Distinguished Scholar Acceptance Remarks by Dr. Joshua D. Freilich. These remarks were presented at the Division of Terrorism & Bias Crimes (DTBC) General Business Meeting on Thursday 11/16/23 at the American Society of Criminology (ASC) Annual Meeting in Philadelphia, PA.
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Thank you, Steve, for those very kind remarks. I would like to begin by thanking the awards committee, the Executive Board, and the members of the Division on Terrorism and Bias Crimes for this honor.
Jeff Gruenewald asked me to say some words and I thought I would take this opportunity to briefly outline what I think are 2 important gaps in terrorism studies that future research could begin to address from a criminological perspective.
First, one exciting development in terrorism research over the last 20 or so years has been the development and testing of theory. Its particularly pleasing to see how criminology theories have been applied to terrorism. I think these developments could be enhanced.
Recently a growing number of studies looking at the etiology of terrorism and political violence call for theoretical integration. Some of these studies go about their integration work by including models with many variables that are linked to a variety of theories.
This is a useful start, but we should be wary of simply grabbing a bunch of measures that are readily available, throwing them into the same model & then start linking each to various theories- we want to avoid an “everything but the kitchen sink” approach.
It reminds me of the debates in our field about theory integration that occurred some 40-50 years ago. In the late 1970s, 1980s and beyond our field began highlighting the need for theory integration of the major criminology theories like strain, control, learning, etc.
One strong argument in favor of integration is that the major criminology theory in regression models often explained very little variation in the DV. If each theory only explained a small part, we might be able to greatly increase our explanatory powers if we combined the strongest part of each: The sum might be greater than its parts.
Other criminologists like Hirschi disagreed. One key argument against theory integration is that certain frameworks- for e.g., strain & control theories- have contradictory assumptions about human nature and other key issues. Thus, theory integration risked being “unfair” & violating some theories’ fundamental assumptions.
Rather than theory integration, another view calls for theory competition- Outlining which theories you were pitting against each other & then carefully operationalizing some of their key constructs. This is especially important for our field where multiple theories sometimes “claim” the same variables; thus, we need thoughtful deliberation; we need access to particular types of data, that we can then demonstrate are consistent with one theory and not with its competitor.
We could take these debates and apply them to our research on terrorism. Initially, when we have our models filled with variables from a variety of frameworks we need to clearly lay out if we are engaging in theory competition or theory integration.
If it is theory competition, we need to spend time justifying our operationalization decisions and show how these measures capture the theory we want it to; while not being so crude as to leave an opening for it to be claimed by another theory. Or if it could be claimed by more than 1 framework, we must note that before and outline the different causal models at play for each framework.
We then need to carefully assess the results to determine which frameworks do better than others; and transparently outline the criteria we use/apply to come to these conclusions.
On the other hand, if we are engaging in theory integration, we could also draw from our criminology research. We should specify what type of theory integration we are engaging in. Is it two theories making the same prediction for different reasons, or are we combining micro and macro frameworks to better explain things? Alternatively, are we doing end to end integration, where theories emerge sequentially where each comes in a temporal order, theory A leads to Theory B, etc., and eventually to the dependent variable? And so on, there are other possibilities too.
In sum, we have a strong body of criminological research on theory integration and theory competition. We could use and apply our knowledge from these studies to strengthen terrorism research that I think is much farther behind in engaging theory integration rigorously.
Second, we could do a better job reviewing the prior literature, as well as outlining and explaining the outcome variables in our studies. We often talk about studying radicalization, terrorism studies, violent extremism or political violence. But when we look a little deeper, we realize that there are multiple outcomes/DVs that we are potentially interested in.
We, of course, have extremist attitudes, violent intentions and/or support for violence–all beliefs- versus actions like extremist violence. But these distinctions at times are obscured when for e.g., we compare “terrorists” to a comparison group.
We often assume the terrorist is static, but many terrorists- not all- (i) join a group or movement, (ii) become radicalized (extremist beliefs) aka embrace extremist ideology, or support violence or claim to intend violence (all beliefs) & only subsequently do they (iii) commit violent actions.
These varying phenomena (i) radical opinion; (ii) joining movement; (iii) committing violence different outcomes occurring at varying points in time are often ignored by researchers. Perhaps there is an opening for life course criminology to shed light on individuals who move through these points.
Relatedly, we commonly treat all extremists alike, but they may vary in terms of both their intensity of support for the movement ideology and in the specific beliefs they adhere to.
Similarly, there are often variations in mobilization across different ideological groupings (Far-Right versus Left-Wing versus AQ/ISIS), and there may be other differences between leaders versus members and other types of roles.
Further, as Steve Chermak and I have noted in earlier works, extremists often do not limit themselves to violent extremist crimes; some engage in only ideologically motivated crimes, while others do plenty of NON-ideological crimes, some engage in legal activities at times (and sociology’s social movement theories often speak to this) and/or also engage in NON-violent crimes to further the movement, such as financial crimes (tax refusal; terrorism financing, money dirtying), material support, cyber crimes and others.
More recently, some scholars, and NIJ in a recent RFP, have argued that certain non-ideological crimes of targeted violence like school & mass shootings share similarities with violent extremism. Others argue that non-political bias crimes also share many similarities with terrorism.
McCauley & Moskalenco point out that not all terrorists are radicalized or extremists, sometimes they do it for “love” or as Social Movement theory finds due to preexisting social ties. Their radicalization follows their joining the movement and does not precede it. Our own ECDB data shows that non-extremists are often explicitly recruited to join extremist crimes due to their unique skill sets that the terrorists need, and some of these non-extremists are motivated by greed as opposed to ideology.
We are familiar with these differences and nuances but sometimes our studies conflate these outcomes/categories and end up combining violent, nonviolent, and non-criminal extremists in the same attribute for instance.
We could do a better job in applying our theories and crafting our literature reviews to account for these varying outcomes and contexts to explain when each will emerge and how the many attributes and outcomes interact or relate with one another.
Finally, I would like to conclude by thanking the many collaborators I have worked with who have made the contributions, and successes we have achieved over the years possible.
Of course, I must start with Steve Chermak from Michigan State University:
Time certainly flies. Who knew that my dissertation advisor Graeme Newman’s off the cuff suggestion- years ago- that Steve and I meet would lead to all this. Steve and I have worked together for close to 20 years, and in preparing these remarks I have thought about all the:
Exchanges & drafts back/forth for articles; grant proposals
Exchanges about inclusion criteria; protocols for database development; & how to frame arguments.
It has been a great time. I also want to thank the many students and former students who became colleagues, who were invaluable in helping us build the ECDB, TASSS, our other databases and conduct our research studies:
William Parkin, Jeff Gruenewald, & Roberta Belli;
Colleen Mills, Ashmini Kerodal, Emily Greene-Colozzi, Celinet Duran, Marissa Mandala and Brent Klein, Tiana Guadette, & Noah Turner.
And many other RAs both graduate & UG students.
Finally, I’m grateful to my Dissertation Advisor Graeme Newman whose mentorship and advice/input has been invaluable in shaping my career.
Thank you all again for the award and the opportunity to share my thoughts. It is an honor to accept it.