s ta r t b u l l e t i n · s ta r t b u l l e t i n s u m m e r 2 0 1 1 the national consortium...

S TA R T B u l l e t i nS u m m e r 2 0 1 1

The National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START) is a U.S. Department of Homeland Security Center of Excellence based at the University of Maryland.

START uses state-of-the-art theories, methods, and data from the social and behavioral sciences to improve understanding of the origins, dynamics, and social and psychological impacts of terrorism. For more information on START, please visit http://www.start.umd.edu/.

Contact: START • 3300 Symons Hall • University of Maryland • College Park, MD 20742 301.405.6600 • [email protected]

IN THIS ISSUE2 START Highlights3 Catastrophe and Catalyst Recap4 START Interns: Driven and Diverse5 START Dataverse6 Research Spotlight: I-VEO7 Recent START Publications

2 START Bulletin Summer 2011

S TA R T H i g h l i g h t sS u m m e r 2 0 1 1

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START Highlights showcase recent accomplishments of START researchers and students.

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In August 2011, the Human Factors/Behavioral Sciences Division of the Science and Technology Directorate and the Homegrown Violent Extremism Branch of the Office of Intelligence and Analysis at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security jointly organized an event entitled “Understanding the Threat: Perspectives on Violent Extremism.” START researchers Jarret Brachman, Jeff Gruenewald, John Horgan and Stevan Weine were featured at the event, which was designed to foster dialogue between researchers, intelligence analysts, and counterterrorism practitioners.

START director Gary LaFree received the Dean’s Medal, the highest honor bestowed by the College of Behavioral and Social Sciences at the University of Maryland. Recipients of this award are members of the college community with an outstanding record of sustained contributions marked by a dedication to the fulfillment of the college’s goals and missions, professional accomplishments and service.

This summer, START launched a new project designed to examine the characteristics of counties in the United States that experience the highest (and lowest) levels of extremist violence. A multidisciplinary research team will work together to specify the degree to which extremist violence has occurred in each of the 3143 counties in the United States. The project will also identify the geographic areas from which perpetrators of extremist violence have come and where terrorist groups have based their operations. This three-year study is being supported by the Human Factors/Behavioral Sciences Division, Science and Technology Directorate, U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

Erin Miller, Global Terrorism Database (GTD) Program Manager, conducted a webinar on June 29 as the official launch to the newly updated GTD, which now includes 98,000 cases of terrorist attacks that have occurred around the world from 1970 through 2010. Unlike many other event databases, the GTD includes systematic data on domestic as well as international terrorist incidents, making it a valuable tool for both researchers and policy makers.

START-affiliate Bert Useem testified in front of the House of Representatives Homeland Security Committee on June 15 during its second in a series of hearings related to radicalization and Muslim-Americans. This hearing was entitled “The Threat of Muslim-American Radicalization in U.S. Prisons” and examined the degree to which U.S. prisons serve as fertile ground for recruiting Muslim Americans to engage in violent extremist activity against the United States.

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Catastrophe and Catalyst Recap

Nearly a decade has passed since the attacks of 9/11. To mark this important historical occa-sion, START hosted its premiere event “Catas-trophe and Catalyst: 10 Years Since 9/11” on Thursday, Sept. 1, at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. Nearly 200 people, repre-senting the public policy, academic and media communities, as well as members of the gen-eral public, attended the sessions.

Event highlights included:• Senator Joseph Lieberman keynote ad-

dress on violent Islamic extremism• Two START researcher panels focused on

radicalization and resilient communities• A debate on safety since 9/11• A panel of former radicals discussing les-

sons learned from their pathway out of extremism

“Catastrophe and Catalyst brought together some of the best minds in the field of terrorism studies and policy to participate in engaging and thought-provoking discussions about the implications of 9/11,” said Gary Ackerman, START Research Director.

Panelists and presenters included:

• Gary Ackerman, START• Arif Alikhan, National Defense University• Peter Bergen, New America Foundation

and CNN• Jarret Brachman, Cronus Global• Martha Crenshaw, Stanford University• Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, Foundation for

Defense of Democracies • Gary LaFree, START• John Horgan, Pennsylvania State

University• Arie Kruglanski, University of Maryland• Peter Neumann, Kings College London• Fran Norris, Dartmouth College• Stevan Weine, University of Illinois,

Chicago

“Sharing START’s research with policymakers, government officials, think tank leaders and interested citizens in unique and engaging ways is key to ensuring our work makes an impact,” said START Director Gary LaFree.

To watch the recording of the event, go to http://www.c-spanvideo.org/videoLibrary/event.php?id=196967

Photos by Heather Behlendorf


START Interns: Driven and Diverse

Interns are the engine of much of START’s research, providing invaluable support to a number of projects. This summer nearly 60 interns from across the country worked for START.

“We had some amazing interns this summer,” said John Sawyer, START Program Manager and Senior Researcher. “There were several projects that wouldn’t have gotten completed without their help. They made it a lot of fun coming into work.”

START’s research center provided an opportunity for students to study terrorism, counterterrorism and political violence through a number of research projects. Students were able to apply data to simulations and real-life occurrences and analyze terrorism policies.

Among the 58 summer interns, 32 were University of Maryland, College Park students. Other universities represented include

American, East Carolina, John Jay, and Vanderbilt. Students worked up to 40 hours a week for college credit.

Kevin LaCherra, a junior at the University of Maryland, College Park studying Government and Politics and History with a Terrorism Studies Minor, noted that what he valued most about his internship experience was the trust and initiative placed on students.

“This was my first internship and the experience I gained within the first few weeks was like nothing I could have anticipated. My supervisors put a level of trust and demanded a level of initiative that’s rare for an undergraduate experience,” said LaCherra.

The different internship projects included:

• Global Terrorism Database (GTD)• Minorities at Risk Organizational Behavior

(MAROB)• Counter Measures against Extresmism and

Terrorism (CoMET)• Influencing Violent Extremist Organization

(I-VEO)• Domestic Nuclear Detection Office

(DNDO)• Special Projects

For information on internships opportunities, visit http://www.start.umd.edu/start/education/research_support/internships/


S TA R T D a t a v e r s e E x p a n d s A c c e s s

t o R e s e a r c h

START has released a number of new data collections responding to some of the most relevant questions in today’s study of terrorism. Utilizing the Dataverse Network Project, these data collections analyze and code information on terrorism, conflict and preparedness. The Dataverse Network Project is housed at the Institute for Quantitative Social Science (IQSS) at Harvard University and is an open-source application for citing, publishing and researching data.

Currently, the START Dataverse includes the following datasets: • Minorities at Risk Organizational Behavior

(MAROB) Middle East, 1980-2004

• Big Allied and Dangerous (BAAD) Database 1-Lethality Data, 1998-2005

• Muslim Public Opinion on U.S. Policy, Attacks on Civilians, and al Qaeda

• Public Opinion in the Islamic World on Terrorism , al Qaeda, and U.S. Policies

• Survey on Information Sharing, Attitudes, and Practices of Lessons Learned Information Sharing (LLIS.gov) Users, 2007

• Public Warnings and Evacuations: A Study of the 2009 California Station Fire

• The Youth, Emotional Energy, and Political Violence: The Cases of Egypt and Saudi Arabia

Users can read over information about each dataset regarding its time period, geographic coverage and sampling procedure. Additionally, the system allows users to download codebooks, data collection instruments and data, which provide an interface for START researchers. Data can be recoded directly on the START Dataverse website.

New datasets are added periodically and they are announced on the START homepage. For those interested in the available datasets, visit the Data Collections tab on the START homepage. More information can be found at http://www.start.umd.edu/start/data_collections/.


R e s e a r c h S p o t l i g h t : I n f l u e n c i n g

V i o l e n t E x t r e m i s t O r g a n i z a t i o n s ( I - V E O )

START contributed to the Influencing Violent Extremist Organizations: Planning influence activities while accounting for unintended side effects (I-VEO) project undertaken as a Strategic Multilayer Assessment initiative funded by the Office of the Secretary of Defense and STRATCOM. START was tasked with providing support to current efforts to understand the levers of influence that governments can exert over violent extremist organizations (VEOs).

Methodology:Task 1: The project team was tasked with identifying, collecting, and organizing all theoretical knowledge relevant to influencing VEOs, as well as analyzing the degree to which such knowledge had received theoretical support.

Task 2: In the parallel task, the team was tasked with identifying influencing factors, patterns and effects, both intended and unintended, of influence operations against VEOs through an empirical analysis of the historical record.

Conclusions:The combined tasks produced a wealth of information meant to inform the model for the broader I-VEO project. Task One provided an overview of scholarly literature related to influencing VEOs. The assessment indicated many gaps that future research should address. Task Two demonstrated that a variety of influence operations can be highly successful. In addition, such operations often produce a host of unexpected consequences,

some of which are positive, but most of which are negative.

Deliverables from this project included:• 190 micro literature reviews that assess

a broad scope of theoretical literature related to influencing VEOs;

• The Knowledge Matrix, a tool which allows for easy access to both the breadth and depth of information; and

• 75 empirical case studies, based on 8 conflict clusters, that identify causal relationships that affect outcomes of operations meant to influence VEOs.

For more information about START research projects, visit http://www.start.umd.edu/start/research/projects/

In Task 1’s Knowledge Matrix, the hypotheses were organized into several categories for user ease.


Articles & Book Reviews

Asal, Victor. 2011. “Examining the Causes and Effects of Terrorism.” International Studies Review 12: 318-321.

Lemieux, Anthony. 2011. “The Role and Impact of Music in Promoting (and Countering) Violent Extremism.” Countering Violent Extremism (Interagency White Paper). Ed. Laurie Fenstermacher.

McCauley, Clark, and Sarah Scheckter. 2011. “Reactions to the war on terrorism: Origin-group differences in the 2007 Pew Poll of U.S. Muslims.” Perspectives on Terrorism 5: 38-54.

McCauley, Clark, and Sophia Moskalenko. 2010. “Do suicide terrorists have personality problems? Review of Driven to death: Psychological and social aspects of suicide terrorism, by Ariel Merari, and The banality of suicide terrorism: The naked truth about the psychology of Islamic suicide bombing, by Nancy Kobrin.” Terrorism and Political Violence 23: 108-111.

Mileti, Dennis S., Michele M. Wood, Megumi Kano, and Linda B. Bourque. 2011. “Motivating Public Preparedness.” Bulletin of the International Association of Emergency Managers 28: 9-12.

Mileti, Dennis S., Linda B. Bourque, Michele M. Wood, and Megumi Kano. 2011. “Motivating Public Mitigation and Preparedness for Earthquakes and Other Hazards.” Journal of Mulit-Hazard Mitigation and Risk Assessment 1: 25-31.

Goltz, James D., and Dennis S. Mileti. 2011. “Public Response to a Catastrophic Southern California Earthquake.” Earthquake Spectra 27: 487-504.

R e c e n t S TA R T P u b l i c a t i o n s

More START Publications available at: http://www.start.umd.edu/start/publications/search_pub/

Porter, Keith, Lucile Jones, Dale Cox, James Goltz, and Dennis Mileti. 2011. “The Shake Out Scenario: A Hypothetical M7.8 Earthquake of the Southern San Andreas Fault.” Earthquake Spectra 27: 239-261.

Jeon-Slaughter, Haekyung, Phebe Tucker, Betty Pfefferbaum, Carol S. North, and B.B. de Andrade. 2011. “Heart Rate Reactivity and Current Posttraumatic Stress Disorder when Data are Missing.” Psychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences 65: 451-458.

Book Chapters

Ackerman, Gary A. 2011. “The Psychological and Social Sequelae of Bioterrorism.” In Encyclopedia of Bioterrorism Defense, 2nd ed. New York, NY: Wiley.

Suttmoeller, Michael, Steven Chermak, Joshua Freilich, and Sarah Fitzgerald. 2011. “Radicalization and Risk Assessments.” In Terrorism and Risk Assessment. New York, NY: Routledge.

Freilich, Joshua, Steven Chermak, and James Shearer. 2011. “Animal and environmental rights extremists and crime: Setting forth a research agenda.” In Terrorism Research and Analysis Project (TRAP): A Collection of Research Ideas, Theories and Prospectives. Washington DC: Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Smith, Brent, Kelly Damphousse, Steven Chermak, and Joshua Freilich. 2011. “Right wing extremism and military service.” In Terrorism Research and Analysis Project (TRAP): A Collection of Research Ideas, Theories and Prospectives. Washington, DC: Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Chermak, Steven, Joshua Frelich, Andy Bringuel, and James Sherar. 2011. “Terrorism and Counterfeiting: A synopsis of critical issues and research opportunities.” In Terrorism Research and Analysis Project (TRAP): A Collection of Research Ideas, Theories and Prospectives. Washington DC: Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Carter, Jeremy, and Steven Chermak. 2011. “Evidence-Based Intelligence Practices: Examining the Role of Fusion Centers as a Critical Source of Information.” In Evidence-Based Counterterrorism Policy. New York, NY: Springer.

Flanigan, Shawn T. 2012. “Conflict and Peace Building.” In Handbook of Research on Development and Religion. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing.

LaFree, Gary. 2011. “Generating Terrorism Event Databases: Results from the Global Terrorism Database.” In Evidence-Based Counter Terrorism. New York, NY: Springer.

LaFree, Gary, and Laura Dugan. 2011. “Trends in Global Terrorism, 1970-2008”. In Peace and Conflict, 2012. Boulder, CO: Paradigm.

Schoch-Spana, Monica. 2011. “Standing at the Crossroads of Anthropology, Public Health and National Security”. In Anthropologists in the SecurityScape: Ethics, Practice and Professional Identity. Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press.

Books

Chenoweth, Erica, and Maria J. Stephan. 2011. “Why Civil Resistance: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Resistance.” New York: Columbia University Press.

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