Be Careful What You Ask For: 10 Years at START

Much has changed since the first COE meeting I attended in Boston in 2005—when all of the directors and their support staff and the DHS team could meet in a local Starbucks.  But the mission of START has been the same since we began more than a decade ago: to advance the science-based knowledge about the human causes and consequences of terrorism.  As many of you in the audience will know, for whatever reasons, social and behavioral sciences were slow to get into the field of terrorism studies.  On the day after 9-11, no one on the planet had systematically collected data on total world trends in terrorism.  No one could tell you for sure how much extremist violence there was in the United States and whether it was increasing or declining.  No one could provide a catalogue of major responses of governments to countering terrorism and which of these were most successful.  The START Consortium now provides evidence based answers to questions like these.