The terrorist shootings in Paris have brought a new round of attention to issues of immigration, political polarization, religious discrimination and threats to global security. Scholars at Stanford’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies are following the developments and talking about the attacks.

Cécile Alduy, is an associate professor of French literature writing a book on France’s far-right National Front political party and is an affiliated faculty member of FSI’s Europe Center. She is in Paris, where she wrote an opinion piece for Al Jazeera America and spoke with KQED’s Forum. 

David Laitin is a professor of political science and also an affiliated faculty member of The Europe Center as well as FSI’s Center for International Security and Cooperation. His co-authored book, Why Muslim Integration Fails: An Inquiry in Christian-Heritage Societies, examines Muslim disadvantages and discrimination in Europe.

Christophe Crombez is a consulting professor at TEC specializing in European Union politics. And Martha Crenshaw, a senior fellow at FSI and CISAC, is an expert on political terrorism.

How are Parisians reacting to the tragedy?

Alduy: The mood here is of grief, disgust, anger, and fear. We were all in a state of shock: a sense of disbelief and horror, as if we had entered a surreal time-space where what we hear from the news happening in far away places—Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Nigeria—had been suddenly catapulted here, on our streets, in our everyday. The shock has given way to mourning. Lots of crying, swallowed tears and heavy hearts. But there’s also revolt and determination to not let that get to us and to not let it succeed in reviving internal wounds.

I was surprised by the spontaneous quiet demonstrations and collective mourning happening all over France: that people would go out rather than hide in spite of the fact that two heavy armed gunmen were on the loose. It was such a naturally humane, human, compassionate response. It was a real consolation to witness this getting together, this flame of humanity and solidarity braving the fear and silencing the silencers.  

What can we say about the brothers who allegedly carried out the attack?

Crenshaw: Apparently they are French citizens of Algerian immigrant origin, who had moved into the orbit of French jihadist networks some years ago. They were both known to French and American authorities, just as the 7/7 London bombers were known to the British police.  One had spent time in a French prison for his association with a jihadist network that sent young men to fight in Iraq, and the other is said to have recently trained in Yemen.  In that case, he would almost certainly have come into contact with operatives of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (known as AQAP).  AQAP is an extremely dangerous organization in Yemen and abroad.  The U.S. has regarded it as a number one threat for some time – this is the group that sent the infamous Christmas or underwear bomber on a flight to Detroit in 2009.  Its chief ideologue, the American Anwar al-Awlaki, was killed in an American drone strike in 2012. The fact that the terrorists were two brothers also brings to mind the case of the Tsarnaev brothers and the Boston Marathon bombing.  

What are the cultural and societal implications of the shooting?

Alduy: The event highlights a menace that had been rampant, and duly acknowledged by the French government: that of French-born radicalized Muslims going to Syria, Afghanistan or Iraq to be trained as jihadist and then coming back to conduct terrorist attacks on French soil (this was already the case for Mohammed Merah, but he was not part of an Al-Qaeda cell and acted all alone, as did the man who attacked the Jewish Museum in Bruxells). The cultural and societal implication is that we are now talking of being a country at war, with al-Qaida recruiting among us our potential enemies. In other words, France has to come to terms with the fact that its own values, its own political system, and its own people have been shot execution style in the name of the jihad by our own children.

Explain the extent to which Muslims are disenfranchised and discriminated against in France.

Laitin: Our book documents that Muslims, just for being Muslims, face rather significant discrimination in the French labor market. We sent out CVs to employers, comparing two identically qualified applicants, one named Khadija Diouf and the other Marie Diouf. Both were from Senegalese backgrounds but were French citizens and well educated. Marie received a significantly larger number of “call backs.” From a survey, we know that controlling for race, for gender, and for education, Muslims from one of the two Senegalese language communities we study have much lower household income than matched Christians. We connect this finding to that of the discrimination in the labor market. In our book, we search for the reasons that sustain discrimination against Muslims in France. Here we find that the rooted French population prefers not to have Muslims in their midst, and not to have a lot of Muslims in their midst. Tokens are O.K.

Meanwhile, Muslims exhibit norms concerning gender and concerning public displays of religious devotion that are threatening to the norms of the rooted French. We therefore see a joint responsibility of both the French and the immigrant Muslim communities in sustaining what we call a “discriminatory equilibrium”.

Can these shootings be attributed to those inherent tensions?

Laitin: There is no evidence that this discriminatory equilibrium is in any way responsible for the horrendous criminal behavior exhibited in the offices of Charlie Hebdo. There is a viral cult that is attractive to a small minority of young Muslims inducing them to behavior that is inhuman. The sources of this cult are manifold, but it would be outrageous to attribute it to the difficulties that Muslims face in fully integrating into France.

How will the shootings affect the standing of right-leaning political parties that have been gaining traction?

Crombez: I think the shootings in Paris will provide a further boost to the electoral prospects of France's extreme-right, anti-immigrant party, the National Front. Opinion polls in recent months already showed that it could emerge as France's largest political party at the departmental elections in March – as far as vote share is concerned – and that the Front's candidate for the Presidency in 2017 is likely to make it into, but lose, the second round run-off with the candidate of the moderate right, as was the case in 2002. The shootings will only have improved the Front's chances. Even if the election results are consistent with the polls taken prior to the shootings, and the Front doesn't do even better than the polls predicted, the dramatic results are likely to be attributed to the shootings.

And the long-term political fallout?

Crombez: The effects will reverberate throughout Europe. But as time passes and the shootings become but a distant memory, the effects will disappear. I would draw a parallel here with what happened after the Fukushima nuclear plant disaster in Japan in 2011. In the following months Green parties did very well in elections in Europe at various levels, but after a year or so that effect seems to have dissipated. I would expect this to be the case with the shootings also, except if there are more such incidents to follow.

National Security Agency Director Admiral Michael Rogers told a Stanford University audience during a rare visit to Silicon Valley that his greatest concern today is that the nation is not yet prepared to defend against a major cyber terrorist attack.

He said the growing rift among the signals intelligence agency, tech companies and civil liberties organizations over the shifting boundaries of privacy rights and secret surveillance is weakening the nation’s resolve.

“We have yet to be able to come to a broad policy and legal consensus about how we deal with some of the legal issues in cyber now,” said Rogers, who took over the leadership of the embattled intelligence agency in April.

The admiral, wearing military dress, spoke to some 300 Stanford students, faculty and tech executives in an event sponsored by the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC) and the Hoover Institution.

Watch the Rogers talk in this video:

His wide-ranging talk on Monday – in which he appealed to Stanford students to consider a career at the intelligence agency – came on the eve of a hearing by a federal appeals court investigating whether the NSA’s surveillance program violates the U.S. Constitution’s ban on unreasonable searches. The Justice Department argues that collecting phone data is of overriding importance to national security.

The NSA, whose mission is to prevent foreign adversaries from getting their hands on classified national security data, has come under fire since NSA contractor Edward Snowden disclosed last year the extent of the government’s electronic surveillance programs. The former CIA system administrator leaked documents to journalists that revealed global surveillance programs with the cooperation of some telecommunications companies and European governments.

One of those journalists was Barton Gellman of the Washington Post, who received dozens of top-secret documents from Snowden when he traveled to Moscow to meet him. Gellman, who shared the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for his reporting on the Snowden materials and the NSA, will address a Stanford audience on Nov. 17^th as part of the university’s “Security Conundrum” lecture series.

Rogers indicated that until a consensus is reached on government surveillance, the United Sates is vulnerable to attack.

“Is it going to take a crisis to wake us up and say, `Man, how did we get here?’” he asked. “I don’t want to be at the end of another 9/11 commission asking how we got here.”

Rogers said the government is backing a bill known as the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act, which would allow tech firms and the U.S. government to share cyber threats captured through Internet data. The bill was introduced to the Senate in July but has not yet been voted on by the full Senate. Opponents of the bill say it would only give the NSA enhanced spying powers.

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Rogers called the proposed legislation critical. “Without it, cyber becomes a huge cost for us as a nation.”

Rogers said he knows Americans’ trust in their government is dismal.

“We have a fairly limited faith in Washington and there is incredible frustration over the mechanisms of our government, whether it be the legal framework, the courts, the Congress,” he said. “It’s hard to achieve a political consensus when we’re losing faith in many of the mechanisms.”

And still, he called on Stanford students – namely the engineering and computer science majors who were in the audience – to come work for him. While acknowledging that the NSA could not match the salaries of Google, Yahoo and Facebook, he said they could do something worthwhile for their nation.

“If we’re going to make this about money – we don’t stand a chance,” Rogers said.

But, he added, “We’ll give you an opportunity to dedicate yourself to something that is bigger than you: service to the nation.”

Rogers said young recruits would be given great responsibility at an early stage in their careers. And, they’d get to play real-world spy games. “We’re going to give you the opportunity to do stuff you can’t legally do anywhere else,” he said.

Not all students in the audience were ready to sign up.

Thu-an Pham, a sophomore who has yet to declare her major, said after listening to the talk that she’s concerned that NSA surveillance is curbing innovation.

"I'm worried about the impact of surveillance on the culture of innovation,” she said. “Glenn Greenwald gave a recent TED Talk on the importance of privacy. He showed that people alter their behavior to conform to norms and expectations if they suspect they are under surveillance, which stifles individuality and free-thinking.”

Pham also said she’s concerned about the possibility of American officials “outsourcing illegal tasks to other governments.”

The National Journal reported last week that the NSA has given broad access to British intelligence to Americans’ telephone calls and Internet traffic, leading civil liberties activists to accuse the agency of trying to circumvent the Fourth Amendment.

Amy Zegart, CISAC’s co-director and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, moderated the one-hour talk and Q&A in Encina Hall.  

Zegart, an intelligence expert, noted tech firms are tightening encryption standards to prevent government spying on their customers.

Google and Yahoo are working on tools to encrypt their email systems and Apple and Google just announced its mobile operating systems would eventually be encrypted by default. Government officials have warned that the tech firms could be aiding criminals and terrorists with these tougher encryption standards; FBI Director James Comey suggested Silicon Valley build encryption with a backdoor for the U.S. government to spy on potential terrorists.

“Industry is very concerned about evidence of the NSA undermining encryption standards. If the NSA were to find a way through encryption standards, how do you weigh the right thing to do?” Zegart asked.

“Let there be no doubt that a fundamentally strong Internet is in the best interest of the nation,” Rogers replied. “When you find vulnerabilities, we are going to share them; the default mechanism is that we’re going to share the vulnerabilities.”

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CISAC Affiliate Jennifer Granick, director of civil liberties at the Stanford Law School's Center for Internet and Society, asked Rogers to answer to disclosures by Snowden that the NSA secretly broke into communications on Yahoo and Google servers overseas.

“We do not use any foreign partners as a vehicle to overcome and bypass U.S. law,” Rogers replied. “When we partner with our Five Eyes teammates, we remind them that we have specific requirements that we must meet.”

The Five Eyes refers to an intelligence alliance of the United States, Canada, Great Britain, Australia and New Zealand to share signals intelligence.

Rogers conceded the Department of Defense no longer drives technical innovation, so the government will have to increasingly rely on the brainpower of Silicon Valley. He pledged to visit every six months and build partnerships with tech firms.

But he emphasized that national security could not be left to the technologists.

“It is unrealistic to expect the private sector to withstand the actions of nation-states,” Rogers said. “I think it is also unrealistic to expect the government to deal with this all by itself. We have got to create those partnerships that enable us to actually share information and insight in a real-time basis.”

Former CISAC Honors Student Joshua Alvarez contributed to this story.