The 2025 Hugo Valentin Lecture: Perpetrators: Why do They Kill?
- Date
- 24 September 2025, 17:15–18:30
- Location
- University Main Building, University Main Buildningt, Lecture Hall IV
- Type
- Lecture
- Lecturer
- Professor Alexander Hinton
- Web page
- https://www.uu.se/en/centre/uppsala-centre-for-holocaust-and-genocide-studies/about-us/the-hugo-valentin-lecture/the-hugo-valentin-lecture-2025-professor-alexander-hinton
- Organiser
- Uppsala Centre for Holocaust and Genocide Studies
- Contact person
- Roland Kostic
Welcome to the twenty-second Hugo Valentin Lecture, which will be delivered by professor Alexander Hinton. Professor Hinton’s lecture will examine why perpetrators commit their acts of genocidal violence.
Professor Alexander Hinton. Photo: Lawrence Lerner
The lecture will explore the commonly held assumption that such atrocities are the result of inherently evil individuals committing evil deeds. Evidence of this seeming truism appears everywhere. This intuitive explanation is pervasive, and reinforced by historical narratives that emphasise mass murderers like Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, and Mao, and by the everyday media reports on the excesses of extremism and the ravages of war. Indeed, evil would seem to be most clearly revealed in such extremes of human destructiveness, especially genocide. Drawing on decades of research on this issue, including interviews with former guards, executioners, and torturers, Professor Hinton will explore this dark side of humanity and whether there is more to the story about the nature of human evil.