Name Benjamin Zablocki | Education Columbia University | |
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Born January 19, 1941 (age 83) ( 1941-01-19 ) Brooklyn, New York Books Misunderstanding Cults | ||
Occupation Professor of Sociology | ||
Benjamin Zablocki (born January 19, 1941) is an American professor of sociology at Rutgers University where he teaches sociology of religion and social psychology. He has published widely on the subject of charismatic religious movements, cults, and brainwashing.
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Academic career
Born in Brooklyn, New York, Zablocki received his B.A. in mathematics from Columbia University in 1962 and his Ph.D. in social relations from the Johns Hopkins University in 1967, where he studied with James S. Coleman.
Zablocki heads the Sociology department at Rutgers. He has published widely on the sociology of religion.
Zablocki is a fervent supporter of what he calls 'the brainwashing hypothesis'. The question is not whether brainwashing exists, he asserts, but to what extent. Other scholars, Zablocki notes, commonly mistake brainwashing for both a recruiting and a retaining process; it is merely the latter, however. This misunderstanding enables critics of brainwashing to set up a straw-man, and thereby unfairly criticize the phenomenon of brainwashing. For evidence of the existence of brainwashing, Zablocki refers to the sheer number of testimonies from ex-members and even ex-leaders of cults. Zablocki further alleges that brainwashing has been unfairly "blacklisted" from the academic journals of sociology of religion. Such blacklisters, Zablocki asserts, receive lavish funding from alleged cults and engage in "corrupt" practices.