Jennifer Daskal

Jen Daskal is a national security legal and policy expert, with years of experience managing crisis, mitigating risk, and working at the intersection of technology, policy and law. From October 2023 to January 2025, Jen served as the Deputy Homeland Security Advisor at the White House. Before that, she was the Principal Deputy Legal Advisor at the National Security Council, and also served as Acting General Counsel at the Department of Homeland Security, where she oversaw over 3,000 attorneys, including the Department’s cybersecurity, intelligence and litigation teams. 

Jen was a tenured law professor at American University Washington College of Law (WCL) until February 2021, when she left WCL to join the Biden Administration. In 2020, Jen founded and served as the first Faculty Director of WCL’s Tech, Law & Security Program. Before joining WCL, she was counsel to the Assistant Attorney General for National Security at the Department of Justice. Daskal also previously worked as senior counterterrorism counsel at Human Rights Watch, a staff attorney for the Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia, and a law clerk for the Honorable Jed S. Rakoff.  From 2011-2013, Daskal was a national security law fellow and adjunct professor at Georgetown Law Center.  

Daskal has received multiple awards for both her scholarship and her government service. She o has published numerous op-eds, including in the New York Times, Washington Post, and The Atlantic, has long been sought-out as an expert on issues at the intersection of law and technology, and has testified several times in Congress. She is a graduate of Brown, Cambridge University (UK), where she was a Marshall Scholar, and Harvard Law School.