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Mark Sidel

Professor of Law and Faculty Scholar
Lauridsen Family Fellow

Mark Sidel is Professor of Law at the University of Iowa and a research scholar at the University's Obermann Center for Advanced Studies. His research focuses on law, philanthropy and the nonprofit sector, and on comparative law in Asia with a focus on Vietnam, China, and India and South Asia. Professor Sidel teaches philanthropy and nonprofit institutions, contracts, and comparative and international law. In the 2005-06 academic year Professor Sidel served as Visiting Professor of Law at Harvard Law School.   Sidel has also been named a University of Iowa Faculty Scholar beginning in fall 2006.

Professor Sidel has also taught Vietnamese and Chinese law at Harvard Law School (1998), served as W.G. Hart Lecturer in Law at the School of Oriental and African Studies in the University of London (2003), served as visiting professor of Asian law in "chaire Asie" at the Institut d'Etudes Politiques de Paris (Sciences Po) (2004), and taught comparative law in Asia at the University of Melbourne Law School (2005).  Sidel studied at Princeton University (history), Yale University (history), and Columbia Law School.

Professor Sidel has published extensively on comparative law in Asia, and on philanthropy, the nonprofit sector, and civil society, including a volume on anti-terrorism policy in comparative perspective, and a co-edited volume on philanthropy and law in South Asia. His articles have appeared or are forthcoming in the Michigan Law Review, Tulane Law Review, U.C. Davis Law Review, International and Comparative Law Quarterly, Chicago-Kent Law Review, Pittsburgh Law Review, Michigan Journal of International Law, Texas International Law Journal, UCLA Pacific Basin Law Journal, Critique Internationale (Paris), Voluntas, International Journal of Not-for-Profit Law, China Quarterly, Asian Survey, SAIS Review, Signs, Vietnam Forum and other journals, as well as in a number of edited volumes. Sidel's detailed research guide to Vietnamese law was published by Harvard Law School and his monograph Old Hanoi was published by Oxford University Press in 1998.

Since 2000 Sidel has served as academic director of a five nation research and policy project on Philanthropy and Law in South Asia, funded by the Ford, Asia, Himalaya, Myer and Rockefeller foundations and convened by the Asia Pacific Philanthropy Consortium. A volume from the research study, Philanthropy and Law in South Asia, was published in fall 2004.

Before assuming his current position, Professor Sidel managed the regional program on philanthropy and the nonprofit sector for the Ford Foundation in South Asia (New Delhi, 1999-2000). He earlier managed the Ford Foundation's programs in Vietnam (Hanoi and Bangkok, 1992-1995), served on the Ford Foundation team that established the Foundation's office in China, and as the Foundation's first program officer for law and legal reform based in China (Beijing, 1988-1991). Sidel has also served on the Ford Foundation's Endowment Working Group and as one of the drafters of the Foundation's endowment handbook.

Professor Sidel has also served as a consultant on legal reform, philanthropy, the nonprofit sector and related areas for the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS), Asia Foundation, Asia Pacific Philanthropy Consortium, Asian Development Bank, Center for Educational Exchange with Vietnam, Economics Institute (Boulder), Ford Foundation, Luce Foundation, McKnight Foundation, National Foreign Affairs Training Center/Foreign Service Institute (Washington), Oxfam International, Oxfam America, Oxfam Hong Kong, Aga Khan Foundation/Pakistan Centre for Philanthropy, United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), U.S. Department of Justice (Civil Rights Division), U.S. State Department, Stanley Foundation, University of Iowa, Vietnamese Ministry of Justice, World Bank, and other institutions.

Sidel's consultancy service with the Ford Foundation has included assignments with the Office of the President, the program offices for Governance and Civil Society, International Affairs, Asia, and Management Services, and the field offices for Vietnam and Thailand, India, Nepal and Sri Lanka, and Bangladesh. He has also served as Vice President and Senior Program Consultant at the Stanley Foundation.

Sidel has served as Chair of the University of Iowa Research Council and as a member of the board or advisory board of the University of Iowa Press, International Writing Program, Iowa Humanities Council, Books and Authors/Vietnam (Chapel Hill), and YMCA Camp Wapsie (Coggon, Iowa). He is a member of the Institute of Current World Affairs (Crane-Rogers Foundation) and the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations. Sidel practiced law with Baker & McKenzie in New York, Beijing and Hong Kong (1985-1988) and is a member of the New York bar. He taught earlier at Lewis and Clark Law School.

Law and Society in Vietnam  (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming 2008)

Cinema, Law, and the State in Asia  (ed. with  Creekmur, Palgrave Macmillan, 2007)

Vietnam's New Order:   International Perspectives on the State and Reform (ed. with Balme, Palgrave Macmillan, 2007)

More Secure, Less Free? Antiterrorism Policy and Civil Liberties After September 11
(University of Michigan Press, 2004, revised paper edition 2007)

Philanthropy and Law in South Asia
(Asia Pacific Philanthropy Consortium, 2004)

Philanthropy and Law in South Asia: Key Themes and Key Choices
(Introductory chapter by Sidel and Zaman, adapted for International Journal of Not-for-Profit Law)

Association of American University Presses Books for Understanding Bibliography on the Nonprofit Sector and Philanthropy

Antiterrorism and the Universities (YaleGlobal Online, June 14, 2005)

The Legacy of Catherine Hope (YMCA Camp Wapsie, June 3, 2005)

A Dishonorable Road Home (Chicago Tribune, October 4, 2004)

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