Harold Hongju Koh currently serves as the Legal Advisor of the U.S. Department of State, a position to which President Barack Obama appointed him and to which the U.S. Senate confirmed him on June 25, 2009.

He is one of the country's leading experts on public and private international law, national security law, and human rights. He is on leave from Yale Law School, where he is the Martin R. Flug ’55 Professor of International Law. From 2004 to 2009, Koh served as the fifteenth Dean of Yale Law School. From 1998 to 2001, Koh served as Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, and he previously served on the Secretary of State's Advisory Committee on Public International Law. A Marshall Scholar, Koh graduated from Harvard, Oxford, and Harvard Law School, and has received eleven honorary degrees and more than thirty awards for his human rights work, including awards from Columbia Law School and the American Bar Association for his lifetime achievements in International law. Following clerkships with Judge Malcolm Richard Wilkey of the D.C. Circuit and Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun, he served as Attorney-Adviser at the Office of Legal Counsel, Department of Justice and practiced law at Covington & Burling. As a Yale law professor since 1985, Koh has taught courses, authored or co-authored eight books, published more than 170 articles, testified before Congress, and litigated numerous cases involving international law issues.

Mr. Koh’s lecture will be the second in a series devoted to examining the evolving national security narrative.  

The lecture will be co-hosted by the Penn State Journal of Law and International Affairs (JLIA) and the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues at Dickinson College. JLIA will publish each speaker’s remarks and related articles in its spring issue.

The public is welcome.