OCA Intern Alum: William Xu
Written by Amelia Lagna and Kent Tong
BORN IN THE SEASIDE CITY OF NINGBO, CHINA, but growing up as an immigrant in New York City, William Xu embodies the ideals of what it means to be an American. He spent his days playing baseball and basketball on playgrounds of local parks and schools, many of his friends immigrants or children of immigrants themselves, and went to a magnet school for engineering. He remembers 9/11, which happened when he was a freshman in high school. “I rode home that afternoon on the G train with dust-and-blood-covered businessmen who had walked across the bridge from Lower Manhattan into Brooklyn,” he says. “It changed New York and shaped my high school experience.” He continued to study engineering in college, where he found his love for public service and law.
At the Rochester Institute of Technology, Xu immediately drew interest in campus organizing. After founding the school’s first AAPI fraternity and serving as its national president, he combined Greek life with civic engagement by partnering with Asian and Pacific Islander American Vote to organize national AAPI voter registration efforts. His mentor at APIAVote, Alvina Yeh, recommended the OCA summer internship program as the next step in his public service journey.
As an OCA intern in the summer of 2009, Xu was placed to work at the D.C. Mayor’s Office, where he worked on the Chinatown Business Revitalization Project. There, he identified existing AAPI-owned businesses in Chinatown as well as ones the city could approach to expand to Chinatown; it was a priority of the city’s to retain and expand the presence of the AAPI community in Chinatown. He credits the OCA internship for opening his eyes to career paths in public service and the need for AAPI representation in civil society and government. “My experience during the OCA summer, along with the mentors I met, was responsible for my pursuit of law,” he says.
William Xu with four of his OCA summer internship cohort members
After earning his J.D. from American University’s Washington College of Law, Will served as an international law fellow for the Red Cross and later returned to New York as a public defender. In 2018, he joined the U.S. Navy Judge Advocate General’s Corps, where his career has spanned San Diego, the Middle East, and now Washington, D.C. His work has included leading the Navy’s regional criminal defense office, teaching law at the U.S. Naval Academy, and serving as a White House social aide.
Xu is currently serving as a defense attorney for the capital trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who is held in Guantanamo Bay for allegedly planning the 9/11 attacks. Most people don’t know that the case remains unresolved, that we’ve held the suspects in custody for decades despite no convictions against them, which he attributes to “the legal quagmire created by torturing those suspects and bringing them to Guantanamo Bay in an effort by our government to sidestep due process protections."
William Xu aboard the USS Essex in the Persian Gulf
The best part about being a defense attorney, says Xu, “is that you are always trying to see the best in everyone.” Nothing has tested his commitment to this ideal better than the Mohammed case. This has been a very humanizing and humbling experience for him, being able to work with Mohammed across linguistic, cultural, and traumatic barriers caused by his detention. To him, standing in court in uniform to defend someone the nation views as one of its greatest enemies has been the ultimate reflection of his American patriotism. “My arguments highlight our past wrongs,” he says, referring to Mr. Mohammed’s repeated torture at the hands of the U.S. government. As an immigrant and a servicemember, Xu says being able to define what he believes to be American values—that due process must be for everyone, including those accused of the worst offenses—reflects some of this country’s proudest traditions and most redeemable values. “I’m so glad to be a part of it.”