David C. Rapoport

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David Charles Rapoport

David Charles Rapoport (born January 7, 1929, Pittsburgh, PA) was a Professor Emeritus of Political Science at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) who focused on the study of terrorism.

Contents

Biography

Rapoport received his Ph.D. at University of California, Berkeley in 1960. In 1962 he joined the UCLA political science department. In the late 1960s he became interested in terrorism and in 1969 taught the first terrorist course in the U.S. [1] In 1989, he established the journal Terrorism and Political Violence and is its chief editor., [1] credited as “one of two journals which has made terrorism into an academic field”. [2] He received 12 Awards from a variety of Foundations including the Social Science Research Council, Ford Foundation, Fulbright, American Council of Learned Societies, National Institute of Mental Health and Harry Frank Guggenheim.

After retiring in 1995, he founded the Center for the Study of Religion UCLA and became the Chair of the Interdepartmental Religion Major 1995–7. He continued teaching until 2012, received the UCLA Emeritus Distinguished Dickson Award.

Academic publications

Rapoport wrote and edited six books, 50 academic articles and 12 op-ed newspaper columns. Ten academic publications were republished in Spanish, French and German. Two of his academic articles were written for Encyclopedias, and a third will be published in 2017. [3]

He wrote a series of articles on ancient religious traditions, including their interaction with terrorism. [4] He also wrote a number of essays on apocalyptic movements in the modern world, especially in Christianity. [5]

Rapaport's 1999 article “Terrorism” in the Encyclopedia of Violence, Peace and Conflict contained an analysis of the history of modern global rebel terror. He argues that political concerns and technological development produced the new iterations of terrorism in the form of "waves". The "new terrorism" began in the 1880s and has produced four different overlapping waves, the Anarchist, Anti-Colonial, New Left and Religious. The argument drew little attention until Rapoport published a second article on the subject immediately after the 9/11 attack, “The Fourth Wave: September 11 in the History of Terrorism” in Current History. The aim was to demonstrate that although the tragedy “created a resolve... to end terror everywhere”, the history of modern global terror did not inspire much confidence that this resolve would succeed. [6] [7] The article was widely influential in the field of terrorism studies. [8] [9]

Books

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">State terrorism</span> Acts of terrorism conducted by a state

State terrorism refers to acts of terrorism which a state conducts against another state or against its own citizens.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Terrorism</span> Use of fear to further a political or ideological cause

Terrorism, in its broadest sense, is the use of intentional violence and fear to achieve political or ideological aims. The term is used in this regard primarily to refer to intentional violence during peacetime or in the context of war against non-combatants. There are various different definitions of terrorism, with no universal agreement about it.

Religious terrorism is a type of religious violence where terrorism is used as a strategy to achieve certain religious goals or which are influenced by religious beliefs and/or identity.

Christian terrorism, a form of religious terrorism, comprises terrorist acts which are committed by groups or individuals who profess Christian motivations or goals. Christian terrorists justify their violent tactics through their interpretation of the Bible and Christianity, in accordance with their own objectives and worldview.

A lone wolf attack, or lone actor attack, is a particular kind of mass murder, committed in a public setting by an individual who plans and commits the act on their own. In the United States, such attacks are usually committed with firearms. In other countries, knives are sometimes used to commit mass stabbings. Although definitions vary, most databases require a minimum of four victims for the event to be considered a mass murder.

Henry Armand Giroux is an American-Canadian scholar and cultural critic. One of the founding theorists of critical pedagogy in the United States, he is best known for his pioneering work in public pedagogy, cultural studies, youth studies, higher education, media studies, and critical theory. In 2002 Routledge named Giroux as one of the top fifty educational thinkers of the modern period.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Religious violence</span> Violence practiced in the name of religion

Religious violence covers phenomena in which religion is either the subject or the object of violent behavior. All the religions of the world contain narratives, symbols, and metaphors of violence and war. Religious violence is violence that is motivated by, or in reaction to, religious precepts, texts, or the doctrines of a target or an attacker. It includes violence against religious institutions, people, objects, or events. Religious violence does not exclusively include acts which are committed by religious groups, instead, it includes acts which are committed against religious groups.

Mia M. Bloom is a Canadian academic, author, and Professor of Communication at Georgia State University. She was formerly an associate Professor of International Studies at the Pennsylvania State University in University Park and a fellow at the International Center for the Study of Terrorism at Penn State.

Khaled Abou el Fadl is the Omar and Azmeralda Alfi Distinguished Professor of Law at the UCLA School of Law where he has taught courses on International Human Rights, Islamic jurisprudence, National Security Law, Law and Terrorism, Islam and Human Rights, Political Asylum, and Political Crimes and Legal Systems. He is also the founder of the Usuli Institute, a non-profit public charity dedicated to research and education to promote humanistic interpretations of Islam, as well as the Chair of the Islamic Studies Program at the University of California, Los Angeles. He has lectured on and taught Islamic law in the United States and Europe in academic and non-academic environments since approximately 1990.

Jewish extremist terrorism is terrorism, including religious terrorism, committed by extremists within Judaism.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alex P. Schmid</span> Dutch terrorism academic

Alex Peter Schmid is a scholar in terrorism studies, who from 1999 to 2005 was Officer-in-Charge of the Terrorism Prevention Branch of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime in Vienna. He is particularly known for his work on the definition of terrorism.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Communal violence</span> Violence between ethnic or other communal groups

Communal violence is a form of violence that is perpetrated across ethnic or communal lines, where the violent parties feel solidarity for their respective groups and victims are chosen based upon group membership. The term includes conflicts, riots and other forms of violence between communities of different religious faith or ethnic origins.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Douglas Kellner</span> American academic (born May 31, 1943)

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Communist terrorism is terrorism perpetrated by individuals or groups which adhere to communism and ideologies related to it, such as Marxism–Leninism, Maoism, and Trotskyism. Historically, communist terrorism has sometimes taken the form of state-sponsored terrorism, supported by communist nations such as the Soviet Union, China, North Korea and Kampuchea. In addition, non-state actors such as the Red Brigades, the Front Line and the Red Army Faction have also engaged in communist terrorism. These groups hope to inspire the masses to rise up and start a revolution to overthrow existing political and economic systems. This form of terrorism can sometimes be called red terrorism or left-wing terrorism.

Critical terrorism studies (CTS) applies a critical theory approach rooted in counter-hegemonic and politically progressive critical theory to the study of terrorism. With links to the Frankfurt School of critical theory and the Aberystwyth School of critical security studies, CTS seeks to understand terrorism as a social construction, or a label, that is applied to certain violent acts through a range of political, legal and academic processes. It also seeks to understand and critique dominant forms of counter-terrorism.

Sherifa D. Zuhur is an academic and national security scholar of the Middle East and Islamic world. She was most recently a visiting scholar at the Center for Middle East Studies, University of California, Berkeley and is the director of the Institute of Middle Eastern, Islamic and Strategic Studies.

Jeffrey Kaplan is an American academic who has written and edited a number of books on racism, religious violence, terrorism and the far-right. He is an associate professor of religion at the University of Wisconsin–Oshkosh and a member of the board of academic advisors of the university's Institute for the Study of Religion, Violence and Memory.

In ethics, questions regarding the morality of violence ask under what conditions, if any, the use of violence can be morally justified. Three prominent views on the morality of violence are (1) the pacifist position, which states that violence is always immoral, and should never be used; (2) the utilitarian position, that means that violence can be used if it achieves a greater “good" for society; (3) a hybrid of these two views which both looks at what good comes from the use of violence, while also examining the types of violence used.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Virginia Held</span> American feminist philosopher (born 1929)

Virginia Potter Held is an American moral, social/political and feminist philosopher whose work on the ethics of care sparked significant research into the ethical dimensions of providing care for others and critiques of the traditional roles of women in society.

Terrorism and Political Violence is a peer-reviewed academic journal covering terrorism and counter-terrorism published by Routledge. It was established in 1989 by David C. Rapoport, who remains editor-in-chief. In the editorial manifesto in its first issue, it is referred to as the Journal of Terrorism Research; however, from its first issue until the present, in editorial statements and elsewhere, it is only ever cited as Terrorism and Political Violence.

References

  1. 1 2 UCLA Department of Political Science. www.plisci.ucla.edu.
  2. Daryl R. Bullis and Richard D. Irving “Journals Supporting Terrorism Research: Investigation into their Impact on the Social Sciences” College and Research Libraries (74:2) March 2013
  3. Routledge Encyclopedia of Government and Politics, 1993, 2nd ed. 2003, Encyclopedia of Violence, Peace and Conflict, 1999 2nd Edition, 2008 Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Politics 2017. He also published “Anarchism” in The New Dictionary of the History of Ideas.
  4. "Moses, Charisma, and Covenant," Western Political Quarterly, (32 2 (Jun., 1979), pp. 123-148, with comments by Reinhard Bendix, Rolf Kneirem, Mulford Sibley and Murray Baumgarten.*Reprinted: Center for the Study of Federalism,Temple University 1980. “Fear and Trembling: Terrorism in Three Religious Traditions," American Political Science Review, 78, 3 (September 1984)
  5. “Terror and the Messiah: An Ancient Experience and Some Modern Parallels," eds David Rapoport and Yonah Alexader eds. The Morality of Terrorism, "Why does Messianism Produce Terror?" Paul Wilkinson and A.M. Stewart, eds., Current Research on Terrorism (Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press, 1987) l“The Importance of Space in Violent Ethno-Religious Strife”, Nationalism and Ethnic `Politics,2,2 Summer 1996 “Why Has The Islamic State Changed its Strategy and Mounted the Paris-Brussels Attacks?”, Perspectives on Terrorism 10:2 April 2016
  6. Current History December 2001, (100, 650)
  7. “Looking for Waves of Terrorism”, Rosenfeld,(note) 5, p.15
  8. Alex P. Schmid, The Routledge Handbook of Terrorism Research (New York:2011, Routledge) p.228
  9. Tom Parker and Nick Sitter, “The Four Horsemen of Terrorism: It’s Not Waves, It’s Strains” Terrorism and Political Violence 28. 2 April 2016 pp. 197-98. The article was “one of the most influential articles ever written in the field of terrorism studies and referenced in numerous volumes. To this day it provides the basic conceptual framework for academic courses taught around the world on this subject.”