William F. Podlich Distinguished Fellows

Academic Year 2016-2017

Fall 2016

Bruce Hoffman is a professor at Georgetown University’s Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service where he is also the director of both the Center for Security Studies and of the Security Studies Masters of Arts Degree Program. He has been studying terrorism and insurgency for nearly four decades. Appointed by the U.S. Congress to serve as a commissioner on the Independent Commission to Review the FBI’s Post-9/11 Response to Terrorism and Radicalization, Professor Hoffman was a lead author of the commission’s final report.

Author of Inside Terrorism (2006), Hoffman’s most recent books include The Evolution of the Global Terrorist Threat: From 9/11 to Osama bin Laden’s Death (2014), and Anonymous Soldiers: The Struggle for Israel, 1917-1947 (2015), which is based on newly available documents from the British, Israeli, and U.S. Archives. During his time on campus, he taught a course on “Terrorism and Counterterrorism” and gave two lectures at the Athenaeum titled “Does Terrorism Work?” and “Is Winter Coming? The Enduring Threats from ISS and al-Qaeda and the Necessary Countermeasures.” He also participated in a lecture and discussion with Professor of Literature Robert von Hallberg on “The Enduring Relevance and Importance of the Film, Zero Dark Thirty,” hosted by the Claremont International Relations Society and the Gould Center.

John Prendergast is the founding director of the Enough Project, an initiative to end genocide and crimes against humanity. He is also the co-founder of the Sentry, a new investigative initiative focused on dismantling the networks financing conflict and atrocities. Prendergast has worked for the Clinton administration, the State Department, two members of Congress, the National Intelligence Council, UNICEF, Human Rights Watch, the International Crisis Group, and the U.S. Institute of Peace. During his time in the US state department, Prendergast was an instrumental part of a team that mediated, and ended, the 1998-2000 war between Ethiopia and Eritrea, the deadliest war in the world at the time.

Since then, Prendergast has made it his mission to combat mass atrocities in Africa. His latest book, Unlikely Brothers: Our Story of Adventure, Loss, and Redemption (2012), is a dual memoir co-authored with his first little brother in the Big Brother program—a program in which he has been involved for over 25 years. His previous two books were co-authored with Don Cheadle, Not On Our Watch: The Mission to End Genocide in Darfur and Beyond (2007), a New York Times bestseller and NAACP non-fiction book of the year, and The Enough Moment: Fighting to End Africa's Worst Human Rights Crimes (2010). In the Fall semester, he participated in film, panel, and classroom discussions and presented many talks on the topic of human rights, including his Athenaeum lecture titled, “New Approaches to Countering War and Atrocities in Africa.”