Alexander Chen

Professor Alexander Chen is the Founding Director of the LGBTQ+ Advocacy Clinic at Harvard Law School, where he also teaches Gender Identity, Sexual Orientation, and the Law. He is one of the nation’s leading experts in LGBTQ+ civil rights law. Prof. Chen’s work has been featured in the New York Times, the Economist, the Guardian, the Boston Globe, Bloomberg, and Slate. His scholarship has been published in the Harvard Law Review, Boston University Law Review, the New England Journal of Medicine, and other leading journals. 

Prof. Chen’s award-winning clinical program has achieved landmark impact litigation settlements, passed first-in-the-nation plural domestic partnership and non-discrimination ordinances, and published influential amicus briefs, regulatory comments, and white papers.

Previously, Prof. Chen worked at the National Center for Lesbian Rights, where he litigated landmark federal appellate cases involving the first transgender military ban and transgender prisoner health care access, and co-drafted AB 2119, a bill that made California the first state to mandate access to gender-affirming care for trans foster youth.

Prof. Chen has been named one of Forbes’ 30 Under 30 in Law & Policy, one of the 40 Best LGBTQ+ Lawyers Under 40 by the National LGBTQ Bar Association, Best Under 40 by the National Asian Pacific American Bar Association, and Harvard’s inaugural Trans Alumni of the Year (2023). For his teaching, he was awarded the Harvard AAPI/APIDA Affinity Celebration Faculty Award, which recognizes one Harvard University faculty member for their outstanding mentorship of Asian Pacific Islander Desi American students. He was also one of three professors chosen by the 2023 Harvard Law School graduating class to deliver a “Last Lecture,” Living a Good Life as a Socially Conscious Lawyer.

Prof. Chen attended Oxford University (B.A. 2009), Columbia University (M.A. 2012), and Harvard Law School (J.D. 2015), where he was the first openly transgender editor of the Harvard Law Review and a recipient of the Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowship for New Americans. He clerked on the Ninth Circuit for the Hon. M. Margaret McKeown, and in the Southern District of California for the Hon. Gonzalo P. Curiel. He also co-founded the National Trans Bar Association and the Polyamory Legal Advocacy Coalition and co-authored the Trans Youth Handbook.

He is also a Founding Faculty Affiliate of the Carr Center for Human Rights Global LGBTQI+ Program at Harvard Kennedy School.