2005 POINT SCHOLARS

Lam Ho

Harvard University Law School

Lam Ho’s doctoral thesis on queer sexualities and genders in Victorian fiction is entitled Lost Boundaries. This could also describe how Lam has defied the personal and socio-economic limitations he has faced since emigrating from Vietnam to Brockton, MA. Not speaking a word of English, Lam mutely witnessed domestic violence inside his family’s two-bedroom apartment, into which were squeezed nine people; from its single window, he observed drug-dealings and gunshots outside. He suffered hunger and ridicule as his family survived on his parents’ sub-minimum wages from temporary, night assembly shifts and public assistance. Nonetheless, Lam graduated valedictorian of his high school, where he co-founded Brockton’s first Gay Straight Alliance and AIDS service student-organization. He did so in response to the physical and verbal harassment he endured as its first openly queer pupil—from being trapped into lockers and molested by peers to being publicly humiliated by his headmaster. And despite being financially independent from his conservative, religious family and working between 30-40 hrs/wk, he completed both an A.B. & M.A. in English in 4 years and earned some of Brown University’s top distinctions for academic achievement and public service. He also won three of academia’s most competitive awards: the Coca-Cola, Beinecke, and Marshall Scholarships, which have enabled him to pursue his degree at Oxford University. It is Lam’s commitment to fighting what he describes as “the paralyzing silence of ignorance and fear” that has inspired his pursuit of education and activism. He has been hailed as an “instinctual bridge builder” for uniting the Third World and queer communities at Brown, as well as Brown and Oxford universities with their local neighborhoods (for which he was selected as Honorary Co-Chair of Rhode Island Pride 2001), through his volunteer work on such issues as police homophobia monitoring, sexual health, public advocacy, homelessness, and disadvantaged children. He has also been Research Fellow at the Danish National Organization for Gays and Lesbians, when he completed a study for the Rhode Island legislature on same sex partnership: an area in which he hopes to challenge more boundaries as a civil rights lawyer.

In Lam's own words: “I have discovered the experience of overcoming adversity to be transformative: it changes anger into resolve, sorrow into compassion, and despair into inspiration; all ultimately into forces for a better and wiser humanity.”