Susan Olzak

Susan Olzak is Emerita Professor of Sociology at Stanford University, where she does research on ethnic and racial conflict, collective action, and social movement organizations. Her prior research projects include (1) a combined state, national, and international-level project (funded by the Sociology Program at NSF) analyzing the impact of environmental advocacy group activity on pro-environmental legislation in the U.S. Congress and in the California State Legislature (with Sarah A. Soule); (2) a 2007 book published on the impact of economic, cultural, and political globalization on armed conflict  in the contemporary period,  (3) examination of temporal and spatial factors influencing the fate of organizations within a variety of social movement sectors, and (4) examination of the impact of attitudes towaard immigrants on radical-right party support in Germany (with Maureen Eger). Her current research includes analyses of the effects of ideological focus on the fate of terrorist organizations, the impact of violent content of social media posts on right-wing activity in the U.S. using Large Language models (LLMs), and an analysis of the impact of typicality on the success of environmental social movement organizations, also using LLMs to evaluate mission statements and causes listed by each organization.

“Dynamics of Collective Action.” Dataset including information on over 23,000 protest events that occurred in the United States, 1960-1995.