Sarkar Published Op-Ed on Domestic Nuclear Terrorism
Jayita Sarkar, Assistant Professor of International Relations at the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University, published an op-ed in the Washington Post discussing the threat of domestic nuclear terrorism in the United States.
The article, titled “It’s time to take domestic nuclear terrorism seriously,” examines why the Biden administration needs to move away from the 1970s understanding of nuclear terrorism as the threat of radical Islam from outside of U.S. borders. She argues that the new administration needs to pay close attention to apocalyptically-minded White supremacists who have been calling for nuclear attacks on non-White people also since the 1970s.
An excerpt:
The key to preventing such a catastrophic attack will be moving beyond a one-dimensional understanding of terrorism as the violent threat of radical Islam, and better understanding the different ways in which far-right domestic terrorism has grown in the United States and the specific threats this brings. Despite ample evidence to support the concern that insider threats pose high security risks in nuclear and radiological environments, little has been done at the policy level.
The full op-ed can be read on The Washington Post‘s website.
Jayita Sarkar is Assistant Professor at Boston University’s Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies, where she is also the founding director of the Global Decolonization Initiative. She teaches diplomatic and political history at graduate and undergraduate levels. Professor Sarkar’s areas of research expertise are 20th century South Asia, history of U.S. foreign relations, politics of nuclear technologies, and connected partitions. Her book, Ploughshares & Swords: India’s Nuclear Program in the Global Cold War, (Forthcoming, Cornell University Press, 2022), examines the first forty years of India’s nuclear program through the prisms of geopolitics and technopolitics. Read more about Professor Sarkar on her faculty profile.