« Previous Story | Next Story »

January 23, 2006

Top Terrorism Experts to speak at the Opening of Fletcher’s Jebsen Center for Counter Terrorism Studies Fred Fielding, member of 9/11 Commission, to deliver opening address

Medford/Somerville, Mass. [01.23.06] Some of the nation’s top terrorism experts will speak this Wednesday, Jan. 25 at The Fletcher School at Tufts University as part of the opening ceremonies for the new Jebsen Center for Counter Terrorism Studies. The opening comes against the backdrop of a series of explosive events of late: Osama bin Laden’s new audiotape threatening another attack against the United States; the continuing ordeal of Jill Carroll, the young American journalist being held hostage by Iraqi insurgents; as well as the controversial air strikes by the U.S. in Pakistan.

BG (Ret) Russell D. Howard, the new Director of the Jebsen Center, said the ceremony will be built around a panel discussion at 3 p.m. called, “Reconsidering the Terrorist Threat - What the Future Holds,” followed by an address at 5:30 p.m. by Fred Fielding, a member of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States [the 9/11 Commission], and who previously worked as White House Counsel to President Nixon and Deputy Counsel to President Reagan.

Moderated by Richard Shultz, Director of Fletcher’s international security studies program, the panel boasts an impressive array of experts:

• Rohan Gunaratna, the head of terrorism research at the Institute of Defense and Strategic Studies in Singapore. Also, a counter-terrorism consultant to governments, traveling widely to the Middle East, Asia, Africa, the Balkans and Latin America.

• Dr. Bruce Hoffman, Director of Rand Corporation’s Washington D.C. office. Editor-in-chief of Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, the leading scholarly journal in the field. Manager, U.S. Department of Defense Counter-Terrorism Advisory Board. Holds a doctorate in International Relations from Oxford University.
• Ritz Katz, Director/Founder of the SITE institute, tracks and analyzes the electronic communications of Islamic insurgents and terrorist groups, and their financial operations. Born in Iraq and a graduate of the Middle Eastern Studies program at Tel Aviv University. She is also the author of Terrorist Hunter, her remarkable 2004 memoir in which she recalls how her father was executed in Baghdad in 1969, shortly after Saddam Hussein's Baath Party came to power, and how she herself escaped from captivity in Baghdad, via Iran, to Israel.
• Dr. Bruce Hoffman, the Director of RAND’s Washington DC office; Ms. Rita Katz the Director and co-Founder of the Search for International Terrorist Entities (SITE) Institute; and, Professor Jarret Brachman the Director of Research in the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point.

For more information about the event, please go to: http://fletcher.tufts.edu/jebsencenter/events.shtml#25jan2006

The schedule of events is as follows:

3 p.m. Panel discussion led by Richard Shultz, director of the International Security Studies Program. ASEAN Auditorium

5:30-6 p.m. Ceremony featuring address by Fred Fielding. Followed by reception in the Hall of Flags.

WHEN: Wednesday, January 25, 2005, panel starts at 3 p.m.

WHERE: The Fletcher School [ASEAN Auditorium]
Tufts University
160 Packard Ave.
Medford, Massachusetts 02155

Posted by fletcher at January 23, 2006 10:53 AM