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Norman Victor Lourie

(1912–2003)

Norman Victor Lourie was a U.S. social worker and government official. Born in New York, Lourie graduated from Cornell University in 1936. From 1937 to 1939 he was a research associate with the Russell Sage Foundation and from 1939 to 1943, an assistant director of the Bronx House and Madison House settlements in Manhattan. After serving in World War II as director of the social work section of the U.S. Army School for Military Neuropsychiatry, he became the director of the Hawthorne Cedar Knoll School for the correction of juvenile delinquents (1946–51). In 1951 he moved to Philadelphia to direct the work of the Association for Jewish Children and from 1955 onward was executive secretary of Pennsylvania's Department of Public Welfare. He took part in the White House Conferences on Children and Youth in 1950 and 1960 and was a member of the advisory council of the President's Committee on Juvenile Delinquency. He also taught in the graduate faculty of the School of Social Work at the University of Pennsylvania. Lourie was chairman of the editorial board of the Journal of Jewish Communal Service (1952–58) and Child Welfare (1962–64). He was president both of the National Association of Social Workers and the Academy of Certified Social Workers during 1961 to 1963, as well as of the American Orthopsychiatric Association, 1967. Active in community and professional affairs, Lourie assisted refugees from Vietnam. He served as senior policy adviser for the Institute for Economic Development (1980–82) and the National Immigration, Refugee and Citizenship Forum (1983–90), both in Washington, D.C.


Source: Encyclopaedia Judaica. © 2007 The Gale Group. All Rights Reserved.