Richard Danzig
Distinguished Lecturer
Vice Chair, The RAND Corporation
Richard Danzig, who served as Secretary of the Navy in the Clinton Administration, is a member of the Defense Policy Board, the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board, and Homeland Security Secretary’s Advisory Council. During Senator Obama’s 2008 Presidential campaign, Danzig was one of his principal national security senior advisors. Earlier, in the Office of Assistant Secretary of Defense, he served first as Deputy Assistant Secretary and then as Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Manpower, Reserve Affairs and Logistics. For his work in national defense, he received the Defense Distinguished Public Service Award—the highest Department of Defense civilian award—three times. Danzig is Vice Chair of the Board of The RAND Corporation, a member of the Aspen Strategy Group and a senior advisor at the Center for New American Security, Center for Naval Analyses, and Center for Strategic and International Studies. Danzig is also a Trustee of Reed College, a Director of the Center for a New American Security and a Director of Saffron Hill Ventures. Danzig was previously a director of the National Semiconductor Corporation and Human Genome Sciences Corporation, Chairman of the Board of the Center for a New American Security and Chairman of the Board of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. In academic life, he was an Assistant and then Associate Professor of Law at Stanford, taught contract law at Georgetown, was a Prize Fellow of the Harvard Society of Fellows and a Rockefeller Foundation Fellow. He has been a partner in the law firm of Latham and Watkins and Litigation Director and then Vice Chair of the International Human Rights Group, for which service he was awarded the organization’s Tony Friedrich Memorial Award. With Peter Szanton, Danzig is the author of National Service: What Would It Mean? (Lexington, 1986). His recent publications include, “Driving in the Dark: Ten Propositions About Prediction” and co-author of “Aum Shinrikyo: Insights into How Terrorists Develop Biological and Chemical Weapons,” both published by the Center for a New American Security. He received his BA from Reed College, his JD from Yale and his Bachelor of Philosophy and Doctor of Philosophy from Oxford, where he was a Rhodes Scholar. Upon his graduation from Yale, Danzig served as a law clerk to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Byron White.