A New Homeland Security College Founded

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Fifteen years after 9/11, the spectre of terrorism remains a global threat and, in response, the University of Albany, New York, announced that it has made faculty experts available to discuss contemporary impact of terrorism in the United States. The new College of Emergency Preparedness, Cybersecurity and Homeland Security is “designed to maintain New York’s position as a front-runner in state and national security.” It is designed to provide students with a broad overview of the three fields, help them develop critical thinking skills and acquire subject area knowledge of public policy, management, and risk analysis.

Albany is also home to  the National Center for Security & Preparedness, which will operate as a research center for the college.

“It is the first college of its kind, and I believe that it will play a fundamental role in both keeping New Yorkers safe, and in helping other communities around the globe rise to meet the challenges of the future,” said Andrew Cuomo, the Governor of New York.

Spotlightnews.com reports that in addition to required courses in Emergency Preparedness, Cybersecurity and Homeland Security, the college will offer elective courses in a wide variety of topics, including: Climate Change, Public Policy, Natural Disasters, Urban or Environmental Planning, Healthy Communities, Political Violence, Comparative Ethnicity, Civil Liberties, Crime Deviation, Order and Disorder in Society, Data and Databases, Cyber Crime, Digital Forensics, and Cryptography.

UAlbany’s faculty advisory team on terrorism team includes some of the leading experts on the subject. Two of them, Karl Rethemeyer and Victor Asal, are working together on a project meant to enable a better understanding of how terrorist organizations network and function over time.

The National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START) has launched the Big Allied and Dangerous (BAAD) online platform, a new tool that features updated, vetted and sourced narratives, and relationship information and social network data on 50 of the most notorious terrorist organizations in the world since 1998, with additional network information on more than 100 organizations.