Daveed Gartenstein-Ross

Daveed Gartenstein-Ross is the vice president of research at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, and the director of its Center for Terrorism Research. He is also a Ph.D. candidate in world politics at the Catholic University of America. Gartenstein-Ross has consulted for a number of clients who need to be at the forefront of understanding terrorism, including Corporate Risk International and the Manhattan Institute. He frequently leads federal, state, and local law enforcement training, including for the Department of Homeland Security, and has served as a Subject Matter Expert designing training material for the U.S. State Department’s Office of Antiterrorism Assistance.

Gartenstein-Ross understands the Islamic extremist movement from the inside, having worked in his early twenties for the head U.S. office of the Al Haramain Islamic Foundation, an international Wahhabi charity that has been named a specially designated global terrorist entity by the U.S. Treasury Department. His experience working for the charity--and later assisting the FBI’s investigation of it--is detailed in Gartenstein-Ross’s book My Year Inside Radical Islam,.

Described as “a rising star in the counterterrorism community” by the International Herald Tribune, Gartenstein-Ross has testified before the U.S. Senate’s Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee and Georgia’s state legislature. His writings on the war on terror have appeared in Reader’s Digest, The Wall Street Journal Europe, The Hindustan Times, Middle East Quarterly, Commentary, The Weekly Standard, and many other publications. The Manhattan Institute has published two monographs that he authored, and most recently Gartenstein-Ross co-edited the book From Energy Crisis to Energy Security: A Reader.

Gartenstein-Ross’s media appearances include BBC, CNN, the Fox News Channel, al-Hurra, al-Jazeera, MSNBC, NPR, and PBS. A highly regarded public speaker, he frequently addresses college and university audiences, law enforcement, and civic and political groups. Venues where he has spoken include Harvard Law School, the University of Georgia, Kenyon College, and Marine Corps University. He has also appeared on academic and policy panels sponsored by the LAPD, the Cato Institute, and the Manhattan Institute.

Gartenstein-Ross earned a J.D., magna cum laude, from the New York University School of Law, where he was a member of the Law Review. He earned a B.A., magna cum laude, from Wake Forest University, where he won the 1997 National Debate Tournament. He was also selected for the Claremont Institute’s prestigious Lincoln Fellowship in 2007. Previous positions that he has held include commercial litigator at Boies, Schiller & Flexner, and law clerk on the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.

Gartenstein-Ross has traveled widely, including covering the Iraq war as an embedded journalist and visiting the detention facilities at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base. He can conduct research in several languages, including Arabic, Italian, and Spanish.