Who We Are

David N. Myers is the director of the Bedari Kindness Institute, the Initiative to Study Hate, and the Dialogue Across Difference Initiative. He is a Distinguished Professor of History and holds the Sady and Ludwig Kahn Chair in Jewish History in the UCLA History Department. He is also the founding director of the UCLA Luskin Center for History and Policy.

Maia Ferdman is the deputy director of the Bedari Kindness Institute. Maia is a dedicated bridge builder and educator. She is the founder and principal of Bridges Intergroup Relations Consulting, which supports organizations and communities to build vibrant spaces of belonging. Throughout her career Maia has developed numerous interfaith programs, trained government and nonprofit groups in cultural competency, and facilitated conversations across differences about policing, homelessness, racial equity, and more. She holds a B.A. in Global Studies and an M.A. in Latin American Studies from UCLA.

Amalia C. Mora is the Research Manager for the Initiative to Study Hate, which is housed in the UCLA Bedari Kindness Institute. She is an ethnomusicologist, writer, and performing artist whose doctoral research examined the relationship between sexual violence and narratives about lower-caste dancers in India. In addition to her position at UCLA, she is a lecturer in the online Human Rights Practice Program and an affiliated faculty member for the Applied Intercultural Arts Research Program at the University of Arizona, where she helped to establish a new master’s certificate program as well as the UA Consortium on Gender-Based Violence. Amalia received her PhD from the UCLA Herb Albert School of Music, department of Ethnomusicology. 

Felicia is a sixth year PhD candidate in UCLA’s Graduate School of Education in the division of Social Science and Comparative Education. Her research and teaching focus on youth civic engagement, Global Studies, and Indigenous/Decolonizing pedagogies and epistemologies of the Americas. Guided by chicana feminist theory, her current research engages youth in a political and economic critique of contemporary digital media to become advocates for culturally, historically, and politically responsive education based on human dignity, earthly respect, and rooted in the practice of love. She is a Graduate Fellow for the Dialogue across Difference Initiative at the UCLA Bedari Kindness Institute. Felicia received her Master’s in Global and International Studies, Political Economy and Sustainable Development from UCSB, and her BA in Political Science and History from UCSD.

Maria Patlan is the fund and payroll manager at the Bedari Kindness Institute. She comes to the institute from the UCLA College Division of Social Sciences, where she spent a year working as the Divisional Payroll Intern. She received a B.S. in Anthropology with a minor in French from UCLA.