James Laue

James H. Laue was born in River Falls, Wisconsin, in 1937. Laue graduated from high school in 1955 and went to college in his home town at the University of Wisconsin-River Falls, where he took a major in sociology. After earning his Bachelor's degree in 1959, Laue was admitted to the Harvard graduate program in sociology with a Danforth Fellowship, where he studied race relations and the sociology of religion under such distinguished sociologists as Talcott Parsons, Gordon Allport, and David Riesman.

During his graduate studies, Laue became involved in the Civil Rights movement, attending lunch counter sit-ins, church "kneel-ins," and protests organized by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. Laue's 1966 doctoral dissertation, "Direct Action and Desegregation: Toward a Theory of the Rationalization of Protest," grew out of a combination of diligent sociological analysis and first-hand experience in the Civil Rights movement. These experiences, along with a pious adherence to the core tenets of Christianity, influenced Laue's approach to conflict analysis, which he described in his 1976 University of Missouri tenure application as "a conscious and explicit linking of scholarship and action."

Combining social theory and practical problem-solving into a new practice of clinical sociology, Laue helped to establish the field of conflict resolution as a distinct academic discipline, and his career reflects both the academic and the activist sides of the field. From 1965-1969, Laue served on the US Department of Justice's Community Relations Service (CRS), an agency established under the 1964 Civil Rights Act to help resolve racial conflicts. After leaving the CRS, Laue held academic positions at the Laboratory of Community Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School (1969-1971), Washington University-St. Louis (1971-1974), the University of Missouri-St. Louis (1975-1986), and finally, George Mason University (1986-1993) where he became the first Lynch Professor of Conflict Resolution. Laue also served as President and Executive Director of the Conflict Clinic, Inc., a non-profit dispute-resolution organization, from 1984 - ca. 1989.

In 1976 Laue co-founded and chaired the National Peace Academy Campaign (N-PAC), which sought to establish a national institute for peace research and education. Three years later, President Jimmy Carter appointed Laue Chair of the congressional Commission on Proposals for the National Academy of Peace and Conflict Resolution. The evidence gathered by the Commission at public hearings across the US, along with Laue's testimony before Congress in the early 1980s, was instrumental in establishing the US Institute of Peace and its funding counterpart, the National Peace Institute Foundation, which Laue also chaired during the 1980s.

Throughout his long and prodigious career, Laue participated in dozens of academic conferences, taught numerous classes and workshops on dispute resolution, published scores of academic papers, collaborated with Civil Rights activists and arms-control advocacy groups, delivered sermons at churches and speeches at graduate commencements, and remained active in the field of peacemaking and conflict resolution until his death in 1993.