Professor Deleso A. Alford
Deleso A. Alford, the Rachel Emanuel Endowed Professor is doing ground-breaking work bridging legal and medical education by telling stories—what she refers to as "HER- stories"—the unique and particularized lived experiences of black women intersecting with health care and research. Professor Alford has moved her scholarship from classrooms to the court room, benefiting both law, medical students and society with her racially inflected lessons.
She earned a B.S., magna cum laude at Southern University A&M College, a J.D. at Southern University Law Center, and an LL.M. at Georgetown University Law Center. Her interest in bioethics led to her earning a Certification in Clinical Bioethics from the Medical College of Wisconsin.
Professor Alford's journey into the legal academy began in 2004 as an Adjunct Professor teaching Lawyering Process at UDC David A. Clarke School of Law; Professorial Lecturer in Law, Legal Research and Writing Program at The George Washington University Law School. Her full-time tenure track employment began at Barry University School of Law (2006- 2008); Florida A&M University College of Law, (2008- 2018); Southern University Law School (2018 - 2019)-Visiting/Full-time (2019 - present). Professor Alford's short visit/scholar in residence sites include the University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center, Stetson University College of Law, and Tuskegee University, National Center for Bioethics in Research and Health Care.
Representative courses taught by Professor Alford include:
Basic Civil Procedure, Torts I and II, Federal Jurisdiction, Law and Racism, Bioethics and the Law, Race and the Law, Conflict of Laws, Legal Research and Writing. The practical application of Professor Alford’s scholarship is evidenced by her design and facilitation of virtual cultural competency teaching modules for an audience consisting of LSU Health Sciences Center Shreveport School of Medicine, School of Graduate Studies, and School of Allied Health Professions. Recently, she served as the Keynote Speaker for Cedars-Sinai Center for Healthcare Ethics Noon Virtual Conference, wherein she explored the mostly overlooked impact on women of the infamous U.S. Public Health Service (USPHS) Syphilis Study at Tuskegee.
Professor Alford served as an Adjunct Faculty, Associate Professor of Medicine (Medical Education) at University of Central Florida (UCF) College of Medicine and the Co-Director of Director of the Longitudinal Curricular Themes (LCT) in Culture, Health, and Society. She is a nationally sought after interdisciplinary speaker who has been referred to as "a prolific and impactful "HER-story" teller changing the legal landscape of bodily autonomy and medical ethics."
Professor Alford's seminal law review article written over a decade ago, entitled ‘HeLa Cells and Unjust Enrichment in the Human Body’, served as a catalyst and theory of the case for the complaint filed by the estate of Henrietta Lacks against biotechnology company, Thermo Fisher Scientific, Inc. in 2021 Baltimore federal court. This case resulted in a historic settlement for the Lacks’s family (August 1, 2023). She recently submitted an Amicus Brief in a new unjust enrichment lawsuit against Ultragenyx Pharmaceutical company for its wrongful profits from use of Henrietta Lacks's immortal cell line (August 10, 2023).
She is a past Fulbright Scholar in Senegal/Cote d’Ivoire; former Delegate to the World Conference Against Racism in Durban, South Africa; and past member of the American Bar Association (ABA) Special Committee on Bioethics and the Law. As a long-standing member of the National Bar Association (NBA) Law Professor’s Division and Planning Committee Member, she has participated during NBA International Affiliates Continuing Legal Education (CLE) meetings including Salvador da Bahia, Brazil and Havana, Cuba. Professor Alford was appointed as NBA Assistant Secretary and Special Assistant to the NBA President for the International Affiliates Trip during Bar Year 2019-2020 and served as the NBA Secretary for South Africa Intern Affiliate. In 2020, Professor Deleso Alford was appointed to Governor Bel Edwards' COVID-19 Taskforce on the Public and Regulatory Policy subcommittee. Currently, she is serving as a SULC Managing Fellow, Health Equity Law & Policy Institute.