Category Archives: Equity

Naples Daily News: FGCU coaches in ‘disbelief’ and ‘devastated’ over McAloose’s resignation

ESTERO — Whether they helped Carl McAloose build programs from make-shift scratch or recently joined the sparkling new Division I ambience, stunned Florida Gulf Coast University coaches lamented the resignation of their athletics director and tipped their caps to him Monday.

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The Chronicle: Rutgers U. Weighs Complaints of Bias Against Women

Female faculty members and graduate students in the university’s political-science department feel unfairly compensated and shut out of leadership posts, says an internal university report obtained by The Chronicle.

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AP: SBOE bars illegal immigrants from Ala. jr colleges

PELL CITY, Ala. (AP) — A pared-down state board of education has passed a new policy denying illegal immigrants admission to Alabama’s two-year colleges.

The policy, which takes affect next spring, was passed on a 4-0 vote Thursday, with one member abstaining. Three others were absent, as was Gov. Bob Riley, the board’s president.

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USA Today: McCain critique stirs affirmative action ban debate

PHOENIX (AP) — With one brief criticism of affirmative action, Republican presidential candidate John McCain has brought new attention to ballot issues aimed at dismantling preferential treatment programs for women and minorities.

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Inside Higher Ed: Preserving the Right to Deny

Expanding protections for disabled students is fine with higher education officials, so long as accommodating those students doesn’t erode academic standards, according to testimony given to a U.S. Senate committee Tuesday. But, as the hearing revealed, some are concerned that “standards” could be defined to exclude the very students federal laws are designed to help.

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Kansas City Star: Group fails to get enough signatures for anti-affirmative action amendment

JEFFERSON CITY | A group seeking to bar many state affirmative action programs missed a Sunday deadline to submit its initiative petition.

Missouri had been one of five states California businessman Ward Connerly and his supporters had targeted for an effort to strike down affirmative action laws.

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Inside Higher Ed: When Equity Official Takes Anti-Gay Stance

At many colleges, human resources officials are leaders in promoting equity and diversity among those who study and work together. And while colleges periodically debate views of various officials that are seen as biased against various groups, it is highly unusual for the head HR official at a university to be the source of such a controversy.

But at the University of Toledo, a column in a local paper by Crystal Dixon, the associate vice president of human resources, has set off such a debate and resulted in her being placed on a paid leave, pending possible further action.

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Inside Higher Ed: Gay Rights vs. Religious Rights

A federal judge has ruled that the Georgia Institute of Technology had materials in its office to support gay students that amounted to unconstitutional support for some religious groups over others.

The case may have no practical impact at Georgia Tech as the materials in question are already gone. But the legal group that brought the suit and other analysts agree that such materials may well exist at other public colleges and may now become the focus of more scrutiny or legal battles. The Georgia Tech ruling is believed to be the first of its kind.

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The Chronicle New Blog: Where Particles Collide, Sexism Is Rampant, Study Finds

A study of postdoctoral researchers involved in a major particle-physics experiment reveals pervasive gender discrimination there, according to a physicist who formerly worked on the experiment at the Fermi National Acceleratory Laboratory, known as Fermilab.

The study, which was conducted by Sherry Towers, looked at the work output of 57 postdoctoral physicists associated with Fermilab’s DZero collaboration, an experiment that includes some 700 physicists around the world. Her review documented how many internal papers each postdoctoral researcher had written and compared that figure with the number of times that each was allowed by the collaboration to make presentations at academic conferences. Such presentations help advance the careers of young physicists.

Fermilab data suggest that female postdocs had to be three times as productive as male postdocs in order to be granted the opportunity to present work at academic conferences, according to Ms. Towers.

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The Chronicle: Wealthy Colleges Show Drop in Enrollments of Needy Students

Elite colleges have made headlines in recent years with financial-aid plans aimed at enrolling more low-income students. But despite those efforts, the proportion of financially needy undergraduates at the nation’s wealthiest colleges and universities actually dropped between the 2004-5 and 2006-7 academic years, according to a Chronicle analysis of federal Pell Grant data.

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Boston Globe: Gender debate revived at Harvard

The controversy sparked by former Harvard president Lawrence H. Summers in 2005 when he questioned women’s “intrinsic aptitude” for science may be over, but the issue continues to provoke lively debate on campus.
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Yesterday afternoon, Rosalind Chait Barnett of Brandeis University and Steven E. Rhoads of the University of Virginia offered students vastly different takes on women’s scientific prowess and why they make the professional choices they do, during a seminar titled “What Larry Summers and Nancy Hopkins Didn’t Say: Women in Science.”

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Tulsa World: Affirmative action ban scuttled

Backers say they don’t have enough valid signatures to get the proposal on a ballot.

OKLAHOMA CITY — Backers of a proposed state question to end race and gender preferences have asked to withdraw the measure from consideration.

Critics said it would have ended affirmative action in Oklahoma.

Lawyers for Oklahoma City attorney W. Devin Resides filed a motion with the Oklahoma Supreme Court on Friday to withdraw the proposed ballot measure, State Question 737, from consideration.

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San Francisco Chronicle: U.S. ends bias investigation of Stanford

The U.S. Department of Labor has ended its investigation into whether Stanford University discriminated against some female faculty members and researchers.

Of the 16 employees who joined a gender discrimination complaint filed in 1999, only five complainants remained, the others having dropped off for various reasons. Investigators in the department’s Office of Federal Contract Compliance did not find any gender or racial discrimination against those who remained, said department spokeswoman Deanne Amaden.

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