Radhika Sainath

Radhika Sainath is a senior staff attorney at Palestine Legal, where she oversees the organization’s case work. She has advised hundreds of students, professors, and activists on matters relating to free speech, censorship, anti-Palestinian discrimination, and academic freedom. She has litigated several cases involving the rights of Students for Justice in Palestine to organize on college campuses and filed what is believed to be the first complaint with the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights alleging a hostile anti-Palestinian environment in violation of Title VI.

Prior to joining Palestine Legal, Sainath worked at Hadsell Stormer, one of Southern California’s most prestigious civil rights firms. She is a former union organizer with UNITE (now UNITE HERE). From 2002-2003 and in 2011, Sainath lived in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, where she worked with the International Solidarity Movement, a Palestinian-led nonviolent resistance movement.

Sainath’s writing has appeared in Boston Review, The Nation, Lit Hub, and Jacobin. She is a frequent commentator in media outlets including The New York Times, Politico, Vox, Fashionista, The Washington Post, MSNBC, Al Jazeera Faultlines, NPR, Democracy Now, 5-4, and more. She has spoken to thousands of students across the country about their First Amendment rights and the Palestine exception to free speech.

Sainath is a graduate of the UC Berkeley School of Law, where she was a proud member of Law Students for Justice in Palestine.

She is based in Palestine Legal’s New York City office and is admitted to the California and New York state bars.