Princeton senior Joshua Yang awarded Gates Cambridge Scholarship

Princeton University senior Joshua Yang has been awarded a Gates Cambridge Scholarship. The awards recognize U.S. students for "outstanding academic achievement" and "social leadership," and cover the full cost of a postgraduate degree at the University of Cambridge, according to the prize announcement.

The program was established in 2000 by a donation to the school from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation “to build a global network of future leaders committed to improving the lives of others.” Yang, who is from Palo Alto, California, is among 35 U.S. winners of the scholarship who will join the 25th anniversary cohort. 

He is a philosophy major with a minor in journalism and plans to pursue an MPhil in Modern South Asian Studies at Cambridge in preparation for a career as a journalist. He hopes to begin his career reporting from India or Pakistan. This summer, he will be interning at the international desk of The Washington Post covering foreign breaking news.

While at Princeton, Yang has published articles on India, Israel and Hong Kong in media outlets including Foreign Policy, The Nation and the LA Review of Books, among others. His international experiences have included a Streicker Fellowship in New Delhi, a semester at the University of Oxford, a Dale Summer Award for a project in Hong Kong, and a fall break trip to Berlin for the journalism course “Migration Reporting.”

His reporting work in India “convinced me that I could spend decades in South Asia and still have more to learn about the region’s dynamic and contradictory forces,” he wrote in his personal statement for the award.

Yang is writing a senior thesis on jurisprudence (philosophy of law) and legal normativity. His adviser is Robert P. George, the McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence, professor of politics and the director of the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions.

“Working with Joshua is an unmitigated pleasure,” George said. “He’s a morally and intellectually serious young man who thinks rigorously about the deepest issues. His senior thesis explores different perspectives on the perennial question of whether, and if so how, law creates or reinforces moral obligation.”

Sarah McGrath, professor of philosophy and adviser for one of Yang’s two junior papers, described him as a scholar who is “philosophically serious, creative and entirely capable of doing excellent independent research, seeking advice and feedback only after a truly impressive amount has been accomplished.”

In his journalism, “Joshua's determination to report on social justice issues is particularly noteworthy,” said Deborah Amos, a Ferris Professor of Journalism in Residence. “During our trip to Berlin, he managed to gain access to a Ukrainian refugee center at the former Tempelhof airport. His reporting included not only compelling interviews but also a personal touch, with a memorable meal shared with a family eager to tell their story.”

A member of Mathey College, Yang is an undergraduate fellow in the James Madison Program, a member of the Edwards Collective and a student representative on the Department of Philosophy’s undergraduate curriculum committee. He has served as associate editor of The Daily Princetonian, contributing editor for The Nassau Weekly and co-director of New York TigerTrek, which brings Princeton students to New York for a week of conversations with creative professionals, journalists and entrepreneurs. He has also interned at Zette, a journalism tech startup.