Lipsky Wisdom

At 5 p.m. Tuesday, the lights in Uris Auditorium will shine on Professor David Lipsky, an ILR School icon.

He will speak on "Conflict and Collaboration" as if it is his last chance to share more than four decades of teaching, research and outreach.

Lispky is not retiring, but was chosen by Cornell's Mortar Board Senior Honor Society to give this semester's hypothetical "Last Lecture."

Presented twice a year, the lecture features the university's most prestigious professors.

It is modeled after "The Last Lecture" speech by a Carnegie Mellon University professor. Randy Pausch, who also co-authored "The Last Lecture" book, died in 2008.

Tuesday's Mortar Board Society-sponsored lecture -- free and open to the public -- is supported by the ILR School, the Student Assembly Finance Commission and the ILR Graduate Student Association.

A reception at Taverna Banfi in the Statler Hotel on campus follows the lecture.

Lipsky is ILR's Anne Evans Estabrook Professor of Dispute Resolution. He teaches undergraduate, graduate and doctoral students.

He is also director of ILR's Scheinman Institute on Conflict Resolution. It has helped design, administer and evaluate alternative dispute resolution systems for organizations such as the U.S. Department of Labor, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

Lipsky served as ILR's dean from 1988 until 1997. He has been a member of the Cornell faculty since 1969.

As an undergraduate, he transferred from Lehigh University in Pennsylvania to ILR. He graduated in 1961 from ILR with a bachelor’s degree in industrial and labor relations. In 1967, he received a doctoral degree in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.