Norwich University Newsroom

By Sean Markey

Category: News

January 25, 2018

The author, journalist and former Al Qaeda hostage speaks with Norwich professors Sean Prentiss and Travis Morris about Al Qaeda, U.S. policy, and why the region's children will determine our safety.

BY SEAN MARKEY | NU Office of Communications

October 25, 2017

American journalist and author Theo Padnos was captured by Al Qaeda forces in Syria in 2012. A fluent Arabic speaker, he was tortured and imprisoned for two years. Following his unlikely release, Padnos recounted his experience for the New York Times Sunday Magazine and, later, in the 2016 documentary, Theo Who Lived.

Last month, the Paris-based writer visited the Norwich campus to kick off the 2017-18 Norwich University Writers Series. His appearance was cosponsored by the Department of English and the Peace and War Center (PAWC) at Norwich University. Between classroom visits and a public lecture, Padnos sat down with author and Associate Professor of English Sean Prentiss and PAWC director and terrorism scholar Prof. Travis Morris to share his insights and experience. Excerpts:

MORRIS: In class, you talked about how (Middle East) policy is affecting the view of America and how people interact with us.

PADNOS: I think the thing that (students) might not be getting from the general news media is that we have been on the wrong side of this war, at least in Syria. We have been kind of supporting the rebels. The rebels, they're not all that friendly. They can look like moderate guys. But inside, they're not that moderate. Some of the stuff I've been writing lately has been about (the fact that) after four years of bombing, even if a guy wants to be a moderate, he's not that moderate anymore. He wants revenge. His wife has been killed-and his kids. Or he's seen his neighbor's kids killed.

Do you have any insight into how to stop extremists in the region?

PADNOS: We need to persuade the civilian population from which the extremist groups draw their soldiers--the children. At the moment, they are indoctrinating and focused and just completely prepared. They have a solid, effective strategy for bringing eight-year-olds into the psychology of the Islamic State. It's their hearts and minds. I often felt all the (adults) are gone. We're not getting those people back. It's a competition for the next generation.

They know this too. They would often take me out of my cell and say … "We're doing this for little Ahmed here. He's six. See him with his little Kalashnikov over there? He's gonna build the next Islamic State. He'll be our future." So in a way we need to consider that this is a long-term engagement for us. If we wanna be safe, we cannot fund the rebels. We cannot arm the rebels. Because the arms that we send to the rebels end up in Ahmed's hands in 20 minutes.

PRENTISS: You see how we treat Islam here in America, and we don't always value or respect it.

PADNOS: Among all the Western countries that have significant Muslim populations, we have the least friction between that minority and the rest. Anyone who's not a Muslim can go into almost any mosque in this country, he's gonna be welcomed. That's not the case in France. That's not the case in England, even:

I think in general we do pretty well in the U.S. But they don't like us because of this drone thing. That's what they're most angry about-the drone attacks on weddings in Afghanistan. one drone attack can ruin all the good will that we accomplished by basically having relatively good relationships between the Muslim minority here and the wider population. However, we kill a … bride over there in Afghanistan, it screws up the PR.

MORRIS: What do you think about the rules of engagement for fighting extremists in Syria?

PADNOS: When I left my captors, al-Qaeda in Syria, the U.S. government was focused on a small number of the commanders within al-Qaeda in Syria who allegedly served in Afghanistan and had been with bin Laden. The U.S. government declared, "These are high value targets." I met some of these guys, and they didn't have enough money to put gas in their cars. They would have to come to the contemporary commanders, the guys with the big stacks of cash. "Hi, can we like drive to this town?" You know? They were like stars from yesteryear. Without cash, they had to ask the commanders on the ground, who had the money, for authority to do anything. The U.S. should have been targeting these guys with the cash. Instead they were targeting these nobodies.

What you're saying sounds so subtle and nuanced. That level of detail and knowledge seems totally absent from our political discourse here and what's even discussed in the news.

PADNOS: Our media has done a very poor job of communicating. The situation, for instance, in Syria now is that something like 16-17 million people live under the authority of a functioning government. It's not a democratic government. It's not like Switzerland. You cannot have a gay rights parade down the center of the avenue. They cannot start a newspaper and criticize the president. However, their universities function, the hospitals function-with 16 million people living under this regime. Now there's 2, maybe 3 million living under the rebels.

We as a government were trying to intervene on behalf of the 2 million to overturn the government of the 16 million. That just requires so much work. Even if all the 2 million guys were like angels and all the 16 million guys were really bad, it's a lot of heavy lifting. The easiest way to solve it, if you just want peace, would be to intervene on the behalf of the 16 million against the 2 million. Because it's easier to subdue 2 million than 16. Our media never reported to us the actual numbers involved. I think that most of the officials involved probably didn't realize that there's such a discrepancy.

Last year at this time there was a lot of discussion about Aleppo. Half of Aleppo was in the hands of the government. There was a lot of discussion in newspapers, "What if the rebel half falls? The government will come in and kill all the citizens, civilians here." The rebel half did fall. Most of the civilians ran away to the government side, and they weren't persecuted. Maybe they weren't given library cards. If you have a Kalashnikov in your basement, the government will put you in jail many years for this. That's what the government does, and they might torture you too. But if you play by their rules-no guns-they're basically going to leave you alone.

PRENTISS: The one thing I'm hearing is that if you want peace, it's not always a simple process.

PADNOS: When I was looking at these guys that were my captors, I was thinking, "I really don't care if you kill each other, if you blow yourself up. But if I was designing policy, I would want to figure out some way so that you are not able to blow up your wife and kids as well." These men have their wives and their children-anybody weaker than them-under their physical and psychological control. It's really an abusive situation. It's why so many civilians have died in this conflict. Because the men will not let the women run away.

Interview condensed and edited for length and clarity.

By Sean Markey

Category: News

January 16, 2018

BY SEAN MARKEY
NU OFFICE OF COMMUNICATIONS

February 1, 2017

At a recent busy gathering in Kreitzberg Library, civil and environmental engineering majors in Prof. Tara Kulkarni’s Environmental Engineering lab shared project designs that addressed major water management challenges in cities across the globe. The Norwich undergraduates worked on the four-week, group projects as part of a service learning partnership with a community partner, Friends of the Winooski River, to promote water education and outreach to local high school students. Watch:

By Sean Markey

Category: News

January 16, 2018

BY DAPHNE LARKIN
NU OFFICE OF COMMUNICATIONS

Feb. 16, 2017

Norwich University President Richard W. Schneider along with Distinguished Leader in Residence General Gordon R. Sullivan, USA (Ret.) ’59 will launch the Center for Global Resilience and Security (CGRS) with roundtable discussions focused on community resilience and security, on Friday, March 3.

The Center for Global Resilience and Security (CGRS) is a Norwich University research center of excellence dedicated to the advancement of the interrelationships between human resilience and sense of security in the face of global challenges. CGRS is focused on challenges in the areas of climate change, water, energy, and infrastructure and their impact on resilience and security. CGRS will craft creative, innovative, and sustainable solutions for building resilient communities, through inter-disciplinary research and design collaboration.

One major initiative already underway includes CGRS taking over the role of coordinating the Resilient Vermont Network from the Institute of Sustainable Communities (ISC). There are three aspects to this role:

• Serve as the point of contact for the various entities interested in or doing resilience work in the state. The CGRS website will be set up to provide the most current information on various resilience initiatives, talks, funding opportunities, as well as collaborative research or educational activities across resilience happening primarily in the state but also outside Vermont, based on the information provided by the various groups in the network, including state agencies, non-governmental organizations, and others.
• Offer professional development events on CGRS themes, and host relevant conferences, such as the 2016 RVT conference that Norwich University cohosted with ISC. In April 2017, CGRS will host Vermont’s Community Resilience Officers (CROs) for a day of information exchange and professional workshops.
• Create an Academic Resilience Collaborative (ARC) within the RVT network to bring together teachers, researchers, and students, across Vermont’s educational campuses, interested in resilience related work.

The center’s director is Tara Kulkarni, PhD, assistant professor in Norwich University’s Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering and Construction Management.

Kulkarni teaches environmental engineering focused courses and serves as an academic and student club advisor. She serves on the University’s Honors Council and Undergraduate Research committee, and has led and facilitated several faculty roundtables.

She has also been the engineering instructor for K-8 teachers in the Vermont Science Initiative’s Engineering and Science Summer Academy for three years and mentors newer Civil engineering faculty through the ExCEEd workshop series run by the American Society of Civil Engineers. Her research interests are in green infrastructure, sustainable water resources management, and climate change related disaster resilience through engineering innovation. She has previously worked in engineering positions at the Florida Department of Environmental Protection and at Environmental Management Center in India, where she was involved in academic and corporate training, case study development, and writing corporate sustainability policies.

By Sean Markey

Category: News

January 16, 2018

BY DAPHNE LARKIN
NU Office of Communications
April 17, 2017

Norwich University’s Center for Global Resilience and Security, in collaboration with Community Resilience Organizations (CROs) will hold the “CROs-ARC Summit: Think Global, Act Local,” an event to connect statewide CROs teams and academic researchers interested in participating in the new Academic Research Collaborative (ARC) on Saturday, April 29, 2017 from 8:15 a.m.-1:45 p.m.

The summit provides a day of short, inspiring presentations by local action teams (CROs), resource providers, and academic researchers (ARC), plus a noon lecture on social engagement by Rebecca Sanborn Stone, a community planner, engagement specialist, writer and speaker with expertise in resilience, local capacity building and communications.

Presentations include ecological solutions, with NU’s Simon Pearish and Lyndon State’s Ian Balcom; water and energy resilience; cybersecurity with NU’s Huw Read; and art integration. Informational showcase highlights housing, water, energy, climate, food systems, hazard mitigation, etc. from state agency experts and non-profit groups.

Peg Elmer Hough and Amanda Blank with CROs; Jared Ulmer with the Department of Health’s Climate and Health Program; Paige Heverly of Vital Communities (Energy and Transportation project coordinator); and Ben Rose, Recovery and Mitigation Section Chief, Vermont Division of Emergency Management and Homeland Security, are some of the key Vermont experts presenting at the summit.

The CROs-ARC Summit is slated to end early enough to allow participants to join the Climate Rally at the statehouse in Montpelier, scheduled from 1 – 4 p.m.

“This event is to help the CROs strengthen their teams, learn about new and existing resources and get the latest updates in areas critical to resilience and security in their communities,” Center for Global Resilience and Security Director Tara Kulkarni, Ph.D. said. “We also want to connect academic researchers to the problems facing the CRO teams and engage students in the discussion.”

Registration Fee: $35 includes breakfast and lunch. Registration deadline is April 20, 2017.

The summit is sponsored by: Catamount Solar, Vermont Community Resilience Organizations, Center for Global Resilience and Security at Norwich University, Center for Civic Engagement at Norwich University.

The Center for Global Resilience and Security (CGRS) is a Norwich University research center of excellence dedicated to the advancement of the interrelationships between human resilience and sense of security in the face of global challenges. CGRS is focused on challenges in the areas of climate change, water, energy, and infrastructure and their impact on resilience and security. CGRS will craft creative, innovative, and sustainable solutions for building resilient communities, through inter-disciplinary research and design collaboration.