Victor Asal (PhD University of Maryland, 2003) is Director of the Center for Policy Research and a Professor of Political Science at the University at Albany. He is also, the director of the Project on Violent Conflict. Currently Dr Asal is focusing on Nonstate actor behavior in near crises related to the Minerva grant being led by Dr. Steven Lobell. Dr. Asal is also affiliated with the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START), a Department of Homeland Security Center of Excellence. Dr. Asal’s research focuses on the choice of violence by nonstate organizational actors as well as the causes of political discrimination by states against different types of groups including, ethnic minorities, sexual minorities and women. He has done a great deal of work on the behavior of insurgent and terrorist organizations using yearly data in the Big Allied and Dangerous dataset created by his team at the University at Albany in conjunction with R. Karl Rethemeyer. He has also collected data related to extremists in the United States funded by the National Counterterrorism Innovation, Technology, and Education (NCITE) Center of Excellence which was funded by the Department of Homeland Security. In addition, Prof. Asal has done research on the impact of nuclear proliferation on crisis behavior and on the pedagogy of simulations and games. In addition, Asal has been involved in research projects funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, Defense Threat Reduction Agency, The National Science Foundation, and The Office of Naval Research.
Victor was a superbly prepared and inquisitive student in my EPIIC West Bank and Gaza year, where he was chosen by his peers to help introduce the symposium to its audience and lead one of its sessions. He was meticulous and measured in his arguments, and while differing - at times widely - with his fellow classmates in an inevitably contentious subject field, he was a moderating voice and a figure of great respect in the class.
Upon graduation Victor emigrated to Israel . Nothing could have made clearer the respect he earned to me, than one day when another very valued ans salient member of the class, Victor’s symposium co-chair, Leila Abu Gheida, contacted me from her Peace Corps assignment in East Africa inquiring about Victor’s safety.
He had been on a bus that the BBC reported had been seized and overthrown into a steep ravine by a young Palestinian in retribution for his brother having been killed by the IDF in Gaza. Victor had been interviewed on the site, having survived the attack, and while still bleeding profusely from glass cuts, revealed his character by condemning terror, whether it had been by Arabs against Jews, or Jews against Arabs.
Victor entered the Israeli Army and took his humane sensibility with him and was named one of the IDF teachers of the year. In subsequent years, when returning to the US, Victor spoke for Institute programs and in particular, conducted workshops on research methodology.