Mae Ngai is the Lung Family Professor of Asian American Studies and professor of history at Columbia University. She was previously a labor-union organizer and educator in New York City, working for District 65-UAW and the Consortium for Worker Education. She has written about immigration for organizations such as The New York Times, The Nation, and the Boston Review.

Ngai is the author of Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America (2004) and The Lucky Ones: One Family and the Extraordinary Invention of Chinese America (2010). She is now writing The Chinese Question, a study of Chinese gold miners and racial politics in 19th-century California, Australia and South Africa; and Nation of Immigrants: A Short History of an Idea. 

Expertise: Immigration history and policy, Asian American studies, U.S. legal and political history, citizenship, nationalism

Location: New York, N.Y.

Phone: (646) 438-1701

Email: mn53@columbia.edu

You can listen to Ngai speak about border security on CCTV: