Alice Kim
Template:TOCnestleft Alice Kim Director of The Public Square at the Illinois Humanities Council, received her Bachelor of Arts in English and Women's Studies from Northwestern University and her Master of Arts in English from DePaul University. She is a Chicago activist and has worked on a wide range of social-justice issues. She currently serves on the board of directors of the Campaign to End the Death Penalty and was a recipient of the Ford Foundation's Leadership for a Changing World Award for her work to end capital punishment in Illinois. She also previously worked at the Women's Interagency HIV Study (WIHS) and served as the coordinator for the WIHS National Community Advisory Board[1].
She is a founding member of the STW Legacy Network and on Children and Family Justice Center’s advisory board. Alice Kim is active in the movements to abolish the death penalty and create street peace and works to build bridges and linkages between social movements. In her professional capacity, she is the director of The Public Square, a program of the Illinois Humanities Council [2]
Background
Alice Kim is an educator, cultural organizer, activist, and writer. She teaches and develops curriculum for the Gender and Women’s Studies program and Social Justice Initiative at the University of Illinois at Chicago. She is also the Editor of Praxis Center, a new online resource center for scholar activists hosted by the Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership at Kalamazoo College.
A long-time death penalty and prison abolitionist, Alice is a founding member of the Chicago Torture Justice Memorials project, a collective that documents the history of Chicago police torture through the arts and seeks justice for the survivors of police torture. In her activism, Alice embraces radical imagination, multi-ethnic organizing, and intersectionality. She writes about identity, family, coming of age as a first generation Korean American and issues connected to race and the prison industrial complex. You can read her writing on her blog Dancing the Dialectic. Alice was previously the Director of The Public Square, a program of the Illinois Humanities Council that creates spaces for public conversations about social, political and cultural issues. She also worked as a national organizer for the Campaign to End the Death Penalty and the Consortium Administrator for the Women’s Interagency HIV Study. Alice received her B.A. from Northwestern University, M.A. from DePaul University, and most recently, her M.F.A. from Bennington College Writing Seminars.
Brazillian visitors
Amika Tree Tendaji May 24, 2019 ·
Last night I got to share an evening with these incredible women. Some I’m fortunate enough to bask in the presence of pretty regularly & 3 women from Brazil 🇧🇷 whose children were tortured or murdered by the police. They represent Mães de Maio and Associação Amparar. I don’t speak Portuguese & we only had one tired, hungry, hardworking, amazing translator, but I could understand how entwined our... See More — with Arewa Karen Winters, Alice Kim, Aislinn Sol, Moni Cosby.
"Support Bill Ayers"
In October 2008, several thousand college professors, students and academic staff signed a statement Support Bill Ayers in solidarity with former Weather Underground Organization terrorist Bill Ayers.
In the run up to the U.S. presidential elections, Ayers had come under considerable media scrutiny, sparked by his relationship to presidential candidate Barack Obama.
- We write to support our colleague Professor William Ayers, Distinguished Professor of Education and Senior University Scholar at the University of Illinois at Chicago, who is currently under determined and sustained political attack...
- We, the undersigned, stand on the side of education as an enterprise devoted to human inquiry, enlightenment, and liberation. We oppose the demonization of Professor William Ayers.
Alice Kim signed the statement.[3]
In These Times
As of 2009 Alice Kim was a member of the Editorial Board of Chicago based socialist journal In These Times.[4]
Ella's Daughters
In 2009 Alice Kim was a member of Chicago based organization Ella's Daughters-A network of artists, scholars and writers working in the tradition of militant Civil rights activist Ella Baker[5].
- We are a loose network of women who respect and admire Baker’s legacy, and are either interested in or already engaged in work that represents a continuation of her democratic, egalitarian humanistic tradition. We do not want to reinvent the wheel or duplicate or compete in any way with existing efforts. An argument can be made that the potential for a renewed progressive movement already exists and is embedded in the local trench work of organizers like Ella Baker.
Prominent members include Bernardine Dohrn, Tracye Matthews, Camille Odeh and Barbara Ransby.