Foreword from a preeminent retired High Court of Australia judge

The global resurgence of violent extremism punctuated by recent acts of politically motivated violence necessitates a detailed examination of the factors that contribute to the radicalization process. Here, we argue that relative deprivation, or the perception that one’s in-group is unfairly deprived of material or symbolic goods relative to other groups, often elicits support for violent extremism. Because relative deprivation theory emphasizes perceived, rather than actual, experiences of injustice, the concept helps explain why members of both structurally disadvantaged and advantaged groups sometimes turn to violent extremism – especially when they believe that their in-group cannot redress their perceived grievances through normative mechanisms (i.e., when group efficacy is low). After demonstrating that relative deprivation can foster support for extremist violence and introducing an integrative model of group-based relative deprivation and violent extremism, we propose solutions to the growing threat of radicalization including the need to (a) reduce inequality, (b) develop productive ways for the disenfranchised to establish meaning in their life, (c) foster belongingness, and (d) build inclusive democracies that provide legal means to redress real or perceived grievances. By taking such proactive measures, practitioners and policymakers can mitigate the threat of violent extremism and make the world a safer place.

Grounded in the belief that teachers are central to the task of educating young people, the chapters in this part posit that the improvement of any system of education will necessitate attention to the role, position, and training of teachers. Though emanating from a unified position, the chapters in this part offer a variety of lenses through which it is possible to view the work of teaching and learning to teach within partnership settings.

The first two chapters in this part focus on the preparation of future teachers with an explicit emphasis on developing teachers who are connected to the communities they serve and committed to a stance of social justice and equity. Cross and colleagues use a critical lens to explore the foundations and evolution of teacher residencies as a form of teacher preparation. Their chapter summarizes four reports about teacher residencies published between 2008 and 2022 and exposes the underlying structures that contributed to some teacher residencies perpetuating the very inequities they were designed to alleviate. This emphasis on critical pedagogies and justice-oriented education highlights the importance of classroom teaching that is progressing towards equity, contextually grounded, and responsive to the local community.

This chapter examines the transformative effects of generative AI (GenAI) on competition law, exploring how GenAI challenges traditional business models and antitrust regulations. The evolving digital economy, characterised by advances in deep learning and foundation models, presents unique regulatory challenges due to market power concentration and data control. This chapter analyses the approaches adopted by the European Union, United States, and United Kingdom to regulate the GenAI ecosystem, including recent legislation such as the EU Digital Markets Act, the AI Act, and the US Executive Order on AI. It also considers foundational models’ reliance on key resources, such as data, computing power, and human expertise, which shape competitive dynamics across the AI market. Challenges at different levels—including infrastructure, data, and applications—are investigated, with a focus on their implications for fair competition and market access. The chapter concludes by offering insights into the balance needed between fostering innovation and mitigating the risks of monopolisation, ensuring that GenAI contributes to a competitive and inclusive market environment.

Research spanning the globe including samples of current terrorists, former terrorists, individuals at risk of radicalization, and combatants against terrorism has shown that identity fusion – that is, a visceral feeling of commitment to a group, leader, or set of convictions – propels individuals to engage in extreme behaviors on behalf of the fusion target across cultural and ideological boundaries. From jihadist radicals to ethnonationalist terrorists and neo-Nazis, the behavior of violent extremists is permeated by the effects of identity fusion, underscoring the need to understand this construct for the development of enlightened measures to counter violent extremism. In the present chapter, we provide a comprehensive review. We introduce the concept of identity fusion and explain its nature, antecedents, and behavioral consequences. We also summarize how it can be assessed, the mechanisms that amplify or reduce its effects, and the processes responsible for its behavioral impact. After that, we provide an overview of existing identity fusion research with individuals at different stages of the radicalization process and fighters and highlight its implications for the development of tools to assess the risk of radicalization and measures to prevent violent radicalization and promote disengagement from violence.

This chapter explores the transformative potential of pre-service teachers (PSTs) partnering with community activist organizations (CAOs) as part of their teacher preparation program. Through summer internships with CAOs, PSTs gain insights into community cultural wealth, systemic oppression, and issues facing marginalized communities. This engagement enables PSTs to develop a racial and social justice lens and understand their future students’ strengths and challenges. The chapter presents how these experiences inform curriculum development, leading to community-responsive pedagogy. It highlights enduring understandings PSTs gain from CAO partnerships, emphasizing the wisdom of local communities, collective action, diverse forms of activism, the joy of community engagement, and integration of community issues in curriculum. Policymakers are encouraged to support such partnerships to equip educators for socially just teaching. Further research is suggested to explore long-term impacts and best practices in CAO engagement.

Several criminal offences can originate from or culminate with the creation of content. Sexual abuse can be perpetrated by producing intimate material without the subject’s consent, while incitement to criminal activity can begin with a simple conversation. When the task of generating content is entrusted to artificial agents, it becomes necessary to delve into the associated risks posed by this technology. Generative AI changes criminal affordances because it simplifies access to harmful or dangerous content, amplifies the range of recipients, creates new kinds of harmful content, and can exploit cognitive vulnerabilities to manipulate user behaviour. Given this evolving landscape, the question that arises is whether criminal law should be involved in the policies aimed at fighting and preventing Generative AI-related harms. The bulk of criminal law scholarship to date would not criminalise AI harms on the theory that AI lacks moral agency. However, when a serious harm occurs, responsibility needs to be distributed considering the guilt of the agents involved, and, if it is lacking, it needs to fall back because of their innocence. Legal systems need to start exploring whether and how guilt can be preserved when the actus reus is completely or partially delegated to Generative AI.

This chapter deals with the use of Large Language Models (LLMs) in the legal sector from a comparative law perspective, exploring their advantages and risks, the pertinent question as to whether the deployment of LLMs by non-lawyers can be classified as an unauthorized practice of law in the US and Germany, what lawyers, law firms and legal departments need to consider when using LLMs under professional rules of conduct - especially the American Bar Association Model Rules of Professional Conduct and the Charter of Core Principles of the European Legal Profession of the Council of Bars and Law Societies of Europe, and, finally, how the recently published AI Act will affect the legal tech market – specifically, the use of LLMs. A concluding section summarizes the main findings and points out open questions.

In contemporary education, the role of teachers as leaders has gained prominence, particularly within school–university partnerships (SUPs) and professional development schools (PDSs). Teacher leaders play a critical role in improving teaching and learning in schools and in establishing and maintaining partnerships. In this chapter, we explore the multifaceted dimensions of teacher leadership within the context of SUPs and PDSs, including its historical underpinnings and evolving nature. We acknowledge the challenges associated with teacher leadership and assert that teacher leaders in a SUP are essential to a partnership’s success. We discuss the ways in which teacher leadership should, and can, be supported as a professional, impactful and important role in schools. In addition, issues of diversifying the teacher leader workforce and why that is important are also addressed.

Community schools, an equity-oriented reform strategy, has expanded significantly in recent years. To achieve their goals, community schools engage partners that operate outside the traditional K-12 realm. School–University partnerships are one key example of collaboration that have a transformative potential to impact the effectiveness of community schools. While these partnerships hold great potential to advance the vision and mission of community schools, there are also many barriers to the development, sustainability, and growth of meaningful partnerships between universities and community schools. This chapter provides an overview of the community school strategy, outlines both opportunities and challenges in partnerships between universities and community schools, and highlights examples from the field to illustrate some key learnings to establishing sustained partnerships. This chapter aims to contribute to a more open and honest discussions around community school and university partnerships for education equity.

This chapter examines how emotions contribute to the development of violent extremism, drawing on research into emotional drivers of violent intergroup behavior. We first introduce the concept of emotion and explain the role of cognitive appraisals of events in shaping emotions. Then, to position emotions within the context of hostile intergroup relations, we demonstrate how social identities and group processes impact emotional experience. In the main section of this chapter, we consider the roles of several discrete emotions that motivate distinct types of behaviors relevant to violent extremism. Using a broad framework of the radicalization process, we suggest that: (1) humiliation, shame, and anger in response to self- or group-relevant experiences are pertinent pre-radicalization as they create a desire to reestablish a positive self- or group-image and to restore a sense of justice; (2) contempt, disgust, and hatred, as emotions that exclude their targets from moral consideration and motivate their eradication, develop during active radicalization; and (3) positive emotions, such as love, joy, and pride, which increase commitment and motivate others, characterize the engagement stage. We draw out implications of our analysis for policymakers, stressing the importance of responding to the unfulfilled emotional needs that motivate violent extremism.

As hybrid spaces for enacted practice, school–university partnerships (S-UPs) are complex systems for leadership and educational change. Therefore, in this chapter I explore various educational leadership theories–from a wide perspective encompassing paradigms, conceptual frameworks, and constructs as described in the literature on educational leadership – and work to identify coherence among the complexity in order to provide guiding principles (from theories) for SUP leadership practice and scholarship. Among the discussions of theory and practice in educational leadership scholarship, tensions and even contradictions are identified when considering enacted practice of educational leaders. Embracing tensions to meet complexity with complexity, I highlight a framework with theories as guideposts for leaders in SUPs to engage and live in a dynamic way to best meet the needs and purposes of SUPs through complexity leadership.

Historical records and recent events suggest that conspiracy theories and violent extremism are closely associated. However, empirical research examining this link has only recently gained momentum. The present chapter provides an overview of this fast-growing research field. We first discuss theoretical explanations of the link between conspiracy theories and violent extremism, as well as the hypothetical mechanisms underpinning it. Next, we summarize the empirical evidence so far along three main research lines: (a) evidence from radicalized groups and individuals; (b) evidence from general population studies focusing on support for, and intentions to engage in, violent extremism; (c) evidence from the general population focusing on extreme political attitudes. We conclude by formulating recommendations for policy and practice.

Previous research has underscored the significance of intergroup threat perceptions in fostering prejudice and hostility toward out-groups. Nevertheless, the degree to which different types of threats – symbolic, realistic, numerical, existential, and meta-threat – remains insufficiently explored. This chapter provides a theoretically informed review of the role of these diverse threat types and synthesizes recent empirical studies demonstrating that perceptions of threat can precipitate extreme forms of out-group hostility, including violent extremism. The evidence suggests that threat perceptions not only incite violent hostility across various cultural contexts but also provoke violent defensive reactions among both majority and minority groups aiming to protect their valued traditions, scarce resources, and societal status and to avoid the perceived dread of extinction. We further discuss how cultural narratives, media portrayals, and political rhetoric shape these threat perceptions, which may fuel the process of radicalization and lead to a spiral into violent extremism. Our objective is to present a detailed analysis that can lay the groundwork for devising strategies to alleviate perceived threats leading to violent extremism. Accordingly, we propose prevention and intervention strategies designed to diminish perceived threats and curtail their violent ramifications.

This chapter examines the effects that international military interventions and foreign military occupations have on violent extremism with a particular focus on how interventions and occupations foster psychological processes associated with radicalization and patterns of political violence. The chapter begins by providing definitions for the key terms and then surveys the main strands of literature on how international interventions and foreign occupations may provoke violent extremist responses. In particular, the chapter discusses evidence that military interventions and occupations enhance grievances and feelings of national humiliation among affected populations, prompting them to support political violence. International military interventions and occupations can also foster violent extremism by facilitating othering of foreigners, by worsening human rights standards, and by producing a strategic environment conducive to political violence. The chapter also examines how interventions and occupations may foster vicarious radicalization outside of the intervened-in or occupied country, thereby increasing the threat of political violence globally. The discussion of the literature is expanded to acknowledge that certain studies in the literature depict a relationship of greater complexity or nuance. It discusses some key limitations in the literature on international military interventions, foreign occupations, and violent extremism. Finally, it concludes with implications for scholars and practitioners.

Part VII of the handbook explores funding, policy, and politics as a means to build and sustain school–university partnerships (SUPs). How partnerships evolve over time involves many factors. At the heart of partnership work is a shared vision and commitment to a set of values that support mutually beneficial outcomes. Even with the best of intentions, too often these qualities are not enough to move SUPs beyond an initial stage of development. While these elements are critical to partnership success, it’s important to acknowledge that unless funding, policy, and politics are in place to support SUPs in their efforts, barriers will derail their ability to operate and organize in new ways.