Meera Santhanam

Meera Santhanam is a recent graduate of the University of Chicago dedicated to illuminating issues of systemic injustice. She holds a B.A. in Political Science and minors in Chemistry and Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations and currently works as a paralegal in the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice. Previously, Meera reported on the role of innocence projects in challenging wrongful convictions as a 2020 Justice Reporting Fellow for the Pulitzer Center and wrote her B.A. thesis on the relationship between the prison abolition movement and the innocence movement in the United States. She also served as the Head Viewpoints Editor of The Chicago Maroon, the University of Chicago student newspaper, and helped lead Maroon Tutor Match, a student-run tutoring organization. In addition, Meera has researched the legacy of slavery in American mass incarceration as a research assistant, interned at the Washington D.C. Public Defender Service, and volunteered at the Chicago-based Exoneration Project. A language enthusiast, she has studied Japanese with the Hokkaido International Foundation and Arabic at the Noor Majan Training Institute in Oman. In her free time, she enjoys running, hiking, and drinking copious amounts of tea.