Abstract
In the last volume of the Journal of Hate Studies, Ken Stern of the American Jewish Committee (AJC) wrote an article addressing the need for what he calls an interdisciplinary field of hate studies. For too long, he argued, academics have studied “hate”1 in isolation. A social psychologist may have approached the subject looking to study the relationship between an individual hater and the hate group to which he belongs; a political scientist or economist might have studied how economic instability or political disenfranchisement contributed to the behavior of some racist or anti-Semite. To put it simply, academics from a variety of disciplines have the resources to examine why people hate, but very few (if any) have had the opportunity to participate in a broader dialogue that includes a plurality of voices. A unified field of hate studies would provide a more complete picture of what hate looks like, why it looks the way it does, and finally (and perhaps most importantly) what we can do to help combat it.
Highlights
In the last volume of the Journal of Hate Studies, Ken Stern of the American Jewish Committee (AJC) wrote an article addressing the need for what he calls an interdisciplinary field of hate studies
Ken Stern initiated the first step in creating a field of hate studies; he outlined the unique contributions of different disciplines by discussing why and how these disciplines would enhance our study of hate
We might enlist sociologists, social psychologists, political scientists, and historians to examine the dynamics of in-group and out-group relations
Summary
In the last volume of the Journal of Hate Studies, Ken Stern of the American Jewish Committee (AJC) wrote an article addressing the need for what he calls an interdisciplinary field of hate studies. A social psychologist may have approached the subject looking to study the relationship between an individual hater and the hate group to which he belongs; a political scientist or economist might have studied how economic instability or political disenfranchisement contributed to the behavior of some racist or anti-Semite To put it academics from a variety of disciplines have the resources to examine why people hate, but very few (if any) have had the opportunity to participate in a broader dialogue that includes a plurality of voices. To address the interplay between the theoretical and empirical, hate studies can involve both academicians and non-academic practitioners–politicians, human rights advocates, law enforcement officials, and so forth.4 In this sense, a field of hate studies serves two purposes: it is an academic discipline (that can equip students with a particular body of knowledge, a sort of literacy in the subject) on the one hand, and a virtual think tank (for policy making) on the other. How can we create a framework within which to study hate?
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