J. Wesley Boyd, MD, PhD

Wes Boyd, MD, PhD is the Director of Education in the Center for Bioethics at Harvard Medical School. Wes graduated with a BA cum laude from Yale in philosophy. He then attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where he received an MA in philosophy, a PhD in religion and culture, and a medical degree. Following graduate school and medical school, he completed a residency in psychiatry at Cambridge Hospital/Harvard Medical School and completed a Fellowship in Medical Ethics at Harvard Medical School. His areas of interest include social justice, access to care, human rights, asylum and immigration, humanistic aspects of medicine, physician health and well-being, and substance use. He writes for both lay and academic audiences on these topics.

Wes has been a member of the faculty in the Center for Bioethics since its inception. In the Master of Science in Bioethics program, Wes helped create—and has taught in—"Bioethics Advocacy," "Health and Human Rights," and "Critical Reading of Contemporary Books in Bioethics." As Director of Education in the Center, Wes now has oversight of the Master of Science in Bioethics, the Fellowship in Bioethics, the public educational offerings of the Center, as well as oversight of the Medical Ethics and Professionalism sequence for Harvard medical and dental students.

Wes held an appointment in psychiatry for over two decades at Cambridge Health Alliance (CHA) and co-founded the Human Rights and Asylum Clinic at that institution. From 2020 until 2024, Wes served as a professor of medical ethics and psychiatry at Baylor College of Medicine (BCM), where he taught "Introduction to Health Policy," which was the most popular elective course at BCM. He has won teaching awards from Harvard and other educational institutions as well as the American Psychiatric Association.