While veterans and active-duty U.S. military personnel are no more likely than the public to support extremist groups or beliefs, those who do endorse extremist views can be devastatingly effective in committing acts of terror. The Mobilized Soldiers and Veterans Working Group seeks to understand patterns of radicalization and violence within the small yet significant population of radicalized, violent actors with military backgrounds. Key activities for this research-focused working group include:
- Completing the dataset of U.S. military soldiers and veterans implicated in criminal acts of terrorism or violent extremism from 1990-2022, including performing intercoder reliability checks.
- Developing case studies of individuals in the dataset through open-source research, coding for variables such as demographics, personal, and criminal characteristics.
- Performing statistical analysis to identify attributes associated with military involvement and mobilization to violence.
The analyses will contribute to hypothesis building as to salient characteristics of service members who commit acts of terrorism and violent extremism.
Faculty Advisor: Dr. Michael Kenney
Project Lead: Grant van Robays