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The Institute is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization. It is supported by individual donations, fees for consulting and workshop services, and small grants. Over 90% of all donated funds go to program activities.
"Helping to build the new society in the vacant lots of the old"
Howard J. Ehrlich, Ph.D.
Howard Ehrlich is the director of The Prejudice Institute. The Institute is the successor to the National Institute Against Prejudice and Violence where Ehrlich served as research director for seven years. The work of the Institute, a nonprofit institution involving the major disciplines of the social sciences and law, is organized around ten projects. These include: studies of the social and psychological effects of victimization; the nature of violent attitudes and behavior; the nature of prejudice, conflict, and ethnoviolence as they are played out in college campus and workplace settings; and the role of the news media in communicating prejudice. This is a program of action research emphasizing the application of scientific knowledge in building programs of education, prevention, and response. Dr. Ehrlich is the author of seven books including Reinventing Anarchy, Again. His influential book, The Social Psychology of Prejudice, has been used by many as a basis for programs of intervention and prejudice reduction. His recent works include Intergroup Tensions and Ethnoviolence in the Workplace: A Manual for Trainers (1993) -- which contains extensive materials on gender harassment and modes of conflict resolution--and Race and Ethnic Conflict: Contending Views on Prejudice, Discrimination, and Ethnoviolence (1999. 2nd edition).
Before moving to Baltimore, he was a Professor of Sociology and the director of the Graduate Program in Social Psychology at the University of Iowa. In Baltimore, he spent ten years as a consultant to social change-oriented community organizations and as the coordinator of a city-wide adult learning network focused on survival, self-help, and self-development skills. As part of that network, he taught courses in food and cooking, and published Fast Breads, which was a Book-of-the-Month Club alternate and a selection of the Better Homes and Garden Book Club. He also served one year as Executive Director of the Maryland Committee on Occupational Safety and Health and four years as a board member of Nuclear Free America, a clearinghouse for nuclear free zones. In addition to his professional writings, his op-ed pieces have appeared in newspapers nationally. From 1976-1992, he was a regular reviewer for Choice, the review magazine of the Association of College and Research Libraries.
For twenty years, from 1972-1992, Ehrlich was executive co-producer of the nationally syndicated Great Atlantic Radio Conspiracy. The Conspiracy, a weekly program which presented documentary radio and an alternative perspective on public affairs and the radical arts, was the recipient of nine national awards including three from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the National Federation of Community Broadcasters. In 1981, following the publication of his first anthology of anarchist writing, he began the magazine, Social Anarchism. Described as the premiere anarchist intellectual journal in English, it has been in continuous publication since its beginning. It is designed on the model of a professional journal with all articles refereed by a national board of editors.
In 1994, Howard Ehrlich was named the recipient of the Sociological Practice Award of the Society of Applied Sociology. In its announcement, the Society recognized Ehrlich's "unique combination of applied research, community service, and social activism," and commended him for his recent work "to comfort the victims of hate crimes, reduce racial tensions, and educate the public about the nature of and prevalence of ethnoviolence."
Bob Purvis is the co-founder of The Prejudice Institute. He served as its legal and administrative director, a position he also held with its predecessor, the National Institute Against Prejudice & Violence. He is now a senior consultant to The Prejudice Institute.
He is the author of Bigotry and Cable TV, a landmark study of the use of public access cable TV by right-wing extremist groups. A nationally known expert on "hate speech" and first amendment issues, Purvis has consulted with a number of states in the drafting of bias-crime laws; has regularly assisted human rights and civil rights groups in the preparation of legal resources addressing ethnoviolence; and has written a guidebook for involving lawyers in community-based efforts in this area, He has served as a primary resource to national print and electronic media on these issues, and his op-ed pieces have appeared in newspapers nationally.
He was a member of the Maryland Governor's Advisory Committee on Racial, Religious, and Ethnic Tensions and now sits as a member of the Board of Governors of the American Civil Liberties Union of Maryland.
For twelve years, Purvis was involved as a co-developer and director of a model community-based chemical dependency treatment program. He served on the Maryland Governor's Executive Advisory Committee on Drugs, the Baltimore Alcoholism Directorate, and the advisory board of a hospital-based drug and alcohol treatment program.
He began his legal career with a large Pittsburgh-based law firm, and moved to Baltimore in 1980 where he focused on providing legal services to community-based nonprofit organizations and low income individuals. His pro bono activities include representing criminal defendants in non-jury trials.
Purvis has worked as a volunteer member of the Carroll County Human Relations Commission, and as a member of the board of directors of Common Ground Music Harvest.
Barb Larcom is a consultant and trainer for The Prejudice Institute and a member of our speakers bureau.
From 1988 to 1993 she was the Senior Research Associate with the National Institute Against Prejudice & Violence. At the Institute, in collaboration with Howard Ehrlich, she conducted and analyzed the first national survey of violence motivated by prejudice, involving over 2,000 cases. She was co-principal investigator for the Institute's workplace ethnoviolence studies. She helped develop standardized instruments for assessing campus intergroup relations, adopted for use by colleges and universities around the country.
She has trained groups in conflict resolution techniques and has lectured on the identification, prevention, and response to ethnoviolence. She works as an independent sociologist, as a development officer for the American Friends Service Committee, and is also the coordinator of Casa Baltimore/Limay, a friendship city project with a small Nicaraguan town.
She was the co-founder of the Alliance for the Mentally Ill of Maryland and the Pennsylvania Coalition Against Domestic Violence.
Larcom received her Ph.D. in sociology at The Johns Hopkins University; a Master of Social Work from The Ohio State University; and a Certificate in Negotiation and Mediation in Conflict Resolution from George Mason University.
Pat Webbink chairs the Institute's national advisory board.
A multilingual world traveler, she has conducted workshops on stress reduction, imagery, and intimacy nationally and internationally. Dr. Webbink has provided counseling and advocacy for victims of sexual harassment and gender violence. She is presently completing a book on intimate relationships based on her clinical experiences.
In 1999, after a sabbatical teaching and touring in several Asian countries, Dr. Webbink returned to the states and began a network of child centered programs--The Enrichment Centers. These programs are dedicated to providing an enriching and challenging program in multicultural and diverse settings. They are open to all students regardless of family income. The Prejudice Institute is partnering with these programs both in providing guidance in the development of multicultural materials, but also through new techniques of evaluating such programs. The Centers may be accessed at http://www.enrichmentcenters.com/.
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