Naomi Murakawa is a professor at Princeton University, where she specializes in American politics with an emphasis on racial and gender politics, public policy, and American political development. The author of numerous journal articles, Murakawa's forthcoming book is entitled, The First Civil Right: Racial Liberalism and the Rise of Prison America (Oxford University Press). The First Civil Right investigates the development of America's racially distinctive punishment expansion. Her teaching interests include American racial formation, feminist politics, and the politics of crime and punishment.

Murakawa received her Ph.D. in Political Science from Yale University in 2005. Her dissertation entitled "Electing to Punish: Congress, Race, and the American Criminal Justice State" was awarded: departmental distinction from Yale University (2005); best dissertation prize from the Law and Society Association (2006); and best dissertation award from the Race, Ethnicity and Politics Section of the American Political Science Association (2006).