The Harvard Club Singapore (HCS) Fellow Award recognizes a person whose achievements, conduct and career stand as a beacon to all Harvard alumni, reflecting the best values of Harvard University, its excellence and leadership, not just in the academe but having a broader, positive impact on larger society.
- 2024 HCS Fellow
Dr Ang Swee Chai is awarded the 2024 HCS Fellow Award
An alumna of Kwong Avenue Primary School and Raffles Girls’ School, Dr Ang studied medicine at University of Singapore and trained to be an orthopaedic surgeon in the UK. At a diminutive 4 feet 11 inches tall, she has the distinction of being the first female consultant orthopaedic surgeon at St Bartholomew’s Hospital in London, a rare achievement in a speciality dominated by much taller and well-built Caucasian men.
Dr. Ang’s notable achievements as a humanitarian started in 1982 when she answered the call of an international appeal for medical personnel to treat casualties in war-torn Lebanon. Despite being an in-demand orthopaedic consultant in London, she left her job and husband behind to work in the hospital of the Sabra and Shatilla refugee camp. A month after she started at the camp, she came to witness the massacre of hundreds of Palestinian refugees in the camp by Lebanese Phalangist militia. Dr Ang continued to operate and treat patients in the camp until she and her colleagues were marched out at gunpoint. Later that year, when an inquiry was held into the massacre, Dr Ang went to Jerusalem to give evidence. As she recounted, “… if we are silent in the face of massacres, we would not be fit to be doctors and scientists. We have to be witnesses.”
Moved by her experience, in 1984, together with her late husband lawyer and activist Francis Khoo, Dr. Ang established the British charity Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP) to provide access to essential health services for the most vulnerable Palestinians, such as children and people with disabilities. MAP was one of the earliest humanitarian organisations to send medical supplies to Gaza during the current on-going conflict.
Dr Ang would return to Lebanon again in 1985 when another conflict during the Lebanese civil war known as the Camp War broke out. Between 1986 and 1989, she ran MAP’s humanitarian programme there, before leaving to work as a United Nations and World Health Organisation orthopaedic consultant in Gaza. Dr Ang is now an honorary patron of MAP.
In 1987, Dr Ang – a staunch Christian – was bestowed the “Star of Palestine”, the highest honour for service to the Palestinian people, for her courage and indefatigable championing on their behalf. She was the first Asian and one of only six non-Palestinians to have received the award. In 2016, she was inducted into the Singapore Women’s Hall of Fame.
Her account of the Sabra and Shatilla massacre, From Beirut to Jerusalem: A Woman Surgeon with the Palestinians, was published in 1989 and has been translated into a dozen languages including Chinese. She also co-authored War Surgery: Field Manual, a detailed handbook for setting up field hospitals and handling cases in war zones.
Past HCS Fellows
2022 HCS Fellow: T. Sasitharan, co-founder of the Intercultural Theatre Institute
2021 HCS Fellow: Professor Wang Gungwu, AO, CBE, historian, sinologist, and writer specialising in the history of China and Southeast Asia.
2020 HCS Fellow: Dr. Noeleen Heyzer, former under-secretary general of the United Nations, Executive Secretary of the UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) and Executive Director of the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM).