Rohit Rajan is a summer intern at the ACLU's West Michigan office. A rising second-year law student at Harvard Law School, Rohit says his journey into civil-rights activism started in high school while doing research, and he expects it continue for many years to come.
What issues most interest you?
I'm most interested in issues related to racial justice and economic inequality. Equal access to justice system remains illusory for large portions of the population, and I hope to spend my career as a lawyer rectifying that problem.
How did you become interested in social justice?
I became interested in social justice through my involvement with speech and debate in high school and college. Through debate, I had the opportunity to research topics related to US drug policy and mass incarceration, US surveillance policy and the detention of Arab-Americans post-911, and economic inequality in our criminal justice system. Seeing the connection between my research and phenomena in the real world inspired me to get involved.
What brought you to the ACLU of Michigan?
An intern at the ACLU of Michigan, Grand Rapids office last summer who also goes to Harvard Law School told me about this opportunity. He told me that the work would be rewarding, the staff would be great, and that I would have an opportunity to do a lot of substantive work. I've always been interested in impact litigation work because it involves a lot of reading and writing, so this opportunity was a perfect fit for me. I'm so glad that I took this opportunity to work at the ACLU of Michigan this summer.
In what ways has your work with the ACLU help prepare you for your plan future career?
As I talked about before, I want to eventually go into impact litigation, so working at the ACLU has been great training. I've been assigned a lot of different substantive assignments from writing memos to drafting letters and flyers to writing portions of a brief. All of these different tasks combined with watching court proceedings has really given me a feel for what an impact litigator actually does. I've also received a lot of really valuable feedback, which has improved my writing substantially.
How has your experience at the ACLU been so far?
My experience has been immensely rewarding. I've had so many opportunities to research different subject areas. Working in the smaller West Michigan office has also been nice because I know the rest of the staff really well and have had an opportunity for more individualized supervision. I know from speaking with our clients that what we do is so valuable and it's been an honor to be part of that work.