Joshua Yang ’25 has been awarded a 2025 Gates Cambridge Scholarship, joining 34 other scholars from the United States. Yang is a part of the 25th-anniversary cohort of scholars since the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation established the scholarship in 2000.
Yang is a former associate Prospect editor for The Daily Princetonian.
According to its website, the program selects “scholars based on their outstanding academic achievement and their commitment to change the world for the better.” Out of the 35 U.S. scholars, 13 will pursue PhDs, and 22 will undertake one-year master’s degrees.
The application process is divided into three stages. The first step involves prospective scholars applying to the University of Cambridge, and students indicate their intended study area. Once applications are submitted, University of Cambridge administrators nominate the top applicants for an interview.
“I submitted my initial application in late October, and I was invited to interview in late January in Seattle,” Yang said.
Yang was placed in a hotel in Seattle for a night and met the next morning with a “panel of interviewers who were all working in the social sciences.” The three-person panel included two alumni of the scholarship.
The next week on Jan. 31, Yang received an email in his inbox notifying him that he was part of the 2025 cohort heading to the United Kingdom in October.
“I had been told that they would announce the results Thursday [Jan. 30] or Friday. On Thursday, nothing came the entire day. I was on edge,” Yang said. “I checked my inbox and there was an email, and I was absolutely thrilled. It felt like an immense privilege and honor. And I also thought back to all of the friends and professors and family that have supported me.”
Yang grew up in Palo Alto, Calif., where he attended Henry M. Gunn High School. He wanted to attend college on the East Coast “to explore the humanities in more depth.” At Princeton, Yang is majoring in philosophy and pursuing a minor in journalism.
Yang was drawn to philosophy because he wanted to “engage with abstract and complicated ideas in the form of philosophical arguments or analyses.”
“To just spend four years immersed in that world before likely pivoting to something else, that felt like a unique sort of privilege to be able to have, and so I decided to take advantage of it,” he said.
His interest in pursuing a journalism minor was sparked by a course he took with Professor Kushanava Choudhury. “Within two weeks, [he] convinced me that this is something I want to pursue,” he said.
Yang has freelanced for Foreign Policy, The Nation, Rest of World, and LA Review of Books. Through his freelancing and internships, he has also traveled extensively; he has visited Hong Kong, the Middle East, and New Delhi, where he reported on “mostly foreign policy and geopolitical issues.”
Outside of his freelance work, Yang is a member of the Edwards Collective, a fellow at the James Madison program, and the former co-director of New York TigerTrek.
At the University of Cambridge, Yang plans to pursue an MPhil in Modern South Asian Studies. His interest in South Asia was sparked by an assignment in Israel where he reported on South Asian — mostly Indian — migrant workers, who had been hired to replace Palestinian laborers throughout Israel after the laborers were barred.
Yang traveled throughout Israel and spoke to the workers, some of whom had come under attack from Hezbollah. “I’m glad that I was able to get that story out, and I’m glad that I’m still able to engage with a lot of those issues about migration and labor and human rights,” he said.
Yang’s senior thesis is on jurisprudence and legal normativity, advised by Robert P. George. George is the director of the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions, the McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence, and a professor of politics.
“[Jurisprudence] was something that I began thinking about seriously after seeing [it] in different areas of the world … increasingly authoritarian governments were bending the rule of law further their own means,” Yang said.
“Working with Joshua is an unmitigated pleasure,” George said in the University announcement. “He’s a morally and intellectually serious young man who thinks rigorously about the deepest issues.”
Yang will start the program in October and looks forward to “immersing [himself] in academic study about the region” and “continue studying Hindi.”
Hayk Yengibaryan is an associate News editor, senior Sports writer, and Education Director for the ‘Prince.’
Please send any corrections to corrections[at]dailyprincetonian.com.
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