Brandon Colas
Graduate School Student
Bio
Brandon Colas is an active-duty U.S. Army officer and fellow with the Army’s Advanced Strategic Planning and Policy Program. Select previous assignments include being a Defense Intelligence Agency liaison officer in UK Defence Intelligence in London, President’s Daily Brief briefer to the Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, assistant professor in the Social Sciences Department at the United States Military Academy (West Point), and battalion intelligence officer for a mechanized infantry battalion.
Brandon is married to Bethany, a published poet, and they have three children, Hannah, Abigail, and Andrew.
Contact
Education
- B.A. in English and History, Cedarville University, 2006
- A.A. in Arabic, Defense Language Institute, 2013
- M.A. in Global Affairs, Yale University, 2015
Conference papers/presentations
- “The Logic of Sectarian Religious Violence.” Annual Conference of the International Studies Association. Understanding Change in World Politics. Baltimore, 2017.
- “Jihadi Hermeneutics and Fundamentalist Communications: Understanding the Contradictory Roles of the ISIS-Issued English Magazine Dabiq.” Annual Conference of the New England-Maritime Region chapter of the American Academy of Religion. Boston, 2016.
- “ISIS Rhetoric, Hermeneutics, and Organizational Fractures: How Dabiq Communicates a (Long-Term) Message of Weakness for the Islamic State.” American Academy of Religion Mid-Atlantic Regional Conference. Why We Are Here: Aims and Practices in Religious and Theological Scholarship Today. New Brunswick, 2016.
- “What Does Dabiq Do? An Alternative Look at ISIS English-Language Propaganda.” ISSS-ISAC Joint Annual Conference. Global Trends in War and Political Violence. Springfield, Massachusetts, 2015.
Articles
- “A Rational Choice? Russia’s Potential Use of Nonstrategic Nuclear Weapons,” Aether 2:2 (2023).
- “Defining and Deterring Faits Accomplis,” Parameters 52:2 (2022).
- “Understanding the Idea: Translating Jihadist Concepts into English,” Studies in Conflict and Terrorism 42:9 (2018).
- “What Does Dabiq Do? ISIS Hermeneutics and Organizational Fractures within Dabiq Magazine,” Studies in Conflict and Terrorism 40:3 (2017).
Areas of Interest
- International Relations
- Comparative Politics
- Formal Theory