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Army's Updated Rules On Hair Styles Tangle With Race | As some Army regulations on hair styles spark protest from African American women, David Greene talks to professor Lori Tharps, co-author of Hair Story: Untangling the Roots of Black Hair in America. | News Headlines: Aug. 28, 2007Press Release: U.S. Civil Rights Commission Warns That Affirmative Action Might Harm Minority Law Students -- "Admitting students into law schools for which they might not academically be prepared could harm their academic performance and hinder their ability to obtain secure and gainful employment ... Moreover, racial preferences might also contribute to racial income and wealth disparities." Do you agree? What do make of the report's concept of affirmative action? Should racial preferences be used in student admissions? More Headlines:The New York Times: After a Trailblazer Is Honored, Williamses Carry on Her Legacy Politico.com: Obama Supported by Wilder ESPN.com: Coverage of Vick Means Bigger Issues Ignored Washington Times: D.C. Tops in Obese Youths BBC: South Africa Recalls Faulty Condoms Los Angeles Times: Bids to Start for Bonds' Nos. 755, 756 The Atlanta Journal Constitution: Bishop Accused in Beating Blames Satan for His Woes Newsday: Judges in Newark More Cautious with Bails After Slaying | kor_Hang | 19,700 |
Brown University President On Why Universities Need To Reopen By Fall | NPR's Steve Inskeep talks to Brown University President Christina Paxson about why reopening college and university campuses for the fall semester should be a "national priority." | -- NPR's Larry Abramson reports that a government plan to lower student loan interest rates is meeting resistance from banks. They say rates are already low for the amount of work it takes to administer that kind of loan. | eng_Latn | 19,701 |
The Myth Of Colin Powell's 'Obama's One Of Us' Vote | To hear Rush Limbaugh tell it, it sounds like a scary story shared around the fire when he's at sleepaway camp in the "pro-America" parts of the country: Colin Powell, the once Trustable Brother? He's possessed! He's voting for Barack Obama! Why? Why? Because they're both black...ish. They've got that light-dark-skinned soul brother thing going on. It's the only, ONLY reason Powell is voting for Obama! Though Limbaugh is an admitted satirist and I'm sure is just making ironic comment on Powell's eloquent, heartfelt, cogently explained reasons for supporting Obama. By reducing those reasons to race. (Though, no, Powell hasn't endorsed any, as Limbaugh puts it, "inexperienced, very liberal, white candidates." He's just supported an inexperienced, very conservative, white candidate for years.) Unfortunately, there might be a few people on the far, far right who don't get satire — the folks who did the 1/2 Hour News Hour, for example — who might actually buy into the nonsense that blacks are giving Obama "he's one of us" votes. That, in turn, forces me to take time from my busy schedule to prove the right wrong. Limbaugh, and Pat Buchanan, too (whom I work with at MSNBC and who I will say is decent even when he's way wrong, so I will cut a little slack), make their "he's one of us" vote claim regarding Powell in particular (blacks in general) in spite of the fact that a person of color has run for the White House in every presidential election over the last 24 years: Jesse Jackson in 1984 and 1988. Gov. Douglas Wilder of Virginia in 1992. Former ambassador and conservative activist Alan Keyes of Maryland in 1996 and 2000. Former Sen. Carol Moseley Braun of Illinois and the Rev. Al Sharpton of New York in 2004. Plenty of opportunities for Powell and other blacks to willy-nilly support a brother (or a sister). Conservatives may argue that, well, none of those candidates was even worth Powell's attention. But if Powell is — if blacks are — just going to vote for a "darkie," then won't any "darkie" do? None carried the black vote to any significance. Certainly not Keyes. Not Wilder and Braun, arguably the most qualified candidates at that time. Jackson had some strong showings but could not come close to closing the deal. And what about Sharpton? Shouldn't he be the closest comparison to Obama in terms of blacks just "giving him" their votes? Sharpton, too, gives a good speech, and he ran most recently. In 2004, in the District of Columbia primary, Sharpton came in second to Howard Dean. D.C. at the time was 70 percent minority. Sixty percent black. Yet the minorities and the blacks "gave" their votes to Dean. In South Carolina, only 1 in 5 blacks voted for Sharpton. Clearly — more important, factually — most blacks don't vote for blacks just because they are black. This should have been evident in the early stages of Obama's campaign, when Sen. Hillary Clinton initially outpolled Obama among blacks, to the surprise of everyone except people of color, who knew going in we weren't a monolithic voting bloc. Should've been evident when blacks and liberals had to ask the inane question, "Is Obama black enough?" Even Michelle Obama was reduced to saying that one day black America would "wake up and get it" with regard to voting for her husband based on race. Beyond the merit of that, or of any of those positions, it does not appear as though black America is handing Obama a "he's one of us" vote. Rather, the majority of black Americans are giving their votes to the man who, as Powell said, has passed the tests of leadership, particularly over these past seven weeks. I think the confusion is with the conservatives, who wouldn't cast their votes for someone who's not "one of us." They apply a very narrow litmus test — excluding the "macacas," or the "uppity," or people who don't come from those "pro-America" parts of the country. But that doesn't mean the rest of us — those who have a more open mind — necessarily vote for a candidate simply because he is "one of us." | Has American education research mostly languished in an echo chamber for much of the last half century? Harvard's Thomas Kane thinks so. Why have the medical and pharmaceutical industries and Silicon Valley all created clear paths to turn top research into game-changing innovations, he asks, while education research mostly remains trapped in glossy journals? Kane, a professor of education at Harvard's Graduate School of Education, points out that there is no effective educational equivalent of the Food and Drug Administration, where medical research is rigorously vetted and translated into solutions. Maybe, he says, there should be. It's been 50 years since the publication of the highly influential "Equality of Educational Opportunity" study — better known as the Coleman Report, after its author, James Coleman. And after a half-century, Kane writes in a new article, we should have made much more progress toward closing the achievement gap: the educational equivalent of the fight against cancer. Failure to do more, Kane argues, underscores the deep shortcomings of education research. The Coleman Report drew national attention to chronic educational inequality and achievement gaps by race. And while scholarship and research since 1966 have challenged some of his conclusions as misleading, even wrong, many of the core problems he highlighted remain. I spoke with Kane about this recently. Here's a version of our conversation, edited for length: Give us a snapshot of how important the Coleman Report was in terms of looking at the achievement gap. The Coleman Report was extremely important. It was authorized as part of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. They were given two years to do a nationally representative study just documenting the magnitude of the achievement gap and differences in access to quality education. As you can imagine, the technology for collecting and analyzing data back in 1964-65 was very different from what we have today, so it was a remarkable feat, and has a lasting legacy to this day. The tools he had were limited; his methods and conclusions were flawed. But he was nonetheless on to something. Is that a fair characterization? I would say my main complaint is not with what Coleman did, although, as you say, there are some weaknesses to it. My main complaint is what we've done since then. We have spent the last 50 years essentially recapitulating the same descriptive work that Coleman and his colleagues did, and not finding solutions and spreading information about solutions. The point of education research is to identify effective interventions for closing the achievement gaps that Coleman observed and ensuring that that information is usable. And by that metric — by our ability to build consensus around a set of interventions that work for closing the achievement gap — I would have to say that the last 50 years have been a near complete failure. Let's drill down on that. That's a pretty scathing and strong indictment. Yes. I don't point fingers at the school officials out there. We just have not organized ourselves and organized the research function in a way that we're actually informing decision-makers with the type of evidence, and on the timeline they need, to make decisions. Have education experts been writing and researching for these glossy journals in a kind of echo chamber? It's mostly produced for each other and not for the actual practice that's implemented? I would say for the first 35 of those 50 years, we were primarily writing for academic colleagues. Over the last 15 years, we've done a better job of studying interventions. Under the second George W. Bush administration, the Education Department made a big push to study interventions with random-assignment experiments. The problem is that we don't have any kind of mechanism for connecting that central knowledge base to the decisions that school superintendents and chief academic officers inside school districts make. Medical science and technology companies, with its research and development, they have a pretty good system where research gets translated into action. You're saying in education that just does not exist. It's almost as if we have replicated the medical model and the pharmaceutical model for conducting research, but we've not replicated the parts of those models which actually translate that research into action. The FDA offers the expertise of a central panel of folks that are reviewing the research and looking for the evidence, side effects, efficacy. They make decisions about which drugs we're all, you know, going to be exposed to. We have no such thing in education. In medicine, often you'll have panels recommending clear standards of care. We have no such thing in education. We have an approach to funding education research that seems geared toward building a central knowledge base or building the expertise among a small group of experts, but there's just no way to translate that into decisions out in the | kor_Hang | 19,702 |
What are the consequences of lying about your ethnicity on your college applications? | Can I lie about my ethnicity to top college admissions? | Has anyone ever gotten into legal troubles by using Hola VPN/proxy? | eng_Latn | 19,703 |
Poll: Asian-Americans See Individuals' Prejudice As Big Discrimination Problem | New results from an NPR survey show that large numbers of Asian-Americans experience and perceive discrimination in many areas of their daily lives. This happens despite their having average incomes that outpace other racial, ethnic and identity groups. The poll, a collaboration among NPR, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, also finds a wide gap between immigrant and nonimmigrant Asian-Americans in reporting discrimination experiences, including violence and harassment. "Our poll shows that Asian-American families have the highest average income among the groups we've surveyed, and yet the poll still finds that Asian-Americans experience persistent discrimination in housing, jobs and at college," says Robert Blendon, professor of health policy and political analysis at the Harvard Chan School who co-directed the survey. "Over the course of our series, we are seeing again and again that income is not a shield from discrimination." In addition to asking about personal experiences with discrimination, we also wanted to find out what people's perceptions are of discrimination within their own neighborhoods. The numbers for Asian-Americans were lower on this measure than for personal experiences but still show that a notable level of discrimination exists in everyday life. The survey was conducted among a nationally representative probability-based telephone (cell and landline) sample of 500 Asian-American adults. The margin of error for the total Asian-American response is 5.8 percentage points at the 95 percent confidence interval. Interviews were conducted in English, Mandarin, Cantonese and Vietnamese. Complete methodological information is in the full poll report. Looking at the split according to immigration status, we found that nonimmigrant Asian-Americans are more than three times as likely to say they've experienced violence because they are Asian and more than twice as likely to say they've been threatened or nonsexually harassed because they are Asian. We also saw a similar gap based on immigration status in terms of experiencing sexual harassment. But it's important to note that our poll was done earlier this year, before the country's widespread discussions of sexual assault and harassment in the fall. "These national conversations may have affected how people viewed or responded to their own experiences, or on their willingness to disclose these experiences in a survey," Blendon says. When it comes to health care, the immigrant-nonimmigrant split was reversed, with immigrants being 17 times more likely than nonimmigrants to report experiencing discrimination because they are Asian. Overall, Asian-Americans commonly report experiencing insensitive or offensive comments, negative assumptions or slurs. But they infrequently report the experience of having other people be afraid of them because of their race. Regarding treatment by the police or by the court system, about 1 in 10 Asian-Americans report that they or a family member have been unfairly stopped or treated by the police because they are Asian. But when we sorted the results by ethnicity, Indian-Americans reported unfair stops or treatment eight times more often than Chinese-Americans. Discrimination takes on many forms, both institutional and personal. In the survey, a large majority of Asian-Americans said discrimination by individuals is a bigger problem than discrimination in laws or the government. Some important notes on our survey: We asked people to identify their ethnicity, and our data is sorted as follows. But in several cases, the number of respondents was insufficient to include in our breakouts along ethnic lines. In the full report, "Southeast Asian American" includes respondents who said their families are Filipino, Vietnamese, Cambodian, Laotian or Malaysian. "Chinese Americans" refers to Asian-Americans of Chinese heritage, but not those who identified as Taiwanese. Asian-Americans who say their families are from the Indian subcontinent are referred to as "Indian American," not to be confused with Native Americans, whose experiences are covered in a separate report in this series. These three groups (Southeast Asian, Chinese and Indian) are not exhaustive of the entire Asian-American sample. Individuals from other subgroups (e.g., Taiwanese Americans) are included in the total sample ("All Asian-Americans") but are not analyzed separately because of insufficient sample size. The survey was conducted Jan. 26 to April 9, 2017, among a nationally representative, probability-based telephone (cell and landline) sample of 3,453 adults age 18 or older. The survey included nationally representative samples of African-Americans, Latinos, Asian-Americans, Native Americans and white Americans; men and women; and LGBTQ adults. This report presents the results specifically for a nationally representative probability sample of 500 Asian-American U.S. adults. Separate reports anal | The men and women who depend on the Department of Veterans Affairs for their medical, educational and other benefits are not "customers," VA Secretary Eric Shinseki, a retired Army general, tells All Things Considered host Robert Siegel. "We look at this as a relationship with clients, not just customers," said Shinseki, after Robert played him a recording of one veteran who says that when he deals with the VA, he's always told to wait -- and doesn't feel as if he's being treated like a friend, but more like a number. That's wrong, Shinseki said. "We look at this as a relationship with clients, not just customers," he said. "Customers have an opportunity to shop around and decide which choices they want to exercise. The relationship with a client is different. "Clients have already invested in this relationship. Our obligation now is to fulfill that obligation." And regarding that veteran's concerns about how long things take to get processed, Shinseki said "we intend to do something about it." Here's that part of his conversation with Robert: The interview is the fifth and final installment of ATC's series on the challenges that the nation's "new veterans" face and the VA's efforts to meet them. It is scheduled to be on today's show. Click here to find an NPR station that broadcasts or streams ATC. Later, the as-aired version of the interview will be posted here. | eng_Latn | 19,704 |
Controversy: Are Black Teachers and Mentors Better for Black Kids? | Twice in a very short amount of time we have gotten irate letters from listeners accusing us or our guests of reverse racism for the guests saying that it's important for black kids to have black teachers and mentors. I can't help but think this is one of those stories that many black and non-black listeners hear differently. I'll leave you to listen to the tape, and to weigh in. What do you think? Who can best mentor and teach African-American children? Is it reverse racism to say yes? Story on black mentoring:"A Nationwide Shortage in Black Mentors" Letters in response Stories on black teachers:"Call Me Mister" programTeacher Antonio Coleman, on being a black teacher in a mostly black school Letters in response | Tavis Smiley sits down for an extended, exclusive interview with Harvard University Afro-American Studies Professor Cornel West about why he's chosen to leave Harvard for Princeton. | eng_Latn | 19,705 |
High Court Sets Limits On Sex Discrimination Suits | The nation's high court rules that workers who sue their employers for sex discrimination must do so promptly. The case stems from an employer who argued that the decision to pay a female employee less than her male counterparts was made years earlier. The justices agreed, setting a statute of limitations. | Nearly 100 French women activists, academics and actresses have signed an open letter saying that the #MeToo movement has gone too far, becoming a "witch hunt" against men. | eng_Latn | 19,706 |
Arizona Gov Signs Ethnic-Studies Ban | With the bonfire of controversy over its anti-illegal immigration law still burning strong, Arizona got more tinder going on another controversy Tuesday when Gov. Jan Brewer signed into law a ban on ethnic studies in the state's schools. The legislation was specifically targeted at high schools in the Tucson Unified School District with courses in Mexican American studies. Critics of those courses said they were used by activists in Tuscon to incite hatred, particularly of whites. A fact sheet for House Bill 2281 gives the purpose of the bill thusly: Prohibits public schools from including courses or classes, which promote the overthrow of the U.S. government or resentment towards a race or class of people, and specifies rules pertaining to pupil disciplinary proceedings are not to be based on race, color, religion, sex, national origin or ancestry. The law has certain exceptions, such as for native Americans, for instance. | NPR's Ari Shapiro speaks with Alabama State Rep. Jeremy Gray about his bill to bring yoga back to the state's public schools. | yue_Hant | 19,707 |
Why Some Diversity Thinkers Aren't Buying The Tech Industry's Excuses | The thing about the tech industry and employee diversity reports is they can feel like Groundhog Day: Google, 2014: "Put simply, Google is not where we want to be when it comes to diversity." Google, 2016: "We saw encouraging signs of progress in 2015, but we're still far from where we need to be." Facebook, 2014: "We have more work to do — a lot more. But the good news is that we've begun to make progress." Facebook, 2015: "While we have achieved positive movement over the last year, it's clear to all of us that we still aren't where we want to be. There's more work to do." Facebook, 2016: "We still have a long way to go, but as we continue to strive for greater change, we are encouraged by positive hiring trends." It's certainly commendable that tech giants have gotten in the habit of airing their diversity efforts and commitment to doing better. But the numbers show that actual progress in hiring more underrepresented minorities — for tech, that's black, Latino and female — seems to be stuck in neutral. This month, Google said its total U.S. workforce in 2015 was 2 percent black and 3 percent Hispanic — unchanged from the year before. Women comprised 31 percent of all Google employees globally, up from 30 percent in 2014. Facebook issued a strikingly similar report: Of its overall U.S. workforce, 2 percent of workers were black, and 4 percent were Hispanic — also unchanged from the previous year. Women accounted for 33 percent of global employees, up from 32 percent. The numbers didn't surprise many — both companies are heavy ships, and can't be expected to rotate in a year. But Facebook's diagnosis of the underlying problem raised eyebrows: "It has become clear that at the most fundamental level, appropriate representation in technology or any other industry will depend upon more people having the opportunity to gain necessary skills through the public education system." The "pipeline" argument — that there are simply not enough properly skilled minorities for hire — has troubled diversity experts in Silicon Valley for years. "It's always been a cop-out," says Kalimah Priforce, who runs Oakland-based Qeyno Labs, which organizes hackathons targeted at minority youth. "The pipeline has a bias. ... Their version of the pipeline is what's creating the outcome that we see." The numbers A Facebook spokeswoman tells NPR that the education angle was never meant as an excuse for the existing demographics. Rather, it's a reflection of the company's focus on the comprehensive change needed to chip away at the years-old systemic racism that's reflected not just in the tech sector but in business in general, she says. (Facebook pays NPR and other news organizations to produce live videos for its site.) Engineering and computer science degrees, of course, are far from an exact measure of competency for jobs at tech companies, but that's one element that can be quantitatively analyzed. According to National Science Foundation data, black or African-American students received more than 8 percent of bachelor's degrees in science and engineering in 2012, virtually unchanged over a decade. Hispanic or Latino students received almost 10 percent of such degrees, rising steadily from about 7 percent in 2012. Women received just over half of science and engineering bachelor's degrees in 2012, having risen over the years, according to the NSF report. But women's share of bachelor's degrees in math and computer sciences has declined to about a quarter since peaking at nearly 40 percent in the mid-'80s. A USA Today analysis in 2014 found that "top universities turn out black and Hispanic computer science and computer engineering graduates at twice the rate the leading technology companies hire them." And as of that year, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission reported that the high-tech sector (broader than just Silicon Valley) employed a larger share of whites, Asians and men, and a smaller share of African-Americans, Hispanics and women than the "overall private industry." "This is a multifaceted problem. ... But when you hear these inane kind of platitudes and then pushing the responsibility off to the pipeline, it's insulting," says Catherine Bracy, co-founder of the Oakland TechEquity Collaborative and former community organizer at Code for America. "The fact that you can't hire people into nontechnical roles, how do you account for that?" (At Facebook and Google, women were on roughly equal footing with men in nontechnical jobs, though black and Hispanic workers remained in single-digit percentages.) "These are people in companies that have been wildly successful obviously," Bracy says, "and they can't imagine that there's something that they're doing that might be contributing to a negative outcome. So if what they're trying isn't working, it must be something else that's broken, not internally." "Not a feelings problem" Much has been said and written about the "bro culture" stereotype associated with the | This past week, the Pentagon fired off a stern warning about Chinese computer hacking, and the Chinese responded with a tense rebuttal. Weekends on <em>All Things Considered</em> guest host Arun Rath speaks with James Fallows, national correspondent with <em>The Atlantic</em>, who's been in Beijing all week and saw the response firsthand. | eng_Latn | 19,708 |
#1326 - Decisions, Decisions at the Supreme Court | This week, the U.S. Supreme Court decides on crucial cases for Latinos. For “News or Noise?” we talk about unpaid internships and their effects on journalism. Then, visit a dual language program in Florida, the state where bilingual education began. Finally, ten years after the U.S Navy ceased its practice range bombings in Vieques, artists get together to raise money for a radio station that will help Viequenses cope with new challenges. | Congress has passed a ban on what opponents call "partial-birth abortion." In a separate case, the Florida legislature has passed a bill ordering a patient's feeding tube to be reinserted. We'll discuss the intersection of legislation and the courts.<BR><BR> Guests: <BR><BR> <STRONG>Julie Rovner</STRONG><BR> *NPR health correspondent<BR><BR> <STRONG>Richard Knox</STRONG><BR> *NPR health and science correspondent<BR><BR> <STRONG>S.V. Date</STRONG><BR> *Tallahassee bureau chief for the <EM>Palm Beach Post</EM><BR> *His latest novel is <EM>Black Sunshine</EM> (Putnam, 2002)<BR><BR> <STRONG>Jeffrey Rosen</STRONG><BR> *Associate professor at George Washington Law School<BR> *Legal affairs editor at <EM>The New Republic</EM><BR><BR> <STRONG>Sylvia Law</STRONG><BR> *Professor of constitutional law at New York University<BR> *Has represented people seeking the right to choose at the beginning and at the end of life (specializing in health care, human rights) | eng_Latn | 19,709 |
Work At Home Standards | <font color="red">(Update)</font> NPR's Kathleen Schalch reports that millions of telecommuters could be affected by a Labor Department policy requiring companies to abide by health and safety regulations for their stay-at-home workers. Federal workplace regulations apply to home offices even if employees only work from home on an occasional basis. OSHA would not inspect home offices, but employers say the policy could have a chilling effect anyway, making employers wary of telecommuting because of liability concerns. | A 15-year-old Texas student boycotts the state's mandatory standardized test for public school students. Kimberly Marciniak says preparation for the exam robs students of classroom time. NPR's Susan Stamberg talks to Marciniak. | kor_Hang | 19,710 |
Proposals To Diversify NYC's Top High Schools Would Do Little To Help, Study Finds | New York City's public school system is vast, with more than a million students spread across thousands of schools. And like the city itself, it's remarkably diverse — about 15 percent Asian, just under 30 percent black, about 40 percent Latino, and about 15 percent white, with all sorts of finer shadings of ethnicity, nationality and language in that mix. The city also boasts nine elite "specialized" public high schools — of which the Bronx High School of Science, Brooklyn Technical High School, and Stuyvesant High School are the most difficult to get into. They're largely considered the school system's crown jewels, regularly sending students to top-tier universities. The demographics at those schools look a lot different. Blacks and Latinos make up around 70 percent of all the kids in the city's public school system, but just a tiny share of the kids at those three schools. At Stuyvesant, generally considered the best school in the city, they made up less than 4 percent of the total student body — 113 out of 3,296 kids — this school year. The conversation about how to boost the number of black and Latino kids at those three schools tends to focus on their narrow admissions process. There are no interviews, no applications, no required transcripts; whether a student gets in depends entirely on how she does on a 2 1/2-hour multiple choice exam called the Specialized High School Admissions Test. Critics say that all-or-nothing emphasis on the SHSAT exam hurts otherwise academically talented black and Latino kids who might otherwise get in. In 2012, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and other civil rights groups filed a formal complaint with the Department of Justice arguing that using the SHSAT as the lone metric of academic talent shuts out academically talented black and Latino students. And Bill di Blasio, the city's mayor, made the push for a more holistic set of admissions criteria part of his campaign platform when he first ran in 2013. Meanwhile, alumni groups at the specialized schools have fought changes to admissions policies, saying that relying on the test is fair and objective. But a report released last month by New York University found that many of the proposals that advocates have suggested to help bolster black and Latino enrollment at those schools wouldn't make much of a dent — indeed, the researchers found that they might do the opposite. "Maybe it was naive, but I thought if you switched to more holistic measures, it would diversify the admissions pool considerably," said Sean Corcoran, one of the researchers, told Sarah Danville of GothamSchools. But the study found that there is "considerable overlap in students who would be admitted under different rules." The researchers wrote that using an alternative admissions criteria — taking some combination of grades, state test results and attendance into account — would "have little effect on the average baseline achievement of specialized high school students ... but would have large effects on their demographics." They found that under the broader criteria, many more girls would be admitted to the specialized schools — at Stuyvesant this year the gender gap is close to 600 students — and more white and Latino students would get offers to attend those schools, and fewer Asian kids would be admitted. But they found that the new criteria would do little to boost the numbers of black kids, and in some cases actually might lower them. The NYU researchers said that guaranteeing entry to the top students from every high school would make the elite high schools more diverse, but warned that taking that approach would come "at the cost of reducing the average achievement of incoming students." The Atlantic's Alia Wong wrote that the bottleneck isn't happening at the point of the test — certain kids are sorted out of the prospective applicant pool for those specialized high schools way before they can ever take the SHSAT exam. "[A]mong the students who came from one of the top 30 'feeder' middle schools, 58 percent were in gifted and talented programs that required a test for admission, and 29 percent were in other types of screened schools that admit kids based on criteria such as exam scores. This phenomenon is also known 'tracking,' which even the DOE has described as a modern-day form of segregation, and indicates that a much deeper problem lies in the tendency to test and segregate children from the get go. The analysis raises questions about the extent to which inadvertent engineering—starting with the so-called 'rug-rat race'—is exacerbating the achievement gap." Stuyvesant, Bronx Science and Brooklyn Tech are all math- and science-focused; it's worth considering how much their thinning-out of blacks and Latinos at the high school level impacts the numbers of students from those groups who pursue degrees or careers in STEM fields down the line. The acceptance letters for the upcoming fall school year went out across New York City in March. The | This from The Boston Globe about students on college campuses across the country struggling with ethnic tensions and racist attitudes: The subject of racial and ethnic tensions on college campuses has become so topical that a November episode of "Without a Trace" kicked off with a white student calling his black peer an affirmative-action "charity case" during class. Tufts University's conservative student newspaper, The Primary Source, generated controversy a year ago when it published a Christmas carol titled "O Come All Ye Black Folk." Asian students at Boston College complain of drunken alumni and students who shout racial epithets as part of their football game celebrations. Read the rest of the article, and tell us: Did you face similar run-ins during your time in school? How did you deal with it? | kor_Hang | 19,711 |
Is it possible to be allergic to a color? | Is it possible to be allergic to colors? | Can my school legally force me to say the pledge of allegiance, and punish me if I refuse? | eng_Latn | 19,712 |
First-In-The-Nation Effort Advances Debate Over What Form Reparations Should Take | The city of Evanston, Ill., authorized spending on a reparation program this week — believed to be the first of its kind in the country. Here's the report on Evanston's racial history we mention in this episode. Alderwoman Cecily Fleming — an African American resident of Evanston — tells NPR why she voted against the plan. And Dreisen Heath, researcher at the Human Rights Watch, argues that reparations can take many forms. In participating regions, you'll also hear from local journalists about what's happening in your community.Email us at [email protected]. | Roll over each state to see rankings on the disproportionality index. The index gauges the level at which Native American children are present in the foster care system compared with the level at which they are present in the general child population. An index greater than 1 indicates Native American children are over represented in the foster care system while an index of less than 1 indicates under representation. All figures are based on 2009 data. | kor_Hang | 19,713 |
Report: Affirmative Action May Harm Law Students | News Headlines: Aug. 28, 2007Press Release: U.S. Civil Rights Commission Warns That Affirmative Action Might Harm Minority Law Students -- "Admitting students into law schools for which they might not academically be prepared could harm their academic performance and hinder their ability to obtain secure and gainful employment ... Moreover, racial preferences might also contribute to racial income and wealth disparities." Do you agree? What do make of the report's concept of affirmative action? Should racial preferences be used in student admissions? More Headlines:The New York Times: After a Trailblazer Is Honored, Williamses Carry on Her Legacy Politico.com: Obama Supported by Wilder ESPN.com: Coverage of Vick Means Bigger Issues Ignored Washington Times: D.C. Tops in Obese Youths BBC: South Africa Recalls Faulty Condoms Los Angeles Times: Bids to Start for Bonds' Nos. 755, 756 The Atlanta Journal Constitution: Bishop Accused in Beating Blames Satan for His Woes Newsday: Judges in Newark More Cautious with Bails After Slaying | NPR's Lulu Garcia-Navarro talks to Renee Mahaffey Harris, president of the Center for Closing the Health Gap, about why Blacks and Latinos are not well represented in clinical vaccine trials. | eng_Latn | 19,714 |
Criminal Justice Collaborative | This team covers the nation's criminal justice system, including challenges to justice equity; recidivism; juvenile justice; prisons; police-community relations; crime-fighting strategies and trends including surveillance tools and technology. | NPR's Rachel Martin speaks with Shanteona Keys of the Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics about the organization's new report on achieving racial equity in college sports. | eng_Latn | 19,715 |
The Promise Of Diversity Is Yet To Be Fulfilled | Between the 1970s and today, the term "affirmative action" fell out of favor, and in its place, "diversity" emerged. Affirmative action, grounded in law and the moral obligation to right historic wrongs, was aimed at women and racial minorities. Over the years, it became tainted by controversy over reverse discrimination and quota-mongering. Diversity, on the other hand, was perceived to be not about preferences, but "fairness and inclusion." It embraced every group in the workforce: minorities, women, older workers, disabled workers, gays, lesbians — and white males. Diversity largely was not seen as a burden, but rather as an opportunity. Companies began to see how a diverse workforce could help them venture into new markets. Recent decades have brought a positive shift in thinking, but challenges still exist, UCLA and Columbia University legal scholar Kimberle Crenshaw tells Morning Edition guest host Deborah Amos. "The real question is: How open is the pipeline? And does it go all the way up to the top?" she says. "Many companies that have good reputations for having great diversity programs still have difficulty in mentoring and creating opportunities so those folks who are at the middle actually make it all the way up to the penthouse." Today, many American companies will say diversity is a central value, but is that much more than lip service? A company can celebrate Mother's Day, Crenshaw says, but on closer inspection, do they have family leave policies or offer flex time? "You can have a cosmetic policy, but not have a structural one," she says. STEVE INSKEEP, Host: Now even in this uncertain economy in this country, there are some things we know for sure, and this week we're going to explore one of them: The workplace is becoming more diverse. DEBORAH AMOS, Host: The percentages of Hispanics, Asians, African-Americans in the workforce are growing at a much faster rate than whites. INSKEEP: Unidentified Man #2: We got to change the attitude... (SOUNDBITE OF VIDEO MONTAGE) AMOS: And you notice, they're not just talking about women and minorities, corporate diversity is about young and old, gay and straight, disabled workers, we even heard the word height in that montage. Some people also described diversity as a safe word. KIMBERLE CRENSHAW: Diversity more or less came into common parlance as a way of framing equal opportunity policies that was acceptable, not quite as controversial. AMOS: I spoke with legal scholar Kimberle Crenshaw who says diversity is a much less threatening word than affirmative action. CRENSHAW: As we move away from those traditional kind of arguments to diversity, the focus of the argument trains our attention on the benefits of diversity. For companies, often it's framed in terms of there are markets that are untapped and if we really want to broaden the scope of our product, we need to have talent from the different communities that are traditionally underrepresented here. AMOS: So how do you know if a company is truly making progress? If you are analyzing a company, what would you look for? CRENSHAW: Or you can have a company that celebrates Mother's Day, right, but the question is do they have family leave policies, do they have flex time? So you can have a cosmetic policy but not have a structural one. AMOS: You know, in the '60s when affirmative action became law, many companies complied because they had to. CRENSHAW: Right. AMOS: Now, research shows that diversity pays, because it's a reflection of society. So why are we still talking about this? CRENSHAW: It's not surprising that we're still grappling with this. Quite frankly, the legal context has changed significantly. So we've moved from a period where companies thought they had to do it in order to comply to a period where they thought, well maybe we don't really have to worry about litigation, but perhaps they're other benefits for us in terms of market share, to a period now where a lot of companies sometimes worry that if they do too much then they're subject to suit from those who are claiming reverse discrimination. So it's a very complicated environment for companies right now. AMOS: And here's another complication; there's been a number of news reports showing that in this economy minorities, particularly blacks and Hispanics, are disproportionately affected. The New York Times ran a story about recent black college graduates, who were what the article said, whitening their resumes. They were altering their names to make them sound whiter. CRENSHAW: Well, absolutely. I mean - and this is again where the conversation about diversity, as opposed to remedying discrimination creates this huge gap, because there's a recognition that ones chances of even getting an interview are increased if the assumption is that you may in fact might be white. And there's a lot of studies that really back that up. So that's still in the background. As long as that's in the background they're going to be differential opp | Rachel Martin talks to Sen. Doug Jones of Alabama about what has been happening behind the scenes. There hasn't been a whole lot of visible progress on the immigration front. | eng_Latn | 19,716 |
What To Know About Affirmative Action As The Harvard Trial Begins | Does Harvard University discriminate against Asian-Americans in its admissions process? That's the question on trial in a Boston federal courtroom this week. At issue is whether Harvard unfairly discriminated against an Asian-American applicant who says the Ivy League school held him to higher standards than applicants of other races. This trial will also dissect a contentious political issue in higher education: affirmative action. But what exactly is affirmative action, and how did it become such a controversial issue? Today in U.S. higher education, affirmative action refers to policies that give students from underrepresented racial groups an advantage in the college admissions process, said Mark Naison, an African-American studies professor who teaches about affirmative action at Fordham University. But that wasn't the original definition when it was introduced by President John Kennedy in the 1960s. As the Harvard trial begins, here's what you need to know about affirmative action's history and how it's used today in elite college admissions. How did affirmative action begin? The concept was first introduced by President Kennedy in a 1961 executive order. He hoped it would increase the amount of people from historically underrepresented groups (like African-Americans at the time) employed by government contractors. But the public didn't pay much attention to his order, Naison said. That changed later in the 1960s, when race riots shook cities across the country, including Washington, D.C., Chicago and Baltimore. Presidents at elite colleges later decided to tweak Kennedy's definition of affirmative action to include goals, quotas and racial preferences for black students in college admissions, Naison said. Affirmative action turned into a "results-driven" effort to integrate American colleges and end race rioting, he said. "These institutions decided that they had better recruit the next generation of black leaders in America, or the country wasn't going to work," Naison said. Has affirmative action in higher education been challenged in the courts before? Yes. Many times. One significant court challenge to affirmative action in higher education was in the 1970s, when a man claimed he was rejected by the medical school at the University of California, Davis because he was white. The school reserved spots in each class for minorities, and 35-year-old Allan Bakke's credentials — his college GPA and test scores — were higher than any of the minority students admitted both years he applied. The Supreme Court ruled that colleges could consider race as one of many factors in an admissions decision, but they couldn't set quotas for racial groups. Justice Lewis Powell played a central role in the case. He said affirmative action wasn't a way to remedy past discrimination. Instead, he said the justification for affirmative action was the educational value of having a diverse student body. "I think that was a very, very important turning point in how we've come to think about such policies used by highly-selective institutions and frame the thinking around affirmative action," said Mitchell Chang, a University of California, Los Angeles professor who studies diversity initiatives in higher education. Then came two cases that challenged affirmative action at the University of Michigan. The Supreme Court upheld their law school's affirmative action policies, but ruled that the school's undergraduate admissions officers couldn't use racial bonuses, like 20 points for blacks, Hispanics and Native Americans on an admissions rating scale, NPR's Nina Totenberg reported in 2003. That brings us to Fisher v. University of Texas, the Supreme Court's most-recent ruling on affirmative action. (Students for Fair Admissions, the group challenging Harvard's use of affirmative action in Boston this week, also backed Fisher, a white female, in this lawsuit.) The court ruled on Fisher's case in 2016, saying that schools must prove their race-conscious admissions strategy is the only way to achieve diversity. The strategy must also be specifically designed to reach a goal. Which schools consider race in admissions? Mostly elite (selective) schools. The American Council on Education surveyed 338 nonprofit four-year institutions and found 60 percent of the most selective institutions, which are those admitting 40 percent or fewer applicants, consider race in admissions. As the law stands, colleges can consider race in admissions if it is one of many factors considered when evaluating a student for admission, said Curt Levey, a lawyer who argued against the University of Michigan in its affirmative action cases. But schools must first use race-neutral options, like grades and test scores, to meet their diversity goals, said Mike Reilly, executive director of the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers. (His organization is backing Harvard in the Boston trial.) If that doesn't work, they can then add rac | An NPR investigation found the VA failed to keep its promise of benefits to thousands of exposed veterans. And revealed previously unknown U.S. military tests that singled out the men by race. | eng_Latn | 19,717 |
Law School Race Suit | -- NPR's Wade Goodwyn reports from Austin, Texas on the legal battle between the state's Attorney General and the University of Texas Law School. Two years ago, a federal court told public universities in Texas that they could no longer use race in deciding which students could attend their institutions. That ruling has drastically affected minority enrollment, especially at the University of Texas Law School. It wants to appeal the decision to the U.S. Supreme Court, but the state's Hispanic Attorney General won't do it. | History professor Ted DeLaney tells <em>News & Notes</em> about his journey from putting off college dreams and working as a janitor at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Va., to becoming the first black department chair in the school's history. | eng_Latn | 19,718 |
Texas Company Scraps Controversial Lesson Plan System | After uproar over some lesson plans some conservatives deemed un-American, a Texas company has decided scrap a curriculum system used by 877 school districts that were too small or too poor to produce their own. "The CSCOPE era is over," Texas state Sen. Dan Patrick, who was leading the charge against the program, said in a statement. Patrick and others had introduced legislation that would have added more scrutiny to the lesson plans produced by the program. The legislation was scheduled to be debated, but CSCOPE pulled the plug before that. Texas Monthly wrote a piece back in April that detailed how we got here. The magazine reports: "[CSCOPE] first gained national attention last November when conservative talk show host (and recent Dallas transplant) Glenn Beck mentioned a lesson on his show that said that, from the British perspective, the Boston Tea Party could be considered an act of terrorism. "Patrick, who chairs the Senate Education Committee, had explained that he drafted SB 1406 because of his "great concerns about the management, the supervision, and the oversight" of the system. Proponents of the bill who testified shared those concerns; some complained that another lesson on Islam said that 'Allah' was another word for 'God.' Others complained that material in the lesson plans was not always appropriate for grade level." After today's news, the Texas Freedom Network, an activist organization that tries to fight against what it calls "textbook censorship at the Texas State Board of Education," was not happy. "Today political bullying resulted in hundreds of school districts getting thrown under the bus and essentially told to figure out for themselves where to find the resources to replace the service CSCOPE had provided them," Texas Freedom Network President Kathy Miller said in a statement. "The big lesson here is that if you can generate a witch hunt that includes enough incendiary and distorted claims, then there are politicians at the Capitol who are ready to throw their supposed commitment to local control out the window." Scripps Texas Newspapers reports that during a press conference Patrick said his issue with CSCOPE was that it ran afoul a system of "checks and balances." That is, curriculums should be able to be reviewed by parents or some other Texas entity. Patrick said the "future legislation would take a deeper look at online curriculum that private companies might develop to fill the void left by CSCOPE." | Religion in schools has one Virginia community divided. Eric Niiler reports from the rural town of Staunton on the community's decision to keep a supplemental and voluntary Bible study program. The program is offered off-campus, but happens during the school day. | eng_Latn | 19,719 |
Persistent Challenge: Desegregating Urban Schools | Another court-monitored effort to integrate a big city school system is coming to an end. The Chicago Public Schools spent billions of dollars trying to integrate. But many of the city's minority students still attend racially isolated schools. District officials say they'll continue efforts to integrate, but maintain it's impossible to truly desegregate when just 9 percent of the student body, citywide, is now white. Jay Field of Chicago Public Radio reports. | NPR's Mandalit DelBarco talks to high school students and admissions officials at the University of California system, which has dumped its affirmative action program, or at least the parts of it that gave special status to applicants based on race, ethnicity or gender. | eng_Latn | 19,720 |
College's Citizenship Preparation Program Aims To Simplify Often-Arduous Process | Every year, thousands of people across the U.S. become naturalized citizens. But for many immigrants, becoming a citizen can be a long and stressful process. The citizenship preparation program offered at Montgomery College in Maryland wants to make that process easier. The school has had 4,000 students go through the program — and 3,200 of them have been naturalized. Here & Now‘s Lisa Mullins talks with program director Nancy Newton. This article was originally published on WBUR.org. | NPR's Steve Inskeep talks to Brown University President Christina Paxson about why reopening college and university campuses for the fall semester should be a "national priority." | eng_Latn | 19,721 |
Tovia Smith Reports On A Class Action Lawsuit | filed by 10 learning disabled students at Boston University. The students accuse school administrators of discriminating against them by gutting the program that provides them with support services, like note-takers and extra time on tests. | Following Angelina Jolie's op-ed in the <em>New York Times</em> revealing her double mastectomy, Audie Cornish talks with Sue Friedman, founder and executive director of <a href="http://www.facingourrisk.org/index.php" target="_blank">FORCE: Facing Our Risk of Cancer Empowered</a>, about access to genetic testing and preventive surgery. | eng_Latn | 19,722 |
A Hot Summer for the Congressional Black Caucus | Ed Gordon talks with Rep. Mel Watt (D-NC), chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus, and Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA), for a look at the issues keeping Congress busy during the hot summer months. | UCLA law professor Richard Sander talks about his new study on affirmative action in law schools. Sander says many African-American students at the nation's top law schools are struggling academically. Many drop out, resulting in fewer minority lawyers, not more. Harvard law professor David Wilkins disagrees. Sander and Wilkins talk with NPR's Renee Montagne. | eng_Latn | 19,723 |
The Great U.S. History Battle | William Faulkner wrote, "The past is never dead. It's not even past." And that's never more true than when people start arguing over how American history should be taught in school. The current fight involves the Advanced Placement U.S. history exam. Nearly half a million high school students took the test last year, hoping to earn college credit. This school year, the nonprofit College Board unveiled a redesign of the course that's meant to prepare AP teachers and their students for the exam. And some state lawmakers are calling the new framework "distorted" and "revisionist." An Oklahoma House committee voted earlier this month to review the guidelines and potentially cut funding for AP U.S. history classes there. Other anti-AP proposals have come up in Texas, Georgia, Nebraska, North Carolina and Tennessee. What are their complaints? The new course and exam description is extensive — more than 120 pages — but some conservative lawmakers argue it's not extensive enough. State Rep. Dan Fisher, who introduced the Oklahoma bill, told reporter Rachel Hubbard of member station KOSU: "In the new framework, little if anything is even emphasized about the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution or our war of independence. The founders are hardly even mentioned." And it's not just the founders. Critics are quick to point out that the new AP guidelines also leave out Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr. Much of the criticism now stirring up statehouses echoes a resolution that the Republican National Committee adopted at its big meeting last summer in Chicago. It said the new framework "reflects a radically revisionist view of American history that emphasizes negative aspects" while omitting or minimizing the positive. And it's not just what the College Board left out that has these lawmakers upset — but a key shift in focus, based on what did make the cut. Among the negative aspects of U.S. history that the framework highlights: The persecution of American Indians, slavery and the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II. The list goes on. Georgia state Sen. William Ligon, an outspoken critic of the AP redesign, much preferred the old framework, which he says emphasized American exceptionalism. To him, the new course "looks at America through the lens of race, gender and class identity" and doesn't pay enough attention to "the things that unite us and set us apart from much of the rest of the world." The College Board has issued a full-throated rebuttal, making clear this framework was written by teachers and historians. It acknowledges that many famous documents and people, including Parks and King, go unmentioned. The explanation: These are guidelines, not a comprehensive curriculum. In fact, the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights and the Emancipation Proclamation weren't mentioned in the old AP framework. That said, the College Board is listening to this debate. It's opened up a public feedback process through the end of this week and says, based on what it hears, it could make changes to the framework over the summer. While opposition to the new AP framework is fierce in some statehouses, the likeliest outcome in most cases is a state-led review of the new material. And it's unclear what consequences, if any, such a review would have. Dropping the course altogether would be unpopular with many students, parents and teachers. The College Board claims that, in Oklahoma alone, students are on track this year to earn nearly a million dollars in college credit through its AP U.S. history class. And last year, in Jefferson County, Colo., when the school board initiated its own review, students walked out of class. The effort in Oklahoma appears to have run into similar objections. A week after the anti-AP U.S. history bill cleared the state's House education committee, Fisher now says he's not trying to do away with the program or cut its funding. | The story of Thanksgiving helped create a common American heritage. But the so-called facts aren't so true. NPR's Bob Edwards explains that the real Thanksgiving was much more grim than grade school teachers will allow in the annual pageant. | eng_Latn | 19,724 |
College Rejection Letters Don't Equal Failure In Life | We're nearing the time of year when high school students will race to their mailboxes in hopes of finding acceptance letters from the colleges of their dreams. For a fair number of them, the return trip will be filled with grief and tears as they deal with the pain of rejection. In some instances, it will be the first major setback of their still young lives. But it's important for young people, and their parents, to keep those rejections in perspective. That's the take-away message in a Wall Street Journal piece by my old boss Sue Shellenbarger. She talks with icons of American success -- billionaire Warren Buffett, "Today" show host Meredith Vieira and Nobel laureate in medicine Harold Varmus, all of whom were rejected by Harvard. (Based on this article, you might come away concluding that being rejected by that school is a prerequisite for super success.) Anyway, the article establishes that not only does life go on after such a rejection but that it can be glorious. A snippet: "The truth is, everything that has happened in my life...that I thought was a crushing event at the time, has turned out for the better," Mr. Buffett says. With the exception of health problems, he says, setbacks teach "lessons that carry you along. You learn that a temporary defeat is not a permanent one. In the end, it can be an opportunity." Mr. Buffett regards his rejection at age 19 by Harvard Business School as a pivotal episode in his life. Looking back, he says Harvard wouldn't have been a good fit. But at the time, he "had this feeling of dread" after being rejected in an admissions interview in Chicago, and a fear of disappointing his father. Read More >> As it turned out, his father responded with "only this unconditional love...an unconditional belief in me," Mr. Buffett says. Exploring other options, he realized that two investing experts he admired, Benjamin Graham and David Dodd, were teaching at Columbia's graduate business school. He dashed off a late application, where by a stroke of luck it was fielded and accepted by Mr. Dodd. From these mentors, Mr. Buffett says he learned core principles that guided his investing. The Harvard rejection also benefited his alma mater; the family gave more than $12 million to Columbia in 2008 through the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation, based on tax filings. The lesson of negatives becoming positives has proved true repeatedly, Mr. Buffett says. He was terrified of public speaking--so much so that when he was young he sometimes threw up before giving an address. So he enrolled in a Dale Carnegie public speaking course and says the skills he learned there enabled him to woo his future wife, Susan Thompson, a "champion debater," he says. "I even proposed to my wife during the course," he says. "If I had been only a mediocre speaker I might not have taken it." The article makes an important point, so much so that college admissions officers might want to get reprint rights so they can send out copies with rejection letters to buck up those who didn't make the cut. Just a thought. It also reinforces what college admissions officers, especially at the most selective schools, often say. They know that most rejected applicants will go on to have excellent college experiences elsewhere and successful work lives. So admissions officials don't lose a lot of sleep over such rejections and neither should rejected applicants. It's important to be reminded of this, especially this year with applications for college admission at record levels this year at many institutions. There will be more tears this year than past years. But rejection by a college admissions official doesn't equal failure in life. Unless you let it. | Martha Foley reports from Canton, New York that small colleges are changing their campuses in an effort to compete and attract new students. | eng_Latn | 19,725 |
DeVos Is Sued By 17 States; Richard Spencer And Colleges; Race and Student Loans | Our weekly roundup of education news and happenings may make you uncomfortable, but please don't ban our inconvenient truths. A Mississippi district bans To Kill A Mockingbird The classic 1960 novel was pulled from a junior high reading list, according to the Biloxi Sun Herald, because some were made "uncomfortable" by the use of the n-word. The decision was roundly criticized. The book was temporarily banned last year from schools in Accomack County, Virginia. New Mexico restores science education standards The state of New Mexico announced that it would restore classroom references to evolution, human-caused climate change and the 4.6-billion-year age of the Earth. The information, all part of mainstream scientific consensus, had been stripped from the state's draft science education standards released last month. They were restored after a public outcry. Black graduates, especially, struggle to repay student loans The typical African-American who took out student loans in 2003-2004 owed even more money, not less, after a dozen years. Nearly half of all African-American borrowers ultimately defaulted on their loans, compared with just 29 percent of all students. The defaulters included 75 percent of African-Americans who left for-profit colleges. Those are the stark results of an analysis of new federal student loan data from the left-leaning Center for American Progress. They found that even when black students earn a bachelor's degree, on average they make no progress at all paying down their loans for more than a decade. Loan balances can balloon in this way because of missed payments, penalties or times when payments are suspended because of economic hardship. Ben Miller of the Center for American Progress added that the latest numbers may be even worse than the period covered by this data. 17 states and D.C. sue Betsy DeVos over for-profit college rules In a suit filed Tuesday, a group of Democratic attorneys general are challenging the education secretary's decision to suspend the "gainful employment" rule. Previously in July, a similar group filed suit over the secretary's rollback of the "borrower defense to repayment" rule. Both rules were aimed at predatory or fraudulent for-profit colleges. As we've reported: The "gainful employment" rule sanctions individual programs at colleges and universities based on how many students are able to pay back their loans. The "borrower defense to repayment" rule smooths the way for students to get their loans forgiven if their college is found to engage in fraudulent behavior, a situation that has befallen tens of thousands of students at Corinthian Colleges and ITT Technical Institute, among others, in the last few years. Liz Hill, a spokeswoman for the department, said in a statement: "This is just the latest in a string of frivolous lawsuits filed by Democratic attorneys general who are only seeking to score quick political points." New Education Department appointee is a foe of federal regulations Politico reports that Hans Bader, who until last week worked at a libertarian think tank, will join the department's Office of General Counsel. He previously served in the department's Office of Civil Rights in the George W. Bush administration. He is on record as a critic of the stepped-up enforcement of civil rights by Obama's education department, particularly its actions on campus sexual assault. DeVos has thrown out these Obama-era guidelines and the department is now writing new ones. Florida declares a state of emergency over campus appearance by white nationalist Richard Spencer, who was a headliner at the alt-right rally in Charlottesville, Va., that turned deadly, rented a hall for a speech at the University of Florida this week, rather than being invited by a campus-affiliated group. Extra security for Thursday's appearance was estimated to cost the university more than a half-million dollars. Gov. Rick Scott declared a countywide state of emergency in order to coordinate a security plan. Hecklers shouted Spencer down; at least three people were arrested in connection with the protests. Spencer has similar upcoming appearances at the University of Cincinnati and Ohio State University. These visits have raised debate and led to legal wrangling over hate speech vs. free speech at public and private universities. Newark schools have improved, says Harvard study A new analysis says reading scores have risen for fourth- through eighth-graders. Most of the improvement, said researchers, came from closing low-performing schools. The city's schools have been scrutinized nationwide since Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg donated $100 million in 2010. Library fines erased for New York City children Another bright spot this week: A philanthropic foundation has contributed $2.25 million to erase the public library fines of children under 18 in all five boroughs of New York City. An estimated 1 in 5 children's library cards had been blocked because of overdue boo | NPR's Ailsa Chang speaks with Heidi Beirich of the Southern Poverty Law Center's Intelligence Project about the status of white nationalism in the U.S. one year after the violent "Unite the Right" rally in Charlottesville, Va. | eng_Latn | 19,726 |
Does New Hiring Tool Aid Diversity Or Discrimination? | A new tool lets job recruiters filter candidates based on race, gender and veteran status. Civil rights attorney Cyrus Mehri sorts through the legal questions about this program. | Thanks again to our friends at Twitter's @JoinTheFlock and all those who participated in Thursday's #NPRTwitterChat. If you missed the event or would like to revisit some of the tips that were shared, check out the recap below. Feel free to share with anyone who might be interested in learning more about using social media in job searching. Lars Schmidt is the Senior Director of Talent Acquisition & Innovation at NPR where he is responsible for providing leadership and advocacy for talent acquisition strategies that align with NPR's strategic mission and core values. He is the voice behind @NPRjobs and can also be found on Twitter at @ThisIsLars. | eng_Latn | 19,727 |
Legality of Segregating Prisoners by Race | Ed Gordon explores legal issues surrounding segregating prisoners by race to prevent violence with Ramona Ripston, executive director of the ACLU of Southern California, and Paul Butler, a law professor at George Washington University. | UCLA law professor Richard Sander talks about his new study on affirmative action in law schools. Sander says many African-American students at the nation's top law schools are struggling academically. Many drop out, resulting in fewer minority lawyers, not more. Harvard law professor David Wilkins disagrees. Sander and Wilkins talk with NPR's Renee Montagne. | eng_Latn | 19,728 |
Why are universities in USA racist towards Asian applicants? | Why do USA universities discriminate against Asians? | Why were the Vietnam War veterans treated so badly after their return to America? | eng_Latn | 19,729 |
What's Driving Dropout Rate For Black, Latino Men? | A new report says barely half of Latino and Black men graduate from high school in four years. Host Michel Martin discusses the dropout rate and what's being done about it. She speaks with John H. Jackson of the Schott Foundation for Public Education, and Pilar Montoya of the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers. | Police caught Erik Rivera racing in the streets around Orlando, Fla. A judge ordered a novel punishment. He's been told to spend 50 consecutive Sunday nights standing in a parking lot where he used to race. And each night Rivera wears a sign reading, "Don't Street Race. I Lost My Driver's License for Three Years." His lawyers say this may be humiliating, but it's better than the alternative -- going to jail. | eng_Latn | 19,730 |
Groups Get Tangled In Black Hair Controversy | Recently, a group of black women connected with a website devoted to black hair, came to Union Square in New York City with signs reading: You Can Touch My Hair. It set off a controversy, and when the women returned two days later, other groups of black women had come to the square to argue, hold counter signs and begin a dialogue. | News Headlines: Aug. 28, 2007Press Release: U.S. Civil Rights Commission Warns That Affirmative Action Might Harm Minority Law Students -- "Admitting students into law schools for which they might not academically be prepared could harm their academic performance and hinder their ability to obtain secure and gainful employment ... Moreover, racial preferences might also contribute to racial income and wealth disparities." Do you agree? What do make of the report's concept of affirmative action? Should racial preferences be used in student admissions? More Headlines:The New York Times: After a Trailblazer Is Honored, Williamses Carry on Her Legacy Politico.com: Obama Supported by Wilder ESPN.com: Coverage of Vick Means Bigger Issues Ignored Washington Times: D.C. Tops in Obese Youths BBC: South Africa Recalls Faulty Condoms Los Angeles Times: Bids to Start for Bonds' Nos. 755, 756 The Atlanta Journal Constitution: Bishop Accused in Beating Blames Satan for His Woes Newsday: Judges in Newark More Cautious with Bails After Slaying | eng_Latn | 19,731 |
Amid Application Season, Seniors Consider A New Criterion: Race Relations | For high school students looking to choose a college, grade-point averages and test scores may weigh heavily on their minds. But campus atmosphere may not be far behind given recent demonstrations on college campuses across the country. Students at the University of Missouri's flagship campus in Columbia were the forefront of a wave of protests over racist incidents and the reaction of school officials. For some high school students, those protests make racial relations factor highly in their college search. A few hundred students — mostly African-American — made their way into a vast hall on Chicago's South Side, visiting tables adorned with bright banners and school brochures. This was the first college fair, co-sponsored by Illinois state Sen. Mattie Hunter for students in her district. Maya Sanders, a national honors society student visiting the fair with her parents, had lots of questions for the school representatives. "I'm trying to really see how well they engage with me in order for me to attend their school," Sanders says. Sanders says the recent protests on campuses over racism have made her a little leery. So she wants details about the racial makeup of the student population of every school she's considering. "And if it's predominantly white, I'm like well, I don't know yet because I don't want to have to worry about things like that when I'm going off to college," Sanders says. At another table, Keonna Hill starts talking about her plan to make sure she gets into her dream school — Tennessee State University. Hill says she's also concerned about the protests sweeping college campuses across the country. "Everywhere you go, there's racism and it's a problem. I am scared, I mean what kid wouldn't be scared," Hill says. Tennessee State University is a historically black college and Hill says she expects the campus atmosphere there to be comfortable. Eighteen-year-old Jeremy Thompson plans to focus on pre-med courses in college. He says racial tension at some colleges might be alarming but it's not going to scare him away from schools he wants to attend. "It's all based on how you handle yourself. We're not there to prove ourselves to anyone. We're more there to better ourselves. I'm looking for the best school someone that can get me where I need to be," Thompson says. Attracting high school students and admitting them is key to a university's success, and the protests have sparked change at some universities that have promised, for example, to require diversity training and hire more diverse staffs. Over at the table for Mizzou's St. Louis campus, admissions representative Jocelyn Deloney runs down information about the nursing program for Travis Morgan. Morgan advises high school students about their college choices and the challenges they may face as minorities on predominantly white campuses like Mizzou. "Ultimately, it's between that student and the family to make a decision about where they want to go. At the same time, we talk about the graduation rates of that school. We talk about how successful African-Americans have been at that school," Deloney says. Even so, Morgan and some high-schoolers at the fair say they're proud that the college activists pushed for change instead of leaving the schools where they felt threatened or ignored. ARI SHAPIRO, HOST: The protests on college campuses in the last month come as high school students are researching and applying to schools. So to them, dramatic scenes like this are more then a news story. (SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING) UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: (Shouting) It is our duty to fight for our freedom. UNIDENTIFIED PROTESTERS: (Shouting) It is our duty to fight for our freedom. SHAPIRO: Students at the University of Missouri's Columbia campus were at the forefront of the protests over racist incidents and the reaction of school officials. NPR's Cheryl Corley has been talking with high school students about how these demonstrations factor into their college searches. CHERYL CORLEY, BYLINE: A few hundred students, mostly African-American, made way their way into a vast hall in Chicago's South side, visiting tables adorned with bright banners and school brochures. This was the first college fair, co-sponsored by Illinois State Sen. Mattie Hunter, for students in her district. MATTIE HUNTER: So young people, take your time. Try to talk to everyone at every single table. CORLEY: Maya Sanders, a National Honor Society student visiting the fair with her parents, took that advice and had lots of questions for the school representatives. MAYA SANDERS: I'm trying to really see how well they can engage with me in order for me to attend their school. CORLEY: Sanders says the recent protest on campuses over racism has made her a little leery, so she wants details about the racial makeup of the student population of every school she's considering. SANDERS: And if it's predominately white, I'm like well, I don't know yet because I don't want to, you know, have to | NPR's Sunni Khalid reports that a federal task force has said 'no' to the idea of a multiracial U.S. Census category. In a report to the White House Office of Management and Budget, the task force came out against the multiracial designation, saying it would "create another population group...and add to racial tension...." The task force studied the issue for 4 years, as multiracial advocates lobbied for recognition and other minorities complained a new category would dilute their political strength. | kor_Hang | 19,732 |
Corporal Punishment In Schools: Does It Work? | Nineteen states have laws that allow corporal punishment in public schools, according to the Center for Effective Discipline. Critics argue paddling does not stop bad behavior, while supporters say paddling teaches discipline and respect. StateImpact Florida education reporter Sarah Gonzalez outlines the debate. | The controversial law that curbed the collective bargaining rights of public employees in Wisconsin has been struck down by Dane County Circuit Judge Juan Colas. The law, if you remember, was championed by Gov. Scott Walker and it unleashed massive protests and even led to Democratic law makers to flee the state to forestall its passage. After it became law, union activists mobilized and triggered a recall vote, which Walker ultimately defeated. The Associated Press reports: "Dane County Circuit Judge Juan Colas ruled Friday that the law violates both the state and U.S. Constitution and is null and void. The ruling comes after a lawsuit brought by the Madison teachers union and a union for Milwaukee city employees. "Walker spokesman Cullen Werwie says he is confident the decision will be overturned on appeal. "It was not clear if the ruling means the law is immediately suspended. The law took away nearly all collective bargaining rights from most workers and has been in effect for more than a year." The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports that this means municipal workers return to what was the status-quo before the law was passed. State employees still have to abide by the new law. "The ruling means that, unless it is overturned on appeal, school districts and local officials will have to return to the bargaining table with their workers in a much more significant way," the Sentinel reports. | eng_Latn | 19,733 |
Study Discovers Racial Discrimination By Ride Hailing App Drivers | For many years, African-Americans have faced discrimination on street corners, getting bypassed while hailing a cab. Now academic researchers say they have found a similar pattern of discrimination involving popular ride hailing apps. The findings were based on some 1,500 trips in Boston and Seattle. In Boston, Uber drivers cancelled rides for passengers with African-American sounding names more than twice as much as for people with white sounding names. And in Seattle, African-Americans waited significantly longer for ride requests to Uber and Lyft to be accepted. | The Harvard University admissions trial comes to a close on Friday. The case centers on how much a school can consider race in admissions. | eng_Latn | 19,734 |
Black Colleges Slam Miss. Governor's Plan To Merge HBCUs | Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour is being both applauded and scorned over his plan to downscale and merge five publicly-funded universities to addess a $700 million budget shortfall. But the proposal is being especially shunned by those who believe it unfairly puts Mississippi's minority students at a disadvantage. Three of the five schools included in Barbour's plan are historically black colleges — Alcorn State, Mississippi Valley State and Jackson State universities. George E. Ross, the outgoing president of Alcorn State, and Jackson State University president Ronald Mason, Jr., share their strong opposition to the merger and why their campus communities are fighting hard to block the governor's proposal. | NPR's Lulu Garcia-Navarro talks to Renee Mahaffey Harris, president of the Center for Closing the Health Gap, about why Blacks and Latinos are not well represented in clinical vaccine trials. | hrv_Latn | 19,735 |
Hispanic Farmers Fight To Sue USDA | In Texas and across the Southwest, Hispanic farmers have been fighting the Agriculture Department for close to a decade. The farmers say the department's Farm Services Agency discriminated against them — denying or delaying loans, and refusing to investigate when they cried foul. The government settled a similar complaint brought by African-American farmers for $1 billion. And while the claims of discrimination and other factors are almost identical, the Hispanic farmers have gotten nothing. 'Always No' Noe Obregon, 47, looks exactly like the South Texas farmer he's been all his life: cowboy hat, blue denim shirt, jeans and cowboy boots. Obregon says that in the 1970s, '80s and '90s, it didn't matter what you looked like or how good of a farmer you were. If you were Hispanic in Texas, getting a farm loan from the USDA was like the quest for the Holy Grail. "I would go and apply, and it would take about two to three weeks," says Obregon. "Then they would turn me down, say it was a high risk crop or different reasons. But it was always, 'No.' Then I would appeal, and it would take 90 to 120 days, and by then my planting season was over." Instead of getting his loan in the spring, Obregon says his money would come in November. He would use the late arriving loan to get his family through the winter, and then he'd apply earlier the next year. But Obregon learned it didn't matter how early he applied. While his white neighbors got their loans in February and planted and raised crops, Obregon seethed and his debt mounted. By 1990, he owed the government $150,000, and the USDA moved to foreclose on his farm. He says it was the same with nearly every Hispanic farmer in the county. "They were either foreclosed, or they'd take their lands, put them up for auction, and Anglos bought them because they had the finances and they had the way to buy them," he says. 'No Help For Them' Down the road from Obregon's farm, 65-year-old Modesta Salazar tells the same story. "They would give the loans late when the Anglos were already raising their crops," Salazar says. As some scraggly cows gather around her, Salazar looks out over her 500 acres of mesquite scrub, tumbleweeds, ruined barbed wire fencing — what's left of the family farm. For more than 30 years, this was a vast expanse of cotton, maize and vegetables, with hundreds of horses and cattle. Now it's mostly brush. Salazar says the farmers who sat on the local USDA loan board were made up of the most prosperous farmers in the county. She says these men gave the government loans to other white farmers — the people they'd gone to school with and known all their lives — while Hispanic farmers slowly went broke. "All the farmers, from Cotulla, from Bigfoot, Devine, from everywhere — all the farmers were in the same situation; no help for them," she says. A Long History Of Discrimination Both Obregon and Salazar's families filed discrimination complaints with the USDA, but say they never heard anything back. The agency refuses to comment about specific cases. But if you're expecting the Agriculture Department to issue an indignant rebuttal to the overall accusation that it discriminated for decades, you're going to be disappointed. In 1997, then-Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman testified before Congress and conceded a long history of discrimination in the loan program. He talked about "good people who lost their family land, not because of a bad crop, not because of a flood, but because of the color of their skin." "[Agriculture] Secretary [Tom] Vilsack often talks about how the department is known in some quarters as 'The Last Plantation.' That's a reputation that's unfortunate and one we intend to fix," says Justin Dejong, Vilsack's spokesman. "By empowering the Office of Civil Rights at the USDA, Secretary Vilsack is laying the foundation for people to be treated better in the future." No Class Action Soon after President Reagan took office in the early 1980s, the USDA's civil rights division was quietly dismantled. Nevertheless, the agency continued to tell farmers that if they felt they weren't getting loans because of their color or gender, they should file a complaint. But for the next 14 years, those complaints were put into an empty government office and never investigated. By the 1990s, black farmers filed a lawsuit — Pigford v. Glickman. Because the USDA failed to investigate years of discrimination complaints, U.S. District Judge Paul Friedman certified the black farmers' case as a class action. And with that ruling, rather than risk a trial, the federal government settled with 15,000 black farmers for $1 billion. The next year, Hispanic farmers filed their lawsuit. And although their discrimination complaints had been thrown into the same empty USDA office, the judge in their case decided the Hispanic farmers would not be allowed to sue as a class. The federal government has opposed them in court for the past nine years. Matthew Miller, sp | One out of every 10 Houston residents is undocumented. Many lost everything in the storm, but unless they have a U.S.-born child, they don't qualify for FEMA assistance. Advocates are trying, but struggling, to help potentially hundreds of thousands of people left with nothing, and no other recourse. | eng_Latn | 19,736 |
Race, Gender And Age In Democratic Party Politics | A woman of color is challenging an entrenched white male congressman in a Democratic primary in Massachusetts's 7th Congressional District around Boston. | College graduation rates are up for Americans in nearly every racial and ethnic group. But the so-called achievement gap is still pretty big. As of 2016, according to the Pew Research Center, 55 percent of white 25- to 34-year-olds had attained at least an associate degree. African-American students? 35 percent. There's work underway throughout the country to do something about this achievement gap. It's happening in the classroom, in the community, and at home. Our guests are Rinaldo Murray, executive director of College Tribe; Adrian Miller, a 6th grader at Center City Charter School in Washington, D.C.; Sean Beach, an 8th grader at Friendship Tech Prep Middle School in Washington, D.C.; William Darity, professor of public policy and director of the Samuel DuBois Cook Center on Social Equity at Duke University; Joseph Neff, investigative reporter at The News & Observer; Pastor Kirby Jones, founder and executive director of The Daniel Center for Math and Science; and Anya Kamenetz, education reporter for NPR. | kor_Hang | 19,737 |
The Politics Of Passing 1964's Civil Rights Act | The act, which turned 50 last year, ended the era of legal segregation in public accommodations, like restaurants and hotels. Author Todd Purdum talks about the battles that surrounded it. Originally broadcast Jan. 20, 2014. | This week, a government report said the Justice Department rejected law students for jobs two years ago based on their liberal leanings. A growing number of government positions are being politicized under the Bush administration. | kor_Hang | 19,738 |
Examining The Effectiveness Of The Trade Adjustment Assistance Program | There's a part of trade agreements that deals with how to help people in the U.S. who are harmed when jobs move abroad because of trade. It's called Trade Adjustment Assistance. Does it work? | Tavis Smiley talks to Jay Rosner of the Princeton Review about how standardized testing factors into the arguments surrounding affirmative action. | eng_Latn | 19,739 |
Common Core Turns Business Leaders Against Oklahoma GOP | Mike Neal gets annoyed when he talks about politicians in his state. Just three years ago, when the Common Core State Standards for education were implemented, no one had a problem with them, says Neal, president of the Tulsa, Okla., Regional Chamber of Commerce. "It's been a really frustrating situation to the business community in Oklahoma in that we've all been on the same page, from the governor, the House, the Senate, school board members," Neal says. "They've all been behind this." Now, things are different. "You've got a lot of people just running scared," Neal says. That's because they're running for re-election, he explains. This spring, Republicans and Democrats have been bombarded by opponents of the standards and told, "if you support Common Core, we're going to beat you, and we'll beat you over this one single issue." The threat is real. What's not real, Neal says, are the arguments being used to threaten legislators — namely, that it's a federal scheme to tell teachers what to teach, that private groups will mine and profit from test results, and that Common Core will take local control of schools away from Oklahomans. Neal says that's not true. "Despite what some fringe groups may say, we don't think it takes [local control] away at all," he says. Jenni White is founder of ROPE, which stands for Restore Oklahoma Public Education, a fervent opponent of the standards. "This is about people who are concerned about the direction of education in Oklahoma and across the nation today," White says. White is also a lifetime Republican, a mother of five and a former science teacher. She says ROPE has not threatened elected officials, but it has shown them why the adoption of the new standards was a mistake. "You're talking about a set of standards that was created completely outside of the state, in which taxpayers had no voice," White says. "So parents have risen up and said, 'Wait a minute. We need to feel like we have some control over the education of our children.' And that has frustrated the Chamber of Commerce, who, really, isn't for parents. They're for businesses." That argument persuaded Oklahoma state Rep. Jason Nelson to co-author a repeal of Common Core. "What the bill does is to say that the state cannot cede its discretion or control over our standards or assessments," Nelson says. But Mike Neal of the Tulsa Chamber of Commerce says a repeal would be a costly step backward. "We, in this state right now, waste outrageous amounts of money on remediation for students that come out of high school with good grades but they're not ready for higher education," Neal says. "They're not ready to be hired by businesses. ... They're not going to be able to compete." Neal worries that later this month Oklahoma is likely to become the second state, along with Indiana, to dump the core standards. What happens after that? "I think that's an excellent question, and it's something that we would like to know the answer to as well," White says. She says that assuming lawmakers vote to drop the standards, schools will return to the old state standards, which even she concedes weren't great. But still: "We would really prefer to go back to those while we're preparing a really great set of standards," White says. That, business leaders say, will take schools back to square one, with no guarantees that Oklahoma will end up with standards as good as Common Core. ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST: From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Robert Siegel in Washington. MELISSA BLOCK, HOST: And I'm Melissa Block at member station KERA in Dallas. An unlikely fight is playing out next door in Oklahoma between two sides that are used to being on the same team. It involves the common core education standards in English and math. Conservatives are fighting to repeal them, business leaders are fighting to save them. In fact, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is so worried about efforts to repeal the common core in Oklahoma and elsewhere that it launched a new ad campaign. It's defending the core with help from A-list conservatives including former Florida Governor Jeb Bush. JEB BUSH: If we aspire to greatness as a nation, we have to have standards that are benchmarked to the best in the world. common core is the best chance... BLOCK: NPR's Claudio Sanchez was recently in Tulsa and has this report. CLAUDIO SANCHEZ, BYLINE: Mike Neal gets really annoyed when he talks about politicians in his state. He's president of the Tulsa Regional Chamber of Commerce and he says just three years ago when the common core Standards were implemented, no one had a problem with them. MIKE NEAL: It's been a really frustrating situation to the business community in Oklahoma. And for the most part we've all been on the same page from the governor, the House, the Senate, school board members, they've all been behind this. SANCHEZ: But now... NEAL: You've got a lot of people just running scared. SANCHEZ: That's because they're running for reelection, says | The Texas Board of Education approved social studies curriculum guidelines that incorporate socially conservative ideas into American history. The new guidelines could ultimately reshape history and economics textbooks for Texas and, potentially, much of the nation. | eng_Latn | 19,740 |
Scotus & Affirmative Action | The Supreme Court today let stand a lower court ruling that blocks affirmative action programs at three state-run southern colleges. The lower court had labelled the programs as unlawful reverse discrimination. The ruling applies directly to Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi, but could influence courts in other states as they consider challenges to affirmative action programs in higher education. NPR's Nina Totenberg reports. | Ohio joins the growing list of states that have put death sentences on hold because of problems getting execution drugs. Justice Antonin Scalia told an audience Tuesday he wouldn't be surprised if the Supreme Court eventually strikes down capital punishment. | eng_Latn | 19,741 |
Justice Department Investigating How Colleges Use Early-Decision Admissions | The Justice Department is investigating whether colleges communicate with each other about prospective students they accept through the early-decision process. | Legal manuevering has already begun across America in preparation for Election Day. Democrats and Republicans are trying to ensure that voting decisions aren't made that could put their party at a disadvantage -- and potentially determine the outcome of the election. NPR's Pam Fessler reports. | eng_Latn | 19,742 |
Non-Hispanic white students are still expected to be the largest racial group in the public schools this year at 49.8 percent .
According to the National Center for .
Education Statistics, minority students, when added together, will now .
make up the majority .
The shift brings new academic realities, .
such as the need for more English language instruction and cultural .
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It brings up complex societal .
questions that often fall to school systems to address, including issues .
of immigration, poverty, diversity and inequity . | By . Associated Press . For the first time, U.S. public schools are projected this fall to have more minority students than non-Hispanic whites, a shift largely fueled by growth in the number of Hispanic children partially due to workers migrating from Mexico and other countries to work on mushroom farms. The changing demographics of American education are apparent inside Jane Cornell's summer school classroom, where giggling grade-schoolers mostly come from homes where Spanish is the primary language. The sign outside the classroom reads 'Welcome' and 'Bienvenidos' in polished handwriting. Non-Hispanic white students are still expected to be the largest racial group in the public schools this year at 49.8 percent. But according to the National Center for Education Statistics, minority students, when added together, will now make up the majority. Minorities will become majority: According to the National Center for Education Statistics, minority students, when added together, will now make up the majority . Higher birth rate: U.S. public schools are projected this fall to have more minority students enrolled than white, a shift largely fueled by growth in the numbers of Hispanic children . Added up: White students are still expected to be the largest racial group in the public schools this year at 49.8 percent but there are more minorities in schools in general when added together . About one-quarter of the minority students are Hispanic, 15 percent are black and 5 percent are Asian and Pacific Islanders. Biracial students and Native Americans make up an even smaller share of the minority student population. The shift brings new academic realities, such as the need for more English language instruction, and cultural ones, such as changing school lunch menus to reflect students' tastes. But it also brings up some complex societal questions that often fall to school systems to address, including issues of immigration, poverty, diversity and inequity. The result, at times, is racial tension. In Louisiana in July, Jefferson Parish public school administrators reached an agreement with the federal government to end an investigation into discrimination against English language learners. In May, police had to be called to help break up a fight between Hispanic and black students in at a school in Streamwood, Illinois, a Chicago suburb, after a racially-based lunchroom brawl got out of control. Learning in action: School District Superintendent Barry Tomasetti meeting with young students in teacher Jane Cornell's summer school class at Mary D. Lang Kindergarten Center in Pennsylvania . Issues of race and ethnicity in schools also can be more subtle. In Pennsylvania's Kennett Consolidated School District, Superintendent Barry Tomasetti described parents who opt to send their kids to private schools in Delaware after touring diverse classrooms. Other families, he said, seek out the district's diverse schools 'because they realize it's not a homogenous world out there.' The changes in the district from mostly middle-to-upper class white to about 40 percent Hispanic was in part driven by workers migrating from Mexico and other countries to work the mushroom farms. 'We like our diversity,' Tomasetti said, even as he acknowledged the cost. He has had to hire English language instructors and translators for parent-teacher conferences. He has cobbled money together to provide summer school for many young English language learners who need extra reading and math support. 'Our expectation is all of our kids succeed,' he said. The new majority-minority status of America's schools mirrors a change that is coming for the nation as a whole. The Census Bureau estimates that the country's population also will have more minorities than whites for the first time in 2043, a result of higher birth rates among Hispanics and a stagnating or declining birth rate among blacks, whites and Asians. Moving towards success: Recent high school graduate Christian Cordova-Pedroza as he speaks during an interview with The Associated Press at Mary D. Lang Kindergarten Center . In class: Teacher Jane Cornell working with young students on their storytelling skills during summer school at Mary D. Lang Kindergarten Center . Even as the population becomes more diverse, schools are becoming more racially divided, reflecting U.S. housing patterns. The disparities are evident even in the youngest of black, Hispanic and Native American children, who on average enter kindergarten academically behind their white and Asian peers. They are more likely to attend failing schools and face harsher school discipline. Later, they have lower standardized test scores, on average, fewer opportunities to take advanced classes, and are less likely to graduate. As the school age population has become more nonwhite, it's also become poorer, said Patricia Gandara, co-director of the Civil Rights Project at UCLA who serves on President Barack Obama's advisory Commission on Educational Excellence for Hispanics. Roughly one-quarter of Hispanics and African-Americans live below the poverty line — meaning a family of four has nearly 24,000 in annual income — and some of the poorest of Hispanic children are dealing with the instability of being in the country illegally or with a parent who is, Gandara said. Focusing on teacher preparation and stronger curriculum is 'not going to get us anywhere unless we pay attention to the really basic needs of these children, things like nutrition and health and safety, and the instability of the homes,' she said. This transformation in school goes beyond just educating the children. Educators said their parents also must feel comfortable and accepted in schools. Sharpening minds: This photo taken July 21, 2014 shows young students in Jane Cornell's summer school class line put to sharpen pencils at Mary D. Lang Kindergarten Center . New leadership: Consolidated School District Superintendent Barry Tomasetti listening during an interview with The Associated Press at Mary D. Lang Kindergarten Center . | (CNN Student News) -- Students will examine different proposals to reform the Electoral College and discuss the strengths and weaknesses of these proposals. Procedure . Point out that proposals to reform the Electoral College system are not uncommon, especially after close U.S. presidential elections like the one in 2000. Refer students to the Electoral College One-Sheet and online resources, including those listed, to review arguments for and against the Electoral College system and to examine some of the proposed modifications to the Electoral College. Have students share their findings in a class discussion and discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the different reform proposals. Following the discussion, instruct students to draw upon their research to write position papers on whether or not they think that the U.S. electoral system should be reformed, and if so, which reforms make the most sense. Have students share their papers with the class. Correlated Standards . Civics . 9-12 Content Standards . II. What are the Foundations of the American Political System? A. What is the American idea of constitutional government? B. What are the distinctive characteristics of American society? C. What is American political culture? D. What values and principles are basic to American constitutional democracy? III. How Does the Government Established by the Constitution Embody the Purposes, Values, and Principles of American Democracy? A. How are power and responsibility distributed, shared, and limited in the government established by the United States Constitution? B. How is the national government organized and what does it do? C. How are state and local governments organized and what do they do? D. What is the place of law in the American constitutional system? The National Standards for Civics and Government (http://www.civiced.org/index.php?page=stds) are published by the Center for Civic Education (http://www.civiced.org/). Social Studies . Standard X. Civic Ideals and Practices . Social studies programs should include experiences that provide for the study of the ideals, principles, and practices of citizenship in a democratic republic. The Curriculum Standards for Social Studies (http://www.socialstudies.org/standards/strands/) are published by the National Council for Social Studies (http://www.socialstudies.org/). Keywords . Electoral College, reform, civics, government . | eng_Latn | 19,743 |
What is supposed to be the last resort for police? | They can also be armed with non-lethal (more accurately known as "less than lethal" or "less-lethal") weaponry, particularly for riot control. Non-lethal weapons include batons, tear gas, riot control agents, rubber bullets, riot shields, water cannons and electroshock weapons. Police officers often carry handcuffs to restrain suspects. The use of firearms or deadly force is typically a last resort only to be used when necessary to save human life, although some jurisdictions (such as Brazil) allow its use against fleeing felons and escaped convicts. A "shoot-to-kill" policy was recently introduced in South Africa, which allows police to use deadly force against any person who poses a significant threat to them or civilians. With the country having one of the highest rates of violent crime, president Jacob Zuma states that South Africa needs to handle crime differently from other countries. | UCLA professor Richard H. Sander published an article in the November 2004 issue of the Stanford Law Review that questioned the effectiveness of racial preferences in law schools. He noted that, prior to his article, there had been no comprehensive study on the effects of affirmative action. The article presents a study that shows that half of all black law students rank near the bottom of their class after the first year of law school and that black law students are more likely to drop out of law school and to fail the bar exam. The article offers a tentative estimate that the production of new black lawyers in the United States would grow by eight percent if affirmative action programs at all law schools were ended. Less qualified black students would attend less prestigious schools where they would be more closely matched in abilities with their classmates and thus perform relatively better. Sander helped to develop a socioeconomically-based affirmative action plan for the UCLA School of Law after the passage of Proposition 209 in 1996, which prohibited the use of racial preferences by public universities in California. This change occurred after studies showed that the graduation rate of blacks at UCLA was 41%, compared to 73% for whites. | eng_Latn | 19,744 |
What does affirmative action supposedly aim to do? | Proponents of affirmative action recognize that the policy is inherently unequal; however, minding the inescapable fact that historic inequalities exist in America, they believe the policy is much more fair than one in which these circumstances are not taken into account. Furthermore, those in favor of affirmative action see it as an effort towards inclusion rather than a discriminatory practice. "Job discrimination is grounded in prejudice and exclusion, whereas affirmative action is an effort to overcome prejudicial treatment through inclusion. The most effective way to cure society of exclusionary practices is to make special efforts at inclusion, which is exactly what affirmative action does." | In the United States, non-Caucasian LGBT individuals may find themselves in a double minority, where they are neither fully accepted or understood by mainly Caucasian LGBT communities, nor are they accepted by their own ethnic group. Many people experience racism in the dominant LGBT community where racial stereotypes merge with gender stereotypes, such that Asian-American LGBTs are viewed as more passive and feminine, while African-American LGBTs are viewed as more masculine and aggressive. There are a number of culturally specific support networks for LGBT individuals active in the United States. For example, "Ô-Môi" for Vietnamese American queer females. | eng_Latn | 19,745 |
Who does this law target? | Legislatures have reduced infringement by narrowing the scope of what is considered infringing. Aside from upholding international copyright treaty obligations to provide general limitations and exceptions, nations have enacted compulsory licensing laws applying specifically to digital works and uses. For example, in the U.S., the DMCA, an implementation of the 1996 WIPO Copyright Treaty, considers digital transmissions of audio recordings to be licensed as long as a designated copyright collective's royalty and reporting requirements are met. The DMCA also provides safe harbor for digital service providers whose users are suspected of copyright infringement, thus reducing the likelihood that the providers themselves will be considered directly infringing. | In 1976, a group of Italian American professors at City University of New York asked to be added as an affirmative action category for promotion and hiring. Italian Americans are usually considered white in the US and would not be covered under affirmative action policies, but the professors believed they were underrepresented. Libertarian economist Thomas Sowell wrote in his book, Affirmative Action Around the World: An Empirical Study, that affirmative action policies encourage non-preferred groups to designate themselves as members of preferred groups [i.e., primary beneficiaries of affirmative action] to take advantage of group preference policies. | eng_Latn | 19,746 |
What fueled the recent interest in race-based medicine? | In the United States, federal government policy promotes the use of racially categorized data to identify and address health disparities between racial or ethnic groups. In clinical settings, race has sometimes been considered in the diagnosis and treatment of medical conditions. Doctors have noted that some medical conditions are more prevalent in certain racial or ethnic groups than in others, without being sure of the cause of those differences. Recent interest in race-based medicine, or race-targeted pharmacogenomics, has been fueled by the proliferation of human genetic data which followed the decoding of the human genome in the first decade of the twenty-first century. There is an active debate among biomedical researchers about the meaning and importance of race in their research. Proponents of the use of racial categories in biomedicine argue that continued use of racial categorizations in biomedical research and clinical practice makes possible the application of new genetic findings, and provides a clue to diagnosis. | The racial preferences debate related to admission to US colleges and universities reflects competing notions of the mission of colleges: "To what extent should they pursue scholarly excellence, to what extent civic goods, and how should these purposes be balanced?". Scholars such as Ronald Dworkin have asserted that no college applicant has a right to expect that a university will design its admissions policies in a way that prizes any particular set of qualities. In this view, admission is not an honor bestowed to reward superior merit but rather a way to advance the mission as each university defines it. If diversity is a goal of the university and their racial preferences do not discriminate against applicants based on hatred or contempt, then affirmative action can be judged acceptable based on the criteria related to the mission the university sets for itself. | eng_Latn | 19,747 |
What was the name of the law passed by Arnold Schwarzenegger? | California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed the "Donda West Law", legislation which makes it mandatory for patients to provide medical clearance for elective cosmetic surgery. | UCLA professor Richard H. Sander published an article in the November 2004 issue of the Stanford Law Review that questioned the effectiveness of racial preferences in law schools. He noted that, prior to his article, there had been no comprehensive study on the effects of affirmative action. The article presents a study that shows that half of all black law students rank near the bottom of their class after the first year of law school and that black law students are more likely to drop out of law school and to fail the bar exam. The article offers a tentative estimate that the production of new black lawyers in the United States would grow by eight percent if affirmative action programs at all law schools were ended. Less qualified black students would attend less prestigious schools where they would be more closely matched in abilities with their classmates and thus perform relatively better. Sander helped to develop a socioeconomically-based affirmative action plan for the UCLA School of Law after the passage of Proposition 209 in 1996, which prohibited the use of racial preferences by public universities in California. This change occurred after studies showed that the graduation rate of blacks at UCLA was 41%, compared to 73% for whites. | eng_Latn | 19,748 |
Who benefited from secondary schools? | Secondary education in the United States did not emerge until 1910, with the rise of large corporations and advancing technology in factories, which required skilled workers. In order to meet this new job demand, high schools were created, with a curriculum focused on practical job skills that would better prepare students for white collar or skilled blue collar work. This proved beneficial for both employers and employees, since the improved human capital lowered costs for the employer, while skilled employees received a higher wages. | Frederick Lynch, the author of Invisible Victims: White Males and the Crisis of Affirmative Action, did a study on white males that said they were victims of reverse discrimination. Lynch explains that these white men felt frustrated and unfairly victimized by affirmative action. Shelby Steele, another author against affirmative action, wanted to see affirmative action go back to its original meaning of enforcing equal opportunity. He argued that blacks had to take full responsibility in their education and in maintaining a job. Steele believes that there is still a long way to go in America to reach our goals of eradicating discrimination. | eng_Latn | 19,749 |
What was feared would happen when different races were mixed in shelters? | The brief success of the Communists also fed into the hands of the British Union of Fascists (BUF). Anti-Semitic attitudes became widespread, particularly in London. Rumours that Jewish support was underpinning the Communist surge were frequent. Rumours that Jews were inflating prices, were responsible for the Black Market, were the first to panic under attack (even the cause of the panic), and secured the best shelters via underhanded methods, were also widespread. Moreover, there was also racial antagonism between the small Black, Indian and Jewish communities. However, the feared race riots did not transpire despite the mixing of different peoples into confined areas. | On August 18, 1970, the NAACP filed suit against Michigan state officials, including Governor William Milliken, charging de facto public school segregation. The NAACP argued that although schools were not legally segregated, the city of Detroit and its surrounding counties had enacted policies to maintain racial segregation in public schools. The NAACP also suggested a direct relationship between unfair housing practices and educational segregation, which followed segregated neighborhoods. The District Court held all levels of government accountable for the segregation in its ruling. The Sixth Circuit Court affirmed some of the decision, holding that it was the state's responsibility to integrate across the segregated metropolitan area. The U.S. Supreme Court took up the case February 27, 1974. The subsequent Milliken v. Bradley decision had wide national influence. In a narrow decision, the Court found that schools were a subject of local control and that suburbs could not be forced to solve problems in the city's school district. | eng_Latn | 19,750 |
Which contestant reportedly received a death threat on the show? | Much media attention on the season had been focused on the three black singers, Fantasia Barrino, LaToya London, and Jennifer Hudson, dubbed the Three Divas. All three unexpectedly landed on the bottom three on the top seven result show, with Hudson controversially eliminated. Elton John, who was one of the mentors that season, called the results of the votes "incredibly racist". The prolonged stays of John Stevens and Jasmine Trias in the finals, despite negative comments from the judges, had aroused resentment, so much so that John Stevens reportedly received a death threat, which he dismissed as a joke 'blown out of proportion'. | In 2012, Abigail Fisher, an undergraduate student at Louisiana State University, and Rachel Multer Michalewicz, a law student at Southern Methodist University, filed a lawsuit to challenge the University of Texas admissions policy, asserting it had a "race-conscious policy" that "violated their civil and constitutional rights". The University of Texas employs the "Top Ten Percent Law", under which admission to any public college or university in Texas is guaranteed to high school students who graduate in the top ten percent of their high school class. Fisher has brought the admissions policy to court because she believes that she was denied acceptance to the University of Texas based on her race, and thus, her right to equal protection according to the 14th Amendment was violated. The Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Fisher on October 10, 2012, and rendered an ambiguous ruling in 2013 that sent the case back to the lower court, stipulating only that the University must demonstrate that it could not achieve diversity through other, non-race sensitive means. In July 2014, the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit concluded that U of T maintained a "holistic" approach in its application of affirmative action, and could continue the practice. On February 10, 2015, lawyers for Fisher filed a new case in the Supreme Court. It is a renewed complaint that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit got the issue wrong — on the second try as well as on the first. The Supreme Court agreed in June 2015 to hear the case a second time. It will likely be decided by June 2016. | eng_Latn | 19,751 |
How many whites were given the possibility of immediate promotion as a result of taking the controversial test? | Ricci v. DeStefano was heard by the United States Supreme Court in 2009. The case concerns White and Hispanic firefighters in New Haven, Connecticut, who upon passing their test for promotions to management were denied the promotions, allegedly because of a discriminatory or at least questionable test. The test gave 17 whites and two Hispanics the possibility of immediate promotion. Although 23% of those taking the test were African American, none scored high enough to qualify. Because of the possibility the tests were biased in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, no candidates were promoted pending outcome of the controversy. In a split 5-4 vote, the Supreme Court ruled that New Haven had engaged in impermissible racial discrimination against the White and Hispanic majority. | Some biographical accounts include the autobiography Life on the Color Line: The True Story of a White Boy Who Discovered He Was Black by Gregory Howard Williams; One Drop: My Father's Hidden Life—A Story of Race and Family Secrets written by Bliss Broyard about her father Anatole Broyard; the documentary Colored White Boy about a white man in North Carolina who discovers that he is the descendant of a white plantation owner and a raped African slave; and the documentary on The Sanders Women of Shreveport, Louisiana. | eng_Latn | 19,752 |
What does AAUP stand for? | In the year 2000, according to a study by American Association of University Professors (AAUP), affirmative action promoted diversity within colleges and universities. This has been shown to have positive effects on the educational outcomes and experiences of college students as well as the teaching of faculty members. According to a study by Geoffrey Maruyama and José F. Moreno, the results showed that faculty members believed diversity helps students to reach the essential goals of a college education, Caucasian students suffer no detrimental effects from classroom diversity, and that attention to multicultural learning improves the ability of colleges and universities to accomplish their missions. Furthermore, a diverse population of students offers unique perspectives in order to challenge preconceived notions through exposure to the experiences and ideas of others. According to Professor Gurin of the University of Michigan, skills such as "perspective-taking, acceptance of differences, a willingness and capacity to find commonalities among differences, acceptance of conflict as normal, conflict resolution, participation in democracy, and interest in the wider social world" can potentially be developed in college while being exposed to heterogeneous group of students. In addition, broadening perspectives helps students confront personal and substantive stereotypes and fosters discussion about racial and ethnic issues in a classroom setting. Furthermore, the 2000 AAUP study states that having a diversity of views leads to a better discussion and greater understanding among the students on issues of race, tolerance, fairness, etc. | Rep. Christopher H. Smith (R-NJ), criticized the State Department investigation, saying the investigators were shown "Potemkin Villages" where residents had been intimidated into lying about the family-planning program. Dr. Nafis Sadik, former director of UNFPA said her agency had been pivotal in reversing China's coercive population control methods, but a 2005 report by Amnesty International and a separate report by the United States State Department found that coercive techniques were still regularly employed by the Chinese, casting doubt upon Sadik's statements. | eng_Latn | 19,753 |
What percentage of Bostons public students are African American? | The Boston Public Schools enrolls 57,000 students attending 145 schools, including the renowned Boston Latin Academy, John D. O'Bryant School of Math & Science, and Boston Latin School. The Boston Latin School, established 1635, is the oldest public high school in the US; Boston also operates the United States' second oldest public high school, and its oldest public elementary school. The system's students are 40% Hispanic or Latino, 35% Black or African American, 13% White, and 9% Asian. There are private, parochial, and charter schools as well, and approximately 3,300 minority students attend participating suburban schools through the Metropolitan Educational Opportunity Council. | Terry Eastland, the author who wrote From Ending Affirmative Action: The Case for Colorblind Justice states, "Most arguments for affirmative action fall into two categories: remedying past discrimination and promoting diversity". Eastland believes that the founders of affirmative action did not anticipate how the benefits of affirmative action would go to those who did not need it, mostly middle class minorities. Additionally, she argues that affirmative action carries with it a stigma that can create feelings of self-doubt and entitlement in minorities. Eastland believes that affirmative action is a great risk that only sometimes pays off, and that without it we would be able to compete more freely with one another. Libertarian economist Thomas Sowell identified what he says are negative results of affirmative action in his book, Affirmative Action Around the World: An Empirical Study. Sowell writes that affirmative action policies encourage non-preferred groups to designate themselves as members of preferred groups [i.e., primary beneficiaries of affirmative action] to take advantage of group preference policies; that they tend to benefit primarily the most fortunate among the preferred group (e.g., upper and middle class blacks), often to the detriment of the least fortunate among the non-preferred groups (e.g., poor white or Asian); that they reduce the incentives of both the preferred and non-preferred to perform at their best – the former because doing so is unnecessary and the latter because it can prove futile – thereby resulting in net losses for society as a whole; and that they engender animosity toward preferred groups as well.:115–147 | eng_Latn | 19,754 |
To feminists:ERA | Was the E.R.A.'s Defeat Really a Loss for Feminism? - Room for ... Sep 8, 2016 ... Did feminists win even though the E.R.A. was defeated? Read the Discussion ... Despite Gains, Effects of E.R.A.'s Defeat Are Unknown. | Title IX enacted - Jun 23, 1972 - HISTORY.com On this day in 1972, Title IX of the education amendments of 1972 is enacted into law. Title IX prohibits federally funded educational institutions from... | eng_Latn | 19,755 |
At what rate is Tennessee state sales and use tax usually applied? | The Tennessee income tax does not apply to salaries and wages, but most income from stock, bonds and notes receivable is taxable. All taxable dividends and interest which exceed the $1,250 single exemption or the $2,500 joint exemption are taxable at the rate of 6%. The state's sales and use tax rate for most items is 7%. Food is taxed at a lower rate of 5.25%, but candy, dietary supplements and prepared food are taxed at the full 7% rate. Local sales taxes are collected in most jurisdictions, at rates varying from 1.5% to 2.75%, bringing the total sales tax to between 8.5% and 9.75%, one of the highest levels in the nation. Intangible property is assessed on the shares of stock of stockholders of any loan company, investment company, insurance company or for-profit cemetery companies. The assessment ratio is 40% of the value multiplied by the tax rate for the jurisdiction. Tennessee imposes an inheritance tax on decedents' estates that exceed maximum single exemption limits ($1,000,000 for deaths in 2006 and thereafter). | In 2012, Abigail Fisher, an undergraduate student at Louisiana State University, and Rachel Multer Michalewicz, a law student at Southern Methodist University, filed a lawsuit to challenge the University of Texas admissions policy, asserting it had a "race-conscious policy" that "violated their civil and constitutional rights". The University of Texas employs the "Top Ten Percent Law", under which admission to any public college or university in Texas is guaranteed to high school students who graduate in the top ten percent of their high school class. Fisher has brought the admissions policy to court because she believes that she was denied acceptance to the University of Texas based on her race, and thus, her right to equal protection according to the 14th Amendment was violated. The Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Fisher on October 10, 2012, and rendered an ambiguous ruling in 2013 that sent the case back to the lower court, stipulating only that the University must demonstrate that it could not achieve diversity through other, non-race sensitive means. In July 2014, the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit concluded that U of T maintained a "holistic" approach in its application of affirmative action, and could continue the practice. On February 10, 2015, lawyers for Fisher filed a new case in the Supreme Court. It is a renewed complaint that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit got the issue wrong — on the second try as well as on the first. The Supreme Court agreed in June 2015 to hear the case a second time. It will likely be decided by June 2016. | eng_Latn | 19,756 |
One of Bush's first initiatives was tort reform to stop what he called the "junk" type of these | The 2x2 Matrix of Tort Reform's Distributions - Via Sapientiae Anita Bernstein, The 2x2 Matrix of Tort Reform's Distributions, 60 DePaul L. Rev. ... The dichotomous contrast of these two abstract nouns does some of ... Example one: In order for me to be free to walk down the sidewalk, other ... security and freedom in what he called his first principle of justice: "[E]ach ...... stop tort claims). | Game Show NewsNet - Jeopardy! Teen Tournament 2006 Feb 14, 2006 ... The clue: Jerry's refusal to sell candy for a school fundraiser ignites the title conflict in this Robert Cormier novel. Iddoshe's response: "What is... | eng_Latn | 19,757 |
What did DC Sinclair and G Weddell propose a property of all skin fiber endings is? | In 1955, DC Sinclair and G Weddell developed peripheral pattern theory, based on a 1934 suggestion by John Paul Nafe. They proposed that all skin fiber endings (with the exception of those innervating hair cells) are identical, and that pain is produced by intense stimulation of these fibers. Another 20th-century theory was gate control theory, introduced by Ronald Melzack and Patrick Wall in the 1965 Science article "Pain Mechanisms: A New Theory". The authors proposed that both thin (pain) and large diameter (touch, pressure, vibration) nerve fibers carry information from the site of injury to two destinations in the dorsal horn of the spinal cord, and that the more large fiber activity relative to thin fiber activity at the inhibitory cell, the less pain is felt. Both peripheral pattern theory and gate control theory have been superseded by more modern theories of pain[citation needed]. | Following the Sergeant Isaac Woodard incident, President Harry S. Truman, himself a combat veteran of World War I, issued Executive Order 9808 establishing the President's Committee on Civil Rights to examine the violence and recommend appropriate federal legislation. Hearing of the incident, Truman turned to NAACP leader Walter Francis White and declared, "My God! I had no idea it was as terrible as that. We've got to do something." In 1947 the committee published its findings, To Secure These Rights. The book was widely read, influential, and considered utopian for the times: "In our land men are equal, but they are free to be different. From these very differences among our people has come the great human and national strength of America." The report discussed and demonstrated racial discrimination in basic freedoms, education, public facilities, personal safety, and employment opportunities. The committee was disturbed by the state of race relations, and included the evacuation of Americans of Japanese descent during the war "made without a trial or any sort of hearing…Fundamental to our whole system of law is the belief that guilt is personal and not a matter of heredity or association." The recommendations were radical, calling for federal policies and laws to end racial discrimination and bring about equality: "We can tolerate no restrictions upon the individual which depend upon irrelevant factors such as his race, his color, his religion, or the social position to which he is born." To Secure These Rights set the liberal legislative agenda for the next generation that eventually would be signed into law by Lyndon B. Johnson.:35–36 | eng_Latn | 19,758 |
This 3-word doctrine stems from the Supreme Court case Plessy v. Ferguson & was extended in Gong Lum v. Rice | Gong Lum v. Rice - Education Law Rice (1927) stands out as the case within which the U.S. Supreme Court explicitly extended the pernicious doctrine of separate but equal that it ... of separate but equal that it introduced at the national level to public education in Plessy v. ... Gong Lum v. Rice, 275 U.S. 78 (1927). Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537 (1896). | Foundational StudiesUpper Division Integrative Elective English 335 genre definition and then examines how 1940s and 1950s science fictions represent identity issues ... [See the Ursula K. Le Guin comment in the course description.] In an ... The following policy statement and syllabus has been modified to include bold type ... Asimov, Isaac. ..... The abbreviation PP means that the assigned. | eng_Latn | 19,759 |
In what year did low scores of black firefighters on a promotion test issued by the New Haven Fire Department ultimately halt promotions for all firefighters of any race in the city? | In April 2009, the United States Supreme Court agreed to hear a suit over reverse discrimination brought by 18 white firefighters against the city. The suit involved the 2003 promotion test for the New Haven Fire Department. After the tests were scored, no black firefighters scored high enough to qualify for consideration for promotion, so the city announced that no one would be promoted. In the subsequent Ricci v. DeStefano decision the court found 5-4 that New Haven's decision to ignore the test results violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. As a result, a district court subsequently ordered the city to promote 14 of the white firefighters. | Early Asian immigrants experienced prejudice and discrimination in the forms of not having the ability to become naturalized citizens. They also struggled with many of the same school segregation laws that African Americans faced. Particularly, during World War II, Japanese Americans were interned in camps and lost their property, homes, and businesses. Discrimination against Asians began with the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and then continued with the Scott Act of 1888 and the Geary Act of 1892. At the beginning of the 20th century, the United States passed the Immigration Act of 1924 to prevent Asian immigration out of fear that Asians were stealing white jobs and lowering the standard for wages. In addition, whites and non-Asians do not differentiate among the different Asian groups and perpetuate the "model minority" stereotype. According to a 2010 article by Professor Qin Zhang of Fairfield University, Asians are characterized as one dimensional in having great work ethic and valuing education, but lacking in communication skills and personality. A negative outcome of this stereotype is that Asians have been portrayed as having poor leadership and interpersonal skills. This has contributing to the "glass ceiling" phenomenon in which although there are many qualified Asian Americans, they occupy a disproportionately small number of executive positions in businesses. Furthermore, the model minority stereotype has led to resentment of Asian success and several universities and colleges have limited or have been accused of limiting Asian matriculation. | eng_Latn | 19,760 |
How long is the screening period of an individual's or organization's petition to add a species to the list | A species can be listed in two ways. The United States Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) or NOAA Fisheries (also called the National Marine Fisheries Service) can directly list a species through its candidate assessment program, or an individual or organizational petition may request that the FWS or NMFS list a species. A "species" under the act can be a true taxonomic species, a subspecies, or in the case of vertebrates, a "distinct population segment." The procedures are the same for both types except with the person/organization petition, there is a 90-day screening period. | In 2012, Abigail Fisher, an undergraduate student at Louisiana State University, and Rachel Multer Michalewicz, a law student at Southern Methodist University, filed a lawsuit to challenge the University of Texas admissions policy, asserting it had a "race-conscious policy" that "violated their civil and constitutional rights". The University of Texas employs the "Top Ten Percent Law", under which admission to any public college or university in Texas is guaranteed to high school students who graduate in the top ten percent of their high school class. Fisher has brought the admissions policy to court because she believes that she was denied acceptance to the University of Texas based on her race, and thus, her right to equal protection according to the 14th Amendment was violated. The Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Fisher on October 10, 2012, and rendered an ambiguous ruling in 2013 that sent the case back to the lower court, stipulating only that the University must demonstrate that it could not achieve diversity through other, non-race sensitive means. In July 2014, the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit concluded that U of T maintained a "holistic" approach in its application of affirmative action, and could continue the practice. On February 10, 2015, lawyers for Fisher filed a new case in the Supreme Court. It is a renewed complaint that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit got the issue wrong — on the second try as well as on the first. The Supreme Court agreed in June 2015 to hear the case a second time. It will likely be decided by June 2016. | eng_Latn | 19,761 |
To not violate the Establishment Clause, a law must be adopted with neutral or what purpose? | Subsequent to this decision, the Supreme Court has applied a three-pronged test to determine whether government action comports with the Establishment Clause, known as the "Lemon Test". First, the law or policy must have been adopted with a neutral or non-religious purpose. Second, the principle or primary effect must be one that neither advances nor inhibits religion. Third, the statute or policy must not result in an "excessive entanglement" of government with religion. (The decision in Lemon v. Kurtzman hinged upon the conclusion that the government benefits were flowing disproportionately to Catholic schools, and that Catholic schools were an integral component of the Catholic Church's religious mission, thus the policy involved the state in an "excessive entanglement" with religion.) Failure to meet any of these criteria is a proof that the statute or policy in question violates the Establishment Clause. | UCLA professor Richard H. Sander published an article in the November 2004 issue of the Stanford Law Review that questioned the effectiveness of racial preferences in law schools. He noted that, prior to his article, there had been no comprehensive study on the effects of affirmative action. The article presents a study that shows that half of all black law students rank near the bottom of their class after the first year of law school and that black law students are more likely to drop out of law school and to fail the bar exam. The article offers a tentative estimate that the production of new black lawyers in the United States would grow by eight percent if affirmative action programs at all law schools were ended. Less qualified black students would attend less prestigious schools where they would be more closely matched in abilities with their classmates and thus perform relatively better. Sander helped to develop a socioeconomically-based affirmative action plan for the UCLA School of Law after the passage of Proposition 209 in 1996, which prohibited the use of racial preferences by public universities in California. This change occurred after studies showed that the graduation rate of blacks at UCLA was 41%, compared to 73% for whites. | eng_Latn | 19,762 |
Why is using racial categorization for profiling often criticized? | In some countries, law enforcement uses race to profile suspects. This use of racial categories is frequently criticized for perpetuating an outmoded understanding of human biological variation, and promoting stereotypes. Because in some societies racial groupings correspond closely with patterns of social stratification, for social scientists studying social inequality, race can be a significant variable. As sociological factors, racial categories may in part reflect subjective attributions, self-identities, and social institutions. | In 1976, a group of Italian American professors at City University of New York asked to be added as an affirmative action category for promotion and hiring. Italian Americans are usually considered white in the US and would not be covered under affirmative action policies, but the professors believed they were underrepresented. Libertarian economist Thomas Sowell wrote in his book, Affirmative Action Around the World: An Empirical Study, that affirmative action policies encourage non-preferred groups to designate themselves as members of preferred groups [i.e., primary beneficiaries of affirmative action] to take advantage of group preference policies. | eng_Latn | 19,763 |
What does the new "race science" call attention to the importance of? | As another example, she points to work by Thomas et al., who sought to distinguish between the Y chromosomes of Jewish priests (Kohanim), (in Judaism, membership in the priesthood is passed on through the father's line) and the Y chromosomes of non-Jews. Abu el-Haj concluded that this new "race science" calls attention to the importance of "ancestry" (narrowly defined, as it does not include all ancestors) in some religions and in popular culture, and people's desire to use science to confirm their claims about ancestry; this "race science", she argues, is fundamentally different from older notions of race that were used to explain differences in human behaviour or social status: | Richard Sander claims that by artificially elevating minority students into schools they otherwise would not be capable of attending, this discourages them and tends to engender failure and high dropout rates for these students. For example, about half of black college students rank in the bottom 20 percent of their classes, black law school graduates are four times as likely to fail bar exams as are whites, and interracial friendships are more likely to form among students with relatively similar levels of academic preparation; thus, blacks and Hispanics are more socially integrated on campuses where they are less academically mismatched. He claims that the supposed "beneficiaries" of affirmative action – minorities – do not actually benefit and rather are harmed by the policy. Sander's claims have been disputed, and his empirical analyses have been subject to substantial criticism. A group including some of the country's lead statistical methodologists told the Supreme Court that Sander's analyses were sufficiently flawed that the Court would be wise to ignore them entirely. At the same time many scholars have found that minorities gain substantially from affirmative action. | eng_Latn | 19,764 |
How many Native Hawaiian are in Raleigh? | As of the 2000 United States census, there were 276,093 persons (July 2008 estimate was 380,173) and 61,371 families residing in Raleigh. The population density was 2,409.2 people per square mile (930.2/km²). There were 120,699 housing units at an average density of 1,053.2 per square mile (406.7/km²). The racial composition of the city was: 63.31% White, 27.80% Black or African American, 7.01% Hispanic or Latino American, 3.38% Asian American, 0.36% Native American, 0.04% Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander, 3.24% some other race, and 1.88% two or more races. | On November 17, 2014, Students for Fair Admissions, an offshoot of the Project on Fair Representation, filed lawsuits in federal district court challenging the admissions practices of Harvard University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The UNC-Chapel Hill lawsuit alleges discrimination against white and Asian students, while the Harvard lawsuit focuses on discrimination against Asian applicants. Both universities requested the court to halt the lawsuits until the U.S. Supreme Court provides clarification of relevant law by ruling in Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin for the second time. This Supreme Court case will likely be decided in June 2016 or slightly earlier. | eng_Latn | 19,765 |
What were the effects of affirmative action on universities according to the study done by the AAUP? | In the year 2000, according to a study by American Association of University Professors (AAUP), affirmative action promoted diversity within colleges and universities. This has been shown to have positive effects on the educational outcomes and experiences of college students as well as the teaching of faculty members. According to a study by Geoffrey Maruyama and José F. Moreno, the results showed that faculty members believed diversity helps students to reach the essential goals of a college education, Caucasian students suffer no detrimental effects from classroom diversity, and that attention to multicultural learning improves the ability of colleges and universities to accomplish their missions. Furthermore, a diverse population of students offers unique perspectives in order to challenge preconceived notions through exposure to the experiences and ideas of others. According to Professor Gurin of the University of Michigan, skills such as "perspective-taking, acceptance of differences, a willingness and capacity to find commonalities among differences, acceptance of conflict as normal, conflict resolution, participation in democracy, and interest in the wider social world" can potentially be developed in college while being exposed to heterogeneous group of students. In addition, broadening perspectives helps students confront personal and substantive stereotypes and fosters discussion about racial and ethnic issues in a classroom setting. Furthermore, the 2000 AAUP study states that having a diversity of views leads to a better discussion and greater understanding among the students on issues of race, tolerance, fairness, etc. | The RCC attempted to suppress regional and tribal affiliation, replacing it with a unified pan-Libyan identity. In doing so, they tried discrediting tribal leaders as agents of the old regime, and in August 1971 a Sabha military court tried many of them for counter-revolutionary activity. Long-standing administrative boundaries were re-drawn, crossing tribal boundaries, while pro-revolutionary modernizers replaced traditional leaders, but the communities they served often rejected them. Realizing the failures of the modernizers, Gaddafi created the Arab Socialist Union (ASU), a mass mobilization vanguard party of which he was president. The ASU recognized the RCC as its "Supreme Leading Authority", and was designed to further revolutionary enthusiasm throughout the country. | eng_Latn | 19,766 |
Which other Executive Order did the Civil Right's Act work closely with? | This eventually led to LBJ's Civil Rights Act, which came shortly after President Kennedy's assassination. This document was more holistic than any President Kennedy had offered, and therefore more controversial. It aimed not only to integrate public facilities, but also private businesses that sold to the public, such as motels, restaurants, theaters, and gas stations. Public schools, hospitals, libraries, parks, among other things, were included in the bill as well. It also worked with JFK's executive order 11114 by prohibiting discrimination in the awarding of federal contracts and holding the authority of the government to deny contracts to businesses who discriminate. Maybe most significant of all, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act aimed to end discrimination in all firms with 25 or more employees. Another provision established the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission as the agency charged with ending discrimination in the nation's workplace.:74 | Richard Sander claims that by artificially elevating minority students into schools they otherwise would not be capable of attending, this discourages them and tends to engender failure and high dropout rates for these students. For example, about half of black college students rank in the bottom 20 percent of their classes, black law school graduates are four times as likely to fail bar exams as are whites, and interracial friendships are more likely to form among students with relatively similar levels of academic preparation; thus, blacks and Hispanics are more socially integrated on campuses where they are less academically mismatched. He claims that the supposed "beneficiaries" of affirmative action – minorities – do not actually benefit and rather are harmed by the policy. Sander's claims have been disputed, and his empirical analyses have been subject to substantial criticism. A group including some of the country's lead statistical methodologists told the Supreme Court that Sander's analyses were sufficiently flawed that the Court would be wise to ignore them entirely. At the same time many scholars have found that minorities gain substantially from affirmative action. | eng_Latn | 19,767 |
By 1810, what percentage of the free population was black? | After 1800, cotton and tobacco became important export crops. The eastern half of the state, especially the Tidewater region, developed a slave society based on a plantation system and slave labor. Many free people of color migrated to the frontier along with their European-American neighbors, where the social system was looser. By 1810, nearly 3 percent of the free population consisted of free people of color, who numbered slightly more than 10,000. The western areas were dominated by white families, especially Scots-Irish, who operated small subsistence farms. In the early national period, the state became a center of Jeffersonian and Jacksonian democracy, with a strong Whig presence, especially in the West. After Nat Turner's slave uprising in 1831, North Carolina and other southern states reduced the rights of free blacks. In 1835 the legislature withdrew their right to vote. | In 2012, Abigail Fisher, an undergraduate student at Louisiana State University, and Rachel Multer Michalewicz, a law student at Southern Methodist University, filed a lawsuit to challenge the University of Texas admissions policy, asserting it had a "race-conscious policy" that "violated their civil and constitutional rights". The University of Texas employs the "Top Ten Percent Law", under which admission to any public college or university in Texas is guaranteed to high school students who graduate in the top ten percent of their high school class. Fisher has brought the admissions policy to court because she believes that she was denied acceptance to the University of Texas based on her race, and thus, her right to equal protection according to the 14th Amendment was violated. The Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Fisher on October 10, 2012, and rendered an ambiguous ruling in 2013 that sent the case back to the lower court, stipulating only that the University must demonstrate that it could not achieve diversity through other, non-race sensitive means. In July 2014, the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit concluded that U of T maintained a "holistic" approach in its application of affirmative action, and could continue the practice. On February 10, 2015, lawyers for Fisher filed a new case in the Supreme Court. It is a renewed complaint that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit got the issue wrong — on the second try as well as on the first. The Supreme Court agreed in June 2015 to hear the case a second time. It will likely be decided by June 2016. | eng_Latn | 19,768 |
What percentage of the black population thought affirmative action should be abolished? | A study in 2007 by Mark Long, an economics professor at the University of Washington, demonstrated that the alternatives of affirmative action proved ineffective in restoring minority enrollment in public flagship universities in California, Texas, and Washington. More specifically, apparent rebounds of minority enrollment can be explained by increasing minority enrollment in high schools of those states, and the beneficiaries of class-based (not race) affirmative action would be white students. At the same time, affirmative action itself is both morally and materially costly: 52 percent of white populace (compared to 14 percent of black) thought it should be abolished, implying white distaste of using racial identity, and full-file review is expected to cost the universities an additional $1.5 million to $2 million per year, excluding possible cost of litigation. | Early Asian immigrants experienced prejudice and discrimination in the forms of not having the ability to become naturalized citizens. They also struggled with many of the same school segregation laws that African Americans faced. Particularly, during World War II, Japanese Americans were interned in camps and lost their property, homes, and businesses. Discrimination against Asians began with the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and then continued with the Scott Act of 1888 and the Geary Act of 1892. At the beginning of the 20th century, the United States passed the Immigration Act of 1924 to prevent Asian immigration out of fear that Asians were stealing white jobs and lowering the standard for wages. In addition, whites and non-Asians do not differentiate among the different Asian groups and perpetuate the "model minority" stereotype. According to a 2010 article by Professor Qin Zhang of Fairfield University, Asians are characterized as one dimensional in having great work ethic and valuing education, but lacking in communication skills and personality. A negative outcome of this stereotype is that Asians have been portrayed as having poor leadership and interpersonal skills. This has contributing to the "glass ceiling" phenomenon in which although there are many qualified Asian Americans, they occupy a disproportionately small number of executive positions in businesses. Furthermore, the model minority stereotype has led to resentment of Asian success and several universities and colleges have limited or have been accused of limiting Asian matriculation. | eng_Latn | 19,769 |
What did the plaintiffs claim the university had for an admissions policy? | In 2012, Abigail Fisher, an undergraduate student at Louisiana State University, and Rachel Multer Michalewicz, a law student at Southern Methodist University, filed a lawsuit to challenge the University of Texas admissions policy, asserting it had a "race-conscious policy" that "violated their civil and constitutional rights". The University of Texas employs the "Top Ten Percent Law", under which admission to any public college or university in Texas is guaranteed to high school students who graduate in the top ten percent of their high school class. Fisher has brought the admissions policy to court because she believes that she was denied acceptance to the University of Texas based on her race, and thus, her right to equal protection according to the 14th Amendment was violated. The Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Fisher on October 10, 2012, and rendered an ambiguous ruling in 2013 that sent the case back to the lower court, stipulating only that the University must demonstrate that it could not achieve diversity through other, non-race sensitive means. In July 2014, the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit concluded that U of T maintained a "holistic" approach in its application of affirmative action, and could continue the practice. On February 10, 2015, lawyers for Fisher filed a new case in the Supreme Court. It is a renewed complaint that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit got the issue wrong — on the second try as well as on the first. The Supreme Court agreed in June 2015 to hear the case a second time. It will likely be decided by June 2016. | The Quine-Duhem thesis argues that it's impossible to test a single hypothesis on its own, since each one comes as part of an environment of theories. Thus we can only say that the whole package of relevant theories has been collectively falsified, but cannot conclusively say which element of the package must be replaced. An example of this is given by the discovery of the planet Neptune: when the motion of Uranus was found not to match the predictions of Newton's laws, the theory "There are seven planets in the solar system" was rejected, and not Newton's laws themselves. Popper discussed this critique of naïve falsificationism in Chapters 3 and 4 of The Logic of Scientific Discovery. For Popper, theories are accepted or rejected via a sort of selection process. Theories that say more about the way things appear are to be preferred over those that do not; the more generally applicable a theory is, the greater its value. Thus Newton's laws, with their wide general application, are to be preferred over the much more specific "the solar system has seven planets".[dubious – discuss] | eng_Latn | 19,770 |
At least what percentage of HIV-positive patients who contract TB will experience extrapulmonary infection? | In 15–20% of active cases, the infection spreads outside the lungs, causing other kinds of TB. These are collectively denoted as "extrapulmonary tuberculosis". Extrapulmonary TB occurs more commonly in immunosuppressed persons and young children. In those with HIV, this occurs in more than 50% of cases. Notable extrapulmonary infection sites include the pleura (in tuberculous pleurisy), the central nervous system (in tuberculous meningitis), the lymphatic system (in scrofula of the neck), the genitourinary system (in urogenital tuberculosis), and the bones and joints (in Pott disease of the spine), among others. When it spreads to the bones, it is also known as "osseous tuberculosis", a form of osteomyelitis. Sometimes, bursting of a tubercular abscess through skin results in tuberculous ulcer. An ulcer originating from nearby infected lymph nodes is painless, slowly enlarging and has an appearance of "wash leather". A potentially more serious, widespread form of TB is called "disseminated tuberculosis", also known as miliary tuberculosis. Miliary TB makes up about 10% of extrapulmonary cases. | In 2012, Abigail Fisher, an undergraduate student at Louisiana State University, and Rachel Multer Michalewicz, a law student at Southern Methodist University, filed a lawsuit to challenge the University of Texas admissions policy, asserting it had a "race-conscious policy" that "violated their civil and constitutional rights". The University of Texas employs the "Top Ten Percent Law", under which admission to any public college or university in Texas is guaranteed to high school students who graduate in the top ten percent of their high school class. Fisher has brought the admissions policy to court because she believes that she was denied acceptance to the University of Texas based on her race, and thus, her right to equal protection according to the 14th Amendment was violated. The Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Fisher on October 10, 2012, and rendered an ambiguous ruling in 2013 that sent the case back to the lower court, stipulating only that the University must demonstrate that it could not achieve diversity through other, non-race sensitive means. In July 2014, the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit concluded that U of T maintained a "holistic" approach in its application of affirmative action, and could continue the practice. On February 10, 2015, lawyers for Fisher filed a new case in the Supreme Court. It is a renewed complaint that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit got the issue wrong — on the second try as well as on the first. The Supreme Court agreed in June 2015 to hear the case a second time. It will likely be decided by June 2016. | eng_Latn | 19,771 |
What does NAA stand for? | Gorbachev's inability to alleviate any of Armenia's problems created disillusionment among the Armenians and fed a growing hunger for independence. In May 1990, the New Armenian Army (NAA) was established, serving as a defence force separate from the Soviet Red Army. Clashes soon broke out between the NAA and Soviet Internal Security Forces (MVD) troops based in Yerevan when Armenians decided to commemorate the establishment of the 1918 First Republic of Armenia. The violence resulted in the deaths of five Armenians killed in a shootout with the MVD at the railway station. Witnesses there claimed that the MVD used excessive force and that they had instigated the fighting. | UCLA professor Richard H. Sander published an article in the November 2004 issue of the Stanford Law Review that questioned the effectiveness of racial preferences in law schools. He noted that, prior to his article, there had been no comprehensive study on the effects of affirmative action. The article presents a study that shows that half of all black law students rank near the bottom of their class after the first year of law school and that black law students are more likely to drop out of law school and to fail the bar exam. The article offers a tentative estimate that the production of new black lawyers in the United States would grow by eight percent if affirmative action programs at all law schools were ended. Less qualified black students would attend less prestigious schools where they would be more closely matched in abilities with their classmates and thus perform relatively better. Sander helped to develop a socioeconomically-based affirmative action plan for the UCLA School of Law after the passage of Proposition 209 in 1996, which prohibited the use of racial preferences by public universities in California. This change occurred after studies showed that the graduation rate of blacks at UCLA was 41%, compared to 73% for whites. | eng_Latn | 19,772 |
Which river runs through the university's campus? | Other notable places include Elizabeth Fort, the Cork Opera House, Christ Church on South Main Street (now the Triskel Arts Centre and original site of early Hiberno-Norse church), St Mary's Dominican Church on Popes Quay and Fitzgerald's Park to the west of the city, which contains the Cork Public Museum. Other popular tourist attractions include the grounds of University College Cork, through which the River Lee flows, the Women's Gaol at Sundays Well (now a heritage centre) and the English Market. This covered market traces its origins back to 1610, and the present building dates from 1786. | In 2012, Abigail Fisher, an undergraduate student at Louisiana State University, and Rachel Multer Michalewicz, a law student at Southern Methodist University, filed a lawsuit to challenge the University of Texas admissions policy, asserting it had a "race-conscious policy" that "violated their civil and constitutional rights". The University of Texas employs the "Top Ten Percent Law", under which admission to any public college or university in Texas is guaranteed to high school students who graduate in the top ten percent of their high school class. Fisher has brought the admissions policy to court because she believes that she was denied acceptance to the University of Texas based on her race, and thus, her right to equal protection according to the 14th Amendment was violated. The Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Fisher on October 10, 2012, and rendered an ambiguous ruling in 2013 that sent the case back to the lower court, stipulating only that the University must demonstrate that it could not achieve diversity through other, non-race sensitive means. In July 2014, the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit concluded that U of T maintained a "holistic" approach in its application of affirmative action, and could continue the practice. On February 10, 2015, lawyers for Fisher filed a new case in the Supreme Court. It is a renewed complaint that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit got the issue wrong — on the second try as well as on the first. The Supreme Court agreed in June 2015 to hear the case a second time. It will likely be decided by June 2016. | eng_Latn | 19,773 |
When was the doctrine of Erie Railroad Co. v. Tompkins put into effect? | Under the doctrine of Erie Railroad Co. v. Tompkins (1938), there is no general federal common law. Although federal courts can create federal common law in the form of case law, such law must be linked one way or another to the interpretation of a particular federal constitutional provision, statute, or regulation (which in turn was enacted as part of the Constitution or after). Federal courts lack the plenary power possessed by state courts to simply make up law, which the latter are able to do in the absence of constitutional or statutory provisions replacing the common law. Only in a few narrow limited areas, like maritime law, has the Constitution expressly authorized the continuation of English common law at the federal level (meaning that in those areas federal courts can continue to make law as they see fit, subject to the limitations of stare decisis). | FDR's New Deal programs often contained equal opportunity clauses stating "no discrimination shall be made on account of race, color or creed",:11 but the true forerunner to affirmative action was the Interior Secretary of the time, Harold L. Ickes. Ickes prohibited discrimination in hiring for Public Works Administration funded projects and oversaw not only the institution of a quota system, where contractors were required to employ a fixed percentage of Black workers, by Robert C. Weaver and Clark Foreman,:12 but also the equal pay of women proposed by Harry Hopkins.:14FDR's largest contribution to affirmative action, however, lay in his Executive Order 8802 which prohibited discrimination in the defense industry or government.:22 The executive order promoted the idea that if taxpayer funds were accepted through a government contract, then all taxpayers should have an equal opportunity to work through the contractor.:23–4 To enforce this idea, Roosevelt created the Fair Employment Practices Committee (FEPC) with the power to investigate hiring practices by government contractors.:22 | eng_Latn | 19,774 |
What do patents create an incentive for inventors to do? | The stated objective of most intellectual property law (with the exception of trademarks) is to "Promote progress." By exchanging limited exclusive rights for disclosure of inventions and creative works, society and the patentee/copyright owner mutually benefit, and an incentive is created for inventors and authors to create and disclose their work. Some commentators have noted that the objective of intellectual property legislators and those who support its implementation appears to be "absolute protection". "If some intellectual property is desirable because it encourages innovation, they reason, more is better. The thinking is that creators will not have sufficient incentive to invent unless they are legally entitled to capture the full social value of their inventions". This absolute protection or full value view treats intellectual property as another type of "real" property, typically adopting its law and rhetoric. Other recent developments in intellectual property law, such as the America Invents Act, stress international harmonization. Recently there has also been much debate over the desirability of using intellectual property rights to protect cultural heritage, including intangible ones, as well as over risks of commodification derived from this possibility. The issue still remains open in legal scholarship. | Richard Sander claims that by artificially elevating minority students into schools they otherwise would not be capable of attending, this discourages them and tends to engender failure and high dropout rates for these students. For example, about half of black college students rank in the bottom 20 percent of their classes, black law school graduates are four times as likely to fail bar exams as are whites, and interracial friendships are more likely to form among students with relatively similar levels of academic preparation; thus, blacks and Hispanics are more socially integrated on campuses where they are less academically mismatched. He claims that the supposed "beneficiaries" of affirmative action – minorities – do not actually benefit and rather are harmed by the policy. Sander's claims have been disputed, and his empirical analyses have been subject to substantial criticism. A group including some of the country's lead statistical methodologists told the Supreme Court that Sander's analyses were sufficiently flawed that the Court would be wise to ignore them entirely. At the same time many scholars have found that minorities gain substantially from affirmative action. | eng_Latn | 19,775 |
When was the slope-line approach system introduced? | The first lighting used on an airport was during the latter part of the 1920s; in the 1930s approach lighting came into use. These indicated the proper direction and angle of descent. The colours and flash intervals of these lights became standardized under the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO). In the 1940s, the slope-line approach system was introduced. This consisted of two rows of lights that formed a funnel indicating an aircraft's position on the glideslope. Additional lights indicated incorrect altitude and direction. | Affirmative action is a subject of controversy. Some policies adopted as affirmative action, such as racial quotas or gender quotas for collegiate admission, have been criticized as a form of reverse discrimination, and such implementation of affirmative action has been ruled unconstitutional by the majority opinion of Gratz v. Bollinger. Affirmative action as a practice was upheld by the Supreme Court's decision in Grutter v. Bollinger in 2003. Affirmative action policies were developed in order to correct decades of discrimination stemming from the Reconstruction Era by granting disadvantaged minorities opportunities. Many believe that the diversity of current American society suggests that affirmative action policies succeeded and are no longer required. Opponents of affirmative action argue that these policies are outdated and lead to reverse discrimination which entails favoring one group over another based upon racial preference rather than achievement. | eng_Latn | 19,776 |
I am applying for jobs and certain job postings specifically "welcome applications from" certain groups that "contribute to diversification." I am in one of these groups that they state, but you have to get to page 4 of my CV or page 2 of my teaching statement to find out. Why are they especially welcoming these groups? Is there part of their evaluation criteria that considers this diversification? Should I make the committee more aware of my belonging to such a group? If so, how? [Nota bene: This is a North American job.] | I was browsing PhD position offers in Europe on different websites and I was quite surprised to find that several offers contained sentences such as University of X value equality and diversity. We strongly encourage women and BAME applicants for this position. where BAME stands for Black, Asian and Minority Ethnicities; or The research group aims to increase the number of women in scientific positions. Female candidates are therefore encouraged to apply. Is it considered normal in the academic environment to discriminate between candidates according to their race and/or gender for "egalitarian" reasons? How is the choice of a candidate based on their gender and/or race considered "egalitarian"? | The entire site is blank right now. The header and footer are shown, but no questions. | eng_Latn | 19,777 |
What is the used to achieve a practical effect? | Lighting or illumination is the deliberate use of light to achieve a practical or aesthetic effect. Lighting includes the use of both artificial light sources like lamps and light fixtures, as well as natural illumination by capturing daylight. Daylighting (using windows, skylights, or light shelves) is sometimes used as the main source of light during daytime in buildings. This can save energy in place of using artificial lighting, which represents a major component of energy consumption in buildings. Proper lighting can enhance task performance, improve the appearance of an area, or have positive psychological effects on occupants. | Richard Sander claims that by artificially elevating minority students into schools they otherwise would not be capable of attending, this discourages them and tends to engender failure and high dropout rates for these students. For example, about half of black college students rank in the bottom 20 percent of their classes, black law school graduates are four times as likely to fail bar exams as are whites, and interracial friendships are more likely to form among students with relatively similar levels of academic preparation; thus, blacks and Hispanics are more socially integrated on campuses where they are less academically mismatched. He claims that the supposed "beneficiaries" of affirmative action – minorities – do not actually benefit and rather are harmed by the policy. Sander's claims have been disputed, and his empirical analyses have been subject to substantial criticism. A group including some of the country's lead statistical methodologists told the Supreme Court that Sander's analyses were sufficiently flawed that the Court would be wise to ignore them entirely. At the same time many scholars have found that minorities gain substantially from affirmative action. | eng_Latn | 19,778 |
In 1961 IBM's nondiscrimination policy was expanded to include what? | In 1952, Thomas J. Watson, Jr., published the company's first written equal opportunity policy letter, one year before the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Brown vs. Board of Education and 11 years before the Civil Rights Act of 1964. In 1961, IBM's nondiscrimination policy was expanded to include sex, national origin, and age. The following year, IBM hosted its first Invention Award Dinner honoring 34 outstanding IBM inventors; and in 1963, the company named the first eight IBM Fellows in a new Fellowship Program that recognizes senior IBM scientists, engineers and other professionals for outstanding technical achievements. | Democrats were elected to the legislature and governor's office, but the Populists attracted voters displeased with them. In 1896 a biracial, Populist-Republican Fusionist coalition gained the governor's office. The Democrats regained control of the legislature in 1896 and passed laws to impose Jim Crow and racial segregation of public facilities. Voters of North Carolina's 2nd congressional district elected a total of four African-American congressmen through these years of the late 19th century. | eng_Latn | 19,779 |
The "american colonization society" consisted mostly of whom" | In the United States, there was a movement to resettle American free blacks and freed slaves in Africa. The American Colonization Society was founded in 1816 in Washington, DC for this purpose, by a group of prominent politicians and slaveholders. But its membership grew to include mostly people who supported abolition of slavery. Slaveholders wanted to get free people of color out of the South, where they were thought to threaten the stability of the slave societies. Some abolitionists collaborated on relocation of free blacks, as they were discouraged by discrimination against them in the North and believed they would never be accepted in the larger society. Most African Americans, who were native-born by this time, wanted to improve conditions in the United States rather than emigrate. Leading activists in the North strongly opposed the ACS, but some free blacks were ready to try a different environment. | In 1976, a group of Italian American professors at City University of New York asked to be added as an affirmative action category for promotion and hiring. Italian Americans are usually considered white in the US and would not be covered under affirmative action policies, but the professors believed they were underrepresented. Libertarian economist Thomas Sowell wrote in his book, Affirmative Action Around the World: An Empirical Study, that affirmative action policies encourage non-preferred groups to designate themselves as members of preferred groups [i.e., primary beneficiaries of affirmative action] to take advantage of group preference policies. | eng_Latn | 19,780 |
What is an opt-in class action? | Generally, American civil procedure has several notable features, including extensive pretrial discovery, heavy reliance on live testimony obtained at deposition or elicited in front of a jury, and aggressive pretrial "law and motion" practice designed to result in a pretrial disposition (that is, summary judgment) or a settlement. U.S. courts pioneered the concept of the opt-out class action, by which the burden falls on class members to notify the court that they do not wish to be bound by the judgment, as opposed to opt-in class actions, where class members must join into the class. Another unique feature is the so-called American Rule under which parties generally bear their own attorneys' fees (as opposed to the English Rule of "loser pays"), though American legislators and courts have carved out numerous exceptions. | In 1940, Jeannette Rankin had once again been elected to Congress, and in 1941, as she did in 1917, she voted against the United States' declaration of war. This time she was the only vote against the war, and in the wake of public outcry over her vote, she required police protection for a time. Other pacifists tended to be those from "peace churches" who generally opposed war. Many individuals from throughout the U.S. who claimed conscientious objector status were sent to Montana during the war as smokejumpers and for other forest fire-fighting duties. | eng_Latn | 19,781 |
What kind of system is Yale's financial aid? | Through its program of need-based financial aid, Yale commits to meet the full demonstrated financial need of all applicants. Most financial aid is in the form of grants and scholarships that do not need to be paid back to the university, and the average need-based aid grant for the Class of 2017 was $46,395. 15% of Yale College students are expected to have no parental contribution, and about 50% receive some form of financial aid. About 16% of the Class of 2013 had some form of student loan debt at graduation, with an average debt of $13,000 among borrowers. | UCLA professor Richard H. Sander published an article in the November 2004 issue of the Stanford Law Review that questioned the effectiveness of racial preferences in law schools. He noted that, prior to his article, there had been no comprehensive study on the effects of affirmative action. The article presents a study that shows that half of all black law students rank near the bottom of their class after the first year of law school and that black law students are more likely to drop out of law school and to fail the bar exam. The article offers a tentative estimate that the production of new black lawyers in the United States would grow by eight percent if affirmative action programs at all law schools were ended. Less qualified black students would attend less prestigious schools where they would be more closely matched in abilities with their classmates and thus perform relatively better. Sander helped to develop a socioeconomically-based affirmative action plan for the UCLA School of Law after the passage of Proposition 209 in 1996, which prohibited the use of racial preferences by public universities in California. This change occurred after studies showed that the graduation rate of blacks at UCLA was 41%, compared to 73% for whites. | eng_Latn | 19,782 |
Why were Black politicians upset about the change in immigration laws? | Bermuda was colonised by the English as an extension of Virginia and has long had close ties with the US Atlantic Seaboard and Canadian Maritimes as well as the UK. It had a history of African slavery, although Britain abolished it decades before the US. Since the 20th century, there has been considerable immigration to Bermuda from the West Indies, as well as continued immigration from Portuguese Atlantic islands. Unlike immigrants from British colonies in the West Indies, the latter immigrants have had greater difficulty in becoming permanent residents as they lacked British citizenship, mostly spoke no English, and required renewal of work permits to remain beyond an initial period. From the 1950s onwards, Bermuda relaxed its immigration laws, allowing increased immigration from Britain and Canada. Some Black politicians accused the government of using this device to counter the West Indian immigration of previous decades. | In 2012, Abigail Fisher, an undergraduate student at Louisiana State University, and Rachel Multer Michalewicz, a law student at Southern Methodist University, filed a lawsuit to challenge the University of Texas admissions policy, asserting it had a "race-conscious policy" that "violated their civil and constitutional rights". The University of Texas employs the "Top Ten Percent Law", under which admission to any public college or university in Texas is guaranteed to high school students who graduate in the top ten percent of their high school class. Fisher has brought the admissions policy to court because she believes that she was denied acceptance to the University of Texas based on her race, and thus, her right to equal protection according to the 14th Amendment was violated. The Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Fisher on October 10, 2012, and rendered an ambiguous ruling in 2013 that sent the case back to the lower court, stipulating only that the University must demonstrate that it could not achieve diversity through other, non-race sensitive means. In July 2014, the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit concluded that U of T maintained a "holistic" approach in its application of affirmative action, and could continue the practice. On February 10, 2015, lawyers for Fisher filed a new case in the Supreme Court. It is a renewed complaint that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit got the issue wrong — on the second try as well as on the first. The Supreme Court agreed in June 2015 to hear the case a second time. It will likely be decided by June 2016. | eng_Latn | 19,783 |
When was the NAA formed? | Gorbachev's inability to alleviate any of Armenia's problems created disillusionment among the Armenians and fed a growing hunger for independence. In May 1990, the New Armenian Army (NAA) was established, serving as a defence force separate from the Soviet Red Army. Clashes soon broke out between the NAA and Soviet Internal Security Forces (MVD) troops based in Yerevan when Armenians decided to commemorate the establishment of the 1918 First Republic of Armenia. The violence resulted in the deaths of five Armenians killed in a shootout with the MVD at the railway station. Witnesses there claimed that the MVD used excessive force and that they had instigated the fighting. | Affirmative action is a subject of controversy. Some policies adopted as affirmative action, such as racial quotas or gender quotas for collegiate admission, have been criticized as a form of reverse discrimination, and such implementation of affirmative action has been ruled unconstitutional by the majority opinion of Gratz v. Bollinger. Affirmative action as a practice was upheld by the Supreme Court's decision in Grutter v. Bollinger in 2003. Affirmative action policies were developed in order to correct decades of discrimination stemming from the Reconstruction Era by granting disadvantaged minorities opportunities. Many believe that the diversity of current American society suggests that affirmative action policies succeeded and are no longer required. Opponents of affirmative action argue that these policies are outdated and lead to reverse discrimination which entails favoring one group over another based upon racial preference rather than achievement. | eng_Latn | 19,784 |
Of what fishery treaty is Tuvalu a signatory? | Tuvalu participates in the operations of the Pacific Island Forum Fisheries Agency (FFA) and the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission (WCPFC). The Tuvaluan government, the US government, and the governments of other Pacific islands, are parties to the South Pacific Tuna Treaty (SPTT), which entered into force in 1988. Tuvalu is also a member of the Nauru Agreement which addresses the management of tuna purse seine fishing in the tropical western Pacific. In May 2013 representatives from the United States and the Pacific Islands countries agreed to sign interim arrangement documents to extend the Multilateral Fisheries Treaty (which encompasses the South Pacific Tuna Treaty) to confirm access to the fisheries in the Western and Central Pacific for US tuna boats for 18 months. Tuvalu and the other members of the Pacific Island Forum Fisheries Agency (FFA) and the United States have settled a tuna fishing deal for 2015; a longer term deal will be negotiated. The treaty is an extension of the Nauru Agreement and provides for US flagged purse seine vessels to fish 8,300 days in the region in return for a payment of US$90 million made up by tuna fishing industry and US-Government contributions. In 2015 Tuvalu has refused to sell fishing days to certain nations and fleets that have blocked Tuvaluan initiatives to develop and sustain their own fishery. | In 2012, Abigail Fisher, an undergraduate student at Louisiana State University, and Rachel Multer Michalewicz, a law student at Southern Methodist University, filed a lawsuit to challenge the University of Texas admissions policy, asserting it had a "race-conscious policy" that "violated their civil and constitutional rights". The University of Texas employs the "Top Ten Percent Law", under which admission to any public college or university in Texas is guaranteed to high school students who graduate in the top ten percent of their high school class. Fisher has brought the admissions policy to court because she believes that she was denied acceptance to the University of Texas based on her race, and thus, her right to equal protection according to the 14th Amendment was violated. The Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Fisher on October 10, 2012, and rendered an ambiguous ruling in 2013 that sent the case back to the lower court, stipulating only that the University must demonstrate that it could not achieve diversity through other, non-race sensitive means. In July 2014, the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit concluded that U of T maintained a "holistic" approach in its application of affirmative action, and could continue the practice. On February 10, 2015, lawyers for Fisher filed a new case in the Supreme Court. It is a renewed complaint that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit got the issue wrong — on the second try as well as on the first. The Supreme Court agreed in June 2015 to hear the case a second time. It will likely be decided by June 2016. | eng_Latn | 19,785 |
How many miles of rivers are known for high class trout? | Montana contains thousands of named rivers and creeks, 450 miles (720 km) of which are known for "blue-ribbon" trout fishing. Montana's water resources provide for recreation, hydropower, crop and forage irrigation, mining, and water for human consumption. Montana is one of few geographic areas in the world whose rivers form parts of three major watersheds (i.e. where two continental divides intersect). Its rivers feed the Pacific Ocean, the Gulf of Mexico, and Hudson Bay. The watersheds divide at Triple Divide Peak in Glacier National Park. | In 2012, Abigail Fisher, an undergraduate student at Louisiana State University, and Rachel Multer Michalewicz, a law student at Southern Methodist University, filed a lawsuit to challenge the University of Texas admissions policy, asserting it had a "race-conscious policy" that "violated their civil and constitutional rights". The University of Texas employs the "Top Ten Percent Law", under which admission to any public college or university in Texas is guaranteed to high school students who graduate in the top ten percent of their high school class. Fisher has brought the admissions policy to court because she believes that she was denied acceptance to the University of Texas based on her race, and thus, her right to equal protection according to the 14th Amendment was violated. The Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Fisher on October 10, 2012, and rendered an ambiguous ruling in 2013 that sent the case back to the lower court, stipulating only that the University must demonstrate that it could not achieve diversity through other, non-race sensitive means. In July 2014, the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit concluded that U of T maintained a "holistic" approach in its application of affirmative action, and could continue the practice. On February 10, 2015, lawyers for Fisher filed a new case in the Supreme Court. It is a renewed complaint that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit got the issue wrong — on the second try as well as on the first. The Supreme Court agreed in June 2015 to hear the case a second time. It will likely be decided by June 2016. | eng_Latn | 19,786 |
What type of fish did the Abbey receive from Thames fisherman? | The first reports of the abbey are based on a late tradition claiming that a young fisherman called Aldrich on the River Thames saw a vision of Saint Peter near the site. This seems to be quoted to justify the gifts of salmon from Thames fishermen that the abbey received in later years. In the present era, the Fishmonger's Company still gives a salmon every year. The proven origins are that in the 960s or early 970s, Saint Dunstan, assisted by King Edgar, installed a community of Benedictine monks here. | In 2012, Abigail Fisher, an undergraduate student at Louisiana State University, and Rachel Multer Michalewicz, a law student at Southern Methodist University, filed a lawsuit to challenge the University of Texas admissions policy, asserting it had a "race-conscious policy" that "violated their civil and constitutional rights". The University of Texas employs the "Top Ten Percent Law", under which admission to any public college or university in Texas is guaranteed to high school students who graduate in the top ten percent of their high school class. Fisher has brought the admissions policy to court because she believes that she was denied acceptance to the University of Texas based on her race, and thus, her right to equal protection according to the 14th Amendment was violated. The Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Fisher on October 10, 2012, and rendered an ambiguous ruling in 2013 that sent the case back to the lower court, stipulating only that the University must demonstrate that it could not achieve diversity through other, non-race sensitive means. In July 2014, the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit concluded that U of T maintained a "holistic" approach in its application of affirmative action, and could continue the practice. On February 10, 2015, lawyers for Fisher filed a new case in the Supreme Court. It is a renewed complaint that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit got the issue wrong — on the second try as well as on the first. The Supreme Court agreed in June 2015 to hear the case a second time. It will likely be decided by June 2016. | eng_Latn | 19,787 |
What fraction of Manhattan residents have graduate degrees? | Over 600,000 students are enrolled in New York City's over 120 higher education institutions, the highest number of any city in the United States, including over half million in the City University of New York (CUNY) system alone in 2014. In 2005, three out of five Manhattan residents were college graduates, and one out of four had a postgraduate degree, forming one of the highest concentrations of highly educated people in any American city. New York City is home to such notable private universities as Barnard College, Columbia University, Cooper Union, Fordham University, New York University, New York Institute of Technology, Pace University, and Yeshiva University. The public CUNY system is one of the largest universities in the nation, comprising 24 institutions across all five boroughs: senior colleges, community colleges, and other graduate/professional schools. The public State University of New York (SUNY) system also serves New York City, as well as the rest of the state. The city also has other smaller private colleges and universities, including many religious and special-purpose institutions, such as St. John's University, The Juilliard School, Manhattan College, The College of Mount Saint Vincent, The New School, Pratt Institute, The School of Visual Arts, The King's College, and Wagner College. | To accommodate the ruling in Hopwood v. Texas banning any use of race in school admissions, the State of Texas passed a law guaranteeing entry to any state university if a student finished in the top 10% of their graduating class. Florida and California have also replaced racial quotas with class rank and other criteria. Class rank tends to benefit top students at less competitive high schools, to the detriment of students at more competitive high schools. This effect, however, may be intentional since less-funded, less competitive schools are more likely to be schools where minority enrollment is high. Critics argue that class rank is more a measure of one's peers than of one's self. The top 10% rule adds racial diversity only because schools are still highly racially segregated because of residential patterns. The class rank rule has the same consequence as traditional affirmative action: opening schools to students who would otherwise not be admitted had the given school used a holistic, merit-based approach. From 1996 to 1998, Texas had merit-based admission to its state universities, and minority enrollment dropped. The state's adoption of the "top 10 percent" rule returned minority enrollment to pre-1996 levels. | eng_Latn | 19,788 |
How much did each school have to pay as punishment for price-sharing? | In 2005, the Office of Fair Trading found fifty independent schools, including Eton, to have breached the Competition Act by "regularly and systematically" exchanging information about planned increases in school fees, which was collated and distributed among the schools by the bursar at Sevenoaks School. Following the investigation by the OFT, each school was required to pay around £70,000, totalling around £3.5 million, significantly less than the maximum possible fine. In addition, the schools together agreed to contribute another £3m to a new charitable educational fund. The incident raised concerns over whether the charitable status of independent schools such as Eton should be reconsidered, and perhaps revoked. However, Jean Scott, the head of the Independent Schools Council, said that independent schools had always been exempt from anti-cartel rules applied to business, were following a long-established procedure in sharing the information with each other, and that they were unaware of the change to the law (on which they had not been consulted). She wrote to John Vickers, the OFT director-general, saying, "They are not a group of businessmen meeting behind closed doors to fix the price of their products to the disadvantage of the consumer. They are schools that have quite openly continued to follow a long-established practice because they were unaware that the law had changed." | In 2012, Abigail Fisher, an undergraduate student at Louisiana State University, and Rachel Multer Michalewicz, a law student at Southern Methodist University, filed a lawsuit to challenge the University of Texas admissions policy, asserting it had a "race-conscious policy" that "violated their civil and constitutional rights". The University of Texas employs the "Top Ten Percent Law", under which admission to any public college or university in Texas is guaranteed to high school students who graduate in the top ten percent of their high school class. Fisher has brought the admissions policy to court because she believes that she was denied acceptance to the University of Texas based on her race, and thus, her right to equal protection according to the 14th Amendment was violated. The Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Fisher on October 10, 2012, and rendered an ambiguous ruling in 2013 that sent the case back to the lower court, stipulating only that the University must demonstrate that it could not achieve diversity through other, non-race sensitive means. In July 2014, the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit concluded that U of T maintained a "holistic" approach in its application of affirmative action, and could continue the practice. On February 10, 2015, lawyers for Fisher filed a new case in the Supreme Court. It is a renewed complaint that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit got the issue wrong — on the second try as well as on the first. The Supreme Court agreed in June 2015 to hear the case a second time. It will likely be decided by June 2016. | eng_Latn | 19,789 |
What fishing organization has its home here? | Montana has been a destination for its world-class trout fisheries since the 1930s. Fly fishing for several species of native and introduced trout in rivers and lakes is popular for both residents and tourists throughout the state. Montana is the home of the Federation of Fly Fishers and hosts many of the organizations annual conclaves. The state has robust recreational lake trout and kokanee salmon fisheries in the west, walleye can be found in many parts of the state, while northern pike, smallmouth and largemouth bass fisheries as well as catfish and paddlefish can be found in the waters of eastern Montana. Robert Redford's 1992 film of Norman Mclean's novel, A River Runs Through It, was filmed in Montana and brought national attention to fly fishing and the state. | In 2012, Abigail Fisher, an undergraduate student at Louisiana State University, and Rachel Multer Michalewicz, a law student at Southern Methodist University, filed a lawsuit to challenge the University of Texas admissions policy, asserting it had a "race-conscious policy" that "violated their civil and constitutional rights". The University of Texas employs the "Top Ten Percent Law", under which admission to any public college or university in Texas is guaranteed to high school students who graduate in the top ten percent of their high school class. Fisher has brought the admissions policy to court because she believes that she was denied acceptance to the University of Texas based on her race, and thus, her right to equal protection according to the 14th Amendment was violated. The Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Fisher on October 10, 2012, and rendered an ambiguous ruling in 2013 that sent the case back to the lower court, stipulating only that the University must demonstrate that it could not achieve diversity through other, non-race sensitive means. In July 2014, the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit concluded that U of T maintained a "holistic" approach in its application of affirmative action, and could continue the practice. On February 10, 2015, lawyers for Fisher filed a new case in the Supreme Court. It is a renewed complaint that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit got the issue wrong — on the second try as well as on the first. The Supreme Court agreed in June 2015 to hear the case a second time. It will likely be decided by June 2016. | eng_Latn | 19,790 |
What political group attracted voters displeased with Democrats? | Democrats were elected to the legislature and governor's office, but the Populists attracted voters displeased with them. In 1896 a biracial, Populist-Republican Fusionist coalition gained the governor's office. The Democrats regained control of the legislature in 1896 and passed laws to impose Jim Crow and racial segregation of public facilities. Voters of North Carolina's 2nd congressional district elected a total of four African-American congressmen through these years of the late 19th century. | In 1976, a group of Italian American professors at City University of New York asked to be added as an affirmative action category for promotion and hiring. Italian Americans are usually considered white in the US and would not be covered under affirmative action policies, but the professors believed they were underrepresented. Libertarian economist Thomas Sowell wrote in his book, Affirmative Action Around the World: An Empirical Study, that affirmative action policies encourage non-preferred groups to designate themselves as members of preferred groups [i.e., primary beneficiaries of affirmative action] to take advantage of group preference policies. | eng_Latn | 19,791 |
Parental choice has informed what controversial practice? | Since the 1988 Education Reform Act, parents have a right to choose which school their child should go to or whether to not send them to school at all and to home educate them instead. The concept of "school choice" introduces the idea of competition between state schools, a fundamental change to the original "neighbourhood comprehensive" model, and is partly intended as a means by which schools that are perceived to be inferior are forced either to improve or, if hardly anyone wants to go there, to close down. Government policy is currently promoting 'specialisation' whereby parents choose a secondary school appropriate for their child's interests and skills. Most initiatives focus on parental choice and information, implementing a pseudo-market incentive to encourage better schools. This logic has underpinned the controversial league tables of school performance. | California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed the "Donda West Law", legislation which makes it mandatory for patients to provide medical clearance for elective cosmetic surgery. | eng_Latn | 19,792 |
Appeal Academic Probation | As a student at a university or college, you are expected to maintain good academic standing by showing up for classes and maintaining a certain GPA. | Has YouTube ever flagged one of your videos for violating it's Community Guidelines? Have you ever received a strike against your YouTube account? If this applies to you, there is a way you can appeal the case with YouTube. | eng_Latn | 19,793 |
Claim Weight Discrimination | Both state and federal laws, primarily the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) protect employees in the U.S. from being discriminated against as a result of their disabilities. | Busy schedules, accidents, injuries, and unexpected moves can prevent gym members from utilizing their pricy memberships; loss of income can make paying those monthly fees a hardship. | eng_Latn | 19,794 |
Do minorities even like affirmative action? | I think you misunderstand affirmative action. People are not hired or admitted to college solely on the basis of their race or ethnic background. They still have to be qualified for the position, or have the grades to qualify for admission. But if there are two qualified applicants, and one of them is under-represented in the work force or in the educational setting, then the "minority" candidate is to receive preference.\n\nYour attitude demonstrates how far we have to go in this country to eliminate racism and prejudice, because you assume that a person of color who holds a prestigious position got there not because they were intelligent or worked hard, but because they somehow sneaked in. How insulting. | i don't know its ironic though i have experienced this my self they can type in a link to kkk it goes through but you cant type in a link to aztlan and it blocks it? that's probably a good thing in long run ,lol . i think also they run ramp-id with the report abuse button i guess it bother' s them more what people think | eng_Latn | 19,795 |
where can i find articles on discrimination? | http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page\nhttp://www.questia.com/ | A sealed section inside. Doesn't have to be rude. Put on the cover 'such and such inside. Too controversial to print so it's sealed!'\n\nSomething like that anyway. | eng_Latn | 19,796 |
I think instead of getting handy cap parking they should get the farthest spots and not take those stupid motorized carts everywhere, etc. | We live in the time of ( Poor Me ) . Its not that they wanted a free check and parking place because they are fat. Thats just the only thing they could think of to convince the govt. to get it. I think I am going to try and get the same by saying my teeth need some work. Everybody is getting everything they can for nothing. Good Question I agree. | AMEN! \n\nI am sick of special programs for minorities. Where is the scholarship for the white boy who grew up poor? Certainly he has a much harder time in life than any rich minority.\n\nIf people want to be treated as equals, then they must eliminate the programs that allow them special privileges. Until I see minorities protesting against hiring quotas, hate crime laws, and other such racist things, they will not be seen as "equals". The government has many laws telling me that they are not equal to others, so how can I argue that point? | eng_Latn | 19,797 |
i can sue on my own behalf, thank you (I), so you really did not answer my question. what purpose does the aclu serve? if the any group steps on my rights can i not file a class action suit just like the aclu? | Do you have the money to pursue these things? Maybe, maybe not. The ACLU stands up and helps those who think they have been wronged who may not have the means nor smarts to do it on their own.\n\nThey look after civil rights in the constitution just as the NRA rights for 2nd amendment rights. Both are necesary advocates for our constitutional rights.. You may not always like what either does but in general they're good org's to have in place. | Because ACLU stands for "Anti-Christian Liberals Union"... | eng_Latn | 19,798 |
My administrator agrees with me that I was graded unfairly last semester and told me to submit a written request for a grade change. I am having a hard time getting it started, and was wondering if anyone who has been in a similar situation could provide me with some advice. Thanks in advance for any suggestions! | Who are you addressing this appeal to?\n\nWhen I did mine, I gave a brief summary of what I was asking for, gave supporting evidence, let them know that if they needed more I could supply it, and ended with a request for a fair decision.\n\nBe concise, and try not to criticize the teacher or their curriculum. But at the same time, don't gloss over the details.\n\nAnd yes, the appeal went in my favor. | Explanation of what? If you want to go to grad school in the Fall, you should already have made contact with the school or school you are interested in joining. You should send your transcripts to prospective course advisors. | eng_Latn | 19,799 |
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