Harvey Rishikof

Visiting Professor, Carnegie Mellon Institute for Strategy & Technology

Bio

Harvey Rishikof is a visiting professor for Carnegie Mellon Institute for Strategy & Technology (CMIST) based in the Washington, DC office where he teaches courses on law and political institutions. He is also the Director of Policy and Cyber Security Research and Visiting Research Professor at the University of Maryland, College Park in ARLIS - Applied Research Laboratory for Intelligence and Security and senior counsel to the ABA Standing Committee on Law and National Security.  Rishikof is involved in a number of legal-policy projects sponsored by the MITRE FFRDC, the Carnegie Foundation, the Center for Strategic International Studies, Martinus Nijhoff/Brill Publishers, Outside Director for SAP-NS2, and National Defense University, INSS. His most recent publications are “Seeing the Dots, Connecting the Dots: How Government Can Unify Cybersecurity Efforts,” (with Michael McLaughlin, Lawfare, 2022) and “The National Security Enterprise: Navigating the Labyrinth,” (with Roger George, Georgetown Press, 2011, 2nded. 2017).

He is the former Director Military Commissions and Convening Authority at DoD, and the senior co-chair of the ABA National Task Force on Cybersecurity and the Law. Most recently he was senior counsel at Crowell & Moring, dean of faculty at the National War College, and held a joint appointment at Drexel University in the law school and the iSchool, College of Information Science and Technology. His last government position with the IC was senior policy advisor to the director of national counterintelligence at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.  Before joining the government, he was at the National Defense University, National War College in Washington, D.C., where he served as dean, professor of law and national security studies, and also chaired the department of national security strategy. He specializes in national security law international law, media, civil liberties, civilian/military relations, governmental process, and the U.S. Constitution. Mr. Rishikof’s career includes experiences in the private sector, academia and public service and is a lifetime member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the American Law Institute. He was the chair of the senior advisory committee for the ABA Standing Committee on Law and National Security, and currently on the Board of Visitors for the National Intelligence University.  He is an advisor to the Harvard Journal on National Security, on the US Board of Wilton Park, a Visiting Distinguished Research fellow of the Center for Strategic Research at INSS at NDU, and was an outside director for Chicago, Bridge, and Iron (CBI). 

As dean of the Roger Williams University School of Law, Bristol, Rhode Island (1999-2001), he introduced courses in national security law and the Constitution, in cooperation with the Naval War College. Rishikof was also legal counsel to the deputy director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. As Administrative Assistant to the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court (1994-96), Mr. Rishikof, a former federal court of appeals law clerk in the Third Circuit for the Honorable Leonard I. Garth, served as chief of staff for Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and was involved in general policy issues concerning the federal court system. In this capacity, he acted as liaison to the Executive Branch, Congress, the Federal Judicial Center and the Administrative Office of the United States Court.  For a number of years he was a Tutor in Social Studies and the Government Department at Harvard University. He was in private practice in Boston with Hale and Dorr and Crowell and Moring in Washington, DC. . Rishikof has authored many publications and monographs and co-edited Patriots Debate (2012, ABA Publications) and The US Intelligence Community Law Source Book (2018-2023, ABA Publications).