A nationally-recognized expert on the relationship between authoritarian movements, hate violence, and preserving inclusive democracy, Eric brings over 30 years of leadership in community organizing and philanthropy to his roles as Western States Center’s Executive Director and Senior Fellow with Southern Poverty Law Center and Race Forward. Since Eric took the helm in 2017, Western States Center has become a national hub for innovative responses to white nationalism, antisemitism, and structural inequality, towards a world where everyone can live, love, work, and worship free from bigotry and fear.

Currently Co-Chair for The Proteus Fund, Eric co-founded Funders for Justice with the Neighborhood Funders Group and has served as consultant or advisor to numerous philanthropic institutions including Open Society, Tides, and the Brooklyn Community Foundation.

ERIC WARD, Western States Center

OREN SEGAL, Anti-Defamation League

As Vice President of the Center on Extremism, Oren Segal and his team combat extremism, terrorism and all forms of hate in the real world and online.

Recognized as the foremost authority on extremism, the Center provides resources, expertise and training which enables law enforcement, public officials and internet and technology companies to identify and counter emerging threats.

Oren joined ADL in 1998 after working for The New York Times and the Jewish Community Federation in San Francisco. Much of Oren’s 21 years with ADL has been devoted to evaluating the activity and tactics of extremist groups and movements from across the ideological spectrum, training law enforcement officers and publishing reports and articles on a wide range of extremist topics.

Dr. Katz is a historian of modern Europe and the Mediterranean, with specialties in modern Jewish history and the history of modern France and its empire.

He has regularly taught courses at both the undergraduate and graduate level on Jewish history, late modern Europe, the Mediterranean, Jews and Muslims, religion in the modern world, modern France and its empire, and historical methodologies.

Beyond research and the classroom, Dr. Katz has taken a leading role in contemporary conversations about antisemitism on and beyond the Berkeley campus, serving as the Vice Chair of the Chancellor’s Advisory Committee on Jewish Life and Campus Climate.

DR. ETHAN KATZ, UC Berkely

ARIE W. KRUGLANSKI, University of Maryland

Arie W. Kruglanski is a Distinguished University Professor, a recipient of numerous awards, and is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association and the American Psychological Society. He has served as editor of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology: Attitudes and Social Cognition, editor of the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, and associate editor of the American Psychologist.

His work in the domains of human judgment and belief formation, the motivation-cognition interface, group and intergroup processes, and the psychology of human goals has been disseminated in over 300 articles, chapters, and books, and has been continuously supported by grants from the National Science Foundation, NIMH, Deutsche Forschungs Gemeineschaft, the Ford Foundation and the Israeli Academy of Science.

Shannon Foley Martinez, a former violent white supremacist, has two decades of experience in developing community resource platforms aimed at inoculating individuals against violence-based lifestyles and ideologies.

Foley Martinez has worked in at-risk communities teaching and developing dynamic resiliency skills. She has worked for school systems, nonprofits, and community organizations. She has participated in programs with such organizations as the UN Office of Counter Terrorism, the National Counterterrorism Center, Hedayah, The Center for the Prevention of Radicalization Leading to Violence, UN Women, and the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine.

SHANNON FOLEY MARTINEZ, Former Violent White Supremacist

SASHA HAVLICEK, Institute for Strategic Dialogue

Sasha Havlicek is Co-Founder and CEO of ISD, having spearheaded ISD’s pioneering research and data analysis, digital education, policy advisory, training, tech and communications programmes.

With a background in conflict resolution and an expertise in extremism, digital information operations and electoral interference, she has advised a range of governments at the highest levels and has spearheaded partnerships with the UN, EU Commission and Global Counter-Terrorism Forum. She has also worked with the private and civil society sectors to promote innovation, including developing major programmes run in partnership with Google, FB and Microsoft.

Sasha serves as an expert advisor to the UK Counter-Extremism Commission and the Mayor of London’s counter-extremism programme, and is a member of the European Council on Foreign Relations. Sasha previously served as Senior Director at the EastWest Institute where she led conflict resolution programming. Sasha has testified before US Congress, the UK Parliament and is a regular commentator in the media (CNN, BBC, Channel 4 News and other networks).

Matt Masterson is a non-resident policy fellow with the Stanford Internet Observatory. He recently served as Senior Cybersecurity Advisor at the Department of Homeland Security, where he focused on election security issues.

He previously served as a Commissioner at the Election Assistance Commission from December 2014 until March 2018, including serving as the Commission’s Chairman in 2017-2018. Prior to that, he held staff positions with the Ohio Secretary of State’s office, where he oversaw voting-system certification efforts and helped develop an online voter registration system.

Matt holds a law degree from the University of Dayton School of Law and BS and BA degrees from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio.

MATT MASTERSON, Stanford University

DR. JAY VAN BAVEL, Associate Proffessor of Psychology, NYU

An Associate Professor of Psychology and Neural Science at New York University, with an affiliation at the Stern School of Business, Jay Van Bavel examines the psychology of topics such as implicit bias, group identity, team performance, decision-making, and public health. In his new book The Power of Us (co-written with Dominic J. Packer), Van Bavel dives deeper into the science of identity. This page-turning exploration reveals how our sense of self—our feelings, beliefs, and behaviors—is derived from our social groups, challenging society’s dominant assumptions about power and influence. Understanding these topics and dynamics will give you the necessary tools to build smarter, more collaborative groups and teams.

In an age where public life is characterized by ideological battles and impossible conflicts, Van Bavel offers a timely diagnosis for the dissonance ailing our world, as well as a path forward towards collaboration, unity, and success. It is just as applicable for CEOs and leaders making sense of the hybrid workplace, as it is for politicians and government organizations tackling the spread of misinformation online.

DR. PETER T. COLEMAN, Lecturer; Executive Director, Advanced Consortium on Cooperation, Conflict and Complexity in the Earth Institute

Dr. Peter T. Coleman is Professor of Psychology and Education at Columbia University where he holds a joint-appointment at Teachers College and The Earth Institute. Dr. Coleman directs the Morton Deutsch International Center for Cooperation and Conflict Resolution (MD-ICCCR), is founding director of the Institute for Psychological Science and Practice (IPSP), and is co-executive director of Columbia University’s Advanced Consortium on Cooperation, Conflict, and Complexity (AC4).

Dr. Coleman is a renowned expert on constructive conflict resolution and sustainable peace. His current research focuses on conflict intelligence and systemic wisdom as meta-competencies for navigating conflict constructively across all levels (from families to companies to communities to nations), and includes projects on adaptive negotiation and mediation dynamics, cross-cultural adaptivity, optimality dynamics in conflict, justice and polarization, multicultural conflict, intractable conflict, and sustainable peace.

In 2003, Dr. Coleman became the first recipient of the Early Career Award from the American Psychological Association (APA), Division 48: Society for the Study of Peace, Conflict, and Violence, and in 2015 was awarded the Morton Deutsch Conflict Resolution Award by APA and a Marie Curie Fellowship from The European Union. In 2018, Dr. Coleman was awarded the Peace Award from Meaningful World, in celebration of their 30th anniversary and the UN’s International Day of Peace. Dr. Coleman edits the award-winning Handbook of Conflict Resolution: Theory and Practice (2000, 2006, 2014) and his other books include The Five Percent: Finding Solutions to Seemingly Impossible Conflicts (2011); Conflict, Justice, and Interdependence: The Legacy of Morton Deutsch (2011), Psychological Components of Sustainable Peace (2012), and Attracted to Conflict: Dynamic Foundations of Destructive Social Relations (2013). His last book, Making Conflict Work: Navigating Disagreement Up and Down Your Organization (2014), won the 2016 Outstanding Book Award from The International Association of Conflict Management. He is currently work on a book with Columbia University Press that will be released in 2021 on breaking through the intractable polarization plaguing the U.S. and other societies across the globe, titled, The Way Out: How to Overcome Toxic Polarization.