Victor Asal

Asal_Victor
Associate Professor of Political Science and Chair of Public Administration
University at Albany, State University of New York
Investigator
Office Address:

300b Milne Hall, 135 Western Ave., Albany, NY 12203

Phone
518-591-8729
Biography:

Victor Asal is chair of Public Administration and a professor in the Department of Political Science at the University at Albany SUNY. Dr. Asal is affiliated with the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START), a Department of Homeland Security Center of Excellence. Dr. Asal has also been involved in research projects funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, Defense Threat Reduction Agency, The National Science Foundation and The Office of Naval Research.   Dr. Asal’s   research focuses on violence by non-state organizations as well as the causes of political discrimination by states against different groups. His recent work looks at what factors impact an organization’s choice of violence, nonviolent contention or mixed strategies and what factors make organizations more likely to use or pursue CBRN capability. Asal specializes in collecting datasets that shine light on topics that have not been explored in a quantitative cross-national fashion with the necessary data.  This work has led to the creation of one of the few time series organizational datasets of terrorist organizations, the Big Allied and Dangerous Dataset, as well as one of the few datasets that has information on comparable violent and nonviolent organizations, the Minorities at Risk Organizational Behavior Dataset.   Asal’s work is multidisciplinary in nature and he has written papers with scholars in the fields of public administration, computer science, criminal justice, sociology, economics, communications and area studies.  

Background

Education:
  • University of Maryland, College Park, Ph.D., 2003
  • Hebrew University Israel, M.A., 1996
  • Tufts University, B.A., 1987
Honors:
  • 2007 Article of the Year Award. Journal of Peace Research. For “Proliferation and International Crisis Behavior.” With Kyle Beardsley (Emory University) in Journal of Peace Research 44(2): 139-155.
  • Martin Edelman Excellence in Teaching Award, Department of Political Science, Nelson A. Rockefeller College of Public Affairs and Policy, University at Albany, State University of New York, 2007
  • Excellence in Teaching Award, College of Behavioral and Social Sciences, University of Maryland, 2002
Professional Experience:
  • University at Albany – SUNY, Associate Professor, Department of Political Science. 2009- to the present
  • University at Albany – SUNY, Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science. Appointed 2003- 2009
  • University at Albany – SUNY, Co-Director, Public Security Studies Certificate, Department of Public Policy and Administration. 2004- to the present
  • University of Maryland Research Associate, National Center for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START Center)
  • University of Maryland Research Associate, Center for International Development and Conflict Management (CIDCM)

Selected Publications

Maritime Insurgency (Journal Article)
Big Allied and Dangerous (BAAD) (Project Fact Sheet)
The Dog that Doesn't Bark (Discussion Point)
Nuclear Weapons as Shields (Journal Article)
Winning with the Bomb (Journal Article)

News References