During the 2020 presidential campaign season, Oswald Symister Colclough Research Professor of Law Laura A. Dickinson is working to advance diverse talent in national security positions across the federal government through her work with the Leadership Council for Women in National Security (LCWINS).
Professor Dickinson is a member of the LCWINS steering committee, which she hopes will be a platform for her to encourage greater representation of women at the top levels of leadership in the US government.
“One of our first projects was to create a pledge for the 2020 presidential candidates to make sure there’s a diverse slate of advisors and senior-level positions,” Professor Dickinson said. “We’re encouraging the 2020 presidential candidates to start thinking about their approach to filling these leadership positions right now.”
Fifteen candidates, including Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, and Kamala Harris, have pledged gender parity in national security posts through the LCWINS pledge.
Another LCWINS initiative is supporting freshman women in Congress. Professor Dickinson said LCWINS is providing curated, coordinated, and valuable briefings and initiatives on a wide range of national security topics to ensure women in Congress are supported and welcomed by other senior women experts in Washington, D.C.
“I’m very excited to be working with the incredibly talented group of people on the steering and honorary committees of LCWINS. They are all very committed to thinking about how we can improve diversity in a real way," she said.
Professor Dickinson has an extensive background in national security and a distinguished record of government service. She was Special Counsel to the General Counsel of the Department of Defense from 2016-2017 and was awarded the Secretary of Defense Medal for Exceptional Public Service for her work there. Professor Dickinson also served as a Senior Policy Adviser to Harold Hongju Koh, Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor at the US Department of State, and is a former law clerk to US Supreme Court Justices Harry A. Blackmun and Stephen G. Breyer, and to Judge Dorothy Nelson of the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.
“When I was at the Defense Department, there were times when I was the only woman in the room in meetings," Professor Dickinson said. "Women have a lot to contribute to national security policy-making. And research shows that diversity can lead to better outcomes. Diverse teams do better. They plan better, they think better. It’s not just true in other fields, but it’s true in national security as well.”
According to Foreign Policy, while more women have entered the national security field, women are not equally represented at senior levels. More than half of international affairs graduate students are female, but women have never exceeded 40% of senior positions at the State Department, with numbers closer to 20% at the Defense Department.
“Whether in a meeting room in the Pentagon or a panel at a thinktank, there are many times there aren't any female voices at the table, or there is just a token voice. In 2019, that’s just not acceptable. It doesn’t reflect the diversity of experiences and talent in the field. This is something we really have to change.”
To learn more about what LCWINS is doing for diversity in national security positions, visit www.lcwins.org.