Michael Nacht is the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Global Strategic Affairs. He previously was Dean and Professor of Public Policy in the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley, where he taught in the fields of U.S. national security and foreign policy and management strategies. Since assuming the position in 1998, the School has doubled its space, increased faculty appointments and graduate student enrollment by 50%, launched research initiatives in the fields of information technology and public policy as well as international environmental policy, and established executive programs for practitioners in Mexico City, Sacramento and East Asia. The School was ranked the nation's #1 graduate school of public policy analysis in the April 2004 US News & World Report.

From 1994 to 1997, after unanimous U.S. Senate confirmation, Nacht served as Assistant Director for Strategic and Eurasian Affairs of the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency. He directed the Agency's work on nuclear arms reduction and missile defense negotiations with Russia and designed the first high-level nuclear arms dialogue with China. He participated in five summit meetings with President Clinton: four with Russian President Yeltsin and one with Chinese President Jiang Zemin.

Nacht recently chaired an advisory panel to the Office of the Secretary of Defense on combatting terrorist use of weapons of mass destruction in the United States. He is a member of the Educators' Advisory Panel to the Comptroller General of the United States, serves on an advisory committee to the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and on the Board of the Bay Area Economic Forum.

He is the author, co-author or editor of five books and his articles have appeared in Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, International Organization, International Security, Survival and other journals. He holds a B.S. in aeronautics and astronautics from New York University and a Ph.D. in political science from Columbia University.