#45 — February 2, 2015. The George Washington University’s Marc Lynch, director of the Project on Middle East Political Science, speaks with Richard A. Nielsen, assistant professor of political science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Some of his work is published or forthcoming in The American Journal of Political Science, International Studies Quarterly, Political Analysis, and Sociological Methods and Research. His current work uses statistical text analysis and fieldwork in Cairo mosques to understand the radicalization of jihadi clerics in the Arab world. Lynch and Nielsen discuss this work and his dissertation and book project, The Lonely Jihadist: Weak Networks and the Radicalization of Muslim Clerics, which explores why some Muslim clerics adopt the ideology of militant jihad while most do not.
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