MU Diversity News
Katherine Reed, Newspaper Journalism Faculty
The Missouri School of Journalism announces a new two-year Adelante! fellowship for an early career journalist who is bilingual in Spanish and English and wishes to pursue a master's degree in journalism.
Pamela A. Mulumby, Columbia Tribune
Doralisa Calmet left Peru four years ago in search of better opportunities in the United States. But when she arrived in Columbia, English was as foreign to her as the weather.
Christian Basi, News Bureau
Latinos constitute the largest-growing minority population in the United States, and Spanish is becoming the second most widely spoken language, according to U.S. Department of Labor and census statistics. This can make communication in the workplace difficult and create conditions that are not safe. With the importance of workplace safety in mind, administrators in the Department of Residential Life at the University of Missouri-Columbia are hoping to bridge the language barrier between English- and Spanish-speaking employees and students.
Annie Nelson, Columbia Tribune
Hinduism says the human race is the apex of creation, but not in the sense that human beings are masters of the Earth and its resources, but rather guardians charged with using their superior intelligence to act as a custodian of creation.
Liz Manring, Columbia Missourian
Last Tuesday evening, I went jogging. Another female jogger was coming in my direction. We both stopped at the intersection of University and College, and she revealed that she had seen the campus security release the University of Missouri Police Department had sent out about an assault on College Avenue that happened a week before. She had gone out a little earlier in the evening than usual, with the report in mind.
Eric Stann, Columbia Missourian
Ted Distiler, 70, of Jefferson City has been taking care of his wife, Norma, since she was first diagnosed with Alzheimer’s in 1993. When Norma had surgery after hitting her head in May 2003, Distiler said, a CAT scan revealed a large number of amyloid plaques in her brain.
AP, Columbia Missourian
Dorothy Coleman Roudebush, an educator and lifelong activist for women’s rights, died Wednesday of congestive heart failure and dementia, her family said Sunday. She was 95 and a St. Louis native.
Illumination Magazine
"In the next 100 years, probably half of the world's languages will disappear unless vigorous measures are taken now," says N. Louanna Furbee, a professor emerita of anthropology and research associate at MU who earlier this year was honored with a lifetime service award from the Linguistic Society of America.
Anita Neal Harrison, Illumination Magazine
Six times Scott Cairns, celebrated poet and MU professor of creative writing, has made pilgrimage to the holy peninsula of Mount Athos, that forbiddingly austere sliver of Northern Greece that for nearly 16 centuries has served as the spiritual center of Eastern Orthodox monasticism.
The Center on Religion & the Professions
A free public lecture by: Dr. G. Lakshman, 12-1:30 p.m. - July 6, 2007, Tucker Forum, Gannett Hall, Room 85, University of Missouri-Columbia. Dr. Lakshman believes the Bhagavad Gita, the ancient Hindu text, has valuable lessons for today - both in resolving personal strife and finding solutions to the "global crisis" of violence, bigotry and socio-economic conflicts.
Off Campus Diversity News
St. Louis-AP, Colummbia Tribune
John A. Madison Jr., the great-grandson of Dred and Harriet Scott, who researched the famous couple's lives and landmark legal struggle, has died. He was 82.
Emily Van Zandt, Columbia Missourian
Steady drumbeats of African music blared out of a set of speakers and mingled with the sharp smell of spices at the American Legion Hall on Saturday night. As several women in brightly colored headdresses tended to a nearly 9-foot spread of traditional Nigerian food, arriving friends and guests greeted one another with warm smiles.
Annie Nelson, Columbia Tribune
When Columbia resident Eman Abdelhadi was just 9, she rebelled against her mother by deciding to follow the Muslim commandment to dress modestly - hijab - before puberty, when most Muslim girls are expected to do so.
Dustin Arand, Columbia Missourian
A 2003 lawsuit against Dillard’s in Columbia, which appears likely to go to trial, contains allegations that “suggest a larger pattern of race based harassment,” wrote Judge Diana Murphy of the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals in the court’s opinion released last week.
Elliott C. McLaughlin, CNN
The police were only about 50 yards down the road when the gun-wielding white mob stopped the car and dragged the two black men out, shoving them face first into the dirt.
Cincinnati-AP, Columbia Tribune
Two Muslim women had the right to continue wearing their head scarves when sitting for a driver’s license photo, the Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles said.
Louisville,Ky-AP,Columbia Tribune
Instead of taking offense at a recent Vatican statement reasserting the primacy of the Roman Catholic Church, evangelicals should seize the chance to respond with equal candor that "any church defined by the claims of the papacy is no true church," according to a prominent Southern Baptist leader.
Dustin Arand, Columbia Missourian
Plaintiffs in a lawsuit against Dillard’s Inc. will get their day in court after a decision last week by a federal appeals court.
Joe Meyer, Columbia Tribune
A federal appeals court has ruled that plaintiffs alleging racial discrimination by employees at the Dillard’s retail store in Columbia have a case and should receive a trial.
Arthur L. Coleman and Scott R. Palmer, The Chronicle of Higher Education
Four years after the U.S. Supreme Court decision Grutter v. Bollinger upheld the limited use of race in college and university admissions to promote the educational benefits of diversity, the court returned last week to that contentious issue in the context of race-conscious K-12 student-assignment policies. In a fractured 4-1-4 opinion reminiscent of the 1978 decision in Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, the court in Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1 (which it heard along with Meredith v. Jefferson County Board of Education) ruled 5-4 that the specific student-assignment policies at issue in the Seattle and Louisville, Ky., school districts were unconstitutional, as they were not narrowly tailored to achieve their stated goals.
By Karin Brulliard/The Washington Post, Columbia Missourian
At the Sri Siva Vishnu temple in Lanham, Md., 11 Hindu priests recite mantras before intricately chiseled altars to deities carved by expert temple stonemasons. They offer the idols lentils and rice prepared in a small kitchen by Haridas Padithaya, 38, who looks like a line cook in his stained T-shirt but who was trained from childhood to cook for the deities by his father, who learned from his father before him.
Sangeeta Shastry/Mary Institute and Country Day School, St. Louis, Columbia Missourian
Carlos, a stocky 20-year-old with a caramel complexion, risked almost everything to live in the United States. An undocumented immigrant from Chiapas, Mexico, Carlos (his real name) paid $3,000 to a “coyote” — one who leads small groups of South American and Mexican nationals across the border illegally for a fee — to guide him safely to a U.S. city.
Bill Clark, Columbia Tribune
Sgt. Marvin McCrary became the first black police captain when he was promoted by Chief Norman Botsford. Five others were promoted to sergeant, including Zim Schwartze and Diane Bernhard, who became the second and third female sergeants. Bobbi Arnold was the first after her appointment in early 1997.
Bill Clark, Columbia Tribune
Ben Johnson, the managing editor of the Columbia Missourian, wrote on Dec. 4, 1988: "He likely doesn’t know it, but Hank Waters, publisher of that other Columbia daily newspaper, is responsible for one of Columbia’s newest groups. "And Columbia is all the better for it.
By Lauren Zima, Columbia Missourian
About a year ago, photographer Jane Lavender sat at her dining room table, carefully pairing the words of her subjects with their black-and-white images. As the hours passed, Lavender laid scraps of sentences across the film, giving voice to a group of people who have spent much of their lives in the shadows.
Lauren Zima, Columbia Missourian
The process of transitioning is long and sometimes physically painful. But, for “Jim,” it’s the only way he can be who he really is. Jim — an MU employee who asked that his real name not be used — is one of the transgender subjects in “Meta-Genesis,” a collection of photographs by Jane Lavender. Living as a lesbian since the age of 16, Jim realized that he was actually a transgender four years ago after his therapist suggested it.
Katie Walley, Columbia Missourian
Every summer, minds thirsting to discuss important religious, social and political issues of our time gather at the southwest corner of New York, the location of the not-for-profit Chautauqua Institution.
Jake Siegel, Columbia Missourian
It is the story of two men of different faiths whose friendship thrives in a world torn apart by religious strife, in a town that Neo-Nazis chose to visit with their message of hate. The story of the rabbi, Yossi Feintuch, and the minister, John Yonker, began just a few years ago, when the rabbi’s son was hit by a car and badly injured. Yonker, of Columbia’s First Christian Church, picked up the phone to say his family was praying for the Feintuchs.
Matt Zapotosky/Washington Post, Columbia Missourian
Joel Cohen wanted his kids to receive instruction in their Jewish faith. But the closest synagogue was half an hour from his house in suburban Waldorf, Md. So Cohen did what any good dad would do: He opened the phone book and called everyone in the area with a Jewish-sounding name he could find, hoping others might help him form a social group to teach the Torah.
Associated Press, Cnn
National Park Service Ranger Spirit Trickey feels a special connection when directing tourists down the sidewalk to Little Rock Central High School. Her mother made the same journey 50 years ago as one of nine black students integrating the previously all-white school.
Charles Dervarices, Diverse Issues in Higher Education
Despite defeat of the Senate's immigration bill last week, Latino and other education leaders say they still will press for action this year on a bill to help illegal immigrant students gain legal status as well as access to in-state college tuition rates.
Aaron Rosenblatt, Columbia Missourian
In a fluorescent-lit, poorly air-conditioned room inside the Unity Center in Columbia, 12 brown folding chairs are arranged in a circle. To capture the sounds, audio recorders, ranging from Sony digitals to old-fashioned tape players, are placed randomly on the blue and gray carpeted floor.
Dustin Arand, Missourian
“Yesterday there were 400 talks in this town on the existence of God. Tonight we’re going to have one with the opposite point of view.” With that, Kenny Duzan of the Show-me Skeptics welcomed between 50 and 60 people to a lecture by Victor Stenger at the Columbia Public Library on Monday night.
