Good morning, everyone. Hi. Welcome. My name name is leeann. United States Institute of peace. I am delighted to welcome you here today. We were founded by members of congress who were also veterans of world war two. Returning from the battlefield convinced that the u. S. Needed greater capacities to reach peace as we wage war. It was a bipartisan effort. In 1984, president reagan signed into law the united States Institute of peace. An independentrt nonpartisan National Institute charge with owthe mission of preventing, mitigating and resolving violent conflict abroad. We fulfill that mission by linking training and analysis, research and policy by working with local partners on the ground and conflicts around the world. We have offices in iraq and afghanistan, pakistan, nigeria just to name a few. They continue to pose obstacles. A Global Consortium of researchers and research organizations. Committed to more rigor and more understanding. Our work and research that the rise and evolution is one of the most today. Especially as it interacts with existing conflicts or creates new ones or further damages. On many people today following the massil shootings over the weekend in texas and ohio. I amm still at a loss for words. The newly empty sides of the bed and the people that are reading that text message over and over again. Those that are at hospitals right now asking why did i live and others died. This week and more families and friends to the list of the forever injured. Forever scarred, forever harmed by violence. This is a typetr of grief and violence that exists in way too many countries around the world today. The task force on extremism, worldwide attacks have increased fivefold since year 2001. Extremist groups extremist groups have 19 out of 45 countries in the middle east. Undermining already challenging circumstances. Here at an institute committed to the notion we want to help uncover new ways to help doing better at addressing the most Wicked Problems surrounding violent extremism. Today we are tackling the problem of the government and communities. Return home with the extremists. More than 100 countries could finish the task of not only reintegrating their citizens, perhaps tens ofso thousands in total, but also preparing their communities for aev future with living with people next door. Some who were part of these violent extremist groups will face trial and some will face incarceration, but not all. Some will eventually be released from prison and many others will reintegrate directly back into communities. Local communities need to be prepared. An imperative for rehabilitation and reconciliation. People need processes to enable them to abandon their violet attitudes and behaviors. Communities also need attitudes to avoid further violence,em revenge and reradicalization. We lack the language inst our Public Discourse to even talk about people who are disengaging from violent extremism. Most of us are concerned, once the the terrorists, forever a terrorist. While the radicalization is a very complex process, there are many, many different pass to to violent extremism. It is social in nature. Disengagement and rehabilitation needs to address social factors, too. Also rebuild the bond to tween that person and society and generate a new sense of belonging. Currently, wero scholars, media, government, Community Members, can you be unintentionally using language that underscore anger and fear. Reinforced a persons identity as reinforce a persons identity as a terrorist or fighter and it may contribute toe a prophecy. Leverage language as a tool to shape attitudes and behaviors, to reduce the burden of stigma, and to ease open spaces for engagement. In the spaces, communities can be presented with opportunities let me be clear im notin callig about the violent risk that violent extremist groups of people who are part of them pose. This conversation does not take away the need for clear justice and accountability mechanisms for those who committed atrocities and other crimes or enabled others to do so but this is not about forgiveness or absolution. But once Justice Systems meet out their sentences, present time has been served are those who do not commit crimes were pp charged this need to call a spade a spade must grapple with the other reality of how we communities new to the front lines to get reintegration and reconciliation right because all our safety and security depends on it. This is a tall order which is why im delighted today to be joined by four incredible experts to help us further unlock and unleash new avenues for adjusting the challenge. Todays event for a quick rundown i will introduce each speaker individually and they will give about a 15 minute or so presentation and then i will introduced the next speaker and they were present. When everyone is finished presenting will move to a moderated question and answer session. Of take groups of questions from audience in three or live online and twitter. With that, i will start introducing our speakers and get today going. It is my pleasure to introduce [inaudible]. Hes a social psychologist with Extensive Research experience on githe dynamics of violent radicalization. His model doing from human needs for respect is significant is outlined in his this book from Oxford University press, the three pillars of radicalization. He will provide context on the social ecological drivers of violent radicalization with Group Dynamics significance and respect. With that, please help me welcome the doctor. [applause] thank you very much. Good morning. Good morning to all. Im honored and pleased to be here for arranging this event in organizing this event and im thankful for being invited. As you know radicalization that progresses into violent extremism has been and continues to be a major issue for a nation around the world. Isis has lost its caliphate but far from being defeated and neither is al qaeda and they continue to launch attacks and attract followers individuals to joinin them all over the world with hundreds of attacks in different parts of the planets. The question is how do we understand this global threat and what can we do about it . Into the stock i like to present psychological perspective on this issue that i believe to be important. Many psychological phenomenon Many Political phenomenon that shape history and determine the fate of nations are rooted in human psychology. Poverty, poor education or oppression occasionally contribute to radicalization sometimes they matter less and sometimes they matter not at all. Why . Because they matter only when they activate when they are in circumstances that activate the psychological mechanisms that promote radicalization. Psychology is the basic disciplinese that addresses radicalization. Most importantly if we understand these mechanisms we cannot only understand it but also prevent radicalization the world over. Over the last decade several decades we have been carrying out research in various parts of the globe with Empirical Research with hundreds if not thousands of extremisms and terrorists in jails and other locations and on the basis of that empirical work we have developed an integrity model. A model on one hand that capitalizes on important insights of Understanding Social scientists and disciplines and the model integrates in the sense of showing how their diverse insights combined into and their understanding of the process whereby radicalization [inaudible] takes place. We suggest in fact that three barometers of the process are critical and they have been emphasized by different models and we combine them together into three parameters are individual motivations, the need component and the narrative that tells individuals how to set aside their motivations and the network that validates and dispenses rewards for those who serve their needs in terms of violent extremism. Let me say a few words about these three and the need is critical. After all radicalization is located at the individual and its an individual who decides to don a suicide belt to pick up a weapon and to travel thousands ilghof miles in order to justifd kill wherever they might be. Therefore very important question that was posed by terrorism researchers is what is the motivation and why do they do that and what makes them take those risks and make those sacrifices and risk life and limb in order to join the fight. The terrorism researchers have provided an answer in terms of a list of different motivations or motivations as [inaudible] for example the afterlife is one example. They do it to enjoy the perks of afterlife or becauseaf there is adulation and commitment to the leader or do it because for families and that women can do it or vengeance and all of these motivations are important in specific cases but i submit to you that underline all these motivations there is one universal need and this is the need to mentor and be significant and to have respect, both selfrespect and respect from others in one community. Now, this quest for significance how we call it like with all motivations is an active at all times. We do not quest for significance 247 and the question is how is this quest activated and its activated when significance acquire a special value. We acquire a special value primarily when ones experiences humiliation and this empowerment in disenfranchisement and this can be ones own failures and lack of luck in ones ownwn circumstances that promote ones of suffering. For example, stigma women who are accused of an extramarital affair or who are in for dial or disfigured by fire so we can be a personal thing having nothing to do with International Conflict but it can also be something that has to do with social identity when you group religious or ethnic group racial group is disseminated, humiliatedar you feel discrimination as your own thing and youre then motivated to restore your significance and that humiliation and discrimination provides an opportunity to great significance gain to become a mauphero in market for the group that was discriminated against and million in an experience the grievance. Now, the quest for significance is a universal human need as [inaudible] put it, all of us have secret desires to be seen as saints, heroes or martyrs with the quest for significance is something that all of us have and this is a quest for attention because otherwise it will not survivey nobody wantso feel disrespected how then we acquire respect . We acquire this sense of significance and the simple answer is we acquire significance through living up to our values and its values t trickle down to those who serve them and lend them significance. Of course, the values vary by different cultures and different groups. What the narrative element is of our and network does is type violence to the values that show how to identify significance through violence and tells you to gain significance in this particular circumstance you have to join the fight and kill other people and be ready to take risks must sacrifice yourself, maybe die on the altar of the cause and that gives you significance. The narrative functioning is very important. We all great significance and were not all terrorists or violent extremists but we have other avenues and we serve other values but if youre exposed to a narrative that tells you you have been insulted or disempowered in your group has been slighted and insulted and you have to stand up for the group, join the fight and protect the groups glory and significance and at that point you become a violent extremists. Finally, its the network. By the network . Network is important because we are social beings and the whoof wef people are respect and it defined for us what is the social reality and what is real and it devalues the narrative because about the social network we would not know that you have totoha fight and s important to fight in the Network Tells you yes, it is what you need to do. The agreement of the network and beyond validation and defense of rewards and its admires people who serve the values through violence and through extremism. It tells you that you are a hero and a martyr and you will be forever engraved in memory of the group and we go to parasitee what are we talking about . The networks very widely from facetoface networks of the kind that was made famous. A bunch of guys get together and invite each other to action all the way to virtual networks. Networks on the internet are particularly influential these days that people attend so you dont have to be in physical residence of these networks but you know that if you carry out or should be if you ram into people and kill them to pick up and ask and kill enemies of your group you will be appreciated. It will be implicit network that you do not have to be in physical presence of. What is unique about our mode model [inaudible] social scientists have been studying violent extremism for many decades and they have provided very important insight. What is important about our model is that it brings these insights together into a unified function of portrayal of a violent extremism. Some people in some models through life illuminated one part of the response that our restoration is to embrace the entire elephant and provide the reasons why the different parts work together. We illustrate that by examining some very important contributions in this domain that occurs in 1970, white men rebel emphasized the idea of relative deprivation. Its the idea that your group does not receive justice and its a slight discriminated inht comparison to other groups and of course, this is on the quest for significance. Its a lot of significance but there are other ways of losing significance as i mentioned. Even sources of a significant [inaudible] personal failures with plenty of evidence that personal failure these peoplet o embrace collective causes in the interest in service of regaining their significance. Of course, [inaudible] does not empathize the ethnic narrative and ideology and emphasize the network so it does identify important elements but i think those other parameters are also important and we bring them togetherer. People talk about micro factors with poverty, oppression, poor education and they all came to the conclusion that neither of these alone Remote Island extremism. In terms of our model defectors also address a lot of significance. If you are poor or oppressed you do not feel very good and you feel insignificant and do not matter but of course not all poor people in all oppressed people become violent extremism. There are other ingredients is needed to be added to the mixture. You have to have narrative and social group that supports the narrative in order for this to combine into combustible mixture that creates violent extremism. My great colleague emphasize the issue of sacred values and the devoted extras as an important ingredient into violent extremism. Yes, definitely but its important becauseut they allow people to serve them and become significant. It also comes to the individual and their motivation for significance is served wonderfully if you sacrifice life, take risks and are ready to die on altar of sacred values. Sacred values are important in conjunction with those other elements. Mark made famous the issue of networks and networks are important as i said they are important because they validate the narrative and dispense rewards and pronounce you a martyr or hero. What about their radicalization. Radicalization is in some sense a reversal of radicalization so the same three elements that promote radicalization if you reverse them they promote the radicalization. For example, the importance of narrative and the importance of counter messaging is paramount significant where you have to counter the idea that islam is served by jihad again and promote the idea where there is tolerance in islam and the ideology is misinterpretation of all the profit intended and you got to have a counter narrative. We are a sentient being and listen to reason and narratives that will provide to vacation with the rational for our actions. Narrative is important the network is very important in radicalization. We have recently completed another book on german neonazis and those who left the movement often left because they connected to a network and they meet somebody and meet a friend, romantic relationship that draws them back to the mainstream ways of thinking so the network importance is very important in promoting the radicalization. Finally, production of the dominance of the quest for significance activation of other needs and need for having a life and nobody expresses better than former matter former member of the terrorist organization who explained why he wants to de radicalize. You say to yourself [inaudible] i better get myself a light. In my case, specifically wanting to get married. You are going on 40 years old going to get married next yearyo and you say to yourself well, f word at this stage of the game [inaudible] you got to live a bit. The other needs are activated the quest for significance is reduced. I mentioned our theorizing has been based in time is too short and probably already exceeded my time but i would like to share with you a story of one Research Project on the reader radicalization of islam radicalization and you all know who they are. They waged a 30 Year Long Campaign to create independent state and they were recognized as a terrorist organization and the employed violent and brutal tactics and highprofile assassinations, suicide bombing, child objections use of humans as human shields and they did a lot of damage with 100,000 civilian victims over the course of 30 euros and 30000 others killed. One of the most vicious terrorist organizations in the history of this phenomenon. They had their air force, air tigers, navy, see tigers. In 2009 more than 11000 surrendered to the military after a follow body bloodied battle in 2009. Government at that point launched an effort to rehabilitate theirth surrender terrorist. They were placed into facilities of a different kind and was our great luck to be able to enter those facilities and carry out research on the 11000 extremists [inaudible] was the architect of the militant tigers. The programs were adopted from other programs launched the head educational, vocational, Psychological Community programs and the idea was to [inaudible [inaudible]s are some of the pictures of the program. Examples of our trade work had to do with respect and dignity and reported really a respectful treatment and not even referred to as detainees or terrorists but called beneficiaries and this was the program and the narrative was on the ineffectiveness of war and emphasize the importance of coexistence and there was extensive use of families and communities, integration in order to embed them in social support of their changed attitudes. [inaudible] they were exposed to a program of educational vocational psychological and so on and had to have a control room it is important to see whether the program was effective as opposed to individuals who are over the same time exposed to a much more limited program so in one we looked at it [inaudible] next month intervals. As you can see, over time the [inaudible] decreased significantly over the minimal treatment. This particular program was effective and at the end of it it was much less radicalize then when they entered and what is interesting for all of us that their attitudes toward the program was related positively to a reduction off similar and this was mediated by their feeling significant in the problem and feeling perspective and that they mattered and that they were cared for. This was immediately after the end of the program that was that. We examined extreme attitudes of beneficials release from the programs and again the number of programs that they participated in was negatively [inaudible] there were less extreme comparable sample of committees that were never part of the City Organization and what is a bit more troubling is those who had the corrections, to the network were less or more extreme than those who did not. This is the community where connection to a members where a bit more extreme than those who were not and also connected to the ds for a who was react radicalize being more extreme ds for a period sorry for taking conclusions. This offer a glimpse into the mechanisms of the radicalization process m and support suggest te radicalization should have a multi prong approach reconnection with society and remains to potential real acquisition in the same way they can the radicalize and can read radicalize. The human mind is very malleabli thank you very much. [applause] thank you so much for a lot of information on empirics as well as theory and i hope that many others find that they can learn even more about the doctors work in his latest book. Next, please join me for a warm welcome with ms. Martinez. A former white supremacist who now helps others disengage from violent extremism by emphasizing empathy and compassion. She will provide remarks on the effect of stigma, importance of empathy and belonging prosocial engagement in the rehabilitation process. Please join me in welcoming shannon. [applause]li thank you. Thank you for having me. I dont have a slide show. I want to take a moment to honor those who have died this week at the hands of people who took the ideas that they were wrestling with and looking through and chose to enact catastrophic violence as an extension of those ideas. There are lives that are irrevocably changed, like a lo e lost. The timing for this eventhi is pretty uncanny because we aresi currently engaged inside the country in a discussion about the language we use. Whether or not that language holds power and whether or not language influences behavior. Pope john paul ii had a saying [inaudible] essentially how we pray is how we believe is how we live. I thought about this a lot over the years about the words that we use change our thoughts and how we think and i thought then change how we live. In a perfect scenario from this moment, not a single human would radicalize into violent space ideology. If we had her weight right now Perfect World no one would take that trajectory. It still leaves ave lot of peope who are still currently in that movement or whatever movement of choice in whatever expression of their violent space ideology. The besto scenario were over ts past week would be for the young men involved to have turned away from their ideologies before they committed catastrophic acts of violence. But then where do they go and what do we do with them and how do we treat them after words . From the time i was 15 until just about the time i was 20 i was involved in the violent mites from the movement. I had a pretty functional childhood but not overly abusive or anything like that. Pretty runofthemill 1980s white middleclass dysfunction. At the age of 14 as i was doing what most 14 yearolds do in grappling with my identity and who i was in the world and who i chose to be i felt certain that mainstream culture was never really going to be a place where i could deposit my identity and graduated toward counterculture. The first place i really liked, one of my very first paper books was the autobiography of malcolm x but i love the power of the ideas and revolutionary idea in which they were presented. I would go into the Punk Movement and then shortly after i was 14 or shortly before i turned 15 years old i went to a party where i was raped by two men because of my childhood i knew i cannot tell my parents and knew they would blame me for having lied about where i was going and having been drinking at that party. They would be more angry about that and upset that i had just been sexually assaulted. I took that trauma, shut it down and became consumed with rage over the course of about six months in the angriest people in the periphery or of the subculture where i existed where the neonazi white supremacist skinheads. The rage i felt resonated deeply with the rage they felt and i andt more time with them started listening to white power music and broke down the barriers for me using racially charged language and introduced to some of the ideologies and some of the talking points of theki movement into my vernacul. I began to read some of the literature that was a part of the movement and over time i would have a complete and utter physical echo chamber i lived in that was only about this movement from the time i woke up till the time i went to sleep or passed out drunk at the end of the night. Very luckily i ended up not having a place to go at one point i was dating a young man in the army and he was also a white pharmacist and in the army and was in training and so i cannot live with him and at that point i do not have anywhere else to go. Luckily, for me is mom was a single mom and had three younger sons besides him that i could go live with her. Im pretty sure she knew what our ideology was and even if she did not at the time i looked very gruff that my external experience neared the internal realities of my life and i looked very angry and carried myself with bravado and really do not take anyones word. [laughter] she chose to see past this violent hate filled creature that i had become an chose instead to see a hurting and struggling young woman. She set the parameters about getting a job in helping with stuff from the house and included me in all of the daytoday family activities going and taking kids to cub scouts and during this thesee ad reading the chronicles of narnia to the boys at night. She created enough stability in my life that expanded this space around me so i could shift and examine where i was and how i had taught. The ideology for me fell away relatively quickly as i had this space and the stability and one of the crucial things i think she did for me she reconnected me with a sense of future but in your living a hyper violent echo chamber life there is no future. There might be a future in terms of the movement or what you hope will come from your belief system but in a personal sense there is only right now in a couple of minutes from now. She challenged me on ideas like you want to go to college, dont you want to make something with your life . It was beyond just introducing those ideas, she tangibly connected me to the resources i needed to make that happen and she did not just say hey, tony want to go to college . She would like to find out information and find addresses before the internetn, and lets find out how you can contact these schools and lets take you to set for your sats and here is a number two pencil in her hand, get my car im driving you there. She did not just introduce ideas to me. What i do not know while i sent these five years in the movement is that not only was i actively dehumanizing other people but that in order to do that and maintain that viewpoint and way of living i also had become dehumanized. I was much less than human and actively had to work at scene other human beings as not human in order to project all of the things and rats i felt inside, out on other people. I think one of the things this woman was so transformative in my life is because she initiated the process of re humanizing me by choosing to first see me as a human with a broken interested me that there was being expressed in a terrible way. Rather than just as an ideologue or someone that was not worth it. Its a hard sell to gather resources and invest time and money into human discussions about reintegration of people from violent space extremist. I had no idea that one of the main reactionsct in most of the Common Threads of anything out there in the media or on the internet about me would be a challenge to the very idea that people fundamentally transform their lives. When we were talking about reintegration it is paramount to examine whether or not genuinely believe people can transform and the objections are either i never really believed that in the first place or i still believe it now. Both of which are categorically untrue and it was an ideology that i would have died for. I hoped i would die for. My belief system is utterly transformed in the co empowerment and genuine equity building of all human beings. Our first focus we must have when we are talking about any sort of reintegration and is it worth it . Are these resources worth spending on these people that have chosen terrible relief systems and put forth pain and action a lot of time . I am a mom of seven children, ages almost 22 down to three years old. They are phenomenal human beings and they fight for equality and justice equity building in their lives on a daily basis. They certainly have transformed and transformed the communities of which they are a part on a daily basis and i absolutely feel certain they will have a piece in transforming the world. I think its worth it to invest resources when we look at things from a Restorative Justice point of view and instead of just seeing the bad actions of one person which they are, i hold personal response ability for the choices that i made in the things i did. We dont always do a good job talking about that but we talk about people falling down rabbit holes, sliding down pipelines, hitting caught up in some way that releases them from personal responsibility and i believe that to be a mistake in terminology. It is important except responsibility because the only way to get towards making ongoing meaningful amends. I first have to say i did this. I take responsibility and im sorry. How do i make amends however, when we talk about that i still resonated with what jeff said in the way i framed it is that we all have a basic need that beyond food and beyond food, shelter and clothing in the way i see it is that we all have the need to give love and be loved, to feel truly seen and truly heard and to feel like we have a meaningful connection with the connection greater than ourselves. Every Single Person i workedd with and help disengage from violent extremism that these essential need set was broken and those were compounded by multitude of factors. From a Restorative Justice point of view we have to see that bringing people back into the fold does not just help the individual but helps the entire network. We have to see that even though the actions are the responsibility of one person that ecosystem involves us all. Terrorist still have come from a family and they still have lived in communities and there are many layers of fracturing of those three basic needs that have led to their trajectory towards immerse in violence. When people leave were trying to reintegrate them back into society and more pro social ways it helps heal us all. It heals the broken fabric that was part of the trajectory inwards and when we devote resources to healing those among us we all become stronger for it. I can leave mybr finger broken still get through life probably just the use of my other fingers but how much stronger will my hand be if all my digits are well and thriving . Jihadi right. Lets talk about that. I am a female emmy female who became a violent right supremacists. There was a sense in which i found twisted sexual empowerment in my position inside a movement that is based on dehumanization and objectification of people perceived as weaker. Women definitely fit in that category inside that belief system. On the outside i was not successful with boys and dating and stuff but inside i could pretty much go out with whoever i wanted because is one of only a few women. Sexual abuse or Sexual Assault was part of my trajectory inward it felt very much like sexual empowerment and i did not know that at the time. I was just doing what i was doing but there was more to it than that. I was an active participant in my ownic radicalization that i continued to amplify my willingness to use violence and willingness to take risks. I was nota a passive agent who was simply the arm candy of someone else in the movement. When we use words like jihadi bride we remove the sense of agency in the quest for significance that we just heard about. We say well, yeah, but were actually reinforcing a lot of the viewpoints that exist with that. We remove also the ability for someone to take full responsibility and come to terms with their action which is a crucial part of reintegrating us hiinto society. One last challenge that i will mention is that in terms of the modern world there are entire radicalized trajectories that exist nowhere except online. There are people who have stories of going into the movement or at least i thought thought spaces and when we talk about women particularly in terms of the far right, alt write, write nationalist fears very much a leaderless resistance. They are very overlapping ideologies. I believe we will see more ideologies get convoluted and enmeshed over the years and harder to pinpoint a single ideology which looks like what we use to know it was. These trajectories dont exist anywhere outside of the internet. There is no actions taken. Maybe if they have conversations in real life with other people where they you bring your ideology there but that echo chamber is completely digital. This is a challenge for us to figure out how to navigate those spaces and how do we address people and how do we treat their trajectories into and then hopefully, out of these violent space ideologies. When they had not traveled across the world and yet it is still a multinational network because its the internet and is everywhere. Do we treat them as though they are the same or different from People Living this out in the physical space . Do we offer the same force of services or prosecute them the same way and hold them accountable the name way back i dont know that i have answers but i do think that this is very much the trend towards even a virtual caliphate or in connection with the physical space because obviously the most catastrophic thing is when the Digital World makes out and becomes catastrophic violence in action like we have seen over and over again. With that, i will turn the microphone back over but all of you who have the influence to do so, whenever you are challenged about programs, talking about reconstruction and helping former violent extremist, please remember my face. Please remember my story. Please remember the value that my life has now. If i had never been given that you i would never be able to be here and i would never be able to spend the rest of the rest of my life doing as much good as i possibly can. Thank you. [applause] thank you so much. Thank you for reminding us of the empathy and compassion and sincerity to accept the humanity and all of us thank you. Please, allow me to introduce our next speaker, doctor paul is a psychologist who is an expert on the ways in which language influences cognition and will present on the cognitive power of language, framing, metaphors and how they shape perceptions, generate empathy and reduce stigma. And cute so much. [applause] thank you for having me. If my slideshow pops up here in a second so, im a psychologist of language and im generally interested in the ways in which we use language to think about complex problems i will start with an obvious and somewhat silly point in that is that solving big problems is really hard and how we fight world hunger and how can we fix a broken education and how what we do about it crime epidemic and what does windows live which marginalized people. These are all big important questionsti, they are nuanced ad there is no magic bullet solution to any of them. As a society we are tasked with solving these problems. In my work im interested in the metaphors and narratives that are embedded in these kinds of questions and embedded in the ways we think about these problems so when we asked the question how do we fight world hunger we are positioning world hunger as an enemy and a war that we have to defeat. When we are fixing the broken educational system we are implicitly or explicitly thinking about the educational or a vehicleachine that we can just fix. When we talk about a crime epidemic were talking about crime is a virus and were talking about marginalizing people we might be thinking about people on a page and some people in the middle or on spots. Language is an important window in the world but particularly when we talk about big picture sociopolitical issues those are issues that we have some perceptual experience with and we can see depictions of world hunger and see depictions of crimecr but those kinds of issus are not the same as a concept of a bird, for example or concept of a tree and we can go outside and see trees and birds and hear them and express them directly and with these other more abstract complex sociopolitical issues most of the information that we get about those issues is through language and reading the newspaper and hearing other people talk about them. Language is a primary and critical source of information about the world. One way of thinking about the way language works is that it describes the world and described it. I thought as a tool for communication follow up question might be does it shape the way we think about the world and change our thoughts and if so, how. I will just a few of you experience quickly that illustrate the power of language to shape the way we see the world. Early work on this question was done by Elizabeth Loftus in the 70s and in this experiment participants watched a car crash and asked to estimate the speed of the car that got into the car. We buried the herb they use to ask the question one group of participants was asked about how fast were the cars going when they smashed each other and other participants were asked that same question but withh the verb collided with instead of smashed or bumped into or hit or contacted. And so, there is variability here in the emotional and the vividness of these birds. There is a corresponding variability in the speed estimates people are given. When a really vivid birdlike smashed is used people give a high speed estimates and many more neutral verb like contacted is used people give a lower speed estimates. All the participants watched the same video and at some level these questions and these verbs are all acting the same thing. Reflect on what you saw and give us an estimate but theres a dramatic difference in the estimates people give. In my own work im interested in. He power of metaphor to shape the way we think about complex problems and present people with narratives like this where people are exposed to one of two different metaphors and most of the information in this reported in the same but theres a different metaphorical frame. Participants will read Something Like s crime is a beast or virus ravaging the city of addison and five years ago addison was in good shape with no obvious vulnerabilities but unfortunately the past five years the city Defense Systems have weakened the city has succumbed to crime. Today there are more than 55000 criminal incidences a year up by more than 10000 a year. There is a worry that the city does not regain its strength soon, even more Serious Problems may art to develop. Participants read one of the two versions of the report either the beast version or the virus version and then there asked a simple question. In your opinion what does addison need to doed to reduce crime . We have done this experiment with a free response format, thats how we started doing the experiment the people would write things like well, lawenforcement should be stricter in the Justice System harsher and things like study the causes of crime and implement strategies to address the causes. When we were for starting to do this work we were looking through these responses and two big categories emerged some people were emphasizing more enforcement Oriented Solutions and some people emphasized more social reform Oriented Solutions. And so, we would code peoples responses into these categories and then we would look at and see whether people who read the virus version of the report would give different responses in different types of responses of people who read the beast version. We found that they did. So, people who read that crime is a beast would tend to emphasize enforcement Oriented Solutions to crime. Increase the police force. Lincoln prison sentences. People who read the virus version would give relatively more social reform oriented responses. Fix the educational system. Create jobs for people. This was a pretty dramatic effect, one more difference in a crime report that had mostly the same information was leading to a 20point shift in kind of suggestions people were making. We also followed up using slightly different methods where people would evaluate specific policies as opposed to just responding really so maybe the metaphors would make something come to mind more easily in a free response format and maybe it was not really making people think differently and maybe it wouldnt affect how people would evaluate these policies that we provided. We would provide some policies that were enforcement oriented and reform oriented and people would read the same report either the virus version or the beast version and then they would pick one of these as their preferred method for solving crime. And using this multiplechoice format evaluating actual policies we see the same affect. From the free response format. It is showing the proportion of enforcement oriented responses. People who read the beast version of the report are more enforcement oriented than the people who read the virus version, people who read the virus version are more reform oriented. Those are the only two categories we were coding. We see this effect using a variety of different methods. We are seeing this effect using a variety of different methods. Another line of work that is related that a want to talk about briefly and then i will unpack some of the mechanisms that i think are at play, is some work ivei done on obesity and looking at narratives for obesity. In the context of obesity, uncle use the term narrative rather than metaphor although i thinknk theyre similar and we could talk about some ofy the soul and there similarities and differences. Theres a variety narratives about the causes of obesity. Some focus on the individual and limitations of an individual. So talking about the overweight has sort of a sin, a failure of selfregulation. At the other end of the extreme we also talk about how the environment and contribute to obesity, food deserts and the of support, Statement Associate with being overweight, those factors can contribute to obesity. We run some studies that are in design to the crime where people read ale narrative about obesity and then make some judgments. And in this study one judgment that people made was about blame. Blame. So who deserves blame for obesity . And we had people answer questions that were related to individual blame and societal blame, environmental blame. Narrative that focused on the individual, others had a narrative that talked about overweight as an addiction. Medicalization of the problem. A disorder narrative was similar to that one. At the other extreme was the environmental narrative. What we see in this plot is after reading the narrative that emphasizes personal failure, people are happy to assign a lot of blame to an individual for being overweight and they dont think the environment plays a big role. At the other end of the extreme, people who read about some of the societal and environmental causes of obesity are showing the opposite pattern. They are happy to attribute blame to the environment and are much more forgiving to an individual. In this study, we asked people about their support for Public Policy designed to reduce the prevalence of obesity. We looked at policies that were more protective. So education campaigns, treatment programs, as well as policies that were more punitive. So allowing insurers to charge higher premiums for people who were overweight. What we find is, this measure of blame, how people think about who deserves blame for the problem, tracks almost perfectly onto how they are thinking about these treatment programs. Sorry, the graph is tricky to see. What it says is the more that we blame an individual for being overweight, the more we support punitive policies and the more that we recognize the environmental factors that contribute to obesity, the more we support protective policies. There is a growing stock of evidence, lots of experience of experiments are showing the power of language to shape the way we see the world. One very positive line of work in my opinion is work by carol black showing intelligence is something that is malleable, something that can grow and can really change students thinking about education and the role of hard work and practice in education. There are a lot of issues, the addiction, some of the problems i talked about in the context of obesity also apply to addiction. It is a stigmatize health issue. Talking about it as a disease has a profound effect on the way people think about addiction. It reduces stigma. It encourages people to get help if they need it. Talking about cancer as an enemy in a war has become a topic that has gone under a lot of research garnered a lot of Research Interest recently. There are tradeoffs associated with the metaphor. On the one hand, it seems to be very effective at raising money and grabbing our attention. Thats important. Its a very emotionally salient metaphor. War is a salient, attention grabbing topic. As susan sontag talked about in her book, this is supported and by research, it can lead people with cancer feeling marginalized. If cancer is an enemy in war and the doctor is fighting the war, the person with cancer is a battlefield and nobody really wants to be a battlefield. The last experiment is a little bit raw. I wont go into it into much detail. Talking about immigration as a contamination in the nations body has negative effects on how people see immigration. That has become a pretty prevalent framing recently. So language shapes what we see. Its not just a tool for describing reality. Its also a tool for thinking and it affects the way we think. How does language shape perception . Thats the main focus of my lab. I will talk about a few mechanisms here. Metaphors, narratives, stereotypes, a big part of their function is that they ground the novel in familiar terms. And this is a the process of categorization. If i see an animal in the world maybe ibody tells me, have never seen it before and it looks new and somebody tells me its a bird, i can make a variety of inferences about what that animal can do. Metaphors and stereotypes and narratives are culturally salient, familiar abstractions like bird categories or tree categories in some sense. They help us simplify and understand complexity. When we talk about crime as a beast or a virus, we are leveraging what we know about how to solve comparatively simple problems for the purpose of thinking about more complex ones. A beast problem is fairly straightforward. If a lion escapes from the zoo and is terrorizing the city, we need to capture and contain it. If we have a crime epidemic in the community, we are not going to capture and contain that crime epidemic. We need to diagnose and treat that problem. There is structure to these metaphors and narratives. When we use them to talk about novel situations, complex sociopolitical issues, we are leveraging that structure. One of the functions of language is to ground novel experiences in familiar terms. Guides is that language our attention. It shapes what we see. It shapes the process of making meaning. In this description of the crime problem that i started with, there is a lot of ambiguous phrases. We are talking about how addison didnt have any obvious polar abilities and how in the past five years, the citys defense sick systems have weekend. Have weakened. Those phrases are not necessarily calling out anything in particular. They are kind of vague. So what do they really mean . What does it mean . What makes a city vulnerable to crime . What does it mean to say the Defense System is weakened . What we are finding is that it really depends on the context in which they are used. When a beast metaphor starts this paragraph, people call to mind the police force and criminal justice. Thats what it means to make a city vulnerable to crime. A bad criminal Justice System, a weak police force. If people just read a virus metaphor, the ambiguity in the phrases is resolved differently. People are thinking about poverty, infrastructure, they are thinking about education. So the way we are talking about problems is having a direct influence on the problems. But its also shaping how we seek out other information and how we interpret other parts of the world. How we resolve that ambiguity. In a followup experiment, one of the ways we tested that particular interpretation is by moving the metaphor frame from the beginning of the report to the end. In that situation, we dont get any metaphor framing. When the metaphors are at the beginning of the report, we see people who read the crime as a beast are more enforcement oriented. When those phrases are presented at the end, there is no difference. N people want to resolve have already resolved these ambiguities without the help of metaphoric labels priming them to think one way or another, the metaphors presented at the end are not reshaping or reconfiguring those mental representations. So language guides our attention. Language also evokes emotion. Loftus and palmers work illustrates that nicely. The verb smashed is much more emotionally salient than the word contacted. That leads people to give higherspeed estimates. The last point i want to make about how language shapes the way we think is that the process is often unconscious. Both in the production side and on the comprehension side. In the studies we conducted on crime, in some versions we would ask people afterwards to identify the part of the report that was most influential in their subsequent judgment. Underline the part of the report that led you to give your suggestion. People would typically identify numeric information. They thought they were being really objective. Only about 5 of participants would identify the metaphor is as having any influence on the way they were thinking. It wasnt a particularly salient feature of the report. In followup studies, we would ask more targeted questions. We would ask people at the end of the study if they could remember which metaphor they got. About half could remember and half didnt. We looked at whether we saw these framing effects among both groups. So we might expect to see the on everybody who remember the metaphor and may be the are using the metaphor actively to think about these problems. But if people forgot the metaphor, its unlikely they were actively using it to think about the problems. We asked those questions one minute later. What we find is the metaphor framing effect among both groups, people who remember the metaphor are showing the effect of the metaphor and people who dont are also showing the effect of the metaphor. So at least in some circumstances, we feel like we have pretty good evidence that people are not aware of the influence of language on the way they are thinking. What about the capacity for language to stigmatize and build compassion . At a cognitive level, stigma communication creates simple categories, us versus them. It assigns blame to them. It evokes negative emotions, fear. T, anger, and it has real effects on people. It generates negative attitudes. It isolates the groups and individuals who are stigmatized. On the other end of the communicationthic at a cognitive level typically situates a problem in a broader, more complex ecosystem. It evokes more neutral or positive associations. It engenders compassionate, compassionate attitudes, connecting individuals and groups. To conclude, language is a window into the world. It is our primary source of information about lots of really important sociopolitical problems. It shapes what we see. Its not just the tool for describing what we are thinking. Es in thely meddl perception process and it does this by grounding novelty in familiar terms, guiding our attention and activating emotion, often unconsciously. Which highlights the stigmatizing and empathic potential of language. Thank you. [applause] now we will all watch what we are saying. We know the power of language. Thank you so much, paul. Our final speaker is a sociologist who has studied reconciliation in rwanda. She will provide an applied example in the context of postgenocide and the role language has played in reconciliationn and justice. Please join me in welcoming holly. [applause] holly good morning. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you for coordinating this fantastic event. As im sure you are aware, in the 19 94 genocide in rwanda, hundreds of thousands of civilians essentially took up arms against their neighbors. They grabbed machetes and clubs. They went out to hunt tutsi. Throughout this, over one Million People were killed in raped 250,000 people were in about two months. In the aftermath of this genocide, the government held people accountable by creating a localized Justice System. As you see in this photo, this meant that the incarceration rate soared in the aftermath of the genocide. Since then, people have steadily been returning home. Toost always, they returned the same communities where they committed violence, and sometimes they return to the same village as their victims families. The Research Project i will be telling you about looks at the reentry and reintegration. I was asked to talk about this as a case study. To contextualize it so you know the broader study, there are three core questions. Do we theorize reentry and reintegration in the context of genocide . What obstacles do people convicted of genocide face as they Reenter Society . And what are the individual family, community and state level factors associated with successful reintegration . Today, i cant tell you about all of this. Instead, what i will do is this. I will start by telling you briefly about one of the course core theories. I will talk afterwards about the other theoretical frameworks. Then come i will tell you briefly about the context of rwanda and my message. I have been following 200 people as they returned to their communities. I interviewed 100 rwandans about what they think about the reintegration and will be going back to wanda in september to continue the interviews. I will talk about three Core Insights relevant to our discussion today, then i will conclude with broader implications in particular. I have notes because im going to try hard to stay to my 15 minute limit. If i am speaking too fast, please raise your hand. I want to have time for q a. To begin, i am a sociologist and criminologist. Criminologists have studied reintegration for decades. It is important to note political and biased crimes like genocide or terrorism are different than other crimes like, side, rape or burglary. They have a lot in common. I draw some parallels from criminology. Criminologist look at reentry, its called labeling theory. Labeling theory essentially posits that labels matter. Ourselves, how others label us can influence our selfconcept and actions and how we interact in the world. Peoples identities and behaviors are influenced by the terms others use to describe and classify them. In our case, this is important because people who are labeled ofteniant or terrorists face new problems associated with this label. , where it is where we stigmatize people with these labels, these individuals face little chance at reentry within mainstream society. This is important because these individuals can turn to other communities that will accept them, sometimes violent subcultures. Reintegration,ut we have to think both about how people label themselves and understand themselves and their actions, and how their communities label them as well. As i mentioned, im looking at this in the case of rwanda. This project is funded by the u. S. National science foundation. I have a separate grant that has basically enabled me to create a data set of people tried for genocide in rwanda. About 200,000 people were found guilty of participating in the genocide, specifically crimes Violent Crimes against people. About 6 of these individuals were women. You can see the figure here. Its fairly small. But it is the category one, category two, category three. The post genocide court system split crimes into categories. Categories one and two were Violent Crimes against people, like genocide a homicide. They were met with prison sentences or Community Work service camps. Category three, these were crimes against property, looting during the genocide. Met with prison sentences but with fines meant for reparations. With this project i focus specifically on people who were found guilty of category one and category 2 crimes. Im following 200 people as they leave prison. I will talk about the moment i first talked with them in prison in 2017 and i have been following them since their release. Of these 200 individuals, 180 were convicted of genocide. Were convicted of other crimes, more ordinary crimes like, side after the genocide so i have a comparison group. Im not talking about them today but i am happy to talk about more of the comparisons to ring the question and answer. 19 of these individuals are women come as women did participate in the genocide. Their sentences ranged from eight years to more than 25 years. They are reentering in urban and Rural Communities across rwanda. Very briefly, im talking with. Hese individuals at set times i talked with them before they left prison to learn about their prison experience, why they did what they did, how they expected reentry to go. Then ive been finding them at their homes, sometimes a neutral location if they dont want me coming to their homes, six months, one year and two years after their reintegration. Im currently at the oneyear mark in particular. As i mentioned at the outset im also talking with Community Members. I interviewed 100 people about what they thought about the people coming back to their neighborhoods. When i go back in september, we will talk to those people again. Its important to note there has been a little bit of attrition. In the ordinary crimes division, are back inve prison. None of the people who left are back in prison. Its an important point. What i would like to do with my remaining time is tell you about three Core Insights that are relevant to the discussion today. How do they label themselves . How do the talking with the violence they committed . The second is how the communities are talking about them. The third is an important point about social factors that shape the narratives and the reintegration experience. To begin, how people label themselves. If reentry means something, it will involve somebody who was not just physically relocated back to their community, but moral inclusion. When people return to society, this means they have rights of passage. Thats a ritual that signifies the change in stage or age in life span. These are consistent across cultures. Marks and rituals that some kind of transition. When you think about people who are reintegrating from violent extremism, you might think these are important because they allow someone to have a clear break from their prior life and reentry into community. What i have found for some individuals in rwanda, they have told me about when they come home they were met with a family dinner, Community Members welcome them back. They were supportive. Another person told me there are people i never expected to help or greet me. Neighbors would come and give me small amounts of money. These rights of passage influenced how these individuals were talking about themselves. One person shared this is an amazing situation beyond comparison. It kind of corrected my feelings that people hated me. Many people have these narratives of redemption, its a stark line between who they were during the genocide and prison and who they are today. You see many examples here. I became a citizen again. I am a new person now. These are important. They point to a couple of important takeaways. The first is the importance of person first language. Many people really struggled with that. It placed the action before the person. They said there is a separation between who they are and their actions. This is important. I heard this time and time again. We have it here in the u. S. Someone who committed a felony, dont talk about them as a felon. This matters and how they see themselves. Many people said they strove to engage in Committee Activities that align themselves. With how they saw themselves. They went to church, they went to meetings, they tried to show their neighbors that they were changed. Its important because it signifies communities have to have space for people to have this type of interaction. It might be voting. It might be community service. Communities have to make space for people to be engaged. They need to live up to this positive view of themselves. Turning quickly to some of the community narratives, having these individuals see themselves is how the community sees them. We talked already about blame and responsibility. Many of the people take responsibility or their actions. Something thats very important in rwanda is there is a complex structural view of what happened during the genocide. While people to take responsibility, many rwandans will tell me, to go back to colonialism and talk about how belgium created divisions between the people. They talk about how local leaders created a structure in which the genocide was possible. They encourage people to participate. This is important. It does not necessarily take away the blame, it does allow people to contextualize actions and allows the communities to understand why people did what they did. They dont just see individuals as bad people. They see them as good people who engaged in bad actions. The actions were shaped by a confluence of factors. Some were shaped by these broader structural factors. This humanized them as they came back. There is a difference between this and shaming. Reintegrated shaming is what we want to strive toward. It reaccepts someone as a member of the community. Recognizing that good people can do terrible things, also that often based on a confluence of a powerful social structure. This is important in the narrative we tell about violence, especially in communities that are accepting and reintegrating people. Finally, i will try to go briefly, this is not monolithic. We talk about reintegration as if everyone is the same. This is not the case. Your social location, your age or gender, this shakes your shapes your experience and it shapes how people view you. In rwanda, let me make two examples. The socioeconomic status and related power. As i talk about these experience people are having, they are being welcomed and having this great experience, its the people who are fairly poor during the genocide. They are better able to lay claim to this narrative that there was a complex structure. Theyre the ones that do not tell stories of people welcoming them. They are having a much worse experience. More importantly, gender. The women in my study are much worse than the men. Most of the men have spouses, most of the women dont. They are far worse off economically. This is tied to ideas about who can engage in violence. In most places, there is the ideas it meant of the ones who can engage in violence. The women who do it are evil or different. I encourage you to check this book out. In this case, the women are seen as different, as evil or bad. They are not benefiting from some of these narratives within society. To wrap up and talk about a couple of takeaways, firstperson first language. First language. Its tremendously important to talk about someone who engaged in terrorism rather than genocide. I heard this from the people who tell me this hurts them on a daily basis, when somebody still calls them a perpetrator. They are trying to disassociate themselves from us. Its important to mark these transitions. We have a lot of markers in society, would people get into a when people integrate into a violent extremist group. We failed to have markers at the other side. Some of these small markers, whether it is a couple of really do something to help them feel like they have made a transition. I have a caveat here that this does not take away their blame. It does situate their actions within a broader social structure. A structure that we know is very powerful. Finally, the experience will vary by location. As we think about programs that aid reentering integration, we have to be thinking about how differences are going to shape how they view themselves and how others view them in a variety of ways and we must keep this in mind as we design programs. Thank you so much and i look forward to our discussion. [applause] thank you so much to everyone. This is an incredibly content filled hour and a half plus. Dont have as much time for questions as we originally hoped. I will ask that people quickly identify themselves and limit it to a question. If it is a comment, speak to our speakers after for commentary. [inaudible] outside of your lane here. Given what you have heard as we think about how we reintegrate people who committed crimes in this country, in your part of ohio even, what have you heard today that you think would make the most sense guiding professional peace builders as we go forward . Other questions . We are trying to take three. In terms of reintegration of programming, what would you say the biggest differences are in the programming from criminal Justice Programs for gang members and other violent offenders. What is the biggest differences . What are the biggest differences . Is there a third . Ok. I want to acknowledge that i feel out of my lane. In terms of thinking about specific language in this domain , about how people are integrated into society and the kind of language to use, i dont know if i have a specific suggestion. A lot of my work points to a basic distinction between language and metaphor and narratives that are simplifying. Crime is axample for simplifying metaphor. It makes things straightforward. Blackandwhite. The solution is very clear. More systemic metaphors, metaphors that situate a broader problem in a context. One of the take away points from the work i have been doing here, is to think about that distinction, situating the context is critical. A couple of things. For the first question, i will probably just add that i think this complex narrative of the structural factors of crime could be recognized. We know that people who engage in crime in the u. S. Are not just at the based on their individual motivations. The communities they are in matter. Often, we do not talk about that. We just bring it back to the individual. Whether or not the government intended to do this, they did create this complex narrative, it did recognize that it is an interplay. In rwanda versus gang members, a couple of things. Im not an expert on reintegration here. Some of the differences in rwanda that have been striking, they are preparing the community for people to reenter. When we study as criminologists here, we are mostly still focusing on the individual, but not what the communities think about reentering reintegration. In rwanda, because of the massive level of the reentry, we they took the step to prepare Community Members that people will be coming home to talk about what drove them to do it to do what they did. I think this could be adopted in the u. S. One other key difference in the u. S. That i did not highlight much in the talk would be the importance of jobs. In rwanda, most individuals have a fairly agrarian lifestyle. We know that in the u. S. Context, when people leave prison or any situation that left them away from their community, having a job is important. Of course, for their socioeconomic status but to help them feel like they are productive member of society. Programs in the u. S. That emphasize the importance of jobs are really important. In rwanda, it hasnt been as important because most are farmers on their own land. I am focusing on some of the other factors. I would be remiss if i did not mention the importance of jobs and similar factors in the u. S. We will take two more. First . Thank you. I am from equal access international. I am curious, do you have examples our Research Identifies critical significance belonging, all of these things, agency is a critical factor. If those are critical to engagement and i appreciate the framing around disengagement, what examples do you have of programs that work to rehabilitate . We call off ramping individuals that are also assetbased . We are not stripping away those critical pieces. We are just taking away the violence. Thank you. I am with the state department. One of the areas we talk about trying to change the stigma is with governments themselves. Government actors Like Police Officers or military officials, trying to reverse the history. Do you have any specific guidance for changing the stigma . Somebody mentioned the use of counter messaging to take people on this radicalization process and steer them away from the path. Somebody mentioned what you do when there is no other place to go and you are already on that path, can you speak to the strategies behind counter messaging . We can take one more. Your focus on the need for significant since significance is great in the process. The program equipped individuals with alternative means for significance. Through vocational training, domains, variety of they endowed them with significance and showed them away of integrating into society through professional activity that are alternatives to violence. That said, one must not underestimate the importance of violence as a primordial means of gaining significance. For example, one individual who was well integrated, he worked as a translator. Providing for his family. We asked him, how do you feel that you are integrated . He said i feel ok but i felt better as a fighter. There is something about dominance that pervades. Animals do it. Little children do it. Sophisticated nations do it. Theres something about violence that requires efforts to counteract through alternative means. These alternative means are professional activity and embracing by the community are critical. If you are integrated in the community, this is likely to be effective. In america, it doesnt really exist. Programmatically. There are ngos out there doing the work of disengagement and reintegration. We do not have an exit program in any real sense of the word. Messaging, iounter just did some work with one of the Tech Companies and working identify some to counter messages that were out there that might be effective. I think one of the things it can be effective at particular points if you simply sickly look at the trajectory, radicalization is like a parabola. Most of our efforts are focused on the vertex. The most difficult time to get somebody to disengage. For counter messaging to be important, it has to have it has to legitimize the grievances that are already being felt by the people who are beginning to delve into the radicalization process. Lots of the material out there, particularly in terms of the wingme white wing right it misseslists completely. The other thing is that it has to hit a target demographic. If we are all just middleage white women, i have no business is counter there content that can be hyper effective because that is where young people are. Utilizingtors are fore spaces effectively their messaging. We have to make sure the content we are putting out is hitting the demographic where and how they are consuming materials in the first place. It has to offer an alternative pathway. It cannot just be, like, its bad. We all know that. It does not give them anything else to do, to deal with the grievances they have, to find meaning and a sense of community and a sense of agency. I think counter messaging can be very effective at particular points along the trajectory but it misses its mark overwhelmingly. Counter messaging would not be effective if it is disjointed with the general elements of radicalization. N the counter messaging labeling them in a way that would be derogatory, that will miss the point. If the counter messaging is devoid from the support of the network, it is going to miss the point. Counter messaging has to be integrated with the other element. It has to address, identify alternative means of significance, of fulfilling the basic motivation. It has to be validated by a group. If you address the counter messaging as an individual where the Group Remains untouched, the individual will quickly revert to the old way of thinking. The counter messaging has to be integrated with a panoply of factors that create radicalization. Otherwise, it will be ineffective. Deradicalize individuals through complex theological arguments was ineffective. Theydo not care about care about their needs to become heroes. Crutch for just a pushing their motivation. Integrated and has to address peoples motivation. A couple of other things to add, the counter messaging point, this is not my area but i would like to briefly point out that the messages that people receive and the different types of violence we are talking about is quite different. In the case i talked about, genocide, the average age was 34. It is much older than a lot of the ages you will see for people who do participate in violent extremism. Participation in violence was a framed as a way to protect their families and their communities. This is a very different message that people might be getting in other circumstances. Pay attention to the type of messaging people are receiving because this will determine whether it is terrorism or genocide or a different type of crime. On the question of government, i do not have a great answer. In rwanda, the local leaders who were part of the government are not having great reentry experiences because the dominant narrative of the violence really does not talk about the structural factors that were at play for them but places a lot of the blame on them. I do think that sociologists could tell you that bureaucratic structures are powerful as well so there is space to talk about the different structural factors that shape the actions of leaders or others engage in the violence. They made a concerted effort to involve members of the government and the Transitional Justice process and many of the people i spoke with in the aftermath of the genocide said they did not trust the government at first but were able to engage with people at a more local level within their community and this helped them to regain some of the trust in the government. One of the things that struck me as important related to that is a leadership issue. If the leadership believes in the government and the power of the government to affect change and do good, you are not fighting such an uphill battle. It seems like there is a big uphill battle to fight right now. In terms of the language, narratives emphasize the relationship between the people and the government and government organizations and how different organizations are really just people, representatives of a country. Emphasizing that could break down some of these us versus them barriers. Was going to take another round of questions we are already over time. I want to take this opportunity ,o thank my Incredible Team whose brainchild this event was and has brought it together seamlessly. Thank you so much for all of the hard work you have put into it. Thank you to my incredible experts who have joined us today. We have lessons and cross comparative studies we need to be bringing to bear. On behalf of the u. S. Ip, thank you to everyone who has joined today. Thank you. [applause] [applause] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] tonight on the communicators. People come up to me and they say, sir, i cant, i cant follow you. They make it impossible. These are people that are really good at what they do. They say, they make it absolutely impossible. Will talk about the recent president ial social media summit where President Trump discussed social Media Censorship by big tech firms and what could be done about it with robert louis from Heritage Foundation and Patrick Hedger from the competitive enterprise institute. I think as consumers we can demand that as users of facebook and twitter and google that if were going to be on that platform we expect they will respect our ability to communicate. If we dont like it we can quit. To me it seems part to love indexation that big tech is a net negative any way, shape, or form to conserve speech when somebody like Dennis Prager is getting 1 billion views on the products and videos hes putting out. Watch the communicators tonight at 8 p. M. Eastern on cspan2. Every year cspan awards fellowships to several middle and High School Teachers who have demonstrated