2026 Faculty Service Awardee

The Faculty Service Award recognizes full-time faculty whose extraordinary and creative voluntary service has contributed significantly to the University’s inclusion and belonging efforts.

The recipient of the 2026 Faculty Service Award is:

Elora Mukherjee
Jerome L. Greene Clinical Professor of Law
Columbia Law School

What does service mean to you in the context of faculty life, and how has that understanding shaped your work?  

I am grateful to be a clinical professor of law at Columbia Law School and the founding Director of the Immigrants’ Rights Clinic. Service is integral to my teaching and daily life. Each semester, I teach students how to represent asylum seekers and refugees in the context of real client cases. Our clients include babies, toddlers, children, and families from across the world, including those who are needlessly and cruelly subject to detention in violation of the law and the Constitution.  

Much of your work reflects a strong commitment to advocacy and community impact. What motivates that work, and what has it meant to you over the course of your career? 

My teaching, service, lawyering, and advocacy focus on protecting the most vulnerable among us. I am grateful to have the opportunity to work on a daily basis with asylum seekers, refugees, and others seeking protection in the United States. I am honored to do this work at Columbia University. I first began working with children and families in immigration detention in January 2007. I never expected this work to remain a central part of my professional life two decades later. As I’ve written here, there are cost-effective and humane alternatives to detaining immigrant children and families, and all children should be released from immigration detention facilities. 

What advice would you offer to faculty who hope to engage in meaningful service while balancing teaching, scholarship, and other responsibilities?  

Just do it. Those of us who  are lucky enough to teach at Columbia are extraordinarily privileged. Serving our students, our campus community, and the broader world is a moral imperative.