Alford Tribute

Rayhan Asat
LL.M. ‘16, Harvard Law School

Professor Alford beyond Harvard 

On June 30, 2020, after 18 exceptional years of leading the International Legal Studies at Harvard Law School, Professor William P. Alford, Jerome A. and Joan L. Cohen, Professor of Law, stepped down. While Professor Wu is a wonderful successor to Professor Alford, Alford’s stepping down remains a loss for HLS. I’m compelled to pen a tribute to Professor Alford that will testify to the exceptional warmth of the internationally-minded professor and big-hearted mentor whom I came to know in the most unfortunate of circumstances. 

In May 2016, as HLS students excitedly approached graduation, I was flooded with unanswered questions. I was confused as to why my entire family canceled their plans to travel to the U.S. and attend my graduation as the first Uyghur HLS graduate. I had no idea that an extremely long nightmare was about to ensue. I soon came to learn that my brother Ekpar Asat, an Uyghur entrepreneur, multi-faceted media owner, and philanthropist, was forcibly disappeared by the authoritarian Chinese government. Just a few months prior to graduation, I had embraced my brother in Washington, D.C., and New York, when he came to attend a prestigious program sponsored by the U.S. Department of State. While the Harvard community celebrated in the joyous company of family, friends, and faculty, I sat in tears without my family. The glow of New England that summer had turned into a thick grey cloud. 

After I learned in the fall of 2016 that the Chinese government was constructing mass concentration camps and forcibly interning Uyghur and other Turkic people, I was frightened about my brother’s safety. Regardless of being fully aware that my own well-being directly impacts my brother’s freedom, I struggled to take care of myself and was struck often by guilt. Amidst this deeply trying time, it was Professor Alford who repeatedly told me that first and foremost, I need to take care of myself —not just for my own sake, but for the sake of my brother, my friends, my family, and my HLS community. 

I got to know professor Alford through long walks in Harvard Yard by the Georgetown river discussing my brother’s possible paths to freedom and the struggles of my people. Professor Alford always made himself available for me throughout this arduous journey that I had to navigate. He predicted the monumental challenges I might face if I shared my story publicly. He assured me that he and the Harvard Law School community would stand behind me. 

Over the years, Professor Alford always reminded me how exceptional a lawyer I am despite the immense personal responsibility I carry every day. In early 2020, when I decided to inform the public about my brother’s enforced disappearance, Professor Alford invited me to return to my alma mater to tell my story. His love and support prompted me to share my brother’s story, a story of courage and grace and I went back to Cambridge to pursue truth and justice for my brother. On March 9, before the COVID-19 pandemic prompted the Harvard community to desert our beautiful campus, I stood before a room of faculty members, students, and graduate program staff. Then, holding back tears, I told my brother’s story, just as I had during my walks with Professor Alford. 

My brother’s walk to freedom has been far too long. It’s been four years, eight months, and I’m still counting his unknown steps. One day the tragedy will end because the Harvard community will carry my brother through this struggle. We will all embrace my brother in Cambridge. On that day, I will tell him my mentor, a Harvard Law School professor named Professor William Alford cared tremendously for him. He has been a light for my brother. Beyond all of his glorious achievements and contributions to the field of legal studies, I present a Professor who carried the Veritas torch in pursuit of justice for my brother. 

Rosabeth Moss Kanter
Ernest L. Arbuckle Professor at Harvard Business School; Founding Chair and Founding Director of the Harvard University Advanced Leadership Initiative

Millions of Cheers for William P. Alford

I’ve known Bill Alford casually for many years, perhaps stemming from the long-ago time that I was a Fellow in Law and Social Science at Harvard Law School. But I’ve really gotten to know Bill Alford in depth more recently, thanks to his enormous generosity in joining the faculty board of the Harvard Advanced Leadership Initiative. On top of all the other things on his plate from his multiple roles at HLS, there he was saying Yes to more: teaching ALI Fellows about China, offering wise counsel to me and the other faculty leaders, and also becoming my dinner buddy for Chinese and other cuisine along with a mutual friend. He gave me a very special chance to contribute to his important work for Special Olympics, for which he not only offered board leadership but also befriended, mentored, and cheered for many of the SO athletes. And then there’s our shared love of our esteemed colleague and friend Charles Ogletree and shared sadness at his illness. In fact, another sign of Bill’s generosity is that he made time for all these personal gestures of friendship.

I can’t stop at three cheers for Bill, because there are so many dimensions to his impact on people and issues. He has touched millions of lives through his work for international students, his work on disability law, and his belief in the law as an instrument for perfecting the world. He is highly intellectual and knowledgeable and also intensely human–the essence of humanity in a world that needs more of it. He has touched me and countless others with his kindness, gentleness, humility, and caring.

Steve Moore

Harvard College ’01, Professional Hockey Player

I’ve had the pleasure of knowing Bill Alford for over 20 years now and have watched with respect and admiration his prolific tenure as Vice Dean for the Graduate Program and International Legal Studies at Harvard Law School. Over that time, I have been fortunate to see first-hand the many remarkable personal qualities that Bill possesses, and the impact he has had on those fortunate enough to be around him. His intelligence is evident in the quality of his scholarship and the many awards he has received for his significant academic contributions. His open mindedness has led to a transformation of HLS’s international programs. His inclusiveness has been the impetus behind HLS welcoming more international students to attend Harvard than any other U.S. law school, and to do so regardless of financial position. His generosity is seen in the boundless time, energy, and attention he devotes to countless students, former students, mentees, colleagues, and friends – listening, counselling, challenging, encouraging, and supporting them. His optimism and positivity have been instrumental in launching the many groundbreaking programs which have been met with great success during his tenure, including the HLS international exchange programs. His compassion and respect for all people, regardless of circumstance, has been evident in his work with the Special Olympics and the Harvard Law School Project on Disability. His wisdom has been a key guiding influence on countless successful careers of his former students and mentees, and has been recognized in his selection as faculty advisor to the Harvard Men’s Varsity Ice Hockey Team. His thoughtfulness is felt in virtually every interaction with him. The combination of all of these amazing personal qualities, rather remarkably found all in one person, has made Bill Alford one of the best ambassadors Harvard Law School has ever had.

Dominic Moore
Harvard College ’03, Professional Hockey Player

On June 6, 1966, Robert Kennedy delivered an address to students at the University of Cape Town. Given at the height of South African apartheid, with Nelson Mandela still in prison, the speech is considered one of the most important of his life.

“It is from numberless, diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring those ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.”

Professionally, Dean Alford’s individual excellence and cooperative leadership have been immensely impactful, and there are many who can speak more insightfully than I can to highlight those significant achievements.

What I can share is the impact Bill has made in my life as a mentor and friend. Since I joined the Harvard Men’s Ice Hockey team back in 1999, Bill has served as a friend and faculty fellow of the program, combining his love for sports with his compassion and care for students. Over two decades, Bill has mentored me, as well as close to two hundred other student-athletes, making it his mission to enrich our experience and encourage us to lead better, more productive lives. Whether it be organizing educational opportunities, building relationships between faculty and students, or offering academic and career guidance, Bill always has time for those within his reach. Amazingly, that generosity only continues after students leave Cambridge. In 2013, ten years after my graduation, Bill was instrumental in helping me establish a charitable foundation, which continues to make a positive impact in the area of rare cancer research, with Bill’s continued support.

Both professionally and personally, Bill’s kindness and generosity are reflected in an abundance of actions both large and small, simple yet profound, spontaneous yet intentional, that have sent, and will continue to send, a ripple effect that is felt far and wide.

Mark Jia
J.D.’16, Harvard Law School; Former Research Fellow, East Asian Legal Studies Program

I am so pleased that the Harvard International Law Journal is celebrating Bill Alford’s career at the conclusion of his 18-year service as Vice Dean.  

Bill’s contributions to the international endeavor at Harvard Law School are inestimable. He is a giant in the field of Chinese law, and a pioneering figure in U.S.-China exchange. In my own life, he has been a devoted teacher, a generous mentor, and a model scholar and person.   

In relation to Bill, I will always think of myself first as his student. His 1L course, Comparative Law: Why Law? Lessons from China, was an engrossing introduction to comparative law by way of China. More than anything else, it was this course, and Bill’s teaching, that cemented my passion for the subject. The course stressed context over form, history over hysteria, forcing us—Bill’s students—to confront profound and difficult questions around law and legality. Every element of the course—topics, readings, speakers, films, and pedagogy—reflected Bill’s meticulous and erudite approach to the study of China. 

In my own career, Bill has supported me in more ways than I can count—writing letters, making introductions, creating research and teaching opportunities, and dispensing encouragement and advice. He has read drafts of everything I have written on Chinese law, with comments that never failed to press on my assumptions or to push my thinking. For as long as I write on this subject, I will always be writing for Professor Alford.  

As an aspiring law scholar, what I admire most about Bill’s writing—and what I have (poorly) sought to emulate in my own work—is its conscientiousness. Bill does not overstate. He does not understate. His analyses are scrupulously careful, managing a skepticism of every tradition’s conventional wisdoms while according due respect to setting and difference. The result is scholarship that persuades through rigor rather than ideology, reason rather than volume. His book, To Steal a Book is an Elegant Offense, well illustrates this analytic style. He opens with a thoughtful exposition on methodology, stressing problems of language, culture, and “[t]he need to guard against extrapolating normality from the West.” But, as he later shows, one can be mindful of methodological pitfalls while still perceptive of the Chinese leadership’s own failures in “proclaiming rights without being constrained by” them.  

Finally, Bill has modeled in his life and in his work a humility and a humanity to which we should all aspire. At a time of global tension, we would all benefit from following Bill’s example, rooted, at bottom, in his fundamental decency.  

Jedidiah Kroncke
Associate Professor of Law, The University of Hong Kong

To me, Bill Alford’s legacy epitomizes the often invisible but decidedly crucial generosities that sustain academic life. Whether as a teacher, mentor or colleague, Bill has devoted great energy to building spaces of community and forums of engagement for students and scholars who often find themselves far from home while in Cambridge. The generational impact of such contribution is now evident across the world in networks suffused not only with ideas and intellect but also compassion and humanity. In a field that often privileges judgments of individual achievement and brilliance, Bill has demonstrated how an original and pioneering scholar can make their mark while also nurturing those around them. As someone who benefited greatly from his generosity, I clearly see this example as one I continually strive to live up to in my own career.