Dr. Jessica Stern

Jessica Stern is one of the foremost experts on terrorism.  She is the author of TERROR IN THE NAME OF GOD: Why Religious Militants Kill (selected by the New York Times as a notable book of the year); she is a co-author of ISIS: The State of Terror, DENIAL: A Memoir of Terror, (named a best non-fiction book of 2010 by the Washington Post), and THE ULTIMATE TERRORISTS.  She is a fellow at the FXB Center for Health and Human Rights at the Harvard School of Public Health and a Research Professor at Boston University’s Pardee School of Global Studies. As an expert on terrorism, she also serves on the Hoover Institution Task Force on National Security and Law. She is a 2014-2015 Fulbright Scholar and, in 2009, she was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for her work on trauma and violence. She also served on President Clinton’s National Security Council Staff in 1994–95. She was included in Time magazine’s series profiling 100 people with bold ideas.

The film, “The Peacemaker,” starring Nicole Kidman and George Clooney, is based on a fictional version of her work at the National Security Council.  Her new book, Denial: A Memoir of Terror, is published by Ecco, a HarperCollins imprint.

Her PhD is from Harvard University in public policy.