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Think tank From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD) is a political advocacy organization founded in 2006 by Sasha Havlicek and George Weidenfeld and headquartered in London, United Kingdom.
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| Formation | 2006 |
|---|---|
| Founder | Sasha Havlicek, George Weidenfeld |
| Headquarters | London, United Kingdom |
CEO | Sasha Havlicek |
Managing Director | Arabella Phillimore |
Key people | Rashad Ali, Zahed Amanullah, Moustafa Ayad, Kelsey Bjornsgaard, Milo Comerford, Jiore Craig, Jacob Davey, Julia Ebner, Aoife Gallagher, Jakob Guhl, Jared Holt, Katherine Keneally, Jennie King, Ciaran O'Connor, C. Dixon Osburn, Lucie Parker, Melanie Smith, Tim Squirrell, Elise Thomas, Henry Tuck, Huberta von Voss |
Budget | £7m GBP[citation needed] |
Staff | 120 |
| Website | www |
ISD's core activities range from traditional research output and policy advice to the facilitation of youth and practitioner networks and the development of counternarrative and technological tools to combat extremism.[1] More recently, ISD has researched misinformation and disinformation involving climate change,[2] public health,[3] election integrity,[4] and conspiracy networks such as QAnon.[5]
ISD partners with a number of Western governments, including agencies in Canada,[6] Norway,[7] Germany, the United Kingdom,[8] New Zealand,[9] Australia, the United States,[10] and the European Commission.[11] It also works on funded projects with technology companies and organisations such as Google,[12] Microsoft,[13] Meta,[14] and the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism.[15]
Other institutional partners include the Global Disinformation Index,[16] the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society,[17] Institut Montaigne,[18] the British Council,[19] the German Marshall Fund,[20] the University of Ontario Institute of Technology,[6] and the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism.[21]
Funding for the ISD has come from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation,[22] the Omidyar Network,[23] the Gen Next Foundation,[24] and the Open Society Foundation.[25]
ISD was founded in 2006 as an extension of the Club of Three,[26] a strategic networking organisation founded in 1996 by George Weidenfeld that focused on high-level engagement[clarification needed] between Europe and the world.[27] ISD originally focused on social cohesion[28] and radicalisation following a rise of far-right and Islamist extremism in Europe. ISD later hosted the Against Violent Extremism network shortly after it was founded in 2011 in Dublin, Ireland, promoting engagement with former violent extremists as a way of understanding how extremist movements work.[29]
By 2012, ISD was working with social media platforms such as YouTube to explore radicalisation online,[30] including research on the use of counternarratives[31] to minimise the impact of extremist recruitment by groups such as ISIS,[32] Al Qaeda,[33] and white supremacists[34] in Europe and North America. This work later expanded to include recruitment and disruption efforts by state actors[35] and conspiracy theorists[36] during the COVID-19 pandemic.[37] Much of this activity was found to be amplified during regional and national elections,[38] leading to new research on election disruption in countries such as Germany,[39] Sweden,[40] France,[41] Italy,[42] Kenya,[43] and the United States.[44] ISD's analysis of the 6 January United States Capitol attack was chosen for inclusion in the Library of Congress.[45]
ISD is also a member of the Christchurch Call advisory network and the Commission for Countering Extremism's Expert Group[56] in the United Kingdom.
ISD previously chaired the EU's Radicalisation Awareness Network (RAN) working group on the Internet and social media and has provided testimony to the US Committee on House Administration,[61] the US Committee on Foreign Affairs,[62] and the UK Home Affairs Select Committee.[63]
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