is both his passion and his primary scholarly pursuit.
“If I’m working on it, chances are I’m passionate about it,” Peeler says. “I don’t really see the point in working on something I don’t care about.”
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