Mia Mellissa Bloom is Professor of Security Studies at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell and the author of Dying to Kill: The Allure of Suicide Terror (NY: Columbia University Press 2005) and Living Together After Ethnic Killing edited with Roy Licklider (London: Routledge 2007) and Bombshell: Women and Terror (U Penn Press 2011). She is a former term member of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) and has held research or teaching appointments at Princeton, Cornell, Harvard, and McGill Universities. Bloom has a PhD in political science from Columbia University, a Masters in Arab Studies from Georgetown University and a Bachelors from McGill University in Russian and Middle East Studies and speaks nine languages. She regularly appears on CNN, Fox News, CSPAN, and NBC Nightly News.

 

Since before the events of 9/11, analysts and experts have debated whether there exist root causes for terrorism. Schools of thought have emerged that poverty and lack of education are the underlying root causes, while others point to the evidence that among many terrorist organizations, members and leaders tend to have higher levels of education and access to sometime great resources. Women and Children are increasingly being drawn into terrorist organizations as operatives. While women have been involved with such groups since the outset, their roles and responsibilities have changed. In recent years, the increase in the number of children participating in front line attacks has taken security personnel and counter terrorism analysts by surprise. Mia Bloom's talk will address the mobilization on non traditional operatives to terrorist organizations and discuss how and why women and children are drawn into the fray. Dr. Bloom is Professor of Security at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell and is the author of Dying to Kill: the Allure of Suicide Terror  and Bombshell: Women and Terrorism.