thesis on terrorism

200+ Academic Theses (Ph.D. and MA) on Terrorism- and Counter-Terrorism - related Issues, written in French, Spanish, Italian, German, Dutch, and Norwegian

This bibliography contains doctoral dissertations (Ph.D.) and Master’s (MA) Theses on issues relating to terrorism and counter-terrorism. Titles were retrieved manually by browsing the Open Access Theses and Dissertations (OATD) database, using the search terms ‘terrorisme’, ‘terrorismo’, and ‘Terrorismus’. More than 1,000 entries were evaluated, of which slightly more than 200 were ultimately selected for this list. All theses are open source. However, readers should observe possible copyright restrictions. The title entries are ‘clickable’, allowing access to full texts.

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Master's Theses

The affect of globalization on terrorism.

Philip R. Passante , University of New Haven

Date of Submission

Document type, degree name.

Master of Science in National Security

National Security

Jeffrey Treistman, Ph.D

Committee Member

Robert A Sanders, LP.D

Christopher Haynes, Ph.D

Globalization, Terrorism, Ideologies

Terrorism and globalization, Ideology

This thesis proposal will dive into the concept of terrorism and how it is an act of force and has proven to be detrimental to the modern world. In addition, this thesis will analyze the concept of terrorism as well as the rationale behind it. It is important to understand and study this as terrorism is a complex entity made up of different themes. The concentration of this thesis will highlight how globalization has affected the phenomena of terrorism in the past, present, and ultimately the future. Globalization and terrorism have a relationship that many scholars and researchers have noticed. Historical events as well as data patterns have proved this to be accurate as well. Terrorism is a phenomenon that has been around for centuries, taking different forms as it has evolved. Due to gradual change, terrorist groups organize their attacks based on ideologies primarily. It is at the forefront of problems not only the United States faces, but the world too. This concept has spread across the world causing fear and chaos to innocent civilians. This gradual change that has changed the dynamic of terrorism is globalization. Globalization has allowed for many exchanges between people around the world. These exchanges include people, goods, ideologies, religion, etc. Based on this claim, it can be inferred that globalization has provided a positive outcome to the world by bringing together countries and people. However, it is crucial to note that while many people have felt globalization has benefited them, there are many people around the world that have felt threatened by the spread of this concept. Globalization has benefited heinous acts like terrorism through involvement of modern technologies. My thesis statement is “Globalization has affected terrorism in the way it has made terrorism easier, more accessible, and has impacted the frequency in which attacks occur.” The iv findings provided in the literature review and data analysis support the evidence that globalization does impact terrorism through different factors that affect countries daily. In other words, is there a significant relationship between globalization factors and rates of terrorism globally?

Recommended Citation

Passante, Philip R., "The Affect of Globalization on Terrorism" (2021). Master's Theses . 180. https://digitalcommons.newhaven.edu/masterstheses/180

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Modern Far-Right Terrorism Is a Repeat of Reconstruction-Era Themes

I n A Red Record , civil rights pioneer Ida B. Wells recounts the story of a lynching near Selma, Alabama, in which a young Black farmworker developed a consensual relationship with a white daughter of the household, and eventually fathered a child. Taken from jail, the man, Daniel Edwards, was hanged and his body filled with bullets. According to a contemporaneous dispatch, “Upon his back was found pinned this morning the following: Warning to all [N-words] that are too intimate with white girls. This the work of one hundred best citizens of the South Side.”

During the volume’s opening chapter, Wells recalls Frederick Douglass’s three “excuses” for the lynchings of Black men in the post-war South, each of which developed as the prior justification grew too implausible: white men sought to lynch Black men, Douglass argued in a posthumously published 1895 article , to stamp out “race riots,” to suppress the Black vote, and to protect the virtue of white women against Black rapes and assaults (the lie that would herald Edwards’ death sentence). “The orderly arrangement and periodicity of excuses are significant,” Douglass argued. “They show design, plan, purpose, and invention.”

Remarkably, though, over 100 years later, those three justifications are still among those that animate the far-right today—even though the range of targets has broadened. Indeed, each of Douglass’s justifications was an early manifestation of the same “ Great Replacement ” conspiracy theory—positing that an ongoing replacement of American whiteness is underway, orchestrated by Jews and elites—which motivates most white supremacist terrorism today. Most modern attacks, including the deadly white supremacist attack on Buffalo that occurred two years ago this week, repeat Reconstruction-era themes.

The “Great Replacement” theory, then, is not something new to the social media era or a more globalized world—it instead is fundamental to the very fabric of America, dating from the lynchings of the postbellum decades to modern acts of white supremacist terrorism as seen at Charleston, El Paso, Buffalo, and beyond. Further examination of the materials published as part of those attacks reveals language that hearkens back to the same excuses used for lynching in the Deep South.

Take, for instance, the justification that Black men deserved to be lynched because they were, to use Wells’ words, “alleged participants in an insurrection or riot.” Dylann Roof, murderer of nine Black parishioners at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015, evoked this urgency to protect white communities from Black violence, writing that “Segregation was not a bad thing. It was a defensive measure. Segregation did not exist to hold back [N-words]. It existed to protect us from them.” A manifesto penned by Payton Gendron, the shooter who targeted a supermarket in a predominantly Black neighborhood in Buffalo, New York, in May 2022, similarly outlined in no uncertain terms both his grievances against African Americans and his genocidal intent: “They are prone to violence and common criminal activity. We must remove blacks from our western civilizations.” These days, the bogeyman often takes the forms of perceived hordes of Antifa and Black Lives Matter rioters wreaking havoc on America’s streets. Kyle Rittenhouse traveled to Kenosha, in his own words, to “ protect ” businesses and people, before ultimately killing two protestors.

Read More: The Kyle Rittenhouse Verdict Makes Us All Less Safe

The complaint of minority dilutions of the white vote is similarly oft-uttered by today’s white supremacist terrorists. In fact, the replacement of white votes was one of the primary drivers behind Patrick Crusius’s assault on predominantly Latino shoppers at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, in August 2019. He killed 23. “They intend to use open borders, free healthcare for illegals, citizenship and more to enact a political coup by importing and then legalizing millions of new voters,” he wrote, going on to add, “They will turn Texas into an instrument of a political coup which will hasten the destruction of our country.” Gendron made similar claims: “Children of replacers do not stay children, they become adults and reproduce, creating more replacers to replace your people. They grow up and vote against your peoples own wishes, for the interests of their own people and identity.” In the post-Reconstruction years, the effort to suppress the Black vote (or what some termed “ Africanization ”) was ultimately successful—South Carolina, for instance, saw a drop in registered voters from more than 92,000 in 1876 to under 3,000 in 1898. Moreover, this model remains a popular tactic. As terrorism expert Daniel Byman reflects , “White racists’ victories during Reconstruction gave them a repertoire of violence to draw on in subsequent years when their superior social position faced new threats.” Indeed, similar declarations are now frequently issued by politicians and media figures on the political right, perhaps best encapsulated by X owner Elon Musk, who tweeted on May 9, “Given the massive influx of illegals from every country on Earth, 2024 will probably be the last election actually decided by US citizens.”

And finally, modern far-right terrorists still frequently invoke the same libelous assertion that white women must be protected from licentious Black men. In perhaps the most infamous example, Roof told victims during his rampage on Charleston, “I have to do it. You rape our women and you’re taking over our country. And you have to go.” Similarly, Gendron’s manifesto seethed, “Black youth are two and a half times as likely as White youth to have raped someone.” Both attacks accordingly conformed to Jamelle Bouie’s reflection in Slate after Charleston: “Make any list of anti-black terrorism in the United States, and you’ll also have a list of attacks justified by the specter of black rape.” In his manifesto, however, Roof offered perhaps an even more direct nod to his postbellum compatriots. “I have noticed a great disdain for race mixing White women within the White nationalists community, bordering on insanity,” he wrote. “These women are victims, and they can be saved. Stop.” Herein lies the “ benevolent sexism ” also inherent in Roof’s attack—the implication that white women are owned by white men, who therefore must nobly protect their property through violence.

Despite ideological echoes, though, perhaps the most important similarity is the deliberately public way in which these Black lives are taken. These Black bodies brutalized. Just as the Black men in the late-1800s who were supposedly sparking riots, voting against white interests, and raping white women were often hanged in public places as a warning to other would-be rebels against the established social order—as was Daniel Edwards’ horrific demise—modern white supremacist terrorism also seeks to create a spectacle. Today, the show often takes the form of a livestream , shared online to thousands of excited onlookers, while a manifesto is published as ideological testament to the crime. Conforming to the characteristics of lynching killings that terrorism scholar Tim Wilson called “rightist vigilantism that grew both highly ritualized and carnivalesque,” Gendron noted in his manifesto that “I think that live streaming this attack gives me some motivation in the way that I know that some people will be cheering for me.” As Georgetown University’s Emma Coleman Jordan wrote in the days after the horror at Buffalo, “As with the lynchings of the past, today’s racially-based attacks put Black suffering on display for the entertainment of a 21st century version of the White mob.”

Globalization and social progress have served to broaden the number of enemies against which the white supremacists targets their vitriol—adding immigrants, women, Jews, and the LGBTQ community to Black men and women—but they have not greatly altered their grievances. And, America’s Black population remains the foremost, enduring target. As terrorism scholar Brian Levin told TIME in May 2022, “Many people swim in this elastic, amorphous reservoir of grievance, where a constellation of new targets are identified all the time. But African Americans remain.” What’s more, those first two justifications behind far-right violence both during the postbellum years and today are actually platforms often defended by the political right—suggesting that political support continues to provide the veneer of legitimacy behind which extremist violence can be excused, if not encouraged . Buffalo also provided an important reminder that, despite the focus of much of Wells’ work being the Deep South, racist terrorism has never been a uniquely Southern phenomenon.

Incidents of mass racial violence such as the shooting at Charleston are often correctly decried as instances of “modern-day lynching.” What is remarkable, though, is how little the justifications themselves have shifted. The common thread, in the words of CeLillianne Green, is the “depth of hatred in the bone marrow of this country that supports the killing of the black body.” The only conclusion to be drawn, then, is a sober and pessimistic one—that America will not rid itself of its violent white supremacist plague without a deeper reckoning about the very origins of the country. Until then, prosecutors should consider pursuing white supremacist terrorists with charges that place their acts of violence within the proper historical context—such as the Emmett Till Anti-lynching Act , which President Joe Biden signed into law in 2022 after over a century of efforts to pass such legislation.

Meanwhile, for those of us in the public policy space, our solemn task is to continue to tell the stories of those taken by hatred far too soon as well as those who have fought back —and to loudly condemn those who continue choosing violence in pursuit of hatred. Or, as Wells puts it, “It becomes a painful duty […] to reproduce a record which shows that a large portion of the American people avow anarchy, condone murder and defy the contempt of civilization.” —With research support from Sinet Adous.

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Terrorism Essay for Students and Teacher

500+ words essay on terrorism essay.

Terrorism is an act, which aims to create fear among ordinary people by illegal means. It is a threat to humanity. It includes person or group spreading violence, riots, burglaries, rapes, kidnappings, fighting, bombings, etc. Terrorism is an act of cowardice. Also, terrorism has nothing to do with religion. A terrorist is only a terrorist, not a Hindu or a Muslim.

Types of Terrorism

Terrorism is of two kinds, one is political terrorism which creates panic on a large scale and another one is criminal terrorism which deals in kidnapping to take ransom money. Political terrorism is much more crucial than criminal terrorism because it is done by well-trained persons. It thus becomes difficult for law enforcing agencies to arrest them in time.

Terrorism spread at the national level as well as at international level.  Regional terrorism is the most violent among all. Because the terrorists think that dying as a terrorist is sacred and holy, and thus they are willing to do anything. All these terrorist groups are made with different purposes.

Causes of Terrorism

There are some main causes of terrorism development  or production of large quantities of machine guns, atomic bombs, hydrogen bombs, nuclear weapons, missiles, etc. rapid population growth,  Politics, Social, Economic  problems, dissatisfaction of people with the country’s system, lack of education, corruption, racism, economic inequality, linguistic differences, all these are the major  elements of terrorism, and terrorism flourishes after them. People use terrorism as a weapon to prove and justify their point of view.  The riots among Hindus and Muslims are the most famous but there is a difference between caste and terrorism.

The Effects Of Terrorism

Terrorism spreads fear in people, people living in the country feel insecure because of terrorism. Due to terrorist attacks, millions of goods are destroyed, the lives of thousands of innocent people are lost, animals are also killed. Disbelief in humanity raises after seeing a terrorist activity, this gives birth to another terrorist. There exist different types of terrorism in different parts of the country and abroad.

Today, terrorism is not only the problem of India, but in our neighboring country also, and governments across the world are making a lot of effort to deal with it. Attack on world trade center on September 11, 2001, is considered the largest terrorist attack in the world. Osama bin Laden attacked the tallest building in the world’s most powerful country, causing millions of casualties and death of thousands of people.

Get the huge list of more than 500 Essay Topics and Ideas

Terrorist Attacks in India

India has suffered several terrorist attacks which created fear among the public and caused huge destruction. Here are some of the major terrorist attacks that hit India in the last few years: 1991 – Punjab Killings, 1993 – Bombay Bomb Blasts, RSS Bombing in Chennai, 2000 – Church Bombing, Red Fort Terrorist Attack,2001- Indian Parliament Attack, 2002 – Mumbai Bus Bombing, Attack on Akshardham Temple, 2003 – Mumbai Bombing, 2004 – Dhemaji School Bombing in Assam,2005 – Delhi Bombings, Indian Institute of Science Shooting, 2006 – Varanasi Bombings, Mumbai Train Bombings, Malegaon Bombings, 2007 – Samjhauta Express Bombings, Mecca Masjid Bombing, Hyderabad Bombing, Ajmer Dargah Bombing, 2008 – Jaipur Bombings, Bangalore Serial Blasts, Ahmedabad Bombings, Delhi Bombings, Mumbai Attacks, 2010 – Pune Bombing, Varanasi Bombing.

The recent ones include 2011 – Mumbai Bombing, Delhi Bombing, 2012 – Pune Bombing, 2013 – Hyderabad Blasts, Srinagar Attack, Bodh Gaya Bombings, Patna Bombings, 2014 – Chhattisgarh Attack, Jharkhand Blast, Chennai Train Bombing, Assam Violence, Church Street Bomb Blast, Bangalore, 2015 –  Jammu Attack, Gurdaspur Attack, Pathankot Attack, 2016 – Uri Attack, Baramulla Attack, 2017 – Bhopal Ujjain Passenger Train Bombing, Amarnath Yatra Attack, 2018 Sukma Attack, 2019- Pulwama attack.

Agencies fighting Terrorism in India

Many police, intelligence and military organizations in India have formed special agencies to fight terrorism in the country. Major agencies which fight against terrorism in India are Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS), Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), National Investigation Agency (NIA).

Terrorism has become a global threat which needs to be controlled from the initial level. Terrorism cannot be controlled by the law enforcing agencies alone. The people in the world will also have to unite in order to face this growing threat of terrorism.

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State Department removes Cuba from short list of countries deemed uncooperative on counterterrorism

WASHINGTON (AP) — Secretary of State Antony Blinken removed Cuba Wednesday from the State Department’s short list of countries that it deems less than fully cooperative against violent groups.

In a statement, the State Department said Blinken had found that Cuban and U.S. law enforcement were again working together on counterterrorism and other efforts.

The State Department had cited Cuba as a “not fully cooperating country” in 2022, saying that Cuba had refused to engage with Colombia in the extradition of members of the National Liberation Army group.

Colombia later dropped its arrest warrants for those members, however. “Moreover, the United States and Cuba resumed law enforcement cooperation in 2023, including on counterterrorism,” Wednesday’s statement said.

READ MORE: Blinken says U.S. arms are helping Ukraine as nation faces a new Russian offensive

The State Department, in compliance with U.S. laws on arms exports, maintains a list of countries perceived as not cooperating fully on counterterrorism.

The U.S. kept North Korea, Syria, Iran and Venezuela on the list in Wednesday’s rulings.

Cuban foreign minister Bruno Rodríguez acknowledged the decision, but he said that Washington could do more.

“The U.S. has just admitted what is known to everyone: that #Cuba fully collaborates with the efforts against terrorism,” Rodríguez said on X, formerly Twitter.

But he added that “all political manipulation of the issue should cease and our arbitrary and unjust inclusion on the list of countries sponsoring terrorism should end.”

Associated Press writer Andrea Rodríguez reported from Havana.

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Tragic News – The Passing of Chris Edley, Visionary and Beloved Dean

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Message from Dean Erwin Chemerinsky, May 10, 2024:

Dear Berkeley Law Community,

It is with a very heavy heart that I am writing to inform you that our beloved colleague and former dean Chris Edley died on Friday morning.

Chris had an amazing life and career, including being a transformative dean for Berkeley Law.

Chris graduated from Swarthmore College and the Harvard School of Public Policy and Harvard Law School. He then had an exemplary career in academia and in public service.

Chris spent 23 years as a professor at Harvard Law School, including co-founding the Harvard Civil Rights Project, before coming to Berkeley Law as dean in 2004. He served as dean until 2013. As dean, he made an enormous positive difference in every aspect of the law school, from the hiring of many terrific faculty, to his initiative to build the south addition (with the library and classrooms and Café Zeb), to dramatically increasing support for public interest grants for students, to the creation of many centers.

Chris served in White House policy and budget positions under Presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton. Chris also held senior positions in five presidential campaigns: policy director for Michael Dukakis (1988); and senior policy adviser for Al Gore (2000), Howard Dean (2004), Barack Obama (2008), and Hillary Clinton (2016). In 1993, he was a senior economic adviser in the Clinton Presidential Transition, responsible for housing and regulation of financial institutions. In 2008, he was a board member for the Obama presidential transition, with general responsibility for healthcare, education, and immigration. In 1993, he was a senior economic adviser in the Clinton Presidential Transition, responsible for housing and regulation of financial institutions. In 2008, he was a board member for the Obama presidential transition, with general responsibility for healthcare, education, and immigration. From 2011-2013, he co-chaired the congressionally chartered National Commission on Education Equity and Excellence.

Chris was a fellow or member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences; the National Academy of Public Administration; the Council on Foreign Relations; the American Law Institute; the Advisory Board of the Hamilton Project, the Brookings Institution; and the board of Inequality Media. He is a National Associate of the National Research Council, the operating arm of the National Academies of Science, for which he chaired a committee to evaluate NAEP performance standards, and a committee to design a national system of education equity indicators.

Since completing his deanship, he has served the Law School and the campus in countless ways, including recently serving for two years as the Interim Dean of the School of Education. Chris and Maria Echaveste directed the Opportunity Institute.

Chris and I were law school classmates. He has been a dear friend and has provided me invaluable wisdom and support in my years as a dean. I know I speak for all of us in saying how terribly much we will miss him.

I will keep you posted of plans for memorials.

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Reading and Protesting on Campus

Readers discuss a column by Ross Douthat.

To the Editor:

Re “ What Students Read Before They Protest ,” by Ross Douthat (column, April 28):

Historians in the future are unlikely to attribute worldwide protests against Israel’s war in Gaza to the syllabus for Columbia’s required “Contemporary Civilization” course. Yet Mr. Douthat somehow suggests that a handful of anticolonial texts read in the yearlong course are fueling widespread antisemitism.

Mr. Douthat fails to explain how students go from Gandhi’s passive resistance or Bhimrao Ambedkar’s civic liberalism to condoning Hamas’s terrorism. Nor does Mr. Douthat account for the diversity of the authors’ views (Frantz Fanon’s book “The Wretched of the Earth,” which has been on the syllabus since the ’60s, is followed by Hannah Arendt’s powerful rebuttal, “On Violence”).

Even a course as expansive as “Contemporary Civilization” cannot cover everything. But this hardly justifies Mr. Douthat’s claim that the syllabus is narrowing students’ understanding of the issues of our time. “Contemporary Civilization” requires that students think critically about a wide range of ideological commitments, including classical liberalism, civic republicanism and Judeo-Christian-Islamic thought.

Before Mr. Douthat, the most vocal critics of “Contemporary Civilization” were those students who called on us to “decolonize” its syllabus — conflating the study of a text with an endorsement of its views. One can forgive a college student for not appreciating the distinction. Mr. Douthat should know better.

Larry Jackson New York The writer is associate dean of academic affairs for Columbia College and director of its Center for the Core Curriculum.

Ross Douthat suggests that U.S. students are protesting Israel’s war on Gaza but are not as concerned about other wars and crises (in Sudan , the Democratic Republic of Congo , Armenia , Myanmar , Yemen ) because university reading lists are biased. The more likely reason is that the U.S. government is funneling billions of dollars in armaments to Israel, which are being used to kill thousands of Palestinians.

Joel Andreas Baltimore The writer is a professor of sociology, director of undergraduate studies and director of the East Asian studies program at Johns Hopkins University.

Nestled among an otherwise well-reasoned and incisive argument from Ross Douthat lurks a puzzling observation: that academic syllabuses channel impulses “that anyone with eyes to see will notice all across the meritocracy, from big Ivies to liberal arts colleges to selective high schools and middle schools.” Such impulses, he suggests, may inform the mind-sets of students leading current protests at some of our nation’s college campuses.

Yet Mr. Douthat seems not to see the numerous events, teach-ins and civil debates occurring across the range of learning environments outside his cited meritocracy, where approximately three-quarters of those enrolled in higher education study.

Contrary to the curriculums Mr. Douthat bemoans, my own philosophy syllabuses at a public flagship university feature Robert Nozick as readily as Michel Foucault, Kwame Anthony Appiah as prominently as Frantz Fanon. But perhaps he does not naturally perceive students beyond the meritocracy as viable leaders of our collective future.

Mr. Douthat might consider widening the aperture on how he understands merit — and tomorrow’s leaders — should he wish to avoid being caught in the very trap he critiques: presenting one aspect of a diverse, complex landscape as the whole.

Cheryl Foster Kingston, R.I. The writer is a professor of philosophy and political science at the University of Rhode Island.

Ross Douthat writes, “Climate change looms over everything, but climate activism is expected to be merged somehow with anticolonial and antiracist action.”

If there’s such as a thing as God’s own work in 2024, it’s ending carbon pollution. Those most at risk from climate chaos are disproportionately those least responsible for causing it, including people in Africa, Pacific island nations and the Asian subcontinent.

That said, activism divorced from political reality is not only futile but also counterproductive. One hard example is reparations for climate victim nations. The moral case is overwhelming, but in a U.S. presidential campaign, it’s a loser.

William Faulkner’s line about race in America still rings true: “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” But Mr. Douthat’s caution is well taken. Integrity and effective messaging are not mutually exclusive. Too often, progressive climate activists risk losing potential supporters and members of the broad-based movement we must have to succeed.

David Scott Columbus, Ohio The writer is a member and former president of the Sierra Club board.

I taught 20 semesters of “Contemporary Civilization” (or “C.C.”) at Columbia — as a graduate student, lecturer and faculty fellow. I also served on the committee that proposed some of the curricular changes that Ross Douthat criticizes.

He builds his critique of this course on a perusal of the required texts posted to Columbia’s website and an imagined propagandistic teaching style.

Hardly an exercise in brainwashing, C.C. foregrounds texts of the ancient and early modern world that make it impossible to, as Mr. Douthat maintains, “simplify and flatten history” around 21st-century sloganeering.

My students would view Frantz Fanon’s arguments for anticolonial violence as a reflection of Plato’s call in “Republic” for mass infanticide in the name of Socratic “justice. ” They considered topics like “sex and gender” not by regurgitating mantras from “Gender Trouble” but by weighing the views of its author, Judith Butler, against those of John Stuart Mill, Mary Wollstonecraft and Rousseau.

Especially in my later years teaching the course, I often omitted Michel Foucault and included instead Hannah Arendt’s “Origins of Totalitarianism,” one of Mr. Douthat’s suggested additions. Many instructors still teach Freud’s “Civilization and Its Discontents” (long a required text) and Thomas Kuhn as critiques of modern technological progress. Some spend a day on Marilynne Robinson .

Mr. Douthat would find that many of Columbia’s instructors include the very texts and topics he wants to see taught there.

Charles McNamara Minneapolis The writer is a lecturer in the department of classical and Near Eastern religions and cultures at the University of Minnesota.

Hip-hop bling is the thing at a luminous new jewelry exhibit

“Ice Cold” celebrates the cultural impact and brilliant style of rappers from Run-DMC to the Notorious B.I.G.

H ip-hop jewelry has gone by many names over the past 50 years . “Bling-bling” crystallized into “ice,” which melted into “drip” as rappers went from adorning their necks with gold chains and knuckles with four-finger rings to decking out their teeth and wrists in diamonds. One-upping your opponent in a rap battle couldn’t be done with lyrical prowess alone. You also had to look fly. As inner-city rappers sought global respect for their street poetry as a reputable art form throughout the ’80s and ’90s, so too did up-and-coming immigrant jewelers who found a commonality in their hustle to attain the American Dream.

At New York City’s American Museum of Natural History, 66 culturally priceless heirlooms are now on display as part of “Ice Cold: An Exhibition of Hip-Hop Jewelry.” Sean M. Decatur, the museum’s president, told The Washington Post “Ice Cold” was a “natural fit” for the Meister Gallery inside the Mignone Halls of Gems and Minerals, which has previously hosted three jewelry-themed exhibits. To him, the gems “tell an interesting broader cultural story.”

“When you are from a people who come from a history where the right to express one’s identity was constantly being questioned, challenged and diminished, it takes on special meaning to present yourself in a particular way that is so deeply tied into one’s own understanding of self,” Decatur said of the pieces that reflect Black and Latino diasporic experiences.

Old-school fans will recognize Public Enemy’s ’80s leather medallion featuring its logo of a Black man caught in the crosshairs of a gun sight to raise awareness about police brutality. Aficionados will spot the legendary yellow gold Jesus piece that the Notorious B.I.G. rapped about in his 1997 hit “Hypnotize.” Onlookers can “lean back” and admire Fat Joe’s 14-karat white gold and diamond Terror Squad logo necklace to learn about how hip-hop crews grew into music collectives by the early ’00s.

“Ice Cold” is an extension of hip-hop journalist Vikki Tobak’s 2022 coffee-table book of the same name, which features more than 300 pages of classic photos and heartfelt essays showcasing what “stuntin’” really means to rappers. The author, who worked as director of publicity and marketing at Payday Records in the ’90s, felt it was important for fans and critics alike to see physical representations of hip-hop’s undeniable presence up close.

“The fact that it’s inside of this museum that’s dedicated to the history of mankind, I really saw the magnitude of placing this kind of work in that kind of context and putting all these new eyes on it,” Tobak said.

W ith cases named after songs such as “Money, Power & Respect” and “U See Us,” the curator emphasized that the jewels don’t necessarily signify decadence. “Ice Cold” shows a kaleidoscopic spectrum of stories — from the time when making it was “all a dream” to memorializing a fallen friend.

“Artists have fully stepped into their power,” Tobak said. “They really understand that what they wear is often just as important as their music. ‘U See Us,’ is named after the Nipsey [Hussle] song, and it’s meant to speak to how all eyes now are on hip-hop for everything — style, fashion, music, politics even.”

The Style section

Tobak, whose family immigrated from Kazakhstan to Detroit in the ’70s, thinks “Ice Cold” is especially timely as the gatekeepers of couture fashion houses and legacy jewelers have not only welcomed tastemakers such as A$AP Ferg and Tyler, the Creator into the fold, but have also taken inspiration from classic hip-hop chain styles.

“You think about the way that hip-hop has been embraced by the luxury world just in the past 10 years and what it means for jewelry,” Tobak said. “Certain link styles you’re starting to see in mainstream culture. I think we needed this past 10 years to tell that additional layer.”

A$AP Ferg’s finery

F erg, a founding member of the A$AP Mob hip-hop collective, used to walk past Tiffany & Co.’s flagship store on Fifth Avenue on his way home to Harlem from the High School of Art and Design. “When you don’t have the money to actually buy something, you don’t feel comfortable walking through these stores,” he said. As a teenager, then known as Darold Ferguson Jr., he designed crystal-studded pendants that got his friends robbed due to how realistic they looked. In 2018, Ferg made history as Tiffany’s first hip-hop brand ambassador.

At “Ice Cold,” the “Plain Jane” rapper’s 18-karat white gold and diamond Tiffany T bracelet glistens next to a more sentimental piece — a custom IF & Co. “Yamborghini” necklace. Inspired by the Lamborghini logo, the Ben Baller -designed pendant is made of 14-karat white gold with 65 carats of white VVS diamonds and a custom Hermes link diamond chain to honor the late Mob member A$AP Yams. Ferg said designing and buying chains is “just another extension of your soul.”

“Whenever I buy jewelry, it has a purpose,” Ferg said. “[We’re] not just spending mad bread on things. We’re mimicking our forefathers. You think about Egypt, the gods, King Tut, Mansa Musa — the richest man in the world — Black man. We’re just mimicking who we are. We’re kings and queens.”

Roc-A-Fella Records logo pendant

W hen Jay-Z raps “got the hottest chick in the game wearin’ my chain,” Roc Nation senior vice president Lenny “Lenny S” Santiago flashes back to the moment he snapped a photo of Beyoncé sporting her husband’s Roc-A-Fella necklace. The 14-karat rose gold and diamond pendant, made by the often name-dropped Jacob “the Jeweler” Arabo, depicts the record label’s iconic logo — a vinyl record with a bottle of champagne and a cursive letter R.

“It represents what Roc was,” Santiago said. “They were getting money, they were buying jewelry, they were popping champagne. That logo became so famous because of what was built. So, forget about what the actual emblem is. It’s what it represents . And it represented independence. When you look at it, you think of the whole Roc-A-Fella to Roc Nation empire.”

Jam Master Jay’s Adidas pendant

B ack in 1986, when kids wanted to sport Run-DMC’s signature Kangol hats and tracksuits, Bronx native Santiago said he was more intrigued by the group’s ability to broker hip-hop’s first endorsement deal with Adidas. His sentiment comes full circle at “Ice Cold,” where Jam Master Jay’s 14-karat yellow gold chain with a black enamel Adidas pendant is featured in the exhibit’s entryway case.

Today, he admires how hip-hop artists have used their business acumen to take the B-boy from the streets to the C-suite, with high-profile collaborations between the likes of Pharrell Williams and Louis Vuitton.

“Nobody would have thought [of] that in the ’70s and ’80s when rappers were just wearing thick gold rope chains,” Santiago said.

Nicki Minaj’s Barbie pendant

I ndian jeweler Ashna Mehta created Minaj’s 2022 18-karat white gold Barbie pendant encrusted in 54.47 carats of diamonds and bright pink enamel. She said via email the exhibit recognizes “how the tradition of adornment is alive and well in modern times.” The heiress to the Indian-Belgian jewelry company Rosy Blue grew up in New York and Dubai, where she said hip-hop’s irresistible style was fully embraced across cultures.

“The pieces are not just accessories,” Mehta said. “They are historical artifacts of our time. As a woman in this industry, creating for another woman who has carved her path in such a male-dominated field is profoundly meaningful. It’s more than just adornment. It’s a celebration of feminine strength, resilience and leadership.”

Pendants with pizazz

D esigner Alex Moss believes his craftsmanship sets a new standard for sophistication. The Toronto native of Armenian descent thinks “Ice Cold” makes a statement that hip-hop jewelry is “art at the highest level.”

“It’s in the same room they’ve had exhibits for Van Cleef, for Cartier, for Harry Winston,” Moss said. “The times are changing. It’s not about 100-year-old jewelry anymore. This is today’s jewelry.”

“Ice Cold” features some of Moss’s most notable pieces, such as A$AP Rocky’s 14-karat gold EXO grenade pendant clock, Drake’s 18K white gold “Crown Jewel of Toronto” pendant with yellow and blue diamonds and Burmese rubies and the bellhop pendant for Tyler, the Creator. The $500,000 14-karat gold pendant and chain has 186 carats in diamonds, 60 carats in sapphires and more than 23,000 handset stones.

“After I put that one out, I think everyone pretty much woke up and said, ‘Who is this kid?’” Moss said.

Pharrell Williams’s grillz

U nlike Moss, who entered the jewelry industry in 2016 without any contacts, 27-year-old grill maker Elan Pinhasov grew up in the family business — Gabby Elan Jewelry. His father, Gabriel, immigrated from Israel in 1990, and over the years, he used his dental training to design more comfortable, custom mouthpieces for the likes of Ol’ Dirty Bastard from the Wu-Tang Clan, Dua Lipa, J Balvin and, most recently, Rihanna . But one particular customer can’t get enough of Gabby Elan designs. “Ice Cold” features two blinged-out grillz owned by Pharrell — a 14-karat white gold set with ruby pavé surrounded by white pavé diamonds from 2006 that Pinhasov estimates cost Williams about $10,000, and a 22-karat yellow gold set with yellow natural pavé diamonds from 2021 for $40,000.

“The [yellow diamond] set I think was originally intended for the Met Gala,” Pinhasov said, noting that the artist wanted bigger stones than those placed in the initial design. “So we have this set [at the exhibit] as kind of like a prototype, and the set that he currently has, has diamonds that are twice the size.”

Pinhasov said his father spent decades making a name for himself in the heart of Brooklyn at Albee Square Mall, formerly a hip-hop hot spot for jewels and rap battles. But the young designer encouraged him to move the business to the Diamond District in October 2018 to keep up with the competition. Having spent summers, weekends and even after-school hours selling gems since 2013, Pinhasov doesn’t see the flashy ornaments as a fading trend anytime soon.

“You can wear the most expensive watch, you can wear the most expensive shoe, any piece of jewelry, but everyone’s first impression is looking at someone’s face,” Pinhasov said. “If they smile and see a magnificent set of grillz, it sticks your attention to that forever.”

“Ice Cold: An Exhibition of Hip-Hop Jewelry” runs through Jan. 5, 2025. American Museum of Natural History, 200 Central Park West, New York. Tickets for nonresidents from $16 to $28. www.amnh.org .