Rise of the Terrorist Professors: Throughout Academia, the Study of Terrorism Is Booming. but in Reality, Argues Kevin Toolis, These "Experts" Represent an Ideology That Has Its Roots in the Cold War and in Israeli Conservatism

Toolis, Kevin, New Statesman (1996)

After every atrocity, every shooting, every bomb, the television studios are filled with a new breed of expert--the counter-terrorist academic, with his pat soundbites. In our baffling, violent world, the terrorism expert, discreetly hinting at access to cryptic intelligence material, is the high priest, able to discern within the entrails of atrocity a fingerprint and a culprit.

At best, "counter-terrorism" is a rehash of very old-fashioned political studies with a bit of fortune-telling thrown in. At its worst, it is a bogus intellectual justification for authoritarianism, military repression and neoconservative Islamophobia.

In academia, terrorism studies are the new, new thing and graduate programmes are springing up like an intifada across the western world. The lecture theatres are filling at the Inter-University Centre for Terrorism Studies at George Washington University in the US capital, at the International Policy Institute for Counter-Terrorism in Herzliyya, Israel and at the Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence at the University of St Andrews in Scotland. The counter-terrorism academic conference circuit is tight and incestuous, and features such figures as Professor Paul Wilkinson (St Andrews), Professor Walter Laqueur (Centre for Strategic and International Studies, Washington, DC) and Dr Bruce Hoffman (ex-St Andrews, now at the Rand Corporation, Washington).

Then there is a web of private corporations, institutes and guns-for-hire contractors that have sprung up to …

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Publication information: Article title: Rise of the Terrorist Professors: Throughout Academia, the Study of Terrorism Is Booming. but in Reality, Argues Kevin Toolis, These "Experts" Represent an Ideology That Has Its Roots in the Cold War and in Israeli Conservatism. Contributors: Toolis, Kevin - Author. Magazine title: New Statesman (1996). Volume: 133. Issue: 4692 Publication date: June 14, 2004. Page number: 26+. © Not available. COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group.

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