Archive for December 2007

STANFORD - Stanford University today announced a five-year plan to pursue the best young scholars in the subjects of race and ethnicity.
The Faculty Development Initiative involves the recruitment of “rising stars” in the humanities and social sciences consistent with Provost John Etchemendy’s commitment to create 10 new positions in the Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity.

The effort is not only to bolster the staff with knowledgeable people but also to add faculty with diverse racial, sexual and cultural backgrounds, according to the university.

“The tried and true methods of recruiting, hiring and retaining well-qualified and diverse faculty members have not been enough,” Etchemendy said. “We must take a new, more vigorous approach to fostering diversity if we are to remain at the forefront of knowledge, creativity and public service.”

The initiative will use $4.5 million in gifts to the School of Humanities and Sciences.

Although the project is slated for five years, Stanford officials declined to put a deadline on the hiring process due to the competitive market and the relatively small pool of candidates.

For a country widely considered to have the best race relations in the world, the year started and ended with events that tugged more at dividing the community than at sowing the seeds of a multicultural society.

Continuing deep divisions between Maori and Pakeha fuelled political extremism, with claims that police raids on alleged weapons training camps in the Bay of Plenty set “race relations back 100 years”.

Nevertheless, there was more to cheer and less to jeer on efforts to build a united nation.

Early in the year, religious groups were outraged and saw red when a national statement on religious diversity spelt out the principle that New Zealand has no state religion.

At the forefront of the opposition to that principle were the Destiny Church and Vision Network of evangelical churches, which demanded that Christianity was and should continue to be the state religion.

Race Relations Commissioner Joris de Bres rubbed salt on Destiny Church founder Brian Tamaki’s wounds when he said: “The State seeks to treat…all faith communities and those who profess no religion equally before the law. New Zealand has no state religion.”

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At least a dozen British towns and cities will have no single ethnic group in a majority within the next 30 years. Leicester will become the first ’super-diverse’ city in 2020, then Birmingham in 2024, followed by Slough and Luton, according to a new study of population trends in the UK.

The report reveals that Leicester has seen the proportion of its white population fall from 70.1 per cent in 1991 to 59.5 per cent today. By 2016 the white population will make up 52.2 per cent of the population, falling to 44.5 per cent by 2026. ‘Britain is becoming ever more plural; our diversity ever more diverse,’ said Danny Dorling, professor of human geography at the University of Sheffield, whose predictions are based on the most comprehensive study into the country’s population trends. ‘This increased diversity is most evident in its cities, with plurality becoming commonplace.’

The immigrant and ethnic populations are no longer characterised by large, well organised Afro-Caribbean and South Asian communities, said Dorling. Instead, increasing numbers come from countries scattered across the globe - from Germany to Guyana, from Sweden to Singapore.

‘It is going to become increasingly difficult to generalise about Britain’s plurality because different cities are experiencing different levels and types of diversity,’ he said. ‘This creates a complex challenge for those responsible for successfully managing the country’s changing population.’

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KLERDEY, Burma - For a repressive police state, Burma has borders that are curiously porous.

more stories like thisAlong the eastern border with Thailand, legions of displaced farmers, smugglers, and army deserters slip back and forth with little trouble and no paperwork.

Quite unlike the dictatorship in North Korea, the zippered-up and ethnically homogeneous police state far to the northeast, Burma’s is a dog’s breakfast of ethnic insurrection, cross-border criminality, and massive refugee flight.

To halt peaceful prodemocracy demonstrations in Burmese cities in September, the generals who run the country had only to order soldiers to club, shoot, and detain Buddhist monks. Taming the mountainous eastern frontier has not been so brutally simple.

The army periodically launches scorched-earth offensives, razing villages, enslaving farmers, and raping women, according to human rights groups. Alternatively, it cuts lucrative deals with ethnic leaders, encouraging them to grow opium, manufacture methamphetamine, and clear-cut teak forests.

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Silicon Valley, Dec 22 (PTI) Serious racial tensions exist between the three largest minority groups in the US — Asians, African-Americans and Hispanics, according to a new survey.

The survey, exposing various facets of racial friction between the three groups, revealed that they viewed each other with deep suspicion.

The nation’s first multilingual poll, sponsored by New America Media (NAM), an association of over 700 ethnic media outlets, also found majorities in each group favoured putting differences aside to work together for the bettermentof their communities.

“This extraordinary poll reveals some unflattering realities that exist in America today,” said Sandy Close, Executive Editor and Director of NAM.

Broadly, the poll of 1,105 respondents found that the predominantly immigrant populations - Hispanics and Asians - expressed far greater optimism about their lives in America, concluding that hard work was rewarded in the society.

By contrast, over 60 per cent of the African-Americans polled did not believe the ‘American Dream’ worked for them.

They also described themselves as more segregated from the rest of America than the other groups.

The poll found that friction between ethnic and racial groups, which often erupted into highly-publicised incidents around the country, was rooted in the mistrust that the groups harbored towards each other.

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In an interview with the Financial Times, Dimitrij Rupel said that hatred between the two groups could effectively lead to a partition of Kosovo, when the province declares independence next year.

“It’s a danger, a serious danger,” said the minister, adding that he did not see potential for violence from the Kosovo Albanians, as they had too much to lose, and stressed that the international presence in the province would have to stay there for a long time to come.

“Obviously, certain individual acts may take place, we’re afraid of provocation from both sides,” said Rupel, adding that, for now, there were no signs of anything more serious.

Expressing the hope that Slovenia, during its EU presidency, would help Serbia take a step towards the EU, Rupel said that Slovenia, which gained independence in 1991, could hardly begrudge the same right to Kosovo.

Two Drug Enforcement Administration agents who sued the U.S. Attorney General and the Justice Department for reverse discrimination were awarded $7 million in damages by a federal jury last Friday.
But the agents will receive far less.

Compensatory damages for employment-discrimination claims against the feds are capped by law at $300,000 per plaintiff.

The jury found that the DEA through its supervisors had “intentionally discriminated” against George W. Marthers III and Jude T. McKenna by creating a hostile work environment because of their race.

Marthers and McKenna are white; their former supervisors, Dempsey Jones and Johnny Fisher, are black.

The jury also found that the supervisors retaliated against the agents after they filed an internal complaint with DEA in March 2002 and later with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

The agents alleged that they had been constantly harassed, verbally and physically, and said that Fisher even had a black agent spy on them.

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The city of San Francisco must pay about $1 million in attorneys’ fees to a white man who filed a successful race-discrimination suit after he was passed up for a promotion at San Francisco International Airport, a state appeals court ruled Friday.

Allen Harmon won $30,300 in damages in a 2004 verdict by a San Mateo County jury that concluded he was rejected for a supervisor’s job in 1998 at least in part because of his race. A minority candidate got the promotion, and Harmon’s lawyer said he had to wait 16 months to get the same job through a race-neutral civil service promotion.

Harmon’s suit, filed by the Pacific Legal Foundation, claimed that the city had designed hiring and promotional policies at the airport to reflect the Bay Area’s racial and ethnic makeup. The city denied having racial quotas or bias, saying most of the promotions awarded at the time went to white men, but later changed the policy that Harmon had challenged.

State and federal law entitled Harmon to legal fees for a successful civil rights suit against a government agency, and he was awarded more than $1.1 million by Superior Court Judge Thomas Smith.

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Illegal immigrants in Arizona, frustrated with a flagging economy and tough new legislation cracking down on their employers, are returning to their home countries or trying their luck in other states.

For months, immigrants have taken a wait-and-see attitude toward the state’s new employer-sanctions law, which takes effect January 1. The voter-approved legislation is an attempt to lessen the economic incentive for illegal immigrants in Arizona, the busiest crossing point along the U.S.-Mexico border.

And by all appearances, it’s starting to work.

“People are calling me telling me about their friend, their cousin, their neighbors — they’re moving back to Mexico,” said Magdalena Schwartz, an immigrant-rights activist and pastor at a Mesa church. “They don’t want to live in fear, in terror.”

Martin Herrera, a 40-year-old illegal immigrant and masonry worker who lives in Camp Verde, 70 miles north of Phoenix, said he is planning to return to Mexico as soon as he ties up loose ends after living here for four years.

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The proud motto of northern Europe’s crack rapid-reaction force is ad omnia paratus. Prepared for everything, everywhere. But the heraldic lion above the Latin tag now sends a less plucky message – he has just been digitally emasculated and, though technically still a lion rampant, he does not seem to be ready for anything, anywhere.

The change was implemented after a group of women Swedish soldiers protested that they could not identify with such an ostentatiously male lion on their army crest. A complaint of sex discrimination was then lodged with the European Court of Justice.

“We were forced to cut the lion’s willy off with the aid of a computer,” Christian Braunstein, from the Tradition Commission of the Swedish Army, said.

Now the Nordic Battlegroup, a force of 2,400 soldiers, is looking deeply embarrassed. For sceptics who already consider the Nordic Battlegroup to be something of an oxymoron – it is led by the Swedes, who were last in battle in 1809 – the operation on the lion is not an auspicious omen.

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