March for Science: Princeton rally draws a big crowd

Phillip Sean Curran, Staff Writer
By Philip Sean Curran, Staff Writer, Thousands of people rallied in downtown Princeton Saturday in support of science, mirroring demonstrations taking place in Washington D.C. and around the country amid concerns about the Trump administration’s approach to science that includes proposed funding cuts to research., The local version of the March for Science, organized by the newly formed activist group, Princeton Marching Forward, drew more than 2,000 people from town and other parts of Central Jersey, said Nicole Pezold-Hancock, lead organizer of the event. She said the size of the crowd reflected how science is critical in the community with the presence of a leading research university and private laboratories., “Every other person in town has some job that is related to science, it seems sometimes,” she said. “And I think that’s what brought people out here.”, The day began with a rally on Hinds Plaza with speeches by scientists, followed by a march through town. People then gathered in the park in front of the Princeton Battle Monument., “I’ve never seen so many people marching in Princeton,” said former Borough Councilman Kevin Wilkes, emcee of the event. “It was an enormous stream of people.”, Mayor Liz Lempert, who is married to a neuroscientist, was in the crowd Saturday. She touched on the message of the day., “I think that it was important for the scientific community and those of us who support the scientific community to gather to say they have an important role to play when we develop policy and that we need to listen to our scientists,” she said., Pezold-Hancock pointed to what she called a “growing dismissiveness of science, science-based policy, for a long time.”, “It’s not something that’s new with the Trump administration. I mean, there have been people who have denied climate science because they found it inconvenient or antithetical to other policy priorities they had,” she said., But she said the Trump administration had signaled early on that it would dismiss “certain types of science that were inconvenient to their agenda.”, There were more than 600 Marches for Science around the world, three of which were in New Jersey: Princeton, Trenton and Atlantic City., In a statement Saturday, President Trump offered that he supported science, although without referring to the demonstrations., “My administration is committed to advancing scientific research that leads to a better understanding of our environment and of environmental risks,” he said. “As we do so, we should remember that rigorous science depends not on ideology, but on a spirit of honest inquiry and robust debate.”