Isra Bhatty
From Bibliz Notables
Isra J. Bhatty, is a young Pakistani-American upcoming lawyer; a law graduate from student from Yale University. Born in Leeds, England and raised in a town outside of Chicago, Bhatty grew up speaking three languages (Urdu, Punjabi and English)at home.
Bhatty graduated from the University of Chicago in 2006 with majors in economics and near eastern languages and literature. She was elected to Phi Beta Kappa as a college junior and won many prizes for leadership and scholarship at the University of Chicago. Bhatty founded a tutoring program in Chicago, was an English-Urdu translator of detainees at Guantanamo Bay, led a Chicago coalition on criminal justice reform and has worked closely with Chicago's inner-city Muslim Action Network. She also founded and captained an intramural champion women's football team and is a hip-hop artist and poet.
The Rhodes Trust selected Isra Bhatty for 2008 Rhodes Scholar. Rhodes Scholarships provide all expenses for two or three years of study at the University of Oxford in England. Rhodes scholars scholarship winners typically end up in notable political positions within a decade or so later.
At Oxford she pursued M.Phil. in evidence-based social intervention, with a focus on programs for people of color, immigrants, and substance abusers. Bhatty is also looking forward to working with the country's South Asian and Muslim populations.
She attended high school in the Chicago suburb of Glenview and came from a devoutly religious family that was deeply committed to bridging Islamic learning with modern education. Even though Isra attended an American public school, she also was intimately involved with a mosque school that her parents helped establish on weekends and is a deeply observant Muslim. She wears the hijab but considers it a personal choice and has no ill feelings towards those who choose not to do so. Isra has only visited Pakistan three times in her life for brief family visits, but her ethnic identity is strong and she can read and interpret Urdu poetry. Her parents were quite insistent that she always embrace her multiple identities as a Muslim, an American and a Pakistani. Isra speaks six languages. Upon entering the Woodrow Wilson School's JSI program (professional public policy school at Princeton University), she had worked for three years with Chicago public school teachers on integrating technology into the classroom and helped build after-school youth programs in the southwest/Chicago Lawn neighborhoods.
She married at the age of twenty four, but has managed to continue her career with a supportive husband who is also a lawyer (and a graduate of Yale Law School).
Guantanamo Bay
At Guantanamo Bay, Bhatty’s tasks include interpreting letters and phone calls, trying to get the government or media involved with particular issues and keeping family members apprised of detainees’ situations.
External Links
- Isra Bhatty ’10 Selected as Rhodes Scholar
- Tales of a Solitary Soul
- Rhodes Scholar–Isra Bhatty
- USA TODAY
- University of Chicago alumna Isra Bhatty’s life
- Princeton University News
- Rami Nashashibi — The Activist by ISRA BHATTY
- Reppin' Islam Young and Muslim and not who you think I am by ISRA BHATTY
