The Center for International Security and Cooperation is pleased to welcome Dr. Amy Zegart as an affiliated faculty member at CISAC in conjunction with her position as a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. 

Zegart comes to Stanford after serving as professor of public policy at UCLA's Luskin School of Public Affairs, where she taught graduate and undergraduate courses in U.S. national security policy, U.S. intelligence, global studies, and public policy. She has won three UCLA teaching awards, including the 2010 Outstanding Public Policy Professor of the Year for excellence in undergraduate teaching.

Zegart has been featured by The National Journal as one of the ten most influential experts in intelligence reform. Her research examines the organizational deficiencies of American national security agencies. Her first book, Flawed By Design: The Evolution of the CIA, JCS and NSC, which chronicled the politics of bureaucratic design of the Central Intelligence Agency, Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the National Security Council, won the American Political Science Association's Leonard D. White Dissertation Award and has become standard reading for several U.S. military and intelligence training programs.

Her second book, Spying Blind: The CIA, the FBI, and the Origins of 9/11, which examined why U.S. intelligence agencies failed to adapt to the rise of terrorism before 9/11, won the 2008 Louis Brownlow Book Award, the top literary prize given by the National Academy of Public Administration for outstanding contributions to the field.

She has also published in International Security, Political Science Quarterly, Presidential Studies Quarterly, and other leading academic journals.

Zegart served on the Clinton Administration's National Security Council staff. She has testified before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, provided intelligence training to the Marine Corps and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and was a member of The National Academics of Science Panel to Improve Intelligence Analysis.  

She currently serves on the FBI Intelligence Analysts Association National Advisory Board, the Los Angeles Police Department's Counter-terrorism and Community Police Advisory Board, and advises local, state, and federal officials on intelligence and homeland security matters.

She will arrive at Stanford on June 17.  

On March 1, the Program on Human rights welcomed David Pressman to the Stanford campus, where he spoke during the eighth installment of the Sanela Diana Jenkins Speaker Series. Pressman, the former Chief of Staff to the Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security, was recently appointed by Obama to serve as the first-ever Director for War Crimes and Atrocities on the National Security Council at the White House.

Drawing both from his experience as an advocate during the crisis in Darfur and from his current role as a government official, Pressman discussed the challenges of making the oft-quoted promise of  "never again" a reality. Pressman argued that the United States has begun to and must continue to adopt more proactive and preventative measures to respond to humanitarian crises as they happen.

Pressman discussed his efforts to create an established process to identify areas where diplomatic efforts of the United States could help prevent or mitigate atrocities. In such a system, the NSC would collect and compile data from NGO's and intelligence agencies to analyze indicators that could predict when and where mass atrocities are likeliest to occur. With this information, the United States could better allocate its resources and engage diplomatically with other states who may be better positioned or equipped to handle the mounting crises.

Speaking more broadly about the demands of his job, Pressman said that it is an extremely exciting time to be working in his position. He detailed the government's massive efforts to prevent the outbreak of violence in the wake of the recent referendum in Sudan, which he described as a marked shift in policy focus toward prevention from the typical reactive measures of the past. He described the recent referral of Muammi Qaddafi to the International Criminal Court as a "watershed moment" for the United States' relationship with the international community in terms of human rights enforcement.

Nevertheless, he mentioned the many areas around the world in which mass atrocities are widespread - Côte d'Ivoire, Kenya, and Burma, among others -  and emphasized the need for continued progress toward a world where "never again" is more than a catch slogan.

Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar  (MA ’96, PhD ’00), a lawyer, scholar, and former official in the Clinton and Obama administrations, will assume the position of co-director of the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC) at Stanford's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) at the conclusion of the current academic year, FSI Director Coit D. Blacker and Law School Dean Larry Kramer have announced.

An expert in administrative law, international security, and public health and safety, Cuéllar is Professor and the Deane F. Johnson Faculty Scholar at Stanford Law School, and is also professor (by courtesy) of political science in the School of Humanities and Sciences. He is a longtime affiliated faculty member at CISAC, where he currently serves on the executive committee. He has collaborated with or served on the boards of several civil society organizations, including the Haas Center for Public Service, Asylum Access, and the American Constitution Society.

“I’m delighted that Tino has agreed to serve as co-director of FSI’s Center for International Security and Cooperation,” says Coit D. Blacker, FSI’s director and the Olivier Nomellini Professor in International Studies. “He will bring to the job just the right combination of skills, talents, and sensibilities to assure the Center’s continuing relevance and future success. Tino is an acclaimed scholar, an outstanding teacher, and an experienced policymaker who thinks hard and very creatively about the most pressing national and international security issues of our time – including problems of executive power and accountability, public health, and migration. Finding someone to take the reins at CISAC following Scott D. Sagan’s long and successful tenure as co-director was never going to be easy. But with Siegfried S. Hecker and now Tino Cuéllar at the helm, I think we’ve put together a winning team.”

Cuéllar has had an extensive record of public service since joining Stanford Law School faculty in 2001. Recently, he served in the Obama Administration as Special Assistant to the President for Justice and Regulatory Policy at the White House. In that role, he led the Domestic Policy Council’s work on criminal justice and drug policy, public health and food safety, regulatory reform, borders and immigration, civil rights, and rural and agricultural policy.  Among other responsibilities, he represented the Domestic Policy Council in the development of the first-ever Quadrennial Homeland Security Review, and coordinated the President’s Food Safety Working Group.

"Tino's decision to become co-director of CISAC is good for everyone,” said Larry Kramer, Richard E. Lang Professor and Dean of Stanford Law School. “It's a great opportunity for him to pursue and build on his expertise in national security. It adds an innovative and forward-thinking mind and voice to CISAC. And it will generate tremendous new opportunities for collaboration between the Law School and CISAC, to the great benefit of our students and faculty."

In July 2010, when Cuéllar left the Obama administration to return to Stanford, he also accepted an appointment from the President of the United States to the Council of the Administrative Conference of the United States, a non-partisan agency charged with recommending improvements in the efficiency and fairness of federal regulatory programs.  Before joining the White House staff, Cuéllar co-chaired the Obama-Biden Transition’s Immigration Policy Working Group.  Earlier in his career, during the second term of the Clinton Administration, Cuéllar worked at the U.S. Department of the Treasury as Senior Advisor to the Under Secretary for Enforcement, focusing on countering financial crime, improving border coordination, and enhancing anti-corruption measures.

Cuéllar graduated from Calexico High School in rural Southern California, going on to receive a BA magna cum laude from Harvard University in 1993, a JD from Yale Law School in 1997, and a PhD in political science from Stanford University in 2000. Cuéllar clerked for Chief Judge Mary M. Schroeder of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit from 2000 to 2001.

Cuéllar will join current CISAC co-director Siegfried Hecker, professor (research) of management science and engineering and FSI senior fellow, in leading one of the country’s preeminent university-based research centers on international security and cooperation. He will succeed longtime co-director Scott Sagan, who has been leading the Center since 1998. “I am extremely pleased that Tino Cuéllar will be joining me,” said Hecker.  “He will build on the extraordinary leadership that Scott Sagan has provided over the last 12 years, and his outstanding academic credentials and deep experience in Washington crafting security policy will be a tremendous asset to CISAC."

Sagan, the Caroline S.G. Munro Professor of Political Science and FSI senior fellow, will continue as an important presence at CISAC and FSI, with plans to focus on policy-related research for the American Academy of Arts and Science's Global Nuclear Future Initiative, where he serves as the co-chair with Harvard’s Steven Miller. Sagan has been instrumental in building CISAC’s capacity as an international leader in interdisciplinary university-based research and training aimed at tackling some of the world's most difficult security problems. “CISAC is a small national treasure inside this great university: a multidisciplinary research institution that consistently produces rigorous policy-relevant scholarship and creatively trains the next generation of international security specialists,” said Sagan. “I am proud to have helped lead the Center for the past 12 years, and am equally excited to be staying on at CISAC as a faculty member in residence."

"Tino Cuéllar will be a spectacular co-director for CISAC,” he added. “His joint legal and political science training brings new perspectives to international and national problems and his research on the security implications of U.S. immigration law, on efforts to combat terrorist financing, and on the politics of transnational law enforcement places new and important subjects directly onto the CISAC global policy agenda."