Biography provided by participant
Professor Bruce Hoffman has been studying terrorism and insurgency for more than thirty years. He is currently a tenured professor in the Security Studies Program at Georgetown University’s Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, Washington, DC. Hoffman previously held the Corporate Chair in Counterterrorism and Counterinsurgency at the RAND Corporation and was also Director of RAND’s Washington, D.C. Office. From 2001 to 2004, he served as RAND’s Vice President for External Affairs and in 2004 he also was Acting Director of RAND’s Center for Middle East Public Policy.
Hoffman was Scholar-in-Residence for Counterterrorism at the Central Intelligence Agency between 2004 and 2006. He was also adviser on counterterrorism to the Office of National Security Affairs, Coalition Provisional Authority, Baghdad, Iraq during the spring of 2004 and from 2004-2005 was an adviser on counterinsurgency to the Strategy, Plans, and Analysis Office at Multi-National Forces-Iraq Headquarters, Baghdad. Hoffman was also an adviser to the Iraq Study Group. Hoffman recently returned from Afghanistan, where he visited Khowst, Paktia, Kunar, and Nuristan Provinces to observe the operations of the 82nd Airborne and Provincial Reconstruction Teams under its command, and Pakistan, where he toured Pakistani military training facilities and divisional headquarters in the North West Frontier Province.
Hoffman is a Senior Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Washington, D.C.; a Senior Fellow at the Combating Terrorism Center, U.S. Military Academy, West Point, NY; a Distinguished Fellow and Senior Advisor on International Security Programs at the Institute of Public and International Affairs, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT; a Visiting Professor at the Institute for Counter-Terrorism, Interdisciplinary Center, Herzliya, Israel; and, a Visiting Professor at the S. Rajaratnum School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. He is also a contributing editor to The National Interest.
Hoffman is a member of the Advisory Committee of the Terrorism and Counterterrorism Program, Human Rights Watch, New York, NY; a member of the Singapore Ministry of Home Affairs Home Team Academy Advisory Panel; a member of the Jamestown Foundation’s Board of Directors; and serves on the advisory boards to the Arms Sales Monitoring Project at the Federation of American Scientists and of Our Voices Together: September 11 Friends and Families to Help Build a Safer, More Compassionate World.
Hoffman was the founding Director of the Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence at the University of St Andrews in Scotland, where he was also Reader in International Relations and Chairman of the Department of International Relations. Hoffman is Editor-in-Chief of Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, the leading scholarly journal in the field. and a member of the advisory boards of Terrorism and Political Violence and the Review of International Studies.
Hoffman holds degrees in government, history, and international relations and received his doctorate from Oxford University. In November 1994, the Director of Central Intelligence awarded Hoffman the United States Intelligence Community Seal Medallion the highest level of commendation given to a non-government employee, which recognizes sustained superior performance of high value that distinctly benefits the interests and national security of the United States.
Hoffman has conducted field work on terrorism and insurgency in Afghanistan, Argentina, Colombia, India (Kashmir and Assam), Indonesia, Israel, Iraq, Northern Ireland, Pakistan (North West Frontier Province), the Philippines (Mindanao), Palestine (the West Bank and Gaza Strip), Sri Lanka, and Turkey.
A revised and updated edition of his acclaimed 1998 book, Inside Terrorism, was published in May 2006 by Columbia University Press in the U.S. and S. Fischer Verlag in Germany. Foreign language editions of the first edition have been published in ten countries. The Washington Post described Inside Terrorism as "brilliant" and the "best one volume introduction to the phenomenon" (16 July 2006).
Hoffman was a Fellow and C. V. Starr Distinguished Visitor at the American Academy of Berlin, Germany during the fall, 2006 and a Visiting Fellow at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, Canberra, Australia during the summer, 2007. He recently was elected to be a Visiting Fellow at All Souls College, Oxford University for Michaelmas Term 2009.
