April 13, 2004

Whitworth Lindaman Chair to Present Lecture on Genocide and the Christian World

April 2004 marks the 10th anniversary of brutal genocidal killings that took place in the African country of Rwanda and resulted in the deaths of nearly one million people. Drawing from his research conducted to understand past violence in order to achieve a more humane future, Whitworth psychology professor and Edward B. Lindaman Chair Jim Waller will present the inaugural 2004 Lindaman Lecture, "Deliver Us from Evil: Genocide and the Christian World." The lecture will take place Wednesday, April 21, at 7 p.m. in the Music Recital Hall at Whitworth College. Admission is free. Call (509) 777-3707.

Waller's lecture is the first installment of the annual Lindaman Lecture, which will be held at Whitworth each spring and will feature Whitworth's appointed Edward B. Lindaman Chair. The position is an endowed, rotating chair for senior Whitworth faculty who are engaged in significant regional and national academic initiatives and who contribute to public dialogue concerning important social issues. Waller's three-year appointment began in fall 2003.

Waller's lecture follows up research he conducted for his most recent book, Becoming Evil: How Ordinary People Commit Genocide and Mass Killing, (Oxford University Press, 2002), which was selected as a finalist for the Raphael Lemkin Award for Outstanding Book Published in 2001-02 from the International Association of Genocide Scholars.

In Becoming Evil Waller draws from his expertise as a social psychologist and from seven years of research to mount an original argument for why political, social and religious groups wanting to commit mass murder are never hindered by a lack of willing executioners. Psychologists and genocide experts have recognized Waller's book as making a significant contribution toward ongoing efforts to understand human nature and to circumvent future mass killing.

According to Waller, during the April 21 lecture he will address the following questions: Why do Christian institutions that should exemplify the human face of God in a suffering world fail to live out their founder's highest ideals? Why do those who should recognize the human face of God in their persecuted brothers and sisters fail to do so? What are the historical and ethical implications of the Christian churches' response to genocide - particularly in respect to fostering future periods of tolerance?

As Lindaman Chair, Waller has conducted 26 national and international speaking engagements this academic year, addressing issues on diversity and the perpetrators of genocide. Waller's major engagements include the Symposium on Psychology and War, in New York City; the Staley Lecture Series on Diversity and Community at Asbury College, in Kentucky; and the International Society for Political Psychology, in Sweden.

Waller is at work on his next book, tentatively titled A Jesuit at Nuremburg: The Holocaust and the Rise of International Law, and is writing a series of articles and book reviews in professional journals, including Holocaust and Genocide Studies, History of Psychology, and Journal of Genocide Research. He is also serving as the general editor for Deliver Us From Evil: Genocide and the Christian World, a volume of papers resulting from a seminar of the same name that Waller led at Whitworth during summer 2002 under a grant from the Lilly Endowment.

Waller received his doctorate in experimental psychology from the University of Kentucky in 1988. He is a member of the American Psychological Society, the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues, the International Association of Genocide Scholars, and the Spokane Task Force on Race Relations.

Waller, who joined the Whitworth faculty in 1989, is the founder of Whitworth's Prejudice Across America Study Program (next offered in January 2005), which gives students firsthand exposure to the corrosive effects of racism and the work being done by individuals and groups to bring about racial reconciliation. He is planning a new study tour, Peace and Conflict in Northern Ireland, for January 2006.

In addition to Becoming Evil: How Ordinary People Commit Genocide and Mass Killing, Waller is author of Prejudice Across America (University Press of Mississippi, 2000) and Face to Face: The Changing State of Racism Across America (Perseus Books, 1998).

Located in Spokane, Wash., Whitworth is a private liberal arts college affiliated with the Presbyterian Church (USA). The college enrolls more than 2,200 students in 50 undergraduate and graduate programs.

Contacts:

James Waller, professor of psychology, Whitworth College, (509) 777-4424 or jwaller@whitworth.edu.

Julie Riddle, public information specialist, Whitworth College, (509) 777-3729 or jriddle@whitworth.edu.