Psychology Scholar and Author to Discuss Why Ordinary People Commit Genocide and Mass Killing

WORCESTER, Mass. – Author James Waller, Ph.D., will present his latest book, Becoming Evil: How Ordinary People Commit Genocide and Mass Killing  (Oxford University Press, 2007) on Thursday, Oct. 15 at 4 p.m. in Seelos Theater at the College of the Holy Cross. This event, sponsored by the College’s Montserrat Program, is free and open to the public.

Waller, an affiliated scholar with the Auschwitz Institute for Peace and Reconciliation, and a former psychology professor at Whitworth College, will discuss how the past century, dubbed the Age of Genocide, saw more than 60 million people murdered to meet the needs of the state.

Waller says that one indisputable fact behind human suffering is that political, social, or religious groups wanting to commit mass murder are never hindered by a lack of willing executioners.

He will question how ordinary people can become perpetrators of such extraordinary evil. Waller will address this question using a model of perpetrator behavior that synthesizes a wide range of factors that spur ordinary people to participate in mass atrocities. Ultimately, he believes that man’s best safeguard against future genocides is to be aware of his capacity for extraordinary evil and how to cultivate the moral sensibilities that will curb the scope of violence.