Rohit Khanna ( ; born September 13, 1976) is an American politician and lawyer serving as the U.S. representative from California's 17th congressional district since 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, he defeated eight-term incumbent Democratic Representative Mike Honda in the general election on November 8, 2016, after first running for the same seat in 2014. Khanna also served as the deputy assistant secretary in the United States Department of Commerce under President Barack Obama from August 8, 2009, to August 2011.
Khanna identifies as a progressive capitalist, and has called for a "new economic patriotism" as a governing philosophy. He states that he only accepts campaign donations from individuals and is one of only six members of the U.S. House of Representatives, and ten members of Congress, who state that they do not take campaign contributions from political action committees (PACs) or corporations.
Early life and education
Rohit Khanna was born on September 13, 1976, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, into an Indian Punjabi Hindu family. His parents immigrated to the U.S. from Punjab, India. His father is a chemical engineer who graduated from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) and then the University of Michigan; his mother is a former schoolteacher.
Khanna's maternal grandfather Amarnath Vidyalankar was from Bhera City, Shahpur District, Punjab Province, British India (now Bhera, Sargodha District, West Punjab, Pakistan) and was a part of the Indian independence movement, working with Lala Lajpat Rai, and spent two years in jail in the pursuit of Dominion status for India. In a 2018 Boston Globe op-ed, Khanna and Representative John Lewis examined how Gandhi's movement was intertwined with the civil rights movement.
Khanna graduated from Council Rock High School North, a public school in Newtown, Bucks County in 1994. He received a Bachelor of Arts degree in economics with honors from the University of Chicago in 1998, where he was a member of Phi Beta Kappa, and a Juris Doctor from Yale Law School of Yale University in 2001. After graduation, Khanna clerked for federal appeals judge Morris Sheppard Arnold in Little Rock, Arkansas. In private practice, he specialized in intellectual property law.
Early work in politics, law, and teaching
As a student at the University of Chicago, Khanna worked for William D. Burns walking precincts during Barack Obama's first campaign for the Illinois Senate in 1996. Khanna interned for Jack Quinn when Quinn served as the chief of staff for Vice President Al Gore. As a sophomore, he interned at former president Jimmy Carter's Carter Center.
Khanna worked at O'Melveny & Myers as an attorney representing technology companies on intellectual property and trade secret issues from 2004 to 2009.
In 2009, President Barack Obama appointed Khanna deputy assistant secretary of the United States Department of Commerce. In that role, Khanna led international trade missions and worked to increase United States exports. He was later appointed to the White House Business Council.
Khanna left the Department of Commerce in August 2011 to join Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, a law firm in Silicon Valley. His pro bono legal activity includes work with the Mississippi Center for Justice on several contractor fraud cases on behalf of Hurricane Katrina victims and coauthoring an amicus brief to the U.S. Supreme Court in the Mt. Holly case to allow race discrimination suits under the Fair Housing Act of 1968. As part of a pro bono legal team, Khanna filed an amicus brief on behalf of 13 of the country's leading social scientists in the Supreme Court case Fisher v. University of Texas (2016). That brief included research on how a diverse educational environment benefits students and cited studies showing that race-conscious admissions policies (known as affirmative action) used by institutions like the University of Texas result in a more diverse student body.
Khanna was a visiting lecturer of economics at Stanford University from 2012 to 2016, taught law at the Santa Clara University School of Law, and taught American jurisprudence at San Francisco State University. In 2012 he published a book on American competitiveness in business, Entrepreneurial Nation: Why Manufacturing is Still Key to America's Future. Governor Jerry Brown appointed Khanna to the California Workforce Investment Board in 2012. Khanna served on the board of Planned Parenthood Mar Monte from 2006 until 2013 while on leave from the Obama Administration.