While the younger brother has been described as good student and warm-hearted, his behavior may have been influenced by his older brother, said James Alan Fox, a professor of criminology, law and public policy at Northeastern University, one of the Boston colleges that remained closed on Friday. “It’s not just an anti-American or Islamic jihadist ideology, it’s […]

Resilience is partly a matter of character, but it is also one of policy. Stephen Flynn, a scholar at Northeastern University who has written widely about this, argues that, despite the billions spent, we have never made it a priority. George W. Bush often explained, “We fight the terrorists overseas so that we don’t have […]

But the rush to assist using crowdsourced, amateur sleuthing, also risked tarring innocent people, based on little evidence. A day before the FBI’s announcement, a social media research team at Northeastern University shuttered plans for a crowdsourcing investigation, amidst fears that it would be unable to prevent the wrong people from being implicated in the attack. The […]

Ammonium nitrate may be the more likely candidate in the explosion. In small quantities, the white pellets won’t detonate, notes Ronald Willey, a chemical engineering professor at Northeastern University in Boston. Many drugstore cold packs use the compound because, when water is also put in the packs, the mixture absorbs heat from its surroundings. But the compound begins […]

The U.S. has been successful in reducing the threat of terrorism, but it has wildly overspent in a futile attempt to achieve the goal of eliminating it. “After 9/11 we put our national security apparatus on steroids and decided that we were going to try to stop another attack from ever taking place,” says Stephen […]

Researchers at Northeastern University in Boston formed a 10-person social-media research team to run a similar project, scheduled to launch Thursday, which would allow people to upload photos from the attack and tag clues. They said they plan to continue their project even if a suspect is found.

The annual marathon alone generates nearly $140 million in revenues for local hotels, shops, restaurants, and other businesses, according to the Boston Athletic Association, which sponsors the race. “This won’t be just affecting the marathon, it’s likely to affect events that will happen outdoors this summer,” said Alan Clayton-Matthews, a Northeastern University professor who focuses […]

Tension has bubbled between Boston and New York since the 17th century, when the Puritans, who founded Boston, and the Dutch, who founded New York, squabbled over Long Island. “We’re so small compared to New York, but we’re so powerful,” said Northeastern University historian Bill Fowler, acknowledging that Boston, with just over 600,000 residents, is […]

The horrible events in Boston yesterday certainly weren’t the first tragedy of recent years. There have been many since 9/11: Virginia Tech, Aurora, Sandy Hook. And those, of course, are only a sampling. If we expand our view outside the United States, that list only multiplies, and exponentially. Personally, though, yesterday’s events resonated in a […]

Editor’s note: Dan Kennedy is an assistant professor of journalism at Northeastern University in Boston and the author of the forthcoming book “The Wired City: Reimagining Journalism and Civic Life in the Post-Newspaper Age” (University of Massachusetts). He blogs at Media Nation. I was going through my Twitter feed Monday morning when I came across this: “Happy greatest day […]

Stephen Flynn, a veteran homeland security expert and political scientist at Northeastern University in Boston, gave the president “high marks” for his statements, which on Tuesday included this: “Boston is a tough and resilient town. So are its people. I’m supremely confident that Bostonians will pull together, take care of each other, and move forward […]

In All Things Considered, WBUR’s Sacha Pfeiffer spoke with Stephen Flynn, co-director of the George J. Kostas Research Institute for Homeland Security at Northeastern University, about the nature of terror threats today and what the Boston Marathon is likely to look and feel like next year.