National Football Foundation

Regarded as the finest offensive guard in Harvard history, Alan Bersin was selected to the All-Ivy League, All-New England and All-East football teams in 1967 while maintaining a 3.4 GPA in government.

A member of the 1966 Ivy League champion Crimson, he earned Honorable Mention All-Ivy League honors. The Brooklyn, N.Y., native participated in the Big Brother program, and he was a member of the School Senate. He served as secretary of the Kirkland House, and he was voted Second Class Marshal.

Bersin attended Balliol College at Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar, and in 1974, he received his law degree at Yale. In 2010, he was appointed by President Barack Obama to serve as commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Before his appointment, he served as chairman of the San Diego County Regional Airport Authority, California’s Secretary of Education, superintendent of Public Education in San Diego, and chairman of the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing and a U.S. Attorney.

Bersin has served as Special Counsel to the Los Angeles Police Commission, Visiting Professor of Law at the University of San Diego School of Law, an adjunct professor of law at the University of California and the University of Southern California Law Center, and as a Lecturer at the Stanford University Graduate School of Education. He was a member of the Board of Overseers for Harvard University, the Council on Foreign Relations and the Pacific Council on International Policy.

Bersin has received honorary law degrees by the University of San Diego in 1994, California Western School of Law in 1996 and the Thomas Jefferson School of Law in 2000. In 1995, he was inducted into the Harvard Varsity Club Hall of Fame.