Upcoming Discussion on The War for Kindness, and the need for Empathy

Join us on the evening of Wednesday, November 16 as Stanford University Professor Jamil Zaki discusses his groundbreaking book, The War for Kindness: Building Empathy in a Fractured World. This one-hour program begins at 7:00 PM in Burgundy’s Logan Loft Theater and will conclude with a book signing.

In an event co-sponsored with our friends at Congressional School, we’ll learn about Zaki’s cutting-edge research, including experiments from his lab, showing that empathy is not a fixed trait—something we’re born with or not—but rather a skill that can be strengthened through effort. Zaki will share stories of people who embody this new perspective, fighting for kindness in the most difficult of circumstances.

At Burgundy, we teach peaceful, collaborative problem-solving and see our diversity as an asset. Yet in a partisan and divided world, we can’t help but notice that empathy is in short supply. We struggle to understand people who aren’t like us. Studies show that we are less caring than we were even thirty years ago. We hope you’ll join us to learn ways to work on and build your own empathy—the same way you’d strengthen a muscle.

About Zaki: Jamil Zaki is a professor of psychology at Stanford University and the Director of the Stanford Social Neuroscience Lab. His research spans a number of domains, including social influence, prosocial behavior, and especially empathy. Using tools from psychology and neuroscience, he and his colleagues examine how empathy works and how people can learn to empathize more effectively. His writing on these topics has appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the New Yorker, and the Atlantic.

Dr. Zaki received his BA in cognitive neuroscience from Boston University and his PhD in psychology from Columbia University and conducted postdoctoral research at the Harvard Center for Brain Science. He has published over 90 peer-reviewed articles and received research and teaching awards from the Social and Affective Neuroscience Society, the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, the Cognitive Neuroscience Society, the Society for Neuroscience, the American Psychological Association, the Association for Psychological Science, Harvard University, and Stanford University.

In addition to his academic work, Dr. Zaki is active in outreach and public communication of science. He has written for outlets including The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, The Wall Street Journal, Harvard Business Review, and The New Yorker. In 2019, he published his first book, The War for Kindness, which NPR called a “wide-ranging, practical guide to making the world better.” He lives in San Francisco with his wife and their two daughters. To learn more visit www.warforkindness.com.