Jennifer Lee

Jennifer Lee is the Julian Clarence Levi Professor of Social Sciences at Columbia University, the Robbert Dijkgraaf Member of the Institute for Advanced Study, and an elected Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. An award-winning author and experienced public commentator, she is the recipient of the 2021 Distinguished Contribution to the Field Award from the Asia and Asian American Section of the American Sociological Association. Her wide-ranging research addresses morally urgent questions about the implications of contemporary U.S. immigration—particularly Asian immigration—on the native-born population. She has studied this from a variety of analytical lenses, including immigrant entrepreneurship and ethnic conflict, intermarriage and multiracial identification, educational opportunities and outcomes, and, most recently, affirmative action and the rise in anti-Asian hate. She is a Fellow at the Center for the Study of Economy and Society at Cornell, a Board Member of the Obama Presidency Oral History, a Trustee of the Russell Sage Foundation, and a Senior Researcher at AAPI Data. She has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, CNN, TIME Magazine, and a variety of other media outlets.