JMU'S PHAM TESTIFIES BEFORE HOUSE SUBCOMMITTEE ON TERRORISM

From: Media Relations

July 29, 2005

HARRISONBURG – Dr. J. Peter Pham, an assistant professor of justice studies at James Madison University, today briefed a Congressional subcommittee on international terrorism in Northeast Africa.

The International Terrorism and Nonproliferation Subcommittee of the U.S. House of Representatives' International Relations Committee invited Pham, who recently carried out fieldwork in East Africa, to brief it on his findings. The briefing was attended by members of Congress and their staff as well as the permanent professional staff of the House committee.

The 15-member subcommittee on terrorism and nonproliferation, headed by Chairman Edward R. Royce of California, has oversight and legislative responsibilities over the United States' efforts to manage and coordinate international programs to combat terrorism as coordinated by the Department of State and other agencies.

According to Pham, his briefing discussed "the activity of Al-Qaeda and other transnational terrorist groups amid the shifting geopolitical dynamics of the Horn of Africa region and the threat that these jihadi groups pose to local peoples as well as to American interests in the region."

Pham is the author of two recent books on African conflicts, "Liberia: Portrait of a Failed State" and "Child Soldiers, Adult Interests: Global Dimensions of the Sierra Leonean Tragedy," which will be published in October.

Pham joined the JMU faculty in 2004 to help establish the justice studies program in the new Center for Liberal and Applied Social Sciences. He is also an affiliate faculty member of JMU's political science department and Africana Studies Program.

Pham's research in Africa this summer was funded by JMU's Institute for Infrastructure and Information Assurance through its Critical Infrastructure Protection Project. Pham is also the recipient of a 2005-06 academic fellowship on terrorism from the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, a nonpartisan policy institute in Washington, D.C.

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