A Letter from Janet Napolitano

On Thursday February 4th I was proud to officially launch the Center for Security in Politics (CSP) at UC Berkeley with our inaugural event, Homeland Security in a Post-Trump Era. For our first ever convening we hosted four former Homeland Security Secretaries, including myself, to discuss the most urgent and complex security challenges facing our nation. Together we examined the ongoing threat of domestic terror groups; Russia’s efforts to interfere in U.S. elections and shape public opinion; the challenges of developing and enforcing a sound and humane immigration policy; and how new Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas can heal the damage done by the Trump administration to the DHS. It was an insightful, thought-provoking, and timely discussion – the first of many that we hope to host at CSP as we develop innovative research in security studies related to climate change, emergent technologies, and election interference. For anyone who was unable to tune in to the event live, you can access the recording here.

Our next virtual event will be an Election Security Workshop on March 10th beginning at 11am PST. The workshop will consist of three panels focused on election security – the first will look at election security from an international comparative aspect focused on election security practices. The second panel will feature a conversation with elected officials in some of the key battleground states in the 2020 election. Panelists will include Katie Hobbs, Secretary of State of Arizona, Jocelyn Benson, Secretary of State of Michigan, and Josh Shapiro, Attorney General of Pennsylvania. They will discuss their experiences, lessons they learned, and how we can better prepare for 2024 – it’s sure to be an engaging and important conversation around election security in our country. The workshop will conclude with a panel of domestic experts in election security practices. They will focus their discussion on how we can advance our own election security practices by using the knowledge we’ve gained from our experiences in 2020 as well looking at best practices in other countries to improve our system overall.

It’s sure to be an exciting afternoon of discussions – I hope you will join me and continue to contribute your thoughtful comments, questions, and ideas along the way.

Best,
Janet Napolitano