Chang Wang walks the line to teach constitutional law in Beijing
Wang dedicated his Asian Pacific Outstanding Contribution Award to his mentor, Rick King. Photo courtesy of Thomson Reuters.
DUELING IDENTITIES
Rick King, executive vice president of operations and chief information officer at Thomson Reuters, has long been a mentor and friend to Wang. When Wang won the Asian Pacific Outstanding Contribution Award from the Minnesota State Council on Asian-Pacific Minnesotans in 2015, he dedicated it to King, saying: “Without Rick’s trust and support, none of my career accomplishments would have been possible.”
The admiration is mutual. “Chang is such a great ambassador for Thomson Reuters,” King says. “I think that his evangelism for spreading the rule of law around the world is incredible.”
King also praised Wang for another of his recent projects, putting together a series of CLE seminars for Thomson Reuters on civic engagement. Wang is on the civic engagement committee for Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton’s Diversity and Inclusion Council and has worked within his community to provide more civics education. During the 2016 election season, he helped put together a seminar to explain how the American political system works to Chinese immigrants and students in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area.
The new CLE seminar series launched this past spring, and each program has looked at a different aspect of the Bill of Rights and issues of discrimination. “He’s just done a really great job,” King says.
Wang’s most recent book, Parallel Universes: Essays and Conversations, was published by Thomson Reuters in October and contains some of his musings about his dueling identities: artist and lawyer, Chinese and American.
“I consider myself most fortunate to be able to appreciate the beauty of the Chinese language and culture,” Wang says. “At the same time, I am able to function in the American system of justice and fundamental fairness. I feel obligated to serve as a bridge between these two cultures. I am a lineal descendant of Chinese arts and intellectual tradition. And at the same time, I am a zealous advocate for the democratic values, equal protection and due process of the American system. In fact, there are only two things that can bring me close to tears: Chinese literature and American law.”
Wang continues to keep his feet in these different worlds. He likes to say that he talks about art with lawyers and law with artists. He writes books on American law for Chinese people and on Chinese law for Americans. He still spends time in both countries, as he did this summer with his students in Beijing. But he made sure to return home to Minnesota on July 3. He wanted to be back in time for the Independence Day fireworks.
This article appeared in the December 2017 issue of the ABA Journal with the title "Law in Translation: Chang Wang walks the line to teach constitutional law to students in Beijing."
