SPOKANE — Recruits and the al-Qaida Network is the lecture topic hosted by Washington State University’s Institute for the Study of Intercommunal Conflict (ISIC). Elena Mastors, a terrorism specialist from the U.S. Naval War College will speak about conflict and terrorism and the important role of individuals in extremist groups. The lecture is slated for Thursday, March 6, from 7-8:30 p.m. in Spokane on the Riverpoint Campus in the Academic Center room 147 at 600 N Riverpoint Blvd.
Mastors will also present a lecture on “Interviewing Extremists” at WSU Pullman on Friday, March 7, in the Center for Undergraduate Education room 518 from 11:45 a.m.-1:30 p.m. Both lectures are free and open to the public.
“Dr. Mastor’s research on terrorist recruitment is pathbreaking. It is a very important contribution to our understanding of the “push” and “pull” factors, of which there are many, that inspire people to join terrorist organizations, and to become loyal activists in those organizations,” said Martha Cottam, director for the ISIC at WSU.
Mastors, an associate professor in the National Decision Making Department at the U.S. Naval War College has held various senior intelligence and policy positions in the United States Defense Department. She received her Ph.D. in political science and political psychology from WSU, where she focused on conflict and terrorism and is currently conducting field work in Northern Ireland on the leaders of banned terrorist groups. Mastors is a frequent lecturer and author of several published books, articles and papers on the topic of terrorism.
Event parking for the Spokane campus presentation is available at meters or a pass can be purchased at the Pay and Display located just off of Spokane Falls Boulevard, in the yellow lot to the west of the South Campus Facility or through Parking Operations in the South Campus Facility behind the Bookie at 412 E. Spokane Falls Blvd. A map to help guide you to your campus location can be viewed or printed at the following link: http://www.spokane.wsu.edu/campusresources/Facilities/
documents/CampusMap2006.pdf.
About the Institute for the Study of Intercommunal Conflict
The Institute for the Study of Intercommunal Conflict is designed to promote interdisciplinary research on conflict with a goal of developing policy-relevant knowledge about a wide variety of conflicts. Through this research the institute intends to develop a conflict prevention diagnostic at all levels of analysis and research that can be used to produce an early warning system for conflict prevention.
About WSU Spokane
WSU Spokane is the urban campus of Washington State University, a land-grant research university founded in 1890. The campus features advanced studies and research in health sciences and health professions, the design disciplines, education, social and policy sciences and science and technology. WSU is one of just 95 public and private research universities with very high research activity, according to the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching classifications. In addition, U.S. News & World Report ranks WSU as one of the top public research universities in the nation.
More information can be found at the following sites:
Institute for the Study of Intercommunal Conflict: http://libarts.wsu.edu/isic/index.html
WSU Spokane: www.spokane.wsu.edu
