[Sci-tech-public] STS Circle, September 10 - Christopher Kirchhoff (Please RSVP)

[STS]

STS Circle at Harvard
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Christopher Kirchhoff
Department of Defense

on
Fixing the National Security State: Commissions and the Politics of Disaster and Reform.
Monday, September 10
12:15-2:00 p.m.
Pierce Hall, 29 Oxford Street, Room 100F (Please note location change)

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Lunch is provided if you RSVP.
Please RSVP to sts<mailto:sts at hks.harvard.edu>@hks.harvard.edu<mailto:sts at hks.harvard.edu> by 5pm Thursday, September 6.

Abstract: In the U.S. federal system, “crisis commissions” are powerful instruments of social learning that actively mediate the politics of disaster and reform.  Typically endowed with the legal authority to establish causes of dramatic policy failures and make recommendations to prevent their recurrence, commissions can prompt major governmental reorganizations.  Yet commissions are also frequently accused of being influenced by dominant interests and faulted for articulating incomplete or politically expedient narratives of failure.  Even when commission conclusions are accepted, the reforms they propose are not always adopted.

Using the 9/11 Commission as a conceptual backdrop, I explore the relationship between disaster, public investigation, and reform by undertaking a detailed study of the Space Shuttle Columbia Accident Investigation Board and Iraq Study Group.  Together, the cases constitute a study of the national security state seeking to correct failures across different domains of state power: border security, war-making capability, and dominance in space.

Biography: Christopher Kirchhoff is Special Assistant to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, with a focus on U.S. defense strategy and cyber policy.  Kirchhoff previously served as Special Advisor and, on two occasions, Acting Chief of Staff, to the Deputy Secretary of Defense, the Pentagon’s #2 official.  In that role, he accompanied DepSecDef on over twenty trips around the world and helped develop the Pentagon’s first-ever cyber strategy.  Earlier, Kirchhoff helped author the Space Shuttle Columbia Accident Investigation report and co-wrote the U.S. government history Hard Lessons: The Iraq Reconstruction Experience, coined “the Iraq Pentagon Papers” by the New York Times.  Kirchhoff graduated with highest honors from Harvard College and holds a doctorate in politics from Cambridge, where he was a Gates Scholar.  He has been awarded the Secretary of Defense Medal for Outstanding Public Service and the Civilian Service Medal for hazardous duty in Iraq.


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http://www.hks.harvard.edu/sts/events/sts_circle/
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