About

Education

AB (History), Princeton University
MA (History), Yale University
JD, Columbia Law School

Biography

Mark Sidel is Doyle-Bascom Professor of Law and Public Affairs at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and an elected member of the American Law Institute. He serves on the boards of the International Center for Not-for-Profit Law, the China Medical Board, Give2Asia (the primary philanthropic intermediary between the United States and China), and The Rights Practice (US). 

Sidel is affiliated for research with University of Liverpool School of Law and Social Justice and its Charity Law and Policy Unit (as visiting Chair in Global Justice and Honorary Professor in Law); the Centre for Social Impact and Philanthropy (CSIP) in New Delhi; the US-Asia Law Institute (USALI) at NYU Law School; the Center for Nonprofit Strategy and Management (CNSM) at City University of New York, Baruch College; the University of Western Australia Law School; and the Paul Baerwald School of Social Work and Social Welfare at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

In 2016 and 2017 Sidel served as the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation Visiting Chair in Community Philanthropy at the Lilly Family School of Philanthropy at Indiana University; in spring 2018 as Ian Potter Foundation Fellow at the Australian Centre for Philanthropy and Nonprofit Studies in Brisbane; and in February-March 2020 as visiting scholar at the University of Western Australia Law School in Perth. From 2020-2024 he served as visiting professor of law at Cardozo Law School in New York.

In addition to his academic work, Sidel has served as president of the International Society for Third Sector Research (ISTR), the international academic association working to strengthen research on civil society, philanthropy and the nonprofit sector; on the Council on Foundations Community Foundations National Standards Board, the national accrediting and standard setting body for American community foundations and trusts; and on the boards of the Association for Research on Nonprofit Organizations and Voluntary Action (ARNOVA), the Society of American Law Teachers (SALT), and other organizations.

Advising and consulting assignments have included SIDA/Indevelop (Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency, on human rights programs in China); the government of Denmark (Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Danish development cooperation, on human rights and legal reform programs in Vietnam); the Ford Foundation (on legal reform programs in China); the Norwegian Centre for Human Rights (on human rights and legal reform programming in China and Vietnam); the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (on philanthropic law and policy in China); and many other international and donor organizations. Over the past eight years Sidel has assisted a wide range of US and other foundations, NGOs, think tanks and others with issues under the Chinese Overseas NGO Law.

Professor Sidel has served as Visiting Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, Melbourne Law School, Institut d'Etudes Politiques de Paris (Sciences Po, in the chaire Asie), Brooklyn, Cardozo, Victoria, Vermont, Miami and Denver law schools and other institutions, and as W. G. Hart Lecturer in Law at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in the University of London.

In 2008 he won the ICNL-Cordaid Civil Liberties Prize for his work on the impact of anti-terrorism law on civil society in comparative perspective, and in 2012 he was named to the Outstanding Academic Award by the Nonprofit Organizations Committee of the American Bar Association, Business Law Section. He is a graduate of Princeton University (A.B. in history), Yale University (M.A. in history), and Columbia Law School.

Professor Sidel has consulted or advised in a number of cases, including

• U.S. v. Stephen William Beal (weapon of mass destruction/death case, records largely sealed)
• U.S. v. Kil Soo Lee et al (the largest prosecution of slavery, human trafficking and involuntary servitude since the Civil War) 
• Alliance for Open Society International v. US Agency for International Development (on funding restrictions to international affiliates of US nonprofit organizations)
• U.S. Summit Company LP v. Kenneth Phan et al (among the first forum non conveniens cases involving Vietnam)
• assisting the UK Serious Organised Crime Agency and other agencies in the matter of a deportation of a high-profile British citizen from Vietnam
• Denver Foundation v. Wells Fargo Bank (a significant case on the control of community foundations' trust principal); and other matters.

Sidel has frequently served and is frequently cited as an appointed expert for British firms and courts in human trafficking cases involving Vietnam (on a number of occasions), China, and the Philippines.  He has also consulted with the U.S. State Department on human trafficking and labor law issues. 

Research and publications

Professor Sidel's research and writing focus on the nonprofit sector and philanthropy (with a focus on Asia and the United States); modern secessionary movements; and constitutional law in China and Vietnam.

In addition to scholarly and policy articles, his books include:

• Regulatory Waves: Comparative Perspectives on State Regulation and Self-Regulation in the Nonprofit Sector (Cambridge University Press, 2017, ed. with Oonagh Breen and Alison Dunn)
• Central-Local Relations in Asian Constitutional Systems (Hart Publishing, 2015, ed. with Andrew Harding)
• State, Society and the Market in Contemporary Vietnam: Property, Power and Values (Routledge 2012; paper ed. 2015, ed. with Hue-Tam Ho Tai) 
• Regulation of the Voluntary Sector: Freedom and Security in an Age of Uncertainty (Routledge 2010)
• The Constitution of Vietnam: A Contextual Analysis (Hart 2009)
• Law and Society in Vietnam (Cambridge University Press 2008)
• Cinema, Law, and the State in Asia (Palgrave MacMillan 2007, ed. with Corey Creekmur)
• Vietnam's New Order: International Perspectives on the State and Reform (Palgrave Macmillan 2006, ed. with Stephanie Balme)
• More Secure, Less Free? Antiterrorism Policy and Civil Liberties after September 11 (University of Michigan Press 2004, updated 2nd ed. 2007)
• Philanthropy and Law in South Asia (APPC 2004, ed. with Iftekhar Zaman, updated ed. 2007)
• Old Hanoi (Oxford University Press, 1998)

Sidel's work has also appeared in ChinaFile, US-Asia Law Institute Perspectives, Nonprofit Policy Forum, Alliance, ForeignPolicy.com, Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, International and Comparative Law Quarterly, Michigan Law Review, Voluntas, Third Sector Review, Alliance, Michigan Journal of International Law, Pittsburgh Law Review, Texas International Law Journal, Tulane Law Review, Charity Law and Practice Review, UCLA Pacific Basin Law Journal, UC Davis Law Review, Chicago-Kent Law Review, China Quarterly, Asian Survey, SAIS Review, Signs, and other academic and professional journals, as well as in edited volumes.

Sidel is honored to have collaborated on research and writing with Stephanie Balme, the late Barnett Baron, Oonagh Breen, David Bright, Corey Creekmur, Dana Doan, Alison Dunn, the late Peter Geithner, Andrew Harding, Robert Jarvis, David Marr, Hu Ming, David Moore, Christopher Pallas, Son Pham, Hue-Tam Ho Tai, Iftekhar Zaman, Zhang Qianjin, Zhang Ye and other distinguished colleagues.

External and earlier activities

Sidel has extensive experience in international philanthropic and funding communities. He served on the Ford Foundation team with Peter Geithner, Zhang Ye and other colleagues that established the Foundation's office in China and as the Foundation's first program officer for law, legal reform, and nonprofit organizations based in China (Beijing) in the late 1980s.

In the early and mid-1990s, he developed and managed the Ford Foundation's programs in Vietnam. Later he developed and managed the regional program on philanthropy and the nonprofit sector for the Ford Foundation in South Asia (New Delhi). Sidel also served on the Ford Foundation's Endowment Working Group and as a drafter of the Foundation's endowment handbook and has consulted for the Foundation. 

Before coming to Wisconsin, Sidel served as Professor of Law, Lauridsen Family Fellow, and Faculty Scholar at the University of Iowa. He is a member of the editorial or editorial advisory boards of Voluntas: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations; Journal of Civil Society; Third Sector Review (Australia); USALI Perspectives (US-Asia Law Institute, NYU); Development in Practice; Asian Journal of Law and Society; and the Australian Journal of Asian Law (Melbourne).

Sidel practiced law with Baker & McKenzie in New York, Beijing and Hong Kong and is a non-active member of the New York bar. He speaks and reads Chinese and reads Vietnamese.

Updated January 2025