Lecturer Professor Amos Guiora was named a 2026-2027 Presidential Societal Impact Scholar by University of Utah President Taylor Randall. The award recognizes faculty members whose area of focus addresses a major societal issue and has the potential to inform public debate and positively impact individuals, institutions and communities.
Guiora leads Utah Law’s Bystander Initiative, in which he and a team of student research assistants work through books, law review articles and legislative efforts to hold enablers and bystanders of abuse accountable.
“Working with Professor Guiora on the Bystander Initiative was one of the great honors of my life,” says alumna Anna Hall (JD ’24), who received the inaugural Alexander Zeev Guiora Bystander Initiative Award in 2024. “Guiora cares deeply for the people that are written about and making sure we are trying to hold bystanders and enablers accountable. There is no one more deserving of this award. His research has not only impacted people in the United States but has also reached around the world.”
3L Sophia Gulgulian, who was honored with the award in 2025 and currently serves as a research assistant, says her time working with Guiora and the Bystander Initiative has been one of the most meaningful and formative experiences of her law school career.
“Professor Guiora challenges his students to think beyond doctrine and to confront the real-world consequences of law, particularly in terms of accountability, security, and institutional responsibility. His work on the concept of ‘enabling’ has shaped how many of us understand institutional failures—showing how silence, inaction, and bystander behavior can allow harm to occur and persist,” she says. “Through his mentorship and the opportunities, he creates—whether in the classroom, through simulations, or collaborative work—and pushes students to engage with the law not just as an academic subject, but as a tool for confronting difficult societal issues and driving meaningful change. Seeing him recognized as a Presidential Societal Impact Scholar is incredibly special and deeply deserved because his work truly reflects the kind of scholarship that makes a real difference both inside and outside the classroom.”
For 2026 Bystander Initiative Award-Winner Samantha Needs, the research—and lots of hard work—has made a big impact on her.
“It’s amazing to be part of Guiora’s research on such difficult topics that make a real change in our society,” she says.
Influence that extends beyond Utah Law
Sixth-grade teacher Amy Burgon-Hill connected with Professor Guiora in 2019. Since that time, Guiora has taught her students at Eisenhower Junior High in Taylorsville, Utah, about the Holocaust and will be returning to teach again this month. Burgon-Hill says she will always be indebted to him for the way he teaches them.
“I do not know if the best part of having Professor Guiora come to my school is the way he inspires students by sharing his parents’ Holocaust survival stories, encourages the students by sharing realistic and age-appropriate ways to be an upstander, or validates them by seeing their power and worth at this vital time in their lives,” she recalls. “I do know he has made lifelong impressions each time he has been here, and students ask each year when ‘our friend, the professor’ will be back.”
Michelle Denault, a public speaker who travels the country telling the story of her grooming and abuse, says she always includes a quote from Guiora’s book “The Complicity of Silence,” which tells the story of 12-year-old Jeremy Bell and his murder by his school principal, Edgar Friedrichs. It explains what made Jeremy Bell vulnerable and what enabled Friedrichs to harm him.
“The enabler didn’t do Jeremy any physical harm that night he was murdered by a teacher who had been passed from school to school for decades, but without the enabler, Jeremy wouldn’t have been there with that teacher. I tell my audience: ‘As a survivor, I had to sit with that statement for a long time. I hope you will sit with it as well. Once again, you are mandated to report suspected child abuse. One call could have saved Jeremy’s life. One simple call,'” she says.
Denault says that she can’t convey in words what Guiora’s work has meant to her and other survivors.
“In an area most don’t dare touch, he has reached in with both hands to expose where failures are occurring. The validation in that is enormous and so needed,” she expresses. “Amos has validated my experience of institutional betrayal, made me see I did no wrong, and given me peace in places there were none.”
Learn more about the Presidential Society Impact Scholars.