William P. Alford is Jerome A. and Joan L. Cohen Professor, at Harvard Law School where he also is Director of the East Asian Legal Studies Program and Chair of the Harvard Law School Project on Disability. He’s pleased to advise Winthrop students about law school, US-East Asian relations, disability studies, sports and more.

From 2002-2020, he served as Vice Dean of the Law School for the Graduate Program and International Legal Studies. He is a graduate of Amherst College and holds advanced degrees from the University of Cambridge, Harvard, and Yale. His publications include To Steal a Book is an Elegant Offense: Intellectual Property Law in Chinese Civilization (1995), Raising the Bar: The Emerging Legal Profession in East Asia (2007), 残疾人法律保障机制研究 (A Study of Legal Mechanisms to Protect Persons with Disabilities) (2008, with Wang Liming and Ma Yu’er), Prospects for the Professions in China (2011, with William Kirby and Kenneth Winston), Taiwan and International Human Rights: A Story of Transformation (2019, with Jerome Cohen and Lo Chang-fa) which won the American Society of International Law’s Certificate of Merit as that year’s best specialized work in the field, and An Oral History of Special Olympics in China (2020-22 with Liao Mei and Cui Fengming in 3 vols). He has served for the last nine years as the Lead Director and Chair of the Executive Committee of the board of Special Olympics International which serves persons with intellectual disabilities in over 190 countries. In his spare time, he serves as Faculty Fellow to the Harvard men’s ice hockey team.