David C. Rapoport

David Charles Rapoport
Portrait of David C. Rapoport

David Charles Rapoport (born January 7, 1929, Pittsburgh, PA) is a Professor Emeritus of Political Science at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) He is “one of the founding figures of terrorism studies” In 1989 he established the scholarly journal Terrorism and Political Violence and is its chief editor.

Rapoport received his Ph.D. at University of California, Berkeley in 1960, His dissertation was Praetorianism: Government without Consensus. His first job was at Columbia University, a Research Associate at the Institute of War and Peace and lecturer at Barnard College. In 1962 he joined the UCLA political science department. Initially a political theorist, in the late 1960s he became interested in terrorism and in 1969 taught the first terrorist course in the U.S. The journal he founded Terrorism and Political Violence became “one of two journals which has made terrorism into an academic field”. At the same time he became absorbed with religion and politics, creating several new courses, i.e., The Bible as Political Theory, Comparative Fundamentalism, Religion and Violence, and became a Consultant for the Fundamentalism Project, University of Chicago 1988-92. He received 12 Awards from a variety of Foundations including the Social Science Research Council, Ford Foundation, Fulbright, American Council Learned Societies, National Institute of Mental Health and Harry Frank Guggenheim.

After retiring in 1995 he founded the Center for the Study of Religion UCLA and became the Chair of the Interdepartmental Religion Major 1995-7. He continued teaching until 2012, received the UCLA Emeritus Distinguished Dickson Award. 2007 and an Emeritus Research Grant from the Mellon Foundation 2007-12. From 1985-2015 he accepted 104 special invitations from university, foundation and government conferences to speak. Many were in foreign countries, U.K., Spain, Israel, Ireland, Italy, Germany, Sweden, Netherlands, etc.

In 1998 he and Paul Wilkinson edited the Routledge Political Violence Series. In 2011 he became the sole editor. The Series has published 31 volumes.

In 2008 16 colleagues (including six former students) received funds from the Sidney L. Stern Foundation to organize the UCLA Festschrift Conference for Rapoport dealing largely with his work on religion and on terrorism later published Terrorism Identity and Legitimacy: The Four Waves Theory and Political Violence,.

Rapoport wrote and edited six books, 50 academic articles and 12 op-ed newspaper columns. Ten academic publications were republished in Spanish, French and German. Two of his academic articles were written for Encyclopedias, and a third will be published in 2017.

His initial articles were in political theory and concentrated on the different forms of legitimate government force and illegal violence by members of the administration to overthrow the existing government. He also was deeply concerned with the concept of the corrupt state.