Michael Lee Family Lecture Series

The Michael Lee Family Lecture Series was established in 2025 through a generous endowed gift from Brigitte and Michael Lee (CC ’96) to advance Korean Studies at Columbia University and beyond through the Center for Korean Research at the Weatherhead East Asian Institute.

Bringing distinguished scholars in the humanities and social sciences to Columbia, the series creates a forum for engaging new scholarship and ideas about Korea across disciplines, historical periods, and regions. The Lee family’s gift extends the work of the Center outward, connecting scholarship in Korean Studies with audiences across the University and the wider public. Envisioned as a signature program of the Center for Korean Research, the series strengthens Columbia’s role as a leading center for the study of Korean history, literature, culture, religion, and society while fostering meaningful exchange among scholars, students, and the broader University community.

The series also honors the intellectual legacy of Korean Studies at Columbia, shaped profoundly by two scholars who successively held the King Sejong Professorship. The late Gari Ledyard, King Sejong Professor and the founding director of the Center for Korean Research, helped establish Korean Studies as a field in the United States through his pioneering scholarship on the Korean alphabet, cartography, and premodern Korean history. The late JaHyun Kim Haboush, who succeeded him as King Sejong Professor, transformed the study of Chosŏn Korea through pathbreaking scholarship on Confucian kingship, women and gender, epistolary culture, and the formation of Korean nationhood. Their scholarship remains foundational to the field that the Michael Lee Family Lecture Series seeks to carry forward.