START Director William Braniff was one of six subject matter experts to brief the White House Homeland Security Advisor, Dr. Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall, and members of her National Security Council (NSC) team this month.
Braniff and experts from academic organizations and NGOs provided their assessment of the domestic violent extremism threat landscape and its implications on the one-year anniversary of the Biden Administration’s Domestic Terrorism Strategy.
“Fortunately, I was able to draw on and share incredibly rigorous and timely research from the START team,” Braniff said. “This includes research briefs on hate crime perpetrators, QAnon-related crimes, the Proud Boys, anti- Muslim terrorism in the United States, and a social network analysis of those arrested for the January 6 insurrection, as well as forthcoming work on militia extremism.”
In follow-up dialogue, Braniff was able to emphasize START research findings on the importance of a public health approach to extremist violence prevention, and the importance of treating hate crime as a national security issue on par with terrorism.
“Our being at the table is a testament to the importance of longitudinal data collection that is agnostic to the motivating ideology at a given moment – the threat landscape evolves and new threats emerge,” Braniff said.