10th anniversary of 9/11 terrorist attacks

For journalists covering the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, UC Berkeley has more than 20 available experts on the tragedy’s impacts and implications. They are listed under the following topic headings, but may have expertise on other issues as well:

Law and human rights Media and language Middle Eastern history, politics and culture Race , ethnicity and religion

Security and technology U.S. foreign policy War and peace

Law and human rights

Jonathan Simon
Professor of law, faculty co-chair of the Berkeley Center for Criminal Justice
Phone: (510) 643-5169
Email: jsimon@law.berkeley.edu
Berkeley School of Law Media Relations contact: Susan Gluss, (510) 642-6936 or sgluss@law.berkeley.edu

Expertise: The role of criminal justice and punishment in modern societies, insurance and other contemporary practices of governing risk, the cultural lives of law, and the intellectual history of law and the social sciences.

Eric Stover
Director of UC Berkeley’s Human Rights Center and adjunct professor of public health
Phone: (510) 642-9065
Email: stovere@berkeley.edu

Expertise: Using empirical research methods to address emerging issues in human rights and international humanitarian law.

John Yoo
Professor of law, faculty director of the Miller Institute for Global Challenges and the Law
Email: jyoo@berkeley.edu
Berkeley School of Law Media Relations contact: Susan Gluss, (510) 642-6936 or sgluss@law.berkeley.edu

Expertise: Yoo served in the George W. Bush administration as a deputy assistant attorney general in the U.S. Department of Justice, where he worked on issues involving foreign affairs, national security and the separation of powers. His latest book, “Confronting Terror: 9/11 and the Future of American National Security,” is a collection of essays by authors for and against the war on terror about the meaning of 9/11, and related legal and policy questions. It is due out in September 2011.

Media and language

Mark Danner
Professor of journalism
Phone: (510) 643-7045
Email: mark@markdanner.com
Media Relations contact: Kathleen Maclay, (510) 643-5651 or kmaclay@berkeley.edu

Expertise: War, conflict, politics and international affairs, the Middle East, and torture in the war on terror.

Robin Lakoff
Professor of linguistics
Email: rlakoff@berkeley.edu
Media Relations contact: Kathleen Maclay, (510) 643-5651 or kmaclay@berkeley.edu

Expertise: Power, politics, gender and language.

Geoffrey Nunberg
Adjunct professor at the School of Information
Phone: (510) 643-3894
Email: nunberg@ischool.berkeley.edu
Media Relations contact: Kathleen Maclay, (510) 643-5651 or kmaclay@berkeley.edu

Expertise: Semantics and pragmatics, information access, written language structure, multilingualism and language policy, and the cultural implications of digital technologies. Nunberg records a feature on language on NPR’s "Fresh Air" program and has written several books, including “The Years of Talking Dangerously” (2009).

Middle Eastern history, politics, culture

Nezar Alsayyad
Director of UC Berkeley’s Center for Middle Eastern Studies, professor of architecture, planning and urban design
Phone: (510) 642-8208
Email: nezar@berkeley.edu
Media Relations contact: Kathleen Maclay, (510) 643-5651 or kmaclay@berkeley.edu

Expertise: Middle Eastern culture and politics, and urban history.

Hatem Bazian
Lecturer in Near Eastern Studies
Phone: (510) 642-7792
Email: hatemb@berkeley.edu
Media Relations contact: Kathleen Maclay, (510) 643-5651 or kmaclay@berkeley.edu

Expertise: Arab and Arab American studies, Muslim American studies, international relations, Islamic studies and Islamic law.

Charles Hirschkind
Professor of anthropology
Phone: (510) 642-1182
Email: chirschk@berkeley.edu
Media Relations contact: Kathleen Maclay, (510) 643-5651 or kmaclay@berkeley.edu

Expertise: Religion, Islam and the Middle East, media theory, and language and performance.

Race, ethnicity and religion

Jack Glaser
Assistant professor of public policy
Phone (510) 642-3047
Email: glaserj@socrates.berkeley.edu
Media Relations contact: Kathleen Maclay, (510) 643-5651 or kmaclay@berkeley.edu

Expertise: Racial/ethnic profiling in counterterrorism and in law enforcement generally.

Ron Hassner
Professor of political science
Phone: (510) 642-4657
Email: hassner@berkeley.edu
Media Relations contact: Kathleen Maclay, (510) 643-5651 or kmaclay@berkeley.edu

Expertise: Symbolic and emotive aspects of international security, religion and conflict, Middle Eastern politics and territorial disputes. Hassner’s book “War on Sacred Grounds” (2009) examined the causes and characteristics of disputes over sacred places and analyzed conditions under which these conflicts can be managed. More details are online.

Saba Mahmood
Associate professor of anthropology
Phone: (510) 642-3565
Email: smahmood@berkeley.edu
Media Relations contact: Kathleen Maclay, (510) 643-5651 or kmaclay@berkeley.edu

Expertise: Religious social movements, Islam, Christian-Muslim relations, and secularism in the Middle East. She is co-principal investigator for a Henry R. Luce Foundation-funded project, "Politics of Religious Freedom," that is studying how law and politics are transforming religious freedom in the United States, the Middle East, South Asia and the European Union. More project information is online.

Security and technology

Chris Hoofnagle
Director of Information Privacy Programs at the Berkeley Center for Law & Technology, Berkeley School of Law
Phone: (510) 664-4327
Email: choofnagle@law.berkeley.edu
Law school media relations contact: Susan Gluss, 510-642-6936 or sgluss@law.berkeley.edu

Expertise: Consumer privacy, identity theft and information privacy law.

Stephen Maurer
Adjunct associate professor of public policy, director of the Information Technology and Homeland Security Project at the Goldman School of Public Policy
Phone: (510) 642-6511
Email: smaurer@berkeley.edu
Media Relations contact: Kathleen Maclay, (510) 643-5651 or kmaclay@berkeley.edu

Expertise: Homeland security.

Richard Muller
Professor of physics, faculty senior scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Phone: (510) 486-7430
Email: ramuller@lbl.gov
Media Relations contact: Robert Sanders, (510) 643-6998 or rsanders@berkeley.edu

Expertise: Muller discussed the physics of the terrorist attacks in his 2008 book, “Physics for Future Presidents,” and has explained how the World Trade Center buildings collapsed, as well as why the so-called evidence that the buildings were detonated does not withstand scrutiny. Muller’s expertise includes the technology of national security, intelligence information and surveillance, and cutting-edge technologies including battlefield technology, terrorism, nuclear threats and dirty bombs.

Karlene Roberts
Professor emeritus in the management of organizations, Haas School of Business
Email: karlene@haas.berkeley.edu
Media Relations contact: Kathleen Maclay, (510) 643-5651 or kmaclay@berkeley.edu

Expertise: Risk management and mitigation, high-reliability organizations and airline safety.

Doug Tygar
Professor of computer science and information management
Phone: (510) 643-7855
Email: doug.tygar@gmail.com
Media Relations contact: Kathleen Maclay, (510) 643-5651 or kmaclay@berkeley.edu

Expertise: Privacy, computer security and electronic commerce

U.S. foreign policy

M. Steven Fish
Professor of political science
Phone: (510) 643-1943
Email: sfish@berkeley.edu
Media Relations contact: Kathleen Maclay, (510) 643-5651 or kmaclay@berkeley.edu

Expertise: Religion and politics, democracy and regime change in developing and postcommunist countries, and constitutional systems and national legislatures. Fish is the author of “Are Muslims Distinctive? A Look at the Evidence” (2011).

Harry Kreisler
Executive director of the Institute of International Studies
Phone: (510) 642-1106
Email: Kreisler@berkeley.edu
Media Relations contact: Yasmin Anwar, (510) 643-7944 or yanwar@berkeley.edu

Expertise: U.S. foreign policy and how it has been affected by the events of 9/11.

Michael Nacht
Professor of Public Policy and former Aaron Wildavsky Dean at the Goldman School of Public Policy
Phone: (510) 643-4038
Email: mnacht@berkeley.edu
Media Relations contact: Kathleen Maclay, (510) 643-5651 or kmaclay@berkeley.edu

Expertise: U.S. national security and foreign policy, and management strategies for public organizations. Nacht stepped down in mid-2010 after serving for more than a year as U.S. assistant secretary of defense for global strategic affairs. He also served previously as a member of the U.S. Department of Defense Threat Reduction Advisory Committee, chairing panels on counterterrorism and the counterproliferation of weapons of mass destruction.

Daniel Sargent
Assistant professor of history
Phone: (510) 643-3159
Email: daniel.sargent@berkeley.edu
Media Relations contact: Kathleen Maclay, (510) 643-5651 or kmaclay@berkeley.edu

Expertise: U.S. foreign policy, U.S. foreign relations history, and global and international history.

Steven Weber
Professor of political science and professor at the School of Information
Phone: (510) 643-3755 (office) or (510) 928-0657 (cell)
Email: steve_weber@berkeley.edu
Media Relations contact: Kathleen Maclay, (510) 643-5651 or kmaclay@berkeley.edu

Expertise: Weber has held academic fellowships with the Council on Foreign Relations, and worked with the U.S. State Department and other government agencies on foreign policy issues, risk analysis and forecasting. He was in New York City when the Twin Towers were struck.

Robb Willer
Assistant professor of sociology
Phone: (607) 339-6466
Email: willer@berkeley.edu
Media Relations contact: Yasmin Anwar, (510) 643-7944 or yanwar@berkeley.edu

Expertise: Effects of terrorism on U.S. public opinion, and terrorism and the presidency.

War and peace

Malcolm Potts
Professor of public health
Phone: (510) 642-6915
Email: potts@berkeley.edu
Media Relations contact: Sarah Yang, (510) 643-6163 or scyang@berkeley.edu

Expertise: Potts says his 2008 book "Sex and War: How Biology Explains Warfare and Terrorism and Offers a Path to a Safer World" remains directly relevant to the ongoing fight against terrorism.

Michael Nagler
Professor emeritus of comparative literature and classics, co-founder of UC Berkeley’s Peace and Conflict Studies Program
Email: mnagler@igc.org
Media Relations contact: Kathleen Maclay, (510) 643-5651 or kmaclay@berkeley.edu

Expertise: Peace and conflict studies, nonviolence. Nagler is the president of the Metta Center for Nonviolence. More information is on his website.