Last fall, 16 West Point cadets signed up for an elective on counterterrorism and created a Facebook page to appeal to young Muslims thinking about joining the so-called Islamic State. The cadets aimed to persuade those tempted by the terrorist cause to see “jihad” as a struggle, but not the violent one that groups such as the Islamic State promote. For their project to succeed, the cadets knew, they would have to learn more about the faith and build a social media platform that reserved judgment even on those who expressed admiration for committed terrorists.
And there was no way they could let on that West Point cadets had engineered the page and its related Twitter feed, YouTube channel and website. “If individuals went (to) the website and knew 16 cadets from the U.S. Military Academy were behind it, I think it would lose a lot of its credibility,” said Lt. Col. Bryan Price, the cadets’ professor. On Tuesday (Feb. 2), the West Point project took second place in an international contest for college students on combating terrorism online sponsored by the State Department, the Department of Homeland Security, Facebook and EdVenture Partners, a business that connects industry to colleges. Read More