April 16: Celebrating James Jones

Article by College of Arts and Sciences communictions staff April 02, 2018

Lecture on diversity to mark professor’s retirement

James M. Jones, Trustees' Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Psychological and Brain Sciences and Africana Studies and director of the Center for the Study of Diversity at the University of Delaware, will deliver a lecture on diversity at 4 p.m., Monday, April 16, in Gore Recital Hall of the Roselle Center for the Arts.

The lecture, which is free and open to the public, will be followed by a reception in the lobby, celebrating Jones’ career accomplishments and his recent retirement. The event is hosted by the College of Arts and Sciences.

James M. Jones is an internationally recognized scholar in the areas of prejudice, racism and diversity.

A longtime UD faculty member and internationally recognized scholar in the areas of prejudice, racism and diversity, Jones will speak on the topic “Why and How Diversity Matters: A Personal and Intellectual Journey.”

He will discuss how diversity—myriad forms of human difference—has become a Rorschach test for beliefs about power, social justice, civility and psychological and cultural health. The lecture will examine the what, why and how of diversity as illustrated by personal family history and scholarly critique.

Jones’ principal conclusion is that diversity is a hallmark of human society, spawning both profound conflict and grand possibilities for the highest human achievement. Learning how to minimize the former and maximize the latter is human society’s diversity challenge, he says.

Jones is a social psychologist who earned his doctorate at Yale University and has taught at Harvard and Howard universities. He published the first edition of Prejudice and Racism in 1972, and the second edition in 1997. His most recent book, The Psychology of Diversity: Beyond Prejudice and Racism, with Jack Dovidio and Deborah Vietze, was published in 2014.

He is a former executive director for public interest and director of the Minority Fellowship Program at the American Psychological Association.

His numerous awards include the 1999 Lifetime Achievement Award of the Society for the Psychological Study of Ethnicity, Culture and Race; the 2001 Kurt Lewin Award and the 2009 Distinguished Service Award by the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues; the 2007 Distinguished Psychologist Award by the Association of Black Psychologists; the 2011 Lifetime Contribution to Psychology award from the American Psychological Association; the 2018 Gold Medal Award for Life Achievement in Psychology in the Public Interest; and, most recently, the 2018 Morton Deutsch Award for Distinguished Contributions to Social Justice from the International Center for Cooperation and Conflict Resolution at Columbia Teachers College.

Those planning to attend the lecture and reception are asked to RSVP by April 9 at rsvp@art-sci.udel.edu or 302-831-2793.