Professor Jennifer Eberhardt

Jennifer Eberhardt, Professor, Department of Psychology at Stanford University, will join NAFUSA at the September conference in San Francisco to speak on unconscious bias in law enforcement. As described on Professor Eberhardt’s website, A social psychologist at Stanford University, she investigates the consequences of the psychological association between race and crime. Through interdisciplinary collaborations and a wide ranging array of methods—from laboratory studies to novel field experiments—Eberhardt has revealed the startling, and often dispiriting, extent to which racial imagery and judgments suffuse our culture and society, and in particular shape actions and outcomes within the domain of criminal justice.

Eberhardt’s research not only shows that police officers are more likely to identify African American faces than white faces as criminal, she further shows that the race-crime association leads people to attend more closely to crime related imagery. In one experimental study, for example, people who were exposed to black faces were then more quickly able to identify a blurry image as a gun than those who were exposed to white faces or no faces.

The race-crime association extends beyond the laboratory. Using an actual database of criminal defendants convicted of a capital crime, Eberhardt has shown that among defendants convicted of murdering a white victim, defendants whose appearance was more stereotypically black (e.g. darker skinned, with a broader nose and thicker lips) were more likely to be sentenced to death than if their features were less stereotypically black. This finding held even after the researchers controlled for the many non-racial factors (e.g. the severity of the crime, aggregators, mitigators, the defendant’s attractiveness, etc.) that might account for the results.

Extending the sentencing research to juveniles, Eberhardt found that bringing to mind a black juvenile offender leads people to view juveniles in general as more similar to adults and therefore deserving of more severe punishment. Further, in a study with actual registered voters, Eberhardt found that highlighting the high incarceration rate of African Americans makes people more, not less, supportive of the draconian policies that produce such disparities.

Eberhardt’s research suggests that these racialized judgments may have roots deeper than contemporary rates of crime or incarceration. In a series of studies, she has unearthed evidence that African Americans sometimes become objects of dehumanization. Specifically, Eberhardt has found that even people who profess to be racially unbiased may associate apes and African Americans, with images of one bringing to mind the other.

The dehumanization finding may help to explain the dynamics that occur within the criminal justice context, where high profile controversies feature African Americans who are shot by police or citizens who feel threatened, even though the African American is unarmed. According to Eberhardt’s research, the implicit association between African Americans and apes may lead to greater endorsement of police violence toward, or mistreatment of, an African American suspect than a white suspect.

As daunting as are the problems Eberhardt illuminates, she has recently begun to work with law enforcement agencies to design interventions to improve policing and to help agencies build and maintain trust with the communities they serve. The problems associated with race are ones we have created, she believes, and they are also ones we can solve. Spurred by the innovation that is the hallmark of Silicon Valley, she aims to combine social psychological insights with technology to improve outcomes in the criminal justice context and elsewhere.

Jennifer Eberhardt received a B.A. (1987) from the University of Cincinnati, an A.M. (1990) and Ph.D. (1993) from Harvard University. From 1995 to 1998 she taught at Yale University in the Departments of Psychology and African and African American Studies. She joined the Stanford faculty in 1998, and is currently a professor in the Department of Psychology and co-director of SPARQ, a university initiative to use social psychological research to address pressing social problems.

Professor Eberhardt’s first book “BIASED: Uncovering the Hidden Prejudice That Shapes What We See, Think, and Do” will go on sale on March 26.

Chuck Rosenberg

NAFUSA life member Chuck Rosenberg (ED Virginia 2006-2008, Texas 2005-2006) and the former Acting Director of DEA), will return to present the 2019 ethics lecture at the annual NAFUSA conference in San Francisco, September 25-27. Chuck organized last year’s excellent panel on the opioid crisis. This fall, Chuck will speak on “The Korematsu Story–The Duty of Candor to The Court. Registration for the September conference is expected to begin in June.

Here is his preview:

In early 1942, following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, FDR issued Executive Order 9066, enabling west coast military commanders to set up curfews and exclusion zones, ostensibly to protect the US against sabotage by Japanese Americans.  More than 110,000 Japanese Americans on the west coast were relocated to internment camps, primarily in the mountain west.  However, two reports – one commissioned by the State Department and one conducted by the Naval Office of Intelligence – showed that there actually was not a significant threat from Japanese Americans living on the west coast.  Indeed, for the most part, those reports showed quite the opposite and, to the extent there was a threat from Japanese Americans, it was confined to a small group of individuals largely known to the FBI and national security officials, many of whom were already under surveillance or in custody.  Further, at least two DOJ attorneys knew about the Munson and Ringle reports and believed – and put it in writing – that withholding the findings from those reports from the Supreme Court in connection with the litigation of the Hirabayashi (curfew) and Korematsu (exclusion) cases amounted to a suppression of evidence.  Those DOJ attorneys lost an internal debate to the Solicitor General, who concealed the information from the Court and misled it in oral argument in response to a direct question about the views of the USG on the threat posed by Japanese Americans.  About seven decades later, the SG’s office (led, at the time, by Neal Katyal) confessed error, acknowledging that the reports had been suppressed and that providing truthful information to the Court was not only required but might have affected the outcome.