HFG Welcomes Its 2026 Emerging Scholars September 16, 2026 (NEW YORK) — Today, The Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation announced the selection of its 2026 HFG Emerging Scholars. The nine doctoral candidates—selected through a rigorous evaluation process—are conducting research that increases understanding of problems of violence around the world. The scholars are completing dissertations on a range of important topics, including school shooting incidents in the United States, anti-minority vigilante violence in India, and the governance of displaced populations and refugees in Lebanon and Turkey. FIRST ROW: KARTHIKA BABY SUJATHA, JUDITH HOPPERMANN, LINDSAY J. LERNER, NAOMI NERO, ENRIQUE OLIVARES-PELAYO; SECOND ROW: MAYRA ORTIZ OCANA, EMMA RIKKEN, AARUSHI SHAH, YASH SHARMA “Does cattle insurance reduce or increase violence between herders? What differentiates a school shooting that occurs from one that was prevented? What is it about psychopathic personality traits that elevates the risk of committing aggression and violence? How do prisons promote conflict between racial and ethnic groups? Each of our 2026 Emerging Scholars—all exceptional doctoral candidates—is asking a question whose answer will, we hope, help to reduce the misery caused by violence, as Harry Guggenheim intended in creating this foundation,” said HFG Director of Research Joel Wallman. The awards are given to promising researchers in their final year of writing a doctoral dissertation that examines a salient aspect of violence. In selecting the awardees, HFG prioritizes research that addresses urgent, contemporary problems. 2026 Scholars and Research Topics Karthika Baby Sujatha (United Nations University – Maastricht Economic and Social Research Institute on Innovation and Technology & Maastricht University) Understanding and Altering Men’s Attitudes, Tolerance, and Behaviors Towards Intimate Partner Violence: A Field Experiment in Kerala, India Judith Hoppermann (SOAS, University of London) Governing Displacement, Contesting the State: Armed Transnational Movements, Refugees and Political Reordering in the Syrian Borderlands Lindsay J. Lerner (John Jay College of Criminal Justice & The CUNY Graduate Center) Advancing School Safety: Comparing Completed & Averted School Shootings Naomi Nero (Georgetown University) Valuing and Devaluing Others: Identifying Mechanisms Relevant to Predicting and Preventing Interpersonal Violence in Psychopathy Enrique Olivares-Pelayo (University of Arizona) Running Raza: An Ethnography from Inside Arizona’s PrisonsMayra Ortiz Ocana (University of Notre Dame) Gatekeeping Justice: Criminal Epistemologies in Prosecuting Organized Crime Violence Emma Rikken (Wageningen University & Research) Drought, Rain, and Raiders: Testing Insurance and Edutainment Against Conflict in East Africa Aarushi Shah (Columbia University) Crime and Replenishment? An Ethnographic Study of the Remedial Work of a Domestic Violence Court in New York Yash Sharma (University of Cincinnati) Majoritarianism and its Discontents: Violence, Mobilization and Resistance in Contemporary India The Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation is a leader in creating and disseminating knowledge on the nature, consequences, and reduction of violence in its many forms, including war, crime, and human aggression. For more information contact: Halima Gikandi, Senior Communications Manager info@hfg.org | 646.428.0973
Which Crimes Do Americans Fear the Most? A New Report from the Council on Criminal Justice Examines Public Fears About Crime August 20, 2026 In August, the Council on Criminal Justice released a new report examining the public fears of different criminal offenses, and the individual characteristics, neighborhoods, broader worries, and other factors associated with those fears. The report was based on an online survey of 2,000 people and found that among 27 specific crimes, respondents worried most about becoming victims of identity theft, residential burglary, and online theft. The women surveyed reported higher levels of worry than men for nearly every offense, and respondents were more worried about a family member being victimized than themselves. “Understanding what influences fear of crime is important for improving people’s quality of life and informing public safety policy” wrote the report’s authors Ernesto Lopez, senior research specialist at CCJ, and Amanda Graham, an associate professor in the Department of Criminal Justice and Criminology at Texas State University. Visit www.counciloncj.com to read the full report, which was published with support from The Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation.
HFG Launches Multi-year Initiative on Violence, Politics, and Democracy July 17, 2024 (NEW YORK) — As shocking events in the US and elsewhere show, political violence is real. The scope of the threat is unclear, as are the motivations that drive people to harm others they disagree with and the effects of such violence on the outcomes of elections and the health of democratic institutions. While media reports and online commentaries convey the sense that incidents of political violence are increasing in frequency and intensity, assessing the actual likelihood of politically motivated acts of physical harm remains challenging, as does determining what to do about such threats. This year, with more than sixty countries, including the US, holding elections, The Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation will explore these issues and seek to identify ways to preempt and respond to such dangers by launching its multi-year Violence, Politics & Democracy initiative. Through research, convenings, and publications, the Foundation will draw on and seek to advance understanding of antidemocratic threats in the United States and other mature democracies. The project will seek both to expand the relevance of this work beyond the scholarly community to those most often tasked with confronting such challenges in policy and practice and to inform public discourse through a focus on factual analysis and civil dialogue. The initiative will initially ask: What is an appropriate definition of “political violence”? At a time when perceptions of an increase in such violence are widespread and definitions have become more expansive, what qualifies as “violence” and when is it “political”? Does political polarization precipitate violence? Widely held, or at least broadly reported, presumptions contend that political polarization is increasing, unyielding, and all but certain to create an environment in which political violence thrives. Does this view accurately describe the relationship between polarization and violence? Does violence increase when perceptions of government legitimacy wane? When citizens believe that structures of governance and the governments that operate within them are lacking in credibility or otherwise illegitimate, what influence does this have on violence, both political and ordinary? Do digital communication and social media, often rife with falsehood and fearmongering, distort objective reality and promote political violence? Can objectivity, truth-telling, and rational thought be reintroduced to the consideration of current events on social media? Do changes to the practice and business of journalism—and threats to journalists themselves—erode democratic norms and institutions that the profession has long sustained? Do these changes damage the environment in which mature democracies are able to prevent or control violence? “Protecting democracy requires a deeper—and more widely understood—assessment of the threats it faces, particularly those associated with political violence,” said HFG President Daniel F. Wilhelm. “It calls for a thorough examination of the source and nature of violence that threatens to undermine democratic institutions and ideals. With the Violence, Politics & Democracy initiative, the Foundation seeks to apply a research lens to these threats and provide a forum for civil discourse about them.” HFG launches the initiative with simultaneous activity from multiple perspectives designed to address the questions above. Government Legitimacy, Social Solidarity, and American Homicide in Historical Perspective, a report by Randolph Roth, 2013 HFG Distinguished Scholar and professor of history and sociology at The Ohio State University, explores the strong historical correlation between citizens’ feelings about their government and fellow citizens and homicide rates in the US. In The Polarization Project, HFG Distinguished Fellow of Practice Greg Berman will conduct a series of interviews with scholars and practitioners who examine or address violence in their work. The interviews will be copublished by The Fulcrum, an editorial site dedicated to civil discourse and good governance. Our Violence, Politics & Democracy speaker series kicks off with “Democracy Tested: How Violent Threats are Affecting Global Elections,” a discussion of election-related violence in the US and beyond. Future events in the series will explore identity politics and othering, the rise of illiberalism, and democratic recession. Register for the first event here. The Role of Social Media in Fostering Political Violence, a collaboration with The Center for Business and Human Rights at the New York University Stern School of Business, will offer a comprehensible assessment of current research on the relationship between social media use (and abuse) and political violence. The report will provide a useful empirical resource and reform roadmap for policymakers, regulators, civil society organizations, industry executives, and serious-minded citizens. Polarization and Violent Threats to Democratic Systems: Assessing the Threats and What We Can Do about Them, a partnership with the Salzburg Global Seminar, will convene an international cohort of researchers, journalists, political scientists, historians, and others with expertise on political polarization, incitement, and violence to assess current dangers and propose responses to them. With Journalism, Democracy, and Violence, the Foundation is exploring the role of journalism in spurring and addressing violent threats to democracy. This inquiry is advised by Tom Goldstein, former dean of the graduate schools of journalism at Columbia University and the University of California, Berkeley, and Harry Frank Guggenheim Distinguished Fellow of Media. Goldstein, author of Journalism and Truth: Strange Bedfellows and other books about the media, will examine how changes in journalism affect democratic norms, institutions, and the violence that threatens them. The Foundation invites those interested in the relationship between violence, politics, and democracy to participate in this inquiry through publications, events, and conversations on LinkedIn, Facebook, and X. The Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation is a leader in creating and disseminating knowledge on the nature, consequences, and reduction of violence in its many forms, including war, crime, and human aggression. For more information contact: Nyeleti Honwana, Program Officer info@hfg.org | 646.428.0971
