By now, we’re all familiar with Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s condemnation of Liberal leader Justin Trudeau’s remarks about seeking the root causes of terrorism.
When Paul Wells of Maclean’s noted last week that the federal government is paying $10 million over five years to fund exactly that kind of research, the Conservative spin on Trudeau’s remarks evolved to focus on their timing, coming as they did in the hours after the Boston Marathon terror attacks. That is, it wasn’t the right time to talk about causes.
But Harper doubled back on the original theme Thursday when asked by Canadian Press reporter Stephanie Levitz when, in his view, it was okay to talk about the causes of terrorism. Harper responded that we should not “commit sociology,” lifting a turn-of-phrase from a W.H. Auden poem that was later popularized by conservative columnist George Will.
How odd, then, to find that the federal government Harper leads is, in fact, paying lots of money — to a sociologist, no less — to study the reasons that motivate terrorism.
Through the Canada Research Chairs program, the feds last year put up $500,000 for Laval University social sciences and humanities professor Aurélie Campana for research intended to “improve understanding of why some individuals and groups resort to terrorism.”
I’m not making this up.
The Canada Chair money will fund Campana’s research over five years. She was also funded from 2007 to 2012 through the same program.
Asked by email what she thought of Harper’s remarks, Campana responded, “To answer (too) briefly your question, I consider terrorism as one of the security problems of our time and think that it is legitimate to do research on it to better explain how individuals and groups radicalize and why they eventually resort to terrorism.”
More on Campana’s research, from the listing on the website of the Canada Research Chairs:
HOW TERRORIST GROUPS GET THEIR START
Terrorism is now considered one of the greatest threats to the security of individuals and states. However, while terrorism is often in the news, it is not a new phenomenon. On the contrary, terrorism has been part of the evolutionary fabric of many societies.
Dr. Aurélie Campana, Canada Research Chair in Conflicts and Terrorism, is attempting to better understand how and why certain groups attempt to use terrorist tactics to further their goals. She is using a comparative approach that involves studying a number of active and inactive terrorist groups to explore how they made the transition to terrorist violence.
Campana is focusing primarily on little-analyzed aspects of terrorism, such as the relationship it has with other forms of violent and non-violent protest, as well as the generational dynamics involved in terrorism, and the response of governments to violence.
Campana’s research aims to contribute to the advancement of knowledge about terrorism. It will provide political decision-makers with ideas that can be implemented to prevent terrorist acts.
Original Article
Source: blogs.ottawacitizen.com
Author: Glen McGregor
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