Rafaela Dancygier Researches Responses to Hate Crimes and Bias

When Rafaela Dancygier was a child in Germany, she always wanted to immigrate to the United States. She finally did when she was 18 to attend Brown University. Her path to researching political rhetoric around immigration, she says, wasn’t inspired by any particular life experience or event, despite the fact that she herself is an immigrant.

She went on to earn her Ph.D. in political science at Yale, winning an award for her dissertation on why native-born residents and governments clash with immigrants in some places but not others. That dissertation turned into her first book, Immigration and Conflict in Europe.

Dancygier has served as the IBM Chair of International Studies since 2023 and is a professor of politics and public and international affairs. In July 2021, she became the director of the Mamdouha S. Bobst Center for Peace and Justice, a University-affiliated think tank.

Quick Facts

Title
Chair in international studies and a professor of politics and public and international affairs

Time at Princeton
19 years

Recent Class
Conducting Independent Research in Political Science

Mikel Casal

Dancygier’s Research: A Sampling

Public Services and Immigration Backlash

Although it is a popular assumption that immigration leads to conflict with natives, Dancygier’s research finds that that isn’t necessarily the case. Conflict that does arise usually surrounds the use of public services and the perception that immigrants are crowding out natives. But much of that conflict actually comes from migration within a country. When areas depopulate as people move into cities, the services available in rural areas become less robust. In areas like this, even when there may not be many immigrants, far-right parties run on the idea that left-wing parties have abandoned the people who remain. That makes backlash to immigration an issue even in areas where there aren’t many immigrants.

Attitudes Toward Hate Crimes

The way that hate crimes are framed in the news media has an impact on how the public perceives them, according to an analysis of media reports and representative surveys. The same attack on a Jewish person could be framed in the context of the war in Gaza or as an attack against a person practicing their faith, Dancygier explains. The study Dancygier worked on in 2025 also examined attitudes toward anti-Muslim and anti-Hindu hate crimes. It is not necessarily that people are becoming more supportive of hate crimes, her team found. When politics are involved, people are less likely to condemn hate crimes than when they are perceived as attacks on religious practice.

Condemning Extremism

Political extremism has been rising in the United States and Europe for the past 30 years, Dancygier says. In a study of rhetoric in Germany, Dancygier and her collaborators found that the state downplays violent extremism — on both sides. “It’s a very partisan affair,” she says. When the right is in power, they downplay right-wing extremism, and the same is true for the left. Although the issue is often framed in some European contexts and in the United States as an issue on the right, Dancygier argues that it goes both ways.