Home, Land, Security: Deradicalization and the Journey Back from Extremism

Date
-
Event Sponsor
McCoy Family Center for Ethics in Society, Center for South Asia, Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC)
Location
Zoom
Home, Land, Security: Deradicalization and the Journey Back from Extremism

What are the roots of radicalism? How can people be persuaded to leave violent extremism behind? Carla Power, a finalist for the National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize, came to this question well before the January 6, 2021, attack in Washington, D.C., turned our country’s attention to the problem of domestic radicalization. She started by investigating a different wave of radical panic—the way populists and pundits encouraged us to see the young people who joined ISIS or other terrorist organizations as simple monsters. Power wanted to chip away at the stereotypes by focusing not on what these young people had done but why: What drew them into militancy? What visions of the world—of home, of land, of security for themselves and the people they loved—shifted their thinking toward radical beliefs? And what visions of the world might bring them back to society?

Power began her journey by talking to the mothers of young men who’d joined ISIS in the UK and Canada. From there, she traveled around the world in search of societies that are finding new and innovative ways to rehabilitate former extremists, talking to both militants and the people working to rehabilitate them.

Power, author of the new book Home, Land, Security: Deradicalization and the Journey Back from Extremism, will be in conversation with Stanford anthropologist Sharika Thiranagama. Together they will discuss Power's investigation of de-radicalizataion schemes and the visions of home, land, security and the world, that frame people's journeys in and out of potential violence. 

This event is part of a new, year-long Ethics & Political Violence series. The series of seminars and public lectures will feature philosophers, lawyers, historians, social scientists, human rights activists, soldiers and political leaders grappling with vexing moral questions raised by uses of violence in international relations and domestic politics.