9:30am to 9:33am Conference Introduction:
Dr. Saqib Naseer, Vice President, Pakistani American Association of Connecticut (PAACT)

 

9:33am to 9:40am - Session I opening remarks by moderator - Watch her opening remarks on YouTube.
Session Moderator: Nadia Naviwala

Nadia Naviwala has trained at Harvard University Kennedy School of Government and at Georgetown University. She is a graduate of the Belfer Center for Science and International Global Affairs. Nadia has served as a Legislative Aide on National Security for a U.S. Senate committee on Foreign Relations and Armed Services as well as a Legislative Correspondent at U.S. Senate. She has worked as a Summer Consultant for the Citizens Foundation. Her professional experience includes work with the Embassy of Pakistan in Washington DC, the US committee for UNDP and a prominent government relations firm. She currently works as a student associate with a program on Afghanistan and Pakistan at Carr Center for Human Rights Policy.

 

9:40am to 10:00am: Pervez Hoodbhoy
“Radicalization in Pakistan: Past, Present and Future” - Watch it on YouTube.

Professor of Nuclear Physics, Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad, Pakistan.
Dr. Pervez Hoodbhoy has been a faculty member at the Quaid-e-Azam University since 1973. In 1984 he received the Abdus Salam Prize for mathematics and is the author of 65 scientific research papers. He is chairman of Mashal, a non-profit organization which publishes books in Urdu on women’s rights, education, environmental issues, philosophy, and modern thought.

Dr. Hoodbhoy has written and spoken extensively on topics ranging from science in Islam to education issues in Pakistan and nuclear disarmament. He produced a 13-part documentary series in Urdu for Pakistan Television on critical issues in education, and two series aimed at popularizing science. He is author of ’Islam and Science: Religious Orthodoxy and the Battle for Rationality’, now in 5 languages.

In 2003, Dr. Hoodbhoy was awarded UNESCO’s Kalinga Prize for popularizing science in Pakistan with TV serials and his film ’The Bell Tolls for Planet Earth’ won honorable mention at the Paris Film Festival.

Dr. Pervez Hoodbhoy received his bachelor's degrees in electrical engineering and mathematics, master's in solid state physics, and Ph.D in nuclear physics, all from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He has been a faculty member at the Department of Physics, Quaid-e-Azam University, Islamabad since 1973. In 1984 he received the Abdus Salam Prize for mathematics and, earlier, the Baker Award for Electronics. He is chairman of Mashal, a non-profit organization that publishes books in Urdu on women's rights, education, environmental issues, philosophy, and modern thought. Dr. Hoodbhoy has written and spoken extensively on topics ranging from science in Islam to education issues in Pakistan and nuclear disarmament. He produced a 13-part documentary series in Urdu for Pakistan Television on critical issues in education, and two other major television series aimed at popularizing science. He is author of "Islam and Science: Religious Orthodoxy and the Battle for Rationality", now in 5 languages. His writings have appeared in Dawn, The News, Frontier Post, Muslim, Newsline, Herald, Jang, and overseas in Le Monde, Japan Times, Washington Post, Asahi, Seattle Times, Post-Intelligencer, Frontline, The Hindu, and Chowk Magazine. He has been an engaged speaker at more than twenty US campuses including MIT, Princeton, Univ. of Maryland, and Johns Hopkins University. He has appeared on several TV and radio networks (BBC, CNN, ABC, NBC, PBS, NPR, Fox) to analyze political developments in South Asia.

10:00am to 10:15am: Hassan Abbas
“Radicalization trends in South Asia and Their relevance to the West" - Watch it on YouTube.

Dr. Hassan Abbas is Quaid-i-Azam Chair Professor at Columbia University in New York. He is also a Bernard Schwartz Fellow at the Asia Society’s New York headquarters and a Senior Advisor at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, after having been a Research Fellow at the Center from 2005 to August 2009. He is also a non-resident Fellow at the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding (ISPU), Michigan, and an Associate of the Pakistan Security Research Unit (PSRU), University of Bradford, in the United Kingdom. He received his Ph.D. from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University and an LL.M. in International Law from Nottingham University, UK, where he was a Britannia Chevening Scholar (1999). Hassan also remained a visiting fellow at the Islamic Legal Studies Program at Harvard Law School (2002–2003) and as a visiting scholar at the Harvard Law School's Program on Negotiation (2003–2004).

His research interests are nuclear proliferation, religious extremism in South and Central Asia, and relations between Muslims and the West.

Hassan is a former Pakistani government official who served in the administrations of Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto (1995–1996) and President Pervez Musharraf (1999–2000). His latest book, Pakistan's Drift into Extremism: Allah, the Army and America's War on Terror (M.E. Sharpe) has been on bestseller lists in India and Pakistan and was widely reviewed internationally, including by the New York Times, the Boston Globe, Far Eastern Economic Review, The Hindu, and Dawn. He has also appeared as an analyst on CNN, M SNBC, C-Span, Al-jazeera, and PBS, and as a political commentator on VOA and BBC. His forthcoming book is Letters to Young Muslims on Science, Sovereignty and Sufis. He runs WATANDOST, a blog on Pakistan and its neighbors' related affairs.

10:15am to 10:30am: Dr. Marc Sageman
“Violent Extremism- What American Muslims Need to Know about the Process" - Watch it on YouTube.

Marc Sageman, Senior Fellow, is an independent researcher on terrorism and the founder of Sageman Consulting, LLC. He holds various academic positions at the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Maryland, and national think tanks including FPRI and the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

After graduating from Harvard, he obtained an M.D. and a Ph.D. in sociology from New York University. After a tour as a flight surgeon in the U.S. Navy, he joined the Central Intelligence Agency in 1984. He spent a year on the Afghan Task Force then went to Islamabad from 1987 to 1989, where he ran the U.S. unilateral programs with the Afghan Mujahedin, and New Delhi from 1989–91. In 1991, he resigned from the agency to return to medicine. He completed a residency in psychiatry at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. Since 1994, he has been in the private practice of forensic and clinical psychiatry and has had the opportunity to evaluate about 500 murderers.

After 9/11, he started collecting biographical material on about 400 Al Qaeda terrorists to test the validity of the conventional wisdom on terrorism. This research has been published as Understanding Terror Networks (University of Pennsylvania Press 2004) and Leaderless Jihad (UPP, 2007). As an expert on Al Qaeda and related terrorist organizations, he has consulted with various branches of the U.S. government, including the National Security Council, the Department of Defense, the Combatant Commanders, the National Laboratories, the Department of Homeland Security, various agencies in the U.S. intelligence community, the U.S. Secret Service, the New York Police Department, and various other law enforcement agencies. He has lectured at many universities, including Harvard University, the University of Pennsylvania, MIT, the University of Chicago, the University of Michigan, the University of California at Berkeley, and Johns Hopkins University. He has also consulted with foreign government (France, Australia, Spain, Canada, Germany, Britain) and lectured extensively at foreign universities.

10:30am - 10:45am: Todd Shea
“Radicalization: Action OR Reaction- Chicken and Egg question?" - Watch it on YouTube.

Todd Shea, an American who came to volunteer in Pakistan after the 2005 earthquake, a disaster that killed 80,000 people, never left. Mr. Shea established a charity hospital in Kashmir called CDRS, or Comprehensive Disaster Relief Services, which provides quality healthcare services to the people in the remote and earthquake affected areas in northwest Pakistan. Todd lives in Pakistan and has made a far bigger impact on winning hearts and minds of people than any other governmental efforts that may have. He lives amongst the people and has been able to learn first hand on what is happening in the hearts and minds of people on ground.

Mr. Shea has been profiled by the New York Times for work and his capacity to make a difference single handedly when teams of consultants, think tanks, various groups could not do. He went inside the North West Part of Pakistan and help change the understanding about Americans in the hearts and minds of the people of Pakistan.

Todd is a singer and has started to sing Urdu songs in Pakistan in front of large audiences and has also shared American songs with the people over including songs he has written himself. Mr. Shea’s understanding of the feelings of the people on ground in Pakistan has allowed him to have frank discussions with Members of Congress in DC and he has shared his ways of building better understanding and preventing radicalization in the region.

 

10:45am to 11:00am: Prof. Vernon James Schubel
“Seeking a Counter-Reformation in Islam: Tradition as an Antidote to Radicalism" - Watch it on YouTube.

Vernon James Schubel (B.A., Oklahoma State; M.A., Ph.D., University of Virginia), joined the faculty of Kenyon College in 1988. In addition to Religion 101 he teaches a variety of courses on Islam, including Classical Islam, Islam in Central Asia, and Sufism; and Religions of South Asia.

Professor Schubel’s primary research interest is Islam in Central and South Asia. He has spent seven months as a Fulbright scholar in Multan, Pakistan, in 1989, where he conducted research on centers of Sufi pilgrimage, and in 1996 he spent seven months of research in Uzbekistan. His book, Religious Performance in Contemporary Islam, was published by the University of South Carolina Press in 1993.

He has spoken at various national and international venues to talk about Islam and aspects of theology which may lead to extreme views which may lead to violence. Professor Schubel has been a source of inspiration for hundreds of students and audience because of his depth of knowledge of Islam. His work on understanding and teaching about Sunni and Shia perspective of faith and the commonality and the path of love has made the people with extreme views irrelevant with their twisted theological theories.

11:00am to 11:15am: Professor Adil Najam
“Causes of Radicalization in United States" - Watch it on YouTube.
Speaker profile and picture available on Session II details page.

11:15am to 12:00pm: Questions and Answers