Parima Kadikar Named to the Skadden Foundation’s Class of 2025 Skadden Fellows
Parima Kadikar
American Friends Service Committee, Newark, New Jersey
Integrate disability advocacy into deportation defense work for disabled clients by filing disability-based civil rights complaints, submitting habeas corpus petitions, developing training materials, and tracking outcomes
On a quiet Friday morning at CUNY Law, Parima Kadikar arrives from Bushwick early, bespectacled and relaxed in an oversized Yellowstone sweatshirt—a favorite family vacation spot—and sculptural hoops that belie the intensity of what she’s here to do. She and two other students are filing a crucial evidence submission for their clinic case, preparing for their client’s main hearing in mid-February. As she settles in to talk, she explains how she learned to speak what she calls the language of justice.
“I grew up bilingual,” she says, “and I have always loved learning languages. Working with people who speak Spanish and Arabic, I saw how much of a difference it made that I could speak to them in their first language.” She pauses, choosing her words carefully. “I was doing this as a paralegal when I realized: if I want to help people get out of cages and fight incarceration, I need to be able to speak this legal language, too.”
It’s this kind of clarity—about both purpose and practice—that drove Kadikar, now in her final semester at CUNY Law, to apply for a coveted Skadden Fellowship, a two-year fellowship for talented young lawyers to pursue public interest work. Fellows receive a salary and benefits commensurate with what an entry-level, public interest lawyer would receive at their host organization, allowing them to launch careers in public service.
“While post-grad fellowships have typically been associated with elite private law schools, CUNY students have so much to offer the world of public interest and movement lawyering,” Kadikar emphasizes. “The Skadden Fellowship allows you to design your own project and really focus on specific intersections of law that might otherwise be overlooked.”
For Kadikar, who grew up in New Jersey with immigrant parents, the Fellowship will fund her work integrating disability advocacy into deportation defense at the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) in Newark. Her path to this intersection of disability rights and immigration justice began before law school, at the Civil Rights Education and Enforcement Center (now Disability Law United), where she worked on Fraihat v. ICE, a nationwide class action lawsuit challenging the abuse and neglect faced by disabled people in immigration detention.
The case proved transformative. When COVID-19 hit, Kadikar and her colleagues secured a preliminary injunction that prioritized release for detained people with disabilities and pre-existing conditions vulnerable to the virus. “Tens of thousands of people got out from ICE detention through that process,” she recalls. “That experience showed me how robust the intersection is between disability justice and immigration justice. It really impacts all of us, whether we identify as disabled or not.”
The experience crystallized her decision to pursue law school—and, specifically, a degree from CUNY Law.
From her first week in Professor Jeena Shah’s class, she knew she’d made the right choice. “CUNY Law gave me a way to articulate both my experiences and what I was learning about practicing law within a system of racial capitalism,” she says. “The faculty is incredible, and so are the students.”
That promise has been fulfilled in her work at CUNY Law’s Immigrant & Non-Citizen Rights Clinic (INRC), where she works under Professor Jackie Pierce’s supervision. Her current case, representing a transgender woman in deportation proceedings, exemplifies the complex intersections of her work. The case encompasses disability considerations, criminal legal system involvement, and trauma—precisely the kind of multifaceted advocacy her fellowship project aims to support.
“The clinic work and student organizing have been the two things that will stay with me forever,” she reflects. “I’m so grateful to be at a place like CUNY. I’ve started to grow into my own as an organizer here.”
As she prepares for this next chapter in an increasingly hostile immigration landscape, Kadikar’s commitment to translating between languages, systems, and communities feels more vital than ever. She credits her fluency to both the tools and the community she gained at CUNY Law. “What brings me solace,” she says, “is having that foot in organizing communities and the strong solidarity network built through movement work.”
About the Skadden Foundation
Since the program’s launch in 1988, the Skadden Foundation has funded more than 900 fellowships with the goal of improving legal services for the poor and encouraging economic independence. Ninety percent of former fellows remain in public service. Almost all of them continue working on the same issues they addressed in their original fellowship projects.