Category Archives: Equity

Detroit Free Press New Lawsuit Seeks to Block Michigan Vote on Affirmative Action

After losing in the state courts, opponents of a ballot proposal to ban affirmative action took their argument to federal court Thursday.

Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick joined local labor groups, several African-American voters and Operation King’s Dream, an affiliate of the organization By Any Means Necessary, in the lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Detroit asking that the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative (MCRI) be removed from the Nov. 7 ballot.

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<the Chronicle: State Bans on Affirmative Action Have Been of Little Benefit to Asian-American Students, Report Says

Contrary to predictions in a widely cited 2005 study that said Asian-American students were the biggest losers in affirmative action, those students made only minor gains at law schools when the practice was banned in three states, according to a new study.

An article in the spring issue of the Michigan Journal of Race & Law challenges the 2005 study, in which sociologists at Princeton University predicted that Asian-Pacific-Americans would occupy four out of every five seats created by accepting fewer African-American and Hispanic students if affirmative action were eliminated at elite universities (The Chronicle, June 17, 2005).

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Inside Higher Ed: The Missing Doctorates

Black Ph.D.’s in science and engineering are more likely than others to end up teaching in non-science fields, NSF study finds.

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The Chronicle: Policies with special appeal for women

Harvard University issued its first progress report Tuesday on the hiring of female and minority faculty members, announcing that it would spend $7.5-million over the next three years to improve working conditions for professors.

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The Chronicle: DISCRIMINATION-SUIT VICTORY FOR MALE PROFESSORS

A judge has decided that 40 white male professors who brought a discrimination suit against Northern Arizona University 11 years ago are entitled to $1.4-million in back pay and raises. The professors alleged that the university had discriminated against them in a pay-equity plan by giving raises of up to $3,000 each to certain minority and female professors, but giving no raises to them.

At the same time, one of those professors, George H. Rudebusch, together with a group of about 200 other white male professors and 80 female professors, filed a class-action reverse-discrimination lawsuit against the university’s president at the time, Eugene M. Hughes.

The suit against Mr. Hughes was later dismissed, and that dismissal was upheld by a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in 2002. But the appellate judges, who considered both lawsuits together, held in their opinion that the 40 professors were entitled to a jury decision on whether the raises given were higher than necessary to make up for past inequities.

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Inside Higher Ed: A Spirited Disposition Debate

For months, an education school accrediting group’s use of the phrase “social justice” to describe a desirable quality in candidates to become elementary and secondary teachers has fueled a debate that has been robust and at times contentious. Monday, as critics formally challenged the accreditor’s policy before a U.S. Education Department panel, the accrediting group defended its evaluation methods and took steps to defuse the issue.

The Chronicle: Accreditor of Education Schools Drops Controversial ‘Social Justice’ Language

The National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education won a key endorsement on Monday in its quest for continued federal approval of its accrediting power after announcing that it would drop controversial language relating to “social justice” from its accrediting standards for teacher-preparation programs.

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The Chronicle: REOPENING AFFIRMATIVE-ACTION DEBATE

The U.S. Supreme Court agreed on Monday to take up the question of whether race can be a factor in assigning students to public schools. How the court decides the two cases could affect the landmark 2003 decisions involving the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor.

Inside Higher Ed: Another Swing at Affirmative Action

The U.S. Supreme Court decided Monday to hear a pair of cases dealing with the use of affirmative action in the public schools, which higher education legal experts agreed could give a newly configured (and more conservative) court the chance to review its 2003 ruling in two University of Michigan cases that allowed colleges to consider race in admitting students.

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Inside Higher Ed: Opening Up the Elites

In recent years, driven in part by the publication of books like William G. Bowen’s Equity and Excellence in American Higher Education and Jerome Karabel’s The Chosen, a small but steadily growing number of elite private and public colleges have embraced the idea that they must do a much better job of opening their doors to students from low-income families. Private institutions such as Princeton University and Amherst College and selective public institutions like the Universities of Virginia and North Carolina at Chapel Hill have altered their financial aid programs and, to a lesser extent, their admissions policies with the goal of expanding the number of underprivileged students they enroll.

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PoughkeepsieJournal.com: 21 gay-rights activists cited at West Point

Twenty-one gay-rights activists were arrested Wednesday after staging a protest against the Pentagon’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy on the grounds of the U.S. Military Academy.

The West Point stop was the last on a 20-stop tour of conservative Christian and military colleges that Soulforce Equality Ride organizers say discriminate against gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered people through their admissions policies.

“We are tired of being discriminated against, we are tired of being pushed in the closet, we’re tired of being told there’s not a place for us at the table,” organizer Jake Reitan told protesters.

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Inside Higher Ed:

Efforts to hire more members of racial minority groups onto college faculties are undermined by significant turnover of those who are hired, according to a report by the James Irvine Foundation and the American Association of Colleges and Universities. The report, which was based on a review of faculty hiring at 27 private colleges in California between 2000 and 2004, found that the proportion of black, Hispanic and Native American/Alaskan Native professors rose from 7 to 9 percent over the period. But it also found that three of every five minority faculty members hired were replacing other minority professors. “With the revolving door spinning minority faculty right back out, efforts to increase faculty diversity are simply not having the impact they should,” said José F. Moreno, assistant professor of Chicano and Latino studies at California State University at Long Beach, the report’s lead author.

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amarillo.com: $58,000 awarded in Tech gender bias suit

Federal jurors unanimously agreed Wednesday with two former Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center pharmacy professors who say the school discriminated against them by paying them less than their male colleagues.

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Inside Higher Ed: Explaining the gender gap in pay

Why do female professors earn less than male professors? Some charge that gender bias is at play, while others insist that once factors such as experience are accounted for, the gaps aren’t consequential.

There may be truth to both views, according to research findings presented this week at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association by Paul D. Umbach, an assistant professor of higher education at the University of Iowa. Umbach used a series of databases to calculate the gender gap in pay over all, and then to account for all kinds of factors other than gender bias that may contribute to the salary gap. In the end, he found that looking at those factors decreases the size of the gap, but that it remains meaningful.

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The Chronicle: Political Connections Were Key to Hiring at N.J. Medical School, Report Says

Influence-peddling was so pervasive at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey a year ago that numerical rankings were assigned to job seekers based on their political connections, according to a report released on Monday by a federal monitor.

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Associated Press: Racial Comment in E-Mail Snares Indiana Trustee

An Indiana University trustee is apologizing after he described a Purdue University admissions officer in an e-mail message as “tall, blond, Scandanavian and attractive” and noted that “enthusiastic whites” like her “do better” in recruiting at black high schools, the Associated Press reported today.

The trustee, Tom Reilly, said he sent the message, complete with typos, to his fellow trustees only to make them aware of Purdue’s approach to minority recruiting, which Indiana has identified as an important goal. He wrote that he had had a chance to speak with the Purdue admissions officer at a statewide conference on admissions and student aid.

Most readers of the e-mail message didn’t take it that way. Clarence Boone, a black trustee, said his response was “outrage and indignation” over the “profound racial implications” in the message. Mr. Reilly conceded that he could have recounted his conversation with the Purdue official “in a different way.”

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The Chronicle: Opponents of Affirmative Action Seek Revocation of ABA’s Accrediting Power

Three organizations that oppose affirmative action asked the U.S. Department of Education on Wednesday to revoke the American Bar Association’s authority to accredit law schools unless the association drops requirements that the groups consider “discriminatory” and “politically correct.”

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The Register-Herald: WVSOM settles sexcual harassment claim

A lawsuit filed last October by a West Virginia School of Osteopathic student claiming she was sexually harassed by a professor has been settled out of court for $90,000, according to a lawyer representing the medical school.

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Star Bulletin: Chaminade U disputes suit alleging hiring bias

The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission alleges in a lawsuit that Chaminade University discriminated against a woman because she was pregnant.

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