Toward an Interdisciplinary Field of Hate Studies: Developing a Framework

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.