Alex P. Schmid

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Biographical Details

"Alex P. Schmid is an internationally renowned Dutch scholar in Terrorism Studies and former Officer-in-Charge of the Terrorism Prevention Branch of the United Nations. In 2006 he was appointed to a Chair in International Relations at St Andrews University as well as succeeding Magnus Ranstorp as Director of its Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence (CSTPV).Prior to his appointment to St Andrews, Professor Schmid served as Officer-in-Charge of the United Nations' Terrorism Prevention Branch in Vienna, where, from 1999 to 2005, he held the position of a Senior Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice Officer. Before joining the United Nations, he held the Synthesis Chair on Conflict Resolution at the Erasmus University in Rotterdam. He also taught International Relations at the Department of Political Sciences of Leiden University where he acted as Research Coordinator of the Interdisciplinary Research Programme on Causes of Human Rights Violations (PIOOM). 11

"He was an Einstein Fellow at the Center for International Affairs, Harvard University, and served on the Executive Board of the International Scientific and Professional Advisory Council (ISPAC) of the United Nations Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice Programme. Professor Schmid is a Member of the World Society of Victimology and a Corresponding Member of the Royal Academy of Arts and Sciences of the Netherlands. He also is a Member of the European Commission’s Expert Group on Violent Radicalisation.The Supreme Court of India adopted Alex P. Schmid's definition of terrorism in a 2003 ruling (Madan Singh vs. State of Bihar), "defin[ing] acts of terrorism veritably as 'peacetime equivalents of war crimes.'"[1]Schmid's academic consensus definition of terrorism (1988) is widely used, e.g. by Jane's Intelligence."

"Dr. Schmid is a Member of the World Society of Victimology and a Senior Fellow of the Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism."

START Project

Assessing Success and Failure in Terrorism and Counterterrorism: Development of Metrics on the Global War on Terror and the Global Jihad.

Investigators: Alex P. Schmid and Rashmi Singh

"(1) Creation of an index based on objective indicators regarding the success of the Global War on Terror, and the related Global Jihad, that allows for an assessment of these efforts both from the perspective of the U.S. government, and from the perspective of the jihadists. Index will include information on scope, nature, and frequency of al Qaeda attacks, breadth of the al Qaeda network, and costs (in a range of measures) of efforts on both sides of this conflict; (2) compilation of annual data from 2001-2009 on composite measures reflected in index to allow for analysis of successes and failures over time in this endeavor." [1]