Terrorism expert and author of "Modern Jihad: Tracing the Dollars Behind the Terror Networks" Loretta Napoleoni will present the third lecture in the Hamilton College globalization speakers series, on Friday, April 30, at 7 p.m., in the Hamilton Chapel. This event is free and open to the public.
Loretta Napoleoni, born and raised in Rome, was a Fulbright scholar at Johns Hopkins University's Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies and a Rotary Scholar at the London School of Economics. She is a journalist and has worked as a foreign correspondent for several Italian financial papers. In addition to "The New Economy of Terror," she has written novels, guide books in Italian and translated and edited books on terrorism. She was among the few people to interview the Red Brigades in Italy after three decades of silence; this research became the topic of her PhD.
In her book, Napoleoni traces 50 years of Western economic and political dominance in developing Muslim countries - backing repressive, corrupt regimes, fighting the Cold War by Proxy and blocking the legitimate economic ascendancy of millions. "As in the Crusades," in which Napoleoni finds many modern parallels, "religion is simply a recruitment tool; the real driving force is economics."
New York Times' reviewer Alan Cowell described "The New Economy of Terror:" "What this work does achieve is a fascinating and incisive cataloguing of the known economic activities of organizations that, whether terrorist or not, have as their aim the transformation of the existing order in the Middle East, the broader Muslim world and, ultimately, the United States." The Wall Street Journal added, "Economist Loretta Napoleoni comes up with a startling conclusion that the 'New Economy of Terror' is a fast growing international economic system, with a turnover of about $1.5 trillion, twice the GDP of the United Kingdom."
As part of its Sophomore Globalization Seminars, Hamilton College is presenting a series of lectures on a variety of global issues presented by prominent academics and authors. Future speakers include: Peter Singer, author of "The President of Good and Evil -The Ethics of George W. Bush," on May 4 and Charles Kernaghan, executive director of the National Labor Committee in Support of Human and Worker Rights on May 5.
All globalization lecture series programs are free and open to the public.
