Spotlight: Juliette Kayyem

Juliette Kayyem knows how to have a 100 percent safe Olympics – don’t have an Olympics. Because perfect security is not possible, Kayyem says public officials should aim instead for perfect planning.

That insight will undoubtedly shape the epic preparations Boston will undertake should it win the right to host the 2024 Olympic Games. For Kayyem, a board member of the Boston 2024 Olympic Committee, such preparation – including public safety, sustainable development, and infrastructure investment – would be the culmination of a career devoted to homeland security and progressive politics.

Kayyem says too often the “home” part of homeland security is neglected.

“People always see homeland security through the lens of terrorism,” she says. “But it’s really about risk reduction.” The virtue of preparedness is a key theme of her forthcoming book, Home Sweet Homeland: The Education of a Security Mom. Building on her experiences as a mother of three and as a government official confronting oil spills, hurricanes, terrorists, and flu epidemics, she explains the gift of knowledge in facing a scary world. She connects the traits of strength and grit to progressive priorities, including broadly shared prosperity, criminal justice and immigration reform, climate change adaptation, and stricter gun control.

Kayyem embraced those issues in her long-shot Massachusetts gubernatorial bid last year.  Though falling short, Kayyem has no regrets. “I absolutely loved running for governor,” she says. “We knew it was going to be tough, given the field.” The advice she would give Harvard Kennedy School students? “Anything can happen, and even in the losing there is a lot to be gained.” The real regret, she notes, would have been staying on the sidelines and wondering “What if...?”

It’s hard to imagine Kayyem, who returned to lecturing at HKS this semester even as she runs her own security consulting business, on the sidelines in anything.

After graduating from Harvard Law School, Kayyem began her career as a civil rights attorney and later as a lecturer at Harvard Kennedy School and executive director at the Belfer Center before being named  homeland security advisor to Gov. Deval Patrick. In that role, she was responsible for (among other things) making a decision that impacted millions of families and first responders across the state: whether to call a snow day – an ironic role for a native Californian who loves paddle-boarding, surfing, and beach volleyball. Under President Obama, she became a top official at the Department of Homeland Security, managing crises as varied as H1N1, the BP oil spill, and the earthquake in Haiti.

In those high-stakes roles, she has  helped shape America’s understanding of the balance between national security and civil liberties in the post-9/11 era. “Our tolerance for greater governmental action or fewer privacy rights always has to be judged by the security situation of the time,” she says, but “the foundations of the debate must be formed by clear rules, oversight, some review–whether it’s judicial or congressional–and a commitment to either sunset provisions or a tolerance for looking back and being willing to reassess.”

Many Bostonians got to know Kayyem through her writing as a Boston Globe columnist. Her work on national security and foreign affairs included a series of essays making the case that the Pentagon should end its exclusion of American women in combat roles. That series not only earned her a coveted place as a Pulitzer Prize finalist but also made her a leading change agent: The Pentagon granted women full access to combat roles a year later.

Public servants who push for policy changes within government, she says, count on pressure from outside voices to help them make their case. Tenacity is imperative. “I was ruthless” in those debates about women in combat roles, she says. “I remember even my editor said, ‘You’re doing another one?!’” But she drew perseverance from feedback inside the Pentagon. “I got a call from someone in the secretary’s office after one of my columns [who] said, ‘There’s a lot of white knuckles after that one.’ And that’s good. If government can’t defend itself, then maybe it’s time for a change.”