Twenty five years ago a group of Indiana University of PA professors and graduate students recognized the pressure of fundamental economic changes that were affecting America’s industrial heartland. As part of our mission to develop a more holistic picture of this phenomenon and a greater sense of its magnitude and duration, we organized a series of conferences at the university which featured leading politicians, activists, academics, and community members from diverse fields of research, interest, and concerns.

The Industrial North: The Future of Jobs, Productivity and Community (1982) – the first of these gatherings - presented thirty prominent speakers who addressed audiences of several hundred about the character and consequences of the economic transformations affecting the region. The gathering evoked favorable comments from audience participants and speakers including extensive press coverage in local, regional, and national newspapers. William Serrin covered the conference for the New York Times and published an article on the event.

The silver anniversary of the first conference in the annual IUP Industry and Society conference series (1982-85) presents an appropriate occasion for commemorating the initial event with a forum that updates how the forces of deindustrialization and globalization have affected the Industrial North over the last twenty-five years.

Preliminary Agenda:
25th Anniversary Conference On the The Industrial North: The Future of Jobs, Productivity and Community
October, 25, 2007

Co-Coordinators: James P. Dougherty, PhD
Irwin M. Marcus, PhD

Conference Keynoters: Barry Bluestone, PhD
(Morning Keynote)
Stearns Trustee Professor of Political Economy Director of the School of Social Science, Urban Affairs, and Public Policy at Northeastern University, Boston, MA

Staughton Lynd, PhD
(Evening Keynote)
Peace and Civil Rights Activist, Historian, Professor, Author, and Lawyer, Youngstown, Ohio

Deindustrialization An Update:

Morning Panel: Deindustrialization:
The View from the Mon Valley
Pittsburgh PA

Afternoon Panel: Deindustrialization:
The View from Indiana County
Pennsylvania

Morning Video: People and Power the Struggle
Continues: A History of Steel Workers, 1880-1980

Afternoon Video: A Vote of Thanks: The Robertshaw Plant Closing and the Deindustrialization of America