In 1988, Ryan agreed to play the prosecutor in an HBO television program, "Kurt Waldheim: Commission of Inquiry."

The show--a mock trial of the former Austrian president on Nazi war crimes--was widely criticized. Both Elizabeth Holtzman '62, who as a member of Congress pushed for the formation of OSI, and Neil M. Sher, then the director of the office, labeled the show dangerous and unfair to Waldheim.

"I didn't like the idea of a TV trial but...this was thoroughly researched and totally unrehearsed," says Ryan, who lost the case.

In Boston, Ryan also became a member of the board of overseers at Facing History and Ourselves, a Brookline-based group devoted to teaching children about the Holocaust.

"The best way to fight prejudice and bigotry is to teach children what terrible harm prejudice and bigotry have done," says Ryan, who participates in teacher training sessions organized by the group. "What we ought to be doing is educating children about the Holocaust."

Ryan also put his political clout to use for the organization. When Facing History was denied funding by the Department of Education in 1988, Ryan testified before a Congressional committee on behalf of the group. Facing History now receives a $70,000 annual government grant to supplement its budget of $1.7 million.

"He's just a very approachable and thoughtful person," says Mark Skvirsky, program director at Facing History. "He's a gold mine for Facing History."

Ryan also teaches a course at Boston College Law School. The class is a three-credit seminar called, "International Human Rights: Legal Responses to War Crimes, Genocide and Terrorism," and it focuses on "the ways courts could bring human rights violators to justice," Ryan says.

The attorney, who is also involved in the Holocaust Human Rights Research Project, says he maintains an intense interest in human rights violations and war crimes overseas, and he tries to work current events into his course.

"The war crimes that took place in Yugoslavia were chilling," Ryan says. "What's terribly disheartening is that the same ones seem to be happening again in the same places, the same valleys."

As a Harvard attorney, Ryan has also kept a high profile. He has handled cases that attracted local and national interest, including last year's attempt by a group of law school students to sue their school to ensure greater faculty diversity.

The litigator has won accolades from colleagues for his professional handling of Harvard cases, with one notable exception.

In 1984, Barbara Bund Jackson, now a private consultant, filed suit against Harvard and Business School Dean John H. McArthur charging the school denied her tenure because she is a woman. Ryan argued the case for Harvard when it finally ended up in court in 1988.

There were frequent problems with Harvard and Ryan's handling of the evidence. Documents that Jackson asked for in March 1986 were destroyed in April or May 1986, even though Business School officials knew they were under subpoena. School officials labeled it a mistake. Jackson and her attorney charged cover-up.

Even more embarassing for Ryan was the handling of tally sheets used by Business School professors to vote on Jackson's application for tenure. Ryan did not turn over the tally sheets when they were asked for by Jackson, according to the court's decision in the case.