Lecture | LUCIS What's New?! Series
To Counter or Not Counter Violent Extremism? That’s the Question
- Date
- Thursday 10 February 2022
- Time
- Explanation
- Please register below
- Serie
- What's New?! Spring Lecture Series 2022
- Address
-
Lipsius
Cleveringaplaats 1
2311 BD Leiden - Room
- 1.48
Much attention has been paid to the concept of countering violent extremism (CVE), both in terms of its policy relevance and as a state-centric discourse in relation to understanding the problems of and solutions to violent extremism in societies across the world. While there is much emphasis on top-down solutions-oriented applications, there is the risk of ignoring ground-level realities beyond the realm of current policy, planning, and strategy. There is also the rather unfortunate reality of a CVE industry that reproduces the state-centric logic. It is therefore important for individual academics, researchers, and activists to introduce genuine, practical measures. In this they may borrow the language of CVE while essentially introducing innovative ways that are more about building capacity, empowering community, enhancing agency and generating support structures—it is the absence of these factors that is largely the reason for violent extremism, both in the global north and in the global south. As I will explain, the book is an attempt to provide a critical assessment of what does and does not work and what should be done on theoretical, conceptual, and policy-oriented levels.
About Tahir Abbas
Professor Tahir Abbas FRSA FAcSS holds as Chair in Radicalization Studies at the Institute of Security and Global Affairs at Leiden University in The Hague. He is also the Scientific Coordinator of the H2020-RIA-funded DRIVE project, which explores the issues of exclusion in the radicalisation of far-right and Islamist extremists in northwest Europe. His forthcoming book is Islamophobia and Securitisation: The Dutch Case (Springer, with L Welton, out May 2022).