Treason, Terrorism, Betrayal

3 Credits · Level: Graduate

This course will employ an interdisciplinary approach to examine the motivations and situations that lead some individuals to pose a threat to U.S. national security. The course will draw on a range of disciplines and approaches including anthropology, psychology (cognitive, cultural, social, forensic), linguistics, narratology, and positioning theory, among others, to gain insight into the decision-making calculus that leads certain individuals to “cross the line”, i.e. to make personal decisions to take actions that will ultimately damage U.S. national security. The course qualitatively divides threats by individuals to U.S. national security into three categories: treason, terrorism, and betrayal. The first third of the course will focus on individuals who have agreed to work as an agent of a foreign government to provide protected U.S. information damaging to U.S. national security. Various frameworks and analytic approaches that have been used to understand their behavior will be introduced and critiqued. The second third of the course will focus on terrorism and the analytic attempts to understand the pathways that lead to radicalization and potentially extremist behavior directed at the U.S. by individuals. The final third of the course will focus on betrayal by individuals who have obtained security clearances but have violated their secrecy agreement through the unauthorized release of classified information to the public that endangers U.S. national security.