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 contributions 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/
Concerned with the major challenges facing our planet in the 21st Century and with the political and ideological fractionation and polarization that present serious obstacles to addressing these challenges, Deutsch in his final years turned his attention to promoting a global human community. Borrowing from Anthony Marsella, he defined a global community as the interrelatedness of peoples, groups, communities, institutions, and nations that is facilitated by technology and includes political, economic, and social interdependence. Deutsch (2012) wrote,
“The global community is multicultural, multinational, and multiethnic and is affected systemically by world events and forces including technology and media, environmental conditions and changes, militarism and war, economic upheaval and inequality, disease pandemics, sexism, racism, and social injustices, and more (p. 300).”Read the full article here at Psychology Today—How Can We Promote a Sense of Global Community?