Terrorism Expert and National Security Analyst for NBC News
Tuesday, February 6, 2007, 11:10 a.m.
Juliette Kayyem is Lecturer in Public Policy at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government, where she teaches courses on on law, homeland security, and national security. Since 2001, she has been a resident scholar at the Kennedy School's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, serving most recently as Executive Director for Research where she oversaw the Center's research activities in international security, environment, and energy policy.
An expert in homeland security and terrorism, with a particular focus on the intersection of democracy and counter-terrorism policies, she served from 1999 to July 2001 as former House Minority Leader Richard Gephardt's appointee to the National Commission on Terrorism. The Commission, chaired by L. Paul Bremer, conducted a congressionally-mandated review of how the government could better prepare for and response to terrorist threats against the United States.
A 1995 graduate of Harvard Law School, she began her legal career as a trial lawyer, litigating cases throughout the United States on behalf of the Department of Justice. She has worked in death penalty appeals cases on behalf of Alabama death row inmates and, before going to law school, as a journalist in South Africa. She also has served as counsel to the assistant U.S. attorney general for civil rights at Justice and as a legal advisor to Attorney General Janet Reno, where she worked on a variety of national security and terrorism cases and oversaw the government's review of its classification procedures regarding secret evidence.
Co-author of Protecting Liberty in an Age of Terror (MIT Press) and co-editor of First to Arrive: State and Local Response to Terrorism, she testifies frequently before Congress and regularly appears as a national security analyst for NBC News.
Read the Press Release: National Security Expert Explores Balance of Liberty and Security in Lawrence University Convocation