The Emergence of Terrorism: A New Paradigm

Dr. Marc Sageman will give a public talk based on his most recent book, "Turning to Political Violence: The Emergence of Terrorism" (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017).

Sageman is an independent scholar on terrorism. After graduating from Harvard, he obtained an M.D. and a Ph.D. (sociology) from New York University. He was a flight surgeon in the U.S. Navy and a case officer at the Central Intelligence Agency where he spent three years supporting the Afghan Mujahedin resistance against the Soviet occupation. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, he returned to medicine and became a clinical and forensic psychiatrist at the University of Pennsylvania, where he taught courses on law and psychiatry, the Holocaust, and terrorism at both the graduate and undergraduate levels.

After 9/11, he focused on terrorism. He was a consultant for the U.S. Secret Service, a "scholar in residence" at the New York Police Department, a special advisor to the U.S. Army Deputy Chief of Staff (Intelligence) on the "insider threat" (terrorists and spies), and a political officer for the International Security Assistance Force in Kabul. He testified before both the 9/11 Commission in the U.S. and the Beslan Commission in Russia. He has extensively consulted with most national security agencies as well as law enforcement agencies. This lecture is part of the Bass Connections project Networks of Cooperation and Conflict in the Middle East within the Information, Society & Culture theme.