Dan Silk has guarded diplomats in Afghanistan. He’s advised police in the United Kingdom. And he’s apprehended criminals in Athens.
But deep down, he’s all about peace.
As the communications coordinator for the UGA Police Department, Silk manages the university’s version of 911, where he helps ensure officers can efficiently and effectively respond to calls. He also teaches part time for the Criminal Justice Studies Program.
He began his career in policing during his undergraduate years at UGA, when he also became interested in studying religion.
“I started in 1994 as a patrol officer. But from the beginning, my academic interest was religion. At the time I was even interested in becoming a priest,” he said. “But my professional interest became law enforcement. So I was in this odd spot where I was trying to figure out a way where I could combine my professional and academic interests, and many, many years later that all sort of came together.”
Silk graduated from UGA in 1997 with a bachelor’s in religion, but stayed in Athens to pursue a graduate degree focusing on Islam. Less than a year after he earned his master’s degree, the 9/11 terrorist attacks hit the U.S., and Silk was uniquely qualified to understand the situation from both a law enforcement and a religious point of view.
“I was giong to do a master’s degree in ancient Christian history, but truly right before I was going to start classes, I wanted to try something different and I’m so glad that I did,” he said. “It changed my life. It opened up a whole world, and since 1999, a whole litany of experiences I never would have had. I was a special agent for the U.S. Department of State. The department has a branch that’s not particularly well known that’s responsible for the safety and security of State Department personnel, such as diplomats and embassies and consulates and such, so most of my time overseas was spent as a body guard.”
His two and a half year tenure with the federal government also took him to Israel and Afghanistan, but Silk came back to Athens in 2004 and began the familiar balancing act of police work and furthering his education.
“In both the law enforcement side and the community side, they’ve been forced to realize there’s constantly this overarching shadow about all their discussions. A cop I spoke with in the U.K. said something like, ‘We hate it, but we’re forced to talk about these issues, when in reality we want to go to these communities and tell them that we’re interested in that burglary that happened,” he said. “Those are the kinds of things that police and communities want to talk about, but because police to some degree are forced to live up to these counter-terrorism agendas, they’re forced to have very uncomfortable conversations about terrorism that, really, they don’t want to be talking about.”
Now that he’s back on U.S. soil, Silk hasn’t left his interest in community policing and working within communities. He’s just made room for other projects. He and his wife, Monira, have a nearly 1-year-old daughter named Miriam.
“We met in Arabic class. In the first conversation that either of us ever remember having happened right after we had just learned the Arabic word for ‘marry’,” Silk said. “As a class exercise, Dr. Godlas asked me to ask her to marry me in Arabic. And I’m pretty confidant that’s the first time we ever spoke. I asked her three times to marry me, and each time she said ‘no.’ ”
