Theme Panel: The 2015 Terror Attacks in Paris and the French Response

paris_attacks

Theme Panel: The 2015 Terror Attacks in Paris and the French Response

Sun, September 4, 8:00 AM to 9:30 AM

Place: Loews, Commonwealth D

One of the Great Transformations of our time has been the changing religious, racial, and ethnic makeup of Europe. The increase in the number of Muslims in Europe, and the ways in which Europeans and their leaders have responded to their changing citizenry, have raised a number of fundamental political questions. The demands of secularism, the limits of individual freedom, and the nature of integration and national identity have all been brought into the limelight for questioning by the general public and academics alike.

This has especially been the case as global attention has turned to Islamic terrorism in the wake of September 11. One of the aims of political science, however, is to bring to the discussion of such attacks a theoretical lens and wider analytical angle, one that incorporates such factors as political institutions, national contexts, historical precedents, and political behavior.

This panel brings together a series of papers that seek to do exactly that.

The year 2015 saw two attacks in and around Paris: the assaults on the offices of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo and a kosher supermarket, accompanied by shootings near and around Paris; and the coordinated attacks of November 13 that lead the government to declare a lengthy, three-month state of emergency. France is home to the greatest number of Muslims in Europe, and some studies claim that they are the most well “integrated” of all European Muslims. That the attackers were Muslim, however, has only compounded longstanding anxieties and uncertainties about France’s Muslim population.

View in the 2016 Online Program.

Chair:
Jennifer Fredette, Ohio University

Papers:

  • What Triggers Authoritarian Shifts? French Public Opinion & Terrorism, 1995-2015
    Vincent Tiberj, Sciences Po
  • Charlie Hebdo, Republican Secularism and Islamophobia
    Aaron Winter, University of Abertay Dundee
    Aurelien Mondon, University of Bath
  • The Paris Attacks—Terrorist Events, Emotional Reactions, Political Participation
    Martial Foucault, Sciences Po Paris
    George E. Marcus, Williams College
    Pavlos Vasilopoulos, CEVIPOF
  • Muslims in Europe and the US: Drivers of Integration beyond Resource Determinism
    Justin Gest, George Mason University
  • Laîcité through Nonwestern Lenses—Comparing State Efforts to Incorporate Muslims
    Brandon T. Kendhammer, Ohio University
    Jennifer Fredette, Ohio University