Louise Richardson is the Executive dean of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. Richardson is also a senior lecturer in government at the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard and a lecturer on law at Harvard Law School. From 1989 to 2001, she was assistant professor and then associate professor of government at Harvard, specializing in international security. For eight years, Richardson was head tutor (director of undergraduate studies) of the Harvard government department. Richardson is the author of What Terrorists Want: Understanding the Enemy, Containing the Threat. She has also published a number of journal articles, book chapters, and reviews on the subject of terrorism. Richardson's current research projects involve a study of patterns of terrorist violence and a study on counterterrorism lessons to be derived from earlier experiences with terrorism. Richardson received a bachelor's degree in history from Trinity College, Dublin. She earned master's degrees in political science from the University of California at Los Angeles and Harvard and in history from Trinity College, Dublin, and a doctoral degree in government from Harvard University.