Homo interfector. Norman Cohn and the Origin of the Montreal Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies (1979–90)

The Montreal Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies, based at Concordia University in Montreal, is Canada's leading research institute and advocacy centre for the study of conflicts, mass atrocity, genocide, and human rights. Nowadays, its featured tasks range from mapping prejudices and hatred online, elaborating new strategies to prevent disinformation or fake news, to defending human lives and strengthening democracy in the whole world. The centre hosts several conferences and workshops every year in order to help politicians, diplomats, academics, experts, soldiers, stakeholders, and general public counter extremism in all its forms. The history of this institution is deeply rooted in the attempt to study conflicts and violence following a comparative, interdisciplinary - chiefly historical and, in some ways, socio-psycho-historical - approach which emerge from the work of the British historian Norman Rufus Colin Cohn (1915-2007) and his Centre for Research in Collective Psychopathology (1962-80). This article deals with the hitherto unexplored contribution of Cohn, his studies on antisemitism and witch hunt in the creation of the Montreal Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies.