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Welcome to The EDU Ledger! We’ve moved from Diverse: Issues In Higher Education.

Mischief makers: the men behind all those anti-affirmative action lawsuits – includes news analysis on court decisions that affect diversity in higher education

When a group of Republican state lawmakers last summer mounted a public campaign to find potential plaintiffs for a class-action lawsuit against the University of Michigan’s affirmative action admissions policies, Jennifer Gratz responded immediately. Gratz, a policeman’s daughter and former high school homecoming queen, had been rejected by Michigan in 1995 despite strong grades and high standardized-test scores.

July 11, 2007

A pair deals seven of a kind: educational preparation and poise result in historic delivery – Black female physicians participate in delivery and media coverage of septuplets

Des Moines, Iowa You could feel the surprise and excitement. Not just because medical history had been made with the birth of the first known surviving septuplets, but because of the people who sat down behind the two desk signs — “Dr. Paula Mahone” and “Dr. Karen Drake.”

July 11, 2007

Less sugar and more of the sweet life: the Diabetes Prevention Program

Washington The Diabetes Prevention Program (DPP) is a researh study being conducted at twenty-five medical centers around the country. Sponsored by the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK), the program hopes to prove that type 2 diabetes can be prevented by altering one’s lifestyle and/or medication.

July 11, 2007

African-American

A prescription for participation: diabetes study helping African Americans overcome fears of ethnic medical research

They don’t want to take pills. They’re unwilling to participate in randomized trials. They are reluctant to take a chance,” says Robert Ratner, M.D., head of the Medlantic Clinical Research Center in Washington, D.C., discussing why some people don’t want to participate in medical research. “There remains reluctance to participate in any medical study. Some of it is, `I want someone else to do it so I “know it’s safe, then I’ll do it’ — the guinea-pig phenomenon.”

July 11, 2007

Leadership & Policy

Accreditation renewed for University of the District of Columbia

After nearly a decade of financial strife, media misrepresentation, and structural challenges, the University of the District of Columbia (UDC) received some positive encouragement regarding its future.

July 11, 2007

Does a “Lynch Mob” belong in college football? – Kansas State University – Column

It has been said that those who fail to heed the lessons of history are doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past. Perhaps someone should pass Kansas State University’s football team a history book.

July 11, 2007

Race relations issues overshadowed by furor over affirmative action

When you discuss race relations in higher education, the issues of diversity and affirmative action inevitably become a part of the dialogue. Unfortunately, those two topics often get confused as the same issue.

July 11, 2007

A Treasury of African-American Christmas Stories. – book reviews

A well-known West African proverb states: “Only when lions have historians will hunters stop being heroes.”

July 11, 2007

Bailing out Piscataway school board: civil rights groups avoid possibility of allowing Supreme Court to make “bad law.” – Piscataway, New Jersey, case before U.S. Supreme Court

The settlement of a New Jersey reverse discrimination case by civil rights groups has headed off a potential U.S. Supreme Court ruling many activists believe would have dealt a death blow to affirmative action programs in the United States.

July 11, 2007

The myth of educational attainment: when a Black woman’s master’s degree equals a White woman’s bachelor’s degree – Picataway, MJ, school board, teachers, lawsuit – Column

The Black Leadership Forum — an organization that includes the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, the National Urban League, the National Council of Negro Women, and others — deflected energy from the controversial Taxman v. Piscataway case that the Supreme Court had committed to hear this session. The forum agreed to finance 70 percent of the nearly $450,000 settlement that the plaintiff and her lawyers will receive from the Piscataway school board.

July 11, 2007

March planned to support affirmative action: Latino law students and professors confront threat of limited access

Albequerque, N.M. A gathering here last month of organizations representing Latino law students agreed to form a national organization to support a pro-affirmative action march, scheduled for January in San Francisco, being organized by legal educators.

July 11, 2007

Leadership & Policy

The shifting terrain of welfare reform: educational advocates for low-income students looking for solid ground

For hundreds of thousands of the nation’s poor adults, community colleges have long delivered their best chance for gaining sufficient education and training to land a job that could break their dependence on welfare.

July 11, 2007

Historically Black Bluefield State’s ironic situation: desperately seeking Black students and faculty – Bluefield State College, West Virginia

Bluefield, W. Va. When a historically Black university fails to sustain, say, a ten percent African American student population, People are bound to start talking. Well, they have.

July 11, 2007

“Hostile environment”: reducing applications to medical schools nationwide – elimination of affirmative action in California, Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi

WASHINGTON – The elimination of affirmative action in California, Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi has had a chilling effect on the enrollment and acceptance of racial and ethnic minorities in medical schools across the country, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC).

July 11, 2007

Commitment is a personal challenge

What is commitment? How do I recognize it in myself and n others? To what am I committed? At what level am committed?

July 11, 2007

Tech prep runs into problems in South Carolina

COLUMBIA, S.C. In what could be a harbinger of the future for the nation, early signs indicate the tech-prep route in South Carolina’s high schools does not run much better than the so-called “general track” that it replaced. Education officials believe that inadequate teacher training for the rigorous applied classes could be one problem with the program.

July 11, 2007

Black, Jewish, and Interracial: It’s Not the Color of Your Skin but the Race of Your Kin and Other Myths of Identity. – book reviews

Katya Gibel Azoulay seems perfectly placed to interrogate the intricacies of interracial and biracial, especially Black/ Jewish, identity formation. Azoulay’s mother was an Austrian Jew who fled the Nazi invasion. Her father is West Indian of mixed racial descent who migrated to this country as a child.

July 11, 2007

Higher education expresses concerns with multiple-choice census

Now that the debate is over about whether the U.S. Census should add a multiracial category to its data collecting and the decision has been made to allow respondents to choose as many racial and ethnic classifications as they feel apply to them, the time has come to figure out how this new and confusing information will be tabulated.

July 11, 2007