Fredericton Faculty of Arts

Join us for the W.C. Desmond Pacey Memorial Lecture on Wednesday, Feb. 19, at 5:30 p.m. in Tilley Hall - Room 102, UNB Fredericton campus.

"Who Becomes a Jihadi Terrorist, How and Why?" will be presented by Professor Lorne L. Dawson from the University of Waterloo.

The threat of domestic terrorism is a new and ever-present reality, even in Canada. Countering this threat is difficult for many reasons. Counterintuitively, research consistently suggests that most of the young men, and some women, involved in jihadist terrorist plots and attacks in the West are “remarkably ordinary.” Yet these largely indistinguishable individuals engage in extraordinary acts of indiscriminant violence and self-sacrifice. Decades of challenging research into aspects of the process of radicalization leading to violence is beginning to reveal how this transformation happens, and with some specificity in the case of jihadists. This lecture highlights some of the key findings, delineating the complex array of factors that interact in diverse ways, and to differing degrees, to influence the choice to become a violent extremist. 

The lecture, organized by the faculty of arts at UNB's Fredericton campus, is free and open to the public.