The Insurgency and Irregular Warfare Working Group will bring together academics from various disciplines - international relations, comparative politics, and the natural sciences - to explore current problems related to insurgency and counter-insurgency. The goal is to generate meaningful scholarly work on a host of current academic and policy issues that straddle existing disciplinary boundaries. By engaging graduate students and faculty from a number of fields at MIT, the founders hope to stimulate new thinking on a number of important topics. Roger Petersen is the faculty sponsor of this working group. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact Colin Jackson (jacksonc@mit.edu) or Austin Long (along@mit.edu).
February 10, 2006
Stathis Kalyvas, Arnold Wolfers Professor of Political Science, Yale University» The Logic of Violence in Civil War
March 14, 2006
Paul Staniland, Political Science, MIT» Flawed Rebellions: Explaining Patterns of Warfare in Internal Conflict
April 19, 2006
Dr. Scott Atran, National Scientific Research Center, Paris» Sacred Values and Radicalization: The Moral Logic and Growth of Martyrdom
May 3, 2006
The Hon. Ranil Wickremasinghe, Prime Minister of Sri Lanka from 1993-1994 and from 2001-2004, CIS Visiting Fellow
October 19, 2005
Colin Jackson and Austin Long, Political Science, MIT» Selective Amnesty and Counter-insurgency: Malaya, Vietnam, and Iraq
[PowerPoint presentation, 196K]
November 28, 2005
Ahmed Hashim, Strategic Research Department, Naval War College» The U.S. Effort in Iraq
November 30, 2005
Roger Petersen, Political Science, MIT» The Strategic Use of Emotion in Civilian Bombings in Insurgency