VCU news

By Pamela Stallsmith
L. Douglas Wilder School of Government and Public Affairs

The Center for Public Policy at Virginia Commonwealth University’s L. Douglas Wilder School of Government and Public Affairs will host symposiums this semester that explore the topics of race and policing in communities, and terrorism and radicalization in an open society.

The first symposium, “Race and Policing in Communities,” will be held on Thursday, March 24, from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. in the Forum Room of the University Student Commons.

The second symposium, “Terrorism and Radicalization in Open Society,” will take place on Thursday, April 14, from 3 to 5 p.m. in the University Student Commons Theater.

“Each event will be an open, informative and constructive conversation with some speakers talking from their perspective as researchers, observers and expert analysts and others speaking from the perspective of their experience,” said Henry Brownstein, Ph.D., the center’s director and the Wilder School’s associate dean for research.

An audience question-and-answer session will follow each panel.

“Race and Policing in Communities”
Thursday, March 24
11 a.m.–1 p.m.
University Student Commons, Forum Room

William Pelfrey Jr., Ph.D., chair of the Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness Program and associate professor in the Wilder School, will moderate. The speakers are as follows:

David Klinger is professor of criminology and criminal justice at the University of Missouri–St. Louis, and senior fellow at the Police Foundation in Washington, D.C. A former patrol officer for the Los Angeles and Redmond, Washington, police departments, his research interests include the organization and actions of the modern police.

Andres Rengifo is an associate professor in the School of Criminal Justice at Rutgers University and a Research Fellow at the Program in Criminal Justice Policy and Management at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. His research focuses primarily on the macro-level intersection between sentencing policies and imprisonment, as well as social networks and urban crime and disorder.

Natasha C. Pratt-Harris is an associate professor and coordinator of the Criminal Justice Program in the Sociology and Anthropology Department at Morgan State University in Baltimore. She is currently conducting a qualitative research study about black males who report that they have wrongful convictions on their criminal record.

John Venuti is the chief of the VCU Police Department and assistant vice president for public safety and emergency preparedness operations. He previously served in the Richmond Police Department for more than 25 years.

Scott Booth is chief of the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority in Washington, D.C., who previously served in a variety of law enforcement assignments across Virginia. He is a current Ph.D. student in the Wilder School.

“Terrorism and Radicalization in Open Society”
Thursday, April 14
3–5 p.m.
University Student Commons Theater

Natalie Baker, Ph.D., assistant professor of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness in the Wilder School, will moderate. The speakers are as follows:

Pete Simi is an associate professor in the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice and director of Radicalization and Violent Groups Research in the Center for Collaboration Science at the University of Nebraska, Omaha. For nearly 20 years, Simi has been interviewing current and former members of various types of violent groups. He conducted embedded fieldwork with U.S.-based hate groups, spending time with Wade Michael Page (the Wisconsin Sikh temple gunman) that culminated in the book, “American Swastika: Inside the White Power Movement’s Hidden Spaces of Hate.”

Frank Smyth is executive director of Global Journalist Security, a private consulting and training firm, and senior adviser for journalist security at the nonprofit Committee to Protect Journalists. He is also an independent, award-winning investigative reporter specializing in covering armed conflicts, organized crime and human rights.

Scott Sayare is an American writer and reporter living in Paris who previously worked as a reporter for The New York Times. He recently wrote “The Charlie Hebdo I Know” (The Atlantic, Jan. 11, 2015) and “The Ultimate Terrorist Factory — Are French Prisons Incubating Extremism?” (Harper’s Magazine, January 2016).

Khalid Rahimi is a graduate student in the Wilder School’s Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness Program. He was born in Kabul, Afghanistan, but the war forced his family to move to Pakistan before he turned 2. He immigrated to Woodbridge, Virginia, in 2000 with his mother, brother and two sisters. The next year, 9/11 happened and it affected not only this country, but the whole world. He witnessed hate, racism and discrimination firsthand growing up, which he says helped him grow as a person and prepare for taking on life and its challenges.

John Wyman is an award-winning supervisory special agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, where he has almost 20 years of counterterrorism experience, including assignments with the Washington field office, FBI headquarters and the Richmond field office. He has served as the supervisor for an international terrorism squad and has focused on al-Qaida threats to the National Capitol Region as well as homegrown violent extremism.