\u201cI’m always proud when students put the things they study into practice.\u201d<\/p>\n
UConn students will have a chance to learn from Waller \u2013 and perhaps find their own inspiration to do incredible work \u2013 this coming academic year.<\/p>\n
In August, he officially joins UConn\u2019s faculty as the new director of Dodd Human Rights Impact<\/a> and as the first Christopher J. Dodd Chair in Human Rights Practice \u2013 a unique blend of roles combining classroom with practice as he leads the University\u2019s human rights outreach and advocacy efforts, with joint faculty appointments to the Gladstein Family Human Rights Institute<\/a> and the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences’ Department of Literatures, Cultures, and Languages.<\/a><\/p>\n And despite a packed agenda this fall, what Waller most looks forward to is joining UConn\u2019s interdisciplinary human rights team \u2013 and, of course, teaching.<\/p>\n \u201cNever Grew Out of Asking Questions\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n For Waller, the opportunity to lead Dodd Human Rights Impact came at a point in his career where he was ready to join a larger institution and to stretch his own wings as a scholar of human rights.<\/p>\n But he wouldn\u2019t have taken on the role, he says, if it didn\u2019t involve teaching.<\/p>\n \u201cThat’s always been what I pride myself on and what I love doing,\u201d he says, \u201cand so, the fact that this position included teaching was a big draw for me.\u201d<\/p>\n Learning has been a career-long process for Waller himself. He was a first-generation college student who grew up in the south and went to college to play basketball.<\/p>\n Like many first-gen students, he didn\u2019t walk onto a college campus for the first time knowing what he wanted to do, or that he would ultimately become an educator and a scholar.<\/p>\n \u201cI had no idea what college was about, no idea if I\u2019d ever make it through,\u201d he says. \u201cI’d been born and raised in the Deep South, and I still remember as a young kid asking my parents questions about why there were still segregated drinking fountains or restrooms when you go on these back roads through Alabama and Mississippi. And I think in some ways, I just never grew out of asking those questions.\u201d<\/p>\n Waller earned his bachelor’s degree from Asbury University in Kentucky, and went on to earn his master\u2019s from the University of Colorado and his Ph.D. in social psychology from the University of Kentucky. In graduate school, he never stopped asking questions about race relations, but he didn\u2019t start actually studying the Holocaust until he participated in a faculty exchange program during his first faculty appointment at a small college in Washington state that sent him to teach in Germany for two summers.<\/p>\n \u201cI was teaching courses on intergroup relations,\u201d he says. \u201cThe Berlin Wall had come down, and students from Eastern Europe were flooding in to take these type of courses, and in their projects, a lot of them were focusing on the Holocaust as their example of intergroup mis-relations.<\/p>\n \u201cI was struck by their papers. I had never studied the Holocaust at all. I was living in Germany for those two summers, and started to do a lot of touring, speaking with people who were archivists in museums and elsewhere, and then came back to my home institution. Two years later, I taught what I think was the nation\u2019s first course on the psychology of the Holocaust.\u201d<\/p>\n In learning about the Holocaust and other instances of genocide, Waller found an area where he, as a social psychologist, believed he could uniquely contribute scholarship.<\/p>\n Those beginnings in Germany kicked off a career in researching and teaching about genocide and especially the psychology of those perpetrators who commit genocide.<\/p>\n \u201cIn Holocaust studies you could, at that time, read a book on the history of the Holocaust, about victims and survivors and bystanders and the architects of genocide,\u201d Waller says. \u201cBut if you said, \u2018OK, I\u2019m looking for a few pages on the people who actually pull the triggers, the people who actually did the killing,\u2019 people just didn\u2019t study that. My field of training, social psychology, focused a lot on people\u2019s misbehavior in those type of settings, so I was fortunate to have a disciplinary lens that could add something to a conversation that was just starting to hit the ground in Holocaust studies.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cA Sense of Responsibility\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n The community of human rights scholars within the United States is pretty small \u2013 everybody still knows everybody, Waller explains. So, Waller \u2013 who spent most of his career working at smaller liberal arts colleges \u2013 knew about UConn\u2019s reputation as a leader in human rights education.<\/p>\n When the opportunity arose to come to UConn, he was eager to see how his work might fit into a bigger picture.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve been working in the field of genocide studies and atrocity prevention for 30 years or so,\u201d he says, \u201cbut within that, I’ve always had an interest in connecting that work to the broader issues of human rights. I think my vision for what I wanted to see for the last chapter of my career was more broadly within the field of human rights and understanding genocide studies as one piece of that.\u201d<\/p>\n And he\u2019s found that opportunity as the new leader of Dodd Impact.<\/p>\n The outreach and engagement arm of human rights at UConn, Dodd Impact Programs works to develop and support initiatives that seek to directly impact local and global communities by helping them meet their human rights challenges.<\/p>\n It\u2019s part of UConn\u2019s Gladstein Family Human Rights Institute<\/a>, one of the top human rights academic and research programs in the country, and housed in The Dodd Center for Human Rights<\/a>, which serves as the hub of human rights at UConn.<\/p>\n Established more than 25 years ago, The Dodd Center also houses Thomas J. Dodd\u2019s collection of papers and letters<\/a> from his time prosecuting Nazi War crimes as executive trial counsel at the historic Nuremberg Trials.<\/p>\n Throughout his career, Waller has taught about Nuremberg and transitional justice and at times used Thomas Dodd and other Nuremberg prosecutors as examples in some of his teaching. He sees a lot of himself and his own professional experiences in the way in which Dodd Center and human rights at UConn have evolved into world leaders in the field over time.<\/p>\n \u201cI love the fact that, in some ways, this position mirrored my own development in the field,\u201d Waller says. \u201cThe archives really started with the Nuremberg Papers and Thomas Dodd\u2019s involvement in post-Holocaust justice, and then that grew and expanded into this larger field of human rights. And that really has mirrored my own trajectory in the field as well.\u201d<\/p>\n The opportunity to serve as the first Christopher J. Dodd Chair in Human Rights Practice comes with its own recognition, but also special responsibility, Waller notes.<\/p>\n Named for Thomas Dodd\u2019s son, Connecticut Senator Christopher J. Dodd<\/a>, a human rights champion in his own extensive career in public service and a major supporter of human rights at UConn, the chair was established in 2020 with the support of nearly 100 donors. According to the UConn Foundation<\/a>, endowed chairs and professorships are essential to the University\u2019s recruitment and retention of faculty talent and the overall enrichment of the academic experience.<\/p>\n \u201cThere’s an honor anytime you hold a position as an endowed chair, and it\u2019s an honor to be the first Christopher Dodd Chair in Human Rights Practice,\u201d Waller says. \u201cI think it’s a recognition of the work you’ve done to receive that type of position, but it’s also a recognition of the work you’re expected to do as well. I take it with a sense of responsibility that I’m very willing to embrace.\u201d<\/p>\n That responsibility, says Sen. Dodd, is to work to enact awareness and change, while also continuing to develop scholarship and empowering the next generation to find their place in the world and make a difference.<\/p>\n \u201cThe creation of this endowed chair is a testament to decades of human rights engagement, outreach, academics and research at The Dodd Center for Human Rights,\u201d he says. \u201cUConn has earned a reputation as a leader in human rights education and practice both in and out of the classroom and generous donors have stepped up to support human rights at UConn.<\/p>\n \u201cThanks to the leadership of President Radenka Maric, the Board of Trustees, and UConn faculty and staff, this endowed chair will help expand this truly important work at home and abroad. I am pleased to welcome Dr. Jim Waller, whose breadth of experience, scholarship, and community engagement will enhance and strengthen human rights at UConn.\u201d<\/p>\n ‘That Would Be Remarkable’<\/strong><\/p>\n Despite his deep love of teaching, Waller won\u2019t be in a UConn classroom in the fall 2023 semester.<\/p>\n Instead, he\u2019s laser focused on his first major responsibility as director of Dodd Impact: the inaugural Human Rights Summit at The Dodd Center for Human Rights<\/a>.<\/p>\n The three-day summit kicks off on Wednesday, October 25, at The Dodd Center with the awarding of the 2023 Thomas J. Dodd Prize in International Justice and Human Rights to the Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center<\/a> in Kyiv, Ukraine.<\/p>\n Entitled \u201cHuman Rights and the Global Assault on Democracy,\u201d the Dodd Summit will bring together scholars, activists, policymakers, artists, students, and business leaders from across the world to examine the key human rights challenges of our time and generate new ideas to promote social justice and human dignity globally.<\/p>\n The summit will include a mix of high-profile lectures and keynotes and roundtable discussions, serving as a critical venue for sharing insights, building relationships, and inspiring action.<\/p>\n The summit comes at an important time, according to Waller, as more than 50 percent of the world’s population currently lives in a country led by an autocratic or authoritarian regime and as even functioning democracies around the world are struggling with what it means to be a democracy.<\/p>\n \u201cWe live in a world in which we are becoming increasingly identified not just by who we are, but by who we\u2019re not,\u201d Waller says. \u201cWe have a world in which division is almost the rule, and when division is the rule, it means that some people who are not in positions of power are going to suffer more than other people, and that’s where human rights matters.\u201d<\/p>\n While the summit intends to attract notable figures in the field, and to take on some of the most pressing topics of modern times, a main metric of its ultimate success for Waller and the Dodd Impact team will be student engagement in the summit.<\/p>\n The summit will conclude with a workshop designed around student participation and what it means for us here at home in the U.S., and even on campus at UConn, to sustain democracy.<\/p>\n \u201cDemocracy is not automatic,\u201d Waller says. \u201cIt has to be sustained with effort and will. If we can get a lot of students in who get that message and start to recommit to that, to me that would be our big success. It won’t matter the names who have come. It will be that students can leave the summit and say, \u2018Yeah, democracy doesn’t just flourish on its own. It takes work to do it, and we need to be part of that work.\u2019 That would be remarkable.\u201d<\/p>\n![\"Beauty](\"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/Dodd_211001a252-1024x683.jpg\")