Today’s Briefing:
PRINCETON GERRYMANDERING LAWSUIT DISMISSED: In a recently settled lawsuit filed by New Jersey Republicans, the Princeton Gerrymandering Project was listed as a defendant. Specifically, the lawsuit alleged that the congressional map passed in a 7–6 vote by the bipartisan New Jersey Redistricting Commission (NJRC) in December retains a partisan bias against Republicans.
In the lawsuit, the Commission’s Republican members accused the NJRC’s tiebreaker vote John Wallace Jr., a former Associate Justice on the New Jersey Supreme Court, of being biased against Republicans and of receiving advice from the Princeton Gerrymandering Project to inform Wallace’s vote.
Founded and directed by neuroscience professor Samuel Wang, the Princeton Gerrymandering Project came under fire in the suit for allegedly breaching a promise of confidentiality by supplying Democrats with valuable information about parties’ proposed redistricting maps. Moreover, the suit alleges that the Princeton Gerrymandering Project is financed by private donors who have historically financed Democratic campaigns and candidates, another ostensible example of the group’s Democratic bias.
“The moment hyper-partisan, Democrat Professor Sam Wang and his Princeton Gerrymandering Project were hired as advisers by the Democrat thirteenth member, Republicans and, more importantly, the millions of New Jerseyans who wanted influence in the state’s federal elections, were unceremoniously boxed out of the decision-making process,” said Chair of the NJRC’s Republican members Douglas Steinhardt in a statement to POLITICO.
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SENIOR NAMED RECIPIENT OF GATES SCHOLARSHIP: Shaffin Siddiqui ’22, a senior in the history department, was named as a recipient of the Gates Cambridge Scholarship, a post-graduate scholarship awarded annually to outstanding students to attend Cambridge University. Siddiqui is one of 23 U.S. winners of the scholarship, and one of about 80 scholars chosen overall.
At Cambridge, Siddiqui will pursue a Master of Philosophy degree in the history and philosophy of science and medicine. According to his bio on the Gates website, Siddiqui wrote that the history department allowed him to combine his “interests in the history of Islam and the practice of medicine” by researching “the history of medicine in the Muslim world.”
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