Sarah Song

Sarah Song joined the Berkeley Law faculty in 2007. She is a political theorist with a special interest in issues of democracy, citizenship, migration, and inequality. She teaches in the Ph.D. Program in Jurisprudence and Social Policy (JSP) at Berkeley Law, including courses in political and legal philosophy, citizenship and migration, and feminist theory and jurisprudence. She also teaches First Amendment law in the JD curriculum. She currently serves as Head Graduate Advisor for the JSP Program.

Song is the author of Justice, Gender, and the Politics of Multiculturalism (Cambridge University Press, 2007), which won the 2008 Ralph Bunche Award from the American Political Science Association. The book explores the challenges of religious and cultural diversity by examining tensions between minority group rights and women’s rights.

Her second book, Immigration and Democracy (Oxford University Press, 2018), explores the values and principles that shape and ought to shape public debate about immigration. The book examines the origins of the plenary power doctrine in U.S. immigration law, analyzes normative arguments for the modern state’s right to control immigration, and considers policy implications for reforming immigration law.

Born in South Korea, Song immigrated to the U.S. at the age of six and attended K-12 public schools in Missouri, Illinois, and New Hampshire. She received a B.A. from Harvard College, M.Phil from Oxford, and Ph.D. from Yale. Prior to coming to Berkeley, she was Assistant Professor of Political Science and Affiliated Faculty in Philosophy and Women’s & Gender Studies at M.I.T. She has been awarded fellowships from the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

From 2015 to 2020, Song served as director of Berkeley Law’s Kadish Center for Morality, Law, and Public Affairs, which together with the Philosophy and Political Science Departments sponsors the Workshop in Law, Philosophy, and Political Theory: https://www.law.berkeley.edu/research/kadish-center-for-morality-law-public-affairs/workshop-law-philosophy-political-theory/.