Robert Koulish is a political scientist at the University of Maryland, where he serves as Director of MLAW Programs, the University's undergraduate law and society programming in collaboration with the University of Maryland Carey School of Law. He is also Joel J. Feller Research Professor of Government and Politics. He earned his PhD from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1996.

His current research is about risk and immigration detention. The research focuses on data received pursuant to a Freedom of Information Request made to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The data is from ICE's new Risk Classification Assessment that is used to make custody determinations for apprehended immigrants. Analyses, with co-author Mark Noferi, are forthcoming in the Georgetown Immigration Law Review, The Immigration Detention Risk Assessment: Impact on Over-Detention, and Migration Policy Institute Report, Detention in the Risk Assessment Era.

Koulish is author of the book, Immigration and American Democracy: Subverting the Rule of Law, which examined how immigration control has functioned as a laboratory for the expansion of executive power in post 9/11 America. He is co-editor of Immigration, Detention, Risk, and Human Rights: Studies on Immigration and Crime, forthcoming by Springer Press in 2015, and has also authored several book chapters, law review articles and peer-reviewed articles on these and other topics. He is an avid op/ed writer.