Terrorism: A Global, Interdisciplinary Approach

Terrorism has become one of the central security concerns of our time, presenting governments and citizens alike with a variety of policy and public safety challenges. Yet the subject also presents intellectual and pedagogic challenges for those seeking to study and understand it. Adequately comprehending terrorism requires an inherently multi-disciplinary approach that often does not fit neatly into existing academic disciplines; even when taught through the lens of a particular discipline, such as criminology or political science, it is still necessary for students to engage with a broad array of concepts from behavioral science and humanities fields as diverse as psychology, history, economics, communications, and anthropology. Moreover, as a highly dynamic and protean phenomenon at the forefront of public policy, new concepts and concerns arise regularly, thus necessitating pedagogic materials that keep pace with the latest incarnations of terrorism. To cite just two pertinent examples, merely a decade ago, topics like ＂homegrown radicalization＂ and improvised explosive devices (IEDs) did not even exist in the academic or policy lexicon surrounding terrorism; furthermore, these topics, which today are central to understanding the terrorist threat, require knowledge and theories from psychology and chemistry, both of which are beyond the disciplines most commonly associated with terrorism studies, namely criminology, political science, international relations, and history.

Unfortunately, extant texts for undergraduates in terrorism-related classes have not adequately met these challenges. First, the vast majority of current texts used in terrorism courses are not true textbooks (see detailed exposition below), but are rather edited volumes or in-depth narratives. With respect to terrorism studies, at least, these are less suitable as introductions for an undergraduate audience because they tend by their nature to focus on only limited aspects of what is a wide-ranging topic and thereby leave gaps that can impair the development of the necessary instructional foundation. Second, many of the (especially older) texts do not reflect the most current subtopics or research in terrorism, since both the phenomenon itself and scholarship thereon have evolved rapidly in the past decade. Third, existing texts tend to place most of their emphasis on a single facet of terrorism (such as its historical development), with negligible attention paid to equally important aspects (such as the sociological context of radicalization) and thereby lack the balanced approach needed for an introductory text on the subject.

Courses on terrorism offered at the undergraduate level have proliferated since 9/11, as well as undergraduate programs of study (including majors, minors, and certificate courses). However, there are few textbooks written for undergraduates that provide good empirical and theoretical foundations for the study of terrorism. The proposed textbook would be more broadly interdisciplinary in scope than existing texts on the market, but at the same time would be configured to satisfy the disciplinary requirements of all of these disciplines.