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Students, faculty, and staff at SUNY Corning Community College will participate in a variety of curricular and co-curricular activities that explore the findings of Pulitzer-Prize winning reporter Eli Saslow in Rising Out of Hatred: The Awakening of a Former Nationalist. The book has been named the 2019-2020 One Book, One College selection, and Saslow has been named the Spring 2020 Walter R. Smith Visiting Scholar.

According to an article in The New York Times, Saslow’s book, “tells the story of Derek Black, the son of Don Black, the founder of Stormfront, until recently the largest and most important extremist website in America. Derek’s godfather is David Duke, the former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard and Louisiana state representative, who groomed Derek from an early age to succeed him as a leader of the white nationalist movement, and who saw in Derek … the precocious face of that future.”

Saslow’s book chronicles Black’s evolution, from the face of an extremist to an empathetic, anti-racist crusader. The first-hand account of Black’s life highlights his “outing” as a White supremacist while a college student and his journey to redemption with the help of a woman named Allison, who “forced him to imagine the effects his ideas would have on people he cared about … .”

The New York Times book review was published online on Sept. 8, 2018. Details for the Spring 2020 Walter R. Smith Visiting Scholar event will be forthcoming.