Tampa Tribune: Union Pushes USF On Domestic Partner Benefits
TAMPA – Even though budget cuts are aimed directly at their colleagues, faculty union leaders at the University of South Florida say they must pursue a benefit still under debate after two years: a domestic-partner health plan.
Union leaders say the university’s grim financial outlook is no reason to abandon work toward an employee benefit offered at a growing number of Florida schools. Progress, however, remains uncertain.
The Washington Post: Affirmative Action Foes Push Ballot Initiatives
Activists, With Eyes on November, Focus on Five States
CHICAGO — Sixteen months after voters in Michigan voted to kill affirmative action in the public sphere, opponents of preferences based on race and gender are pushing five more states to ban the practice.
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Posted in Equity
The Chronicle: Gender Gap in Academic Wages Is Linked to Type of Institution, Researcher Says
The wage gap between men and women in academe is driven more by women’s concentration at certain institutions than by their concentration in certain disciplines, a scholar reported Monday at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association.
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Posted in Equity, Salary/Economic Benefits
Detroit News: Judge dismisses suit challenging Proposal 2
DETROIT — A federal Judge on Tuesday dismissed a lawsuit challenging Proposal 2, a state law that bans preferential treatment based on race or gender in government hiring and university admissions.
U.S. District Judge David Lawson’s ruling upholds the constitutionality of the measure Michigan voters approved in 2006.
In dismissing the suit, Lawson said the plaintiffs failed to prove that the amendment was created to target minorities.
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Inside Higher Ed: EEOC Rejects Racial Bias Claim Against MIT
James L. Sherley attracted nationwide attention last year with a hunger strike to protest his tenure denial by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Sherley, who is black, accused MIT of racial discrimination — a charge the institute denied. While Sherley ended his hunger strike after 12 days, he continued to maintain that he was the victim of bias and filed complaints with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
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Posted in Equity, Tenure & Promotion
The Guardian: Women scientists face discrimination, says study
Women continue to struggle to reach the top echelons of academia due to discrimination, according to new research presented at the Royal Economic Society annual conference this week.
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Lambda Legal: Gay Couple Sues University of Hawaii Following Denial of Family Housing
‘It makes no sense for the University to suddenly decide to discriminate against them just because they are gay.’
(Honolulu, March 10, 2008) — At a press conference today, Lambda Legal announced its intent to file a lawsuit against the University of Hawai`i, representing Phi Ngo and Joseph O’Leary, a gay couple not allowed to move back into family housing after living there for one year.
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Posted in Equity
Denver Post: Moves target affirmative action
A group trying to end preferences says it has enough signatures to reach the ballot.
Affirmative action foe Ward Connerly speaks to reporters Monday after delivering signatures to the secretary of state in support of putting Amendment 31 on November’s ballot. ( Craig F. Walker, The Denver Post )
Supporters of a ballot measure that would ask Coloradans to end state affirmative action programs said Monday that they have enough signatures to put the issue before voters in November.
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Los Angeles Times: Cal Poly SLO’s Saudi proposal generates anger
College’s engineering program ignores the country’s treatment of women, critics say.
If Cal Poly San Luis Obispo had wanted to start an engineering program for a university in someplace like Norway, the proposal probably would have sailed through without much comment either on campus or off.
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Posted in Equity
Sacramento Bee: Former coach accepts $6.6m
Johnson-Klein takes reduced award, says it’s ‘right thing to do.’
Stacy Johnson-Klein said Wednesday she will accept a smaller award in her court victory over Fresno State, saying it’s time for her and the community to put a divisive trial behind them.
The former California State University, Fresno, women’s basketball coach said she consulted with family and her legal team and prayed before deciding to accept Fresno County Superior Court Judge Donald S. Black’s reduced award of $6.6 million.
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Posted in Equity, Legal issues
The Chronicle: Pipeline to College Presidencies Carries Few Members of Minority Groups
Women represent a significant share of the senior campus administrators whose jobs are most likely to lead to a college presidency, according to a new survey by a leading higher-education group. But when it comes to members of racial minority groups, the supply of such potential leaders is much smaller.
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Posted in Administration, Diversity, Equity
The Chronicle News Blog: No Valentine’s Dinner Reservation for Ward Connerly and Ms. Magazine
The latest issue of Ms. Magazine, published by the Feminist Majority Foundation, has a package of stories criticizing Ward Connerly and his campaigns against the use of affirmative-action preferences in public education, public employment, and public contracting. The general tone of the articles is evident in their headlines: “Good Ole Boys,” “Contracting Connerly,” and “A Preference for Deception.”
The magazine argues that while much of the news-media coverage of Mr. Connerly’s campaigns has focused on their impact on public colleges, at core his efforts are driven by a desire to help companies owned by white men gain an upper hand in the competition for government contracts. In “Contracting Connerly,” it alleges extensive financial ties between Mr. Connerly and building-industry trade associations that have supported his campaigns.
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The New York Times: State Court Recognizes Gay Marriages From Elsewhere
A New York appellate court ruled Friday that valid out-of-state marriages of same-sex couples must be legally recognized in New York, just as the law recognizes those of heterosexual couples solemnized elsewhere. Lawyers for both sides said the ruling applied to all public and private employers in the state.
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Rochester Democrat & Chronicle: Gay marriages ruled valid in N.Y.
When Patricia Martinez and her newlywed spouse, Lisa Ann Golden, returned from Canada after their wedding in 2004, Martinez felt as if there was “a cloud over the marriage.”
The gay partners had wed in Canada but were returning to their home state, New York, which did not legally allow gay marriages.
On Friday, Martinez said, the cloud lifted. In a ruling hailed as historic by gay rights activists, an appellate court ruled Friday that New York must recognize same-sex marriages legally consecrated elsewhere.
This appears to be the first appellate ruling in the country mandating that a state must recognize the same-sex marriage of a couple legally wed elsewhere, according to officials with the New York Civil Liberties Union.
“Today I know the legal world looks at my marriage as valid, as something we’re not going to sweep under the rug, as something that doesn’t end,” said Martinez, a Chili resident who filed suit in 2005 to try to get her marriage legally blessed in New York. “Because we’re not going to go away.”
Martinez, a word-processing supervisor at Monroe Community College, sued the college in 2005 after it refused to extend health care benefits to her spouse. Her lawyer, Jeffrey Wicks of Rochester, argued that the couple was the victim of discrimination because the MCC benefits were allowed to heterosexual married couples.
At that time, the college’s contract with the Civil Service Employees Union did not recognize domestic partnerships. The MCC contract with CSEA now does.
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Inside Higher Ed: North Carolina and Coach Settle Sexual Harassment Suit
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has settled a former female soccer player’s lawsuit alleging that the university’s high-profile women’s soccer coach harassed and sexually discriminated against her and that North Carolina officials failed to stop the behavior.
As part of the settlement, the university agreed to pay $385,000 to Melissa Jennings and to revise its sexual harassment policies and procedures after an independent review; Anson Dorrance, the coach, went further than he had before in acknowledging having engaged in “inappropriate and unacceptable” behavior by participating in “group discussions of … team members’ sexual activities.” Dorrance will face no punishment from the university.
AP: Judge rewrites Mo. ballot language on affirmative action
A judge on Monday rewrote the ballot language for a proposal banning most government affirmative action programs in Missouri, striking down a version originally crafted by Secretary of State Robin Carnahan as unfair.
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Posted in Equity
Inside Higher Ed:
Arizona is the latest state where extending health benefits to the partners of gay employees in public higher education has become controversial. Capital Media Services reported that the administration of Gov. Janet Napolitano has moved through the state regulatory process to add the benefits, arguing that offering them will make the state’s colleges more competitive in recruiting employees. But the Center for Arizona Policy, a group that describes itself as supporting “traditional moral principles,” has filed objections to the plan.
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The Washington Post: Taking on the Economics of Gender Inequity
In the world of economic theory, Columbia University’s Graciela Chichilnisky is an A-list star.
Nobel laureates laud her work and call her brilliant; some economists credit her with an important economic theory. She is involved in the economics of fighting global warming internationally, and she was recently elected to the university senate.
Prof. Graciela Chichilnisky of Columbia University, shown above on the school’s campus in New York, is a world-renowned economist who has been fighting with her employer over pay and other gender equity issues for 16 years. Below, Chichilnisky leads a class.
Prof. Graciela Chichilnisky of Columbia University, shown above on the school’s campus in New York, is a world-renowned economist who has been fighting with her employer over pay and other gender equity issues for 16 years. Below, Chichilnisky leads a class. (Photos By Helayne Seidman For The Washington Post)
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Chichilnisky is also embroiled in a bitter 16-year fight, including two lawsuits and a countersuit, against the Ivy League school where she teaches. She says she has been a victim of sex discrimination. Her salary, she alleges, has not kept pace with those of her male counterparts. Research grants have been taken away, and administrators have retaliated because of her complaints, she says.
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Posted in Equity
The Guardian: Women miss out on university places
Older women and people from minority ethnic groups are least likely to secure university places, according to research from the University admissions service, Ucas.
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Posted in Equity, International
The Chronicle: Jury Awards $2-Million to Black Coach Who Blamed Dismissal on Racial Bias
A state-court jury in Louisiana awarded $2-million last week to a former head football coach at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette who said he had been fired because of his race.
Jerry L. Baldwin, one of only a handful of African-American head coaches in a big-time football program, was dismissed in 2001 after his teams compiled a 6-27 win-loss record during his three seasons on the job. University lawyers said the coach’s poor record and low attendance at the team’s games had led to his dismissal.
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Posted in Equity, Legal issues
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