Farah Khan, 3L, has been awarded a Skadden Foundation Fellowship for 2021. She is the fourth student in the history of GW Law to be selected for the prestigious honor.
Described as a “legal Peace Corps,” the fellowship was established more than 30 years ago for law students who wish to pursue public interest work. All fellows are provided a salary and benefits as they complete work over the course of two years. Since its launch in 1988, the Skadden Foundation has funded 906 fellowships.
This year’s class of 29 Skadden Fellows will work in 18 cities in 14 states across the country. They will address issues such as education equity, gender-based violence, housing, immigration and immigrants’ rights, LGBTQ+ rights, police accountability, voting rights, and worker rights.
For her Skadden Fellowship project, Ms. Khan will be hosted at CASA in Langley Park, Maryland. Alongside regional organizers, she will support the development of coalitions fighting for the abolition of immigration detention and the establishment of universal representation for those
facing deportation in Maryland and Virginia.
She hopes to use lawyering as a tool in the larger movement for immigrant justice. “I worked with CASA both semesters of my 2L year through GW Law's Field Placement program and am so excited to return to CASA as a Skadden Fellow next year after having had such a positive experience there,” she said.
“As an immigrant myself, the opportunity to do this work means everything. My community has been under constant attack from a racist immigration system. Being able to start my legal career advocating for a more just world for communities like my own is a huge honor and privilege,” Ms. Khan continued.
At GW Law, she has been a student attorney with the Prisoner & Reentry Clinic and is currently a Thurgood Marshall Scholar. She has served as the President and a Board Member of the National Lawyers Guild and as Community Coordinator for the Immigration Law Association. A summa cum laude graduate of the University of Florida, she received a BA in English with a minor in Spanish.
In addition to CASA, Ms. Khan also interned at the Bronx Defenders in New York, and she will spend the final semester of her 3L year interning with Just Futures Law in Washington, DC. She was a Summer Fellow at Florida Legal Service’s Immigrant/Migrant Rights Project in Newberry, Florida, and prior to law school, she worked on a range of migrant justice issues as a Program Coordinator for the Rural Women’s Health Project in Gainesville, Florida.
On the community organizing front, she is a Legal Observer Coordinator and regular Legal Observer for the Washington, DC, chapter of the National Lawyers Guild and is involved with Sanctuary DMV in Washington, DC, as well as other immigrant justice organizations.
After she completes her Skadden Fellowship, Ms. Khan plans to continue a career in immigration law and community organizing.