6 Experts Available for Timely Analysis on January 6th Anniversary

Director of Communications

This week marks the one year anniversary of the attack on the U.S. Capitol. With the January 6th Commission in full swing and a number of events planned for the anniversary, the following experts are available to provide commentary and analysis for reporters working on related stories.

Vanderbilt University
Sophie Bjork

Dr. Bjork-James is a cultural anthropologist with over ten years of experience researching both the US based Religious Right and the white nationalist movements. She is the author of The Divine Institution: White Evangelicalism’s Politics of the Family (2021) and the co-editor of Beyond Populism: Angry Politics and the Twilight of Neoliberalism (2020). Her research shows that over-throwing democracy is often a goal of far-right movements, and understands the January 6th insurrection as a successful expansion of this goal into a broader conservative movement. 

University of Arizona
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Dr. Earl is an expert on police-protester interactions, including on changes in model protest policing practices, police preparation for protest events, the arrest and trial of protesters, and the consequences of policing on protesters and radicalization processes.

Michigan State University
Frantz

Dr. Frantz specializes in authoritarian politics, with a focus on democratization, conflict, and development. She has published seven books on dictatorships and development, including Authoritarianism: What Everyone Needs to Know (Oxford University Press) and How Dictatorships Work (Cambridge University Press).

University of Maine
Fried

Dr. Fried is co-author of the 2021 book, "At War With Government: How Conservatives Weaponized Distrust from Goldwater to Trump." Fried's research provides a perspective on the January 6 insurrection that emphasizes Republican elites' long-term, strategic efforts to encourage distrust toward government. While employing distrust as a political weapon is meant to help Republicans, the angry right-wing base sometimes turns its wrath on its own leaders. Whatever the focus, inciting distrust and delegitimizing democratic governance proves hard to control.

Kent State University at Kent
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Dr. Mazzei's research focuses on the emergence, organization, and networks of non-state violent actors, paramilitaries specifically. Recent work looks at the emergence and subsequent shifts among right-wing non-state violent actors in Chiapas, Mexico with the evolution of neoliberal economic reforms. On-going research looks at the emergence and evolution of paramilitary groups (or “death squads”) in Iraq after the U.S. overthrow of Saddam Hussein, and in particular at the violence against academics and scientists.

George Mason University
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Dr. McCann is an expert on extremism, preventing/countering violent extremism (P/CVE), and criminal law. He is currently researching why non-state actors pursue chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear weapons; radicalization and de-radicalization pathways; how immigration impacts extremism; and the impact of the Department of Homeland Security's 287(g) program on local crime.