Matthew Levitt

Matthew Levitt is an American expert on Islamist terrorism. Levitt is a senior fellow and director of the Stein Program on Counterterrorism and Intelligence at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and professorial lecturer in International Relations and Strategic Studies at Johns Hopkins University's Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). From 2005 to early 2007 he was a deputy assistant secretary for intelligence and analysis at the U.S. Department of the Treasury. In that capacity, he served both as a senior official within the department's terrorism and financial intelligence branch and as deputy chief of the Office of Intelligence and Analysis. From 2001 to 2005, Dr. Levitt served the Institute as founding director of its Terrorism Research Program, which was established in the wake of the September 11 attacks. Previously, he provided tactical and strategic analytical support for counterterrorism operations at the FBI, focusing on fundraising and logistical support networks for Middle Eastern terrorist groups. During his FBI service, Dr. Levitt participated as a team member in a number of crisis situations, including the terrorist threat surrounding the turn of the millennium and the September 11 attacks.

Dr. Levitt has also lectured on international terrorism on behalf of the Departments of State, Justice, Defense, and Homeland Security, consulted for various U.S. government agencies and private industry, and testified before the Senate and House on matters relating to international terrorism. He is a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations, a member of the international advisory board for both the Institute for Counter-terrorism in Israel and the International Centre for Political Violence & Terrorism Research in Singapore, and a CTC fellow with the Combating Terrorism Center (CTC) at the U.S. Military Academy (West Point).

He received his B.A. from Yeshiva University and his M.A. and Ph.D. from The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. He was a graduate research fellow at Harvard Law School's Program on Negotiation, and has taught at Johns Hopkins University. He attended high school at the Maimonides School.

Levitt is a frequent media commentator on terrorism, and has given testimony at the trial of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.

Published works

• Hezbollah: The Global Footprint of Lebanon's Party of God (Georgetown University Press) September 2013
• Hamas: Politics, Charity, and Terrorism in the Service of Jihad (Yale University Press) April 2006
• Targeting Terror: U.S. Policy toward Middle Eastern State Sponsors and Terrorist Organizations, Post-September 11, 2002
• Negotiating Under Fire: Preserving Peace Talks in the Face of Terror Attacks (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2008)
• “Hezbollah Finances: Funding the Party of God,” in Terrorism Financing and State Responses: a Comparative Perspective (Stanford University Press, 2007)
• “Hamas Social Welfare: In the Service of Terror,” in The Making of a Terrorist: Recruitment, Training, and Root Causes (New York: Praeger Publishers, 2005)
• “The Impact of Acute Security Crises on the Process of Ongoing Negotiations: Lessons from the Palestinian-Israeli Peace Process, 1993-1996” (Ph.D. dissertation, Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University, 2005).