Sarah Song

Sarah Song is a political theorist with a special interest in issues of democracy, citizenship, migration, and freedom of speech and religion. She teaches courses in political and legal philosophy, citizenship and migration studies, feminist theory and jurisprudence, and First Amendment law. Her full-time appointment is in the Jurisprudence and Social Policy (JSP) PhD Program at Berkeley Law School and the undergraduate Legal Studies Program, for which she currently serves as Associate Dean. She welcomes Political Science graduate and undergraduate students to enroll in her JSP and Legal Studies courses.

Her first book, Justice, Gender, and the Politics of Multiculturalism (Cambridge University Press, 2007), explores the challenges generated by religious and cultural diversity in democracy with a particular focus on the relationship between religious and cultural accommodations and gender relations within minority communities and between minority and majority communities. The book was awarded the 2008 Ralph Bunche Award by the American Political Science Association. 

Her second book, Immigration and Democracy (Oxford University Press, 2018), examines the values and principles that shape and ought to shape public debate about immigration. The book was reviewed in Public Books and The New Yorker.

She has written articles on a range of topics, including the boundary problem in democratic theory, the normative foundations of the modern state's immigration power, the rights of noncitizens, and immigrant legalization programs and the rule of law. 

She is currently working on two projects: one explores the value and limits of freedom of speech in democratic societies with a focus on disinformation and hate speech; the other critically examines the ethics of migration in the context of structural injustice.

Song received a BA in Social Studies from Harvard, MPhil in Political Philosophy from Oxford, and a PhD in Political Science 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 American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Institute for Citizens and Scholars.

From 2015 to 2020, Song served as director of Berkeley Law's Kadish Center for Morality, Law, and Public Affairs, which together with the Political Science and Philosophy Departments sponsors the Workshop in Law, Philosophy, and Political Theory.