Neysun Mahboubi '97 receives Soros Fellowship

For Neysun Mahboubi '97 — a recent recipient of the Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowship for New Americans — liberty holds greater meaning than it does for most citizens. Mahboubi is the son of Baha'i parents who emigrated from Iran in the early 1970s, just a few years before the 1979 revolution.

"We had gone back [to Iran] a couple times before the revolution, but after the revolution, there was no way we could go back," he said, adding that members of his father's family still live in Iran.

Mahboubi said though 20 years have passed since the revolution, the Iranian government continues to restrict the rights of Baha'is, making it difficult for them to attend school, obtain visas, get jobs and even make simple financial transactions.

Winners of the Soros Fellowship — awarded each year to U.S. immigrants or children of immigrants — receive a maintenance grant of $20,000 and one half the tuition cost of a U.S. graduate program for up to two years, according to a statement issued by Warren Ilchman, director of the Soros Fellowships.

As a politics major and certificate student in the East Asian studies program, Mahboubi served as class president and Honor Committee chair. Since graduation, he has continued researching his senior thesis topic — administrative litigation law in the People's Republic of China — for which he won the Lyman H. Atwater Prize in politics.

"I'm deeply honored and extremely grateful to Princeton," Mahboubi said. "The award makes a tremendous difference in terms of what I can do."