Rate My Professor Alexander Hinton

Alexander Hinton is Distinguished Professor of Anthropology in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey-Newark. He holds the position of Director of the Center for the Study of Genocide and Human Rights and serves as UNESCO Chair on Genocide Prevention. Hinton earned his Ph.D. in Anthropology from Emory University in 1997. His research specializations encompass genocide, hate, human rights, and atrocity crimes prevention. He has testified as an expert witness at the Khmer Rouge tribunal in Cambodia in 2016 and is frequently invited to speak around the world on these topics. Hinton previously served as president of the International Association of Genocide Scholars from 2011 to 2013 and as a member or visitor at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton during the same period. He co-convened the Global Consortium on Bigotry and Hate from 2018 to 2025.

Hinton is the author or editor of seventeen books. Notable publications include Why Did They Kill? Cambodia in the Shadow of Genocide (University of California Press, 2005), which received the 2008 Stirling Award for Best Published Work in Psychological Anthropology from the Society for Psychological Anthropology; Annihilating Difference: The Anthropology of Genocide (University of California Press, 2002); Man or Monster? The Trial of a Khmer Rouge Torturer (Duke University Press, 2016); It Can Happen Here: White Power and the Rising Threat of Genocide in the US (NYU Press, 2021); Anthropological Witness: Lessons from the Khmer Rouge Tribunal (Cornell University Press, 2022); and Perpetrators: Encountering Humanity’s Dark Side (Stanford University Press, 2023, co-authored). He has also edited volumes such as Genocide: An Anthropological Reader (Blackwell, 2002), Transitional Justice: Global Mechanisms and Local Realities after Genocide and Mass Violence (Rutgers University Press, 2010), and The Oxford Handbook of Transitional Justice (Oxford University Press, forthcoming 2023). Hinton's honors include the 2009 Robert F. Textor and Family Prize for Excellence in Anticipatory Anthropology and the 2022 Anthropology in the Media Award, both from the American Anthropological Association. Additionally, Perpetrators received the 2023 Choice Award for Outstanding Academic Title from the American Library Association.