Ron E Hassner
Biographic Data
| ID | 1256262 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Ron E Hassner |
| GIVEN NAMES | Ron E |
| FAMILY NAME | Hassner |
| SIGNATURE | HASSNER R E |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of California, Berkeley |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-6590-4778 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 33 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 155 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 32 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2003 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
War on Sacred Grounds
This book investigates the causes and properties of struggles over sites that are both venerated and contested, and proposes ways for managing these disputes. Holy places can create the potential for clashes, not only between competing religious groups but also between religious groups and secular actors. The book illustrates this complex, violent dynamic through a series of case studies, including the conflict over Jerusalem and competing Hindu …
How to deceive: A supply-side approach
The study of strategic warning has focused on deception success. Scholars have argued that deception often succeeds because targets suffer cognitive and bureaucratic pathologies. This paper offers an alternative approach that emphasizes the resilience to deception of intelligence organizations. It proposes that deceiving a rival intelligence organization is a challenging task that requires significant planning, resources, and coordination. The sa…
War on Sacred Grounds
In War on Sacred Grounds , Ron E. Hassner investigates the causes and properties of struggles over sites that are both venerated and contested, and proposes ways for managing these disputes. Holy places can create the potential for clashes, not only between competing religious groups but also between religious groups and secular actors. Hassner illustrates this complex, violent dynamic through a series of case studies, including the conflict over…
Persuasive and Unpersuasive Critiques of Torture
Torture critics have offered two types of arguments in the hope of swaying public opinion against torture: A pragmatic (consequentialist) argument that “torture doesn’t work” and a moral (deontological) argument about the immorality and cruelty of torture. I present findings from two survey experiments about public support for torture among U.S. adults. The great majority of the respondents in these surveys did not endorse pragmatic arguments. Th…
Anatomy of Torture
Does torture “work?” Can controversial techniques such as waterboarding extract crucial and reliable intelligence? Since 9/11, this question has been angrily debated in the halls of power and the court of public opinion. This book mines the archives of the Spanish Inquisition to propose an answer that will frustrate and infuriate both sides of the divide. The Inquisition's scribes recorded every torment, every scream, and every confession in the …
Anatomy of Torture
Does torture "work?" Can controversial techniques such as waterboarding extract crucial and reliable intelligence? Since 9/11, this question has been angrily debated in the halls of power and the court of public opinion. In Anatomy of Torture , Ron E. Hassner mines the archives of the Spanish Inquisition to propose an answer that will frustrate and infuriate both sides of the divide. The Inquisition's scribes recorded every torment, every scream,…
Evaluating and Defending Religious Freedom
How religiously free are Muslim-majority states? What responsibility does Islam play in the presence or absence of religious freedom in these societies? In this illuminating volume, Daniel Philpott presents a nuanced view backed by subtle analysis. Muslim-majority states do suffer from a distinct dearth of religious freedom. Less than a quarter of these states enjoy high levels of religious freedom, far less than any other region in the world. Ph…
Two Cantatas
In a mere six pages of Revolutions in Sovereignty, Daniel Philpott connects John Calvin’s theological writings to the foundations of the sovereign international system, one logical step at a time. It’s like a Bach chorale, moving in bold chord progressions from key to key until it arrives at a place that is both surprising and feels entirely like home
What Do We Know about Interrogational Torture
“I have spoken as recently as 24 hours ago with people at the highest level of intelligence and I asked them the question ‘Does it work? Does torture work?’ And the answer was, ‘Yes, absolutely.’”1
The Cost of Torture: Evidence from the Spanish Inquisition
Empirical evidence on contemporary torture is sparse. The archives of the Spanish Inquisition provide a detailed historical source of quantitative and qualitative information about interrogational torture. The inquisition tortured brutally and systematically, willing to torment all who it deemed as withholding evidence. This torture yielded information that was often reliable: witnesses in the torture chamber and witnesses that were not tortured …
The Myth of the Ticking Bomb
“I have spoken as recently as 24 hours ago with people at the highest level of intelligence and I asked them the question ‘Does it work? Does torture work?’ And the answer was, ‘Yes, absolutely.’”1
Political Trials in Theory and History
Hypotheses on Religion in the Military
Recent U.S. military engagements in the Middle East have drawn public attention to the thorny issue of religion in the armed forces but the scholarship on religion in the military lags far behind these developments. Scholars have not developed a coherent research program around the challenges that religion faces in the armed forces or the religious issues that soldiers, commanders and military institutions grapple with on a daily basis. This pape…
Barriers to Entry: Who Builds Fortified Boundaries and Why
Fortified boundaries are asymmetrical, physical barriers placed along borders. These boundaries are more formidable in structure than conventional boundary lines, but less robust than militarized boundaries. Their goal is to impose costs on infiltrators and in so doing deter or impede infiltration. A novel dataset of all such boundaries worldwide shows that states are constructing these barriers at an accelerating rate. More than half of barrier …
Robert M. Bosco, Securing the sacred: Religion, national security, and the western state
Kehoe, Alice Beck: Militant Christianity. An Anthropological History
Anthropos , Seite 296 - 298
Conflicts over Sacred Ground
This chapter argues that contested sacred sites pose indivisibility challenges which can drive even natural religious allies into violent conflict, and also outlines the multiple roots of conflicts over sacred sites based on the type of objective at stake: legitimacy, security, or profit. It then turns to investigate several aspects that characterize these disputes, regardless of cause. Sacred sites cannot be shared to the satisfaction of all par…
Religion and Violence in the Jewish Traditions
This chapter reports the traditional violent themes in religious Judaism as they seem in sacred texts, rites, customs, and chronicles, and provides a survey of the components of Jewish religion relating to violence while evaluating and illustrating their development and influence through history. It then describes the violent implications of two religious elements that are distinct and central in the Jewish legacy: Mysticism and Messianism. The c…
Religion in the Military Worldwide
How does religion affect the lives of professional soldiers? How does religion shape militaries, their organization, procedures, and performance? This volume is the first to address these questions by comparing religious symbols and practices in nine countries: Japan, Canada, the United Kingdom, Pakistan, Israel, Iran, India, the United States, and Turkey. The contributors explore how and why soldiers pray, the role of religious rituals prior to …
How to Cite a Sacred Text
Allusions to holy scriptures and quotes from sacred texts appear in hundreds of political science articles. Yet while we treat other ancient texts with reverence and diligence, we have not extended a similar care to the holy scriptures of the world's religions. Political scientists often refer to biblical events, statements, and turns of phrase but rarely cite them, chapter and verse. They are careless about referencing the precise translation of…
Religious Violence in Judaism: Past and Present
Throughout Jewish history, religious tradition has had a dialectical relationship with violence. Judaism is neither more nor less violent than any other religion. In this essay, however, we offer a comprehensive and integrated survey of the components of Jewish ethos and mythos relating to violence while analyzing and illustrating their development and influence over the course of three millennia, from biblical times to the contemporary Jewish wo…
Blasphemy and Violence1: Blasphemy and Violence
Why did riots in response to the 2005 Danish cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad occur in nine Muslim states but not in 43 other states in which Muslims form a majority of the population? I show that the location of the cartoon riots is best explained by combining insights from the study of politics with arguments from the sociology of religion. Protests were mobilized by radical Islamist movements alarmed by the moral threat posed by the bla…
Sacred Time and Conflict Initiation
This article examines the manner in which rituals and symbols associated with sacred time have influenced conflict initiation. Leaders will time their attacks with sacred dates in the religious calendar if the force multiplying effects of sacred time, motivation, and vulnerability, outweigh its force dividing effects, constraint, and outrage. This is most likely to occur under three conditions: When conflict occurs across religious divides, when …
Religious Intelligence
Sacred rituals and symbols can act as force multipliers that motivate and constrain the effectiveness of actors. Religious intelligence involves an assessment of how these rituals and symbols affect combat operations. The fourfold challenge faced by the religious intelligence analysts is to ascertain how prominent a role religion will play in a given conflict, what the relevant sacred phenomena are, how salient they are for the specific religious…
Religion and International Affairs: The State of the Art
To Halve and to Hold: Conflicts over Sacred Space and the Problem of Indivisibility
Barriers to Entry: Who Builds Fortified Boundaries and Why
Fortified boundaries are asymmetrical, physical barriers placed along borders. These boundaries are more formidable in structure than conventional boundary lines, but less robust than militarized boundaries. Their goal is to impose costs on infiltrators and in so doing deter or impede infiltration. A novel dataset of all such boundaries worldwide shows that states are constructing these barriers at an accelerating rate. More than half of barrier …
The Path to Intractability: Time and the Entrenchment of Territorial Disputes
Why do territorial disputes become more difficult to resolve over time? Why are states often unable to resolve long-standing territorial disputes over land that is of little strategic or economic value? One explanation for territorial dispute entrenchment draws on changes in dispute perception. Specifically, as territorial disputes mature they undergo processes that increase the integrity of the disputed territory, clarify the definition of the t…
Blasphemy and Violence1: Blasphemy and Violence
Why did riots in response to the 2005 Danish cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad occur in nine Muslim states but not in 43 other states in which Muslims form a majority of the population? I show that the location of the cartoon riots is best explained by combining insights from the study of politics with arguments from the sociology of religion. Protests were mobilized by radical Islamist movements alarmed by the moral threat posed by the bla…
Sacred Time and Conflict Initiation
This article examines the manner in which rituals and symbols associated with sacred time have influenced conflict initiation. Leaders will time their attacks with sacred dates in the religious calendar if the force multiplying effects of sacred time, motivation, and vulnerability, outweigh its force dividing effects, constraint, and outrage. This is most likely to occur under three conditions: When conflict occurs across religious divides, when …
Religious Violence in Judaism: Past and Present
Throughout Jewish history, religious tradition has had a dialectical relationship with violence. Judaism is neither more nor less violent than any other religion. In this essay, however, we offer a comprehensive and integrated survey of the components of Jewish ethos and mythos relating to violence while analyzing and illustrating their development and influence over the course of three millennia, from biblical times to the contemporary Jewish wo…
Time and the Intractability of Territorial Disputes
Hypotheses on Religion in the Military
Recent U.S. military engagements in the Middle East have drawn public attention to the thorny issue of religion in the armed forces but the scholarship on religion in the military lags far behind these developments. Scholars have not developed a coherent research program around the challenges that religion faces in the armed forces or the religious issues that soldiers, commanders and military institutions grapple with on a daily basis. This pape…
Debating the Role of Religion in War
Michael Horowitz’s compelling article deserves praise for pushing the agenda on religion and war beyond two contemporary obsessions: the axation on religion and nonstate violent actors, particularly insurgents and terrorists, and the emphasis on Islam as the primary religious movement associated with violent conoict.1 By examining how religion affected the duration of the Crusades, Horowitz persuasively demonstrates that religion has also shaped …
Fighting insurgency on sacred ground
Iraqi insurgents are using their own mosques as operational bases, often forcing U.S. military commanders to choose between desecrating a sacred space or letting insurgents escape. Israel and India, along with experience from Iraq to date, offer four core lessons for how to respond
Persuasive and Unpersuasive Critiques of Torture
Torture critics have offered two types of arguments in the hope of swaying public opinion against torture: A pragmatic (consequentialist) argument that “torture doesn’t work” and a moral (deontological) argument about the immorality and cruelty of torture. I present findings from two survey experiments about public support for torture among U.S. adults. The great majority of the respondents in these surveys did not endorse pragmatic arguments. Th…
The Cost of Torture: Evidence from the Spanish Inquisition
Empirical evidence on contemporary torture is sparse. The archives of the Spanish Inquisition provide a detailed historical source of quantitative and qualitative information about interrogational torture. The inquisition tortured brutally and systematically, willing to torment all who it deemed as withholding evidence. This torture yielded information that was often reliable: witnesses in the torture chamber and witnesses that were not tortured …
Religious Intelligence
Sacred rituals and symbols can act as force multipliers that motivate and constrain the effectiveness of actors. Religious intelligence involves an assessment of how these rituals and symbols affect combat operations. The fourfold challenge faced by the religious intelligence analysts is to ascertain how prominent a role religion will play in a given conflict, what the relevant sacred phenomena are, how salient they are for the specific religious…
To Halve and to Hold: Conflicts over Sacred Space and the Problem of Indivisibility
Sliding into Home Plate: How to Use Slideware to Improve Your Presentation (While Dodging the Bullets)
Recently, Microsoft's PowerPoint has come under a series of brutal attacks. Critics have accused the software of promoting simplistic thinking, dumbing down presentations, and constricting interactions between presenter and audience (Schwartz 2003; Parker 2001; Thompson 2003). One detractor went so far as to label PowerPoint “technological cocaine” and another demanded a ban on the software, urging that “Friends Don't Let Friends Use PowerPoint” …
Fighting insurgency on sacred ground
Iraqi insurgents are using their own mosques as operational bases, often forcing U.S. military commanders to choose between desecrating a sacred space or letting insurgents escape. Israel and India, along with experience from Iraq to date, offer four core lessons for how to respond
The Path to Intractability: Time and the Entrenchment of Territorial Disputes
Why do territorial disputes become more difficult to resolve over time? Why are states often unable to resolve long-standing territorial disputes over land that is of little strategic or economic value? One explanation for territorial dispute entrenchment draws on changes in dispute perception. Specifically, as territorial disputes mature they undergo processes that increase the integrity of the disputed territory, clarify the definition of the t…
At the Horns of the Altar’: Counterinsurgency and the Religious Roots of the Sanctuary Practice
This paper examines the origins and development of the sanctuary practice in Judaism, Christianity and Islam. The customs and laws relating to the sanctuary practice underwent a process of institutionalization that exemplified a constant tension between religious authorities, who wished to expand the practice, and secular authorities, who wished to eliminate it. This struggle resulted in an accommodation: the adoption of rules that restrict the p…
Trial by Fire: Surviving the Job Talk Q&A
There is a common misconception among graduate students regarding the purpose of the job interview. Many seem to treat the interview as if it were designed to identify and hire outstanding graduate students. Indeed, over the course of their brief interaction with a prospective hire, faculty strive to reassure themselves of the candidate's intelligence, training, and scholarly potential. But underlying all these, I would like to argue, is a persis…
Time and the Intractability of Territorial Disputes
Religion and International Affairs: The State of the Art
Debating the Role of Religion in War
Michael Horowitz’s compelling article deserves praise for pushing the agenda on religion and war beyond two contemporary obsessions: the axation on religion and nonstate violent actors, particularly insurgents and terrorists, and the emphasis on Islam as the primary religious movement associated with violent conoict.1 By examining how religion affected the duration of the Crusades, Horowitz persuasively demonstrates that religion has also shaped …
Blasphemy and Violence1: Blasphemy and Violence
Why did riots in response to the 2005 Danish cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad occur in nine Muslim states but not in 43 other states in which Muslims form a majority of the population? I show that the location of the cartoon riots is best explained by combining insights from the study of politics with arguments from the sociology of religion. Protests were mobilized by radical Islamist movements alarmed by the moral threat posed by the bla…
Sacred Time and Conflict Initiation
This article examines the manner in which rituals and symbols associated with sacred time have influenced conflict initiation. Leaders will time their attacks with sacred dates in the religious calendar if the force multiplying effects of sacred time, motivation, and vulnerability, outweigh its force dividing effects, constraint, and outrage. This is most likely to occur under three conditions: When conflict occurs across religious divides, when …
Religious Intelligence
Sacred rituals and symbols can act as force multipliers that motivate and constrain the effectiveness of actors. Religious intelligence involves an assessment of how these rituals and symbols affect combat operations. The fourfold challenge faced by the religious intelligence analysts is to ascertain how prominent a role religion will play in a given conflict, what the relevant sacred phenomena are, how salient they are for the specific religious…
Conflicts over Sacred Ground
This chapter argues that contested sacred sites pose indivisibility challenges which can drive even natural religious allies into violent conflict, and also outlines the multiple roots of conflicts over sacred sites based on the type of objective at stake: legitimacy, security, or profit. It then turns to investigate several aspects that characterize these disputes, regardless of cause. Sacred sites cannot be shared to the satisfaction of all par…
Religion and Violence in the Jewish Traditions
This chapter reports the traditional violent themes in religious Judaism as they seem in sacred texts, rites, customs, and chronicles, and provides a survey of the components of Jewish religion relating to violence while evaluating and illustrating their development and influence through history. It then describes the violent implications of two religious elements that are distinct and central in the Jewish legacy: Mysticism and Messianism. The c…
Religion in the Military Worldwide
How does religion affect the lives of professional soldiers? How does religion shape militaries, their organization, procedures, and performance? This volume is the first to address these questions by comparing religious symbols and practices in nine countries: Japan, Canada, the United Kingdom, Pakistan, Israel, Iran, India, the United States, and Turkey. The contributors explore how and why soldiers pray, the role of religious rituals prior to …
How to Cite a Sacred Text
Allusions to holy scriptures and quotes from sacred texts appear in hundreds of political science articles. Yet while we treat other ancient texts with reverence and diligence, we have not extended a similar care to the holy scriptures of the world's religions. Political scientists often refer to biblical events, statements, and turns of phrase but rarely cite them, chapter and verse. They are careless about referencing the precise translation of…
Religious Violence in Judaism: Past and Present
Throughout Jewish history, religious tradition has had a dialectical relationship with violence. Judaism is neither more nor less violent than any other religion. In this essay, however, we offer a comprehensive and integrated survey of the components of Jewish ethos and mythos relating to violence while analyzing and illustrating their development and influence over the course of three millennia, from biblical times to the contemporary Jewish wo…
Kehoe, Alice Beck: Militant Christianity. An Anthropological History
Anthropos , Seite 296 - 298
Barriers to Entry: Who Builds Fortified Boundaries and Why
Fortified boundaries are asymmetrical, physical barriers placed along borders. These boundaries are more formidable in structure than conventional boundary lines, but less robust than militarized boundaries. Their goal is to impose costs on infiltrators and in so doing deter or impede infiltration. A novel dataset of all such boundaries worldwide shows that states are constructing these barriers at an accelerating rate. More than half of barrier …
Robert M. Bosco, Securing the sacred: Religion, national security, and the western state
Hypotheses on Religion in the Military
Recent U.S. military engagements in the Middle East have drawn public attention to the thorny issue of religion in the armed forces but the scholarship on religion in the military lags far behind these developments. Scholars have not developed a coherent research program around the challenges that religion faces in the armed forces or the religious issues that soldiers, commanders and military institutions grapple with on a daily basis. This pape…
Political Trials in Theory and History
The Myth of the Ticking Bomb
“I have spoken as recently as 24 hours ago with people at the highest level of intelligence and I asked them the question ‘Does it work? Does torture work?’ And the answer was, ‘Yes, absolutely.’”1
What Do We Know about Interrogational Torture
“I have spoken as recently as 24 hours ago with people at the highest level of intelligence and I asked them the question ‘Does it work? Does torture work?’ And the answer was, ‘Yes, absolutely.’”1
The Cost of Torture: Evidence from the Spanish Inquisition
Empirical evidence on contemporary torture is sparse. The archives of the Spanish Inquisition provide a detailed historical source of quantitative and qualitative information about interrogational torture. The inquisition tortured brutally and systematically, willing to torment all who it deemed as withholding evidence. This torture yielded information that was often reliable: witnesses in the torture chamber and witnesses that were not tortured …
Political science (31 works) · Law (23 works) · Sociology (17 works) · Religion and Society Interactions (13 works) · Philosophy (12 works) · Computer Science (10 works) · Law (10 works) · Politics (10 works) · Psychology (10 works) · History (8 works)