Jenna Jordan, associate professor and director of graduate studies in the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs, published a book in 2019 titled Leadership Decapitation: Strategic Targeting of Terrorist Organizations. The book examines how and why some terrorist groups continue to succeed without their leader while others fall apart. Recently, four academics and researchers gathered to discuss and review Jordan’s book in a roundtable.

Reviewers analyzed Jordan’s research and proposed frameworks for such issues as the limitations of decapitation strikes, leader targeting, and the scope of leadership decapitation.

“Jordan’s work raises a number of important questions, such as when and why decapitation happens and what the distinctions are between terrorist groups and insurgencies,” wrote reviewer Megan Stewart, an associate professor at American University. “These questions offer a number of promising avenues for future scholarship.”