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Completed Projects

Transatlantic Fellowship Programme

ICCT’s Transatlantic Fellowship Program seeks to build and strengthen the mutual understanding between the United States and the Netherlands through carefully designed short-term visiting fellowships.

These short-term visits aim to offer insights and exchange experiences between U.S. and Dutch experts and policymakers, and inform the debate on timely topics in efforts to enhance international security. By doing so, the ICCT Transatlantic Fellowship Program seeks to defend and strengthen shared values between the Netherlands and the United States with regard to human rights and the mutual interest to protect and promote freedom and democracy.

ICCT’s Transatlantic Fellowship Program is funded by the Municipality of The Hague.

Topics
Right-Wing & Anti-Government Extremism
Region
Americas Wider Europe

Highlights

Expert Session: Longevity in right-wing extremist groups

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On April 17, 2023, ICCT organised a meeting with Dutch counter-terrorism practitioners, leading ICCT experts, and Transatlantic Fellow Tommi Kotonen, a postdoctoral researcher at University of Jyväskylä in Finland who joined ICCT in the context of a Visiting Fellowship funded by the Municipality of The Hague.

Right-wing extremism in the Netherlands currently consists of a large number of small groups and cells. This raises the question of which of these collectives should receive the attention of municipalities, the police and other interested parties. Dr Kotonen presented his research on factors affecting the survival and longevity of right-wing extremist groups, and on lessons to be learned from Scandinavian cases.

Live Briefing: A Thin Line – Freedom of Expression vis-à-vis (Extremist) Hate Speech

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On October 29, 2020, the International Centre for Counter Terrorism (ICCT), hosted an online Live Briefing on the topic of "A Thin Line – Freedom of Expression vis-à-vis (Extremist) Hate Speech." This was delivered by ICCT's inaugural Transatlantic Fellow, Dr.  Robert Kahn, alongside Associate Professor of Criminal Law at Tilburg University Marloes van Noorloos, and was moderated by Julie Coleman, Senior Research Fellow and Programme Lead.

This focused on the relationship between security and freedom of expression. As the aim to enhance security and the aim to preserve freedom of expression may  stand in conflict with one another, many fundamental questions about what kind of society we want to have and what principles we want to embody arise. This briefing explored these, asking: When are governments permitted to place restrictions on such freedoms? What are the implications? And what are their options if they cannot or if they choose not to? What can we learn from either side of the Atlantic?

Municipality Briefing

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In 2020, ICCT Transatlantic Fellow Robert Kahn delivered a briefing to policymakers from the Municipality of the Hague on the topic of addressing and countering hate speech. This closed-door session allowed detailed discussion of sensitive topics and mapping of potential policy responses.

About the project

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In 2019, Robert Kahn became the inaugural ICCT Transatlantic Fellow. He delivered a closed-door event to staff of The Hague Municipality on the topic of identifying and countering hate speech, as well as a live online briefing on the subject "A Thin Line – Freedom of Expression vis-à-vis (Extremist) Hate Speech."


In 2022, Tommi Kotonen became ICCT's most recent Transatlantic Fellow. During his partnership with ICCT, he delved into research on the longevity of right-wing extremist groups. In 2023, he published a report on this topic, and presented his findings to an audience of stakeholders in The Hague.

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