National security

Professor Jack Beard is an Associate Professor of Law and Director of the Space, Cyber, and National Security Law Program. His primary research interests focus on public international law and national security law, with a particular emphasis upon space law and military uses of space, cyber capabilities, arms control, the law of armed conflict, and the international legal implications of modern military technologies. Before coming to the University of Nebraska in 2011, he was a member of the faculty at the UCLA School of Law. He previously served for 14 years as the Associate Deputy General Counsel (International Affairs) in the Department of Defense where he was responsible for a variety of legal matters related to arms control agreements, defense cooperation and basing agreements in the Middle East region, and programs assisting states of the former Soviet Union in dismantlement of weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) and other nonproliferation activities. These latter activities included the removal of nuclear weapons from Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine and the elimination of other WMDs and related infrastructure in those countries. He served as the senior lawyer on numerous U.S. delegations negotiating international agreements on a wide range of U.S. military operations and activities. He also served on active and reserve duty as an officer in the U.S. Army Judge Advocate General’s Corps, where his assignments included Chief of the International Law Section, International and Operational Law Division, Office of The Judge Advocate General of the Army. He is a Lieutenant Colonel in U.S. Army JAG Corps (Retired). Professor Beard is the Editor-in-Chief of the Woomera Manual on the International Law of Military Space Activities and Operations (Oxford University Publishing, forthcoming 2024). He was recognized as a Cyber Security & Data Privacy Trailblazer by the National Law Journal. Professor Beard is the Chairman of the Committee on the Use of Force of the American Branch of the International Law Association (ABILA), a member of the ABILA Board of Directors, and is one of the U.S. representatives on the London-based International Law Association’s Committee on the Use of Force. He is also a member of the International Institute of Space Law.

Dr. Tyler White is an Associate Professor of Practice and the Director of the National Security Program at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln. Dr. White is the faculty lead for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) Center for Academic Excellence (IC CAE) at UNL. After graduating with his PhD in political science from UNL in 2010, he has focused his research interests on national security topics including intelligence studies, US nuclear policy, US foreign policy and deterrence. White has served as UNL’s director of academic programs at the Great Plains National Security Education Consortium, an Intelligence Community Center for Academic Excellence, since 2011. He developed UNL’s National Security Studies minor and has worked with UNL’s Intelligence Community Scholars Program. His research interests are in international security, specifically nuclear policy, and in human security. He co-developed and ran a task-force style simulation for the International Community Center for Academic Excellence in Washington DC for the past three summers.