How did you become interested in denial and its consequences? I was in elementary school during Desert Storm, in high school during Operation Desert Fox, and in college at the start of the war in Iraq. Like most Americans, my understanding of these conflicts was refracted through politics and the media. So much was left unsaid. For instance, during the second Iraq war, the Department of Defense neither counted nor estimated the number of Iraqi casualties. And euphemisms, such as “collateral damage,” minimized the human costs of these conflicts. In 2004, things changed. The release of photographs of U.S. torture at Abu Ghraib forced politicians and the media to reckon with violence. The photographs were “undeniable” in a sense. Politicians now had to at least admit that detainees had been mistreated in Iraq. So, I began studying the political response to Abu Ghraib and found a range of forms of denial in use. This work turned into a broader study of the denial of torture during the war on terror and my first book, “Talking About Torture: How Political Discourse Shapes the Debate.” I owe the opportunity to think more broadly about denial to the unique teaching environments of DU, CAHSS [the College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences] and my department. I teach electives for both sociology and criminology majors, and my department offers faculty the opportunity to design original courses that reflect our teaching and research passions. In 2016, I designed a new course on denial. Students and I follow denial through all sorts of sociological and criminological contexts. That course is the basis of my new book on denial.