Megan K McBride
Senior Research Scientist, CNA, Institute for Public Research
2024, 2025
Megan K McBride, Ph.D. is a Senior Research Scientist at CNA (a non-partisan, non-profit research and analysis organization). Her areas of expertise include extremism, terrorism, radicalization, disinformation, and the evaluation of P/CVE programs. Her recent work has focused on psychosocial risk factors for radicalization to violent extremism; vulnerability and resilience to mis-/dis-/mal-information; and evaluating the efficacy of P/CVE and reintegration programming. She has taught courses on contemporary terrorism and political violence at Brown University and Boston College; is a 2024 Distinguished Fellow of the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation; and has presented her work at major scholarly conferences and been published in both peer-reviewed journals and popular outlets. She is a former Research Associate at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health where she contributed to a portfolio of CVE research funded by DHS, NIJ, and NATO. And she is a former Middle East intelligence analyst who worked at the National Security Agency for five years. During her tenure with the US government, she spent time in both Jordan (2008) and Iraq (2007–2008). She has a Ph.D. in Religious Studies from Brown University where her research focused on the relationship between religion and contemporary terrorism; she also has an MA in Government from Johns Hopkins University, an MA from the Great Books program at St. John’s College, and a BA in Psychology from Drew University.
The effort to eradicate hate requires the active participation of every component of our society, to include governments, the private sector, communities of faith and indeed every aspect of civil society. There is no more urgent task in front of us. The organizers of the Eradicate Hate Global Summit are doing the United States and the world an enormous service by tackling hatred and extremism with a focus on honest dialogue and conversation, genuine learning and practical solutions. This will not happen overnight, but the Pittsburgh community’s leadership in this effort is genuinely inspiring and motivating.
