UCLA Initiative to Study Hate

Viral Harm, Contested Definitions: Antisemitism and the Politics of Listening
2025-11-12 11:00 - 12:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Royce Hall, 236
Hosted by the Alan D. Leve Center for Jewish Studies, ISH postdoctoral fellow Dr. Kathryn Huether will present her talk Viral Harm, Contested Definitions: Antisemitism and the Politics of Listening, on November 12th at Royce Hall.
Dr. Huether’s talk will examine how antisemitism is transmitted and amplified through sound on contemporary social media platforms, situating this analysis within today’s contested debates over how antisemitism itself is defined. Moving beyond text-based definitions to examine music, ambient audio, and meme-driven clips, she will show how these sonic practices blur parody and hate, evade moderation systems, and circulate antisemitic affect through the viral logics of digital culture.
This talk is being hosted by the Alan Dr. Leve Center for Jewish Studies. To register, click here.

Compassion in Practice: Providing Water and Shelter in Gaza
2025-11-17 18:00 - 20:00 | CA
A Conversation with Seba Abudaqa and Tom Kellner, co-founders of Clean Shelter
This event will feature the work of Clean Shelter, a grassroots organization registered in Germany that delivers immediate relief to displaced communities in Gaza through essential sanitation and shelter solutions. Founded by Seba Abudaqa, a Palestinian from Gaza living between Munich and Cairo, and Tom Kellner, an Israeli based in Berlin, the organization focuses on concrete action on the ground, providing shelter, sanitation, and water. Since January 2024, Clean Shelter has established multiple IDP camps, installed water desalination units and constructed water infrastructure, and provided aid to more than 150,000 displaced people across Gaza.
Seba and Tom will speak about what brought them together and what motivates them in the midst of the overwhelming challenges of Gaza.
Register here.

Symposium on Sound and Hate
2026-04-10 13:00 - 17:00 | Schoenberg Music Building, Lani Hall
Eventbrite: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/symposium-on-sound-and-hate-tickets-1984826445328
UCLA School of Music: https://schoolofmusic.ucla.edu/event/symposium-on-sound-and-hate-studies/
Join us Friday, April 10th for a half-day symposium on sound and hate, presented in collaboration with the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music. This symposium explores what hate sounds like—how we hear it in everyday life. From TikTok audio trends and pop music to online subcultures and global conflict, sound plays a powerful role in shaping how hostility is expressed, shared, and felt. This symposium brings together scholars working across music, media, and cultural studies to explore how sound doesn’t just reflect hate—it helps produce, circulate, and sometimes challenge it.
The program opens with a series of short presentations that spotlight how sound operates in very different contexts:

Amalia Mora (UCLA Initiative to Study Hate/Bedari Kindness Institute): examines the soundtracks of online incel communities, asking how music and shared listening cultures reinforce narratives of male victimhood and normalize misogyny. Her work connects these digital soundscapes to longer histories of gendered violence and cultural ideas about masculinity.
Allie Kelly (UCLA Graduate Student, Musicology): explores how music circulates across digital platforms, focusing on how familiar songs—often detached from their original meaning—are reused in online spaces to signal identity, build community, or subtly reinforce harmful stereotypes. Her work highlights how even seemingly benign or popular audio can take on new meanings in platform culture.
Kathryn Agnes Huether (UCLA Initiative to Study Hate and the Leve Center for Jewish Studies Postdoctoral Research Associate-Antisemitism Studies): turns to social media platforms, where short audio clips—songs, chants, and viral sounds (think trending TikTok audio or repurposed pop tracks)—circulate rapidly and often lose their original context. Her work examines how these sounds carry affect, signal belonging, and sometimes normalize antisemitism and other forms of hate. She also asks whether practices like “radical listening” are even possible in today’s algorithm-driven media environments.
Shayna M. Silverstein (Northwestern University-Associate Professor, Performance Studies): challenges familiar assumptions about hate by looking beyond Euro-American frameworks. Drawing on her work in the Middle East, she asks what hate sounds like in contexts where race is not the primary organizing category, and how everyday sonic practices—voice, music, and public sound—can generate and sustain forms of social division such as sectarianism.

The symposium continues with an open conversation among participants, followed by a keynote address from Shayna Silverstein, and concludes with a reception.
Together, the event invites audiences to think differently about listening—not as passive, but as something deeply tied to how hate is produced, experienced, and potentially challenged.
RSVP here.

Undergraduate Research Roundtable Exploring Human Connection, Conflict, and Community
2026-05-20 15:30 - 17:00 | Luskin School of Public Affairs Rm. 4317
On May 20th, the Bedari Kindness Institute and the UCLA Initiative to Study Hate will be hosting an Undergraduate Research Week roundtable featuring undergraduates who are conducting or interested in research that redefines human connection, conflict, and community.
Food will be provided.
RSVP HERE.

UCLA Bedari Kindness Institute and Initiative to Study Hate Impact Symposium
2026-06-03 13:00 - 17:00 | CA
Join the BKI community for an afternoon devoted to sharing research findings drawn from the study of hate and kindness—and to thinking of ways in which we can make a real difference in the world. The BKI Impact Symposium will explore some of the most critical issues in the world today, including navigating AI technologies, reducing political and social polarization, and building practices of compassion and community. The symposium will feature the following three panels, along with research project posters:
Toward a Better AI? Can It Combat Hate with Kindness?
The danger AI poses to society is becoming clearer by the day. AI technologies have already been explicitly implicated in the spread of mis- and dis-information, risk developing lethal means of destruction, and perpetuate sexual violence against women and girls. This panel will consider the very real social, economic, and political threat that artificial intelligence poses and how we can insist on accountability from big tech,while also considering how AI might be used as a tool to combat hate and encourage compassion.
Replacing Polarization and Hate with Compassion
Polarization is a ubiquitous and toxic presence in politics, media, and popular culture in the U.S. It discourages meaningful interactions and connections across social, political, and ideological divides. This panel will consider compassion-guided and prosocial-driven initiatives to reduce polarization and increase people’s sense of shared reality and community across differences.
Fortifying Practices of Compassion and Community
A growing trend in research suggests that practices informed by altruism, prosocial behavior, and acts of compassion and kindness have a significantly positive impact on our mental and physical well being. This panel will discuss the effects of such acts and initiatives on both the individual and community level, ultimately exploring how they might benefit our collective humanity.
***At the culmination of 4 years of research, the Initiative to Study Hate, a community of almost 130 multi-disciplinary researchers, has supported 107 projects to understand and mitigate hate. During the 2025-2026 academic year, BKI has welcomed over 40 researchers on 18 projects seeking to create a more kind and compassionate world.
Date and Time: Wednesday, June 3rd from 1-4pm
A reception will follow from 4-5pm
RSVP HERE
Location details will be sent upon rsvp.
