Written By Henry Zuo

NARP is pleased to welcome new summer intern Henry Zuo. Henry is an international student at Macalester College and a participant in the Fund for American Studies program.

Hi! My name is Henry Zuo and I will intern with NARP for the summer. I am very passionate about politics, and, for a Chinese student, have a rare passion for U.S. domestic politics. I have been yearning for an opportunity to witness politics firsthand. Thus I am very excited for this learning opportunity with NARP.

I was born in Guilin, a small city with beautiful scenery located in the southern mountainous region of China. I moved with my families to Qingdao, a metropolis located by the coast in the north, at the age of fifteen. I received a scholarship from Singapore Ministry of Education after I completed secondary school in Qingdao, at which point I went to a high school in Singapore. After four years in Singapore, I received a scholarship from Macalester College, a small liberal arts college in Saint Paul, Minnesota, where I am now attending as a rising sophomore.

My interests are very diverse. Before I went to college, I had been a natural science student all my life. But just as a career as an engineer seemed increasingly destined for me, I grew tired of the natural sciences and switched to the social sciences in college. Recently, to all my family and friends’ surprise, I have decided to explore Computer Science.

Regardless of my sometimes unpredictable academic interests, I have always maintained a real passion for politics and public policy. To me, politics matters because it ultimately concerns who we are as a people and what we want to be as a society. For instance, NARP’s push for reforms and improvements on the passenger train system is part of a larger picture of the American society trying to decide how to allocate its resources to move people and capital around. As much as possible, I want to understand how the force of politics can be directed to do good. As a first step, I hope to help with NARP’s efforts to enhance America’s mobility by improving the service of passenger trains.