Introduction to Susan Opotow's SPSSI Presidential Address

Abstract

It is an honor and a pleasure for me to introduce Susan Opotow as she gives her 2009 SPSSI Presidential address. Although I will keep my remarks short, I want to share a bit about Susan’s career and her contributions to SPSSI. Susan took her BA at Antioch College and then a master’s degree in counseling from the Banks Street College. She began her career as a teacher and guidance counselor in the New York City School system. She then entered the doctoral program in social and organizational psychology at Columbia University where she completed her dissertation under the direction of former SPSSI President Mort Deutsch (1960–1961). Her first full-time academic appointment was with the Graduate Program in Dispute Resolution at the University of Massachusetts at Boston where she served as an associate and then a full professor from 1996 until 2007. In that year she moved to become a Professor of Sociology at City University of New York’s (CUNY) John College of Criminal Justice and a Professor in the CUNY Graduate Center’s Criminal Justice and Social and Personality graduate programs. Susan’s scholarly work has focused on the social psychology of conflict and injustice. Her dissertation was an experimental study of the scope of justice: namely whether or not students believe the Bombardier beetle deserves to be treated fairly. Both sides of the scope of justice, exclusion and inclusion, have been recurrent concerns in Susan’s research. She has examined this in several domains including the treatment of animals, affirmative action, environmental and rangeland conflicts, torture, and the American Civil War Reconstruction. Although she has made noteworthy contributions on other topics as well (e.g., a theory of hate,