Described as "a rising star in the counterterrorism community" by the International Herald Tribune, Daveed Gartenstein-Ross is the Director of the Center for the Study of Terrorist Radicalization at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

Gartenstein-Ross has published major academic studies on a wide variety of topics, including al-Shabaab's growth in Somalia, regional security issues in the Afghanistan-Pakistan theater, and the work of Jordan's Royal Aal al-Bayt Institute for Islamic Thought. His writings have appeared in The Review of Faith and International Affairs, Middle East Quarterly, The Journal of International Security Affairs, Reader's Digest, and The Wall Street Journal Europe, among others. He has written or edited seven books and monographs, including My Year Inside Radical Islam (Tarcher/Penguin 2007), a memoir detailing his work in his early twenties for an international Wahhabi charity that has been named a specially designated global terrorist entity by the U.S. Treasury Department. This experience provides him a unique perspective on Islamic extremism.

One of Gartenstein-Ross's main areas of study has been "homegrown" terrorists, those who were born or raised in Western societies. He co-authored two major reports about this subject in 2009, including Homegrown Terrorists in the U.S. and U.K., an empirical examination of the radicalization process in 117 homegrown jihadi terrorists that provides a new framework for understanding the impact of religious ideology. Brian Michael Jenkins, senior advisor to the president of the RAND Corporation, described the work as "an important study that adds to our knowledge of terrorist radicalization." Gartenstein-Ross has presented his research on radicalization at the American Political Science Association Annual Meeting, Marine Corps University, and National Defense University; in the fall of 2010 his presentations on the subject will be featured at conferences at the University of Tübingen (Germany) and the Interdisciplinary Center at Herzliya (Israel).

In addition to his academic research on terrorism, Gartenstein-Ross seeks to craft practical solutions to some of the field's vexing problems. His consulting work has included live hostage negotiations, work on border security issues, and story development for major media companies. He also frequently leads training for the U.S. military and law enforcement. He is a regular instructor in the military's Leader Development and Education for Sustained Peace (LDESP) courses, for which he received a LDESP Support Excellence Award in 2009, and has worked on several projects for the U.S. State Department's Office of Antiterrorism Assistance as a Subject Matter Expert. Gartenstein-Ross was recently an expert witness in a successful asylum case where the asylee feared retribution from Somalia's al-Shabaab due to his family's business with the country's transitional federal government.

The accolades that Gartenstein-Ross has earned for his policy work include being named a 2010 Senior Fellow at George Washington University's Homeland Security Policy Institute, and being selected for the Claremont Institute's prestigious Lincoln Fellowship.

Gartenstein-Ross is a Ph.D. candidate in world politics at the Catholic University of America, where he received a M.A. in the same subject. He earned a J.D., magna cum laude, from the New York University School of Law, where he was a member of the Law Review; and a B.A., magna cum laude, from Wake Forest University, where he was a Nancy S. Reynolds Scholar and won the 1997 the national championship in intercollegiate policy debate. He can conduct research in five languages, including Arabic.

Gartenstein-Ross can be contacted by e-mail at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it . (This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.) You can follow him on Twitter.