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.

Academics from American, European and Asian universities came together September 19th and 20th to present their research on the large-scale movements of people, and engage in a multidisciplinary exchange of ideas and perspectives.  This installment of the Europe Center - University of Vienna bi-annual series of conferences and workshops was held on the Stanford campus and co-sponsored by The Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center and the Center for International Security and Cooperation.

For the agenda, please visit the event website Migration and Integration: Global and Local Dimensions.

Earlier this year U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan announced the appointment of 28 education advocates, civil rights leaders, scholars, and corporate leaders to the Department of Education's Equity and Excellence Commission. Among them: CISAC's Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar. He talked with CISAC about educational inequality, America's standing in the world, and the relationship between education and moral leadership.

CISAC: Can you give a little background about the commission and why it was convened?

Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar: Education inequity is growing, and is considered increasingly problematic, and people have different ideas about how to solve that problem. Several members of Congress as well as the administration decided it would be useful to have a group of people come together to think about the problem in the long term, to think hard about what the solutions might be, and to think about what the consequences would be if America fails to address the worsening problem of inequality in schools.

CISAC: You've been to one meeting so far. What were some of the initial thoughts or discussion points about what these problems are and how we might address them?

CUELLAR: It was a lively conversation from people who had very different views and perspectives but who came together around two basic propositions: One was that America cannot afford to ignore the problem of its educational system and how poorly it's performing relative to expectations. And two is that there's a link between equity and education. This is an important point because there are many schools in America in our K through 12 system that are performing quite well, that manage to prepare kids well, that manage to teach them what they need to learn, that manage to instill a sense of creativity and a capacity for learning. But there's an achievement gap that's affecting a huge proportion of the population. So if we think about the goal being our ability to train the next generation, and have a country that has the capacity to lead in the world, that achievement gap is really what's getting in the way.

CISAC: What is the ultimate goal of the commission? You'll make recommendations, ultimately, to Congress, to policymakers, and then what?

CUELLAR: We spent some time discussing exactly how to approach the goal. The challenge is that on the one hand, we all have a desire to affect this issue in the medium to short term because it's so urgent, and because we have the ear of the Department of Education and the administration, and many people in Congress. They want to know what can be done as soon as possible. That leads to the idea that as we prepare this report, which will take a year, that we should think hard about what can be done sooner rather than later. By the same token, the problem is so important and staggering in scope, and has such an historical context, that it's important to also think medium to long term. And in particular, given the constraints the country is facing fiscally, we want to make sure we can think about placing this in the broader arc of history. We want to make sure that part of the focus on the report is on steps that can be taken in the short term and part of it focuses on where we will want to be 20 to 30 years from now, and how we would get there.

CISAC: Can you put in context where we are now versus some of the history you mentioned?

CUELLAR: I'll mention three things: First, we can think about the capacity of the country to prepare people to go to college. Certainly for a very long time, America led the world in terms of college graduation rates. Now we're falling behind. Second, you can think about achievement in school districts and kids who are going through elementary school, junior high school and high school. Their achievement levels relative to their counterparts in the OECD have suffered. Third, you can think about the role of the federal government. Clearly the federal government is not the solution to every problem. But if you look at the share of education spending that comes from the federal government, that has declined fairly starkly, from a high of, I believe, 12 or 13 percent to as low as 6 percent. Now it's inching back up. But it's never gotten to the level that it was during the Nixon and Carter administrations.

CISAC: There are a lot of fiscal constraints right now in the state governments. How does what you're trying to do tie in or not tie in with that?

CUELLAR: We want to take a step back and ask the education-focused question: How do you get quality education in this country, and how do you make sure that people are not getting a better or a worse education on the basis of completely arbitrary factors? Obviously, any solution to the problem needs to be put in context of the broader fiscal situation of the country. But it's also helpful to have people who are asking the question based on what works for education, and what works in education. I should add that part of what I would like us to document is not only the cost of doing something, but what the costs of inaction are as well. Certainly money is not the solution to every problem in education, far from it, but it is important to recognize that if we fail to deal with this problem we will face a great deal of tangible and less tangible costs, including, and this is something that did come up several times in the meeting, the effect on America's ability to lead in the world.

CISAC: What is that effect?

CUELLAR: Let me start with the most basic: We have an all-volunteer army and we depend on people who are qualified and talented and willing to serve their country to assure our security. A recent report from the Education Trust documents that fully one-fifth of American high school students who took the exam to join the military are not even eligible to serve because they don't have the academic preparation to do so. It gets even more staggering if you look at the breakdown by race and ethnicity, where almost 40 percent of African Americans would be ineligible and 29 percent of Latinos.

Beyond that, we have an economy and a society that is based on our ability to grow our economy and innovate. It's hard to see how we can do so when the population is growing increasingly unequal in its education levels and its capacity to participate constructively in our economy. There's also the issue of what kind of a stake people feel they have in their country and whether they can share the American dream. This is not only important to give people a sense of ownership of the country, but it is also some of what enhances our soft power around the world. If we can offer a promising place in the American system to people who are part of our society we're better able to hold ourselves out to the world as a promising model. If we lose that, its very hard for us to exercise the kind of moral leadership we've all come to expect of the United States.