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Mission & History
The International Center for the Study of Terrorism
(ICST) was formally launched by Dr. Graham Spanier, President of
The Pennsylvania State University, at a meeting of US and UK security
experts which took place on May 20, 2006 in London.
Recognizing the significant potential of Penn State’s connections
with the Worldwide Universities Network, ICST's first Director,
Dr. Kevin Murphy, brought together research teams in the US and
UK to help develop a center which was truly international in nature,
both in terms of research collaboration and its subsequent real-world
application.
Over the years, the social and behavioral sciences have displayed
tremendous potential for advancing our knowledge and understanding
of terrorism and for developing policy-relevant programs and interventions
that can help to reduce and control terrorism and its effects. Much
of the solution to making progress in combating terrorism will derive
from the application of perspectives, theories, methods and results
from the social and behavioral sciences to questions from basic
and applied research on the roots of terrorism, the effects of terrorism
and the most effective means of responding to terrorism.
The mission of ICST is to engage in and promote the scientific study
of terrorism and political violence, and in doing so to continue
to create multidisciplinary, cross-national research teams, drawing
strongly but not exclusively from the social and behavioral sciences,
to respond to needs and opportunities in the broad areas of terrorism
and counterterrorism.
The overarching mission of the ICST is to provide “actionable
knowledge”, a conceptual basis to policy-relevant and
operational counterterrorism activity.
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