 Good morning and welcome to the Center for Strategic and International Studies. My name is Juan Zerati. I'm a senior advisor here at CSIS. On behalf of Dr. Hamery and all of the senior leadership and the board of CSIS, I welcome you. For those of you who are new to CSIS, this building is relatively new, so we hope you enjoy it. It's a great space. Hopefully, during the networking and lunchtimes, you get a chance to explore the building. It really is a great place to have a significant conference like the summit we're having here today. It really is an honor and a privilege for me to be welcoming you on behalf of CSIS, but this is an endeavor led by the ladies up front here and all of you. The Institute for Strategic Dialogue has been a major driver for this initiative for women in extremism. The State Department has been an incredibly important partner in not just setting up the summit, but in driving many of the initiatives. I know that the next two days will be an important set of discussions both in the sessions we have officially and then obviously in the networking to talk about the issues of women in extremism. Let me begin by talking about the importance of this issue in terms of the broader national security issues that are at play. There's no question that the role of women in extremism and radicalization has been with us for some time. Many of you have been studying it, have been activists in this field for years, and so in some ways the summit today is not a new set of issues. In fact, as you looked at the problem of terrorism globally, the role of women both as radical sympathizers as well as activists has been with counter-terrorism officials for years. The problem of the Black Widows, for example, in Central Asia and out of the Caucasus has been one that has in some ways romanticized the role of women in terrorism. And we've seen of course the acceleration of the attractiveness of groups like the Islamic State and elements of al-Qaeda begin to draw from new populations of young women around the world. But at the same time, we've also grappled with how women can be a counter force, a counter network to the allure, the radicalization and the ideology of these groups. How women empowered as mothers, as sisters, as powerful women around the world can network and coalesce in communities of interest to counter the ideology in the home globally, in businesses, in any aspect of life, how women in many ways play a central role in countering the ideology. Those issues now are coming to the fore, and I'm honored to be with all of you who've obviously dedicated your time and lives to this issue and certainly to the leaders on the stage who are with us. The program for the next two days is ambitious. We have a number of discussions with experts outside of government as well as in government. We are live streaming this and recording the sessions today. Let me talk a little bit about the social media and rules around the next couple of days, in part because we want to make sure that everyone's comfortable and understands, especially as we use social media, how we're going to interact. The only session that's going to be on the record will be the first panel, the one I'll be moderating. After that, the sessions will be off the record, but we'll be operating under the Chatham House rules. And so we want you to be able to use the information and experience that is a part of the two days, but we're not going to attribute those statements or comments to particular individuals. At the same time, we want you to use social media. So use the hashtag challenge extremism. That's the hashtag we're using for the summit the next couple of days. But please don't attribute statements to particular individuals. Lastly, if you decide to take photos or videos, we ask that you be very sensitive to the fact that we have visitors from around the world. We want to be careful about safety and security. And so certainly don't take a picture or video and certainly don't post it without the authorization of the people that you're taking the picture of. So we just want to be very sensitive and cautious about that. So let me just begin again by welcoming you. I think these two days are going to be remarkably illuminating as people around the world grapple with the question of how we think about women and extremism. Again, with much of the world focused on the challenges from a terrorism perspective and a radicalization perspective. But for many of you and for those who are steeped in this field, thinking about the role of women encountering the ideology and radicalization that's happening in our communities. And so for that, we have a distinguished set of guests. And I'm going to invite them up to introduce themselves and obviously to introduce their roles in today's summit. I want to thank the individuals here because they've brought not just their expertise and their gravitas, but also their institutions to bear on these issues. And so I want to thank Sasha Havilicek and the Institute for Strategic Dialogue and all of her colleagues for driving this issue, not just in London, but globally. She just came from Norway and leading several efforts there. She's all around the world. I can't keep up with her schedule. Far panda to her right, former special representative to Muslim communities, the first ever for the U.S. government. Her is a close and deep friend and counselor doing remarkable work up at Harvard, continuing to work with Sasha at ISD and beginning to do some work with us here at CSIS. And then Assistant Secretary Evan Ryan, who is a remarkable leader in the space, not just in her current role at the State Department, but also in the role that she played at the White House with the Vice President. And I got to meet Secretary Ryan recently and she's a remarkable leader in the space. And I think this country is fortunate to have her in her position. And so we're fortunate to be here today and I want to thank again the institutions and the leaders who are with us. Secretary Ryan, why don't I invite you up and again thank you to all of you for your time and attention and look forward to the day and the two-day summit. Thank you very much. Thank you, Juan. Thank you for hosting us here today in this beautiful new building. I live just a few blocks away. I've been very eager to see this new CSIS space, so it's really wonderful to be here with you and it's stunning. So thank you. I want to also thank Farah and Sasha, who I've gotten to know both of them quite well. And they both individually are doing amazing work in this space on opposite sides of the Atlantic. They are partnered together in this effort and really the possibilities in terms of the advancements we can make on this very critical issue with the two of them partnered together are really endless and so we're really grateful for both of their work in this space. I'm honored to join you and would like to thank you on behalf of the U.S. Department of State and the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs for hosting this event and including the 25 distinguished women in this room who are participating in one of our exchanges an international visitor leadership program which we've entitled Women Preventing Violent Extremism. We've been working and collaborating with Farah and Sasha to get to this day so it's exciting for us to see you all here with us because this is something we've talked about for a while. To all of the international women on our exchange who are here with us, we want to congratulate you on your remarkable accomplishments and your efforts in your communities to combat violent extremism. It is my great pleasure to officially welcome you to the United States and I have had a chance to read your biographies to learn more about you and your work back home and all I can say is you're an incredibly inspiring group and what we aim to achieve with exchanges is not just the the sense that you can come here and learn about our best practices in the United States but that you can also network and learn from one another so I'm very excited that you all are going to have the chance to work together to confront this really critical issue that we have for us today. You are all leaders by example and an accomplishment and I hope that this exchange experience will strengthen your capacity to lead in finding solutions to the many challenges you tackle every day. To all summit attendees I ask what is the first thing you think of when you hear the words countering violent extremism? If you're like most people you flash immediately to the pictures that we see on the news. You see countering violent extremism in terms of a violent response, an armed response, a military response. I'd like to propose that countering violent extremism is much broader than that. We absolutely have to resist violence by the strongest means yes but if our entire strategy is to wait to do something after the violence has happened we're not doing enough. Countering violent extremism is about prevention. It's about civil society building strong cohesive networks and communities that are resilient and resistant to the influence and recruitment of terrorist groups. What do we do about people who may not be in the midst of conflict but who are cowed into submission by the threat of conflict or the threat of violence or intimidated into silence because even though the extremists are not on their doorstep right now they might be next day, the next month, the next year. How do we help others better understand the true root causes of violent extremism including a lack of a sense of belonging, a lack of a sense of identity to push back against hopelessness and fear? How do we give people the knowledge and the skills, the confidence to resist, to stand firm and to succeed? People to people exchanges can absolutely be central to these efforts. Personal ties can become a beacon of hope, solidarity and support in the midst of darkness. Educational and cultural exchanges are about elevating and empowering people individually and humanity collectively. They bring an understanding of people, things and the world around us. They provide tools to solve complex problems and make people's lives better all over the world. Exchanges foster respect for others and appreciation of alternative approaches to problem solving. An educated citizenry with respect for the diversity of people who are in our families, our communities, our nations and around the world is exactly what we are all fighting for. We have a responsibility to confront, challenge, thwart and yes prevent violent extremism in every way that we can. We must strive to make a better world for our children. Each of us has a responsibility to participate in our communities, to work to prevent ideologies that lead to violence that can threaten us all. There are so many ways that we can do that. Help our youth get an education and a satisfying job, encourage education, community networking, entrepreneurship, cross-cultural tolerance and social connection. And offer guidance, support and mentoring so that young people see a bright future full of possibilities. Most of all, we must offer the next generation something tangible to believe in. Violent extremists tell them that the world is bleak and hopeless. They tell them that they are victims and that they should reject, abandon and burn everything down. By working together we can show them the opposite. That the world has promise and opportunity and that they have an essential role, even a responsibility to help us all build a better world. Thank you for having me here today again Juan and we're eager to commence our discussion. Thank you so much for the introduction Juan. A huge, huge thanks to you personally and to this wonderful institution CSIS for hosting us here. Before I continue with my thanks, I just want to say how wonderful it is to see so many women in one room on the topic of CVE. So I'd like to just start by saying it's actually all too rare and I think this is one of the things that we hope to address with this session. I've been asked to say just a few words about my organization, the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, about the approach that we take to this set of issues that we've been working on for quite a while now, nearly 10 years and then I will have the opportunity during the course of the day to tell you a little bit more about some of the innovations we've been applying trialing in this space and I look very much forward to building the relationships in this room, to speaking with every one of you and to forging what I hope will be an important brain trust on this challenge which is emerging very fast and an action network to start to respond. So just a couple of words about ISD. We are a London-based global think tank. A think tank we like to think with a difference in that we are heavily action-oriented. We like to look at solutions not just to a pine on the problem and when we started to work on the challenge of violent extremism across different ideologies nearly 10 years ago what we saw was that there was an enormous amount of a pining on the problem and the think tank community is very good at that but there was much much too little doing about the problem and so what we did was turn ourselves into a kind of experiment. We wanted to see if we could trial and test out responses, evaluate and measure whether those responses were being effective in any way and in doing that we were taking risks and so just to give you a very very very quick snippet into the kinds of projects that we've run and there are materials in your packs that give you an in-depth insight into some of these programs. From forging the first global network of former extremists and survivors of extremism a unique network of voices of credible voices in pushing back extremist narratives to forging partnerships with the likes of Google and YouTube and Twitter and Facebook that have helped us pioneer new approaches to pushing back the extremist propaganda and recruitment machinery online which as you all know has been extremely sophisticated and effective to finding new ways in which to inspire and enlighten young people to push back on the recruitment that is happening both on and offline and I look forward to talking a little bit about some of those practices and models that we feel have worked. We have a day tomorrow a very in-depth exchange about the various initiatives and innovations that all of you bring to the table a few of the innovations that we hope to bring to the table to share with you many of which desperately need scaling up and in order to scale up we require networks without credible voices there can be no counter messaging there can be no pushback and so at the center of everything that we do at ISD is this focus on building the relevant networks of people that can really push back this is networks of individuals rather than institutions this is important to us so I am extremely grateful to be here today I I'm going to leave it to Farah to tell you more about the Women and Extremism initiative that we've launched some months ago but before that just to bring your attention to two reports which I hope you've been handed as you walked in the door these are pieces of research that we've done at the institute based on a unique database of over a hundred women's social media presences who have traveled to ISIS territory from foreign countries and joined ISIS it provides a very very in-depth insight into the experiences of these mainly young women who have emigrated to ISIS territory and we do research with with one purpose and that is to provide a deep insight and underpinning to inform practical response and so I invite you to look into some of the findings of this research and I will share some of that with you later and one of the authors of that research Erin Sultman is here in the room and will be of course part of these discussions as we as we go forward but I look very much forward to working with you and now have the great pleasure and honor of passing the floor to Farah Pandit who will tell you more about the objectives of this initiative thank you so good morning to everybody everybody's very wide awake and nodding as everybody's talking I've been watching that that's really great the first thing I want to say is congratulations because having been at the State Department I understand the important role of the IVLP program places for our nation and I also know how selective it is so you should be patting yourselves on the back you have been selected to be part of a really special group of people not just now but in the years to come a really wonderful international network so congratulations to you all and I'm feeling very honored that you are part of this conversation today so good morning and hello I think Sasha told you heard my name is Farah Pandit I'm the former special representative to Muslim communities I have been asked to tell you a little bit about the genesis of the women in extremism program how did it start and why did it start in my former role I'm not in government anymore I want to be clear I have but I had the fortune of serving my country in two different administrations both in the Bush administration and in the Obama administration and in the capacities that I serve my nation I had the privilege of traveling around the world and talking to young people under the age of 30 all over the world as special representative I traveled to more than 80 countries talking to Muslim millennials about what was happening in their communities and what was taking place and during the course of that time I kept hearing the same refrain over and over again from women which was something is happening here something is happening here we can't quite put our hands on it but our communities are changing not just watching our young people go in a different direction but we ourselves are finding a different place in our communities and that played out in a wide variety of ways whether I was in Malaysia or whether I was in you know Sweden whether I was in Uganda whether I was in Tajikistan women were saying the same thing to me and I'd say well what is actually happening and they'd say well you know first of all foreign foreign ideologies are coming in and they're changing our way of life they're making us think differently about the way we raise our children and how we must live and breathe and act and and this was beginning to really bother me and after I got to about the 25th or 30th country and I kept hearing the same thing I began to think my god there's a pattern here I'm not doing a research project but I am seeing something so what do you do when you begin to see things you begin to talk to people who are super smart and say are you are you guys seeing the same thing I'm seeing and so I began to do that and people weren't actually looking at women surprise surprise on this issue and I was getting more and more frustrated so I eventually went to secretary Clinton and said I'm seeing this I don't know what is going on we haven't we have one-offs on women who have become radicalized but the intel community isn't quite where we need them to be and the external community outside of governments isn't where we need to be and so when I finished my time as special representative I had been by the time I got to the end I had been really seized with this we need to do more but before I left the state department I did something super smart I looked around and I said who are my partners on this and I went into the education and cultural affairs bureau and I said to Evan can I talk to you about something that I think is really important and all of you are leaders here so you know how important it is to pick the right people to build the right coalitions and in my view there was only one person at the department of state that A I trusted and B I knew could get something done and that was assistant secretary Ryan and what she did was sat down with me and said okay what is it that you're seeing and how can we help and so we began to formulate this idea of pulling together some of the smartest women around the world to come together to talk about this issue in a real way and the second smart thing I did was I found my partner in crime who I've been pulling along in all kinds of ways and she's been pulling me too to think strategically about things and I said Sasha we have an opportunity here to do something really big and so what we did is the two partners in crime came together and said okay let's build a program around this and let's and have three important goals in this program the first was to convene for the first time a brain trust a global brain trust on women's agency and extremist movements and that would include experts on the subject or closely related fields of exploration for both the academic and practitioner sense and what would that do that would create a research agenda and and be able to identify the we would be able to identify the research partners that would help us give us the data that we need to prove what it is that we're seeing okay we needed that anchor the second thing is we knew that in the online space a lot was taking place so we needed to build the credible voices and activists including as Sasha talked about both survivors of extremism and former extremists from around the world to become that voice and help us to understand how to think about what was taking place in the online space but the third goal which was also really important was not to just ignore what was happening in country and in region in the offline space so how do you build the networks of people the activists there because there are so many initiatives that are happening in a very micro way and some in a little bit bigger way around the world how do we bring them together to help us explore and understand this issue so those were the three goals and as we began to build the program the first thing we definitely needed to do is to create the platform here and so what you're going to see over the course of the next two days I hope are in-depth discussions about the threat that we face that you heard Juan talk about that you heard Evan talk about and you heard Sasha talk about you are in this you've been chosen because you have something to say and something to contribute to this two-day project here but more globally this initiative that we're building and we feel very honored that you're part of it I feel honored that I have three partners on the stage who have been really visionary in how we've we've thought about this and I know going forward I hope we'll be able to push both the government communities around the world and the civil society communities in a new way to take hold of this issue there shouldn't be a need to look at how women get radicalized but they are getting radicalized and we also know that women are canaries in the coal mine and can do a lot in terms of pushing back against that extremist narrative so with that I think that's the overview of the women in extremism platform we welcome you congratulations and I look forward to having a conversation with you over the next two days thanks so much we're going to do it with that yeah with that we are going to move into the first panel I'd welcome all of the distinguished ladies who've walked in the door please there are seats available here Karen please either at the table or on the side I want to make sure to welcome everybody and again we want to make this as comfortable and conversational as possible so feel free to get up and get coffee juice as need be you're not going to offend me certainly also make sure that the cameras are off for the first session first session is wrong yeah so just a reminder again the first session this panel is on the record after that it will not be on the record the summit will not be on the record good welcome all right why don't we why don't we begin this is a great session as a bit of a a chapeau if you will to the summit to to hear in more detail from Evan and Farah about their work historically their current work and certainly the role of the US government in this space and we've we've been through an evolution I think in the US government as to how we think about extremism at large the White House recently hosting its countering violent extremism summit but I think in in recent years thanks to your leadership and others a realization that women have a central role to play both in in the government and in civil society and so I think this is a great way of starting the discussion to hear from from Evan and Farah about this Farah you had mentioned sort of that something's happening and I think one of the advantages that both you and Evan have is that you've you've traveled around the world on behalf of the US you've been to numerous countries you've interacted with women around the world of various roles and responsibilities both in government and civil society you know if if you had to say in two or three minutes what is happening in terms of extremism and women how would you describe that Farah let's start with you you started to touch on it a bit but I think it's really important to sort of give a sense from your experience what are you seeing and how do you explain what's happening now in 2015 so you know Evan talked about the crisis of identity and I think one of the things that that I want to sort of hone in on is that fact that Muslim millennials are going through something very particular to their generation in the context of 9-11 in the aftermath we are seeing if you're just pulling yourself all the way down to sort of what is at the core of some of the the persuasion that is being being allowed to happen it's because these young people are asking questions about themselves how can I be modern and Muslim what's the difference between culture and religion and the phenomenon for me as I watched it was not just Muslim you know Muslims living both men and women by the way in countries that are Muslim where they live as a minority excuse me but also where they live as a majority and that was a really important data point for me because oftentimes you think well boy if you're from in Malaysia and Indonesia if you're in Pakistan Afghanistan these are countries that have you know a majority of people that are Muslim surely young millennials couldn't be going through this but they were and there are a lot of reasons why that identity crisis was taking place but because of that opening when they're asking questions about themselves the loudest voices in the communities that persuade them a particular way are the ones that are pulling that that thread that are making them go in a different way so for me one of the things that I was really hearing was yes they're having a crisis of identity then specifically with women a lot of women were not clear for themselves about who they wanted to be and so they were often rejecting the heritage of or the systems of community and socialization that their parent their mothers had or their grandmothers had and adopting a different way of life not just the way they dressed or what they ate or how they how they lived their lives but they were rejecting history and adopting the newest the newest thing that they thought was quote unquote Muslim and I mention that because I think oftentimes as government this soft you know mushy stuff is very hard for us to absorb it's anthropological or it's societal and it can't it's not the hard stuff that we understand well but indeed if you're looking at an 80 000 foot level of this changes that are taking place with one fourth of humanity that is muslim there's something profound that's going to happen that's not going to impact just civil society but it's going to impact the way governments conduct themselves and think about what is taking place so those are some of the things that I definitely saw interesting Evan you've taken on this role in in terms of your bureau and in the state department what are you seeing I mean how how would you explain this to or how do you explain to secretary Kerry as as people worry about this issue more and more uh well actually secretary Kerry has really weighed heavily on us to come up with programming and ideas of how we can really confront this um we meet with him weekly as as far as knows and this is really top of mind for him is what can we do at the state department what can we do creatively to help confront this issue I feel fortunate because of the Bureau of Education and Cultural Affairs this is what we do we do exchanges we bring people here to the United States to learn from us our best practices not that we have all the solutions but we do confront similar challenges here I know as we've discussed internally as we've looked at programming one of the things we've discussed are the similarities between extremism and gang violence here in the United States you know what are the similar paths that we can look at that have worked in some of the the issues in cities and what can we do to translate that to extremism overseas but I can say in terms of our IVLP participants today and our programming is related to women in extremism and the summits that we're very proud to be a part of we know at the state department and Farah knows this well and it really came up when we sat down initially that women are really part of the solution they really are women think creatively women are mothers who care about the path their children are going to choose they know that education is key and they really think creatively and collaboratively collaboratively and they work together I know that there is a mother's network Farah and I talked about this there's a mother's of former extremists and they try to work to help other mothers stop their children from being radicalized and I was thinking about this as we were preparing for today I haven't heard of something similar related to fathers it's interesting so so women really do look at this issue through a different lens and for us at the bureau what we can do is this bring women together bring them here to the United States give them the opportunity to explore what we've done here in the United States and as I mentioned in my opening remarks another key piece of this for us and we've talked about this is that you all will have a network and Sasha mentioned this too it's important to us that you leave your time here establishing relationships with one another and a network that you can rely on because as much as we're going to be able to share with you you're also going to be able to learn from one another and this is something that secretary Kerry does recognize himself the real power of exchanges in terms of shared knowledge knowledge here in the United States but even more broadly with with one another and he has charged us to really do what we can and so we were really pleased to be able to tell him that we're working on this program and we know that the women here in this room are really going to have a great impact so we're proud to be working with all of you yeah in fact one of one of the organizations sisters against violent extremism run by Dr. Edith Schlaffer who couldn't make it today but it's been innovative in terms of pulling the networks in key countries and communities around the world together based on the model you described exactly yeah let's let's turn because Sasha mentioned the reports that ISD has put out in terms of the allure of ISIS and what we're seeing in radicalization we see some experts in the audience who look at the issue of radicalization and terrorism what is it about the current environment whether it's ISIS or the environment at large and the underlying ideology that is drawing young women to these movements and to this new sense of identity to your point Farah certainly in the US that the case of the teenage girls out of Colorado really was sort of a wake-up call not not an issue new to many of you in the audience but certainly to the American public I think that was a bit of a shock that you would have teenage girls women from Colorado deciding to travel into the hands of a terrorist group as opposed to being safeguarded from it so what is it about the current environment that seems to be accelerating the radicalization and really altering the identity of of women and young girls around the world so I'd like to say two things um the first is just going back to your other point about sort of what government is seeing and how we're thinking about things before I get to the the question that you asked I think one of the problems governments not just ours but governments around the world when they look at women certainly on this issue it was a blind spot for them it wasn't something that they were seeing on there wasn't a crisis point yet there was a one-off woman in Belgium that had done something there was a one-off a woman somewhere else and there was never this sense of could there was no unfortunately evil imagination about what could happen next and I want to make that point because I think it's a really important one for the governments that you all I mean the countries that you all come from that you have to be looking at things that are coming coming coming down the road not just what's right in front of you and I think we really missed an opportunity to be really much more robust in our research and understanding around these issues the second point to that is and I'll be very clear about it and and I I think that there is a lot of stereotyping I know not I think I know around Muslim women who they are and what they are and I think if you look at that I think that there is a connection between boy there's no possible way anything could happen to a Muslim woman she would never take on a role to do that because indeed you know they're they're they're very vulnerable they're they're very quiet they all these stereotypes that that you have in your head and that is a really important point to make because I think whatever comes next past ISIS and other things we cannot be stuck in our stereotypes about what what is possible we need to imagine unfortunately the most evil things that could happen now to your question about what is what is taking place I know that Sasha is going to talk a lot about the research that ISD is done and what they have found but I will say at a very very large level one of the things and this is connects a little bit to the ECA component here one of the things that I heard a lot one in my travels was Muslim women asking me where can I go to get information how can I understand my role in society better because the guy with the longest beard or the highest hat we're telling them in their communities how to be a Muslim woman and and oftentimes a lot of the educational pieces whether it's stuff that they could read or people they could talk to we're not available that for them for actually asking about their own role and I say that because it's connected to this issue obviously of identity but it's also connected to this this gaping hole that was left in societies where the bad guys stepped in and said you're looking for purpose and belonging you're looking for understanding your real role of what it really means to be a Muslim woman let me tell you what that's going to be I often talk about shake Google as being the the place for answers for for millennials and that's true for Muslim millennials as well who are female they are looking for answers and and hoping to find a purpose a belonging and and a role that they can play that's larger than themselves one and be that also allows them to be part of a community that is doing something that that is meaningful and I know that we're going to get into more detail about the little the the dynamics within that but sort of on the on the big on the big front that and the final point I would just say about what is drawing the man in you often have heard I think in the course of the last a couple of years especially certainly right after 9 11 and then there was a vacuum people weren't talking about it is what is out there to inspire women to be who they can be and whether you call it role models or you call it initiatives you haven't seen enough of that on the global stage you've seen it at a very micro level so there haven't been enough of enough of a of a conversation that provides women an opportunity to say I can see myself in her and in her and in her everything is being very is very cloaked and I think so when we're looking at the the aspects of education role modeling belonging identity those are some of the themes that that are part of the question that you asked Evan what do you think what what's in the current environment that that is making this so important now well I agree with far I think it has a lot to do with identity I think it's a sense of I don't want to say glamorous but I think I still is portraying itself as you know it's them against the world and as a young person there's something appealing about that I think we've all been through that stage in our lives you know in some in college or around that stage where you do feel like you want to be something be a part of something bigger than yourself and I think I still gives that sense and then I think people as you've seen time and again and we were speaking about this with Sasha bit backstage what they're portraying is obviously not the reality what what they're finding is when they're joining I still it's not at all what they've been promised so what we really do need to do is connect with the people who've left the formers and have them tell their story but I do think that as much as we can message that it is not what they are saying it is the experience is not going to be you know this this you know life changing heroic efforts that you've been told it will be but instead it's going to be demeaning you're most likely going to lose your life and that's not something to to aim for so I think the more we can tell that story I think that's an important piece of this and so that's one of the things that I know you'll hear this tomorrow from under Secretary Stengel that's really an emphasis the State Department right now which is the messaging piece how can we message and the the challenge there is how not just how can we message but how can we really empower voices that are are going to be understood to be pure voices voices that are going to be relatable and that's a that's a challenge for us right now Kevin in terms of of the environment and what you're doing with the State Department is doing far and ask you the same question or similar question what are the types of programs that that you're seeing that are effective or what are some of the innovations that in this space that you think are important because I know U.S. government in particular and other governments as well but U.S. government has struggled with the question of do we are this about a macro level effort is this about micro level efforts is it about connecting all of the other initiatives we have around women right education literacy empowerment entrepreneurship right in these issues how are you thinking about this and and where are we in that debate around macro versus micro programs right well I can speak a little bit mostly to to ECA in our programs I'll start out actually with one anecdote that relates we are focusing a lot on entrepreneurship in our programs and that's something that has also been tasked by the secretary to us as an understanding that helping people entrepreneurship is unique to the United States that's what we know for sure in the United States our entrepreneurs are people who have tried to build a business and failed most often and tried again we we in the U.S. really embrace those entrepreneurs who have failed if you've read the Steve Jobs biography that's a perfect example but those who are investing in entrepreneurs in the United States tend to want to pick people who've tried and failed what we've learned in our programming is that is very unique here and I've actually had participants who've been on our program say my family would be greatly shamed if I tried something and failed so I can't try so we're really trying and this is something the secretary has recognized to focus on entrepreneurship as a message that this is the way it works in the United States and this is how we do it hoping to lift people economically and then and then really show them that there is a path that they can travel and really build a business and help their family so this is a piece of it but what we do know is the anecdote I was going to tell you is we have a program called Tech Women and Tech Women is focused on women in the Middle East and North Africa region and Sub-Saharan Africa we bring women here on an exchange just like this here to the United States except we bring them to Silicon Valley although I know you're also going to Silicon Valley and we and they're there for about five weeks and they're mentored in Silicon at Silicon Valley and you know each individually and individual company at companies and then travel back to their countries and they build their businesses and then they've got that network as well and these women are so enthusiastic it's a wonderful program and this one woman I sat next to when she was in Washington who came from Lebanon I asked her how her family felt about her traveling to the US and to Silicon Valley and she said they were very excited for her except for her brother who was not excited and said why can't there be something like this for me so this is the struggle I think we're confronting right now is are there men in the Middle East that we should be focused on from a programming perspective as it relates to entrepreneurship and possibilities and we have many academic programs as well and those are obviously for men and women and they're broad but I do think that as much as we can because our goal in ECA is to work with our embassies and in the case today with ISD to identify the best of the best and Farah articulated that as well she knows that because she's done this with us but really our US embassies and partnership with others try to identify the best of the best like all of you because we know that when you return you will have an impact in your communities in your country a larger impact and that that can be a multiplier effect so our goal with our programs is to look at the best programs that can have that multiplier effect and reach the right people so that we can affect change or not that we can but that you can affect change and that's what we we endeavor to do Farah can you touch on that and also maybe a little bit I want to blend into this because of the role of this network and the individuals with us today sort of what are the limitations of the US government and why is it so important to have civil society Evan you mentioned that in your opening remarks civil society driving a lot of this so answer the first question but then delve into the second so I'll pick up thank you I'll pick up the theme on entrepreneurship in this one way government needs to be entrepreneurial okay entrepreneurial diplomacy and I think when you're thinking about be the types of programs and the kinds of innovation it's all about diplomatic entrepreneurship and something that you and I and Karen Voker who I'm so delighted is here today really worked on starting in 2007 when we were looking at Muslims in Europe right after the Danish cartoon crisis and began to really think about what can we do to lift up the voices of civil society at a time when our country was a not popular people didn't trust the president in fact didn't like him a lot we're really angry with our foreign policy but we understood so critically what both Evan and Sasha talked about in terms of the credible voices those people who can speak on the ground better than a government can so we understood that the role that the government can play is to be the convener and the facilitator and the intellectual partner with the ideas that we heard on the ground now how do you hear ideas on the ground you have to listen you have to go into those communities into places where it isn't just at the U.S. Embassy you're pulling together the same old people that are doing the same old things that have been doing this for 20 years it's really going out of the norm um what I used to talk about is going deep and going wide so even though you would go pick your country with the U.S. Embassy and say can you bring together somebody who's actually working on this particular issue they'll say yes I have this partner we've been working with them for such and such amount of years we would say okay that's great bring that partner but ask that partner to bring two people we've never seen before that are also in your field that that we want to get to know and that may sound really micro you might think wise far of talking about this how do you hear how do you hear different perspectives if you don't go to places you haven't been before so what we were doing was not just staying in the capital cities but we were going into crazy places within the countries where by the way even the locals we say where did you go what are you doing and by the end of our time we had European governments coming to us saying could you tell us who's doing what in our country because we don't know and I wasn't I'm not saying this with pride I'm simply saying this is what all governments need to do we need to get out beyond the capital city we need to go to voices we haven't heard we need to talk about voices that are not the ones that are written about but the people who are actually doing something and that takes time so being an entrepreneurial diplomat and actually pushing the kinds of programs and innovation means a taking risk and I will say both three secretaries of state allowed us to do that secretary rice secretary Clinton and secretary Kerry all said to me personally take risks and that is that I want to highlight that because how can you be innovative if the only thing you care about is a getting credit and making sure you haven't upset any apple cards the apple cards right so we began to experiment now you talked about a program sisters against violent extremism and one has been very modest in his role in this but I want to use this example because Karen is in the room and she was very important to this but it is a prototype for what we need to do you will remember that after the Danish cartoon crisis we were really looking at we were only looking at the only major organization out there al-Qaeda recruiting and doing things that we weren't sure we weren't actually in the place we are today we actually understand much more about how it is how people get radicalized but what we did know was that women have a role to play in pushing back against that ideology because they were seeing it first in their homes and we know that they were seeing things often that the men weren't seeing they were the canaries in the coal mines they were picking up little things that were happening in the community that we needed to be able to monopolize so what did we do um one at the time was the assistant secretary of the president and working on um on counter counterterrorism stuff and he began to pull together a bunch of people around his table at the national security council who were creative thinkers Karen was one I was privileged to be there there were a couple of others that we began to say how do we use women in a new way and as we began to brainstorm about what we could do we had this crazy idea to create this movement of sisters against violent extremism by the way you're the one who came that coined that phrase um but I'm not gonna but but it's true but the thing is what we this is the point about government instead of coming to the table going we want to show the American flag we want to make sure that everything was like credit for America while everything we did was open and public which is why I'm talking to to you about it right now we knew that small seed money from the state department with a local partner on the ground could actually be an experiment that might work and in 2008 we we partnered with Edith Schaffler to say do you think you could build this network in Europe well she did and she did it incredibly well and she had amazing ideas that we hadn't even thought about and she took it and she took it not just in Europe but she built it around the world and in 2015 this is the only organization that is doing the kinds of stuff with the mother's schools all and this is all Edith's credit this is not us but we we were the spark that began began this I'd like to see the United States government do far more along the lines of experimenting and being entrepreneurial and listening to the to the ideas of people it like the people in this room who come to you and say I've been thinking about something for a really long time I need the infrastructure to help that happen and oftentimes one it was not tons of US government money because they didn't it was it was tainted money they didn't want that money but they wanted the innovation they wanted the partnership and they wanted the platforms and I go back to what I said the convener the facilitator and the intellectual partner you asked a second question that is about where are the limitations of US government and that that is the underlying piece here for all of the work around countering violent extremism as much as people are actually very scared now because of ISIS they see this growing threat they don't know what comes after ISIS and they're not as nervous about US government money as they once were there's still a nervousness that it exists what the US government can do is to to build to pull the kinds of networks that we see here today and scale them up so that we are acting as that convener and and mobilizing but we also can bring to the table what we are seeing so the research piece of it we know a lot about what the connection between something that's happening in Mauritania and something that's happening in Duchamp Bay let's suppose how do you how do you pull those people together one of the things I used to talk about in my role as special representative was that I was a talent scout I was going around the world going you need to meet this person connect you need to meet this person connect and I think we can do that but our limit comes with the with the with the flag of the United States government as strong and as wonderful as it is it in this particular field especially people are very that is where our limitation is which is why we need to be more creative about how we can seed a wide range of innovative experimental prototypes that can be scaled up and mobilized and and the final point I'll just say in terms of the limitation as we all know government is very slow and it is really hard to move in a nimble way and in a creative way so being able oftentimes to say I have a great idea but I'm going to give it to somebody else to do because we can't do it because they can move more quickly is the is the way to go yeah and they're often legal constraints question of policy right right if I can just add that and I know in this room alone we do have this many of our exchange participants are civil society people back in their countries and so it's great for us to be able to support them and support civil society in that manner for that exact reason because they can help affect change often from their perspective sometimes better than we can connecting with governments is connecting that way people to people and the one other thing I'd like to say is we have alumni which this whole group will be part of our alumni after you complete your time here on the exchange and we try to stay connected with the alumni and that's one way the US government we think has made this investment in the exchange and then hopefully stays connected to alumni around the world we've already had a million alumni at this point through all of our through our programs and stay connected to them because they've had that experience in the United States and they understand the United States and they also are clearly innovators and community people back in their countries so we really are pleased to try to maintain that connection I want to open it up in just a second to the audience and the questions for distinguished panelists but let me let me ask this and this is less for this audience because I think this audience understands this and is driving this issue but for those who may watch now or later because this will be online and there's a lot of interest on women in extremism and what this means in in a thumbnail sketch what's your sense of the role of women moving forward encountering all that we've talked about what what are the what are the specific things that you see women able to do and we've touched on a bit but crystallize it for those who may not understand this space quite as well why are women important especially now do you want to oh sure um so in terms of um I would say two two important things women are important now because we're seeing a change in the in the ecosystem okay we talked about that a little bit and we need to be able to articulate that change in a way that's authentic and real we need women themselves to talk about what they're seeing in a really we're a really clear way the second thing is because we are seeing women radicalizing in in new ways and at a pace that is really dangerous and scary we need to understand the counter narratives to women getting radicalized so there's something very specific that's happening and why they're changing and becoming more radicalized but that means in order to counter that there's specific narratives that have to work women can help create those counter narratives I'm sorry I said too but my third my third point is this I want to go back to the issue about the canary and the coal mine because women are a child's first teachers the way they change the way they build their home will make a difference for all of humanity so if a mother is against being altruistic or being open or being inclusive chances are that child is not going to learn to be inclusive so we need to engage the women so that they're raising the children the way we want mutual interest mutual respect caring about each other all the values everybody's nodding in this room the values that we know matter so so we need to we need to empower them to be able to do that and we need to understand that if they're being influenced in a different way we need to push back against it I would completely agree with Farah and and we know that women invest in their families if they if they're earning money they want to see their children thrive and succeed they want to see them on a positive path and so that's why women are really important to this dialogue also we do know this across the board is that women have a different way of looking at things a different lens through which they view a problem and they may come up with a different solution so we need to have their voices at the table just as as we've done here today and through this whole exchange so that we can hear what what everyone here thinks the solutions and the the issues are that we need to look at very carefully to this problem because they're going to be different perhaps than what we we might hear from men and that's an important piece of it and the lastly I would say as we mentioned earlier I think women are inherently collaborative and they want to work together and they want to share ideas and they want to partner and that in this in this especially in what we're confronting with with ISIL and extremism at large I would say is a really important piece because we need to reach far and wide and by networking and sharing ideas and information and that's what women do very well we'll be able to do that could I go back to the last question you asked about government and limitations of government you asked us can I ask you well I think I think you both answered a good bit of it I think in particular for the U.S. government I think we are we are slow less innovative trapped in sort of our 1947 acts sort of authorities and and and stovepipes and it's very difficult especially when you're talking about what you've discussed and what all of you work on which is how does how does the U.S. government catalyze networks of networks to counter a national security threat that is incredibly hard for the government to do I mean we struggled with it the Bush administration I know the Obama administration has struggled in in part as well and and in particular in this context where you're talking about a radical movements that are trying to pretend to usurp one of the world's great religions ideologically it's very hard for the U.S. government to come incredibly into counter that ideology in ways that matter at the micro level and even at the macro level so I think it's a major challenge and kudos to both of you and to those in government like like Karen and others who who've done great work in the space because the U.S. government at the end of the day has to be part of the solution but it's not the the way that this is going to be solved it's going to be solved by the women in this room and the networks that you create and I think that's the reality and that's very hard for governments to do and just a last point Jared Cohen who who now runs Google ideas and was a part of our little brain trust and I appreciate what you said for earlier often says that the 21st century is a very difficult time to be a control freak and I think for governments that's a very difficult thing when you talk about programs you talk about budgeting you talk about how they seed programs it's very hard for governments to sort of let a thousand flowers bloom because governments like to control what they do and have to account for it and so this is a very hard endeavor I think we're still experimenting with what the role of government looks like but at the end of the day the solutions are going to come from you all and from networks like yours as opposed to from the government in the first instance that's at least my perspective so why don't we open it up for questions and see what these two distinguished ladies have to say yes ma'am and remember this is on the record so if you'd like to identify yourself you're welcome to thank you I'm a social worker and I noticed that unfortunately there's young children joining ISIS because you know ISIS right now have a school and they're telling me it's very fun and they're coming you know I am in Lebanon so the borders are always open and I speak with them I went to a lot of confidences nobody mentioned awareness in schools and universities I'm still I hope any government to focus in this awareness awareness awareness and do you have an idea about awareness because there's a huge number is going even women because they always focusing on women they think women can give a huge generation to join ISIS she's can raise them and give them the beliefs so I don't know where the awareness in this conversation I'm not seeing it can you explain or maybe you support my idea I don't know thank you so if I understood you correctly where's the awareness about what is taking place yep and I and I couldn't agree with you more we are both government and non-government have failed in being really clear about what we're seeing for a lot of different reasons that you're all very smart you can understand some of it is political some of it is not but it is hard to be really truthful about what you see which is why your voice is so important if you don't we keep talking about credible voices what do we mean by that we mean people on the ground who have the grit and the understanding and the recognition that their that their role in their communities is a credible one and what we have to do in order to get to the awareness part is to make sure it is not just one person that's standing up but that many people are standing up talking about the wave and the changes that are taking place I've often thought a lot over the course of the last many years why aren't their campaigns from parents to understand what's happening they're getting news from from they're getting things from the news and not from society I'm sorry you're gonna hold it I'm sorry for like interpreting all the time but it's you know you're totally right who's the person you're going to give this awareness actually I'm a social worker I work in prison I speak with terrorists and accused in terrorism people who doesn't have kind of experience shouldn't do that this awareness should have experience or at least spoke with one how they speak how they talk how they eat how their daily lives you need to understand them the more we understand them we know what kind of awareness we need to produce yes I says it's a it's a four types it's for Dr. Raymond Hamden I'm still working on it me and my sister doing huge research about these there are psychopath ethnographic political ethnographic religious and retribution of the youth are using the retribution and the leaders they're using politics and religious so we need to do the awareness for the children and the age the age it's between 18 till 29 there's another awareness and there should be another awareness for women there are several categories we cannot do one awareness in one category because every children one of the ISIS leaders spoke with the ISIS guy I spoke with him he told me ISIS is like a Disneyland really how Disneyland he tell me we learned this and that and that and that and actually that's like and even the Supreme Court didn't support us because we're women I don't know if they have problem with ovaries maybe and and I'm too young to speak why you'd go do this such research go focus with others and and I hope that United States or other countries please listen to my voice maybe I have small voice I have small message but please all the countries here please focus on awareness awareness so combating maybe you can kill the leaders but you have full generations coming up and I don't think so that ISIS will end up in this year or second year it will go for years unfortunately thank you your voice is powerful yes it is very heard yeah so thank you yeah and and one of the things I think just from a human psychology perspective listening to the little boy who says ISIS is like a Disneyland I think it's human nature that it's harder to prove a negative it's it's very easy for ISIS to put itself out there and say it's this it's Disneyland it's harder for us to say to that little boy it's not because the Disneyland sounds so fantastic they they attach themselves to that pretty quickly and it's something we've talked about recently it's on the messaging piece of state very hard to prove something is not it's harder to prove something's not true than to it's harder to refute and that's our challenge in the messaging space but you're you're absolutely right we have to help partner with you to really launch an awareness campaign and you're absolutely right also that the awareness campaigns have to be tailored for the particular demographics because that's what ISIS is doing very important very we've got just five minutes left of this session but let's keep a lot of the commentary for the rest of the day when it's closed and we can speak very openly as well so we'll just take maybe one or two more questions and then switch out great we'll go here and then here my name is Sunshin Eroksson I come from Croatia um uh it's a pleasure to be here thank you very much and to hear what you what you think I have to say because Croatia has undergone through conflict and at the same time we changed our economic system so of course we have Anomi in the society and the thing is and I agree completely with you the thing is that we have to really connect different experts from different fields because for instance transitional justice was facing only civil and political rights until recently when economic and social and cultural rights are included so without actually enhancing economic and social rights raising awareness it's fine and it's important but it's not enough so it's great to say you will be an excellent entrepreneur you can do it of course it's necessary but all economic social system must be really tackled if we don't tackle that we will always have conflicts because we have always corruption and violations of those rights as as the base for the conflict that that is why don't we before we take comments when we take the next question make sure we get both in and then you can address thank you my name is Sanam Angelini I'm the executive director of the international civil society action network we work with women across manna asia who are on the front lines of these issues and one of the things when you work with women civil society as you know is that they cut straight to the chase and so with that I will do that exactly right now the extremist ideology that we're talking about comes from Saudi Arabia Qatar and the Gulf states we know this it's been going for 30 years it didn't just appear out of thin air it's really important if we're going to talk about this to actually tackle that aspect of the story so that that's number one number two is that if we don't I understand that we're talking at predominantly about maybe radicalization in in Europe and the US and elsewhere but unless we deal with some of the fundamental roots right now that are being used to entice and encourage young people from the west to go to these places the Syrian conflict very much the humanitarian crisis in Iraq unless we we've put the resources into really ending those and the political will to really tackling the Syrian conflict we're going to have a flow through of people forever if this is like you know the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s got Europeans and Americans and everybody going into Spain so I think the root cause aspect of this is definitely something that has to be addressed and I and I want to concur with my colleague there about the economic issues we've perpetrated economic extremism for 30 years with neoliberal policies that these ask these issues have to be put on the table we can't just pretend that it's just online and it happened out of nowhere sorry to be so frank but I think it's a good start thank you great questions what why don't we try to address them take them in whatever order you want dress one or both whatever you like Evan well so at the State Department's we do have an economic bureau who deals really purely with economic policy but I what I would call economic diplomacy writ large around the world where they're dealing with these issues and dealing directly with countries like Croatia and looking at economic corruption and looking at ways to help share best practices in that field and so we have Bara knows this as well at State Department that those colleagues handle that issue directly what what I do in the Bureau of Education and Cultural Affairs is really give people at the grassroots level an opportunity to come here and learn about our best practices and entrepreneurship but we do have people and other tracks and other areas addressing those issues head on so I'll say that first right yeah I would just say two things the first is that you talked about 30 years worth of an ideology that's building the ecosystem and I'm glad you raised it I'm glad you were clear about it and I'm I'm equally frank there is no way I could have traveled around the world with blinders on I know what is going on I've seen it government can't be the only one that's identifying things civil society can't be whispering in ears saying this is what's going on and not be clear about it until we talk very clearly about the influence of external actors that are changing the face of your communities on the ground as we speak either by eradicating heritage and history or by brainwashing children or by bringing foreign imams in or I mean I could go on and on and on we are not going to get to the the heart of things so I applaud your clarity and your pointed comment on that but the second thing it's you know this issue of the ecosystem and root causes what Evan said is really important nobody is looking at this with only one dimension everybody is understanding that multi-dimensional component of all this and toward that and I want to say this the big problem in my view as we've talked about it publicly is we talk about the hard power we talk about the boots on the ground and the physical war that we are seeing whether it's you talked about Syria whether we're you know whatever we look at things in in a very concrete way on the on the physical side you have to marry both the hard power and the so-called soft power together in a strategy so that you have an a comprehensive approach to what is taking place and so it is both the physical armies and the virtual armies that we're dealing with and and I think the only way we're going to get ahead of this is to combine that in a way that gives respect to both dimensions of the tools that we're talking about in our toolbox I know we're behind time so I'll close down yep I think we'll leave it at that the good news is we've got the full two days together and Farah is going to be chairing this next panel so you can hit her with other questions we're going to have time I'm sorry we didn't get to all the questions but join me in thanking both Evan and Farah for their great insights. Thank you for taking this.