From 1965-1973, the Lemberg Center for the Study of Violence at Brandeis University collected data and conducted research dealing with social violence, particularly race riots, in America. It was founded in the wake of a series of conferences held at Brandeis concerned with the place of violence in the United States in the wake of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. The Center’s director, Dr. John P. Spiegel, and associate director, Ralph Conant, led researchers, including Terry Ann Knopf, in large-scale projects treating urban violence that encompassed interviews, surveys, and analysis of media reports from cities across the country, with the principal goal of finding a model for such violence. The Lemberg Center included a Riot Data Clearinghouse, which supplied regular information for its Riot Data Review publication. Figures such as Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Rev. John Drinan served on the center’s board of overseers. The Center further sought to publicize its research, both through its own publications and via mass media. It would close in 1973, following the downturn in rioting and a reduction in funding. Between 1979-1998, a portion of the Center’s archives were held by Manchester University (IN), and from 1998 until their return to Brandeis in 2015, they were loaned to the University of Notre Dame.
