Victor Asal joined the faculty of the Political Science Department of the University at Albany -SUNY in Fall 2003 (Ph.D., University of Maryland, 2003; M.A. Hebrew University, Israel, 1996). Asal is a specialist in Comparative Politics and International Relations with his research focusing on the interaction of international relations and domestic politics, notably how this interaction influences ethnic conflict and terrorism. Asal's dissertation, The Political Inclusion of Minorities at Risk 1870-2000, was a broad global comparative study of the political inclusion of minorities at risk involving three hundred groups over a hundred-year period. In this effort and in conjunction with the Minorities at Risk Project, Asal has overseen several ethnic conflict coding projects. Asal's current research expands on the work in his dissertation looking at the impact of political discrimination on political violence. Asal has also examined how a terrorist group's characteristics impact the group's behavior. In addition, Prof. Asal has done research on international crises and the impact of nuclear proliferation.
Prof. Asal has taught courses in Comparative Politics, International Relations, ethnic conflict, democratization, negotiation and crisis management. He has worked as a negotiation trainer in a variety of settings, most notably as a trainer for army officers, and civil servants running simulations on negotiation, democracy, and domestic regimes. Asal has also, in conjunction with the ICONS Project (http://www.icons.umd.edu), created simulations on varied topics, including the India-Pakistan Kashmiri crisis, minority peoples in Indonesia, a U.S. Senate bill mark-up process, and war crime. Working with ICONS, Asal facilitates crisis leadership training seminars for the United States Office of Personnel Management
(http://www.leadership.opm.gov/content.cfm?cat=CMS-EM).
