Cliff Cheng is a social scientist who earned his Ph.D. at the University of
Southern California (USC). His dissertation was on the same group this article
describes. He brings the discipline of organizational behavior to the study of
cults. After teaching at the University of California campuses at Riverside and
Irvine, Dr. Cheng went back to USC, then to UCLA and back to USC. He was
recognized in 1998 as the Ascendant Scholar of the Western Academy of Management
for his work on organizational behavior. He has served as Los Angles City Human
Relations Commissioner, and on the advisory panels of the U.S. Equal Opportunity
Employment Commission and the California Fair Employment and Housing Commission.
