The 1964 rape and murder of Kitty Genovese, and the sensational reporting around it that claimed 37 New Yorkers had witnessed the attack but done nothing to help, elevated the idea of the “bystander effect” into the mainstream. The parallels between the Genovese case and the Cornell gang rape case are obvious, but what IS the “bystander effect”, and how can we encourage people to become “moral rebels”? Dr. Catherine Sanderson is a professor at Amherst College in Massachusetts and the author of ‘Why We Act: Turning Bystanders Into Moral Rebels’. She shares her thoughts about the crime at Cornell, the bystander effect, and why many people don’t (or do) act to do the right thing.