Current Research
BOOK PROJECT
Fighting Fascism: The Global Campaign to Eliminate Violent Extremism After WWII
An investigation of the wider Allied-nation campaign to punish and reorient defeated populations in Europe and Asia after World War II. The book will survey and evaluate anti-fascism projects in postwar Italy, Germany, Austria, and Japan, and expand the scholarship of transitionary justice and postwar reorientation. This study of the first and largest non-violent deradicalization program in modern times speaks to the pervasive public concern for the rising wave of political extremism and right-wing populism.
RESEARCH NETWORK
Countering Violent Extremism in America Working Group
An interdisciplinary group of experts of right-wing extremism and counter-radicalization whose function is to formulate effective solutions for reducing violent radicalism and depolarizing political culture in the United States. If you are interesting in joining the research network, contact me: dack@rowan.edu
DIGITAL DATABASE
The Deradicalization Database (DeRadDB)
A comprehensive online inventory of historical deradicalization undertakings to reduce, eliminate, and prevent violent political extremism with the intention to provide a new category of analysis for countering violent extremism today. The catalogue and associated data will be made available to the wider public and to counter-radicalization and anti-violence organizations, policymakers, law enforcement agencies, students, and researchers. Expected Launch: Fall 2024
DIGITAL RESEARCH PROJECT
Who Became a Nazi? A Structured Database of the German Denazification Questionnaires, 1945-1949
A collaborative project with scholars in France, Denmark, and Mexico that mines and analyzes individual-level qualitative and quantitative denazification data for political economy and historical research purposes. Since early 2021, our team has digitized nearly 20,000 denazification case files. This research will ultimately stand as a major contribution to our understanding of why people are attracted to far-right extremist movements, as we will gain intimate knowledge about the geographical distribution, socio-economic background, and personal and institutional gateways into the Nazi Party.
Liberation Narratives: Family Storytelling and Holocaust Memory in the United States
An examination of the role of testimony in shaping family, community, and national narratives in the United States surrounding concentration camp liberation. This is largely an oral history project and involves interviewing three different generations of Americans.
ORAL HISTORY
RESEARCH PROJECT
The Fort Ontario Emergency Refugee Shelter
A study of the Fort Ontario Emergency Refugee Shelter in Oswego, New York (or “Safe Haven”) where nearly one thousand men, women, and children, most of them Jewish, were cared for (but also interned) between 1944 and 1945. This was the only refugee center established in the United States during World War II.
RESEARCH PROJECT
Planning for the Military Occupation of Austria
This article explores the interworkings of wartime planning for the American military occupation of Austria. Its focus is the Austrian Planning Unit, the small and largely unsupervised planning group that built the military government apparatus for defeated Austria and devised the denazification strategy.