Introduction of the 1997 Kurt Lewin Memorial Award recipient: Bertram H. Raven

Journal of Social Issues, Spring, 1999

It is my great pleasure to introduce Dr. Bertram H. Raven, Professor of Psychology at the University of California, Los Angeles, and this year's recipient of the Kurt Lewin Memorial Award. This award is given annually by The Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues to an individual whose career and professional achievements reflect the values and ideals of Kurt Lewin. It was the judgment of this year's committee members, Marilynn Brewer, Gene Borgida, and myself, that Professor Raven is an extremely appropriate recipient of this award. But before I tell you about Dr. Raven and some of the reasons why we selected him, I want to briefly discuss some aspects of Kurt Lewin's life, and the origins of this award.

Kurt Lewin was born in 1890 in Germany. He received his Ph.D. from Carl Stumpf at the University of Berlin in 1914. Lewin was a patriotic German who served in the army during the First World War and received an Iron Cross for his bravery in combat (Schultz & Schultz, 1996). But as Nazis gained power in Germany, Lewin, who was Jewish, realized that he must leave his native land. In 1933, Lewin wrote to Wolfgang Kohler, "I now believe there is no other choice for me but to emigrate, even though it will tear my life apart" (quoted in Benjamin, 1993, pp. 158, 160). Lewin left for the United States shortly thereafter, but his mother and sister remained in Germany and died in concentration camps.

Lewin began teaching in America at Cornell University in 1933, but after 2 years he left Cornell to take a position at the University of Iowa, where he stayed for 10 years. Although today we see Kurt Lewin as perhaps the major figure in the shaping of contemporary social psychology, his friend, colleague, and biographer Alfred Marrow (1969) pointed out that during Lewin's lifetime, his scientific efforts were not necessarily well-received by his professional colleagues. Lewin's academic appointments were, for the most part, unusual: the school of Home Economics at Cornell and the Child Welfare Station at the University of Iowa. Marrow also notes that it was not until 1947, the year of Lewin's death, that any organization officially recognized his enormous contributions to the social sciences. The organization was SPSSI, which honored Lewin by establishing the award that Dr. Raven is receiving, the Kurt Lewin Memorial Award.

Now let me turn to Dr. Raven. His academic lineage can be traced directly back to Lewin; his doctoral work was supervised by two of Lewin's students, Leon Festinger and John R. P. French, who were part of the Center for Group Dynamics at the University of Michigan. The Center, of course, moved to Michigan from MIT after Lewin's death in 1947. But Professor Raven's professional pedigree played only a very minor part in the decision process. Much more important was the fact that in the 45 years since Professor Raven earned his degree he has been an exemplar of the personal, professional, and social values espoused by Kurt Lewin.

Let me begin by briefly describing Dr. Raven's professional career and achievements. He was born in Youngstown, Ohio, and earned his bachelor's and master's degrees at the Ohio State University. As I have already mentioned, he received his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan in 1953. He stayed there for 1 more year as an instructor; then he was a Fulbright Scholar in the Netherlands, and spent a year with the Rand Corporation. In 1956 Dr. Raven joined the faculty at the University of California, Los Angeles, where he has been ever since. He served five years as chair of the department, which is the context in which I first had the pleasure of meeting him. Dr. Raven has also been a fellow or visiting scholar at the University of Washington, the Hebrew University, and the London School of Economics and Political Science. He was also a Guggenheim Fellow, earned a second Fulbright in 1962, and was a Senior NATO Science Fellow in 1989. And, as you might suspect, this is only a partial listing of the awards Bert has won.

Dr. Raven is a fellow in five divisions of the American Psychological Association, the American Psychological Society, American Psychology-Law Society, the International Association of Applied Psychology, and, of course, SPSSI. Bert's contributions to SPSSI are too numerous to list in their entirety, but I will note that he was editor of The Journal of Social Issues for five years, served two terms on SPSSI Council, and was the president of SPSSI in 1973. Thus, Bert, like Kurt Lewin, shares a strong commitment to SPSSI and its goals and purposes.

Now, a seeming digression. One of the things I learned in preparing this introduction is that in Germany, Lewin and his colleagues would gather at the end of the day for what they called a Quasselstrippe, which according to a recent article by Dr. Raven (1997), means, literally, a string of prattle, or foolish talk. But, in fact, this gathering was similar to what we might call today a brainstorming session. Some enduring and important ideas came out of those sessions and some ideas were abandoned immediately if not sooner. As I read about this, I thought about the half-life of new, apparently earth-shattering ideas and theories in social psychology and allied disciplines. As we are all aware, most of these would best be described as short-lived phenomena; a good percentage of those that do survive live on as examples of bad theory and are subjected to the kinds of abuse that would bring legal intervention if they were someone's spouse or child.