Inside Behavior Analysis
Volume 1 | 2009 | Number 1
Behaviorists for Social Responsibility
By John Glass, Steve Wong, and Pat Williams
Behaviorists for Social Responsibility emphasized three efforts in the past year. First, we organized and encouraged a series of presentations related to climate change for the 2009 ABAI convention, including encouraging the selection of Lonnie Thompson as Presidential Scholar; an invited address by Frederic Wagner followed by a "Special Event" response panel; and an invited tutorial by Scott Geller on actively caring with related content. Such integrated attention to important justice, human rights, and environmental issues at the convention may be one way to increase the level of behavior analytic and cultural analytic work done in these areas.
Second, considerable attention went into further strengthening the journal Behavior and Social Issues, of which BFSR is one sponsor. Rising costs for the print edition, rapidly expanding accesses to the on-line edition, and the value of rapid publication led us to determine that beginning with the 2009 volume, the journal will do immediate on-line publication of articles once accepted, and will then aggregate all articles published during the year into a single hard copy volume at the end of the year. In the meantime, the number and quality of articles submitted has continued to increase.
Finally, after more years than we can track with the current SIG leadership, a new leadership team consisting of Pat Williams - Web/listserv coordination; Steve Wong - professional relations (ABA coordination, BSI liaison); John Glass - membership/public relations/outreach; was elected. This team will take over at the SIG annual meeting at the 2009 ABAI convention in Phoenix, at which time Rich Rakos and Mark Mattaini will be quite relieved to be relieved.