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Stephanie Kaplan

Former Public Policy Scholar

    Term

    June 1, 2008 — May 1, 2009

    Professional affiliation

    Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Political Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

    Wilson Center Projects

    "The Jihad Effect: How Wars Feed the Global Jihadist Movement"

    Full Biography

    Stephanie Kaplan is a public policy scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and a Ph.D. candidate in political science at MIT. Her research focuses on Islamist extremism and U.S. counterterrorism policy. Kaplan's dissertation, "The Jihad Effect: How Wars Feed the Global Jihadist Movement," explores the impact of war on the jihadist terrorist threat from the Soviet-Afghan War to the present. From 2003-04, she served as special assistant to the executive and deputy directors of the 9/11 Commission, where she was also managing editor of the Commission's final report. From 2000-03, she was assistant director for international security at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). A 2008 New Ideas Fund fellow and a 2007-08 START pre-doctoral fellow, Kaplan has also been a consultant to West Point's Combating Terrorism Center and Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government. Kaplan holds a degree in international politics from Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service, where she graduated Phi Beta Kappa and magna cum laude.
     

    Expertise

    Terrorism; Islamist extremism; U.S. foreign and security policy