For the first time this semester, students were introduced to the work that combats violent extremism through American University’s School of Public Affairs Polarization, Extremism Research and Innovation Lab, an external research center.
The semester-long Justice, Law and Criminology course immerses students in PERIL’s research on issues ranging from antisemitism to misogyny, according to its website. PERIL takes an evidence-based approach to prevent struggling people online from channeling their struggles into hate-fueled violence and extremist ideology, the website says.
The lab was founded in 2019, in part by SPA Professor Cynthia Miller-Idriss. The lab utilizes already effective tactics for medical interventions, like scenarios of domestic violence or suicide prevention, and applies them to hate-fueled and extremist violence.
Katie Spann, the director of operations at PERIL, said mitigating extremism is especially important in the current political atmosphere of polarization, and hopes the course will integrate students into this field of work.
“Because of where we are today, I feel like we are creating a resource or barrier that can help many communities and many various state levels support anything that is needed to lessen the climate of polarization,” Spann said. “The escalation of polarization has increased, and so we feel like that work is very important and effective.”
In collaboration with nonprofit and philanthropy organizations — including the Bertelsmann Foundation which focuses on global perspectives on challenges, and Everytown, which aims to combat gun violence — the lab chooses topics before developing resources to intervene and prevent violent extremism, William Braniff, the executive director of PERIL, said.
Braniff said the lab has recently been most focused on honing digital literacy resources combined with social-emotional learning strategies to help people recognize when they are being manipulated into hate online.
“It’s been really gratifying to be able to do something that is genuinely positive,” Braniff said. “You might be decreasing the likelihood of a violent outcome in the future, but you’re also just helping that person thrive.”
Braniff said he thinks the lab’s most valuable goal is how it specifically tailors its resources and research to target young people, ensuring the next generation is more conscious of what extremism is and how to prevent it.
“It’s really important to me that we inspire the next generation of practitioners to join this community in practice,” Braniff said. “Young people can make a huge impact, an outsized impact, in this area of hate-fueled violence prevention in a way that’s hard to do in other fields.”
This article was edited by Olive Redd, Payton Anderson and Walker Whalen. Copy editing done by Avery Grossman, Mattie Lupo and Ava Stuzin. Fact-checking done by Andrew Kummeth.
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