April 6, 2006

Whitworth Lindaman Chair James Waller to Present April 19 Lecture
"Religion, Peace and Conflict in Northern Ireland"

The 2006 Lindaman Lecture, "Religion, Peace, and Conflict in Northern Ireland," will be presented by Whitworth Professor of Psychology and Edward B. Lindaman Chair James Waller on Wednesday, April 19, at 7 p.m. in Whitworth's Robinson Teaching Theatre in Weyerhaeuser Hall. Admission is free. For more information, please call (509) 777-4739.

Waller's lecture is the third installment of the annual Lindaman Lecture, which is held at Whitworth each spring and features 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 four-year appointment began in fall 2003.

The transition from violent conflict to a sustainable peace in Northern Ireland continues to be a fragile and difficult process, according to Waller, whose lecture will explore the historical, political and religious roots of conflict in Northern Ireland as well as the region's prospects for peace. Through applying psychological analyses of intergroup relations, Waller will explore the ways in which Northern Ireland's divided society copes with the attendant political, economic and social problems of religion, peace and conflict.

"This is a timely and important topic because, in addition to learning about Northern Ireland, it's vital to learn from Northern Ireland as a laboratory of intergroup relations in our pursuit of understanding the sources of conflict and peace throughout the world," Waller says.

Mirroring the intent of the Lindaman Chair position to integrate scholarship and teaching, Waller's lecture will include reflections from Whitworth students who participated in Waller's inaugural Northern Ireland study program - which bears the same name as his lecture - in January 2006.

Waller is the author of Becoming Evil: How Ordinary People Commit Genocide and Mass Killing (Oxford University Press, 2002); the revised and updated second edition of Becoming Evil will be released in summer 2006. The paperback edition of the first edition was released in July 2005. The book was selected as a finalist for the Raphael Lemkin Award for Outstanding Book Published in 2001-02 from the International Association of Genocide Scholars.

Waller has published an article related to Becoming Evil in the International Journal of Contemporary Sociology (2005) and has contributed a chapter on perpetrators of genocide in the recently published three-volume set The Psychology of Resolving Global Conflicts: From War to Peace (Praeger, 2006). A piece by Waller on evolutionary psychology and the origins of evil will be published in Science and Theology News (July/August 2006). His recent and upcoming speaking engagements include Sonoma State University, the University of San Francisco, Oregon State University (where he will present the Holocaust Commemoration Week keynote address), and the University of Leicester, in England.

Waller, who joined the Whitworth faculty in 1989, is the founder of Whitworth's Prejudice Across America Study Program, which gives students firsthand exposure to the corrosive effects of racism and to the work being done by individuals and groups to bring about racial reconciliation.

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.

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 2,400 students in 50 undergraduate and graduate programs.

Contacts:

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

Kathy Fechter, program assistant, psychology department, Whitworth College, (509) 777-4739 or kfechter@whitworth.edu.

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