David J. Simon is the Assistant Dean for Graduate Education as well as a Senior Lecturer in Global Affairs. He also serves as the Director of the Genocide Studies Program at Yale University.
David's research focuses on mass atrocity prevention and post-atrocity recovery, with a particular focus on cases of mass atrocity in Africa, including those in Rwanda and Cote d’Ivoire. He is co-editor of Mass Violence and Memory in the Digital Age: Memorialization Unmoored (Palgrave-MacMillan, 2020, with Eve M. Zucker), and co-editor of the Handbook of Genocide Studies (Edward Elgar, forthcoming, with Leora Kahn). He helped launch the Mass Atrocities in the Digital Era initiative within the Genocide Studies Program (with Nathaniel Raymond). The initiative recognizes that digital technology has brought about sea changes in all aspects of mass atrocity — from the commission of it to the efforts to prevent it to the prospects of holding perpetrators responsible — and seeks to bring experts from the fields of genocide studies, international criminal law, and internet data governance in conversation with one another to devise appropriate responses.
He has served as a consultant for various United Nations offices, including Office of the Special Advisor for the Prevention of Genocide, the Millennium Development Project, and the UN Development Program.
David Simon holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of California, Los Angeles and a B.A. from Princeton University.