Michael Kenney
Wesley W. Posvar Chair in International Security Studies, Director of the Matthew B. Ridgway Center, and Professor of International Affairs, University of Pittsburgh
2023, 2024
Michael Kenney is the Wesley W. Posvar Chair in International Security Studies, Director of the Matthew B. Ridgway Center, and Professor of International Affairs at the University of Pittsburgh in the United States. Kenney teaches and conducts research on high-risk activism and political violence, organization theory and social network analysis, and ethnography and qualitative research. He is the author of The Islamic State in Britain: Radicalization and Resilience in an Activist Network, which received the 2019 Best Book Award from the Political Networks Section of the American Political Science Association. He also authored From Pablo to Osama: Trafficking and Terrorist Networks, Government Bureaucracies, and Competitive Adaptation. Kenney’s work on terrorism, Islamic militancy, and transnational organized crime has appeared in the Journal of Conflict Resolution, Political Psychology, Survival, Orbis, Global Crime, Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, Terrorism and Political Violence and other publications. He has also written a book-length oral history on al-Muhajiroun based on extensive interviews with activists and former activists. Since 2017, Kenney has been conducting research on antifascism and anarchism in the United States and Europe. His research includes participant observation and interviews with militant activists. In 2020, Kenney co-authored “What Antifa Is, What It Isn’t, and Why It Matters,” in War on the Rocks based on his interviews with anarchists and antifascists. It is the second most read article on WOTR of all time. He has spoken on the far-left in the United States to a variety of academic researchers, security practitioners and policy makers.
The Summit was more than empty words – it made clear that a solution-driven approach is the only way to fight hate. That’s why the working group activities, which are results driven are going to be critical in defeating violent extremism. The Summit brought together the best minds in government, private sector, academia, and civil society. Being surrounded by these experts sparked new ideas – some of which I’ve already implemented or have written about.
