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Terrorism

Preparation is key to avoiding 'worst-case outcome,' Chertoff says

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At an April 11 symposium in Washington, D.C., Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said while the best-laid plans are likely to change if a pandemic or bioterrorism attack hits the United States, having no plans in place is a sure guarantee for disaster. CISAC members Lynn Eden, Martha Crenshaw, and Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar participated in "Germ Warfare, Contagious Disease and the Constitution," a daylong event co-hosted by Stanford Law School. CISAC affiliate Laura K. Donohue conceived and developed the project, which aimed to bring together senior policy-makers and legal experts to discuss how issues of constitutional law inform responses to natural pandemics or bioterrorism attacks.

Secretary Michael Chertoff of the Department of Homeland Security delivered the keynote address April 11 at the panel titled “Germ Warfare, Contagious Disease and the Constitution” in Washington, D.C.

Although the best-laid plans are likely to change if a pandemic or bioterrorism attack hits the United States, having no plans in place is a sure guarantee for disaster, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff told policy-makers, government officials, constitutional law experts and law students at a symposium April 11 in Washington, D.C.

"Preparation won't eliminate the problems and the stress, and it is often said that no battle plan has ever survived first contact with the enemy," Chertoff told the roughly 200 people attending the event, "Germ Warfare, Contagious Disease and the Constitution," hosted by Stanford Law School and the Constitution Project, a nonprofit organization.

"But I can tell you this," Chertoff continued. "If you don't have a plan, you are definitely going to have the worst-case outcome. A plan at least gives you a running start."

During the symposium, experts discussed the need to reform the complex web of federal and state laws to enable agencies to respond effectively to deadly natural or manmade epidemics—from pandemic flu to smallpox and aerosolized anthrax—while protecting individual rights.

Earlier that day, about 60 people from the current and two previous presidential administrations, public health officials, Stanford academics and law students participated in a closed-door, fictitious scenario that explored the federal government's response to an unfolding deadly epidemic as it crossed state lines. Lynn Eden, associate director for research at Stanford's Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC) at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, moderated the session, which was developed in cooperation with experts from the Department of Homeland Security.

"I think it's the first time detailed issues of constitutional law have been brought to bear in a natural pandemic or bioterrorism exercise," Eden said afterward. "It's very hard to plan for a catastrophe. This approach brought another facet to bear on disaster planning."

Margaret Hamburg, a former assistant secretary in the Department of Health and Human Services, opened the symposium, which was broadcast live on C-SPAN from the Dirksen Senate Office Building. Kathleen Sullivan, director of the Stanford Constitutional Law Center, moderated a panel featuring Stanford law Professors Pamela Karlan and Robert Weisberg; Christopher Chyba, director of the Program on Science and Global Security at Princeton and a former CISAC co-director; Jeff Runge, assistant secretary in the Department of Homeland Security; Michael Greenberger, director of the Center for Health and Human Security at the University of Maryland; and Martin Cetron, director of the Division of Global Migration and Quarantine at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Sullivan opened the panel by reflecting on how recent health crises have informed ongoing legal and policy debates: "West Nile virus. Anthrax mailings. Avian flu—responses to these infectious disease issues and concern about bioterrorism are running about our minds as we think about the response to 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina, and the complex web of local, state and federal authority to deal with such emergencies. What does the Constitution have to say about our ability to deal with infectious disease, whether it's naturally occurring or composed as a weapon of violence?"

In the 21st century, Cetron explained, health officials still rely on a "14th-century toolbox of isolation and quarantine" to control an outbreak. That is "part of our modern reality," he said. "The biggest area is not lack of specific authority, but the fact that jurisdictions are highly complex when it comes to international ports of entry [and] interstate movement. There are often overlapping jurisdictions and overlapping authorities. If there's a gap in some of this, the risk is that neither the state nor the feds would want to step up to that responsibility."

Greenberger said state officials are often ignorant about what they can do in an emergency. "The powers given to governors are extraordinary," he said. Three statutes exist in Maryland to authorize declarations of emergency and allow the governor to enforce isolation and quarantine of infected people, order citizens to take treatment against their will, force doctors to serve in dangerous situations and seize hospitals. "What's extraordinary is that most governors don't even know they have this power," Greenberger said. "The extent of legal illiteracy in this area is shocking."

Despite such challenges, Chertoff praised the participants for tackling the issue. "I think for the first time we've begun to think very seriously and in a disciplined fashion about how to plan for dealing with a major natural pandemic or a major biological attack," he said. "I wish I could tell you these things are unthinkable. But the one thing I've learned in the last seven years is there's pretty much nothing that's unthinkable."

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Laura K. Donohue, a CISAC affiliate and a 2007 Stanford Law School graduate who is the inaugural fellow at the Stanford Constitutional Law Center, conceived the daylong event to bring together policy-makers and constitutional experts to discuss response to natural pandemics and bioterrorism. "It was a chance to bring together the policy world, both operational and strategic, and give them the opportunity to talk to legal experts," she said. "This helped policy-makers think through the issues and think outside the box, and it did so in a non-threatening manner."

Donohue said she was prompted to create the symposium after directing a CISAC-supported terrorism-response exercise in 2003 that involved more than 25 agencies at the national, state and local levels. "In these exercises involving first responders, legal issues always got pushed off the table," Donohue said. "I was struck by this. In an emergency, the law goes out the window. Then, when I got to law school, I saw the broader legal and constitutional context for this discussion."

With support from the directors at CISAC and Stanford Law School, and funding from donor Peter Bing and the Stanford Constitutional Law Center, Donohue brought the two groups together in a high-profile setting.

"This was Stanford in Washington," she said. "It was an opportunity for Stanford to be visible at the U.S. Senate with participation from leading people on these issues. There is no doubt we got an audience we wouldn't otherwise have attracted."

This article first appeared in Stanford Report, 4/16/2008.

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Natural Security: A Darwinian Approach to a Dangerous World

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Arms races among invertebrates, intelligence gathering by the immune system and alarm calls by marmots are but a few of nature’s security strategies that have been tested and modified over billions of years. This provocative book applies lessons from nature to our own toughest security problems—from global terrorism to the rise of infectious disease to natural disasters. Written by a truly multidis­ciplinary group including paleobiologists, anthropologists, psychologists, ecologists, and national security experts, it considers how models and ideas from evolutionary biology can improve national security strategies ranging from risk assessment, security analysis, and public policy to long-term strategic goals.

Terence Taylor is the President and Director of the International Council for the Life Sciences and a former CISAC Science Fellow. He previously served with the United Nations as a Commissioner and Chief Inspector for Iraq on weapons of mass destruction and was a career officer in the British army. He also serves on the U.S. National Academy of Sciences Forum on Microbial Threats and is an adviser to the International Committee of the Red Cross. Mr. Taylor was also a member of the National Research Council Steering Committee on Genomic Databases for Bioterrorism Threat Agents and served as Chairman of the Permanent Monitoring Panel on Risk Analysis of the World Federation of Scientists.

Raphael Sagarin received his Ph.D. in marine ecology in 2001 from the University of California, Santa Barbara. Dr. Sagarin has served as a Geological Society of America congressional science advisor in the office of U.S. Representative Hilda L. Solis. Dr. Sagarin has used his insights as a biologist and policy advisor in his recent work on using biological insights to guide security planning and policy. Based on a short treatment of this topic in Foreign Policy, he organized a working group at the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis to explore a wide range of evolutionary insights into security analysis. Comprised of paleobiologists, psychologists, ecologists, anthropologists and security experts, the working group produced the forthcoming University of California Press volume: Natural Security: A Darwinian Approach to a Dangerous World, edited by Dr. Sagarin and Terence Taylor.

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Terence Taylor Director Speaker International Council for the Life Sciences
Raphael Sagarin Associate Director for Ocean and Coastal Policy, Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions, Duke University Speaker
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The International Control of Atomic Energy, 1945-46: Why Did It Fail? Are There Lessons to be Learned for Today?

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David Holloway (speaker) is the Raymond A. Spruance Professor of International History, a professor of political science, and an FSI senior fellow. He was co-director of CISAC from 1991 to 1997, and director of FSI from 1998 to 2003. His research focuses on the international history of nuclear weapons, on science and technology in the Soviet Union, and on the relationship between international history and international relations theory. His book Stalin and the Bomb: The Soviet Union and Atomic Energy, 1939-1956 (Yale University Press, 1994) was chosen by the New York Times Book Review as one of the 11 best books of 1994, and it won the Vucinich and Shulman prizes of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies. Since joining the Stanford faculty in 1986 -- first as a professor of political science and later (in 1996) as a professor of history as well -- Holloway has served as chair and co-chair of the International Relations Program (1989-1991), and as associate dean in the School of Humanities and Sciences (1997-1998). Before coming to Stanford, he taught at the University of Lancaster (1967-1970) and the University of Edinburgh (1970-1986). Born in Dublin, Ireland, he received his undergraduate degree in modern languages and literature, and his PhD in social and political sciences, both from Cambridge University.

Michael May (discussant) is Professor Emeritus (Research) in the Stanford University School of Engineering and a senior fellow with the Institute for International Studies at Stanford University. He is the former co-director of Stanford University's Center for International Security and Cooperation, having served seven years in that capacity through January 2000. May is a director emeritus of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, where he worked from 1952 to 1988.  He served as director of the Laboratory from 1965 to 1971. May was a technical adviser to the Threshold Test Ban Treaty negotiating team; a member of the U.S. delegation to the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks; and at various times has been a member of the Defense Science Board, the General Advisory Committee to the AEC, the Secretary of Energy Advisory Board, the RAND Corporation Board of Trustees, and the Committee on International Security and Arms Control of the National Academy of Sciences. May received the Distinguished Public Service and Distinguished Civilian Service Medals from the Department of Defense, and the Ernest Orlando Lawrence Award from the Atomic Energy Commission, as well as other awards. His current research interests are in the area of nuclear and terrorism, energy, security and environment, and the relation of nuclear weapons and foreign policy.

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David Holloway

CISAC
Stanford University
Encina Hall, E214
Stanford, CA 94305-6165

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Senior Fellow Emeritus at the Freeman Spogli Institute of International Studies
Raymond A. Spruance Professor of International History
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David Holloway is the Raymond A. Spruance Professor of International History, a professor of political science, and an FSI senior fellow. He was co-director of CISAC from 1991 to 1997, and director of FSI from 1998 to 2003. His research focuses on the international history of nuclear weapons, on science and technology in the Soviet Union, and on the relationship between international history and international relations theory. His book Stalin and the Bomb: The Soviet Union and Atomic Energy, 1939-1956 (Yale University Press, 1994) was chosen by the New York Times Book Review as one of the 11 best books of 1994, and it won the Vucinich and Shulman prizes of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies. It has been translated into seven languages, most recently into Chinese. The Chinese translation is due to be published later in 2018. Holloway also wrote The Soviet Union and the Arms Race (1983) and co-authored The Reagan Strategic Defense Initiative: Technical, Political and Arms Control Assessment (1984). He has contributed to the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Foreign Affairs, and other scholarly journals.

Since joining the Stanford faculty in 1986 -- first as a professor of political science and later (in 1996) as a professor of history as well -- Holloway has served as chair and co-chair of the International Relations Program (1989-1991), and as associate dean in the School of Humanities and Sciences (1997-1998). Before coming to Stanford, he taught at the University of Lancaster (1967-1970) and the University of Edinburgh (1970-1986). Born in Dublin, Ireland, he received his undergraduate degree in modern languages and literature, and his PhD in social and political sciences, both from Cambridge University.

Faculty member at the Center for International Security and Cooperation
Affiliated faculty at the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law
Affiliated faculty at The Europe Center
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Assessing Social Support for Suicide Bombing

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Dr. Chiozza investigates the popular basis of support for suicide terrorism carried out against Americans and other Western targets in Iraq. Using survey data from six countries in the Middle East and South Asia, he investigates how demographic factors, such as gender, education, and age, interact with specific predispositions and attitudes, including fear of the United States, anti-Semitism, and personal anomie, to explain who would consider suicide terrorism against American and Western targets in Iraq justifiable. Methodologically, he employs Classification and Regression Tree (CART) models, a novel methodology that allows for a parsimonious identification of interactive and non-linear effects in the data. Dr. Chiozza shows that fear of the U.S. trumps other motivations in the countries that are geographically closer to Iraq.

Giacomo Chiozza (speaker) is an Assistant Professor of Political Science in the Travers Department of Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley. He holds a PhD from Duke University and a BA from the Università degli Studi di Milano. Before joining the Berkeley Political Science department, he was a post-doctoral fellow in national security at the Olin Institute for Strategic Studies at Harvard University. His research interests include the study of foreign perceptions of the United States in the American World Order and the quantitative analysis of conflict processes. He is the author of "A Crisis like No Other? Anti-Americanism at the Time of the Iraq War" (European Journal of International Relations, forthcoming); "Disaggregating Anti-Americanism: An Analysis of Individual Attitudes Towards the United States" (In Keohane and Katzenstein, Anti-Americanisms in World Politics, 2007), as well as of articles on leaders and conflict processes that were published in the American Journal of Political Science, the Journal of Conflict Resolution, and the Journal of Peace Research.

Aila Matanock (discussant) is a doctoral student in political science at Stanford.  She received an undergraduate degree magna cum laude in Social Studies from Harvard University, while working with the Belfer Center’s Managing the Atom Project and with the Los Alamos National Laboratory.  After graduation, she took a job at the RAND Corporation as a research assistant where she analyzed projects on terrorism and nuclear weapons.  Her current research is on social support for terrorism, the effect of nuclear weapons on conventional conflict, and the reasons for varying levels of shared sovereignty in international agreements.

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Giacomo Chiozza Assistant Professor of Political Science Speaker University of California, Berkeley
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The Indian Nuclear Program: Reflections Based on a Trip to India

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We will present our observations from a visit to India’s nuclear facilities and several think tanks during March 2008. We will comment on India’s nuclear research programs, nuclear energy development, and the implications for the proposed U.S.-India nuclear deal and for scientific collaboration between our countries. We visited the Indira Gandhi Center for Atomic Research (IGCAR) in Kalpakkam, the Bhabha Atomic Research Center (BARC) in Trombay, had detailed discussions with the top leadership of the India Department of Atomic Energy (DAE), and also visited several institutes in Bangalore and Chennai to discuss nuclear energy and nuclear nonproliferation.

Chaim Braun is a vice president of Altos Management Partners, Inc., and a CISAC science fellow and affiliate. He is a member of the Near-Term Deployment and the Economic Cross-Cut Working Groups of the Department of Energy (DOE) Generation IV Roadmap study. He conducted several nuclear economics-related studies for the DOE Nuclear Energy Office, the Energy Information Administration, the Electric Power Research Institute, the Nuclear Energy Institute, Non-Proliferation Trust International, and others. Braun has worked as a member of Bechtel Power Corporation's Nuclear Management Group, and led studies on power plant performance and economics used to support maintenance services. Braun has worked on a study of safeguarding the Agreed Framework in North Korea, he was the co-leader of a NATO Study of Terrorist Threats to Nuclear Power Plants, led CISAC's Summer Study on Terrorist Threats to Research Reactors, and most recently co-authored an article with former CISAC Co-Director Chris Chyba on nuclear proliferation rings.

Siegfried Hecker is a professor (research) in the Department of Management Science and Engineering, a senior fellow at FSI, and co-director of CISAC. He is also an emeritus director of Los Alamos National Laboratory. Hecker's research interests include plutonium science, nuclear weapon policy and international security, nuclear security (including nonproliferation and counter terrorism), and cooperative nuclear threat reduction. Over the past 15 years, he has fostered cooperation with the Russian nuclear laboratories to secure and safeguard the vast stockpile of ex-Soviet fissile materials. His current interests include the challenges of nuclear India, Pakistan, North Korea, and the nuclear aspirations of Iran. Hecker works closely with the Russian Academy of Sciences and is actively involved with the U.S. National Academies, serving on the National Academy of Engineering Council and its International Programs Committee, as chair of the Committee on Counterterrorism Challenges for Russia and the United States, and as a member of the National Academies Committee on International Security and Arms Control Nonproliferation Panel.

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Chaim Braun CISAC Fellow and CISAC Affiliate Speaker

Siegfried S. Hecker

CISAC
Stanford University
Encina Hall, C220
Stanford, CA 94305-6165

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Senior Fellow, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, Emeritus
Research Professor, Management Science and Engineering, Emeritus
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Siegfried S. Hecker is a professor emeritus (research) in the Department of Management Science and Engineering and a senior fellow emeritus at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI). He was co-director of CISAC from 2007-2012. From 1986 to 1997, Dr. Hecker served as the fifth Director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory. Dr. Hecker is an internationally recognized expert in plutonium science, global threat reduction, and nuclear security.

Dr. Hecker’s current research interests include nuclear nonproliferation and arms control, nuclear weapons policy, nuclear security, the safe and secure expansion of nuclear energy, and plutonium science. At the end of the Cold War, he has fostered cooperation with the Russian nuclear laboratories to secure and safeguard the vast stockpile of ex-Soviet fissile materials. In June 2016, the Los Alamos Historical Society published two volumes edited by Dr. Hecker. The works, titled Doomed to Cooperate, document the history of Russian-U.S. laboratory-to-laboratory cooperation since 1992.

Dr. Hecker’s research projects at CISAC focus on cooperation with young and senior nuclear professionals in Russia and China to reduce the risks of nuclear proliferation and nuclear terrorism worldwide, to avoid a return to a nuclear arms race, and to promote the safe and secure global expansion of nuclear power. He also continues to assess the technical and political challenges of nuclear North Korea and the nuclear aspirations of Iran.

Dr. Hecker joined Los Alamos National Laboratory as graduate research assistant and postdoctoral fellow before returning as technical staff member following a tenure at General Motors Research. He led the laboratory's Materials Science and Technology Division and Center for Materials Science before serving as laboratory director from 1986 through 1997, and senior fellow until July 2005.

Among his professional distinctions, Dr. Hecker is a member of the National Academy of Engineering; foreign member of the Russian Academy of Sciences; fellow of the TMS, or Minerals, Metallurgy and Materials Society; fellow of the American Society for Metals; fellow of the American Physical Society, honorary member of the American Ceramics Society; and fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

His achievements have been recognized with the Presidential Enrico Fermi Award, the 2020 Building Bridges Award from the Pacific Century Institute, the 2018 National Engineering Award from the American Association of Engineering Societies, the 2017 American Nuclear Society Eisenhower Medal, the American Physical Society’s Leo Szilard Prize, the American Nuclear Society's Seaborg Medal, the Department of Energy's E.O. Lawrence Award, the Los Alamos National Laboratory Medal, among other awards including the Alumni Association Gold Medal and the Undergraduate Distinguished Alumni Award from Case Western Reserve University, where he earned his bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degrees in metallurgy.

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Siegfried S. Hecker Co-Director of CISAC and Professor (Research), Department of Management Science and Engineering; FSI Senior Fellow Speaker
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The National Plant Diagnostic Network and Agricultural Biosecurity in the U.S.

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The National Plant Diagnostic Network (NPDN) was created to enhance the capabilities of existing diagnostic laboratories in the nation to detect and report introduced pathogens, pests and weeds of high consequence to plant agriculture and natural ecosystems.  An important goal of the network is to coordinate diagnostic and scientific expertise at land-grant universities, state departments of agriculture, agencies within the USDA (CSREES and APHIS), and other organizations involved in agricultural production and security.  The program, which is administered through the USDA, was established in 2002 through funding created by the Homeland Security Act in response to concerns that agricultural pests and pathogens could be used as agents of bio-terrorism.  Responsibilities of the NPDN include the compilation and establishment of diagnostic protocols for priority agents, the development of a web-based distributed plant pest diagnostic and reporting system for the nation, the provision of up-to-date information on plant pests for the nation, the development of analytical tools to exploit these data, and the recruitment and training of first detectors.  The national network is organized into 5 regions, with regional centers located at the University of California, Davis (Western Region), Kansas State University (Great Plains Region), Michigan State University (North Central Region), the University of Florida (Southern Region), and Cornell University (Northeastern Region).  A parallel network for veterinary medicine, the National Animal Health Laboratory Network, also has been established with regional centers located at the same institutions as the NPDN regional centers.  The mission and design of the NPDN, its programs, and progress towards meeting network objectives, will be presented and discussed.

Richard Bostock is a professor and former chair (1999-2005) of the Department of Plant Pathology at the University of California, Davis.  In 2002, he was appointed as the founding Director of the Western Region of the National Plant Diagnostic Network (NPDN).  The NPDN is a distributed system comprised of public institutions for the purpose of quickly detecting and identifying high consequence pests and pathogens.  The network links plant health professionals, researchers and diagnostic labs throughout the region, providing a way for them to share information about occurrences of plant diseases and pests that could have an impact on the region's most economically important crops.   This information also is reported to first responders and decision makers. Funding for the network is provided through the United States Department of Agriculture. Dr. Bostock received his Ph.D. in Plant Pathology at the University of Kentucky in 1981, and was appointed to the faculty at UC Davis that year.  His research and teaching interests are the biochemistry and molecular biology of plant-microbe interactions and general plant pathology.  He teaches several courses in the department and in the Science and Society program on various aspects of plant pathology, plant-microbe interactions, and issues related to food production. 

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Richard Bostock Professor of Plant Pathology and Director, Western Plant Diagnostic Network Speaker University of California, Davis
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Leading constitutional theorist discusses wars for 21st century

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Philip Bobbitt, a Columbia University law professor and one of the nation's leading constitutional theorists, spoke about his forthcoming book, Terror and Consent: The Wars for the 21st Century, at Stanford Law School on March 6. Bobbitt argued that as an idea, the so-called "war on terror" does not make sense. He said states need to change their understanding of terrorism and war to confront these challenges more strategically. CISAC and the Stanford Constitutional Law Center cosponsored the event, which was presented by the Stanford Center on Ethics through the Arrow Lecture Series on Ethics and Leadership.
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Terrorism Law: Between the Executive and Legislative Models

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Daphne Barak-Erez LL.B. (Tel-Aviv) (summa cum laude) 1988, LL. M. (Tel-Aviv) (summa cum laude) 1991, and J. S. D (Tel-Aviv) 1993, is a professor at the Faculty of Law and the Stewart and Judy Colton Chair of Law and Security at Tel-Aviv University. She specializes in administrative law, constitutional law and gender law. She was a visiting researcher at Harvard Law School (1993-1994), a visiting fellow at the Max Planck Institute of Public Law, Heidelberg (2000), an Honorary Research Fellow at University College, London (2002), a Visiting Researcher at the Swiss Institute of Comparative Law (2004), a Visiting Fellow at Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi (2006), and a Schell Fellow at Yale Law School (2006). She was a Visiting Professor at the Institute of Federalism (Fribourg, Switzerland) (2005), the Faculty of Law of the University of Toronto (2005 and 2007), the University of Siena (2006) and Queen's University (2007).

She also served as the Director of the Minerva Center for Human Rights (2000-2001) and the Deputy Dean of the Faculty of Law (2000-2002) and currently serves as a member of Israel's Council of Higher Education (since 2007). She was awarded several prizes, including the Rector's Prize for Excellence in Teaching (twice), the Zeltner Prize, the  Woman of the City Award (by the City of Tel-Aviv) and the Women in Law Award (by the Israeli Bar). She is the author and editor of several books and has many articles published in journals in the United States, Canada, England, and Israel.

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Daphne Barak-Erez Professor Speaker Faculty of Law, Tel Aviv University
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Islamist Terrorism and Antisemitism: The Mission against Modernity

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Matthias Küntzel, born in 1955, is a political scientist in Hamburg, Germany. He has served as senior advisor for the German Green Party caucus in the the Bundestag and is currently a Research Associate at the Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem as well as a member of the Board of Directors of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East. Küntzel's essays have been published in The New Republic, Policy Review, The Weekly Standard, the Wall Street Journal and Telos. His most recent book, Jihad and Jew-Hatred: Islamism, Nazism and the Roots of 9/11, published by Telos Press,won the 2007 London Book Festival Grand Prize.

In this lecture, Dr. Kuentzel examines an understudied legacy of the Nazi past, the transfer of the ideology of European antisemitism into the Arab world and its role in the formation of contemporary terrorism.

 

Event Synopsis:

Dr. Kuentzel begins his talk by recounting widespread celebrations within some Palestinian communities after the March 2008 killing of 15 young Jewish students by a Palestinian. He shows a video of a sermon from a mosque in Gaza in 2005 which praises the murders. Kuentzel rejects common arguments that the celebrations represent a desire for revenge on Israel for Palestinian deaths since 1948. Instead, he asserts that the incident shows that Islamists are obsessed by genocidal anti-Semitism, which has been influenced by and can be compared to European and Nazi anti-Semitism, both of which he sees as attempts to answer the success of liberal capitalism.

His talk follows the outline of his recent book, and covers four topics:

  1. The birth of Islamism

When the Muslim Brotherhood was established as a mass movement in 1928, it aimed to replace a parliamentary system with a caliphate, emphasizing a return to the roots of Islam. By 1948, the group had 1 million members in Egypt alone. A form of populist Islam, it invoked jihad as a means of establishing Sharia law, and focused its efforts almost entirely against Jews, drawing on both early Islamic thought and Nazism.

  1. Jew hatred as related to the hatred of modernity

Kuentzel sees Islamist anti-Semitism as closely tied to a fear of modernity. In this sense Jews are seen as representing the most threatening aspects of modernity including gender equality, freedom of thought, and individualism.

  1. Islamism and national socialism

Kuentzel draws ties between Islamism and the ideology of national socialism embodied by the Nazi party. He describes a Nazi radio station which broadcast Arabic language programming between 1945 and 1949. The programs emphasized religious identity of Muslims, utilized popular broadcasters, and were professionally produced with strong transmission signals, making them popular and widely accessible.

  1. Present day Islamism and anti-Semitism

Dr. Kuentzel asserts that Nazi ideology persisted in parts of Europe after 1945, and that when the Cold War emerged as the prominent political and economic feature of the era, it obscured/overshadowed the continuation of national socialist thought.

Finally, Dr. Kuentzel offers his views of both Islamism and anti-Semitism today, and concludes that the incidents like the one described at the beginning of his talk represent a revival of Nazi ideology "in new garb." He credits Muslims such as scholar Bassam Tibi who urge tolerance and speak out against anti-Semitism.

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Matthias Kuentzel Author and political scientist Speaker
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