Mapping the Global Far-Right | Martha Crenshaw, Iris Malone, and Katy Robinson

Tuesday, January 10, 2023
1:00 PM - 2:00 PM
(Pacific)

William J. Perry Conference Room

Speaker: 
  • Martha Crenshaw,
  • Katy Robinson,
  • Iris Malone

Seminar Recording

About the Event: How “global” is the global far-right? In the past two decades, groups and individuals associated with the far-right have planned or carried out violence in the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, Canada, Sweden, and New Zealand, among other countries. These far-right actors harbor nativist and isolationist views, so we might expect them to operate independently and unconnected from other extremist actors abroad. However, this is not what we observe. Far-right extremists are surprisingly interconnected, both within and across countries. Drawing on original data collected for the Mapping Militants Project, we explore the types of ties that bind the largely decentralized global far-right and assess the potential trajectory of the transnational threat posed by these actors. We argue that traditional counterterrorism practices must be adjusted to address the unique challenges posed by far-right extremists. 

About the Speakers:

Martha Crenshaw is a senior fellow emerita at the Center for International Security and Cooperation, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, Stanford University, and professor emerita in the Department of Government at Wesleyan University.  Her first article on terrorism was published in 1972 while she was a graduate student at the University of Virginia. A Guggenheim Fellow and a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy, she has served on several committees of the National Academy of Sciences.  Publications include Countering Terrorism with Gary LaFree (Brookings Institution Press, 2017) and “Rethinking Transnational Terrorism:  An Integrated Approach,” United States Institute of Peace Peaceworks Report, 2020.  She is a Principal Investigator with NCITE, and was formerly a Principal Investigator with START, also a DHS Center of Excellence at the University of Maryland.  She is also the director of the Mapping Militants Project, currently supported by NCITE.    

Iris Malone is Assistant Professor of Political Science and International Affairs at the George Washington University. Dr. Malone's research agenda includes two projects, which tend to entail the use of machine learning methods. First, she focuses on the causes of terrorism and insurgency. This project entails research on patterns of militant formation and organizational behavior. Second, she focuses on how states identify and respond to emerging militant threats. This project entails research on threat assessment, conflict forecasting, and state-sponsored terrorism.

Kaitlyn (Katy) Robinson is an America in the World Consortium Postdoctoral Fellow at Duke University. Her research examines how international and organizational politics influence civil war. She seeks to explain variation in how non-state armed groups organize, build relationships with foreign states, and carry out violence in armed conflict. She is a researcher on the Mapping Militants Project, which aims to document the organization, behavior, and relationships of armed groups across several different conflicts. Kaitlyn received her PhD and MA in Political Science from Stanford University and her BA in Political Science and History from the University of Michigan. Before graduate school, she worked at U.S. Department of Defense in the William J. Perry Center for Hemispheric Defense Studies.

 All CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone.