The world lost an intellectual giant this year when Morton Deutsch—an eminent psychologist, Columbia University professor, mentor extraordinaire, and one of the founders of the field of conflict resolution—passed away in March at the age of 97. Throughout his long and illustrious career, Deutsch remained committed to promoting a more just, peaceful and sustainable world. In honor of his life and legacy, our Director Peter T. Coleman has selected a series of ten of Deutsch’s most significant scientific to highlight in a series of weekly blog posts, running on Psychology Today and Huffington Post.
The first of these weekly posts was published on Thursday, August 10, and a new blog will be posted each week through Thursday, October 12. Below you can find the link to this week’s blog—you can also check back here for links on future blogs, and remember to follow us on social media for more of our updates!
Finally to read more about Deutsch’s life and work, please visit: http://icccr.tc.columbia.edu/founder-morton-deutsch/
Mort Deutsch liked to claim that he first became interested in issues of justice when he was a 5-year-old boy who was excluded from a softball game by a group of older children (he sought justice at the time by stealing the ball and throwing it into the woods!), and later as an adolescent when he organized a group of busboys to strike at a Jewish resort he worked at in the Catskills. Growing up, Deutsch skipped many grades in school. He entered college at 15, and so, was often the youngest in his cohort. This coupled with being Jewish during the pre-WWII era in the Bronx led to his experiencing many incidents of exclusion, bias, and discrimination firsthand. These experiences infused in him a great need to understand and address injustice. Read the full article here at Psychology Today—Addressing Injustice: Why and How Do People Seek Justice?