Jonathan Lam
He/him
Jonathan Lam (he/him) is a rising junior from Queens, NY studying Industrial and Labor Relations with minors in International Relations and Migration Studies. As a first-gen student and son of Vietnamese refugees, he’s passionate about immigration, international human rights, and criminal justice law.
At Cornell, he serves as Co-President of both the Cornell ACLU and Cornell Parole Initiative, Vice President of Cornell Anti-Detention Alliance, and co-leads Cornell Law School’s Undergraduate Court Monitoring team. Nationally, he is a National Youth Leader and New York Community Organizing Coordinator for Amnesty International USA’s Refugee and Migrant Rights Task Force, and a youth organizer with the ACLU of New York. His advocacy has been featured in Teen Vogue, NBC News, and ABC News.
As an RFK Human Rights John Lewis Young Leader, Jonathan founded Sanctuary Beyond War, a disarmament and refugee rights project now collaborating with the UN Office for Disarmament Affairs. He has served as a UN Youth Delegate and delivered interventions at UN high-level meetings on disarmament, international law, and human rights. His published research includes papers on nuclear weapons, autonomous systems, and forced labor in immigration detention.
Jonathan is a Meinig Family National Scholar, Laidlaw Scholar, Undergraduate Migration Scholar, inaugural recipient of Amnesty International USA’s Trailblazer Award, and Cornell’s Asian and Asian American Student Honorable Mentor Advocate of the Year 2025. He is also the first Cornell student selected for the Stanford Law Scholars Institute.
