Episode description

The Science of Diversity uses a multidisciplinary approach to excavate the theories, principles, and paradigms that illuminate our understanding of the issues surrounding human diversity, social equality, and justice. The book brings these to the surface holistically, examining diversity at the individual, interpersonal, and international levels. Shedding light on why diversity programs fail, the book provides tools to understand how biases develop and influence our relationships and interactions with others. Shermer and Weissmark also discuss:

• What is diversity and how do we understand it?
• How is diversity related to people’s perceptions of fairness and justice?
• Does respect for diversity promote peace and positive change?
• psychology and neuroscience of classification/stereotyping,
• Freudianism to behaviorism to cognitive science to post-cognitive science,
• the self, consciousness, ai, and free will in the context of a science of diversity,
• revenge and justice,
• Israel and Palestine,
• nationalism: ethnic and civic,
• just-world theory of inequality,
• intergenerational justice and reparations,
• BLM and reparations, and
• the future after 2020.

Mona Sue Weissmark is an American clinical psychologist and social psychologist, researcher, and author whose work on diversity and justice has received global recognition. She is best known for her groundbreaking social experiment of bringing children of Holocaust survivors face-to-face with children of Nazis, and later, grandchildren and great-grandchildren of African American slaves with descendants of slave owners. She is also a professor of psychology and author of numerous journal articles and the books: Doing Psychotherapy Effectively (University of Chicago Press); Justice Matters: Legacies of the Holocaust and World War II (Oxford University Press); The Science of Diversity (Oxford University Press).