University of Central Florida (UCF), a partner institution of the DHS National Counterterrorism Innovation, Technology, and Education (NCITE) Center of Excellence, is kicking off its Homeland Security Seminar series this Fall, with a lecture from START Senior Researcher Dr. Elizabeth Yates at 12:00 p.m. ET on Friday, November 12. The event is free and open to faculty, students, and all those within the homeland security enterprise. You can find more information about prior and upcoming talks at seminar.findingthefanatic.com. This is not a START event.
Abstract: In 1993, Levin and McDevitt released what is still the best-known typology of hate crime offenders. Nearly thirty years later, there has been very little empirical work done to verify this work. Using new data from a nationally representative sample of hate crime offenders, (the Bias Incidents and Actors Study, BIAS), we assess the empirical basis of the schema, especially in the context of shifting trends in hate crime offending over this period. As our data shows, today, the landscape of hate crime offending is complicated by the growing nexus between hate crime and terrorism, increases in xenophobic animus, the mainstreaming of hate ideologies, and the nationalization of culture and media markets.
Bio: Dr. Elizabeth Yates is a Senior Researcher on the domestic radicalization team at START. She works primarily on the suite of datasets associated with PIRUS (Profiles of Individual Radicalization in the United States) and BIAS (Bias Incidents and Actors Study), which use publicly-available data to empirically analyze extremist radicalization trends in the United States. She is also a co-Principal Investigator on a multi-year NIJ-funded project studying extremist offender reintegration. Dr. Yates focuses especially on far-right violence, extremism, and hate crimes, and has authored research in these areas. In addition, Dr. Yates has taught undergraduate classes in Terrorism Studies and Sociology. She earned a doctorate in Sociology at the University of Pittsburgh, and a BA in International Relations at Tufts University.