About

MonTREP’s highly qualified and experienced professors ensure that MIIS students have the necessary skills to address the world’s most serious security problems and challenges in the upcoming years.

The Monterey Terrorism Research and Education Program (MonTREP) at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey is a research center which conducts in-depth scholarly research, assesses policy options, and engages in public education on issues relating to terrorism and counterterrorism, extremist groups, regional studies of terrorism, and related aspects of international and homeland security.

MonTREP benefits from the employment of professors and graduate students in the Nonproliferation and Terrorism Studies degree program. The unique courses taught in this program contribute to the research done at MonTREP; all MonTREP research faculty are also teaching professors. In addition, the language requirement at MIIS creates a large pool of research assistants who are able to proficiently work in languages other than English. MonTREP pulls all of its graduate research assistants from the Graduate School of International Policy & Management.

Mission Statement

“The Monterey Terrorism Research and Education Program (MonTREP) has three main goals: to research topics related to terrorism studies and extremist movements; to educate students about the history and trends of these groups; and to generate policy recommendations that can guide professionals in counterterrorism and related fields. Our vision is to be an academic and professional resource to MIIS students, those professionals concerned with terrorism related issues, and the wider international security community.”

Director’s Statement

Brigadier General (ret.) Russell D. Howard, Director of MonTREP, is a retired Special Forces officer with thirty-seven years of military service, more than twenty of which were spent in some type of counter-terrorist capacity. He was also the founding Director of the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point, now recognized as a Congressional Center of Excellence. His goals for MonTREP are: to advance MonTREP’s core competencies in the study of extremism and extremist groups; to emphasize terrorism prediction and prevention as part of a comprehensive counterterrorism education and research program; and to replicate, on the West Coast and at a graduate-level, the CTC’s terrorism studies intellectual energy and acumen.