Claire Jean Kim is Professor of Political Science and Asian American Studies at the University of California, Irvine,where she teaches classes on comparative race studies and human-animal studies.  Her first book, Bitter Fruit: The Politics of Black-Korean Conflict in New York City (Yale University Press, 2000) is the recipient of the American Political Science Association's Ralph Bunche Award for the Best Book on Ethnic and Cultural Pluralism and a Best Book Award from the American Political Science Association Organized Section on Race, Ethnicity, and Politics.  Her second book, Dangerous Crossings: Race, Species, and Nature in a Multicultural Age (Cambridge University Press, 2015), is also the recipient of a Best Book Award from the American Political Science Association Organized Section on Race, Ethnicity, and Politics.  Her third book, Asian Americans in an Anti-Black World (Cambridge University Press, 2023), is the recipient of the Best Book Award in the category of Social Science, awarded by the Association for Asian American Studies.  It was also selected for NPR's Books We Love list for 2023.  Dr. Kim has delivered keynote and plenary talks within the U.S. and abroad, and she is the author of numerous journal articles, book chapters, and essays.  She was co-editor of a special issue of American Quarterly entitled “Species/Race/Sex” (2013) and co-organizer of the Race and Animals Institute at Wesleyan University in 2016.  She was the recipient of a grant from the University of California Center for New Racial Studies, and she has been a fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey and the University of California Humanities Research Institute.  In 2025, Dr. Kim was awarded the Don T. Nakanishi Award for Distinguished Scholarship and Service in Asian Pacific American Politics by the Western Political Science Association.  She has been a guest commentator on MSNBC, PBS, and NPR, and her popular writing has appeared in The Los Angeles Times, The Nation, The American Scholar, and Ms. Magazine.  Dr. Kim has provided expert testimony in court cases testing the reach of the California Racial Justice Act of 2020, a statute seeking to combat racial discrimination in policing and the prison system.  She is regularly interviewed on podcasts, documentary films, and various media on topics relating to race, animals, and ecology.  Dr. Kim is also a Pushcart-nominated poet whose work is published in TriQuarterly, The Ilanot Review, The Lincoln Review, Diode, and The Missouri Review, among other places.