Teng Biao is the Hauser Human Rights Scholar at Hunter College [City University of New York], and the Pozen Visiting Professor at the University of Chicago. His research focuses on China’s criminal justice, human rights, social movements and political transition. Teng was one of the earliest promoters of the Rights Defense Movement and the New Citizens Movement in China. As a lecturer at the China University of Politics and Law in Beijing, he co-founded two human rights NGOs – the Open Constitution Initiative in 2003 and China Against the Death Penalty in 2010 – before being imprisoned for his activism in 2011 and expelled from China. He received the Human Rights Prize of the French Republic in 2007, and the National Endowment of Democracy’s “Democracy Award” in 2008. He is now working on a book about China’s threat to global freedom and democracy. Teng Biao.Illustration by Kate Copeland Q: Please tell us about your background. A: I was born in 1973 into an extre