Guest Lecturers

Kate Frucher is the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point’s Senior Fellow for Homeland Security. Her most recent position was Special Assistant to the Fire Commissioner, Fire Department of New York (FDNY) and the Director of the FDNY Terrorism Task Force. During her tenure at the FDNY, Ms. Frucher managed the McKinsey & Company assessment of FDNY’s 9/11/01 response and identification of new capacity needs; and developed and implemented critical new policies, including those addressing radio communications, emergency response protocols, smallpox vaccinations, and SARS. She has also served as a Skadden, Arps Public Interest Law Fellow/Advocates for Children in New York City and was the Director of Family Court Education Project. Ms. Frucher previously served in the White House as the Special Assistant to the Assistant to President Clinton.

Graham Flack is currently Associate Assistant Deputy Minister of Energy Policy at Natural Resources Canada.  Previously he served as Director of Operations in the Privy Council Office (PCO) where he was responsible for leading the development of Canada's first National Security Policy.  He also directed the Borders Task Force which was set up following the events of September 11 to manage and coordinate the Canada-US Smart Border process (led by Deputy Prime Minister John Manley and U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge). Previously, he was Director of Strategic and Legal Affairs in the PCO where his key projects included the Reference case taken to the Supreme Court of Canada on whether Quebec had a right to unilateral secession and the Clarity Act which set out the conditions under which the Government of Canada would participate in a process leading to secession.  He received degrees in political science and economics from Dalhousie University and Oxford University where he studied as a Rhodes Scholar.   He is a former law clerk of the Supreme Court of Canada and graduated with an LL.B. from Dalhousie University and an LL.M. from Harvard University.  He was born in Halifax, Nova Scotia and has two young children who enjoy schooling him in the wisdom of Dr. Seuss.

David Aidekman is currently Special Assistant to the Counselor, Office of the Secretary of State.  He previously served as Director for Budget, Homeland Security Council, the White House, where he coordinated policy and strategy for all federal homeland security spending.  Prior to this position, he served in the National Security Division of the Office of Management and Budget, where he was a Presidential Management Intern.  Mr. Aidekman is a graduate of the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, and the University of Pennsylvania.

Richard Falkenrath is currently Visiting Fellow, Foreign Policy Studies, at the Brookings Institution. From January 2001 until May 2004, he served in the White House, first as Director for Proliferation Strategy in the National Security Council, then Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Policy and Plans in the Homeland Security Council, and finally as the President's Deputy Homeland Security Advisor. Prior to joining the Administration, Dr. Falkenrath served on President-elect Bush's National Security Council transition team, was Assistant Professor of Public Policy at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government, and served as Executive Director of the Kennedy School's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. Dr. Falkenrath holds a Ph.D. from the Department of War Studies, King's College, where he was a British Marshall Scholar. He is a 1991 summa cum laude graduate of Occidental College in Los Angeles. His published works include America's Achilles' Heel: Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical Terrorism and Covert Attack, with Robert D. Newman and Bradley Thayer (MIT Press, 1998); Avoiding Nuclear Anarchy: Containing the Threat of Loose Russian Nuclear Weapons and Fissile Material, with Graham T. Allison, Owen R. Cote Jr, and Steven E. Miller (MIT Press, 1996); and Shaping Europe's New Military Order: The Origins and Consequences of the CFE Treaty (MIT Press, 1995).

Homeland Security and Consequence Management: A Report of the Aspen Strategy Group,  View Full Article

Summer 2004, published 2005

Statement on the House of Representative's Vote on the USA PATRIOT Act
by Richard A. Falkenrath
(Op-Ed) The Brookings Institution
7/22/2005

 Joint Statement on the Patriot Act
(Article) The Bipartisan Working Group of Former Government Officials
6/16/2005

Protecting Hazardous Materials: A New Mission
by Richard A. Falkenrath
(Testimony) Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs
4/27/2005

Homeland Security: We Could Breathe Easier
by Richard A. Falkenrath
(Op-Ed) The Washington Post
3/29/2005

Present and Future Challenges Facing the Department of Homeland Security
by Richard A. Falkenrath
(Testimony) Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs
1/26/2005

Europe's Dangerous Complacency
by Richard A. Falkenrath
(Op-Ed) Financial Times
7/7/2004

"Problems of Preparedness," International Security, vol. 25, iss. 4 (Spring 2001)

America's Achilles' Heel: Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical Terrorism and Covert Attack, with Robert D. Newman and Bradley Thayer (MIT Press, 1998)

Avoiding Nuclear Anarchy: Containing the Threat of Loose Russian Nuclear Weapons and Fissile Material, with Graham T. Allison, Owen R. Cote Jr, and Steven E. Miller (MIT Press, 1996)

Shaping Europe's New Military Order: The Origins and Consequences of the Cfe Treaty (MIT Press, 1995)

Education

1989 – 1992  Harvard Law School & the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Cambridge, MA

J.D. with honors (1992), M.P.A. (2001)

Teaching Fellow, Harvard University (International Conflicts in the Modern World)

Recipient, Harvard University Certificates of Distinction in Teaching (three years in a row)

Proctor & Academic Advisor, Harvard-Radcliffe Colleges (four years)

Third Year Paper: The United States Status of Forces Agreement with Japan

Editor-in-Chief, Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy

 

1982 – 1985  Harvard & Radcliffe Colleges, Cambridge, MA

A.B. with honors in Government (International Relations)

Undergraduate thesis: Measuring the Readiness of the Army Reserve Components

 

1980 – 1982  Boston University, Boston, MA

Battalion Commander, Reserve Officer Training Corps Cadet Battalion

 

Professional experience

2001 – present  Department of Law, United States Military Academy, West Point, NY

Assistant Professor

Course Director and Instructor, National Security Law Seminar

Instructor, Constitutional & Military Law

Additional teaching responsibilities in International Law (Immigration, Asylum, Citizenship law, Death Penalty), Comparative Law (Asian and Japanese Law), Human Rights Law (nine sessions on Asylum and Refugee Law) and Cyberlaw (High Tech Worker issues)

Chairperson and Member, Academic Excellence Committee, Faculty Council

1998 - 2001                   Stock & Moeller, LLC, Anchorage, AK

Owner/Partner/Attorney

Managing and senior partner at small (3-4 attorney) law firm.  Engaged primarily in immigration law and litigation practice.  Successfully handled large constitutional rights class action against the State of Alaska, as well as numerous federal court cases in U.S. District Court & the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.

Speaker on immigration law issues at numerous public events and Continuing Legal Education events, including the American Immigration Lawyers Association Annual and Regional Conferences, the Federalist Society National Lawyers Convention, various Alaska Bar Association events, and the Alaska World Affairs Council.

 Quoted as expert by radio & television media on immigration-related issues.

1992 - 1998                 Atkinson, Conway & Gagnon,  Anchorage, AK

Associate Attorney

Associate attorney at 13-attorney law firm.  Engaged primarily in immigration law and business litigation practice.

 

Conference Presentations

Speaker, Immigration & National Security, Law & Terrorism Conference, Department of Law, US Military Academy, West Point, NY, April 2004

Speaker, Just War Theory and Preemption Doctrine, LLM Conference, Cornell Law School, Ithaca, NY, April 2004

Speaker, Security Databases & Clearance Issues, American Immigration Lawyers Association Conference on Travel for Work and Business: Visa Application, Admission, Reentry with Post-9/11 Security Clearances, Deer Valley, Park City, Utah, February 10, 2004

Speaker, Smart Borders:  Developing Secure And Sensible Immigration Policies, Capitol Building, Washington, DC, December 15, 2003

Speaker, Immigration and National Security, New York Appellate Judges Conference, West Point, NY, October 24, 2003

Speaker, Universal Jurisdiction as a Threat to US National Security, Northwestern University School of Law, Chicago, IL, October 13, 2003

Speaker, Becoming an Immigration Lawyer, Celebration 50, Harvard Law School, Cambridge, MA, May 2003

Speaker, Structural Security, Harvard Club of Alaska, Anchorage, AK, January 2003

Speaker, Legal Approaches to State-Sponsored Terrorism, Institute for Humanitarian Law, San Remo, Italy, October 2002

Speaker, Federal Courts & Torts for the Immigration Lawyer, Association of the Bar of the City of New York, February 18, 2002

Moderator, Homeland Security 101, American Immigration Lawyers Association Conference on Entry Issues, Detroit, MI, April 2002

Speaker, Military Tribunals & Military Justice, Harvard Club, Anchorage, AK, January 2002

Speaker, Asylum Law: Mock Trial, American Immigration Lawyers Association Annual Conference, Boston, MA, June 2001

Speaker, Immigration Issues for Criminal Defense Attorneys, Alaska Association of Trial Lawyers, Girdwood, AK, April 2001

Moderator, Immigration in a High-Tech Age, Federalist Society National Lawyers Convention, Washington, DC, November 2000

Moderator & Speaker, Habeas Corpus & Coram Nobis, American Immigration Lawyers Association Annual Conference, Chicago, IL, June 2000

Speaker, Immigrant and Non-immigrant Waivers, Northwest Regional Immigration Seminar, Seattle, WA, February 2000

Speaker, Habeas Corpus & Mandamus Remedies, American Immigration Lawyers Litigation Conference, Miami, FL, October 1999

Speaker, Getting Attorneys Fees from the Government, American Immigration Lawyers Association Annual Conference, Seattle, WA, June 1999

Moderator & Speaker, Representing Immigrants Affected By the Nicaraguan & Central American Relief Act, Alaska Bar Association, March 1999

Speaker, Citizenship: N600s and Passport Applications, Northwest Regional Immigration Seminar, Portland, OR, February 1999

Speaker, Citizenship/Naturalization/Maintaining Permanent Residence, Northwest Regional Immigration Seminar, Seattle, WA, February 1998

Speaker, Immigrant Visa Issues, Northwest Regional Immigration Seminar, Seattle, WA, February 1997

Speaker, Recent & Radical Immigration Law Changes: What Every Criminal and Family Law Lawyer Needs To Know, Alaska Bar Association, October 1996

 

Publications

“The Road Less Traveled:  Becoming An Immigration Attorney,” Harvard Women’s Law Journal (Celebration 50 issue, May 2004).

 “The Lessons of 9/11: A Failure of Intelligence, Not Immigration Law,” Immigration Policy Focus, Vol. 2, Issue 3, Immigration Policy Center, American Immigration Law Foundation, December 2003.

 “Two Years of Policy Revamping,” National Law Journal (Dec. 15, 2003).

 “When Your Client Fights for Uncle Sam: ‘No Card’ Soldiers and Expedited Citizenship,” Bender’s Immigration Bulletin, Vol. 8, No. 24 (Dec. 15, 2003).

 “Foreign War Crimes Lawsuits Against American Soldiers Threaten National Security,” Legal Backgrounder, Washington Legal Foundation, Vol. 18, No. 35 (Aug. 22, 2003).

 Detainees in the Hands of America: New Rules for a New Kind of War, Terrorism & International Law: Challenges and Responses (Int’l Inst. For Humanitarian Law, San Remo, Italy, July 2003)

 Essential Workers or Guests? A New Twist on an Old Debate, 3 Engage: The Journal of the Federalist Society’s Practice Groups 1 at 97 (April 2002)

 Immigration Law in a World of Terror, National Security White Paper, Federalist Society, December 2001

 Reflections: Equal Justice for Non-citizens, Trial Magazine, July 1999, at 104-105

Federal Judicial Authority to Increase Local Taxes, 14 Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy 1 at 270 (Winter 1991)

 

Testimony

Senate Judiciary Committee, Subcommittee on Immigration, Border Security, and Citizenship; Securing Our Borders Under A Temporary Guest Worker Program, April 1, 2004, Washington, DC

Maryland Governor’s Task Force on Drivers’ License Issues, March 29, 2004, Annapolis, MD

 

Bar Memberships and Committees

Alaska Bar Association

U.S. District Court for the District of Alaska

Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals

Association of the Bar of the City of New York

Federalist Society for Law & Public Policy

American Bar Association

American Immigration Lawyers Association

Reserve Officers Association

Association of the United States Army

 

Additional professional activities

President, Alaska Chapter of the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy, 1993-2001.

International Law & Security Section, Federalist Society, 1999-present.

President, Young Lawyers Section, Anchorage Bar Association, 1994-95.

Founding Chairperson, Immigration Law Section, Alaska Bar Association

LTC Rice is currently assigned to the FBI Field Office in Honolulu, Hawaii, and spoke to SS464 about the foreign-domestic "wall" that has hindered information sharing between the criminal division and the intelligence and counterterrorism divisions in the FBI, as well as with other federal agencies.

MAJ Walker, a career Military Police officer, spoke to SS464 about his research on terrorist financing and his experience working with other federal officials to counter the drug trade, including the use of hawalas, in Afghanistan

Amy K. Donahue is assistant professor of public administration and political science at the University of Connecticut..  Previously, Dr. Donahue was Assistant to the Administrator and Homeland Security Coordinator, NASA. Dr. Donahue teaches graduate courses in policy analysis, statistics, and public organizations and management. Her research interests focus on analysis of productive efficiency in the provision of public services, particularly the influence of managerial decision processes on public production technologies, organizational outputs, policy outcomes, and cost efficiency in the emergency services. She is author of work related to the relationship of management and performance in government, and has published articles in the Journal of Public Administration and Theory and Public Administration Review. Dr. Donahue has been a senior research associate with the Alan K. Campbell Public Affairs Institute, where she still serves as a consultant for the Government Performance Project. She also has 18 years of training and experience in a variety of emergency service fields. Before embarking on her career in academia, she worked as a 911 communications center manager in Fairbanks, Alaska. She also served as a fire-training officer for a combination fire department in Alaska and taught in the Fire Science Program at the University of Alaska. Dr. Donahue served as a captain in the United States Army Medical Service Corps, where she was assigned to the 6th Infantry Division. Dr. Donahue holds her Ph.D. and M.A. in public administration from Syracuse University. She earned her B.A. in geological and geophysical sciences from Princeton University.

Curriculum Vitae

Tom Ridge served as the first Secretary of Homeland Security, from January 2003 until February 2005, when he retired to private life after 22 consecutive years of government service.  Shortly after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the President named then-Governor Ridge as the President’s Homeland Security Advisor and Director of the new Office of Homeland Security.  The charge to the nation's new director of homeland security was to develop and coordinate a comprehensive national strategy to strengthen the United States against terrorist threats or attacks. In the words of President George W. Bush, he had the strength, experience, personal commitment and authority to accomplish this critical mission. Ridge formally resigned as Pennsylvania's governor on October 5, 2001.

Ridge was elected Governor of Pennsylvania in 1994, and was reelected in 1998 with 57 percent of the vote in a four-way race.  Ridge's share of the vote was the highest for a Republican governor in Pennsylvania (where Democrats outnumber Republicans by almost 500,000) in more than half a century. Ridge served as Governor until his resignation to become the Director of Homeland Security in 2001.  In 1982, Ridge was elected to the House of Representatives as a representative of Pennsylvania, and won reelection six times.  He was the first enlisted Vietnam combat veteran elected to the US House.   From 1980 to 1982, Ridge was the Assistant District Attorney in Erie County, Pennsylvania and prosecuted 86 cases in two years.

Tom Ridge was born in Munhall, Pennsylvania, in Pittsburgh's Steel Valley, the son of a traveling salesman and Navy veteran, and raised in a working class family in veterans' public housing in Erie, Pennsylvania from 1948. He was educated at local Catholic schools and earned a scholarship to Harvard College, paying his way through with construction work and graduating with honors in 1967.  After his first year at the Dickinson School of Law, he was drafted into the U.S. Army, where he served as an infantry staff sergeant during the Vietnam War. His awards included the Bronze Star Medal, National Defense Service Medal, Vietnam Service Medal, Vietnam Campaign Medal, Vietnam Gallantry Cross Unit Citation with Palm, and the Combat Infantry Badge.  A ruptured appendix cut short his tour and he returned home in 1970; a childhood ear infection was also aggravated by his service and Ridge has needed a hearing aid in his left ear since then, which causes him to have to lean in close and listen intently to whomever is speaking to him.  After returning to Pennsylvania, he completed his Juris Doctor (J.D.) degree at Dickinson, graduating in 1972, and entered private practice.

Since leaving government service, Ridge has focused on work in the private sector.  In February 2005, Tom Ridge was named to the board of Home Depot.  

Tom's wife, Michele Ridge, is the former executive director of the Erie County Library System. They have been married since 1979, and have adopted two children.