It is even the subject of a hit dystopian thriller. Though an actual civil war resulting from the election’s outcome remains unlikely, a range of sufficiently alarming politically violent scenarios are nevertheless quite possible.

Speaker: Professor Bruce Hoffman (Georgetown University)
Chair: Professor Richard English (Queen’s University Belfast)

Professor Bruce Hoffman

Bruce Hoffman has been studying terrorism and insurgency for nearly five decades.  He is a Professor at Georgetown University’s Walsh School of Foreign Service and also the Shelby Cullom and Kathryn W. Davis Senior Fellow for Counterterrorism and Homeland Security at the Council on Foreign Relations, and the George H. Gilmore Senior Fellow at the U.S. Military Academy’s Combating Terrorism Center.  

Hoffman was appointed a commissioner on the FBI 9/11 Review Commission by the U.S. Congress and has been Scholar-in-Residence for Counterterrorism at the Central Intelligence Agency; adviser on counterterrorism to the Coalition Provisional Authority, Baghdad, Iraq; and adviser on counterinsurgency to Multi-National Forces—Iraq Headquarters, Baghdad, Iraq.  He is the recipient of the United States Intelligence Community Seal Medallion, the highest commendation given to a non-government employee.  

Hoffman is the author of several award-winning books.  His latest book is God, Guns, and Sedition: Far-Right Terrorism in America (Columbia University Press, 2024.

Professor Richard English

Professor Richard English is Director of the Senator George J. Mitchell Institute for Global Peace, Security, and Justice at Queen’s University Belfast, where he is also Professor of Politics.  His latest book is Does Counter-Terrorism Work? (Oxford University Press, 2024).  Previous works include Armed Struggle: The History of the IRA (Oxford University Press, 2003) and Does Terrorism Work? A History (Oxford University Press, 2016).

Richard is a Fellow of the British Academy, a Member of the Royal Irish Academy, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society.  In 2018 he was awarded a CBE for services to the understanding of modern-day terrorism and political history.  In 2019 he was awarded the Royal Irish Academy's Gold Medal in the Social Sciences.

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