A Message from TSAS Co-director, Daniel Hiebert

Welcome to the first newsletter of the TSAS network. Perhaps it would be helpful to provide a quick summary of where TSAS came from and its recent history. TSAS emerged out of conversations between researchers and government officials over the last 6 or 7 years. These conversations were facilitated by the ‘Justice, Policing, and Security’ domain of the Canadian Metropolis project. It seemed clear that there is a need for more dialogue on these issues and that a larger forum should be created, one that would include a wider array of researchers and policy officials dealing with terrorism, counter-terrorism, security, and how these issues are related to society. While these ideas were being discussed, the Government of Canada announced the Kanishka Program, which is designed to support policy-relevant research on terrorism in Canada. Kanishka provided exactly the right platform for our vision of a new forum for research and dialogue. Accordingly, Lorne Dawson, Martin Bouchard, and I assembled a proposal for the Kanishka Program that was paired with another proposal to the SSHRC Partnership Development Grant program. These were submitted in 2011 and both were successful, with funding commencing in April 2012, for a two-year start-up phase.

We are now almost exactly halfway through this mandate. Our original application included a list of 18 academic researchers who expressed the desire to communicate more with each other, and with policy officials. Over the past year, this number has grown and now surpasses 60 (please see our website if you wish to be added to our list of affiliates). In the last year we have established a website that holds a lot of promise for the future. Kate Castelo, TSAS’ communications strategist, has been busy reaching out to our network and beyond, through several social media platforms. We have also held a number of workshops to ensure that there is real scope for the kinds of conversations we hope to foster. A couple of these were actually scheduled before we heard the final result of the SSHRC and Kanishka applications. Our events so far have been:

• February 2012: the group that formed TSAS worked with Public Safety Canada to organize a pre-conference, one-day workshop at the Toronto Metropolis conference, on “Fear, Hatred, Belonging, and Cohesion: Understanding and Preventing Dynamics of Polarization”. (12 speakers; approximately 50 attending);

• April 2012: workshop at the Liu Institute for Global Issues, UBC, on “Exploring the Intersection between Migration, Terrorism, and Security: Emerging Research Questions”. (15 speakers; approximately 40 attending);

• May 2012: Ottawa, two-day workshop on “Collaborative Research Design and a New National Research Community,” with half of the speakers academic and the other half from our partner institutions. (20 speakers; approximately 40 attending);

• September 2012: Vancouver, TSAS Research Retreat. (15 attending, including 3 representatives of Public Safety Canada);

• November 2012: Ottawa, TSAS workshop on the psychology and sociology of terrorism. (8 speakers; over 50 attending);

• March 2013: TSAS co-organized, with Public Safety Canada, one plenary panel, three workshops, and one round-table session for the Canadian National Metropolis Conference. Around 400 people attended the plenary panel, and about 50-60 came to each of the workshops and the round-table session.

In addition, TSAS has executed its first Call for Proposals and has made a decision to disperse funds to ten new projects on a wide variety of topics:

• Eco-terrorism;

• The relationship between Islamic converts and radicalization;

• Right-wing radicalization among ‘skinheads’ in Quebec;

• The effectiveness of Canada’s National Security Enforcement teams;

• The political attitudes of new immigrants in Canada;

• Future terrorist threats;

• Using virtual environments and simulation tools to plan effective methods to deal with the aftermath of terrorist attacks;

• Estimating the number of extremists in Canada;

• Perceptions of Muslim community-based organizations in counterterrorist measures;

• Rightwing extremism in Canada.

We are also busy designing our Summer Academy. We will hold the first of these at UBC (the Liu Institute for Global Issues) which will take place July 21-26, this year. Please consider registering, or encouraging a colleague to register for the Academy. It will be an intense five-day program that includes learning modules on: introducing terrorism within the Canadian context; government responsibilities in the terrorism and counter-terrorism fields; the radicalization process; social network approaches to the study of terrorism; the changing Canadian social context and its relationship with terrorism and security; and using the concept of resilience to build safer societies.

There are a number of additional TSAS events and initiatives on the horizon and these will be discussed in future newsletters. In the meantime, please monitor our website and by all means plan to participate in these events if you can.