"Many of the founders and the next generation after them advocated: we have to educate the citizenry how to best handle the rights and responsibilities we gave them, we promised them in the Declaration of Independence, and we gave unto them in the Constitution.”
On today’s program, a special panel discussion about civic education as viewed as a national security imperative. This program, a collaboration with the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), features three distinguished guests with varied backgrounds but a common goal. Civics education and national security— what do they have to do with each other? With the proliferation of potentially dangerous information and questionably-sourced news bombarding us unfettered online, these three “civic musketeers” are on a mission. A mission to convince institutions, schools, and the general public that our national security is directly related to general knowledge about out country and how it was meant to work.
--Dean Elizabeth Rindskopf Parker joined Pacific McGeorge School of Law as its eighth dean in 2002, after serving as general counsel for the 26-campus University of Wisconsin System. Her fields of expertise include national security and terrorism, international relations, public policy and trade, technology development and transfer, commerce, and civil rights and liberties litigation. Dean Parker has served as general counsel of the National Security Agency (1984 – 1989), principal deputy legal adviser at the U.S. Department of State (1989 – 1990), and general counsel for the Central Intelligence Agency (1990 – 1995). She is also a presidentially appointed member of the Public Interest Declassification Board and a member of the Director of National Intelligence’s Security Advisory Group.
--Suzanne Spaulding is senior adviser for homeland security and director of the Defending Democratic Institutions project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). She also served as a member of the Cyberspace Solarium Commission. Previously, she served as under secretary for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), where she led the National Protection and Programs Directorate, managing a $3 billion budget and a workforce of 18,000, charged with strengthening cybersecurity and protecting the nation’s critical infrastructure, including election infrastructure. Spaulding has served in Republican and Democratic administrations and on both sides of the aisle in Congress. She was general counsel for the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and minority staff director for the House of Representatives Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.
--Ted McConnell is the executive director of the Campaign for the Civic Mission of Schools, a coalition of more than 60 national organizations, which are committed to improving the quality and quantity of civic learning in the nation’s schools. He has spent more than 20 years, promoting quality law-related education in Congress, state houses, board rooms, universities, and classrooms across the nation. McConnell has been involved in political and governmental sectors for more than 40 years, holding positions such as: Congressional affairs assistant to the U.S. Secretary of Commerce, assistant to the chairman of events for the Commission on Bicentennial of the U.S. Constitution, and 1980 presidential transition assistant.
