Bruce Hoffman is Vice President for External Affairs and
Director of The RAND Corporation’s Washington, D.C. office.
He was the founding Director of the Centre for the Study of Terrorism and
Political Violence at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, where he was
also Reader in International Relations and Chairman of the Department of
International Relations. Dr.
Hoffman is Editor-in-Chief of Studies in
Conflict and Terrorism, the leading scholarly journal in the field, and a
member of the advisory boards of both Terrorism
and Political Violence and Global
Networks: A Journal of Transnational Affairs.
He holds degrees in government, history, and international relations and
received his doctorate from Oxford University.
Dr. Hoffman’s latest book, Inside Terrorism, is published by Columbia University Press in the
U.S. and by Orion Books in Britain. Foreign
language editions have been published in nine countries.
The New York Times Book Review
said, “Inside Terrorism is a
valuable work.... [a] "must read," at least for anyone who wants to
understand how we can respond to international acts of terror.”
Said The Economist:
“Hoffman’s aim is to explain why terrorists do what they do.
Providing the reader with the cream of the twenty years he has spent
studying the subject, he produces an analysis that is gripping—and
alarming.”
In recognition of Dr. Hoffman’s academic contributions to
the study of political violence, he was awarded the first Santiago Grisolía
Prize and accompanying Chair in Violence Studies by the Queen Sofia Center for
the Study of Violence in Valencia, Spain, in 1998. He is a past recipient of the United States Intelligence
Community Seal Medallion, the highest level of commendation given to a
non-government individual in recognition of “sustained superior performance of
high value that distinctly benefits the interests and national security of the
United States.”
Dr. Hoffman is Chairman of the International Research Group on Political Violence, a Washington, D.C.-based group, jointly sponsored by the U.S. Institute of Peace and the Airey Neave Trust in London, that seeks to find new approaches to countering terrorism. He was also a member of the Panel of Experts appointed by Argentina’s National Congress, Special Bichamber Investigation Follow-Up Commission of the Attacks Against the Israeli Embassy and the A.M.I.A. Building, to advise the Argentine government and Supreme Court.