Former Jersey City Board of Education President Mussab Ali was one of 30 recipients of the prestigious Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowships for New Americans.
By John Heinis/Hudson County View
The board of directors for the merit-based graduate school program for immigrants and children of immigrants announced the program’s 2022 fellows chosen from a pool of over 1,800 applicants across the country today.
They will each receive up to $90,000 in funding to support their graduate studies.
“Immigrants, asylum seekers, and refugees are an essential part of the United States. The Paul & Daisy Soros Fellows demonstrate the ingenuity and diverse perspectives that immigrants of all backgrounds bring to America’s graduate programs and to the country as a whole,” Fellowship Director Craig Harwood said of the new Paul & Daisy Soros Fellows.
Ali, who did not seek re-election last year due to a battle with Stage 4 Hodgkins Lymphoma (he is now cancer free), became “passionate about civil rights” after seeing his parents face discrimination after immigrating to Jersey City in 2000, according to his Fellow bio.
Eligible New Americans include green card holders, naturalized citizens, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival (DACA) recipients, individuals born abroad who graduated from both high school and college in the United States, and the US-born children of two immigrants.
Founded by Hungarian immigrants, Daisy M. Soros and her late husband Paul Soros (1926-2013), The Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowships for New Americans program honors the contributions of continuing generations of immigrants in the United States.
“The Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowship liberated me from the traditional path I was expected to follow. Unburdened from debt and energized by peers who were taking the road less traveled, I have been able to thrive,” added 2009 Paul & Daisy Soros Fellow Shantanu Gaur, the co-founder and CEO at Allurion Technologies.
