Provost Initiative on Contemporary Issues: Understanding Domestic Terrorism

UCI Provost Initiative on Contemporary Issues: Understanding Domestic Terrorism

As part of our efforts to advance and expand the Confronting Extremism program, the Provost Initiative on Contemporary Issues: Understanding Domestic Terrorism requests UCI senate faculty proposals that explore the origins and sources, causes and consequences, methods and modalities, representations and discourses, and responses to and engagement with domestic terrorism .

As background, our national attention is now drawn to the looming challenge of domestic terrorism. With a distressing increase in ideologically motivated mass shootings or killings, we have reached a tipping point that threatens to have merciless impacts on our collective civil institutions, democratic values and multi-cultural society.

This topic also raises questions about the contemporary conditions and/or distinctive historical patterns that concern the meaning and use of violence to achieve political goals or objectives.

The very term “domestic terrorism” assumes a fixed interior jurisdiction of the nation-state, the scope of the rule of law, the credibility of political institutions, the consistency of the rights and responsibilities of citizens, and clarity about legitimate and illegitimate uses of violence. Like other countries, the United States has a long history that presents a far more complicated picture.

In varying circumstances, national and state governments, formal and informal organizations, and aligned and non-aligned individuals have used violence as a means to define or subvert the boundaries and interests of the nation-state; to police or consolidate the contours of citizenship; and to defend or devalue people and communities and their right to exist. In other words, exploring the meaning of domestic terrorism opens a lens through which to understand the making of “us and them” through violence.

CALL FOR PROPOSALS

The Provost Initiative on Contemporary Issues: Understanding Domestic Terrorism requests UCI Senate faculty proposals that explore the origins and sources, causes and consequences, methods and modalities, representations and discourses, and responses to and engagement with domestic terrorism.

Proposal Deadline Extended! Due by 5 p.m. Pacific time on Monday, December 2, 2019, at the "Application" tab above.

The call is open to all fields and disciplines, spanning the UCI academic schools/units. Proposals that address civil, political and human rights as they relate to communities and individuals based on ability, ethnicity, gender, immigration status and nationality, race, religious beliefs, and sexual orientation and gender expression—among other categories—are especially encouraged.

The call welcomes proposals for single investigator or multi-investigator projects to advance the core research, teaching and service mission of the university. This ranges from research and/or creative activities, conferences, workshops, performances, installations or exhibitions; course development, pedagogical innovations, or master classes; to community engagement events. Special consideration will be given to proposals that approach domestic terrorism through inter- and intra-school collaborations, interdisciplinary and multi-disciplinary vantage points and/or partner with participating research centers and the university library.

Please direct questions to: inclusion@uci.edu.