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Should We Celebrate Skinner's 100th Birthday at ABA?
Richard W. Malott1

Behavior Analysis Program
Department of Psychology
Western Michigan University

Skinner’s 100th birthday is coming up and ABA is planning no party, in part, for fear that we would be (or be seen as) deifying the man. My view is that it’s OK to deify Skinner, because Skinner is god. We are Skinnerian’s; don’t give me that pathetic, pedantic, no I’m a “behavior analyst” not a “Skinnerian” crap.

Steven Jay Gould and his fellow Darwinians (aka, evolutionists) were not so faint of heart; they made a monstrous to do about Darwin’s 150th birthday. And, for us to ignore Skinner’s 100th strikes me as the ultimate dissing of the man and his legacy.

Let’s not be ingrates; let’s have a party; no, man, let’s have a blast—Skinner’s 100th Birthday Blast at ABA 2004, and what better place than Boston, the birthplace of Skinner’s behavior analysis (Boston/Cambridge, too subtle a distinction for this mid-westerner). And, if ABA won’t officially do it, no problema; let’s have a grass-roots series of symposia and events where everyone organizes or participates in a Skinner Legacy Symposium, where the students and close associates of Skinner discuss his work and impact or personality, and where the rest of us even unto the 5th and 6th generation Skinnerian’s do some sort of explicitly-about-the-works-of-Skinner presentation, even including the neo-Skinnerians, who, as Jack Michael ironically puts it, have gone beyond Skinner, and who might do presentations dedicated to Skinner and dedicated to how they have finally come into their intellectual fulfillment in a post-Skinnerian world and how they are going to make post-Skinnerianism as popular and perhaps as meaningless a buzz word as post-modernism. Let 100 Skinner Legacy Symposia bloom. Imagine what the Behavioral Follies will be like. Anyone have videos of the old Skinner-Keller routines? (Like in 2004, a significant minority at ABA won’t even know who Keller is.)

I think ABA would be happy to do some special listings and promotions of the Skinner Legacy Symposia (by any other name, the symposia will still smell as sweet; they will smell the sweet smell of success). And I think the ABA Program Committee would be happy for each area coordinator to organize a Skinner Legacy (Tribute/Dispute) Symposium; so why don’t you propose to your favorite SIG or favorite area coordinator that you’ll organize the symposium for him or her, which would no doubt be a relief for the coordinator. And I’m pretty sure Jerry Mertens (the founder of MABAèABA) is organizing a Skinner Symposium; maybe he could use some help.

Incidentally, I’m desperately trying to live to the age of 100 to make sure that at least one person celebrates my 100th birthday, realizing, as I do, that I’m not even a minor deity.

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