My theory is just that engineers as a rule are crazy. That's what I keep telling my younger brother who are one.Originally Posted by wondertk
In the Algerian insurgency, pharmacists were over represented. I do think there is something about being torn between the culture of science and the culture of religion that causes personal turmoil which, for a tiny portion of people, manifests itself in violence. The violent are punishing the world for their own internal turmoil.
We've long known that blocked upward mobility is a major source of jihadist radicalization, a point that emerged from Sadd Eddin Ibrahim's seminal studies of Egyptian militants in the 1980s. In particular, he found that graduates from rural lower-middle class origins, who had benefited from the expansion of urban post-secondary education opportunities but who were unable to find appropriate job openings and were consequently underemployed (in status and income terms), were especially likely to join Egyptian jihadist groups.
Gambetta and Hertog also point to relative deprivation as an important cause. They might have teased out a bit more here, however, by looking at data on the employment of engineering graduates, the gap between engineers graduated and engineers working as such in the labour force, etc.
They may also be on to something in terms of the impact of disciplinary self-selection and psychological and professional attributes. There is experimental research showing, for example, that when economists play the ultimatum game, they tend to utility maximize (maximize their profits), whereas non-economists put far more emphasis on "fairness" in the division of resources. I've always loved that finding, since it seems to suggest that the only people who behave the way that economists predict are other economists
Practical linkage, maybe I'm insane: This makes Campus Ministry types an actual tool in the fight against terrorism, then - you really would seem to need clergy/religious in universities that could check students from drifting off in such directions, to act as spiritual directors.
...Then again, the notion of Campus Ministry as I and probably most people are familiar with it (the friendly campus priest/minister/rabbi/clergytype who's part traditional religious leader, part counselor, part youth group leader) is a distinctly American phenomenon, huh?
Hmmm, that makes so many assumptions, I'm not sure I even want to touch it!
I think the main "problem" I have with this is the phrase "spiritual director". There's a real assumption here that there actually is a spiritual direction that this person can lead people in and, perhaps most importantly, that anyone wants to go towards. I haven't looked at the stats for a couple of years, but I would guess that they probably haven't changed much in the past 5 or so, which means that probably less than 40% of Canadians believe in any form of spiritual direction coming out of established religions.
Let's see, at Carleton (Ottawa, Canada), we have an Anglican (Episcopalian to you south of the border types), an RC priest, an Imam, a Rabbi, a couple of Wiccan priestesses and various and assorted others. They really only act as "spiritual directors" to their own groups, although the cookies are usually pretty good in the Chaplaincy
Marc
Sic Bisquitus Disintegrat...
Marc W.D. Tyrrell, Ph.D.
Institute of Interdisciplinary Studies,
Senior Research Fellow,
The Canadian Centre for Intelligence and Security Studies, NPSIA
Carleton University
http://marctyrrell.com/
Perhaps there is also the random chance factor. Marc Sageman wrote that most terrorists are recruited through pre-existing personal contacts. Perhaps engineers are overrepresented because, by random chance, a few earlybirds were engineers, and they simply recruited their friends?
These students enroll in curricula that are practical, profitable, and offer upward mobility. These engineering / pharmacy students are most likely from the professional class, as the children of the ruling class are studying finance and law at elite institutions. I understand that these students selected a course of study, or major, that would be beneficial to their growing nation (demographics, anyone?).
These students would most likely never tell their paternal sponsors that they had dropped civil engineering for art history; and “joined a fraternity”.
I predict that many of the professionally educated radicals listed in the study are second sons. The first son (professional class assumption) is learning and participating in the profession of the father. The second son is sent off to university to start a complimentary profession and represent the family well. The toxic emotional state of the “El Segundo”, away from his family at the university, is ripe for recruitment into a radical group (similar result pg 62-63) (cognitive dissonance pg 68). The profession was selected or dictated by paternal sponsors long before the recruitment into the group. The conclusion of the study does acknowledge a full biography on each radical could offer better solutions.
All of my terms are broad; however, I simply wanted to place the decisions of profession and group affiliation in sequence.
It is odd that the study does not offer the sequence as an argument (moves right past it on page 58). Also, the spread of the professional class in regards to science vs. non science tracks in western and ME societies does not seem well defined or separated. The exact contents of the engineering curricula may need to be examined as well; compared to the US colleges, an MA in Math is not comparable professionally to a BS Elec Engr. Also, as the authors loosely compare western and ME society, they fail to mention the simple fact that in western society the supermajority of engineers are men. This population fact should skew the comparisons amongst various professional groups and the western / ME comparisons.
Although my experience is at an American university, the birth year group is the same as that listed in the study. The year group for my major (Aero Engr, U of AZ) had 13 students; 6 Americans and 7 Kuwaitis. The Kuwaiti students lived together, and lived comfortably. The greater engineering college had many clusters of students on visas from ME countries. Quite simply, the nation of origin sponsored the education of native talent to build their respective countries infrastructure. This developing expertise would also allow for the smart contracting of western efforts, as opposed to being taken to the cleaners on infrastructure and natural resources projects. These students were serious, driven, and had little interest in the “shopping mall experience” that is the American university at the turn of the century. And, we were just one block away from the infamous Tucson mosque.
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