Evil, Goodness, and Creating Active Bystandership: A Conversation with Dr. Ervin Staub
Jun 23, 2026 | 12:00 pm ET
(GMT-04:00) Eastern Time (US and Canada)
Duration:
60 min
Price:
No Cost
Evil, Goodness, and Creating Active Bystandership: A Conversation with Dr. Ervin Staub
- Details
- Speakers
Description
From Research to Reality
Exploring Dr. Ervin Staub’s New Memoir on Evil, Goodness, and Moral Courage. Together with ABLE, we are honored to host Dr. Ervin Staub, Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Founding Director of the Psychology of Peace and Violence program at UMass Amherst. In this special webinar, Dr. Staub will discuss his recently released memoir, Evil, Goodness, and Creating Active Bystandership.
Dr. Staub’s life’s work has defined our understanding of moral courage, inclusive caring, and why individuals choose to act—or remain silent—in the face of harm. This conversation will bridge the gap between his world-renowned research and the personal journey that led him to discover the “roots of goodness.”
Why You Should Attend
New to Active Bystandership? Understand the foundational “why” behind your training. Dr. Staub provides the essential context of how individuals can prevent harm and create a culture of care, even in the most challenging environments.
Already a Heroes Community Member? This is an opportunity to elevate your practice. Move beyond the “how” of the curriculum and gain deeper insight from the man whose research informs the very programs you use every day.
Hear the Personal Story
Learn about the lived experiences that shaped Dr. Staub’s perspective on “altruism born of suffering” and his hope for creating active bystander cultures globally.
Whether you are looking to refresh your commitment to the Heroes mission or are just beginning your journey into moral courage, this session with a true legend in the field is not to be missed.
Dr. Ervin Staub
Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Founding Director of the Psychology of Peace and Violence program at UMass Amherst
Dr. Ervin Staub is Professor of Psychology Emeritus at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and Founding Director of its Ph.D. concentration in the Psychology of Peace and Violence. He is the former President of the Society for the Study of Peace, Conflict and Violence (APA Division 48) and of the International Society for Political Psychology.
Born in Hungary, as a young child he lived through Nazism, and then communism. He escaped from Hungary at age 18 after the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 was defeated, lived in Vienna for two years, and then came to the U.S. He finished his undergraduate education at the University of Minnesota and received a Ph.D. at Stanford. He has taught at Harvard, Stanford, the University of Hawaii, and the London School of Economic and Political Science.
Dr. Staub has studied the influences that lead to caring, altruistic behavior and moral courage in children and adults. Having studied “active bystandership” and passivity in the face of people in need, he turned to a focus on perpetration. He studied the social conditions, culture, psychology, and social processes that lead to mass violence, genocide, terrorism, and torture. He studied how such violence progressively evolves, and the role of passive bystanders in allowing violence to unfold. Increasingly, he focused on understanding how to prevent violence between groups and how hostile groups can reconcile.
In addition to a lifetime of scholarship, Dr. Staub has worked on varied projects in field settings based on his research. After the Rodney King incident, he developed a training program for the State of California to reduce the use of unnecessary force by police, by training police officers to be active bystanders who prevent or stop unnecessary harmful behavior by fellow officers. Since 2015 he led an effort to create a successful version of this program by the New Orleans Police Department. Other projects included teacher training to create classrooms that help children become caring and non-violent; a project in Amsterdam to improve Dutch-Muslim relations after significant violence there; a project in New Orleans to promote healing and reconciliation in the wake of Hurricane Katrina; and a project in Western Massachusetts to train students in active bystandership in the face of harmful behavior by their peers.
Starting in 1999, Dr. Staub, Dr. Laurie Pearlman, and their assistants have conducted workshops/trainings in Rwanda for organizations that work in the community, national leaders, and the media. In collaboration with Radio LaBenevolencija of Amsterdam, they created informational and dramatic educational radio programs that were broadcast in the Congo, Burundi, and Rwanda to promote healing, reconciliation, and peace. In 2007 the Rwandan radio projects won the Human Rights & Accountability Award that was launched by the UN for the 60th anniversary of the Declaration of Human Rights. Dr. Staub’s many books and publications include Positive Social Behavior and Morality, The Psychology of Good and Evil, Overcoming Evil, Patriotism in the Lives of Individuals and Nations, and the Roots of Goodness, and The Roots of Evil, which inspired a three-part television series by the same name.
Jonathan Aronie
Co-Founder, ABLE Project at Georgetown Law Partner, Sheppard Mullin LLP & Leader, Organizational Integrity Group
Jonathan Aronie’s entire career has been centered around integrity, and especially the idea that organizational integrity is good fiscal policy, for corporations and criminal justice agencies alike.
After graduating from Brandeis University and Duke University School of Law, Jonathan served as a law clerk to the Honorable Judge Patricia Wynn on the DC Superior Court. In the early 2000s, he served as the Deputy Independent Monitor over the Memorandum of Agreement between the US Department of Justice and the DC Metropolitan Police Department.
Jonathan Aronie is the Leader of Sheppard Mullin’s Government Practice Group, and the founding member of the firm’s Organizational Integrity Group, a cross-disciplinary team of litigators, regulatory specialists, federal monitors, and ex-prosecutors with extensive experience helping organizations prevent and defend against challenges to their organizational integrity.
As an outgrowth of his internal investigation practice, Jonathan was appointed in 2013 by the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana as the Monitor over the New Orleans Police Department. Jonathan leads a team of former police chiefs, internationally-known professors, and other professionals who collectively are responsible for reviewing, assessing, and reporting publicly on the NOPD’s compliance with a far-reaching federal Consent Decree. In that role, he has been integrally involved in overseeing the transformation of what has historically been one of the nation’s most troubled law enforcement agencies. He has spent his time meeting with citizens, business leaders, and civil rights attorneys, in addition to riding along with the police officers themselves in order to ensure that the consent decree is enforced fairly.
As a corollary to his work in New Orleans, Jonathan helped to create and guide the development of Ethical Policing is Courageous (EPIC), the country’s first department-wide peer intervention program for police officers.
In order to make active bystandership available to police departments across the country, Jonathan co-founded the Georgetown/Sheppard Mullin Active Bystandership for Law Enforcement (ABLE) Project, for which he serves pro bono as chairperson of the Project’s Board of Advisors. Jonathan’s leadership has been instrumental in helping ABLE to change the culture in more than 400 police departments across North America, which serve more than 100 million Americans.
Jonathan Aronie has written more than 100 articles, authored or co-authored three books, and speaks nationally on a wide range of topics, including procurement law, corporate ethics, and compliance programs, organizational integrity, and constitutional policing. He lectures frequently for the FBI National Academy.
Abigail S. Tucker
Co-Founder, Heroes Active Bystandership Training
Abigail S. Tucker, Psy.D. is a licensed psychologist in Denver Colorado. In her current role as trainer, consultant and in private practice she works directly with emergency responders, veterans, victims of crime, criminal and juvenile justice entities and behavioral health providers. Dr. Tucker serves as Adjunct Faculty at Colorado State University Global in their Emergency Responder and Military Psychology Program and at her alma mater Nova Southeastern University in their College of Psychology and for the Fischer College of Education and Criminal Justice. Abigail is a certified instructor for Adult & Youth Mental Health First Aid (MHFA) and for the Public Safety module of Adult MHFA, and is a proud national training instructor for the Active Bystandership for Law Enforcement (ABLE) Project.
