Improving Understanding of the Roots and Trajectories of Violent Extremism

The U.S. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, together with the National Center for Scientific Research of France (CNRS) and the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS), convened a workshop in Paris on June 2021, 2017, to consider the roots and trajectories of violent extremism. The goal was to identify common interests and priorities that could provide the basis for sustained cooperation involving research, analysis, and field investigations. Such a collaborative effort would contribute both to improved international understanding of the challenges posed by outbreaks of violent extremism and to the development of promising strategies and programs to reduce the global threats associated with the upsurge in outbreaks in a number of regions of the world. On the eve of the workshop, President of CNRS Alain Fuchs and his colleagues, Sandra Laugier, Pascal Marty and Fabrice Boudjaaba, who were hosts for the workshop introduced the U.S. and Russian workshop participants to the recently launched CNRS initiative that has expanded significantly its research activities in France of direct relevance to the widely publicized incidents of violence in Europe and to the growing threats in other areas of the world. At the beginning of the workshop, Valery Tishkov, president of the Russian Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology, highlighted the contributions of earlier U.S.-Russian academic collaboration in promoting research on conflict in multiethnic societies and in improving the framework and priorities for academic research. Of particular importance was a landmark report on conflict and reconstruction developed by leading specialists from Russia and the United States 14 years earlier (National Research Council, 2004). The current revival of cooperation provides an opportunity to build on the earlier analyses. Also in introductory remarks, Glenn Schweitzer of the National Academies reported on the topics of special interest when Russian and American experts met during an exploratory workshop in Moscow in November 2016, following a pause in U.S-Russia collaboration concerning terrorism and violent extremism of more than a decade. The participants considered a number of contemporary issues that set the stage for the deliberations in Paris. Topics of special interest in Moscow included (1) collection, organization, and use of high-quality data concerning the drivers of violence in specific situations; (2) criteria for setting priorities for research at the national and international levels; (3) importance of case studies, and particularly methodologies that have been used, in considering developments in specific regions in turmoil; and (4) processes of radicalization and recruitment of foreign fighters. Several participants in the workshop in Moscow urged that future dialogues include researchers from France, a widely held sentiment of many in attendance. Figure 1 reflects anxieties in Europe concerning the spread of violent extremism.