A think tank staffed by high school students
Built on one working assumption: good policy doesn't need to take sides. When a proposal is designed around evidence and clear outcomes instead of electoral incentives, support tends to cross party lines on its own.
The organization
The New York Unity Project is based in Brooklyn, NY. We're a team of high schoolers operating as a think tank — producing original policy research, model legislation, and opinion writing. We don't pick a party. We pick problems.
Most political failures in America aren't failures of will. They're failures of policy design. When solutions are built around ideology and electoral incentives rather than evidence and outcomes, they fail — or never pass at all. We design policy the other way, and our growing focus on AI reflects where the stakes are highest: decisions made in the next few years about how artificial intelligence is governed will shape society for decades. We want young voices at that table.
What we do
Evidence-based proposals on specific, solvable problems — criminal justice, electoral systems, AI and technology governance, economic mobility. Each brief includes legislative language and supporting data.
Bills a Republican and a Democrat could both sign without either feeling they've betrayed their base.
How the system works, why ideological policy fails, and where practical progress is still possible.
Forums and civic discussions in Brooklyn and online, built around specific policy questions.
Where we stand
Most of our members sit left of center, and we'd rather say that plainly than perform a neutrality we don't have. What we hold constant is the test every proposal must pass before we publish: could a legislator from either party carry this bill without betraying their voters? Congress is gridlocked because most legislation is written to draw a contrast, not to pass. Ours is written to pass. When the honest answer to our test is no, we keep redrafting until it's yes — or we don't publish.
Why students
Not as a gimmick. We have the longest stake in whether any of this works — a bad AI-in-schools policy follows us into the workforce, not its authors. On education and technology we're primary sources: every state guidance document about how students use AI was written by adults describing our behavior secondhand. And we're cheap to ignore, which keeps the work honest. Nobody cites a high schooler's policy brief out of politeness. If the analysis isn't airtight, it doesn't get read at all. So we make it airtight.
Impact & accomplishments
- Published a 28-page policy brief, with 47 citations, on reducing recidivism through prison education and workforce programs (March 2026)
- Drafted and published the complete text of a federal model bill — the Anti-Capture Corporate Governance Act of 2025
- Produced nonpartisan candidate pamphlets for four 2025 races: New Jersey governor, New York City mayor, Virginia governor, and California Proposition 50
- Hosted a public youth forum in Brooklyn on making social media less politically divisive (April 2026)
- Add a measurable result here — distribution numbers, downloads, meetings with legislative offices, press mentions
We're looking for high school students willing to commit real time to research and writing. No political litmus test — the bar is work ethic and intellectual honesty.
Email newyorkunityproject@gmail.com or text (718) 612-5621.