Jonathan Wilkenfeld

In 1982, Wilkenfeld founded the International Communication and Negotiation Simulations (ICONS) Project. The project allows students to learn about international relations, crisis management, and negotiation through simulations and scenario-driven exercises. The project has been referenced in multiple academic articles as an example of simulation programs in international relations (IR) for educational purposes.

Wilkenfeld has been a professor at University of Maryland since 1969, where he has worked with the university’s Department of Government and Politics and the Institute for Advanced Computer Studies (UMIACS). He is also a research professor of the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START).

Jonathan Wilkenfeld (born March 24, 1942) is an American political scientist and professor emeritus at University of Maryland, specialized in foreign policy, terrorism and simulation methodology in political science. He is the Founding Director of the International Communication and Negotiation Simulations (ICONS) Project.

Wilkenfeld and Michael Brecher are the creators of the International Crisis Behavior Project (ICB), which maintains an online database of 1,078 countries in international conflict, also called “crisis actors”, and their behavior in over 487 crises international crises since 1918. An example of an international conflict in the database is the Cuban Missile Crisis where the “crisis actors” were the U.S., the Soviet Union and Cuba. The ICB Project has been referenced in a number of academic papers in the analysis of conflict, terror and international crisis.