Building Community Resilience to Counter Violent Extremism

The Obama administration's new approach to countering violent extremism through engaging community partners challenges us to make a paradigm shift in how we understand the causes of terrorism. This approach is supported by theory, research findings, practice knowledge, and policy successes. However, for the US government to deliver on its promise of building community resilience, it is necessary to better understand the meanings of resilience as applied to US communities under the threat of violent extremism. The resilience approach will need to attend to the issues of multilevel dimensions, sociocultural context, community collaboration, and the need for further research.