Bruce Hoffman Considers, Does Terrorism Work?

Bruce Hoffman has spent nearly 40 years studying how terrorism affects government policy and decisionmaking. He is the director of the Center for Security Studies at Georgetown University and the author of Anonymous Soldiers: The Struggle for Israel, 1917–1947, a book that draws on newly declassified documents from the U.K., the U.S., and Israel to define Arab and Jewish terrorism between 1917 and 1947 and describe how it influenced Britain's day-to-day policies and, finally, its decision to surrender the mandate for Palestine to the UN. Bruce previously held the Corporate Chair in Counterterrorism and Counterinsurgency at RAND and was also director of RAND's Washington office. From 2001 to 2004 he served as RAND’s vice president for external affairs, and in 2004 he was acting director of the RAND Center for Middle East Public Policy.

Recently, he joined Dalia Dassa Kaye, the current director of the RAND Center for Middle East Public Policy, at a donor event to discuss what he discovered in the process of researching his book.

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Bruce Hoffman (right) and Dalia Dassa Kaye

Bruce Hoffman (right) and Dalia Dassa Kaye discussed "Does Terrorism Work" at a recent Policy Circle event

Photo by Diane Baldwin/RAND