2016 Fall Newsletter

Now Introducing: Assistant Professor Aliza Luft Aliza Luft grew up in Montréal in a small Jewish enclave where she and most everyone she knew had grandparents who survived the Holocaust. As a result, she started wondering about how some civilians could suddenly turn on their neighbors and kill them from a very young age. This question haunted her all the way to Bates College, where she combined sociology, history, and religion to form an interdisciplinary major that examined violence from diverse perspectives. As part of her research, Aliza traveled to six countries in East and Central Europe to analyze Holocaust education in post-Communist countries; an experience that whet her appetite for international fieldwork. Simultaneously, she became aware of the unfolding genocide in Darfur, Sudan, and was ashamed at how little she knew about mass violence outside the European context.

After she graduated from Bates, Aliza began a Ph.D. in Education at UC Berkeley. Her goal was to explore the relationship between education and practices of racialization pre and post-conflict in Colonial and post-Colonial contexts. With thanks to mentors in Berkeley Sociology where she began to work as a teaching assistant, she rapidly learned that the Education Department was the wrong fit for her and thus put the wheels in motion to transfer disciplines. She’ll never forget meeting with one mentor, who said: “You know, you should really go to UCLA. Their sociology program is perfect for someone with your interests!” Yet much to her dismay at the time, she had already missed the application deadline. She did, however, apply and get accepted to the University of WisconsinMadison. While in Wisconsin, Aliza organized her research around questions of decision-making in violent settings and the relationship between social categories, boundaries, and political behaviors.

She is especially interested in how racial, ethnic, and religious cleavages inform and are transformed by extreme violence such as genocide.

Aliza plans to publish a book in the near future about how people shift stances from support for state violence to resistance and saving behaviors within the same war. In forthcoming projects, she also plans to focus on how gender is implicated in movements’ decisions to adopt (or not adopt) violent tactics. Outside of her research, Aliza is interested in politics, feminism, learning how to be a good ally to the Black Lives Matter and LGBTQI movements, what can be done about the current refugee crisis, music, puppies— she and her husband plan to get one in December—and food in LA. Transparent is her favorite TV Show, though before that, Mad Men was. She’s also always looking for good new novels, and loves to hike, bike, and swim. A lot of those activities seem to fit well into the California lifestyle, which is why, among other reasons, she’s thrilled to be in California and at UCLA .