In Memoriam: Professor of Peace Psychology Bernhard Leidner

The Human Security Lab and University of Massachusetts-Amherst community, as well as the discipline of social psychology, lost a brilliant mind and beloved colleague this weekend when Psychology and Brain Sciences Professor Bernhard Leidner, Associate Director and co-founder of Human Security Lab, passed away due to complications from his disability, which he had survived since childhood to become one of social psychology’s most brilliant minds.

Referred to by some friends as the “Stephen Hawking of Psychology,” he was internationally known for his research on intergroup violence, international conflict (reduction), and justice, primarily in the context of large social categories such as nations and ethnic groups. At Human Security Lab, Leidner was involved in the Peace and Conflict and Health Security research clusters. He pursued collaborative projects with Professor Kevin Young on societal responses to the Covid-19 pandemic and with Charli Carpenter on citizen attitudes toward the new nuclear ban treaty. He was also a co-PI with Charli Carpenter on a National Science Foundation grant that collected the first random citizen surveys from inside Taliban-controlled Afghanistan.

Beyond his work with Human Security Lab, Leidner was a heavyweight in his wider profession. He ran a separate War and Peace Lab in the Peace Psychology program in the College of Natural Sciences at UMass Amherst, published prolifically with countless collaborators, and mentored numerous doctoral students and early career scholars, while nurturing interests as diverse as gaming, paragliding, heavy metal music and international travel. An obituary penned by his graduate mentor, friend and colleague Emanuele Casntano and close friend and colleague Gilad Hirschberger was distributed by the College of Natural Sciences and reads:

Bernhard (Berni) Leidner passed away on November 19th 2022. He was one of us: A social psychologist who spent half of his 39 years of life conducting research on intergroup relations. Berni graduated from the Free University of Berlin in 2006 and in the same year he joined Emanuele Castano’s lab in New York, where in 2010 received his Ph.D. He spent his entire academic career at UMASS Amherst, where earlier this year he was promoted to Full Professor. Among his various awards and recognitions, in 2013 he was named a rising star by the Association for Psychological Science, and in the following years he did rise, indeed, carrying out important research on social identification processes, morality, and the role of collective trauma and of narratives in the perpetuation of violent conflict. Aside from his scientific contributions, which remain with us, Berni leaves us a legacy of inspiration. Confined to a wheelchair for all his truly too-short life, and being able to move only his head and forearms, Berni had no patience for pity or pretense; he preferred for the rest of us to acknowledge that he had been bloody unlucky; he continuously joked about his situation, and appreciated when you did, too. He overcame obstacles that we can hardly imagine and, most importantly, he did so with wit and humor. His laugh was contagious, and this is how we want to remember him.

Calling hours are at Douglass Funeral Home on Monday, November 28 from 5:00-8:00. A celebration of Berni's extraordinary life will be held on UMass Amherst campus in the near future. Stay tuned for details as soon as they are available.