Dr. Zachary Abuza, Jebsen Center Senior Fellow for Counter-Terrorism Studies

Dr. Zachary Abuza is a Jebsen Center Senior Fellow for Counter-Terrorism Studies and Professor of Political Science at Simmons College, Boston. His research specializes in Southeast Asian politics and security issues. He is a graduate of Trinity College and received his MALD and Ph.D. from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. He is the author of Conspiracy of Silence: The Insurgency in Southern Thailand and its Implications for Southeast Asian Security (forthcoming, 2008), Political Islam and Violence in Indonesia (Routledge, 2006), Militant Islam in Southeast Asia (Lynne Rienner, 2003) and Renovating Politics in Contemporary Vietnam (Lynne Rienner, 2001). He has also authored two studies for the National Bureau of Asian Research, entitled Funding Terrorism in Southeast Asia: The Financial Network of Al Qaeda and Jemaah Islamiya, NBR Analysis (2003) and Uncivil Islam: Muslims, Politics and Violence in Indonesia, NBR Analysis (2004). His monograph, Balik Terrorism: The Return of the Abu Sayyaf Group, was published by the U.S. Army War College’s Security Studies Institute in 2005.

Dr. Abuza’s study of Jemaah Islamiyah’s overt strategy of engaging in social welfare and charitable works, “Jemaah Islamiyah and the Inverse Triangle,” is due to be published in late-2007. He is currently completing a major study of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, which was supported by the United States Institute of Peace and the Smith Richardson Foundation.

Dr. Abuza consults widely and is a frequent commentator on Southeast Asian politics and security issues in the press. He is a visiting guest lecturer at the Foreign Service Institute, U.S. Department of State and at the Department of Defense’s Joint Special Operations University. In 2005 he was a Senior Fellow at the United States Institute of Peace. He is a frequent contributor to the Jane’s Intelligence Review, the Counterterrorism Blog, and the Jamestown Foundation’s Terrorism Monitor.