Category Archives: Diversity

The Washington Post: Anti-Muslim Fliers Cause Uproar

Posters appeared all over the George Washington University campus yesterday morning blaring the message: “HATE MUSLIMS? SO DO WE!!!”

Campus police moved quickly to remove the fliers, university leaders began investigating how they got there and student groups met last night to deplore the posters, which had a photo of an Arab and description of “typical Muslim” features such as “suicide vest,” “hidden AK-47” and “peg-leg for smuggling children and heroin.”

Follow

The Chronicle: Gay Professors Face Less Discrimination, but Many Still Fight for Benefits

Gay and lesbian faculty members may no longer be desperate to hide their true identities in academe, but many are desperately seeking health insurance for their partners.

With anti-gay discrimination fading, obtaining health and other benefits for partners is still a major concern for many gay and lesbian academics. A growing number of colleges and universities have been adding such benefits since they were first introduced in the early 1990s. No full tally exists, but a survey this year by the College and University Professional Association for Human Resources found that 40 percent of 544 institutions responding — or 217 — extended health insurance to same-sex domestic partners. The Human Rights Campaign, which describes itself as the country’s largest advocacy group for gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people, has identified a larger number: 304 institutions, up from 178 five years ago.

Follow

Inside Higher Ed: Why Women Leave Academic Medicine

Phoebe S. Leboy was, she acknowledges, one of the lucky ones. It’s not that things were easy for female scientists when she came of age as an academic in the 1960s and 1970s; women earned a small fraction of the Ph.D.’s in biology and chemistry at the time, and they were an even rarer presence on medical or dental school faculties (Leboy was the first tenured faculty member at Penn’s dental school).

Follow

AP: UW-Madison again sued by religious group over funding

The University of Wisconsin-Madison and the largest religious organization on campus are headed back to federal court.

The Roman Catholic Foundation has filed another federal lawsuit claiming university officials are engaging in discrimination by refusing to allow student funding for certain religious programming.

Follow

FrontPage Magazine: Ward Churchill And The Diversity Agenda
By KC Johnson

Mindingthecampus.com | 7/30/2007

This week, as expected, the University of Colorado regents dismissed Professor Ward Churchill from his tenured position in the Ethnic Studies Department. (A university committee had found that Churchill committed plagiarism and misused sources.) And, as expected, Churchill has filed suit, alleging First Amendment violations.

Follow

The Chronicle News Blog: Report Urges Colleges Not to Cave In to Threats and Pressure on Affirmative Action

Colleges have been unnecessarily scaling back their affirmative-action programs in response to threats of litigation and pressure from Bush-administration officials, a report released on Monday by the Civil Rights Project/Proyecto Derechos Civiles argues.

The Civil Rights Project, which long had been based at Harvard University but moved to the University of California at Los Angeles (and appended its name) this year, says that the Supreme Court’s 2003 decision upholding race-conscious admissions policies at the University of Michigan’s law school should have been seen as a green light to colleges to continue considering students’ race and ethnicity for the sake of promoting diversity.

Follow

The Chronicle: Discrimination Complaint Argues That the U. of Texas at Austin Considers Race Unnecessarily

A new civil-rights complaint filed with a federal agency alleges that the “Texas 10-percent plan” has been so effective in bringing about diversity at the University of Texas at Austin that the university does not have any legal justification for considering applicants’ race or ethnicity.

Follow

Inside Higher Ed: Mixed Messages on Affirmative Action

The first reaction to Thursday’s U.S. Supreme Court ruling for many officials at colleges that practice affirmative action was relief. The ruling, as expected, rejected programs under which schoolchildren in Louisville and Seattle have been assigned to schools based on race. While the case didn’t involve college affirmative action, many of the legal briefs in the case cited Grutter v. Bollinger, the Supreme Court’s landmark 2003 ruling involving the University of Michigan’s law school, which upheld the right of colleges in some circumstances to consider race in admissions.

Follow

The Chronicle: Supreme Court Leaves Affirmative-Action Precedents Intact in Striking Down School-Integration Plans

Despite striking down two voluntary school-integration plans in a 5-to-4 ruling on Thursday, the U.S. Supreme Court left solidly intact its precedents dealing with affirmative action in higher education.

Follow

The Independent: University censured by race watchdog

One of Britain’s most prestigious universities has been censured by a race watchdog for the way it has handled redundancies.

Birmingham University may face legal action from the Commission for Racial Equality for failing in its duty to promote racial equality after threatening five black and ethnic minority group lecturers with redundancy.

Follow

Inside Higher Ed: ‘Black Women in the Ivory Tower’

In his landmark demographic studies of black America, W.E.B. Du Bois found that by 1880, 54 black women had earned college degrees. A new book, Black Women in the Ivory Tower: 1850-1954 (University Press of Florida), tells the stories of these women and those who followed them in the period up to the end of legal segregation in the United States. The author of the book is Stephanie Y. Evans, assistant professor of African-American studies and women’s studies at the University of Florida. She recently responded to questions via e-mail about the book.

Follow

Detroit News: Fewer minorities get into U-M law

The University of Michigan Law School admitted six times as many underrepresented minority students before the ban on government affirmative action took place compared with after it took effect, according to admissions data released Thursday.

Follow

The Guardian: Universities urged to combat campus anti-semitism

Student unions must be brought within the Race Relations Amendment Act to protect Jewish students and university leaders must crack down on anti-semitism on campus, Lady Deech, the independent adjudicator for higher education, urged last night.

Follow

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Panel supports fixes for affirmative action

A committee of Wisconsin legislators and citizens formed to review the state’s affirmative action policies approved at least two reform measures Monday night as members fought viciously over whether race and ethnicity should be considered in government contracting and university admissions.

Follow

The Oregonian: UO rejects challenge of recruitment plan

he University of Oregon is taking issue with an economics professor’s claim that a program developed to recruit more minority faculty members is illegal.

Provost Linda Brady and general counsel Melinda Grier said the program, which helps new minority faculty set up an office or lab, is legal and needed to help attract minority faculty in a competitive market.

Economics professor Bill Harbaugh has challenged the program, known as the Underrepresented Minority Recruitment Program, in e-mails to UO President Dave Frohnmayer. He calls it an “obvious violation” of the Constitution and Civil Rights Act.

Harbaugh declined to comment further.

The program provides as much as $30,000 a year for three years to reimburse departments and colleges for the cost of “startup packages” used attract new minority faculty members.

Follow

Sacramento Bee: Students speak out on lack of Latino professors

Eric Alfaro realized about a year ago that something was bothering him about Woodland Community College.

Alfaro said he was among the few Latino students on path to transfer to a four-year university, while others were taking longer to graduate or dropping out of school.

As president of the student group Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan, or MEChA, Alfaro encouraged others to seek answers.

Follow