Speaker to Explore Why Religious Militants Kill in Talk at Holy Cross

WORCESTER, Mass. – Jessica Stern, lecturer in public policy at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, will give a talk titled “Terror in the Name of God: Why Religious Militants Kill” on Nov. 2 at 4 p.m. in the Hogan Campus Center, Room 519 at the College of the Holy Cross. The talk is free and open to the public.

Stern’s Terror in the Name of God: Why Religious Militants Kill (HarperCollins, 2003) investigates the “how” and “why” of religious terrorism. According to Booklist, “Harvard scholar Stern has probed the subterranean world of devout terror. Her up-close portraits allow readers to glimpse the fierce alienation and the festering grudges that drive desperate men (and a few women) to embrace violent theologies promising earthly paradise and heavenly salvation to all who join their merciless crusades.”

From 1994 to 1995, Stern served as director for Russian, Ukrainian, and Eurasian Affairs at the National Security Council, where she was responsible for national security policy toward Russia and the former Soviet states and for policies to reduce the threat of nuclear smuggling and terrorism. Stern earlier worked at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. From 1998 to 1999, she was the Superterrorism Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.

The event is sponsored by the Garrity Professorship in Human Nature, Ethics, and Society, the Peace and Conflict Studies Program, and the Center for Ethics, Religion, and Culture.