Archived copy: Mamdani transition team co-chair Lina Khan to lead new economic law center at Columbia | amNewYork

By Isabella Gallo Posted on April 6, 2026

Lina Khan, co-chair of Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s transition team and ex-FTC chair, is set to lead Columbia Law School’s new center focused on how law shapes the economy.

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Antitrust enforcer Lina Khan will bring her work taking on big business and tech to the next generation of lawyers as the director of Columbia’s Center for Law and the Economy, the school announced late last week.

“We see major gaps in both the legal research and training needed to tackle pressing questions of economic governance,” said Khan, who chaired the FTC under former President Joe Biden. “We also see tremendous interest from law students, and the center will help harness that interest and develop the scholarship and expertise needed to advance this work across key areas of economic law and policy.”

Khan, who’s led legal challenges against tech behemoths like Amazon and Meta, will be on the forefront of the school’s efforts to shore up what Columbia called a “shortfall” of knowledge and expertise in economic law in the United States. The new center’s co-director, Lev Menand, said that shortfall has constrained the country’s ability to solve pressing economic and social problems, including the 2008 financial crisis, greening the energy grid and the increased consolidation of industry.

Khan is expected to use her new position to push her philosophy that antitrust law should be enforced strictly to prevent monopolies and preserve competition. Her place on Mamdani’s transition team was seen as a warning to private equity firms operating in the city and state that have swallowed up healthcare companies and real estate, giving them more leeway to increase costs and lower quality.

The center will prepare law students for careers in public service through a focus on advancing research on antitrust, administrative law, banking law, consumer protection, corporate governance, financial regulation and tech policy. It will lead students to interrogate current laws and tools that govern economic activity by drawing on top government experience, from Khan and others, Columbia said.

Khan and Menand will be joined in leading the center by Doha Mekki, a previous acting assistant attorney general of the U.S. Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division, Shaoul Sussman, who previously served as associate director for litigation in the Bureau of Competition at the Federal Trade Commission and Tim Wu who served as a special assistant to Biden on technology and competition policy.

The center will offer the opportunity to participate in events with leading scholars and policymakers, contribute to original scholarship and policy projects and submit work for annual awards to law students across the country.

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