From late August to mid-September, David Mair led a group of students from the University of Swansea (UK) on a 4-week visit to the CTSS to study online terrorist radicalization.
Here are some photos from their visit. Reports produced as a result of this research will be made available online soon.
Click here to read HAZMAT ROUTING: SAFETY AND SECURITY CHALLENGES, a recent conference paper by Gary Gordon, CTSS Research Associate and Adjunct Instructor
UMass Lowell has recently posted online a job ad (copied below) to hire a Professor (or Associate Professor) and Director of our Center for Terrorism and Security Studies.
The Center’s internationally peer-reviewed scholarly journal has published a special issue on the Islamic State.
Now in its ninth year, Perspectives on Terrorism has over 5,200 regular subscribers and many more occasional readers and visitors worldwide. The Articles of its six annual issues are fully peer-reviewed by external referees while its Policy Briefs and other content are subject to internal editorial quality control.
This special double issue is devoted entirely to the so-called Islamic State (IS), presenting 14 research articles on various aspects of the organization, in addition to an extensive, specially compiled bibliography on IS. The articles are products of a conference on IS held in Oslo on 11-12 June 2015. The conference was organized by the Norwegian Defence Research Establishment (FFI) and funded by the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and it brought together leading specialists on IS, jihadism, and civil war along with senior policymakers and government analysts from several countries.
The Combating Terrorism Center’s (CTC) fourth cadet/student conference on Terrorism, Insurgency, and Asymmetric Conflicts will be held at West Point, New York, on April 5-6, 2016. The conference provides a high-level forum for undergraduate and graduate students to present research focusing on the characteristics, causes, and implications of terrorism and insurgency, as well as on broader issues related to asymmetric conflicts. The audience and discussants will consist of CTC/West Point faculty and prominent experts in the field.
The CTC will cover travel and lodging costs. In addition, selected high quality papers will be considered for publication as part of a special report of the CTC.
Students interested in participating in the conference are invited to submit formal proposals via email to Dr. Arie Perliger at arie.perliger@usma.edu
A proposal should include the paper title, abstract or tentative manuscript, and brief biographical information.
Faculty in the CTSS are often asked to provide commentary and insight for news stories about security and terrorism-related events. Our primary point of contact for these activities is Nancy Cicco, Assistant Director of Media Relations, Office of University Relations, (978) 934-4944 [ Nancy_Cicco@uml.edu ]
Here are some examples:
The June 2015 issue of our journal Perspectives on Terrorism begins with an article by Ali Fisher that explains how ISIS with its Swarmcast technique manages to outwit those who try to contain its propaganda on the Internet. One group that has been vulnerable to ISIS’ propaganda are Muslim women in Western diasporas, although women have more to lose from ISIS than most other groups. This paradox is the subject of Anita Peresin’s article. What has contributed much to the recruiting success of ISIS and other jihadists groups since 9/11 are the strategic mistakes made by those who oppose them. Scott Englund touches on this issue in our third article. ISIS is still puzzling policy-makers and one reason for this is that they cannot decide on what exactly the danger is. Boaz Ganor offers greater clarity by posing and answering four key questions in his Policy Brief.
The Policy Brief section also features an interview by Brian G. Williams with Lt.-Gen. David Deptula, a former US Air Force officer involved in the use of drones for countering terrorists. While collateral damage is much lower than from other instruments of war, drones have many critics. As customary, this issue contains book reviews and bibliographies from the hands of Joshua Sinai, Judith Tinnes and Eric Price.
In early May 2015, CTSS concluded another successful academic year-long student internship program. Several teams of student researchers prepared posters to provide a visual overview of their work.
Here are some snapshots:
New JSOU Report: U.S. Military Deployments to Africa: Lessons from the Hunt for Joseph Kony and the Lord’s Resistance Army , by James Forest
Click here for information on the 8th Annual International Conference on Terrorism and Counterterrorism (September 17-19, 2014), to be held in Boston and co-sponsored by UMass Lowell’s Center for Terrorism & Security Studies, the Society for Terrorism Research, and UMass Boston.