Expert to probe national security policy, war on terror

Benjamin Wittes, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C., will discuss aspects of U.S. policy concerning detainees at Guant namo Bay in a lecture at Skidmore at 6:30 p.m. Monday, March 28, in Davis Auditorium of Palamountain Hall. The talk, open to the public, is titled "Detention, Rendition, Drones, and Commissions: Continuity and Change in National Security Policy Between the Obama and Bush Administrations." 

Wittes, who has written widely on legal issues surrounding the war on terrorism, is the author of Detention and Denial: The Case for Candor After Guantanamo, (2011, Brookings Institution Press) and Law and the Long War: The Future of Justice in the Age of Terror, (2008, Penguin Press). He is also the editor of the 2009 Brookings book Legislating the War on Terror: An Agenda for Reform.

Wittes co-founded and co-writes the Lawfare blog, which is devoted to non-ideological discussion of what the blog calls "hard national security choices," and is a member of the Hoover Institution's Task Force on National Security and Law.

The event is sponsored by the Skidmore College Government Department, the International Affairs Program, and the Student Speakers Bureau.