Mark Wu will join the Harvard Law School faculty in July, Harvard Law School Dean Martha Minow announced today. With broad-ranging experience in international intellectual property and trade, his academic interests include international trade, international law, intellectual property law, and Chinese law.
Said Minow: “In the rapidly evolving field of international trade law and globalization, Mark stands out because of his superb expertise, creativity, and extraordinary knowledge of Japan, China and India. I am delighted that he will now bring that expertise and his experience at the highest levels of government to Harvard Law School. His special knowledge of intellectual property and protection in the borderless world of the digital space will significantly advance the exciting work by faculty and students here. For our teaching program and scholarship in trade, globalization, and intellectual property, we could not find a more terrific colleague, and we are simply delighted that he has decided to join us.”
Wu is currently an Academic Fellow at Columbia Law School. He is a co-author of The Law of the World Trade Organization. Wu is currently researching the growing use of anti-dumping measures in Asia and its impact on global trade.
“I am incredibly honored to be joining the Harvard Law School faculty,” said Wu. “Harvard has had a long-standing commitment to be at the forefront in understanding and shaping the law accompanying increased globalization, and I look forward to benefiting from and hopefully contributing to that tradition.”
Prior to joining Columbia Law as a fellow, Wu was a Clerk to Judge Pierre Leval of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. A 2007 graduate of Yale Law School, he served as a researcher and project coordinator at Yale’s China Law Center, where he oversaw efforts to assist China’s State Council in revising water conservation regulations. He did this by organizing a workshop of international experts, government officials, and Chinese academics to review draft legislation in Beijing in November 2006. Wu also assisted Chinese government officials and visiting scholars in undertaking comparative research on alternative dispute resolution, food safety, free speech, and other constitutional issues.
Prior to attending law school, Wu served as director for intellectual property in the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative at the White House from 2003-04. In this position he played a major role in developing U.S. trade policy in key areas of the world. He led the U.S. negotiating team for intellectual property in several free trade agreements, including the Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA), and agreements with Morocco and Bahrain. Wu was also responsible for overseeing IP trade issues with China, Russia, India, Pakistan, Southeast Asia, the former Soviet republics, and the Middle East. He was actively involved in bilateral and multilateral negotiations concerning the protection and enforcement of IP rights by U.S. trading partners, and participated in the WTO accession talks with several countries. .
Before joining the USTR office, Wu worked for four years at McKinsey & Company in San Francisco, where he was involved with several projects, including devising a strategy for the American semiconductor industry to counter competitive threats in Asia.
From 1998-99, Wu worked as an economist and operations officer for the World Bank in Beijing, China, where he advised the government of China on, among other things, export competitiveness, urban development, and overall macroeconomic conditions. He also helped to develop programs for improving access to clean water in alleviating rural poverty, worked on environmental matters, and assisted with public utilities management. Previously, Wu also spent time as an economist for the United Nations Development Programme in Namibia.
Wu graduated from Harvard College with an A.B. in Social Studies and East Asian Studies, where he was Phi Beta Kappa and named a John Harvard Scholar. He holds a diploma in Japanese Studies from Kyoto University, where he was a Monbusho Scholar, a distinction awarded by the Japanese government. A Rhodes Scholar, Wu earned an M.Sc. in Development Economics from Oxford University, winning the D’Agliano Prize for top dissertation in his course in 1998. He is a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
At Harvard he will teach in the areas of trade law, international economic law, and globalization.