Enemies Within: The Global Politics of Fifth Columns

About the Event

The invocation of "fifth columns" in the political arena has recurred periodically throughout modern history and is experiencing an upsurge in our era of democratic erosion. Fifth-column accusations can have baleful effects on governance and trust, as they call into question the loyalty and belonging of the targeted populations. Enemies Within is the first book to systematically investigate the roots and implications of the politics of fifth columns. The contributors to this volume apply a common theoretical framework and work within the tradition of qualitative social science to analyze cases from three continents. Enemies Within offers a unique perspective to better understand contemporary challenges, including the return of chauvinistic nationalism, the weakening of democratic norms, and the persecution of minorities and political dissidents.

The event will open with remarks by Dean Ayres, followed by a short presentation of the book by the Professors Mylonas and Radnitz, and a discussion by Professors Sheri Berman and Andreas Wimmer. This will be followed by a Q&A with the audience. Several contributors will also be present. Light refreshments will be served.

About the Editors

Harris Mylonas is Associate Professor of Political Science and International Affairs at the George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs. His work focuses primary on the role of decision makers’ perceptions about foreign involvement in their domestic affairs and the impact these perceptions have on state policies. He is the author of the award-winning The Politics of Nation Building (Cambridge), and has been serving as editor-in-chief of the Nationalities Papers since 2018. He holds a Ph.D. in political science from Yale University.

Scott Radnitz is Herbert J. Ellison Professor of Russian and Eurasian Studies at the Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies at the University of Washington. His research deals with the post-Soviet region and topics such as conspiracy theories, disinformation, authoritarianism, informality, and identity. For the 2022-23 academic year, he is a Jean Monnet Fellow at the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies, part of the European University Institute in Florence, Italy. His book Revealing Schemes: The Politics of Conspiracy in Russia and the Post-Soviet Region (Oxford).

About the Discussants

Sheri Berman is Professor of Political Science at Columbia University. Her research interests include European history and politics; the development of democracy; populism and fascism; and the history of the left. She has written about these topics for a wide variety of scholarly and non-scholarly publications, and currently serves on the boards of the Journal of Democracy, Dissent and Political Science Quarterly. Her most recent book is Democracy and Dictatorship in Europe: From the Ancient Regime to the Present Day (Oxford).

Andreas Wimmer is the Lieber Professor of Sociology and Political Philosophy at Columbia University. He brings a long term historical and globally comparative perspective to the questions of how states are built and nations formed, how racial and ethnic hierarchies form or dissolve in the process, and when this will result in conflict and war. His most recent book is Nation Building: Why Some Countries Come Together While Others Fall Apart (Princeton).

About the Dean

Alyssa Ayres is the Dean of the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University. Her work focuses primarily on India’s role in the world and on U.S. relations with South Asia in the larger Indo-Pacific. Before joining the Elliott School, she was a Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, and Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for South Asia under the Obama administration. She holds a Ph.D. in South Asian Languages and Literatures from the University of Chicago.

About the Contributors who will join

Samer Anatabwi is a lecturer of Comparative Politics at University College London. He focuses on political regimes and social movements in the Middle East and North Africa, including authoritarianism, domestic and transnational LGBTQ movements, judicial politics, and law and society. His current book project, LGBTQ Activism and the Politics of Altering Public Perceptions of Sexual Minorities Across Arab States, examines the rise of LGBTQ social movements in the MENA since the early 2000s.

Efe Murat Balıkçıoğlu is a lecturer in Islamic History at Wellesley College’s Department of Religion. He holds a BA degree in Philosophy from Princeton University, and AM and PhD degrees in History and Middle Eastern Studies from Harvard University. His research focuses on the intersections of philosophy and theology in the early modern Ottoman Empire, as well as the rise of political Islam in modern Turkey.

Volha Charnysh is the Ford Career Development Assistant Professor of Political Science at MIT. She studies political attitudes and behavior in culturally diverse societies using micro-level historical data, with a focus on Europe and Eurasia. She serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Historical Political Economy (JHPE) and Broadstreet Blog, a blog dedicated to interdisciplinary research in historical political economy.

Sam Erkiletian is a Ph.D. candidate in political science at University College London. His research focuses on the changing identity of combatants in conflict and postwar environments, especially how the socialization processes of armed groups affect the behavior and postwar identity of former combatants. He holds an MSc in Security Studies from UCL, and his thesis is titled Socialization and Resocialization: The Changing Identities of Former Combatants.

Guest Advisory

The event will be held in-person and livestreamed simultaneously. Information on both in-person and virtual attendance will be included in your registration confirmation.

We thank the following co-sponsors for their support: