Winter 2008

Assessing and Expanding the Task Force Model

When Hoover created the Koret Task Force on K–12 Education in 1999, everyone involved agreed that this pilot effort should cease to exist after five years unless all concerned—scholars, underwriters, the Koret Foundation, and the Hoover Institution—judged the project to be worthy of continuance. The five-year follow-up assessment in 2004 demonstrated everyone’s enthusiastic support for another five-year term.

Indeed, the assessment was so positive that the Hoover Institution began looking at ways to extend this task force strategy to nine other important policy issues, including a task force on national security and law sponsored by the Koret Foundation and the Taube Philanthropies. Through systematic study of a constellation of issues—social, economic, ethical, and political—the Koret-Taube Task Force on National Security and Law will provide practical proposals for striking the optimal balance between individual freedom and the defense of the nation. The Task Force will draw on the talents of the best scholars in the nation and will consult with experts from other nations who have acquired expertise waging the battle against terrorism under law. The group members’ opinion pieces, policy studies, monographs, and legislative proposals will not only improve the quality of public debate but also present legislators and executive branch officials with recommendations for concrete policy change.

The confirmed membership for the Koret-Taube Task Force on National Security and Law is as follows: 

• Peter Berkowitz, chairman of the Task Force and senior fellow of the Hoover Institution

• Ken Anderson, professor of international law at American University
• Philip Bobbitt, professor of law and director of the Center for National Security at Columbia University and a senior fellow at the Strauss Center for Law and International Security at the University of Texas
• Jack Goldsmith, professor of law at Harvard University
• Stephen Krasner, senior fellow of the Hoover Institution, professor of international relations at Stanford University, and senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute at Stanford University
• Jessica Stern, academic director of the Program on Terrorism and the Law at Harvard Law School and a lecturer on counterterrorism at Harvard University
• Matthew Waxman, associate professor of law at Columbia Law School
• Ruth Wedgewood, professor of international relations and diplomacy and director of the International Law and Organizational Program at the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University in Washington, D.C.
• Ben Wittes, fellow and research director in public law at the Brookings Institution

David Brady, deputy director of the Hoover Institution, serves as the managing director of this task force. Richard Posner, judge in the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit and a senior lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School, serves as a regular advisor to the Task Force.

The other eight task forces will explore important policy topics including ideology and terror; the virtues of a free society; property rights and regulation; procedural reform of government; economic development, freedom, and prosperity; and domestic concerns related to taxes, the size of government, health-care reform, and energy policy. While these institutional goals are ambitious, the overwhelming success of the Koret Task Force on K–12 Education gives us confidence to move forward with programs that will raise awareness and create a lasting impact on our country and its policies.