Jonathan Pieslak featured on The Best of Our Knowledge

As always, host Bob Barrett selects an Academic Minute to air during The Best of Our Knowledge.

Each week this program examines some of the issues unique to college campuses, looks at the latest research, and invites commentary from experts and administrators from all levels of education.

For this week‘s edition (#1323), Bob has selected Dr. Jonathan Pieslak’s segment that explores how terrorists use music to stir the passions. Jonathan Pieslak is an associate professor at the City College of New York.

Jonathan Pieslak (b. 1974, Wilmington, DE) is an Associate Professor at The City College of New York and Graduate Center, CUNY where he specializes in scholarship on radical/extremist culture and music composition. He published his second book, Radicalism & Music: An Introduction to the Music Cultures of al-Qa’ida, Racist Skinheads, Christian-Affiliated Radicals, and Eco-Animal Right Militancywith Wesleyan University Press in November 2015. His research was supported by a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2011, and he is now working on a team project exploring the mobilizing influence of media in the jihadi-Salafi movement, funded by a Minerva Grant from the Department of Defense.

He is also the author of the 2009 nonfiction, Sound Targets: American Soldiers and Music in the Iraq War, which has been featured in a variety of national and international newspaper, radio, and television media, including: The New Yorker, BBC, NPR, Fox News, Il Manifesto (Italy), Globo (Brasil), Austrian Public Radio, among many others.He has been invited for lectures at Harvard University, Princeton University, Syracuse University, Davidson College, The Norwegian FFI (Ministry of Defense), Canadian Security Intelligence Service, and many others.

As a composer, Jonathan is a fellowship winner from the American Academy of Arts & Letters for music composition, having worked with members of the New York Philharmonic, Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, Kiev Philharmonic, and other prominent ensembles.

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