Ming Hsu Chen is a Professor at the University of California College of Law in San Francisco and Director of the Center for Race, Immigration, Citizenship, and Equality. She is formerly the Faculty-Director of the Immigration and Citizenship Law Program and holds faculty affiliations in Political Science and Ethnic Studies at the University of Colorado. She teaches a variety of law and social science courses including Immigration and Citizenship Law, Constitutional Law, Administrative Law, Legislation & Regulation, Law & Politics: Race in America, and Law & Social Change.
Professor Chen brings an interdisciplinary perspective to the study of immigration, civil rights, and the administrative state. Her citizenship studies bridge law and social science. Her first book, Pursuing Citizenship in the Enforcement Era (Stanford University Press 2020), has been part of conversations about reforming the process of obtaining citizenship and policies expanding access to citizenship. She is currently working on a second book about the limits of formal citizenship.
Professor Chen serves as Co-Editor for the Immigration Prof blog (@immprof). She writes for the Scholars Strategy network and The Conversation (@minghsuchen) and her research has been featured in BBC The World, National Public Radio, CBS Denver, The Denver Post and other media outlets. She sits on the Colorado Advisory Council to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. Prior to joining the legal academy, Professor Chen clerked for the Honorable James R. Browning on the U.S. Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit in San Francisco. She also worked for the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, NAACP Legal Defense Fund, National Asian Pacific American Legal Consortium, and the Brookings Institution. She earned degrees from the University of California Berkeley (Ph.D 2011), New York University Law School (JD 2004), and Harvard College (AB 2000).