SALINE, Mich. (AP) — People gathered in a southeastern Michigan town on Wednesday to promote unity and inclusion in the wake of a school meeting when a white parent asked a Hispanic parent why he didn't "stay in Mexico."
The Saline Diversity Inclusion Rally was being held in Saline, about 40 miles (60 kilometers) southwest of Detroit, two days after a community meeting at the local school district office to deal with racist social media posts directed at black students. At the Monday meeting, Adrian Iraola said his son endured racist name-calling in the district several years ago, to which Tom Burtell interjected, "Then why didn't you stay in Mexico?" — prompting gasps and outbursts in the room.
Participants in the rally walked along the small town's downtown district with signs, including one that read, "Racism Not Welcome." They moved inside to a building, where speakers included Saline Mayor Brian Marl.
Marl told the demonstrators that racist, bigoted words are discraceful and not to be tolerated.
``You represent the majority of Saline and I want you to know that,'' he said.
Many attending the rally said they were heartened by the turnout and the condemnation o f racism by the wider community.
Saline High School senior JJ Ohren-Hoeft the rally could be evidence of possible change from the difficult experiences at school related to their ethnic and racial backgrounds voiced by students of color.
``(Students of color) just want to see a lot of change happen," Ohren-Hoeft said. ``I think it's definitely going to happen now that there's this much attention to it."
Supt. Scot Graden, Saline schools' superintendent, said the district established a Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Committee and has worked to train teachers and administrators on social justice. It also has endeavored to develop a more culturally inclusive curriculum, though, he added, recent incidents and comments make it clear that much more must be done.
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UND And NASA Partner To Colonize Mars
When the first international mission in the University of North Dakota’s (UND) Inflatable Mars/Lunar Habitat (IMLH) was launched last fall, four students from Argentina, Colombia, Mexico and Peru entered the facility to spend two weeks running experiments to help NASA and their program to explore the moon and Mars. After the successful completion of the mission, NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine, accompanied by U.S. Senator Kevin Cramer (R-ND), visited the UND John D. Odegard School of Aerospace Sciences, calling the work being done there “second to none.” At UND to also discuss future collaborations, Bridenstine explained the university’s importance to the Mars/Lunar program. “The University of North Dakota is delivering – on behalf of NASA – technology that is helping us understand the earth, helping us understand the earth’s atmosphere, helping us better predict weather events and the climate. Beyond that, the University of North Dakota is helping us with human space flight. What happens here enables us to do more than ever before.” He confirmed, “UND will be part of NASA’s future space exploration efforts.” According to Pablo de León…
Editor’s Note: Lethal machines able to make decisions on their own are likely to become reality in the near future. But the ethics regarding such weapons are being considered now.
(AP)(THE CONVERSATION) Robotics is rapidly being transformed by advances in artificial intelligence. And the benefits are widespread: We are seeing safer vehicles with the ability to automatically brake in an emergency, robotic arms transforming factory lines that were once offshored and new robots that can do everything from shop for groceries to deliver prescription drugs to people who have trouble doing it themselves. But our ever-growing appetite for intelligent, autonomous machines poses a host of ethical challenges.
Ethical Dilemmas
Rapid advances have led ethical dilemmas.
These ideas and more were swirling as my colleagues and I met in early November at one of the world’s largest autonomous robotics-focused research conferences – the IEEE International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems. There, academics, corporate…
Can Hate Speech Be Quarantined?
Editor’s Note: Is it possible to deal with online hate speech without using censorship? Two university researchers are proposing it can be done by using cyber security techniques.
The spread of hate speech via social media could be tackled using the same “quarantine” approach deployed to combat malicious software, according to University of Cambridge researchers. Definitions of hate speech vary depending on nation, law and platform, and just blocking keywords is ineffectual: graphic descriptions of violence need not contain obvious ethnic slurs to constitute racist death threats, for example. As such, hate speech is difficult to detect automatically. It has to be reported by those exposed to it, after the intended “psychological harm” is inflicted, with armies of moderators required to judge every case.
This is the new front line of an ancient debate: freedom of speech versus poisonous language. Now, an engineer and a linguist have published a proposal in the journal Ethics and Information Technology that harnesses cyber security techniques to give control to those targeted, without…
US Lags Behind Other Countries In Math
Editor’s Note: The latest PISA results have found that while the math performances of 15-year-olds in the U.S. are not declining, they are still behind their international peers.
American students may not be reading any better, but they’re moving up in rankings of educational achievement worldwide because many of their peers in other countries are performing worse. And while their math performance may not be declining, 15-year-olds in the United States still lag the scores of their peers in dozens of other countries. Overall, the latest global snapshot of achievement shows American students scoring above average in reading and science, but below average in math. The 2018 Program for International Student Assessment, or PISA, shows several Asian school systems at the top. The best-performing across all three measures was a group of four Chinese provinces — Beijing, Shanghai, Jiangsu and Zhejiang. PISA seeks to test not only what students know, but whether they can apply that knowledge to solve problems. About 600,000 15-year-old students in nearly 80 nations and educational systems took…
Immigration Legal Services At CSU
Editor’s Note: Twenty-two CSU campuses are offering immigration legal services for the school’s thousands of undocumented students, as well as its undocumented employees.
California State University (CSU) announced a systemwide plan for the provision of immigration legal services for CSU students and employees. “I am delighted that we will be able to increase the availability of immigration legal services to the California State University community. We remain committed to ensuring that all CSU students have the opportunity to pursue their higher education goals regardless of their country of origin. This inclusive foundation extends to our employees, who demonstrate their dedication to student achievement and success on a daily basis,” said CSU Chancellor Timothy P. White. “These thousands of Californians are pursuing their dreams for a better future every day on CSU campuses. The expanded services and resources that will soon be available will bring support, legal guidance and some peace of mind to enable our students and employees to focus on academic and professional pursuits.”
Hispanic National Bar Association
Jennifer Salinas, Esq. asked a room full of high school students interested in the law to close their eyes and conjure up the image of a lawyer. “Then I said to them, ‘I suspect that many of you saw a white man.’ They all (nodded) their heads yes,” she says. “We hope to change that so you see people of all different races and ethnicities.” For the duration of her presidency at the Hispanic National Bar Association, which wrapped on September 28, Salinas offered programs, held symposia and ran campaigns, all in the name of attracting more Hispanics to the profession to which she’s dedicated her life. One of those campaigns challenged Hispanic youth to imagine a different type of lawyer. It was called This is What a Lawyer Looks Like. “(We) would wear T-shirts that actually had that on the front. We’d go into heavily populated Latino schools and these kids were amazed. They’d say, ‘You’re a lawyer? You don’t look like a lawyer.’ And that’s kind of the point,” says Salinas. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, law is one of the least racially diverse professions in the nation. Hispanics comprise just 4.8% of U.S. lawyers, and Latinas are less than 2% of that.
In 1850, Jose Angel Navarro graduated as the first Latino alumnus of Harvard Law School. According to historian Dr. Daniel Coquillette, author of “On the Battlefield of Merit: Harvard Law School, the First Century,” Navarro returned to San Antonio after graduation and advocated for the downtrodden and exploited in Texas. He served on the San Antonio City Council, as a district attorney and city attorney in Laredo and, at 29, was elected to the Texas Legislature. He is widely credited with removing the word “white” from the new Texas Constitution’s voting requirements. In 1876, he was gunned down on Laredo’s main street. Coquillette cites how Navarro died a martyr’s death and deserves broad recognition and honor.
Trailblazing Influence
Giving Navaro that recognition and honor is exactly what current Latino alumni had in mind when they started contemplating a group gift to Harvard Law School (HLS). Every five years, an all-classes reunion known as the HLS “Celebration of Latino Alumni” (CLA) is held. Members organize the self-funded, 4-day event on campus. “Alumni had been talking about doing something for Latino students,” says Ricardo Anzaldua, JD ‘90, who served as a CLA chair.
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