Connor Huff

Connor Huff is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at UCLA. He is also the Associate Director of the UCLA Ronald W. Burkle Center for International Relations. Professor Huff’s research focuses on the causes and consequences of violent conflict. A central contribution of his work is showing how individuals’ experiences with injustice shape their conflict behavior. His book, Why Rebels Reject Peace: Injustice and the Making of Extremists, demonstrates how governments' repressive behavior both before conflicts begin, and as they unfold, explains why rebels refuse to accept compromise peace settlements. His published research also shows how discriminatory policies, institutions, and beliefs can lead to inequality in defense and national security contexts.

Professor Huff also works on conflict mitigation policy. During the 2024-2025 academic year he served as a Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellow in the Global Department for Social Development at the World Bank. In this capacity, he supported a series of World Bank projects designed to reduce violence in West Africa, and worked with the Fragility, Conflict, and Violence group to advance the Bank's analytic agenda on mobilizing the private sector in fragile and conflict-affected settings. He is also currently engaged in advisory work for a frontier artificial intelligence company as it navigates the risks of catastrophic misuse by violent actors.

Prior to joining the faculty at UCLA, Professor Huff was an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at Rice University and a Visiting Fellow in the Program in American Grand Strategy at Duke University. He received his PhD from Harvard University, where he was awarded the Edward M. Chase Dissertation Prize for “the best dissertation on a subject relating to the promotion of world peace.”