Professor Stephen Holmes
Professor David Golove
Professor Rachel Goldbrenner
Spring 2023
Thursdays, 3:20–5:20 p.m.
LAW-LW.11698.001
2 credits
The Colloquium will explore a broad array of emerging issues in the rapidly changing field of national security. Today, unchallenged American hegemony is increasingly a feature of the past. U.S. policymakers no longer see transnational terrorism as the central threat to American national security. The nature of how we fight as well as how we cooperate across borders is changing. The aim of the seminar, therefore, is to define and debate the new, complex and evolving threat environment facing the country in the third decade of the twenty-first century.
We will look abroad, including at deteriorating relations with an increasingly powerful China and a belligerent Russia, the threat of cyber warfare and “gray zone” tactics, the weakening of America’s traditional alliances and values, and emerging conflicts that threaten international peace and stability. And we will also focus on domestic issues within the United States, including strains on our system of democracy, challenges within our national security bureaucracy, white nationalism and systemic racism, and persistent questions around executive powers and the adequacy of Congressional oversight.
Each week we will engage with a presentation by an eminent national security expert—including former government officials, legal academics, international relations experts, journalists, and human rights and civil liberties advocates—as we explore the defining features and dilemmas of today’s national security law and policy.
Illustrative speakers from past terms include:
- E. Tendayi Achiume, UCLA Law Professor and the UN Special Rapporteur on Contemporary Forms of Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia, and Related Intolerance;
- Gérard Araud, former Ambassador of France to the United States and former Permanent Representative to the United Nations;
- Rosa Brooks, Georgetown Law Professor and author of Tangled Up in Blue and How Everything Became War and the Military Became Everything
- Elizabeth Economy, Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution (on leave)
- Masha Gessen, Staff Writer at The New Yorker and author of 11 books, most recently Surviving Autocracy;
- Oona Hathaway, international law professor at Yale Law School and former Special Counsel to the Department of Defense;
- Azmat Khan, Pulitzer-Prize winning investigative reporter on the human costs of war and professor at Columbia Journalism School;
- Anatol Lieven, journalist and professor in international relations and national security, whose most recent book was Climate Change and the Nation State;
- Naz Modirzadeh, professor of practice at Harvard Law and a leading expert on international humanitarian law;
- Anne-Marie Slaughter, CEO of New America and former director of policy planning at the U.S. State Department; and
- Stephen Vladeck, professor at Texas Law, co-host of the “National Security Law Podcast,” and co-founding editor of Just Security.
Spring 2023 Schedule of Presenters
Thursday, January
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Thursday, February
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Thursday, February
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Thursday, February
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Thursday, February
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Thursday, March
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Thursday, March
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Thursday, March
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Thursday, March
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Thursday, April
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Thursday, April
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Thursday, April
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