Prof. Ben Saul
Ben Saul is Challis Chair of International Law at the University of Sydney, the Whitlam and Fraser Chair of Australian Studies at Harvard University in 2017-18, a barrister, and an Associate Fellow of Chatham House. Ben has published 13 books and 90 refereed articles. Significant books include Defining Terrorism in International Law (2006), Research Handbook on International Law and Terrorism (2014), the Oxford Commentary on the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (2014) (awarded a Certificate of Merit by the American Society of International Law), and Indigenous Peoples and Human Rights (2016). Ben practises in international tribunals (including the ICTY, IACtHR, STL and ECCC) and was lead counsel in five successful security cases against Australia before the UN Human Rights Committee (FKAG (2013), MMM (2013), Leghaei (2015), Hicks (2016) and FJ (2016). Ben has advised United Nations and international bodies (including UNODC, UNHCR, UNESCO and OHCHR), governments, and NGOs, and delivered technical assistance in developing countries. He drafted the professional training curriculum on terrorism and international law for UNODC. Ben has served on various international and national bodies, and taught law and undertaken field missions in numerous countries. He often appears in the media. He has a doctorate from Oxford and honours degrees in Arts and Law from Sydney.
Since President Trump attempted to ban Muslims from certain countries from entering the United States, the question which Muslims are ‘moderate Muslims’ and which are potential ‘radical Islamist terrorists’ has gained new relevance. While some Muslim leaders deny any connection between their religion and terrorism, it is undeniable that many terrorists claim to act in […]
This Report engages in a comparative analysis of ISIS’s Dabiq and Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula’s Inspire magazines in order to ‘reverse engineer’ lessons for CT-CVE strategic communications. It examines how Dabiq and Inspire deploy messaging that is strategically designed to appeal to its audiences and drive their radicalisation. This study particularly focuses on how […]
This essay builds on Kyle Orton’s recent article for BICOM’s series on “The Day After ISIS,” which comprehensively lays out the political, social, and military conditions that will determine whether the Islamic State (IS) will survive the current efforts to defeat it in Syria and Iraq. I want to focus on some of the interesting aspects of […]