Stern on Trump’s Immigration Executive Order
Jessica Stern, Research Professor at the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University, published an Op-Ed in which she argues that President Donald Trump’s executive order “Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry Into the United States,” actually makes the United States less safe.
Stern’s Op-Ed, entitled “Trump’s Executive Order Will Make Us Less Safe,” was published in The Boston Globe on January 30, 2017.
From the text of the Op-Ed:
Will the executive order, “Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry Into the United States” make us safer?
On the contrary, it’s likely to make us less safe. On social media sites, jihadis are already celebrating Trump’s executive order as a “blessed ban,” comparable to President Bush’s invasion of Iraq. That war, launched in response to the 9/11 strikes, increased terrorism in the region dramatically, and jihadis still celebrate it.
Why would President Trump play into jihadis’ hands in this way? He is exploiting Americans’ fear. No nonstate enemy — ISIS or any other — poses an existential threat to the continued viability of our country. And yet, according to the sixth, and latest, annual American Values Survey, Americans are increasingly concerned about the country’s future, anxious about terrorism, and nostalgic for an imagined, more secure past.
You can read the entire Op-Ed here.
Stern’s main focus is on perpetrators of violence and the possible connections between trauma and terror. She has written on terrorist groups across religions and ideologies, among them neo-Nazis, Islamists, anarchists, and white supremacists. She has also written about counter-radicalization programs for both neo-Nazi and Islamist terrorists. Learn more about her here.