Professor and author Dr. Anita Weiss discusses her book Countering Violent Extremism in Pakistan, with writer and policy specialist Raza Rumi, and President of the American Pakistan Foundation Shamila Chaudhary.
Countering Violent Extremism in Pakistan identifies and analyzes the impact of the various ways in which local people are responding, taking stands, recapturing their culture, and saying ‘stop’ to the violent extremism that has manifested over the past decade (even longer) in Pakistan. Local groups throughout Pakistan are engaging in various kinds of social negotiations and actions to lessen the violence that has plagued the country since the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan which let loose a barrage of violence that overflowed into its borders. In so many ways, Pakistanis are engaging in powerful actions that transform how people think about their own society, impeding extremists’ rants while acting on ‘envisioning alternative futures’. — Oxford University Press
Speakers
Dr. Anita M. Weiss received her doctorate in sociology from UC Berkeley and is professor of International Studies at the University of Oregon, where she has taught since 1988. She has published extensively on social development, gender issues, and political Islam in Pakistan. Professor Weiss is a member of the editorial board of Globalizations, has been a member of the Research Advisory Board of the Pakistan National Commission on the Status of Women, has been Treasurer and Vice President of the American Institute of Pakistan Studies (AIPS), and is on the Executive Committee of the Religion and International Relations as well as the IDSS sections of the International Studies Association. She recently stepped down, after seven years, from being Department Head of International Studies at the University of Oregon.
Raza A. Rumi is a policy analyst, journalist and an author. He is Director, Park Center for Independent Media and teaches in the journalism department. He is also Visiting Faculty at Cornell Institute for Public Affairs. During 2015-2017, Raza was a scholar in residence at IC and taught courses in journalism and writing departments as well as at the Gallatin School of Individualized Study, New York University. Raza was the editor of Daily Times, The Friday Times and a TV broadcaster in Pakistan before he moved to the United States in 2014. Raza is the author of Delhi by Heart: Impressions of a Pakistani Traveller, The Fractious Path: Pakistan’s Democratic Transition and Identity and Faith and Conflict. His most recent book Being Pakistani: Society Culture and the Arts was published in June 2018 by Harper Collins, India. He co-edited a volume of essays entitled Rethinking Pakistan that was published by Anthem Press in September 2020.
Shamila N. Chaudhary was appointed President of the American Pakistan Foundation in August of 2019. Chaudhary is a foreign policy analyst specializing in South Asia. Her work is regularly cited and published in Foreign Policy, The Washington Post, the New York Times and she has frequently appeared on CNN, BBC News America, NPR, Fox News, and other outlets. She served in the U.S. government, including at the White House as Director for Pakistan and Afghanistan on the National Security Council from 2010-2011 and on the U.S. Department of State’s Policy Planning Staff, where she advised Secretary Clinton and the late Ambassador Richard Holbrooke on Afghanistan and Pakistan.