Cynthia Miller-Idriss

Cynthia Miller-Idriss is a professor in the Schools of Public Affairs and Education at American University, where she is also the founding director of the Polarization & Extremism Research & Innovation Lab (PERIL). She is a Draper Richards Kaplan Foundation Entrepreneur and was the creative lead for the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation’s 2022 residency program on social cohesion in Berlin. Miller-Idriss regularly testifies before the U.S. Congress and briefs policy, security, education, and intelligence agencies in the U.S., the United Nations, and other countries on trends in domestic violent extremism and strategies for prevention and disengagement. She is the author, coauthor, or coeditor of seven books, including the forthcoming Man Up: The New Misogyny and the Rise of Violent Extremism (Princeton University Press, 2025) and Hate in the Homeland: The New Global Far Right (Princeton University Press, 2020). Her next book (with Pasha Dashtgard), A School Without Hate: Evidence from Education Interventions, is under contract at Harvard Education Press. Miller-Idriss writes frequently for mainstream audiences, as an opinion columnist for MSNBC and in other recent bylines in The New York Times, The Atlantic, Foreign Affairs, The Washington Post, Politico, USA Today, The Boston Globe, and more.

Miller-Idriss’s Andrew Carnegie Fellows project, “Cultivating Resilient Democracies: Gendered Divides, Polarization, and Social Cohesion,” is a mixed-methods, multiphase project that will investigate the relationship between gendered narratives and political polarization among Gen Z youth, examining whether and how battles over gender and feminism are affecting American political divides and social cohesion. The research will shape strategies to reverse course and strengthen democratic resilience, including through educational interventions aimed at improving the well-documented challenges young men experience.