Harvard-Radcliffe Club of Westchester

Sunday, October  11  - Escalation Trap and Violent Populism: Lecture and discussion with Professor Robert Pape, University of Chicago
***Harvard Club of New Jersey Sponsored Event***
7:00 PM - 8:00 PM Tuesday, 11 October, 2026 (Timezone: Eastern)
Join us for a virtual discussion of how military action can set the stage for further conflict.  We will also consider how political violence has become normalized in the United States and what this signals for our upcoming elections.

Robert Pape is a frequent commentator in the New York Times, the Washington Post, CNN, and NPR, a Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago and founding director of the Chicago Project on Security and Threats (CPOST). He is the author of Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism, Bombing to Win: Air Power and Coercion in War, and Cutting the Fuse: The Explosion of Global Suicide Terrorism and How to Stop It.

 

Professor Pape joins us to discuss two forces reshaping American security, one abroad and one at home:
 

• He will first lay out what he calls the escalation trap: how each round of military action can create the conditions for the next. He will explain how to recognize the pattern as it unfolds and what it would take to break out of it. 
   
• He then turns to the rise of violent populism in the United States, drawing on CPOST's national survey research on support for political violence: how that support has become normalized, who holds it, and what it signals for the elections ahead. 
   
• A moderated question-and-answer session with the audience will follow.