Dr. Alan Kazdin, Ph.D.
Transcript of Convention Video Message
May 2008
Hello, I’m Alan Kazdin, and I have the honor of serving as the 2008 President of the American Psychological Association. One of the most exciting jobs one has as APA President is helping to plan and presiding over our annual meeting. Every year our convention proves to be an invaluable experience for those members who attend. This year’s meeting, in Boston, is August 14th through the 17th, and will be at Boston’s Convention and Exhibitor’s Center, a beautiful and high tech new facility on the bay. I believe you will find the meeting to be a rich buffet of sessions of clinical, scientific and applied work, and many special events and distinguished speakers.
We have also improved the registration process in two ways: you can now register on-line through July 30th; and the registration process on-site has been improved to avoid any lines for on-site registration.
Permit me to highlight a few features of the program. Our list of invited speakers for the program is remarkable. Please attend the opening session on Thursday, August 14. I will have the honor of giving a lifetime achievement award to Dr. Edward Ziegler. We will also have Malcolm Gladwell as our featured speaker. As you know, he is the bestselling author of two books: The Tipping Point; How Little Things can make a Big Difference; and Blink; the Power of Thinking Without Thinking. There is a short interview with Malcolm in the May issue of the APA Monitor on Psychology, and you will be captivated and want to hear more.
Because of emphases during my presidency, there are a few topical themes that will be thread throughout the convention. These include interpersonal violence, psychological science’s contributions to the great challenges of society, post-traumatic stress disorder and trauma in children and adolescents, the integration of clinical practice and research, and hate crimes. I should mention that there’s a good deal of special programming for students, additional programming for early career psychologists, and over 85 continuing education workshops, and over 200 continuing education sessions for members needing CE credit.
A second topic I want to talk about during this short message is diversity, culture and identity. These are weighty topics to mention in passing. Even so, I want to underscore their significance. I see diversity, culture and identity as central to our profession if we are interested in developing psychology that is relevant to the world. Issues and problems of concern to us are applicable to all people; there are hundreds of cultural and ethnic groups that are recognized throughout the world. We ought to embrace the challenge directly in our training and education, research and practice. Too often, indeed it seems to me routinely, diversity is an afterthought, one course in grad school, the interest of one faculty member here or there. We start with inclusion, which is absolutely essential, but sometimes we end there, we do not follow up with what it means to train psychologists in a multicultural world. I see multicultural work as a starting point for our basic and applied areas.
Let me end by inviting you to join me at this year’s meeting in Boston. We have gone to great lengths to make this an exciting and educational event to learn about psychology from all over the world. I hope to connect with you in person in Boston. As always, please feel free to contact me before that.
Thank you very much for watching this message.
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