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Indian American Shruti Rana Elected Vice-Chair of Indiana’s Monroe County Democratic Party

Indian American Shruti Rana Elected Vice-Chair of Indiana’s Monroe County Democratic Party

  • The Assistant Dean for curricular and undergraduate affairs at Indiana University, she has a broad range of leadership and other experience in academia, legal practice and international human rights organizations.

The Monroe County Democratic Party in Indiana has unanimously elected Shruti Rana as its vice-chairman in a virtual meeting on Feb. 20. The Indian American is assistant dean for curricular and undergraduate affairs at Indiana University’s Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies. She is also the director of the International Law and Institutions Program. Rana replaces Jennifer Crossley who resigned as vice-chair of the Monroe County Democratic Party, following her selection on the seven-member county council.

In her written statement presented at the Feb. 20 virtual meeting, Rana described herself as “a longtime progressive advocate and community activist, and also a lawyer who specializes in international law and human rights,” according to B Square Beacon. She told the gathering that she has been advocating for women’s rights, reproductive justice, and immigrants’ rights locally, nationally, and globally for over two decades. 

Rana was inspired to run for the position of vice-chair because of her daughter Eva who was born in 2017. “And when I had her, I wanted to make sure that she would grow up in a world that was better than the one that I have, or I have lived in,” she said. “Since she was born, we’ve just seen spiraling crises in our state and our nation. We see that democracy is under threat.”Rana gave three areas she’d like to work on: building a “bench” made up of the next group of party activists; continuing to professionalize party operations, and recruiting strong progressive leaders from across the party’s constituencies.

Rana has a broad range of leadership and other experience in academia, legal practice and international human rights organizations. Before joining the IU faculty, she served as Of Counsel at Brooks Pierce LLP, where she helped grow the firm’s international law practice, according to her profile on the Indiana University website. 

She has also served as a Social Affairs Officer at the United Nations, where she worked on international women’s human rights issues and treaties. As a professor at the University of Maryland Law School, she co-developed the school’s international law clinic and was also a visiting professor at the UC Berkeley School of Law. 

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Her other legal experience includes serving as a judicial law clerk for the Hon. James R. Browning at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, and practicing in the areas of international, corporate and regulatory law at Williams & Connolly LLP in Washington, D.C. and Quinn Emanuel LLP in San Francisco. 

As a member of the Harvard Law School faculty, Rana has led annual student delegations to the UN’s Commission on the Status of Women and has worked with students and NGOs to produce and publish human rights reports. She recently testified before the Indiana legislature on women’s rights and reproductive health legislation and has filed several Supreme Court and federal court amicus and merits briefs on immigration and refugee law issues.

She has a J.D. from Columbia Law School; a Master’s from London School of Economics and Political Science and a BA from the University of California, Berkeley. 

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