Karen Umemoto
Professor, University of California Los Angeles
Karen Umemoto, Ph.D. is the Helen and Morgan Chu Endowed Chair and Director of the UCLA Asian American Studies Center and Professor of Asian American Studies at UCLA.
She received her Master’s degree in Asian American Studies from UCLA and her Ph.D. in Urban Studies from MIT. Her research has centered on issues of democracy and racial justice in multicultural societies with a focus on youth and community building.
Her publications include The Truce: Lessons from an LA Gang War (Cornell University Press), Jacked Up and Unjust: Pacific Islander Teens Confront Violent Legacies (University of California Press) and over 50 refereed articles, book chapters, and reports on issues of community development, race relations, and engaged research.
She is founder and co-editor of Asian American and Pacific Islander Foundations and Futures, an open access multimedia textbook on AA/PI histories and experiences for high school and college students to be released in mid-2025.