Professor Ming Hsu Chen Joins the UC Law SF Faculty

Ming Hsu Chen

Professor Ming Chen

Chen is a familiar face at Hastings after serving as a visiting professor during the 2021-2022 school year and now joins the permanent faculty. She will become the Professor and Harry & Lillian Hastings Research Chair and a Professor of Law.

Her scholarship focuses on citizenship, immigration, and race, and at Hastings, she will launch a new faculty-led research center on Race, Immigration, Citizenship and Equality (RICE).

“I’m excited to be joining a community with a panoply of race and immigration scholars and to be doing so with a cohort of four incoming scholars that will a further enrich the landscape,” she said. “When I started in the legal academy 10 years ago, I was the sole immigration scholar and one of few interdisciplinary scholars at my law school. Hastings has multiple centers of excellence related to race and immigration that I can collaborate with as RICE develops.”

Chen, the author of the book Pursuing Citizenship in the Enforcement Era, was formerly the Faculty Director of the Colorado University Immigration and Citizenship Law Program and a professor at the University of Colorado Law School.

She reflected on her first year at Hastings, “The faculty are serious about interdisciplinary research and building an institution that is inclusive. I’ve also found that students earnestly believe that law can make a positive difference and that they have wonderfully diverse life experiences that fuel their commitment.”

She will teach Legislative and Administrative Regulation, Constitutional Law II, and a seminar on Citizenship and Equality. She will also offer a new colloquium on Race, Citizenship and Equality with lectures open to the Hastings community.

Chen has won numerous awards for her teaching, scholarship, and public service. She is a graduate of the New York University School of Law and clerked for the Hon. James Browning of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. In addition to her J.D., she earned a Ph.D. from UC Berkeley in Jurisprudence and Social Policy.