Ron Hassner

In Anatomy of Torture he analyzes hundreds of trials from the archives of the Spanish Inquisition to uncover the causes, character, and consequences of torture. His book analyzes dozens of cases of torture from Spain and Mexico in the 16th and 17th centuries, relying on archival evidence from Europe and the Americas. These files demonstrate that “torture yielded information that was often reliable: witnesses in the torture chamber and witnesses that were not tortured provided corresponding information about collaborators, locations, events, and practices. Nonetheless, inquisitors treated the results of interrogations in the torture chamber with skepticism.” The torture conducted by the Inquisition yielded corroborative evidence that the Inquisition found useful but it did so slowly and at tremendous social, political, and moral cost. Hassner urges caution in applying those findings to current torture debates.

Hassner holds a B.Sc. in International Relations from The London School of Economics (1995), a masters in International Affairs from the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University (1997), a masters in Religious Studies from Stanford University (2000), and a Ph.D. in Political Science from Stanford University (2003). He was a post-doctoral scholar at Harvard University’s Olin Center. He joined the political science faculty at the University of California, Berkeley in 2004. Since then, he was visiting scholar at Stanford University’s Center for International Security and Cooperation and at the International Institute for Counter-Terrorism at the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya.