The State Department is embracing a new approach: It's invited community leaders from around the world to Washington to compare notes about the best ways to counter extremism on a grassroots level.

Abeera Akhtar and her colleagues at Pakistan’s Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS) in Pakistan launched the “FATE — From Apathy to Empathy” project against extremism. The LUMS group was one of 45 student teams from around the world that applied to this semester’s P2P (Peer to Peer): Challenging Extremism initiative. 

Secretary of State John Kerry went to Hollywood this week in search of ideas to counter the Islamic State’s appeal. And to be fair, he was onto something: the power of narratives and emotional appeal of stories have a role to play in beating back a hateful ideology. And American moviemakers know how to tell great stories with global appeal, as foreign box office sales can attest. The medium is right, but the message — or rather, the “American brand” — is not.

The State Department is revamping its floundering efforts to curb recruiting by the Islamic State and other terrorist groups, senior U.S. officials tell Foreign Policy, in response to growing dissatisfaction in the White House and Congress at existing attempts to stop the spread of the extremists’ ideology. The changes ordered by Secretary of State John Kerry, which have not previously been reported, shift significant power to a single bureau at the State Department tasked with coordinating all counter-extremism efforts.