And now how education impacts how people define terrorism. 50 free copies of the new article available here: tandfonline.com/eprint/G4TDB... /9

2) How education decreases the fear of terrorism (JCR 2022) journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/... /8

This is the final article in a trilogy in which 1) we examined how education impacts how people think about the perpetrators of political violence (JEPG 2017): www.peterjpkrause.com/_files/ugd/7...

Our findings reveal how the uninformed public’s lack of specificity on perpetrators and victims enables the idea that “one person’s terrorist is another person’s freedom fighter,” but also how education can change those definitions and, perhaps, their application /6

The more that students and the public learn about terrorism, the more they define it as a rational act (though not a moral one). /5

Although other studies identify the religion of the perpetrator (especially Islam) as perhaps the most significant element in implicit, revealed definitions of terrorism, almost no students or members of the public mentioned religion/Islam in their explicit, stated definitions /4

We found that students and the public initially define terrorism as being committed by non-state actors and targeting civilians at a far lower rate than do academics and governments. Those percentages increase after students/the public take courses, watch lectures on terrorism /3

We gathered evidence from an extensive series of experimental and observational surveys involving students in 31 terrorism and non-terrorism related courses at 12 universities, as well as online survey experiments of the general public. /2

Fair

50 free copies of the article here www.tandfonline.com/eprint/HNVJR...

This is part of an amazing special issue of Conflict, Security, and Development edited by Christine Cheng + Christopher Day with great articles @susannacampbell.bsky.social @meganturnbull.bsky.social @janetilewis.bsky.social
@kaimthaler.bsky.social @joehud.bsky.social others not yet @bsky.app

We then spell out how proximate, impartial research can be successfully executed across different phases of the research process. We conclude by offering a blueprint for a methodologically pluralistic community to generate a more comprehensive understanding of political outcomes.

Despite the challenges it brings, we use our own experiences studying civil wars in Latin America, the Middle East, and North Africa to demonstrate the plausibility and benefits of a fourth approach – proximate impartiality – which navigates this tension head on.

Each of these approaches to mitigate the tension between impartiality and proximity possesses different – and often complementary – strengths and weaknesses (which we describe in the article).

We present the theoretical and practical tensions between impartiality and proximity and introduce three ideal-type approaches that scholars utilize in response: avoiding proximity, shunning impartiality, or eschewing both

When conducting research and fieldwork on civil war, it is not only challenging to remain impartial or get physically and emotionally close to conflict participants, but it is especially difficult to do both, given that more of one often requires – or leads to – less of the other