Acknowledgments

This book would not have been possible without many fellow travelers in the world of AIDS activism. Beri Hull, Patricia Nalls, Promise Mthembu, Jennifer Gatsi-Mallet, Meena Seshu, and many others lead national and international feminist movements on HIV and AIDS, sex work, and harm-reduction. Their perseverance and creative activism compelled me to begin to document the story of social movements and those involved who were not receiving due attention for the work they were doing to remake the world around them.

I should have known instantly that Terry McGovern, the brave, no-nonsense, and down-to-earth person I respected so much, had already transformed the delivery of welfare, ensured access to legal services for people living with HIV (when few others would), and fought and won struggles around housing, discrimination, and disability. I am grateful to Terry for allowing me to document her activism and legal work. I am grateful to Maxine Wolfe for allowing me to explore her personal archive at the Lesbian Her Story Archives. This book would not be possible without her careful documentation of the activism she and others engaged in. I thank Sarah Schulman for her permission to utilize the ACT-UP Oral History Archive. Thanks also to Margaret McCarthy and Nina for sharing personal materials with me. Thanks to Gail Pheterson for help interpreting the COYOTE archives.

I moved into academia in 2010 and began to take seriously the project of documenting the relationship between law, politics, public health, gender, and science. I desperately needed help in making sense of my observations and research. Janet Halley and Libby Adler saw possibility in me and my scholarship and helped nurture it with deep intellectual mentorship, a shared sense of irreverent humor, and a lot of food. They taught me how to be an academic, allowing me to stumble and grow along the way. Libby’s clear-sighted and careful scholarship has been a constant inspiration. Janet’s ability to look beneath a text and behind spoken words is a constant reminder of how to listen, read, and think. I am deeply grateful and always indebted to them.

Early on in my career, Duncan Kennedy offered me the opportunity to do a reading year with him. That year and my interactions with Duncan since have shaped my own ability to apply and think through theory in the context of my work and this book. I will always be grateful to Duncan for his time, presence, and mentorship in my academic life.

Sheila Jasanoff invited me into the world of science and technology studies and her specific mode of engaging science, technology, and society (STS). It provided a vocabulary for many of my own intellectual instincts and friendship with many like-minded people. This book reflects the influence of a body of work she and STS have cultivated over decades as well as her deep support and engagement with my work. I am grateful, too, to Ben Hurlbut for both his feedback and friendship.

My life in academia, and my academic work, shifted when I met Guy-Uriel Charles. Guy has read multiple drafts of this book. His deep and insightful feedback, always delivered with a dose of laughter, has helped me to clarify the contributions of this project and deepen the ideas within the book. I am so grateful for his intellectual mentorship and his guidance at many different points in my career. To know Guy is a gift. Through Guy I encountered a new world of brilliant, generous, and kind scholars, many who have been willing to endlessly discuss this project with me. I especially thank Franita Tolson, Bertrall Ross, Rick Banks, Luis Fuentes-Rohwer, and Timothy Lovelace for their feedback and support.

Michele Goodwin has been a constant source of motivation and inspiration for this project. This book reflects my engagement with Michele’s visionary scholarship, her ability to build community, be a public intellectual, and engage in activism. She has supported this project from its inception with her encouragement and continues to do so. I am so grateful to her for this support and am deeply indebted to her for the space she has created for many of us in the academy.

I thank David Kennedy for his support of my scholarship and for building a community that nurtures critical thought. Through this community I have met many of my interlocutors, friends, and fellow travelers who have read versions of this book and provided support along the way. I am especially grateful to Dan Danielson, Kerry Rittich, Vasuki Nesiah, and Karen Engle. Their rich scholarship, support, and friendship helped me to understand how to think and engage in critical legal scholarship. Over a series of lunches, I gained the incredible insights of Lucie White which helped me think about how to frame this book.

At Northeastern, Karl Klare and Lucy Williams provided mentorship, friendship, and support. Their iSERP (International Social and Economic Rights Project) network provided a space for valuable feedback. At different points, Karl sometimes intentionally, and other times unintentionally, taught me a great deal about how to think with clarity and purpose. I cherish those moments.

Colleagues at Northeastern University also helped me to think through the ideas in this book and I am especially grateful to Brook Baker, Shalanda Baker, Daniel Medwed, Wendy Parmet, Patricia Williams, Serena Parekh, Nima Eshghi, Suzanna Walters, and Kathy Abrams. The Law and Political Economy network has been a rich and generative space for academic exchange and I am thankful to have been included. I am especially grateful to Amy Kapczynski for her support and feedback on this project.

I presented numerous versions of this work in the Vulnerability and Legal Theory Workshops hosted by Martha Fineman. The ideas presented in this book bear the imprint of thinking with and alongside her work.

During my time as a Law and Public Affairs (LAPA) fellow at Princeton University, I received wonderful feedback from the LAPA community and in particular Paul Frymer, Jessica Eaglin, Lewis Grossman, and Sarah Stazack. Melissa Murray traveled from New York to Princeton to give me comments on an early version of my book proposal and I remain grateful for this early substantive feedback.

I benefitted from feedback at many faculty workshops and conferences. I am grateful to the faculty at Brooklyn Law School, Emory University School of Law, University of Virginia Law School, University of Kentucky Law School, University of California, Irvine, University of Pennsylvania Law and History Workshop, the Health Law Workshop at Harvard Law School, and American University Washington College of Law.

So many friends and colleagues in the academy have read chapters, heard versions of book talks, and helped to shape this book with their feedback. I am especially grateful to Amna Akbar, Helena Alviar, Chaz Arnett, Sameer Ashar, Swethaa Ballakrishnen, Paulo Barrozo, Khiara Bridges, Dorothy Brown, Courtney Cahill, Vignetta Charles, Amy Cohen, I. Glen Cohen, Kevin Davis, Nomita Divi, Gregg Gonsalves, Priya Gupta, Jasmine Harris, Erin Hassleberg, Eisha Jain, Terence Keel, Stephen Lee, Aya Gruber, Liz Sepper, Terence Keel, Charlie Peevers, Naomi Cahn, Craig Konnoth, Maya Manian, Stu Marvel, Serena Mayeri, Zina Miller, Seema Mohapatra, Kim Mutcherson, Osagie Obasogie, Shaun Ossei-Owusu, K-Sue Park, Charlie Peevers, Rachel Rebouché, Brishen Rogers, Teemu Ruskola, Liz Sepper, Hila Shamir, Matiangai Sirleaf, Karen Tani, Chantal Thomas, Philomila Tsoukala, Alvaro Santos, and Lindsay Wiley. I owe Darren Rosenblum particular thanks for helping me make necessary connections within the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT-UP) for me to complete my archival work.

Early in my career Sofia Gruskin, Nancy Krieger, Ali Miller, and Mindy Roseman provided opportunities to think critically about public health – the imprint of those lectures, conversations, readings, and their work are in this book. At various times over the past few years, as I was working on this book, they each took the time to provide feedback and much needed encouragement.

At my current institution, Boston University, many colleagues have been helpful to my own thinking and work. Linda McClain and Jim Fleming have been enormous supporters, mentors, and colleagues. Linda McClain’s encouragement helped propel this project forward. I am also grateful to my colleagues Zohra Ahmed, Madison Condon, Julie Dahlstrom, Steven Dean, Stacey Dogan, Jon Feingold, Woody Hartzog, Nicole Huberfeld, Gerry Leonard, Karen Pita Loor, Steven Koh, Andy Sellers, Erica George, Ngozi Okidegbe, Sadiq Reza, Chris Robertson, Anna di Robilant, Sarah Sherman-Stokes, Kate Silbaugh, Jessica Silbey, Robert Tsai, and Ron Wheeler for taking the time to discuss ideas related to this book with me.

I have been lucky to work under the leadership of deans who have supported my work. I thank Emily Spieler, Jeremy Paul, Bryant Garth, Austen Parrish, and Angela Onwuachi-Willig for their support.

Veena Dubal’s deep curiosity about the world is a source of inspiration for me. Her scholarship serves as a unfaltering reminder that learning and writing are a way of doing politics. I hope I am as good a friend and interlocutor to her as she is to me.

Friends who are not in the legal academy provided support in innumerable ways. As I was researching this book, I recruited Caroline Jones who traveled with me to places she never expected to go. I am so glad she came with me and even more so for her consistent friendship. Sapna Desai housed me on numerous trips to India, listened to me discuss this project, and encouraged me not to lose my things. Her brilliance and curiosity always push me to think in new ways. My dear friends from law school are an everlasting source of fun and encouragement, especially Kiran Singh, Deepika Bains, and Michele Leung. Alan Ricks lent his incredible talent to generate ideas for the cover design. I am deeply grateful to him for taking the time to do this. Dedicated leaders in the AIDS movement including Vivek Divan, Mandeep Dhaliwal, and Nazneen Damji inspired me to keep working at this book.

When you are a transplant to a city, friends become family, and in turn are subject to constant book updates. I am grateful to Diya Kallivayalil, Divya Errabelli, Jasmine Hanifi, Nathan Yozwiak, Justin Steil, Ana Munoz, Tara Pedulla, Mark Pedulla, Cristina de la Cierva, Ana Feingold, Lily Song, and Andres Svetsuk for opening their homes to our family.

Thank you to the editors at Cambridge University Press including John Berger and Matt Gallaway who have shepherded this book over the finish line. Thank you to Sandy Banks for her editorial work and to many research assistants who worked with me along the way.

As I have written this book, my parents have been a constant source of support. My mom, Noorbanu Ahmed, will fly in at a moment’s notice just to make sure we are all eating enough. She insists that I use her presence to write. My dad, Abdul Rehman Ahmed, is always interested in the substance of my writing and his intellectual curiosity and desire to learn has always been an inspiration for me. Noureen Miller and Sara Holman have allowed me to talk about this book project for years and provided constant encouragement. I am grateful to them for their laughter, love, and support. Ryan Miller and Todd Holman got stuck with me as a sister-in-law but I lucked out with them. Peta-Gay Jackson Booth, Eric Booth, Julian Jackson, and Bert Jackson provide a family away from my own.

I began this book when my daughter was a few months old. I continued to work on it through the birth of my son during the COVID pandemic. As I complete writing this book now, my sweet Zoya has just finished reading her first “chapter book” and my little Reza is beginning to identify letters. I wonder if they will read this book one day? I hope, if they do read it, that they see themselves in the stories of people who saw possibility despite an impossible set of circumstances; I hope they see their own place in changing the conditions of the world.

For more than two decades, Jason and I have been juggling some version of life, writing, newborns, pandemic, teaching, diapers, snacks, lunches, dinners, school, and more. But never once has Jason hesitated to stop and take a moment to encourage me in a moment of doubt, to read a draft, to check-in, or to listen. Have I even said thank you once? Thank you, Jason, for everything.

I dedicate this book to Jason, Zoya, and Reza. And to my parents, for their constant support.

Chapter 1 reproduces text from Social Movements in the Struggle for Redistribution written for the Law and Political Economy Blog as well as text from Feminism, Law, and Epidemiology in the AIDS Response in Governance Feminism: Notes from the Field (Janet Halley et al eds., 2019).

Chapter 4 builds on work and research developed while writing The Public/Private Divide in Public Health: The Case of COVID-19, 90 Fordham Law Review 2541 (2022) (with Jason Jackson); Race, Risk, and Public Health, 21 Columbia Law Review Forum 47 (2021) (with Jason Jackson).

Chapter 3 “Rugged Vagina’s” and “Vulnerable Rectums”: The Sexual Identity, Epidemiology, and Law of the Global HIV Epidemic, Columbia Journal of Law and Gender 1 (2013) and Feminism, Law, and Epidemiology in the AIDS Response in Governance Feminism: Notes from the Field (Janet Halley et al eds., 2019).

Chapter 5 reproduces work in Trafficked? AIDS, Criminal Law, and the Politics of Measurement, 70 University of Miami Law Review 96 (2015), Addressing HIV/AIDS at the Intersection of Anti-Trafficking and Health Law and Policy, in Revisiting the Law and Governance of Trafficking, Forced Labor and Modern Slavery (P. Kotiswaran ed., 2017), and Feminism, Power, and Sex Work in the Context of HIV/AIDS, 34 Harvard Journal of Law and Gender 225 (2011). The chapter builds on work developed in Transnational Law and Global Health: Abortion and AIDS, in The Oxford Handbook on Transnational Law (Peer Zumbansen ed., 2021).