Morton Deutsch Awards for Social Justice

4th annual celebration of the
Morton Deutsch Awards for Social Justice
Thursday, April 3, 2008
5:00pm - 7:00pm
179 Grace Dodge Hall
Teachers College, Columbia University

2008 flyer

 

2008 Morton Deutsch Award Recipients

Janusz Grzelak, Distinguished Scholar-Practitioner Recipient
Roundtable Talks Nearly 20 Years After...
Professor of Psychology at Warsaw University
Dean of Psychology Faculty
Part of the negotiation team of the solidarity movement
during the 1989 Polish Roundtable Negotiations

Janusz Reykowski, Distinguished Scholar-Practitioner Recipient
Roundtable Talks Nearly 20 Years After...
Professor of Psychology at the Polish Academy of Science
Co-founder and Chairman of the Academic Council of the Warsaw School of Social Psychology
Negotiated on behalf of the communist regime during the 1989 Polish Roundtable Negotiations

Julia Maskivker, Student Recipient
Political Science, PhD. Candidate, Columbia University
Sovereign Debt and Global Justice

Jennifer D. Whitney, Honorable Mention
Literacy Specialist, Teachers College
The Diversity Disconnection:
Discourse in Mainstream Literacy Instruction

 

 Our 2008 Distinguished Scholar-Practitioner recipients for the Morton Deutsch Award for Social Justice are two social scientists from Poland, who played key roles during the 1989 Polish Roundtable Negotiations, one of the most significant events in Europe’s modern history.  Dr. Janusz Grzelak was part of the negotiation team of the solidarity movement,  and Dr.  Janusz Reykowski negotiated on behalf of the communist regime at that time. The negotiations process that took place in Poland, demonstrated to the world that social change and social justice can be achieved by peaceful means, even among parties caught in deep political and ideological antagonism.

 Janusz Grzelak, Professor of Psychology at Warsaw University and serves as the Dean of Psychology Faculty. He is considered to be one of the most respectable authorities of polish psychology. As a negotiation expert, he served as an advisor in the Polish government and as an advisor and liaison officer during the Solidarity early talks in 1981. His membership included the underground Helsinki Committee for Human Rights in Poland during the process of socioeconomic and political transformation process and the Citizens' Committee.  He is co-founder and was the first president of the Polish Society of Social Psychology. In addition he served as vice-chairperson of the Education and Science sub-table and also negotiation advisor. As deputy minister,  he was responsible for higher education in the first post-communist Polish government. His scientific achievements during two decades include exploration of vast areas of social interdependence, conflict resolution, negotiation and mediation and interpersonal and social control. Janusz Grzelak was awarded with "Polonia Restituta" Order, a highly prestigious state honor in Poland given in peace time awarded in recognition of outstanding contribution to state transformations. He has been invited to lecture at a number of universities including University of Michigan, and at an initiative of Morton Deutsch at Columbia University. He was invited as a visiting professor to number of universities: Vienna (Austria), Newark (Delaware), Norfolk (Virginia), Tillburg (Netherlands).

 

Janusz Reykowski, Professor of Psychology at the Polish Academy of Science, co founder and Chairman of the Academic Council of the Warsaw School of Social Psychology. He is a member of the Academia Europea, served as a President of the Polish Psychological Association and is Honorary Member of this Association as well as Honorary Member of the Polish Society of Social Psychology. He was a Fellow of the Center for Advanced Studies in Behavioral Science at Stanford and was awarded by the International Society of Political Psychology the Sanford Prize for Lifetime Achievement in Political Psychology. He was elected a President of this Society. In the first part of his career he conducted extensive research on stress and emotions, and later on prosocial behavior and altruism – he participated in the international research program (Altruistic Personality project) studying rescuers of Jew during Nazi occupation of Europe.  In the last two decades his research has focused on political psychology, specifically on solving political conflicts and on the development of democratic attitudes. This line of interest was expressed in practice, as he contributed to the democratic transition in Poland, being one of the chief negotiators for the Polish government in the critical Round Table talks. Through the years he published 10 books and over hundred of articles and chapters (in various languages). Also, he was invited as a visiting professor to number of universities in US (University of Michigan, University of Minnesota, University of California Irvine), in Germany  (in Berlin, in Leipzig), in Russia (Moscow).

 

Poland 1989

Round Table Negotiations

 The Polish Round Table Negotiations took place in Warsaw, Poland in 1989. At that time, the Polish communist government decided to initiate discussions mainly with the banned trade union known as the Solidarity Movement (Solidarność) in an attempt to defuse growing social unrest stemming from anti-Communist sentiments, and economical hardships that had depressed Polish living standards. Attempts to stabilize the political system by suppressing dissent in Poland resulted in a heightened state of conflict. As long as the political situation was defined in pro- versus anti-government terms, there was essentially a political deadlock in the society. The government was unable to suppress dissent and the people could not overthrow the government (in part because of its support by the former Soviet Union). The deadlock was broken by the implementation of the Round Table negotiations, which were aimed at seeking innovative solutions to the country’s problems.

During the Round Table Negotiation discussions, the parties’ work centered on a large set of independently defined issues instead of concentrating on which side acquired political power. This meant that there were “sub-tables” for education, industry, health, economic issues, and so forth. This approach brought about by the decoupling of important issues, not only provided solutions for the specific issues at stake, but also started a social process that lowered the intensity of the conflict and paved the way for the operation of various compensatory mechanisms. The resultant change in the system dynamics resolved the conflict over current issues, and perhaps more significantly, did much to eliminate the conflict that had defined the political situation in Poland for almost half a century.

Poland’s Round Table discussions of political, economic, and trade-union reform instigated the country’s transition to democratization and incited a chain reaction of events felt around the world. In June 1989, Hungary began its own Round Table negotiations, followed in November by the so-called Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia. Also in November 1989 and most symbolic of all—the Berlin Wall fell. In December of that year, both Bulgaria and Romania continued the peaceful movement away from single-party rule, which contributed to the disintegration of the Communist Bloc, and ultimately the end of the Cold War.

The peaceful character of these events provides significant historical lessons for addressing tense political conflicts. It demonstrated that even long-standing, deep political and ideological antagonisms among large populations can be resolved by peaceful means.

 

 

For further information, please contact the ICCCR at 212-678-3402.