I’m Associate Professor of sociology at UCLA and interim director of the UCLA Bedari Kindness Institute, home to the Initiative to Study Hate and Dialogue Across Difference. I study how ordinary people decide what to do in violent and authoritarian contexts: why some take part, why others resist, and why many look away. From the Holocaust in France to the genocide in Rwanda, my research shows that these choices turn less on fixed identities or ideology than on the relationships, institutions, and shifting circumstances in which people find themselves. I’ve shown that people’s behavior can change as violence unfolds, and that dehumanization often develops as a consequence of killing, not only as its precursor.

I am the author of Sacred Betrayal: How the French Catholic Church Broke Its Pledge to Protect Jews During the Holocaust (Harvard University Press, 2026). My award-winning research has appeared in the American Sociological Review, Sociological Theory, the European Journal of Sociology, and Social Science History, and featured in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times, among others. I speak and write about genocide, authoritarianism, dehumanization, and political polarization.

In addition to the BKI, I serve on the steering committee of the UC Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation. Before joining UCLA, I worked with USAID, the United Nations Counter-Terrorism Committee Executive Directorate, the Montreal Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies, and Facing History & Ourselves, bringing research on violence and its prevention into policy and education.