Stephen Harder

Background

About Stephen Harder

Stephen Harder is an international lawyer and professor of law, based in Shanghai and New York. He is currently a Professor of Practice of Law at NYU Shanghai, teaching courses on American Law and Society, and Investment in Developing Countries, Comparative Constitutions and International Law. He recently he retired after 20 years as a partner at the London-headquartered international law firm of Clifford Chance LLP, the last 14 years of which he was Managing Partner for the firm's leading China practice. During his career, Stephen has been based in New York, Brussels, Warsaw, Moscow, Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Beijing. When based in Europe in the early 1990s, with the New York-headquartered law firm of White and Case, he was a legal counsel for the Russian and Polish mass privatization program, and counsel to the Polish government in its "London Club" sovereign debt negotiations. Stephen's recent legal practice and teaching has focused on cross border transactions relating to China and Africa. Recently, Stephen has presented on "China Meets Africa" at a conference for African legal counsel organized by Clifford Chance in London, and has been a delegate to the World Economic Forum meetings in Africa. Stephen has written in the International Financial Law Review on "China's Sovereign Wealth Fund: The Need for Caution" and spoken at U.S. law and business schools on "China in the Balance: Needed Reforms, Vested Interests and the Choices Facing China's Leaders." He also published in the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences on "Political Finance in the Liberal Republic." He is a life-long student of the poetry and prose of W.H. Auden, and writes an occasional column called "Notes from Away" for The Free Press, an independent weekly newspaper in Maine.(freepressonline.com/columnists/notes from away). Stephen is a native of Boston, and a resident of Rockport, Maine.