The Hill recently featured Ford School faculty expertise on domestic and international security and counterterrorism. Javed Ali, Towsley Policymaker in Residence at the Ford School, discusses domestic terrorism and the United States’ role in Iranian counterterrorism efforts in op-eds on December 28 and January 9, respectively.
In his first op-ed, Taking concrete steps to address domestic terrorism, Ali asserts that the Executive Branch and Congress made combatting domestic terrorism a priority in recent years. Ali helped shape the National Security Council’s 2018 counterterrorism strategy and is encouraged that “there are signs FBI and DHS increased their focus on the topic [domestic counterterrorism], in addition to heightened attention from Congress.”
Ali then addressed the U.S.-Iran crisis in his second op-ed, Iran crisis presents counterterrorism risks and opportunities. He agrees that the U.S. should leverage U.S.-Iran’s “shared priority” of defeating ISIS to address counterterrorism, according to the Trump Administration.
National security expertise was highlighted in an op-ed, The high costs of a precipitous US withdrawal from Afghanistan, on January 4. The piece, written by Ali; John Ciorciari, associate professor at the Ford School; Ryan Van Wie, MPP candidate at the Ford School; and University of Virginia associate professor Phil Potter, warns of hasty U.S. troop withdrawal in Afghanistan. The authors contend that if the U.S. pulls troops before brokering an “effective agreement”, “Afghanistan may fall back under the heel of Taliban repression or slide back into civil war.”
John Ciorciari is an associate professor at the University of Michigan’s Ford School of Public Policy and director of the Weiser Diplomacy Center.
Javed Ali is a Towsley Policymaker in Residence at the Ford School of Public Policy and served as Senior Counterterrorism Director on the National Security Council from 2017-2018.
CPT Ryan Van Wie is a U.S. Army infantry officer, Master of Public Policy candidate at the Ford School of Public Policy, and future international affairs instructor in the Department of Social Science at West Point.
Phil Potter is an associate professor at the University of Virginia’s Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy and director of the National Security Policy Center.