Charles Kurzman

Muslim-American Involvement with Violent Extremism, 2001-2024

Examine the data for yourself here. A full collection of past reports is available here.
Fatalities in the U.S. from Muslim-American involvement with violent extremism since 9/11: 162 (including vehicle attack in New Orleans on January 1, 2025).
Victims of murder in the U.S. since 9/11, according to the FBI’s Expanded Homicide Offense Counts: 389,516.

The Self-Orientalizing Republic of Iran

Charles Kurzman, “The Self-Orientalizing Republic of Iran,” Review Essay, Perspectives on Politics, Vol. 22, No. 4, pp. 1291-1296, December 2024. One of the main themes of the “Women, Life, Freedom” movement in Iran was a desire for “normalcy” — a life not governed by Islamic authorities, a life where people can dance in alleys, as the anthem of the uprising put it. The government of Iran, for its part, agrees that Iran is not “normal” — and it rejects international norms of normalcy. “They say, ‘Come on, be a normal country,'” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the leader of the Islamic Republic, has said. “A normal country means a country that conforms to the structures of global domination.” More…

The Cold War against the Cold War

Charles Kurzman, “The Cold War against the Cold War,” Social Science History, online pre-publication, October 4, 2024. The Cold War was not the only large-scale geopolitical struggle to play out on the global stage in the decades after World War II. This was also the era of decolonization, when some of the world’s largest empires were forced to recognize the sovereignty of their captive nations. One of the first foreign policy priorities of many newly independent nations was to reject the Cold War. More…

The Strange Career of Millian Methods

Charles Kurzman, “The Strange Career of Millian Methods,” Social Forces, online pre-publication, July 5, 2024. In 1970, few social scientists had heard of Mill’s methods for comparative research. Within a decade, Mill’s methods of agreement and difference had become part of the methodological canon — despite Mill’s objections that these methods should under no circumstances be used in the social sciences. More… (Online appendix.)

An Illegal Majority

Charles Kurzman, “An Illegal Majority,” April 10, 2024. The Republican majority in the U.S. House of Representatives currently stands at 218-213. But this majority is tainted: at least four of the Republican districts have been thrown out by the courts as racist gerrymanders. If the 2022 elections had used legal maps, Democrats would have a slight majority, not Republicans. … And if the House majority is illegitimate, how can the House’s actions be considered legitimate? More…

Muslim-American Involvement with Violent Extremism, 2001-2023

A full collection of past reports is available here.

Introducing the ACSS Dataverse

Charles Kurzman, Seteney Shami, and Neil Ketchley, “Introducing the ACSS Dataverse,” MENA Politics Newsletter, Vol. 6, No. 1, Spring 2023, pp. 13-17. It is a common complaint: researchers cannot access high-quality statistical data for countries in the Arab region. To address this, the Arab Council for the Social Sciences (ACSS) has launched a broad interdisciplinary data archive for social science research datasets, the ACSS Dataverse, which allows researchers and institutions both to deposit and access research data on the Arab region. More…

U.S. Domestic Terrorism Prosecutions: The Reality Behind the Government’s Inflated Numbers

Faiza Patel and Charles Kurzman, “U.S. Domestic Terrorism Prosecutions: The Reality Behind the Government’s Inflated Numbers,” Just Security, May 8, 2023. Over the last decade, the Department of Justice has asked Congress for more than $500 million to pay for terrorism-related prosecutions. These funds support more than 300 positions in the U.S. Attorneys Offices around the country, which claim to have won more than 2,000 domestic terrorism-related convictions in this time. Unfortunately, data released by DOJ in litigation that we brought some five years ago shows that these numbers are wildly inflated. More…

Muslim-American Involvement with Violent Extremism, 2001-2022