Lina Khan, the former chair of the Federal Trade Commission and a co-chair of Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani’s transition team, is taking on a new role in Manhattan as the head of Columbia Law School’s freshly launched Center for Law and the Economy. Billed as a hub for research and training on how law shapes economic power, the center will focus on antitrust, banking, consumer protection and tech policy. Khan’s move lands just as the incoming Mamdani administration rolls out an affordability-focused agenda that could overlap with the center’s work on corporate oversight and municipal policy.
In its announcement, Columbia Law School said the new center will be “dedicated to advancing the study, practice, and implementation of laws and policies that structure the U.S. economy,” naming Khan as director and Lev Menand as co-director, according to Columbia Law School. “We see major gaps in both the legal research and training needed to tackle pressing questions of economic governance,” Khan said in the release.
The center plans to run a Project on Public Economic Law, organize a Law and Economy Student Network, and host fellows drawn from government and practice, including Tim Wu, Doha Mekki and Shaoul Sussman, with support from a roster of foundations, the school said. The programming is designed to prepare students for public service careers through research, events and policy projects, per Columbia Law School.
From the FTC to Columbia: What Khan Brings
Khan served as the 57th chair of the Federal Trade Commission from 2021 to 2025 and led a more aggressive enforcement posture that produced major cases, including the agency's 2023 complaint against Amazon, according to the FTC. She also remains in New York City’s policy orbit as a co-chair of Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani’s transition team, per Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani's transition website, which lists her among the transition co-chairs.
A Signal To Private Equity And Big Business
Observers say Khan’s simultaneous presence at a major law school and on the mayor-elect’s transition team sends a pointed message to firms operating in the city, especially private equity owners of health care and housing assets. Experts told The Guardian that her placement has been read as a warning to private equity, and local coverage in amNY noted both the Columbia announcement and Khan’s record of taking on tech giants including Amazon and Meta.
Columbia says the center will soon begin hosting public events, publishing research and expanding student programming, with the goal of building a pipeline of lawyers who can work on economic governance in government and academia. For New Yorkers watching the Mamdani administration take shape, the new center could become one of the key places where legal theory starts to collide with day-to-day municipal policy.
