Tired of ads? Subscribers enjoy a distraction-free reading experience.
Click here to subscribe today or Login.

WILKES-BARRE — A University of North Carolina professor said U.S. Rep. Lou Barletta quoted him correctly, but missed the point of the entire report.

Charles Kurzman, a sociology professor at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, responded to a story the Times Leader did on Barletta’s take on President Donald Trump’s travel ban. In the story, Barletta cited Kurzman’s research on Muslim-American involvement with violent extremism.

“Congressman Barletta correctly quoted one statistic from my annual report on this subject — 23 percent of Muslim-Americans involved in violent extremism since 9/11 had a family background in one of the seven countries on the Trump administration’s visa ban list,” Kurzman said in his response to the story. “However, he missed the main point of the report, which was in the next sentence: ‘There have been no fatalities in the United States caused by extremists with family backgrounds in these countries.’”

In other words, Kurzman said his research found that the seven countries have generated a small portion of a small number of extremists.

“It’s not a matter of debating whether the cup is 23 percent full or 77 percent empty — it’s whether there is one drop or two drops in the cup,” Kurzman said. “I feel honored to have my research be part of the public debate on such an important issue, but I think that Congressman Barletta needs to be more responsible in his use of data.”

Barletta said he cited the study accurately and spoke specifically about the arrests of people who have family ties to the seven countries in question. That information, Barletta said, directly contradicts those who have said that people from these countries have posed no risks at all.

“In the meantime, a new study this weekend shows that 72 people from those countries have actually been convicted of crimes stemming from terror investigations,” Barletta said. “It is an undeniable fact that these countries are terror hotbeds, which is why they were identified by the Obama administration in the first place.”

Barletta noted that an Associated Press story interpreted Kurzman’s research similarly.

The AP story said that Kurzman’s research shows no Americans have been killed in the U.S. at the hands of people from the seven countries — Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Syria, Sudan and Yemen — since Sept. 11. But, the story said, it’s not quite right to say no one from those nations has been arrested or accused in an extremist-related plot while living in the U.S.

According to the AP Story: “In addition to the cases from last fall, for instance, two men from Iraq were arrested in Kentucky in 2011 and convicted on charges that they plotted to send money and weapons to al-Qaida. They were never accused, though, of plotting attacks on the U.S. Last week, Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway wrongly cited their case as the ‘Bowling Green massacre,’ which never happened.”

Kurzman said Barletta’s response sidesteps his main point, which is that extremists from the seven countries accounted for zero fatalities since 9/11, as well as a relatively small proportion of the small number of arrests.

“The AP story that Congressman Barletta’s office linked to in their message to you this afternoon emphasizes the main point about zero fatalities, which puts this so-called national security crisis into perspective,” Kurzman said.

Barletta
https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/web1_Barletta_Lou_2-2.jpg.optimal.jpgBarletta

Kurzman
https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/web1_Charles-Kurzman-1.jpg.optimal.jpgKurzman

By Bill O’Boyle

[email protected]

Reach Bill O’Boyle at 570-991-6118 or on Twitter @TLBillOBoyle.