Preventing violent extremism: What a public health approach looks like

NINA MOINI: Well, this is interesting. A team of researchers at American University in Washington, DC, has shifted their approach to look at domestic extremism as a public health problem. The researchers work with PERIL. That's short for Polarization and Extremism Research and Innovation Lab.

Minnesota, of course, no stranger to these types of incidents, with the shootings of two lawmakers and their spouses in June, the recent mass shooting, of course, at Annunciation Catholic Church and School that we've been talking about today. Joining me to share more about their work are Hala Furst, the director of strategic partnerships at PERIL. Thanks for being here, Hala.

HALA FURST: Hello. Thank you so much. Thank you for having me.

NINA MOINI: Absolutely. We're also happy to have Rabbi Seth Limmer, the director of public affairs for PERIL. Thanks for being here, Seth.

SETH LIMMER: A pleasure. Thanks for having us.

NINA MOINI: Hala, I'd love to start with you, by just asking you to explain this term of extremism as it applies to the work and the research that you're doing. How do you define extremism?

HALA FURST: So the way that we think about extremism-- and before I get into that, I just want to say a personal thank you for having us on the call. I am a graduate of the University of Minnesota. I went there for college, so Minnesota remains very near, and Minneapolis in particular remains very near and dear to my heart.

NINA MOINI: Oh, wonderful. Thank you for sharing. Yeah, yeah.

HALA FURST: Absolutely. So we use a public health approach to design, test, and scale evidence-based tools and strategies to effectively reduce the threat of radicalization. So when you're asking me about extremism, we're talking about radicalization to violence from harmful online or offline content, and that can include conspiracy theories or misinformation, propaganda, and supremacist ideologies. And extremism in this context is across ideological spectrums, so it's not one thing or the other.

NINA MOINI: OK. That's good to know. Yeah, thanks for setting this scene. At what point did you and your team decide, we got to look at this as a public health issue?

HALA FURST: So the public health approach to violence prevention is about three decades old. We have seen, at health partners like the CDC, that taking a public health approach to a variety of different types of violence prevention effectively includes communities and creates a situation where people have a studied and evidence-based way to address violence that is whole of society.

So if we're thinking about ways that individuals can become engaged in fixing this problem, the public health approach provides opportunities for everyone from faith leaders, clinicians, mental and behavioral health professionals, teachers, educators, caregivers, parents, to become involved in the solution. And it takes the approach that has been proven over, again, three decades. Everything we do at PERIL is evidence-based, and it's incredibly important in a space that can become very, as our name suggests, polarized, that we keep things solidly in an evidence-based space.

NINA MOINI: Mm-hmm. And Seth, you all want this research and this evidence to be used, and for people to be able to really benefit from it. And so I understand that you have these outreach centers in some locations, these Community Advisory, Research, and Education Centers. It looks like one has opened in Lansing, Michigan, one in Athens, Georgia. Would you tell me about how these resources can be used by the public, and then why they are in the locations they are?

SETH LIMMER: Absolutely, and thanks for this. Listening to your previous speaker, Aaron, it broke my heart when he said there isn't any blueprint for this, about how to talk to your kids. There actually is. We have a guide for parents and caregivers for talking to your kids about violent extremism and targeted violence. And that's part of the reason why, for two years, we tested our CARE model. CARE stands for Community Advisory, Resource, and Education, which deploys field staff.

We had a field staff in the Lansing corridor in Michigan and one in the Athens corridor in Georgia, to test out what it would be like to have someone on the ground to distribute the resources that we have to do education. Aaron also spoke about how challenging it was for teachers at Annunciation, but really for teachers anywhere to know how to address these issues, to look for warning signs in students, to know which students to refer to CARE and what the right care is.

So the E of the CARE model is to go and do workshops for teachers and educators, for parents, for coaches, for students themselves, to learn how to navigate an online world in a safe way, and to know what to do when they see warning signs in their friends. So the idea is if we've developed and tested these resources at PERIL in the last five years since our founding, now we think we're ready to scale them.

So our two-year pilot has finished. We had great results about the effectiveness of our trainings and the knowledge gain that people get when they take our trainings, and we're ready to start deploying our field staff to other states. And we're looking for partners in all these states to make that happen and make it work. And we would very much look forward to continue some initial conversations we had in Minnesota to bring CARE to Minnesota, as well.

NINA MOINI: So these toolkits that are out there giving people tools-- Hala, I think the idea at the center of this seems to be that extremist activities or political violence, mass shootings, are preventable. Would you agree with that? Is that the goal here?

HALA FURST: Yes, absolutely. It's not just the goal, it's the truth. This kind of violence feels exotic because it gets a lot of attention, and it feels specialized. But what we want you to understand from PERIL, and what I think people will be empowered to learn, is that this kind of violence is predictable. It follows a predictable model. You can track it. There is a process by which people become radicalized to violence and then mobilize to violence.

So it is preventable, and not only is it preventable. It's not just preventable at the point of intervention, when somebody is picking up a gun or a weapon and going to actually commit an act of violence. It is preventable upstream. It is preventable by teaching children, young people, and adults how to recognize when they're being manipulated online, how to recognize when their biases may be metastasizing into something more violent. It is preventable because we can move, as we used to say, left of boom. We can move upstream and make communities and individuals resilient against being attracted to this kind of violence.

NINA MOINI: And Seth, we know the federal government has been terminating grants for research that examines violence prevention in some instances. Are you feeling like your organization has to try to fill some of those gaps? Or are you worried about less of that public health approach?

SETH LIMMER: We're always worried about less of that public health approach, because we're so exhausted ourselves by seeing people throw up their hands-- I mean, just think about the last month, or in the last weeks just in Minnesota alone, about the violence. And people say, well, what can we do? We can do something.

The good news is if the federal government has retreated from this work-- and it has-- is that there are states who are stepping up to do this work and there are counties that are stepping up to do this work. So we are opening up a partnership with a county in California, who wants to bring CARE there. We're working with the governor of a Midwestern state on bringing CARE staff to that state, to provide a host of trainings for kids K to 12 and make sure that them and their educators, and their parents, have the tools they need.

So we are trying also-- as an organization, we see the gaps now that the federal government has withdrawn. And we're trying to make sure that between us and our other partners in the field, that we can each pick up appropriate pieces of that puzzle so we keep the prevention field moving forward. And we also all stay in our lane, and what we're good at in that way.

So there is bad news that is discouraging. But working with states and working with philanthropists, we're finding that this work is needed and desired. And when people learn about the public health model, they want to bring it to their town and to their state.

NINA MOINI: Seth and Hala--

HALA FURST: And if I can add to that--

NINA MOINI: Oh, oh course. Please.

HALA FURST: I just wanted to add that states have really stepped up into leadership positions. We have seen states recognize what's happened at the federal government and realize their position. States, governors, and the governments of states have recognized that they have a leading role, that they can protect their people, and that they can prevent violence. So we're incredibly grateful to states like Minnesota recognizing that they still have an opportunity at the state level to be national leaders on this issue.

NINA MOINI: All right, Seth and Hala, thanks for coming by Minnesota Now and sharing your work. I appreciate it.

HALA FURST: Thanks so much.

NINA MOINI: Thank you. That was Rabbi Seth Limmer, the director of public affairs for PERIL, and Hala Furst, PERIL's director of strategic partnerships.