Terror in the Name of God: Its Causes, its Sources

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.

Imam Abdullah Antepli is Chief Representative of Muslim Affairs and serves as a faculty member in Islamic Studies at Duke University Divinity School. He previously served as Duke University first Muslim chaplain from July 2008 to 2014. From 1996-2003 he worked on a variety of faith-based humanitarian and relief projects in Myanmar (Burma) and Malaysia with the Association of Social and Economic Solidarity with Pacific Countries. He is the founder and executive board member of the Association of College Muslim Chaplains (ACMC) and a board member of the Association for College and University Religious Affairs (ACURA). From 2003 to 2005 he served as the first Muslim chaplain at Wesleyan University. He then moved to Hartford Seminary in Connecticut, where he was the associate director of the Islamic Chaplaincy Program & Interfaith Relations, as well as an adjunct faculty member.