- Harvey Charles, vice provost for International Education, has been elected to the executive board of the Association of International Education Administrators, the leading national organization that serves senior international officers at universities and colleges around the world. He will serve a three-year term, beginning at the annual meeting that convenes in Washington, D.C., next month.
- Neil Websdale, professor of criminology and criminal justice, has published a new book Familicidal Hearts: The Emotional Styles of 211 Killers. “Familicide involves the killing of a current or former spouse or partner and one or more of their children, followed in many cases by the suicide of the perpetrator,” explains Websdale. “These killings are limited to the modern era and seem to be on the rise in late modern times, deeply disturbing the communities in which they occur.”In Familicidal Hearts, Websdale explores the emotional styles of 196 male and 15 female perpetrators of familicide, situating their emotional styles on a continuum with livid coercive killers at one end and civil reputable murderers at the other. He says most perpetrators see themselves as failing to live up to the demands of modern era gender expectations as fathers, lovers, and—much more rarely—as wives or mothers. In spite of the plethora of case details used, Websdale contends that at some level, familicides are “inexplicable and reflect the haunting effects of modern emotional formations that defy scientific analysis.”
