Mary Beth Altier, Ph.D.
marybeth.altier@nyu.edu
Associate Professor
New York University
About Me:
Dr. Mary Beth Altier is an Associate Professor at New York University’s Center for Global Affairs where she directs the Masters’ degree concentration in Transnational Security and Initiative on Emerging Threats. She received her PhD and MA in Politics from Princeton University and BAs in Mathematics and History from Drew University.Dr. Altier’s research interests are in political violence, political behavior, international security, nationalism, and ethnic conflict. She has over ten years’ experience researching the disengagement and reintegration of violent extremists. This work includes large-scale literature reviews, the compilation and analysis of quantitative datasets, and in-depth interviews with individuals across a range of violent extremist ideologies (far right, Islamist, ethno-nationalist). Dr. Altier’s other research focuses on identifying the causes of popular support for political violence, and armed parties in particular, in developed and developing democracies. That research received the American Political Science Association’s Ernst B. Haas Award and the European Politics and Society Section’s Best Paper Award. Dr. Altier’s research has been published in a number of journals including the Journal of Peace Research, Security Studies, Terrorism and Political Violence, and Studies in Conflict and Terrorism. She serves on the Editorial Board of Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, the ICCT Journal, and Behavioral Sciences of Terrorism and Political Aggression and is a member of the RESOLVE Network’s Research Advisory Council and the AVERT Research Network. Dr. Altier has been invited to present her research to various government audiences and international organizations including NATO, Europol, and the UN. She has also published in The Washington Post and Lawfare and been quoted in various media outlets including WIRED, USA Today, Vox, The Daily Beast, Pittsburgh Post Gazette, and Minneapolis Star Tribune.
Research Interests
Terrorism
Political Violence
Conflict Processes & War
Elections, Election Administration, and Voting Behavior
Foreign Policy
Terrorist Decision-Making
Violence And Voting
Radical Political Parties
Disengagement And Deradicalization
Terrorist Reengagement/Recidivism
Radicalization
Countries of Interest
United Kingdom
United States
Lebanon
Spain
Publications:
Journal Articles:
The potential threat posed by returning and repatriated foreign fighters and the upcoming release of homegrown violent extremists from prisons in developed democracies has raised interest in terrorist rehabilitation programs. Few studies, however, systematically examine how the public views such programs. Drawing on research on public attitudes toward prisoner reentry in criminology and social psychological theory, this study offers a series of hypotheses about support for rehabilitation programming for terrorist offenders. These hypotheses are then tested through a survey experiment on a nationally representative sample of 1,021 adult citizens in the United States. The results show that the public is less supportive of postrelease rehabilitation programming for terrorists than other criminal offenders. Support is also lower when an Islamist, rather than a white nationalist, offender is referenced. Support increases when a referenced Islamist is described as a juvenile convicted of a less serious offense. Men, younger individuals, those with some college education, and self-identified liberals are more likely to support terrorist rehabilitation programming. Finally, irrespective of treatment, respondents are most likely to cite evidence of effectiveness as the factor that would increase their support for rehabilitation programming.
A response to Marc Sageman's "On Recidivism"
Research pays little attention to the diverse roles individuals hold within terrorism. This limits our understanding of the varied experiences of the terrorist and their implications. This study examines how a terrorist’s role(s) influence the likelihood of and reasons for disengagement. Using data from autobiographies and in-person interviews with former terrorists, we find that role conflict and role strain increase the probability of disengagement. We show those in certain roles, especially leadership and violent roles, incur greater sunk costs and possess fewer alternatives making exit less likely. Finally, certain roles are associated with the experience of different push/pull factors for disengagement.
Recent interest in terrorist risk assessment and rehabilitation reveals the likelihood and risk factors for terrorist reengagement and recidivism are poorly understood. Informed by advances in criminology, this study develops a series of theoretical starting points and hypotheses. We test our hypotheses using data on 185 terrorist engagement events, drawn from eighty-seven autobiographical accounts, representing over seventy terrorist groups. We find terrorist reengagement and recidivism rates are relatively high in our sample and similar to criminal recidivism rates except in the case of collective, voluntary disengagements when an entire group chooses to disarm. We account for why we observe relatively high rates in this sample. With regard to risk factors, we find terrorists are less likely to reengage as they age. Radical beliefs and connections to associates involved in terrorism increase the likelihood of reengagement. Social achievements (marriage, children, employment) do not commonly serve as protective factors, at least in the short term, when controlling for beliefs and connections. Finally, those from an upper or middle-class childhood family are less likely to reengage.
A deeper understanding of terrorist disengagement offers important insights for policymakers and practitioners seeking to persuade individuals to leave these groups. Current research highlights the importance of certain “push” and “pull” factors in explaining disengagement. However, such studies tell us very little about the relative frequencies at which these hypothesized factors are associated with leaving in the terrorist population. Using data collected from eighty-seven autobiographical accounts, we find that push, rather than pull, factors aremore commonly cited as playing a large role in individuals’ disengagement decisions and that the experience of certain push factors increases the probability an individual will choose to leave. Importantly, disillusionment with the group’s strategy or actions, disagreements with group leaders or members, dissatisfaction with one’s day-to-day tasks, and burnout are more often reported as driving disengagement decisions than de-radicalization. Finally, our results suggest that ideological commitmentmay moderate one’s susceptibility to pull factors.
This article presents a case study of one individual's trajectory through violent right-wing extremism in the USA. Drawing on an in-depth in-person interview conducted with ‘Sarah', we trace the influences affecting the nature and extent of her involvement, engagement and disengagement. We focus on delineating the complexity of Sarah's disengagement from violent extremism. Her account supports several claims in the literature. First, there is rarely any single cause associated with individual disengagement. Rather, the phenomenon is a dynamic process shaped by a multitude of interacting push/pull factors, sunk costs and the perceived availability of alternatives outside the group. Second, as this case illustrates, prison affords physical separation from the violent extremist group and with it, time to reflect which may be critical to sustaining disengagement. Third, this account illustrates how de-radicalization may be a long-term process, and may in some cases supersede rather than precede one's exit, even where disillusionment precedes disengagement. Finally, Sarah's case suggests the successful adoption of a new social role and sense of identity as a potentially important protective factor in reducing the risk of re-engagement.
Although research on violent extremism traditionally focuses on why individuals become involved in terrorism, recent efforts have started to tackle the question of why individuals leave terrorist groups. Research on terrorist disengagement, however, remains conceptually and theoretically underdeveloped. In an effort to enhance our understanding of disengagement from terrorism and pave the way for future empirical work, this article provides a multidisciplinary review of related research from psychology, sociology, and criminology. Significant promise for moving beyond the existing push/pull framework is found in Rusbult and colleagues’ investment model from psychology and Ebaugh’s research on voluntary role exit from sociology. Rusbult’s investment model offers insight into when and why individuals disengage from terrorism, while accounting for individual, group, and macro-level differences in the satisfaction one derives from involvement, the investments incurred, and the alternatives available. Ebaugh’s research on voluntary role exit provides a deeper understanding of how people leave, including the emotions and cuing behavior likely to be involved. The article highlights the strengths and limitations of these frameworks in explaining exit and exit processes across a variety of social roles, including potentially the terrorist role, and lends additional insights into terrorist disengagement through a review of related research on desistance from crime, disaffiliation from new religious movements, and turnover in traditional work organizations.
We remain steadfast in our belief that terrorist risk reduction programs informed by the processes we highlight here hold great promise. Significant challenges in assessing the effectiveness of terrorist risk reduction programs remain, but we believe the critical rate-limiting factor in their continuing development is whether or not the individual assessment of detainees is informed by a deeper understanding of the disengagement (as opposed to de-radicalization) and re-engagement processes. Effective risk reduction initiatives for the imprisoned terrorist must also take into account the individual’s personal trajectory, or “arc,” of involvement, engagement, and disengagement. A treatment program to promote reduced risk of involvement may require addressing very different sets of issues depending on the individual in question. The most important considerations must include individuals’ initial motivations for becoming involved, the idiosyncratic experiences and meaning they derived from their involvement, and their own pathway out of the group. Though disengagement may be voluntary or involuntary, identifying and addressing those individual-level experiences is critical to developing a person-specific, and not doctrine-specific, prioritization of treatment objectives to reduce risk of re-engagement. Additionally, it is difficult to see how any risk reduction program can reliably predict reengagement in terrorism without being able to acknowledge that the grievances held by detainees are, in their eyes, legitimate and highly meaningful. An attempt at de-radicalizing a detainee that is not cognizant of these issues is doomed to failure. There is a current danger that unless we find ways to ensure that terrorist risk reduction programs retain a firm footing they may be relegated to the ever-increasing trash heap of silver bullet solutions in counterterrorism. De-radicalization programs can never be expected to fix terrorism or all those who participate in it. Yet, helping bring terrorist risk reduction initiatives into an evidence-led, rigorous framework informed by a deeper understanding of the factors and processes that underpin terrorist disengagement and reengagement will bring with it benefits that are too great to ignore.
Despite the growth of terrorism literature in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, there remain several methodological challenges to studying certain aspects of terrorism. This is perhaps most evident in attempts to uncover the attitudes, motivations, and intentions of individuals engaged in violent extremism and how they are sometimes expressed in problematic behavior. Such challenges invariably stem from the fact that terrorists and the organizations to which they belong represent clandestine populations engaged in illegal activity. Unsurprisingly, these qualities make it difficult for the researcher to identify and locate willing subjects of study—let alone a representative sample. In this research note, we suggest the systematic analysis of terrorist autobiographies offers a promising means of investigating difficult-to-study areas of terrorism-related phenomena. Investigation of autobiographical accounts not only offers additional data points for the study of individual psychological issues, but also provides valuable perspectives on the internal structures, processes, and dynamics of terrorist organizations more broadly. Moreover, given most autobiographies cover critical events and personal experiences across the life course, they provide a unique lens into how terrorists perceive their world and insight into their decision-making processes. We support our advocacy of this approach by highlighting its methodological strengths and shortcomings.
Other:
Recent questions surrounding the repatriation, rehabilitation, and reintegration of those who traveled to join the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), the reintegration of violent extremists in conflict zones including Somalia, Nigeria, Libya, and Mali, and the impending release of scores of homegrown violent extremists from prisons in the United States and Europe have heightened policymaker and practitioner interest in violent extremist disengagement and reintegration (VEDR). Although a number of programs to reintegrate violent extremists have emerged both within and outside of conflict zones, significant questions remain regarding their design, implementation, and effectiveness. To advance our understanding of VEDR, this report draws insights from a review of the literature on ex-combatant disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration (DDR). The literature on DDR typically adopts a “whole of society” approach, which helps us to understand how systemic factors may influence VEDR at the individual level and outcomes at the societal level. Despite the important differences that will be reviewed, the international community’s thirty-year experience with DDR—which includes working with violent extremists—offers important insights for our understanding of VEDR.
Editor’s Note: Thousands of individuals suspected of belonging to the Islamic State remain in detention camps with no prospect of either release or a trial in sight. New York University’s Mary Beth Altier examines this challenge, drawing on lessons from the reintegration of other former combatants. She warns that indefinite detention can worsen reintegration problems and spells out the conditions that make successful reintegration more likely.
Media Appearances:
Newspaper Quotes:
"If someone you care about has been radicalized, here’s what to know.”
“This woman turned away from violent right-wing extremism.”
"A violent culture: the roots of radicalization run deep."
"Can Trump's hard-core fans be de-radicalized?"
“Launched after Minnesota court cases, first U.S. deradicalization program shows promise”
"Should ISIS brides and children return to their home nations?"
“How Robert Bowers Went from Conservative to White Nationalist"
"Can you turn a terrorist back into a citizen?"
"The radicalization of white Americans - We need to talk about homegrown extremism too."
Blog Posts:
Lessons for Reintegrating Islamic State Detainees
The London Bridge knife attacker was a bad risk for release. Here’s why. Our research helps reveal which terrorists can be rehabilitated — and which might not be.