Overview

Schedule

Panelists

Committee

Links

Contact

Panelists

(From left to right: Vernon Loeb, Philip Morrison, Steven Aftergood, Juliette Kayyem, Paul Watanabe)

• Steven Aftergood, Director, Project on Government Secrecy
  
  
• Juliette Kayyem, Executive Director, Executive Session on Domestic Preparedness, John F. Kennedy School of Government
  
  
• Vernon Loeb, National Security Correspondent, Washington Post
  
  
• Philip Morrison, Institute Professor and Professor of Physics, Emeritus
  
  
• Paul Watanabe, Co-Director of the Institute for Asian American Studies and Professor of Political Science, University of Massachusetts Boston
  
  
• Sheila Widnall, Institute Professor and former Secretary of the Air Force (moderator)

Steven Aftergood is a senior research analyst at the Federation of American Scientists. He directs the FAS Project on Government Secrecy, which works to reduce the scope of government secrecy, to accelerate the declassification of cold war documents, and to promote reform of security policy.

The Federation of American Scientists, founded in 1945 by Manhattan Project scientists, is a nonprofit national organization of scientists and engineers concerned with issues of science and national security policy.

Juliette Kayyem is Executive Director of the Executive Session on Domestic Preparedness. She most recently served as Minority Leader Richard Gephardt's appointment to the National Commission on Terrorism. She previously served as a legal advisor to the Attorney General and as Counsel to the Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights at the United States Department of Justice. She is the author of several articles on the constitutional implications of America's counter-terrorism policies and teaches courses on counter-terrorism at the Kennedy School of Government's Institute of Politics and the Boston University School of Law.

Philip Morrison earned his B.S. in physics from Carnegie-Mellon University and his Ph.D. in theoretical physics from the University of California at Berkeley, under the supervision of Robert Oppenheimer. He has been on the physics faculties at the University of Illinois at Urbana and Cornell University, as well as M.I.T. During World War II, he served four years with the Manhattan Project, taking part in the test of the first atomic bomb.

Professor Watanabe's principal teaching and research interests are in the areas of international relations, the process of making foreign policy, strategic and defense policy, American political behavior, and ethnic group politics. He is the author of Ethnic Groups, Congress, and American Foreign Policy. His publications have included chapters and articles on anti-nuclear political activism, United States-Japan relations, American foreign policy during the Reagan Administration, the Cold War, the rise of the religious right in America, and the electoral behavior of independents.

Prof. Widnall received her B.Sc. (1960), M.S. (1961), and Sc.D. (1964) in Aeronautics and Astronautics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She was appointed Abby Rockefeller Mauze Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics in 1986. She served as Associate Provost, Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 1992-1993 and as Secretary of the Air Force from 1993-1997 . Professor Widnall stepped down from her position as Secretary of the Air Force on October 31, 1997 to return to her faculty position at MIT. As Secretary of the Air Force, Dr. Widnall was responsible for all the affairs of the Department of the Air Force including recruiting, organizing, training, administration, logistical support, maintenance, and welfare of personnel.