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Initiative for the Study of Emerging Threats

The security challenges facing the world are increasingly complex and varied. We help make sense of them.

About Us

In an age of rapidly evolving technology, declining democratic norms and principles, acts of aggression by state and non-state actors, and acute climate and public health crises, the world is confronting complex and dynamic security challenges. The Center for Global Affairs (CGA) at the NYU School of Professional Studies (SPS), in close collaboration with practitioners, has long been dedicated to identifying, understanding, and exploring responses to non-traditional and new security challenges. The Initiative for the Study of Emerging Threats (ISET) reflects and extends this mission.

ISET is led by Dr. Mary Beth Altier, head of the Transnational Security Concentration within CGA's MS in Global Affairs. The Initiative brings together faculty members, students, and affiliates of the program with key stakeholders to consider what challenges may be lurking just over the horizon, and how we can best prepare for them. ISET engages in peer-reviewed research and timely commentary, holds roundtables and other public events, and supports the CGA’s mission in developing and disseminating the knowledge and skills needed to address the challenges of the future through practical education provided by the MS in Global Affairs and the MS in Global Security, Conflict and Cyber Crime. ISET is proud to host yearly, the US Army War College’s International Strategic Crisis Negotiation Exercise for Masters’ students and also a number of Consulting Practicum where graduate students can engage first hand in applied research on pressing international, national, and human security issues.    

Key themes that ISET addresses include:

  • The changing conduct of war including the use of proxies and private military companies
  • Disinformation, malign influence operations, and subversion
  • Recent trends and technologies in violent extremism and insurgency
  • Radicalization, recruitment, and rehabilitation of terrorists and foreign fighters
  • Cyber-conflict and cybercrime
  • Transnational crime, including the trafficking of drugs, people, and weapons; and financial crime and money laundering
  • Corruption, especially as it impacts aid, development, and governance
  • Energy, climate change, and resource scarcity
  • Respect for human rights and privacy in the implementation of security measures or new technologies
Director's Message
Mary Beth Altier, MA, PhD
Director and Clinical Associate Professor

Welcome! The world is becoming increasingly interconnected and yet, we are currently witnessing nation-states turning inward rather than outward. Yet, threats like terrorism, climate change, pandemics, cyberattacks, biological and nuclear weapons, refugee flows, and corruption require innovative solutions and international cooperation. How do we anticipate and thwart new and emerging threats in an increasingly complex global order?

The Initiative for the Study of Emerging Threats (ISET) follows the broader mission of the NYU School of Professional Studies Center for Global Affairs in seeking not just to catalog and to describe the world's challenges, but to play an active, imaginative, and positive role in creating practical solutions to them. ISET draws upon an extraordinary and inspiring faculty, the efforts of a diverse and entrepreneurial group of graduate students and alumni, and the resources of New York University, one of the most well respected and globally connected institutions of higher learning in the world.

This is a new and ambitious endeavor and inevitably a work in progress, constantly evolving, forever exploring new risks and new strategies to prevent, minimize, or resolve them. We look forward to working with you in that mission.

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