Kah-Jin Jeffrey Kuan

The Rev. Dr. Kah-Jin Jeffrey Kuan became the Seventh President of Claremont School of
Theology on July 1, 2013. Prior to that he served as Dean of Drew Theological School
and Professor of Hebrew Bible from January 2011 to June 2013. A scholar of ancient
Israelite and Near Eastern history, Dr. Kuan’s current research addresses Asian and
Asian American hermeneutics, as well as approaches to biblical instruction for the
churches.

The Rev. Kuan began his career serving as an associate pastor from 1980 to 1983 in
Malaysia. In 2002, he became an ordained elder and full member of the California-
Nevada Annual Conference of The United Methodist Church. From 2004 to 2012, he
served on the Board of Directors of the UMC’s General Board of Higher Education and
Ministry, the last four years as the Vice President and chair of the Division of Higher
Education. Currently, he serves on the University Senate of The United Methodist
Church and chairs the Commission on Theological Education.

President Kuan is the chair of the Member Council of the Hispanic Theological Initiative
Consortium, a member of the Board of Commissioners of the Association for
Theological Schools, and a member of the Board of Trustees of the Foundation for
Theological Education in Southeast Asia.

Dr. Kuan previously served on the faculties of the Pacific School of Religion and the
Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California, and the South East Asia Graduate
School’s Regional Faculty. He also served as Old Testament Editor for the multi-volume
New Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible from 2006 to 2009, and served on the Council
of the Society of Biblical Literature from 2007 to 2012.

In 2004, the Reconciling Ministries of the California-Nevada Annual Conference named
him the winner of the Turtle Award for “sticking his neck out” for the LGBTQ community.

Selected Publications

“Biblical Interpretation and the Rhetoric of Violence and War,” Asia Journal of Theology
23, no. 2 (2009): 189-203.
Ways of Being, Ways of Reading: Asian-American Biblical Interpretation , co-edited with
Mary F. Foskett (Chalice, 2006).
“Reading Amy Tan Reading Job,” in Timothy J. Sandoval and Carleen R. Mandolfo,
eds., Relating to the Text: Interdisciplinary and Form-Critical Insights on the Bible , 263-
274 (Continuum, 2004).

“My Journey into Diasporic Hermeneutics,” Union Seminary Quarterly Review 56, no. 1-
2 (2002): 50-54.
“Šamši-ilu and the Realpolitik of Israel and Aram-Damascus in the Eighth Century
BCE,” in J. Andrew Dearman and M. Patrick Graham, eds., The Land That I Will Show
You: Essays on the History and Archaeology of the Ancient Near East in Honor of J.
Maxwell Miller , 135-151 (Sheffield Academic, 2001).
“Diasporic Reading of a Diasporic Text: Identity Politics and Race Relations and the
Book of Esther,” in Fernando F. Segovia, ed., Interpreting beyond Borders , 161-173
(Sheffield Academic, 2000).
“Voices from the Margin: Interpreting the Bible in the Third World,” Voices from the Third
World 19, no. 1 (1996): 242-246.
Neo-Assyrian Historical Inscriptions and Syria-Palestine: Israelite/Judean-Tyrian-
Damascene Political and Commercial Relations in the Ninth–Eighth Centuries BCE
(Hong Kong: Alliance Bible Seminary, 1995).
History and Interpretation: Essays in Honour of John H. Hayes , co-edited with M.
Patrick Graham and William P. Brown (Sheffield Academic, 1993).

Ph.D., Emory University, 1994
M.T.S., Southern Methodist University, 1986
B.Th., Trinity Theological College (Singapore), 1980