Future Directions

Our principal project in 2007 is to build a research network to explore the root causes of terrorism and consider the means available to address those causes. While seeking to prevent terrorist attacks is clearly essential work, it addresses only the symptoms of this problem. Our interest lies in the causes and what can be done about them.

One example of a possible intervention is the use of Debt for Development Swaps to channel the funds liberated by the cancellation of foreign loans into the building of secular schools in places such as Afghanistan, Indonesia, Mindanao (in the Philippines) and the like. Presently, sometimes the only schools that provide both food and free education to their students in these places are fundamentalist schools that offer students only one perspective on world events. Debt for Development Swaps are a technique that, properly employed, would enable creditor countries to direct the funds liberated by their cancellation of loans towards the building of public schools in these regions.

We seek to develop a research network that would explore this and other such techniques available, but currently rarely utilized, to achieve these ends.