Keynote Speaker
Recipient of the Marion Langer Award for distinction in the promotion of human rights and social justice
 Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot, PhD
Emily Hargroves FisherProfessor
Harvard University Graduate School of Education
Dr. Lawrence-Lightfoot is a distinguished educator and scholar whose work focuses on school culture and structure and on the relationship between culture and learning style. She is widely recognized for her use of portraiture, an innovative research methodology that combines empiricism and aesthetics. She is the acclaimed author of nine books, including Balm in Gilead: The Journey of a Healer, which won the 1988 Christopher Award for literary merit and humanitarian achievement. Her most recent book, The Third Chapter: Passion, Risk, and Adventure in the 25 Years After 50, calls for a re-examination of attitudes about youth and age. Last year’s keynote speaker, Dr. Felton Earls, is one of the individuals whose development Dr. Lawrence described in I’ve Known Rivers, an anthology of biographies of successful African Americans.
Dr. Lawrence-Lightfoot’s lecture at the Family Symposium will build upon her book Respect: An Exploration, first published in 2000. Emphasizing anew that respect is grounded in reciprocity, not authority, she illustrates this approach through the care that she takes as an empathetic listener who recognizes the dignity of the people whom she interviews. Although Respect: An Exploration is the volume in which Dr. Lawrence-Lightfoot explicates the concept, respect is both a value and a way of life that permeates her work. Whichever of her books is the focus, readers soon learn that Dr. Lawrence-Lightfoot appreciates the importance of participants’ experience, no matter what their age and station in life, as she learns about their struggles toward fulfillment of their dreams. In her writing, she provides gentle but probing and transforming criticism of institutional obstacles to justice across the lifespan, and she shows both empathy and esteem for those who confront and overcome such discrimination and oppression, whether in schools, workplaces, or other settings of everyday life.
The recipient of numerous honorary degrees, Dr. Lawrence-Lightfoot was awarded the prestigious MacArthur prize (popularly known as the “genius grant”) in 1984. In 1994, she was honored by Harvard with the George Ledlie prize for research contributing to science and benefiting humankind. In 1998, she was named to the Emily Hargroves Fisher Chair at Harvard, which will be renamed in Dr. Lawarence-Lightfoot’s honor when she retires. A chair in her honor has also been created at her undergraduate alma mater, Swarthmore College.
Ortho Award Recipients for 2012
Recipients of the Blanche F. Ittleson Award for distinction in the promotion of child mental health
Murray Levine, JD, PhD
Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus of Psychology
University at Buffalo, State University of New York
Adeline Levine, PhD
Professor Emeritus of Sociology
University at Buffalo, State University of New York
Dr. Murray Levine has long been a distinguished scholar in community psychology and in psychology and law. After collaborating with Seymour Sarason in his seminal work in community psychology at Yale, Dr. Levine joined the psychology faculty at the University at Buffalo, the State University of New York, in the late 1960s. He attended law school after his interest grew in how law and social policy affect the lives of children. Dr. Levine was named Distinguished Service Professor at SUNY Buffalo in 1995, one of the highest honors that the University bestows. He has authored or co-authored several books, including A Social History of Helping Services and Helping Children, both written with his wife Adeline, and Principles of Community Psychology, published in 2005. Dr. Levine has received multiple awards from the Society for Community Research and Action, a division of the American Psychological Association.
Dr. Adeline Levine is a former chair of the Sociology Department at the University at Buffalo, where she was known for her distinguished scholarship in environmental sociology and women’s rights. Her crowning achievement was a landmark volume on the community response to the Love Canal disaster, an extraordinary case study of the growth of a social movement, the significance of public health in the life of a community, and the issues in generating and applying scientific knowledge in a socially and politically charged context. Like her husband Murray, Adeline is educated in two professions—in her case, nursing and sociology.
The Levines are regular contributors to the American Journal of Orthopsychiatry. Through a feature entitled Reflections from the Ninth Decade, which can be found in AJO’s magazine section (The Community), the Levines thoughtfully blend social history and personal experience to provide useful counterpoints to current debates about social welfare and public policy.
Other Plenary Speakers and Pre-Conference Discussion Leaders
Asher Ben-Arieh, PhD
Associate Professor of Social Work, Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Adjunct Professor, Institute on Family and Neighborhood Life, Clemson University
Director, Haruv Institute
Co-chair, International Society for Child Indicators
Editor, Child Indicators Research
Don Hernandez, PhD
Professor of Sociology at Hunter College and the Graduate Center, City University of New York
Kenneth Land, PhD
John Franklin Crowell Professor of Demographic Studies and Sociology, Duke University
Gary Melton, PhD
Professor of Pediatrics, University of Colorado Denver (eff. Feb.1, 2012)
Extraordinary Professor, University of the Free State (South Africa)
Past President, American Orthopsychiatric Association
Co-editor, American Journal of Orthopsychiatry
Donald Wertlieb, PhD
Professor of Child Development, Tufts University
Incoming president, American Orthopsychiatric Association
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