BARD CENTER FOR THE STUDY OF HATE will be hosting a series of webinars on hate with leading academics, experts, and activists from around the world.
To join the BCSH email list, and to receive registration information for upcoming webinars, please click here.
CALENDAR OF UPCOMING WEBINARS
September 9, 2024, 3pm Eastern — What is the religious movement known as New Apostolic Reformation, why has it become significant since the 2016 election of Donald Trump, and what should we know about it and the upcoming election? Julie Ingersoll, Professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Florida, and Peter Montgomery, Research Director at People for the American Way, will discuss.
PAST WEBINARS
December 20, 2023 – Zahed Amanullah of The Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD), which focuses on extremism, hate and disinformation, on the sharp increase in antisemitic and Islamophobic discourse on social media since the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7. CLICK HERE to view the webinar.
October 24, 2023 – Samuel G. Freedman, on “Hate in the Heartland: Nazi Sympathizers, America Firsters, Christian Nationalist and the Minneapolis Mayor Who Battled Them All, Hubert Humphrey.” Freedman’s talk is based on his new book, Into the Bright Sunshine: Young Hubert Humphrey and the Fight for Civil Rights, in which he explores Humphrey’s journey from a childhood in a South Dakota hamlet to his vital role in the struggle for multiracial democracy in postwar America. His years as mayor of Minneapolis, the subject of this talk, were an essential period. CLICK HERE to view the webinar.
March 9, 2023 – U.S. historian Lila Corwin Berman on “Funding Divides: How American Philanthropy Fostered (and Perhaps Could Heal) Social Tension.” In this talk Berman discussed how, in its ideal form, American philanthropy serves the public good, but in practice it has often bred social, economic, and political divisions, even creating opportunities for hate. She explored the historical development of this tension and asks what role philanthropy might play in reinvigorating a broad and capacious vision of the public. CLICK HERE to view the webinar.
February 1, 2023 –– Joseph Uscinski on “Conspiracy Theories and Hate.” Dr. Uscinski, a political science professor from the University of Miami, is a leading expert on conspiracy theories, and the author, most recently, of Conspiracy Theories: A Primer. CLICK HERE to view the webinar.
October 20, 2022 – Pulitzer Prize-winning author David Kertzer and John Pawlikoski discuss Kertzer’s new book The Pope At War: The Secret History of Pius XII, Mussolini and Hitler, based on newly available Vatican archives. CLICK HERE to view the webinar.
September 15, 2022 — Tali Nates, Founder & Director of the Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide Centre on “Hate and Holocaust and Genocide Museums and Memorials.” CLICK HERE to view the webinar.
May 17, 2022 — Bard Center for the Study of Hate, Western States Center, and Montana Human Rights Network, on using their new jointly-written and jointly published COMMUNITY GUIDE FOR OPPOSING HATE. CLICK HERE to view the webinar.
April 7, 2022 — Amy Spitalnick, Executive Director of Integrity First for America, and Jessica Phillips, plaintiffs’ counsel, spoke about the aftermath of the Charlottesville trial, which held organizers responsible for the violence they caused at that 2017 rally with awards of multi-million dollar in damages. The speakers highlighted what was learned from the evidentiary discovery received from the defendants, the expert reports and the trial testimony, as well as the implications of this case for opposing white supremacy. CLICK HERE to view the webinar.
March 8, 2022 – Stuart Eizenstat on these Holocaust-related issues: reparations for Holocaust survivors (including recent German funds for Russian Jews who survived the two-year siege of Leningrad), on Nazi-era stolen art, and on the work of the US Holocaust Memorial Museum. CLICK HERE to view the webinar.
February 22, 2022 — Mengyao Li ’12 – on her recent book chapter “Understanding Intergroup Violence and its Aftermath From Perpetrator and Victim Perspectives” CLICK HERE to view the webinar.
February 1, 2022 — Susan Benesch and Cathy Buerger of the Dangerous Speech Project spoke about their recently released publications, reviewing and evaluating the literature on two important questions: Is speech a driver of intergroup violence? And is counterspeech an effective response to hatred? CLICK HERE to view the webinar.
November 16, 2021 — Simon K. LI, executive director of the Hong Kong Holocaust and Tolerance Centre, spoke on “Hitler Shirts, Nazi Salute and Swastika Flags: Decoding Southeast Asia’s Strange Fixation with Nazi Hate Iconography.” CLICK HERE to view the webinar.
October 7, 2021 — Bill Morlin, a journalist long admired for his reporting on white supremacy, spoke on “how journalists should write about hate groups and hate group members.” CLICK HERE to view the webinar.
September 30, 2021 — Robert Tynes spoke about his groundbreaking new report “The State of Hate Index,” which ranks the level of hatred manifested in the fifty states and Washington DC by various metrics. CLICK HERE to view the webinar.
June 2, 2021 — Rabbi Tamar Malino leads the largest synagogue in Spokane, Washington. Her building, and the community’s Holocaust memorial, were defaced with swastikas earlier this year. How does a small community respond to such hate? Rabbi Malino was interviewed by Tony Stewart, a longtime human rights leader from nearby Idaho, who works against organized white supremacy. CLICK HERE to view the webinar.
May 6, 2021 — Sheldon Solomon, Professor of Psychology at Skidmore College, on “The relationship between hate and the fear of death.” CLICK HERE to view the webinar.
April 6, 2021 — Samantha Moore-Berg, Director of the University of Pennsylvania’s Peace and Conflict Neuroscience Lab, spoke about her work studying conflict across the globe. The lab “aims to understand how the human mind drives intergroup conflict and to put research into action to heal those divisions.” CLICK HERE to view the webinar.
March 18, 2021 — Award-winning and best-selling author Philippe Sands spoke about his new (February 2021) book THE RATLINE: THE EXALTED LIFE AND MYSTERIOUS DEATH OF A NAZI FUGITIVE, described as an “historical detective story that sets out to uncover the truth behind what happened to leading Nazi Otto von Wächter.” Sands says it’s “a deep and long lesson on how hate begins.” CLICK HERE to view the webinar.
March 4, 2021 — Greg Lukianoff, President of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education and co-author of The Coddling of The American Mind, on “What’s the relationship between ‘cancel culture’ and hate?” CLICK HERE to view the webinar.
February 23, 2021 — Nadine Strossen, a professor at New York Law School, past president of the American Civil Liberties Union, and author of HATE: Why We Should Resist it with Free Speech, Not Censorship, and Richard Wilson, professor of law and anthropology at the University of Connecticut and the author of Incitement on Trial: Prosecuting International Speech Crimes, spoke on “Law and hateful speech — what is to be done?” CLICK HERE to view the webinar.
January 28, 2021 –- Mark Hurtubise, a former college president and attorney, was president/CEO of Inland Northwest Community Foundation (2005-2017). During the last six months of his tenure with the foundation and for three years thereafter he vigorously objected to the foundation awarding grants to a white nationalist charity via a donor-advised fund. He spoke about the challenges of philanthropy funding hate groups. CLICK HERE to view the webinar. And CLICK HERE to see resources on this issue.
December 2, 2020 — “Hate images” with Aaron Tugendhaft, author of the new book The Idols of ISIS: From Assyria to the Internet. What is the relationship between hate and iconography, not only evidenced in the destruction of many valuable historical items by ISIS, but also the contemporary debates about statues of Confederate soldiers, Christopher Columbus, Thomas Jefferson, and Winston Churchill? Tugendhaft, who teaches at Bard College Berlin, asks whether “there can be any political life without idolatry?” CLICK HERE to view the webinar.
November 16, 2020 — James Waller, professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Keene State College (NH), spoke on The Risk of Mass Violence in the Aftermath of the 2020 Election. (Waller’s article for the Stanley Center for Peace and Security is here.) CLICK HERE to view the webinar.
October 22, 2020 — Lee Badgett, professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, will speak on her new and highly acclaimed book The Economic Case for LGBT Equality: Why Fair And Equal Treatment Benefits Us All. Dr. Badgett is also a member of the team Bard economics professor Michael Martell is leading on a BCSH project to measure the economic cost of hate. CLICK HERE to view.
September 15, 2020 — Amy Spitalnick, the Executive Director of Integrity First For America, spoke about the upcoming trial of a lawsuit that “seeks to hold accountable the neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and other far-right extremists who conspired to orchestrate a weekend of violence in Charlottesville in August, 2017.” CLICK HERE to view.
September 2, 2020 — Samuel Freedman, award-winning author, journalist, professor at Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, and author of a forthcoming biography of Hubert Humphrey focusing on the 1948 Democratic National Convention, will talk about the lessons learned from his research about hate and politics, and how they apply to the recently completed national conventions and the upcoming election. CLICK HERE to view.
July 23, 2020 — Suzanne Nossel, the Chief Executive Officer of PEN America, and the author of the forthcoming Dare To Speak: Defending Free Speech for All, will speak on “Hate and the Vilification of the Media.” CLICK HERE to view.
June 30, 2020 — Emmy-winning director Andrew Goldberg’s PBS film VIRAL: ANTISEMITISM IN FOUR MUTATIONS was shown (because of copyright restrictions it is not archived but can be purchased here or here). A discussion with Mr. Goldberg about the film , which looks at current manifestations of antisemitism in the United States, England, Hungary and France, is here.
June 10, 2020 — What the 1960s can teach us about today in the wake of the murder of George Floyd with Gregory Kaster, historian who taught a class on 1968 this past semester and Lewis Zuchman, an original Freedom Rider. CLICK HERE to view.
May 13, 2020 — Robert Sapolsky, the John A. and Cynthia Fry Gunn Professor of biology, neurology and neurosurgery at Stanford University, a research associate at the Institute for Primate Research in Kenya, and the author of Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst, spoke on “Hate and the Brain.” CLICK HERE TO VIEW.
Friday April 17, 2020 — Heidi Beirich, Co-founder of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, spoke on “Hate and Covid-19.” CLICK HERE to view.