Profile
Ishaan is a senior at Columbia University, majoring in Urban Studies and Political Science. Originally from Washington, DC, he attended the Maret School before moving to New York for college; he later completed the Middlebury Arabic Language School’s summer immersion program in 2024. Currently, his research examines urban governance, public policy, immigration law, and the history and theory of architecture.
He has worked at the New York City Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs and is the founder and principal of the Urban Equity Institute, an undergraduate think tank where he directs two major practice areas. At Columbia, Ishaan has been an inaugural Research Fellow at the Eric H. Holder Jr. Initiative for Civil and Political Rights; a Summer Fellow at the Institute for Religion, Culture, and Public Life (IRCPL); an Undergraduate Fellow at the Harriman Institute; and currently serves as a Columbia College Rose Research Fellow. He was recently named a 2025 College Fellow at the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History.
Outside of research and policy work, Ishaan writes regular columns for the Columbia Daily Spectator and the Columbia Political Review, which have been cited in the New York Review of Architecture and MSNBC. His other writing appears in the Harvard Urban Review, URBAN Magazine at Columbia GSAPP, the Stanford Undergraduate Research Journal, and the Barnard-Columbia Urban Review.