Research has shown that the police industry has entered into an era of homeland security. However, whether the core functions of policing have significantly changed since September 11, 2001, has been the topic of considerable debate. Using secondary data, the research identifies variables that are most influential in predicting whether Texas police chiefs understand their departments’ homeland security roles and responsibilities. The data was originally obtained in 2007 through self-administered surveys of police chiefs attending the Texas Chief Leadership Series (TPCLS) and the New Chief Development Program (NCDP).

The paper explores the impact of the September 11 events on the U.S. politics of homeland security, examines the consequences of the after-9-11 measures taken up by the U.S. Government for international trade, and evaluates the role of these measures in contemporary world.

Natural disasters disrupt African American communities in the United States and can exacerbate the degree of poverty for individuals within these communities, necessitating greater aid from local, state, and federal governments. The purpose of this study was to investigate the role of cultural competence in disaster response serving African American communities. This research study focused on emergency manager's comprehension and education of cultural competence, what they recognized to be vital elements of a culturally competent emergency manager, and what the obstacles and components are to bring about the changes to the profession. This study used a qualitative case study design and a theoretical framework based on the Campinha-Bacote model for care for cultural competence. Study data from interviews with 15 emergency manager practitioners and African American disaster survivors were inductively coded and thematically analyzed. The study produced data regarding cultural competence, values, ethics, beliefs, and thought processes of the participants. The findings showed that the emergency managers and survivors had diverging or contrasting beliefs of the emergency managers' cultural competency levels; this difference in perception was the major theme of the study. The study also concluded that implementing the Campinha-Bacote model for Cultural Competence in the Delivery of Healthcare Services, emergency managers dramatically improve disaster response and recovery efforts not only to the African American community but other diverse minority communities as well. This study contributes to positive social change by helping U.S. emergency managers become more culturally competent and better equipped to serve diverse minority communities during a disaster.

The U.S. Department of State disseminates counter-radicalization information through social media but has been unable to reach users due to an inability to create engaging posts due to a lack of understanding of the interests of the general population. The purpose of this quantitative study was to assess the utility of data analytics when administering counter-radicalization social media campaigns. The population for this study were social media posts published on the Quilliam Facebook page between 1 January 2018 and 31 December 2018. The nonexperimental quantitative descriptive research design sought to examine the correlation between the independent variables (topic of a post, use of visual aids in the post, and the geopolitical region the post addresses) and the dependent variables (resulting likes and shares). This study relied on the strategic choice theory which argues that individuals perform a cost and benefit analysis when deciding to join a terrorist organization and commit acts of terrorism. Specifically, individuals are often interested in participating in terror-ism in an effort to gain resources and feel a sense of belonging but can be dissuaded upon realization that terrorism can actually degrade their quality of life. The research found that social media can be used as a tool to increase the perceived costs of terrorism and decrease the perceived benefits of terrorism. The study concluded that posts which involved a personal story emphasizing the ramifications of terrorism and included a video resulted in the highest number of likes and shares, respectively. The findings provide a strong argument for utilizing data analytics to improve the dissemination of counter-radicalization information which could prevent individuals from joining terrorist organizations and committing acts of terrorism.

The paper explores the impact of the September 11 events on the U.S. politics of homeland security, examines the consequences of the after-9-11 measures taken up by the U.S. Government for international trade, and evaluates the role of these measures in contemporary world.

Rhetorical frames are used to support political agendas, define problems, diagnose causes, make policy judgments, and suggest solutions. Following the attacks on September 11, 2001, politicians and media pundits used Islamophobia as a fear-mongering tactic to justify public policy formation. The purpose of this study was to analyze public discourse on Islamic terrorism in arguments advocating government surveillance, restrictive immigration policies, and other erosions of U.S. constitutional protections of its citizens. This study drew on the postmodern theories of Lakoff, Lyotard, and Said to critically examine U.S. political discourse on Islam and terrorism. Three conceptual rhetorical frames were examined: Clash of Civilizations, Endangered Constitutional Protections, and Islamophobia. The key research question asked how U.S. politicians and high-profile national news commentators used biased rhetoric to frame discussions of Islam and terrorism. This qualitative study used content analysis of 44 news reports of crimes that framed these incidents as Islam-inspired terrorism. Study findings suggested that defenders of the USA PATRIOT Act used a Clash of Civilizations frame that pitted Western freedom proponents against radical Muslim fanatics in struggles for social change. U.S. policy makers and news commentators described Islamic inspired terrorism as anti-American vengeance, Jihadism, and/or anti-Semitism to control national debates and information flow. Implications of these findings suggest that an alternative Islamophobic framing can be deployed to make biases explicit, quell anxieties of and about stigmatized groups, raise the self-esteem of the vilified minorities, and decrease the risk of terrorism.

In this dissertation, an important homeland security problem is studied. With the focus on wildfire and pyro-terrorism management. We begin the dissertation by studying the vulnerability of landscapes to pyro-terrorism. We develop a maximal covering based optimization model to investigate the impact of a pyro-terror attack on landscapes based on the ignition locations of fires. We use three test case landscapes for experimentation. We compare the impact of a pyro-terror wildfire with the impacts of naturally-caused wildfires with randomly located ignition points. Our results indicate that a pyro-terror attack, on average, has more than twice the impact on landscapes than wildfires with randomly located ignition points. In the next chapter, we develop a Stackelberg game model, a min-max network interdiction framework that identifies a fuel management schedule that, with limited budget, maximally mitigates the impact of a pyro-terror attack. We develop a decomposition algorithm called MinMaxDA to solve the model for three test case landscapes, located in Western U.S. Our results indicate that fuel management, even when conducted on a small scale (when 2% of a landscape is treated), can mitigate a pyro-terror attack by 14%, on average, comparing to doing nothing. For a fuel management plan with 5%, and 10% budget, it can reduce the damage by 27% and 43% on average. Finally, we extend our study to the problem of suppression response after a pyro-terror attack. We develop a max-min model to identify the vulnerability of initial attack resources when used to fight a pyro-terror attack. We use a test case landscape for experimentation and develop a decomposition algorithm called Bounded Decomposition Algorithm (BDA) to solve the problem since the model has bilevel max-min structure with binary variables in the lower level and therefore not solvable by conventional methods. Our results indicate that although pyro-terror attacks with one ignition point can be controlled with an initial attack, pyro-terror attacks with two and more ignition points may not be controlled by initial attack. Also, a faster response is more promising in controlling pyro-terror fires.

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At its heart, homeland security is a challenge of coordination;(Kettl 2003; Kettl 2004; Waugh and Tierney 2007) however, coordination is an ambiguous term that is difficult to define or measure (Selznick 1984). To build a coordinated homeland security system, the federal government has introduced a number of policy changes including introduction of the Urban Area Security Area Initiative (UASI). (DHS, 2007) Given that over 80% of the nation's population lives in metropolitan urban regions, (Bureau 2008) homeland security threat, risk, and funding is weighed heavily towards protecting these areas. UASI provides funding to high risk/high population urban areas and is designed to build coordinated regional metropolitan homeland security systems. To meet UASI funding requirements, the nation's largest and most vulnerable metropolitan areas have formed regional homeland security networks. While the National Capital Region (NCR) UASI is representative of the challenges other areas face, the nature of metropolitan regionalism and distilled federalism creates complexity few other homeland security networks face. Policy and service delivery co-exist at the operational/technical levels of the sub-network and better understanding how agencies, functions, and nodes coordinate is important to shaping future homeland security policies. This research studies how one functional node of the regional metropolitan homeland security network, the NCR fire service, coordinates its UASI funding requests throughout the Fiscal Year (FY) 2008 grant cycle. Examining the historical context of regional coordination and formal structures and informal elements the research identified nine characteristics of coordination as it is practiced at the operational/technical level of the network. These characteristics include elements such as standardized national policy direction, leadership, organizational commitment, trusted relationships, shared purpose, political support, time, balance of formal and informal elements, and balance between operational and administrative responsibilities. The research builds on Kettl's concept of contingent coordination by describing how the practice of coordination occurs within the homeland security network and begins to expand our understanding of how we organize, integrate, and coordinate a national model. The research also provides important insight into the translation of policy to operations by describing how technical subject matter experts coordinate both operationally and administratively within the homeland security network. / Ph. D.

This thesis tests the necessity of terrorism in articulating Homeland Security citizenship. Chapter 1 orients the study, reviewing relevant literature. Chapter 2 examines the USDHS Ready Kids program's Homeland Security Guide, mapping a baseline for how Homeland Security citizenship is articulated with the overt use of terrorism. Chapter 3 investigates the USDHS Ready Kids program, charting the logic of Homeland Security citizenship when the threat of terrorism is removed from sense making about preparedness. Chapter 4 compares the findings of Chapters 2 and 3, evaluating the similarities and differences between these two articulations of Homeland Security citizenship and concluding that the logic that cements Homeland Security into American society does not depend on the threat of terrorism against the United States.