The Academic Scholars Program identifies and provides academic and financial support for incoming J.D. candidates with strong potential and ambition to become law professors.
Meet the Current Academic Scholars
Makena Binker-Cosen ’25
Makena Binker Cosen grew up in Canada, Argentina, and the United States. She graduated from Columbia College in 2021 with a B.A. in History and a Special Concentration in Public Health. Her senior thesis focused on the early history of the U.S. Copyright Office. After graduating college, Makena worked at an oral history archive exploring the evolution of business leadership in Africa, Latin America, the Middle East, and South Asia. She aspires to a career in copyright, entertainment law, and academia. In her free time, she enjoys listening to music and walking the city with friends. She is fluent in Spanish and French.
Gabriel Karger ’25
Current Academic Scholar
Sohum Pal ’25
Originally from California, Sohum Pal completed his Bachelor's and Master's in History at Yale University in 2020. He is now pursuing a dual JD-PhD in the History program at Columbia concentrating on Atlantic history. Pal’s research interest brings together legal history with the methods of Black Studies to narrate the longue durée of how trans-Atlantic slavery was foundational to the development of the contemporary system of securitized finance, and how those roots continue to assert themselves in the present through the ongoing precaritization of Blackness as a category of risk. Outside of the classroom, Pal is a freelance book critic focusing on feminist and anticolonial approaches to philosophy, history, and literature. He spends time watching movies at Film Forum, walking around the fabulous Noguchi Museum and MoMA PS1 in Long Island City, and cooking for friends.
Sabriyya Pate ’25
Sabriyya is interested in the study of law at the intersection of human rights and business. Born in Washington, D.C., she graduated from Duke University where she studied Conflict and Negotiation through a self-designed interdisciplinary degree program. While at Duke, she worked as a research assistant conducting research on U.S. grand strategy and political violence, and spent a summer at the Council on Foreign Relations where her work centered on venture capital. Prior to Columbia, she worked as a management consultant before leaving to lead a risk assessment initiative at a global technology company. At Columbia, she has been a summer law clerk at a public interest firm and the Department of Justice's Office of Legal Policy, co-president of Rightslink, and Staff Editor on the Columbia Law Review.
Emmanuel Osayande ’26
Current Academic Scholar
Eleanor Wachtel ’26
Current Academic Scholar
Ashley Morales ’27
Current Academic Scholar