Juman Kim is Assistant Professor of Political Science and Director of the Program in Law and American Civilization at Towson University. He is a political theorist whose research and teaching interests range widely over ancient and modern political thought, continental philosophy, contemporary and comparative political theory, and American constitutional law. His current themes and questions revolve around democratic citizenship, identity and membership, and political ethos and pathos.
His research has been published or is forthcoming in academic journals such as American Journal of Political Science, Max Weber Studies, Comparative Political Theory, Korea Journal, and the Korean Journal of Humanities and the Social Sciences. His AJPS piece, entitled "Tempering Senses of Superiority" (AJPS 2025), draws on Aristotle to examine the problem of mutual disrespect and civic enmity in modern democracies. Recently, he has translated two seminal scholarly works—a book by Rogers Smith (with Hyemee Kim) and an essay by the late Tony Judt—into Korean.
He is currently at work on two book projects. The first book, tentatively called Living with Frustration: The Quest for a Democratic Citizenship of Perseverance, is based on his political theory scholarship on democratic frustration that examines five related yet distinct aspects of democratic frustration arising from different democratic aspirations including mutual respect, popular sovereignty, and progress. The second book project, Suspect and Welcome: The First Koreans in America and the Americans Who Defined Them, stems from my research concerning citizenship, membership, and naturalization in late nineteenth-century America. It recovers the forgotten lives of a handful of interconnected Korean immigrants—Soh Kwang Pom, Philip Jaisohn, Penn Su, Yun Ch'i Ho, Kiu Beung Surh, and Esther Kim Pak—who navigated the legal, political, and social realities of late nineteenth-century America, and a few Americans who received, studied, and sought to define and work with them.
Kim holds a Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania and both M.A. & B.A. degrees from Yonsei University. Previously, he taught political theory and public law at the Korea Air Force Academy, Penn, Rutgers University-Camden, and the University of Oregon.
Originally from Seoul, he has strong scholarly and personal interests in Korea and the Korean Peninsula, as well as in Philadelphia, a place he deems to be his intellectual and sports home. He and his family including Apollo—their five-year-old Corgi from Philadelphia—are passionate Sixers, Eagles, and, to a lesser extent, Phillies fans.