Date: Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Time: 6:45 - 8:30 PM
Place: Silver, Room 414
As part of the 2009 SHARP Lecture Series, in conjunction with the Selma Rubin Distinguished Lecture Series, Gunnar Heinsohn, frequent contributor to the Wall Street Journal and the Economist, will be speaking on modern warfare and terrorism in relation to his now famous Youth Bulge Theory.
Gunnar Heinsohn is a German sociologist and economist. Since 1984, he has been a tenured professor at the University of Bremen, where he heads the Raphael-Lemkin Institute for Comparative Genocide Research named for Raphael Lemkin. His list of publications includes almost 700 scholarly articles, conference presentations, and books. His research has been focused on developing new theories regarding the history and theory of civilization.
He is known most widely for his theory of the Youth Bulge. He argues that an excess in especially young adult male population predictably leads to social unrest, war and terrorism, as the "third and fourth sons" that find no prestigious positions in their existing societies rationalize their impetus to compete by religion or political ideology. Heinsohn claims that most historical periods of social unrest lacking external triggers (such as rapid climatic changes or other catastrophic changes of the environment) and most genocides can be readily explained as a result of a built up youth bulge, including European colonialism, 20th century Fascism, and ongoing conflicts such as that in Darfur, The Palestinian uprisings in 1987-1993 and 2000 to present, and terrorism.
Heinsohn's contributions to genocide research include an encyclopedia of genocides, a generalized version of youth bulge theory and a new theory of Hitler´s motivation for the Holocaust.
