Professors Available on Gun Debate Issues in the Aftermath of the Parkland Shootings

EVANSTON, Ill. --- In the aftermath of the shootings at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., Northwestern University professors from a variety of disciplines are available to comment on a wide range of gun- and mass shootings-related issues, including: the impact of student activists, the psychology of group reactions, pro-gun Russian bots, child trauma, the consequences of providing guns to teachers and mental illness in relation to mass shooters.

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Kevin Boyle is the William Smith Mason Professor of American History at Northwestern University in the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences. He is a historian of the 20th-century United States, with a particular interest in modern American social movements. He can be reached at [email protected].

Quote from Professor Boyle
“I do think the Parkland students and those who join them could catalyze the country. We’ve seen it before. It was kids who forced the federal government to de-segregate Little Rock’s schools in 1957, kids who forced white Americans to face the brutality of Jim Crow in Birmingham in the spring of 1963, kids who helped to fill the marches against the Vietnam War. Those kids created fundamental change. So could these kids.”

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Linda Teplin, is the Owen L. Coon Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and director of the Health Disparities and Public Policy Program in the department of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Northwestern’s Feinberg School of Medicine. She can be reached at 773-477-0500 or [email protected].

Quote from Professor Teplin
“Providing guns to teachers would have dire consequences. Teachers may be poor shots. Even police officers in New York City have a ‘hit’ rate of only 17 percent. Practice does not necessarily make perfect. Shooting an armed assailant is not the same as shooting tin cans in the back yard. Stress inhibits accuracy. Moreover, teachers would be unlikely to have a clean line of fire, and could inadvertently wound or kill students or other teachers.

“School shootings capture the nation’s attention because of their drama and potential for contagion. Yet, they comprise a tiny proportion of all deaths by firearms -- less than 2 percent. We must address the equally tragic, if less dramatic daily violence that affects urban youth -- especially racial/ethnic minorities, who disproportionately are killed by guns.” 

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Cassandra Kisiel is the director of the Center for Child Trauma Assessment and Service Planning and an associate professor in the department of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Northwestern’s Feinberg School of Medicine. She can be reached at [email protected] or 312-503-0459.

Quote from Professor Kisiel
“Children and youth of all ages can be negatively impacted by these events, whether they were a part of the school directly impacted, or in any school community across the country. For children and youth, the recent shootings can evoke many emotions including sadness, grief, anxiety, helplessness, anger and difficulties with attention or concentration in relation to the images and stories they hear about through the media or from others at school. 

“Parents and other trusted adults, such as teachers, have an important role in helping and offering guidance to young people during these times of distress, for instance, by helping to start the conversation about the events or finding opportunities for communication, and identifying what children already know.

“These ideas represent best practices from experts across the country through the National Child Traumatic Stress Network. There are several very valuable and effective resources -- where these and other tips for youth, parents and teachers are offered -- at www.nctsn.org under ‘Responding to a School Crisis.’”

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Lori Post is the director of the Institute for Public Health and Medicine and a professor of emergency medicine and medical social sciences at Northwestern’s Feinberg School of Medicine. Post is a violence prevention expert who has spoken extensively on mass shootings. She can be reached at [email protected].

Quote from Professor Post
“Neither the clinical or ‘criminally insane’ definitions of mental illness are particularly useful in prospectively identifying mass shooters. Many people have clinical mental illness and very few are mass murderers. Mass murderers almost always understand that their acts are wrong, so looking for people who don’t understand that murder is wrong will miss virtually all mass killers.

“Understandably, people can’t comprehend what motivates mass shooters; the idea of slaughtering children does not make sense and so it is labeled as insanity. It is understandable to jump to this conclusion but it is wrong -- dismissing mass murder as a mental health event is dangerous and interferes with taking actionable steps to prevent future violent events.”

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Rachel Davis Mersey is an associate professor in the Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications at Northwestern University. Mersey can discuss the influence of pro-gun Russian bots, which spread inflammatory messages following the Parkland shootings. She can be reached at [email protected].

Quote from Professor Mersey
“Generally people believe that they are immune to online coercion -- that they, for example, wouldn’t believe something from a politically slanted or biased source. There are two reasons this isn’t true. 

“First, you are as vulnerable to inaccuracies and influences in your social network as the most vulnerable person with whom you are friends. That's the power of social sharing. Something is validated and thereby magnified because of the action of one and then that happens again and again, until you now see something that's been liked by many people in your network so you're influenced to believe it. 

“Second, the ‘best’ work by the Russians and other interlopers is well disguised either through impersonations of others on social media or well-crafted digital profiles. That means even very thoughtful social media users can be duped. And thus the vicious cycle back to point one, you are as vulnerable to inaccuracies and influences in your social network as the most vulnerable person with whom you are friends.”

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Nour Kteily is an assistant professor of management and organizations at Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management. His research uses the tools of social psychology to investigate how and why social hierarchy and power disparities between groups emerge, and how this influences intergroup relations and prospects for conflict resolution. He can comment on the psychology of group reactions, for example, from politically affiliated groups. Please contact him by reaching out to Molly Lynch at 773-505-9719 or [email protected].

Quote from Professor Kteily
“When such attacks happen, we often learn the identity of the attacker long before we know about his or her motive -- was it a politically motivated terrorist attack, a crime of passion, the result of mental illness? Even as the facts emerge, they regularly fail to provide a plain answer.

“But that doesn’t stop us from interpreting the ambiguous events anyway -- and our own partisan motivations. What people think of the violent acts hold the potential to color society’s perception of the actor’s group as a whole. We care a lot about protecting our groups’ reputation; indeed, previous research shows that we go to substantial lengths to publicly dissociate a disreputable ingroup member from the rest of the group.”

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