Eduardo Bhatia, the John L. Weinberg/Goldman Sachs & Co. Visiting Professor and a visiting lecturer in public and international affairs, delivered the keynote address at the 2025 Cornell Energy Summit on April 30. Bhatia, a former president of the Senate of Puerto Rico, shared insights drawn from the public policy challenges Puerto Rico is facing as it transitions from an oil-dependent energy system to fully renewable sources by 2050. His address highlighted key lessons that can be applied to similar scenarios globally.

Charles M. Cameron, a professor of politics and public affairs, was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award by the American Political Science Association’s Law and Court Section for a “lifetime of significant scholarship, teaching, and service to the Law and Courts field.” The committee recognized Cameron for scholarship that has shaped the study of law and courts “through the innovative use of rational choice institutionalism.”

“His work combines insights from many fields of the social sciences, a careful attention to key elements of judicial practice, and a keen sense for what is important,” the committee wrote, adding that he has made lasting contributions to multiple fields in the section as well as provided decades of “excellent mentorship.”

Cameron, who will be celebrated at the APSA annual meeting in Vancouver in September, is the third Princeton Politics faculty member to receive the award. The other two were Walter Murphy and Sanford Levinson.

"I am thrilled and humbled to be in such company," Cameron said.
 

Tanushree Goyal, an assistant professor of politics and international affairs, has been awarded the 2025 Susan Clarke Young Scholar Award from the American Political Science Association’s Urban and Local Politics Section. The award recognizes the contributions of junior scholars to the field of urban and local politics.

Tali Mendelberg, the John Work Garrett Professor of Politics and co-director of the Center for the Study of Democratic Politics, delivered the 2025 Miller-Converse lecture. The University of Michigan’s preeminent lecture series on American electoral politics, it is named after two of America’s foremost scholars of elections. Mendelberg spoke on the politics of disaster prevention, presenting a study that challenges the view that voters strongly support post-disaster relief but not policies that seek to prevent or prepare for disaster.

Despite the cost savings of investing in disaster prevention as opposed to post-disaster relief, the United States spends much more on relief than it does on prevention, Mendelberg explained. But the study finds that “public support for prevention spending is the same or higher as support for relief spending.”

“Even after we give people all the reasons we could think of to prioritize relief over prevention, they still prefer prevention, and the electoral benefits to candidates are much greater for prevention spending than for relief spending,” she said.
 

David S. Wilcove, the vice dean of Princeton SPIA and a professor of ecology, evolutionary biology, and public affairs, has been awarded the Ralph W. Schreiber Conservation Award by the American Ornithological Society. The award “honors extraordinary conservation-related scientific contributions by an individual or small team.”

“I am honored to be chosen,” Wilcove said.