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Preet Bharara Inspires Crowd at Great Hall
Founded by inventor, industrialist and philanthropist Peter Cooper in 1859, The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art offers education in art, architecture and engineering, as well as courses in the humanities and social sciences.
“My feelings, my desires, my hopes, embrace humanity throughout the world,” Peter Cooper proclaimed in a speech in 1853. He looked forward to a time when, “knowledge shall cover the earth as waters cover the great deep.”
From its beginnings, Cooper Union was a unique institution, dedicated to founder Peter Cooper's proposition that education is the key not only to personal prosperity but to civic virtue and harmony.
Peter Cooper wanted his graduates to acquire the technical mastery and entrepreneurial skills, enrich their intellects and spark their creativity, and develop a sense of social justice that would translate into action.
In style, Bharara is unlike his predecessors. He sometimes acts like a budding pol with a gift for wisecracks and shtick.Photograph by Platon for The New Yorker
As the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Preet Bharara runs one of the largest and most respected offices of federal prosecutors in the country. Under his leadership, the office has charged dozens of Wall Street figures with insider trading, and has upended the politics of New York State, by convicting the leaders of both houses of the state legislature. Last week, Bharara announced charges against a hundred and twenty alleged street-gang members in the Bronx, in what was said to be the largest gang takedown in New York history. The turning point in Bharara’s own career, though, took place not when he triumphed in a courtroom but when he masterminded a dramatic congressional hearing.
Bharara, who is now forty-seven, graduated from Columbia Law School in 1993, spent several years at private firms, and then, from 2000 to 2005, served as an Assistant U.S. Attorney, in Manhattan. On leaving his A.U.S.A. post, he made an unusual choice for a promising young lawyer. Instead of becoming a partner at a law firm, he went to Washington to work for Senator Charles Schumer, the New York Democrat. Schumer chaired the Judiciary Committee’s oversight subcommittee, and Bharara was the top aide on his staff. He organized hearings and prepared Schumer for conducting them. Schumer is famous for cultivating media attention, and his aides are responsible for making sure that he gets it.
“When Chuck approaches a hearing, he wants to elicit something, leave a mark, unearth something that the A.P. will file a story on,” a Schumer staffer from this era told me. “Preet knew this, and he would take the pen and make the first draft of questions that made Chuck’s round of questioning stand out. He would draft them with sound bites in mind. He learned to think that way and write that way.” In early 2 American lawyer and former federal prosecutor (born 1968) Preetinder Singh Bharara (; born October 13, 1968) is an Indian-born American lawyer and former federal prosecutor who served as the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York from 2009 to 2017. He is currently a partner at the law firm Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr. He served as an Assistant U.S. Attorney for five years prior to leading the Southern District of New York. Bharara first entered the public sector as chief counsel to Senator Chuck Schumer when Schumer was charged with investigating the 2006 presidential dismissal of U.S. attorneys. He transferred to the U.S. Department of Justice in 2004 as an assistant U.S. Attorney, beginning his career as a federal prosecutor. His office heavily prosecuted the Italian mafia, convicting four out of the Five Families. Bharara similarly headed various counter-terrorism probes and cases, particularly against Al-Qaeda. His office used a variety of unconventional tactics to close cases like wiretapping and asset seizure. He prosecuted nearly 100 Wall Street executives for insider trading and securities fraud using these legal methods. Bharara closed settlements with the four largest banks in the country and shut down multiple hedge funds. Known for his technocratic approach to prosecution, he routinely convicted both Democratic and Republican politicians on public corruption violations. Bharara occasionally pursued criminals extraterritorially. Following a 2013 Russian money laundering investigation, Russian officials permanently banned him from entering Russia. The prosecution of Indian diplomat Devyani Khobragade by his office in 2013 led to a strain in India–United States relations. Upon the election of former U.S. President Donald Trump, Bharara was dismissed after refusing to submit his resignation as part of the 2017 dismissal of U.S. attorneys. .Preet Bharara
Early life and career