On May 17, 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court issued its ruling in the landmark case of Brown v. Board of Education, a case emanating out of Topeka, Kansas. To commemorate the 50th anniversary of the case, the social psychology program at the University of Kansas will be hosting a conference May 13-14 entitled Fifty Years after Brown v. Board of Education: Social Psychological Research Applied to the Problems of Racism and Discrimination. The Brown v. Board conference will then spill over into the annual Social Psychologists Around the Midwest (SPAM) meeting May 14-16, also at KU.

As one might infer from the inclusion of this item on this board, the KU events will have a strong Michigan flavor. Among the KU social psychology faculty members hosting the events are Monica Biernat and Chris Crandall, two 1980s Michigan Ph.D. recipients. Further, among the speakers at the Brown event are current Michigan psychology professors Patricia Gurin (Emerita) and Rob Sellers, both of whom also received their Ph.D.'s at UM (clickable web links for Monica, Chris, Rob, and a large number of other 80s-era Ph.D. alumni are available in my January and February 2004 postings; see right-hand side of page midway down for links to the archives).

Rob returned to UM several years ago in the personality psych program after an initial stint on the faculty at the University of Virginia (the reason I mention this is that my younger brother Steve, a sociology major, took a course from Rob at UVa).

I plan to do a more extensive entry in the coming weeks marking the two-year anniversary of Pat's retirement celebration in Ann Arbor.