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Women’s Roles in Terrorist Movements

Fri, Apr 5, 2013, 6:00pm - 8:00pm

You are cordially invited to a lecture on

Women’s Roles in Terrorist Movements

with 
Paula Holmes-Eber, Ph.D.
Professor of Operational Culture at Marine Corps University

and 
Christopher C. Harmon, Ph.D.
IWP Professor
MajGen Matthew C. Horner Chair of Military Theory, Marine Corps University 

Friday, April 5
6:00 PM

The Institute of World Politics
1521 16th Street NW
Washington, DC 20036
Parking map

Registration for this event is now closed.

This event is hosted by IWP’s Student Government Association.  

In the Latin, Asian, Middle Eastern, and European regions, revolutionary political movements have been accepting and deploying women in various and important roles:  cadre; mid-level organizers; intelligence agents; couriers; combatants of many sorts; and suicide bombers.   In unusual cases, women have also held senior leadership posts in undergrounds; a few have run their own terror organizations.  What are the reasons for, and effects of, incorporating females into sub-state fighting organizations?  What are the “lessons learned” for intelligence analysts, military personnel, and students of the social sciences focused on culture and war?

IWP is holding a lecture-and-discussion opening to such issues on Friday, April 5, at 6:00 PM.  The speakers are Dr. Paula Holmes-Eber (anthropologist) and Dr. Christopher C. Harmon (who teaches a terrorism course for IWP).  Both represent Marine Corps University in Quantico, VA.

Paula Holmes-Eber, PH.D.Paula Holmes-Eber, Ph.D. is Professor of Operational Culture at Marine Corps University. She is responsible for creating and teaching curricula on cultural aspects of conflict for all four schools at the university: Expeditionary Warfare School, Command and Staff College, School of Advanced Warfighting and Marine Corps War College. She also supports and advises staff at the Center for Advanced Operational Culture Learning, Quantico, VA on academic matters concerning warfighting and culture, Islam, Arab society and North Africa. 

Dr. Holmes-Eber completed her Master’s and Doctoral degrees in Anthropology from Northwestern University.  She holds a B.A. magna cum laude from Dartmouth College, a Certificate in African Studies from Northwestern University and a Certificate in Tunisian Arabic from the Ecole Bourguiba des Langues Vivantes in Tunis, Tunisia. Her research and expertise focus on kinship and social networks in Arab and Muslim culture in North Africa.

Prior to her current position at Marine Corps University, Dr. Holmes-Eber was an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and a Visiting Scholar in the Middle East Center at the Jackson School of International Studies at the University of Washington. She is fluent in French, Arabic, German and Italian and has lived and traveled in over forty countries around the world including Tunisia, Morocco, Turkey, Israel, Mongolia, China, Taiwan, Japan, Russia and Tonga. 

Dr. Christopher Harmon_2010Christopher C. Harmon, Ph.D. has had 21 years of teaching security studies, strategy, military theory & history, and courses on terrorism at six graduate schools, including a division of National Defense University, and the Naval War College. 

Currently, he teaches Terrorism and Counterterrorism at IWP and is MajGen Matthew C. Horner Chair of Military Theory at Marine Corps University. 

Dr. Harmon has served as Curricula Director for the Program on Terrorism and Security Studies at the George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies in Garmisch Germany.  He has also served as the Kim T. Adamson Chair of Insurgency & Terrorism, Marine Corps University at Quantico, VA, and as Professor of International Relations at the University’s Command and Staff College.  He has done academic research fellowships with the Earhart Foundation; Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace; Claremont Institute. 

Dr. Harmon holds a B.A. in History and French Language from Seattle University, where he graduated summa cum laude, and an M.A. in Government and a Ph.D. in International Relations and Government from Claremont Graduate School.

Dr. Harmon is the author of Terrorism Today, co-author of Toward a Grand Strategy Against Terrorism, and co-editor of Statecraft and Power.  His article “Spain’s ETA Terrorist Group is Dying” was published in the geopolitics journal ORBIS in Fall 2012.