Trisha Mukherjee, Human Rights major CC ‘21, has been chosen to receive Nicholas Kristof’s “Win a Trip” Award. Kristof, a New York Times Opinion columnist, selects one student from an American university to accompany him on an international reporting trip. Trisha, who also graduated from Columbia Journalism School in May 2024, will travel and report with him in Madagascar, Mauritius, and Kenya for 2 weeks this winter.
Additionally, Trisha is among 14 journalists chosen for the 2024 Journalism Program of the
Fellowships at Auschwitz for the Study of Professional Ethics (FASPE). This Fellowship selects 80 to 90 graduate students and early-career professionals to “participate in a two-week program in Germany and Poland which uses the conduct of professionals in Nazi-occupied Europe as an initial framework for approaching ethical responsibility in the professions today.”
ISHR talked to Trisha about her background, her time at Columbia University, and her upcoming projects.
Which program did you graduate from and when?
I graduated from Columbia College with a major in Human Rights in 2021.
Please share a bit about yourself and the work that you do.
I'm a journalist covering global human rights. I'm particularly interested in immigration, reproductive rights, climate, and religion.
What was your research focus during your time at Columbia? What drew you to this particular issue/set of issues?
While at Columbia, I mainly focused on immigration through the lenses of the law, activism, and literature. My grandparents were refugees during the 1947 Partition of India and my parents immigrated to the United States. Some of my favorite memories from Columbia include organizing a pro se clinic on campus to help fill out asylum applications through Students for Sanctuary, the student organization I started with two friends.
What else have you done since you graduated from the program?
After graduating in the middle of the pandemic, I took a leap of faith and decided to start a
podcast about activism around the world with a friend. Thanks to a grant, we could work on it full-time for several months. We created episodes about an Indigenous woman from northeast India who is fighting the government’s decades-long martial law, a rabbi and activist who came out as trans to her ultra-Orthodox Hasidic community, a hermit who accidentally changed the fight for climate science, and many more. This passion project led to a job at iHeartMedia, where I produced a range of shows like
A Tradition of Violence,
Partition,
City of the Rails, and
Heidiworld. Eventually, I came back to Morningside Heights to get my master's at Columbia Journalism School and graduated this past May.
Regarding the Kristof Award, How long will you be traveling for, and do you know where you are going yet?
We will be traveling and reporting together for around two weeks and will likely go to Kenya, Madagascar, and Mauritius.
What are you most excited about during this project?
Nick is a phenomenal writer, thinker, and human being. About 10 years ago, I read Half the Sky, the book Nick co-wrote with his wife Sheryl WuDunn. By the time I got to the last chapter, I decided I wanted to be a journalist and write similar stories about global human rights. Since then, I've aimed to emulate Nick's empathy, pragmatism, and courage in my work. To learn from him firsthand is an immense privilege, and I know the 15-year-old version of me would be in disbelief. I'm excited to ask him a million questions about covering difficult stories about conflict and genocide, wrestling with journalistic ethics, and balancing reporting with his other interests, like farming and hiking. And if we're not too busy working on our stories, I'm really hoping to see a lemur in Madagascar!
And what are you most looking forward to during the FASPE Ethics Fellowship?
As I report on human rights issues and interview people from vulnerable communities, I hope to continue deepening my understanding of journalistic ethics. I believe both my sources and readers deserve a solid foundation of trust, and I hope to learn from the successes as well as the failures of journalists covering the Holocaust to better my own sense of journalistic ethics. FASPE journalism is the perfect opportunity to devote my full attention to ethics and learn from faculty and other fellows, all of whom have done incredible work. I'm confident the FASPE fellowship will help me serve my readers better with each story I write going forward.
