Hate and Politics, Part 2 in the series on The State of Hate will look at how hate is playing out in our national and international politics.  Panelists will discuss what the dangers and dynamics of hateful rhetoric are to our political culture and well-being. They will also discuss what the role of the media is in both spreading and righting hate in our political environment. 

Speakers:

• Cesi Cruz, PhD - Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science

• David Myers, PhD - Distinguished Professor, founding director of the UCLA Luskin Center  for History and Policy, and the founding director of the UCLA Initiative to Study Hate

• Lynn Vavreck, PhD  - Marvin Hoffenberg Professor of American Politics and Public Policy at UCLA

Speaker Bios: 

Cesi Cruz, PhD, is an assistant professor in the department of political science. She works on topics at the intersection of political science and economics, with a focus on how information and social networks affect electoral incentives and economic outcomes. Her work has been published in outlets such as the American Political Science Review, American Economic Review, American Journal of Political Science, Economic Journal, Comparative Political Studies, and the Review of International Organizations. Cesi is a board member of Experiments in Governance and Politics (EGAP), the Southeast Asia Research Group (SEAREG), and Empirical Studies of Conflict (ESOC). In addition, she serves on the board of Women Also Know Stuff, an organization to promote women’s scholarship in political science. Her latest projects and working papers are available on her website: www.cesicruz.com. Cesi is also a past research fellow of the UCLA Initiative to Study Hate.

David Myers, PhD, is the Distinguished Professor of History, Sady and Ludwig Kahn Chair in Jewish History at UCLA, and the Director of the UCLA Initiative to Study Hate, a three-year pilot project intended to foster cutting-edge research and high-level teaching to understand better and mitigate group-based hate.  As of fall 2017, Dr. Myers served as the Director of the Luskin Center for History and Policy (http://luskincenter.history.ucla.edu/).  He previously served as chair of the UCLA History Department (2010-2015) and as director of the UCLA Center for Jewish Studies (1996-2000 and 2004-2010).  He received his A.B. from Yale College in 1982 and undertook graduate studies at Tel-Aviv and Harvard Universities before completing his doctorate at Columbia in 1991. He has written extensively in the fields of modern Jewish intellectual and cultural history. He has authored six books: Re-Inventing the Jewish Past: European Jewish Intellectuals and the Zionist Return to History (Oxford: 1995), Resisting History: Historicism and its Discontents in German-Jewish Thought (Princeton, 2003), Between Jew and Arab: The Lost Voice of Simon Rawidowicz (Brandeis University Press, 2008), Jewish History: A Very Short Introduction  (2017), The Stakes of History: On the Use and Abuse of Jewish History for Life  (2018), and with Nomi M. Stolzenberg, American Shtetl: The Making of Kiryas Joel, a Hasidic Village in Upstate New York (2022), which won the 2022 National Jewish Book Award in American Jewish Studies.  Myers has edited or co-edited twelve books, including The Eternal Dissident: Rabbi Leonard I. Beerman and the Radical Imperative to Think and Act (2018), with Benjamin C.I. Ravid, Simon Rawidowicz: Between Babylon and Jerusalem: Select Writings.  Together with Michael Berenbaum, he brought to publication the monumental book of the late Steven Lowenstein, The Population History of German Jewry, 1815-1939 (2023). 

Dr. Myers has taught at the École des Hautes études en sciences Sociales and the Russian State University for the Humanities, visited at the Institute for Advanced Studies (Jerusalem), and been a fellow on three occasions at the Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies (Philadelphia). Since 2003, he has served as co-editor of the Jewish Quarterly Review. Myers is an elected fellow of the American Academy for Jewish Research and the Los Angeles Institute for the Humanities.  At UCLA, he teaches courses on Jewish history and the history of history.  

Lynn Vavreck, PhD, is the Marvin Hoffenberg Professor of American Politics and Public Policy at UCLA, a contributing columnist to The Upshot at The New York Times, and a recipient of the Andrew F. Carnegie Prize in the Humanities and Social Sciences.  She is the author of five books, including the “most ominous” book on the 2016 election: Identity Crisis: The 2016 Presidential Campaign and the Battle for the Meaning of America, and The Gamble: Choice and Chance in the 2012 Presidential Election, described as the “definitive account” of the 2012 election. Political consultants on both sides of the aisle refer to her work on political messaging in The Message Matters as “required reading” for presidential candidates. Her research has been supported by the National Science Foundation and she has served on the advisory boards of both the British and American National Election Studies. At UCLA she teaches courses on campaigns, elections, public opinion, and the 1960s. Professor Vavreck holds a Ph.D. in political science from the University of Rochester and held previous appointments at Princeton University, Dartmouth College, and The White House.  A native of Cleveland, Ohio, she remains a loyal Browns fan and is a “known equestrian” – to draw on a phrase from the 2012 presidential campaign.