Past Events
On Tuesday, October 25, the Strauss Center is hosting Benjamin Kastan, Associate General Counsel for Cybersecurity, and Charity King, Cybersecurity Attorney, at the National Security Agency, as they provide a lawyer’s perspective on the NSA’s role in securing America’s digital networks, infrastructure, and elections from 2016 to the present. Kastan and King will also explain how lawyers contribute to NSA’s mission and can help improve America’s cybersecurity. Strauss Center Director Adam Klein will moderate this discussion.
This event is free and open to the public. No RSVP required. Lunch will be served. For more information on this event, contact Susan Crane at scrane@austin.utexas.edu.
Biographies
Benjamin Kastan is the Associate General Counsel for Cybersecurity at the National Security Agency (NSA). As such, he is the senior legal adviser to NSA’s Cybersecurity Directorate (CSD) and leads the NSA Office of General Counsel (OGC) Cybersecurity Practice Group, a team of military and civilian attorneys who provide day-to-day operational legal advice and counsel to NSA personnel around the world on the full breadth of NSA’s cybersecurity mission, including on-net operations, cryptography, industry engagement, Defense Industrial Base cybersecurity, and information sharing with U.S. and foreign partners. The Cybersecurity Practice Group also advises CSD and other U.S. Signals Intelligence (SIGINT) System elements on the collection, analysis, and dissemination of SIGINT on foreign cyber threats, as well as NSA’s relationship with U.S. Cyber Command.
Kastan began his NSA career in NSA OGC’s Litigation Practice Group through the NSA Legal Honors Program. He has worked on a wide range of cyber operations issues since March 2016, including as the attorney embedded with NSA’s Computer Network Operations office and the NSA attorney assigned to support the NSA/U.S. Cyber Command Russia Small Group, charged with helping to protect the 2018 elections from foreign interference. He was elevated to the rank of Defense Intelligence Senior Level in May 2021.
Prior to joining NSA, he clerked for the Honorable Donna Stroud on the North Carolina Court of Appeals. Kastan received his J.D. and LL.M. in International and Comparative Law from Duke University School of Law.
Charity King is an attorney at the National Security Agency where she provides operational legal guidance to the Cybersecurity Directorate on cybersecurity activities, as well as the collection, analysis, and dissemination of signals intelligence (SIGINT) on foreign cyber threats. Charity also advises the Election Security Group on NSA activities supporting the defense of U.S. elections.
Charity began her career at NSA through the Legal Honors Program in 2018 in the Administrative Law and Ethics practice group. Prior to that, Charity clerked for U.S. Federal Magistrate Judge Andrew Austin in the Western District of Texas. She graduated with a J.D. from The University of Texas School of Law in 2016.
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On Monday, October 24, 2022, the Strauss-Clements Intelligence Studies Project, Strauss Center for International Security and Law, and Clements Center for National Security, in partnership with the LBJ School of Public Affairs and the UT-Austin Department of Middle Eastern Studies, will host Zohar Palti, former Director of Israel’s Ministry of Defense Policy and Political-Military Bureau and former Director of Intelligence of the Mossad, for a conversation on Middle East security challenges.
- Registration is RECOMMENDED. Registrants will receive any updates regarding the event.
- Garage parking is available for a fee at the Manor Garage and the San Jacinto Garage. Parking will not be validated.
BIOGRAPHY
Zohar Palti is the International Fellow at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy. He previously served as head of the Policy & Political-Military Bureau at Israel’s Ministry of Defense, where his responsibilities included directing defense and security relationships with foreign countries. Prior to that, he led the Mossad Intelligence Directorate and served as deputy head of the Research Division in the Israel Defense Forces Intelligence Corps at the rank of colonel.
In addition to his roles in Israeli military and intelligence, he held several research positions, including senior research fellow at Harvard’s Belfer Center and in 2004, a visiting military fellow with The Washington Institute.
Palti holds a B.A. and an Executive M.A. in Middle Eastern studies from Tel Aviv University, with distinction. He is a graduate of the U.S. National Defense University’s advanced management program. Upon his retirement earlier this spring, Palti was awarded the U.S. Department of Defense Medal for Distinguished Public Service “for his major contribution to bolstering U.S.-Israel strategic defense relations.”
On Monday, October 24, 2022, the Strauss-Clements Intelligence Studies Project, Strauss Center for International Security and Law, and Clements Center for National Security, in partnership with the LBJ School of Public Affairs and the UT-Austin Department of Mid
On Monday, October 24, 2022, the Strauss-Clements Intelligence Studies Project, Strauss Center for International Security and Law, and Clements Center for National Security, in partnership with the LBJ School of Public Affairs and the UT-Austin Department of Mid
Policy on the Rocks - Networking with LBJ Faculty, Alumni & Students and Learn About Policy at LBJ
Enjoy informal networking with LBJ faculty, alumni, and students. This is a great opportunity to talk about potential career paths, current events, and trends in your policy area of interest. Light bites will be served.
On Thursday, October 20, the Strauss Center welcomes Dr. Cecilia Farfán Mendez, Head of Security Research Programs at the Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies at UC San Diego, for a talk on “Baseball Diplomacy and the State of U.S.-Mexico Cooperation.” This talk is part of our Brumley Speaker Series.
In this talk, Dr. Farfán will discuss how, amidst over 100,000 overdose deaths in the U.S., with 35,000 annual homicides and more than 100,000 missing people in Mexico, bilateral security cooperation between the U.S. and Mexico could not be more pressing, yet continues to be one of the most complicated areas of the relationship between these two neighbors. She will contemplate whether, almost one year after the announcement of the Bicentennial Framework for Security, Public Health and Safe Communities, the two nations are on track to resolving these important security challenges.
This event is free and open to the public. Lunch will be served. For more information, contact Brittany Horton at brittany.horton@austin.utexas.edu.
On Wednesday, October 19, the Clements Center for National Security, the Center for Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies, the Center for European Studies (CREEES), the Moody College of Communication and the LBJ School of Public Affairs will host Mark Pomar, Clements Center Senior National Security Fellow, for a conversation on his recent release Cold War Radio: The Russian Broadcasts of the Voice of America and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. Kiril Avramov, Assistant Professor at CREEES and non-resident Fellow for the Clements-Strauss Intelligence Studies Project, will moderate. Join us at 12:15 pm in SRH 3.122, The LBJ School of Public Affairs.
Mark G. Pomar has had a distinguished career in academia, US government, and the NGO/foundation sector. From 1975 to 1982, Mark taught Russian Studies at the University of Vermont and was awarded tenure. Later in his career, he was a scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center (Washington) and an Adjunct Professor at the Maxwell School (Syracuse University) where he taught courses on international development.
From 1982 to 1993, Mark worked as Assistant Director of the Russian Service at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (Munich), as Director of the USSR Division at the Voice of America, and as Executive Director of the Board for International Broadcasting. As a member of the USG Senior Executive Service, Mark oversaw radio broadcasts, negotiated international agreements for radio transmission (Portugal, Spain, Israel), and testified in Congress on policies, budgets and programs of international broadcasting. In addition, he conducted the first discussions with Soviet authorities about the cessation of jamming (1987-1988) and negotiated the opening of RFE/RL news bureaus in Warsaw, Moscow and Kyiv.
From 1993 to 2008, Pomar was a senior executive at IREX, a large US international organization operating in 33 countries that administered programs in education, public policy, and media. He worked closely with the Department of State and USAID on projects in Eastern Europe, the Balkans and the Middle East. Mark served as President and CEO of IREX from 2000 to 2008.
From 2008 to 2017, Mark was the founding CEO and President of the US - Russia Foundation (USRF), a private US foundation based in Moscow that ran programs in entrepreneurship and the rule-of-law. In that capacity, he forged ties between US and Russian universities and developed programs with the Supreme Commercial Court of Russia, among many other projects.
Mark has a PhD in Russian Studies from Columbia University and a BA (summa cum laude) from Tufts University. He is currently working on a book about international broadcasting, covering the policies and practice of the Reagan and Bush administrations.
For more information about this event, contact Elizabeth Doughtie at elizabeth.doughtie@utexas.edu.