Jennifer Lee ’86

Jennifer Lee is the Julian Clarence Levi Professor of Social Sciences at Columbia University, her alma mater. An award-winning author, distinguished scholar, and experienced public commentator, she has successfully placed the study of Asian Americans centrally in the social sciences and public discourse.

She is the author or co-author of four award-winning books, including Asian American Achievement Paradox, which garnered five national book awards. In it, she and her co-author dispel the cultural fallacy that Asian Americans excel in education because they value education more than other groups. Her work has also focused on immigrant entrepreneurship, intermarriage and multiracial identification, affirmative action, and the surge in anti-Asian 24 school magazine fall 2024 violence during the pandemic, which she presented to the Biden-Harris COVID-19 Health Equity Task Force.

In her most recent project, she calls attention to discrimination against Asian Americans in the workplace. Presumed competent, she says, Asian Americans are not presumed fit to lead.

Lee was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Academy of Political and Social Science, and the Sociological Research Association. She is a distinguished fellow at the Cook Center for Social Inequality at Duke, serves on the board of the Obama Presidency Oral History, and is chair of the board of trustees of the Russell Sage Foundation—the first Asian American to hold this position.

Committed to public and policy engagement, her essays and commentary have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The San Francisco Chronicle, CNN, Science, and The Brookings Institution, among other news outlets.

Distinguished Alumna Award

This award recognizes an alumna who has made a significant contribution in her field and whose accomplishments have had an impact on the larger community.