On February 18, the White House convened a three-day summit on Countering Violent Extremism (CVE), bringing together handpicked community leaders and national and international representatives. Ministers from roughly seventy countries, officials from various multilateral bodies including United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon, and civil society and private sector representatives were all invited to the White House for the summit.

Their objective, according to the White House, was “to discuss concrete steps the United States and its partners can take to develop community-oriented approaches to counter hateful extremist ideologies that radicalize, recruit or incite to violence.” More ambitiously, the CVE summit also focused on developing “a comprehensive action plan against violent extremism” globally.

Initial media coverage of the CVE summit revolved around the administration’s refusal to specifically name Islam (or Islamism) as the culprit, preferring to refer vaguely to terrorism. As it turned out, Republican complaints that Obama was refusing to name Islam as singularly responsible for violent extremism were largely unfounded. In an op-ed for the LA Times and later in a speech at the summit, the president focused heavily on Islam and Muslims (while tacking on the standard liberal qualifiers about terrorists having “perverted” Islam).