Creating Civil Conversation Whether Knocking on Doors in Iowa or Down the Hall

Wednesday, October 24, 2018 - 12:00pm

Speakers: 

Derek Black

Graduate student, University of Chicago. Derek Black, grew up among the leadership of white nationalism, and was an activist himself until experiences in college compelled him to denounce it.

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Join us as we discuss the commonplace aspects of white nationalism and explore ways to have conversations to oppose it in situations that are constructive, combative, or, in some instances, a combination of the two.

R. Derek Black was raised in one of the most prominent families leading the white nationalist movement. His father founded the first white nationalist website and online community, Stormfront, and Derek spent the first two decades of his life as an enthusiastic activist in his family’s movement.  While attending a liberal arts college, amidst an enormous uproar by the students over his presence, he began to engage with friends through a weekly Shabbat dinner in the dorms. Through long, private and sometimes painful, conversations with a person he met at those dinners, he conceded that the evidence for the ideology he had fought so hard to promote did not hold up, and that he had actively caused harm by promoting it. He renounced the white nationalist movement in 2013 and has spent the years since then coming to terms with his identity. Today he is a doctoral student in history at the University of Chicago, and is the subject of the recent book by Eli Saslow, Rising out of Hatred: The Awakening of a Former White Nationalist.

Derek will help us gain an understanding of the frequent assumptions that white nationalist organizations use to spread their message, and ways to counter those talking points among more moderate Americans. 

This program is the third in a 5-part series on the 2018 elections. Coffee, tea and desserts will be provided. 

For a interview with Derek on the "Daily Show with Trevor Noah, go here; for an op-ed  by Derek published in the New York Times on November 26, 2016, go here. 

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