BY: Xzavier Malone
Staff Writer
October 27, 2018
Mussab Ali, a Rutgers-Newark University student is making a mark on the world already at the age of 21. He’s finish a one-year non-partisan term on the nine-member school board of Jersey City and, on Nov. 6, hopes to win re-election.
In a recent interview via Twitter, Ali told the Equinox about his views and the reasoning behind his decision to run for office.
“I decided to run for office because I looked at my elected officials and realized there was no one who looked like me,” Ali said. “As a Muslim in Jersey City, I was devastated by the comments made by Donald Trump who said he saw thousands of people celebrating in Jersey City, NJ with a heavy implication that these people were Muslim.”
President Trump made those remarks regarding the world trade center collapse when he was campaigning for office in Alabama in Nov. 2015, according to Politifact. Political journalists have called into question the truth of these statements and Politifact labels them an urban myth.
Ali’s win by 68 cotes last Nov. made him the youngest person ever elected to the Jersey City school board. Ali first ran for office in 2016, losing in the general election, according to Ballotpedia.
He is New Jersey’s only Truman Scholar, a highly-competitive national merit scholarship for graduate school funded by the federal government’s Harry S. Truman Foundation in memory of the 33rd president of the U.S.
Winners of this honor are seen as “change agents” in public service.
Ali is majoring in neurobiology and economics with minors in Middle Eastern/Islamic Studies and chemistry.
Photo by The Harry S. Truman Scholarship Foundation.
