Voices of Civil Rights

"AARP, the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights (LCCR), and the Library of Congress have teamed up to collect and preserve personal accounts of America's struggle to fulfill the promise of equality for all. We invite you to explore this site, a tribute to those who were a part of the civil rights experience and to the continuing quest for equality."

"Read extraordinary stories of hope and courage by ordinary people and experience civil rights history as it's never been told before.

Discover how far the nation still has to go to achieve equality in this essay by the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights’ executive director.

Hear how civil rights veterans like Eleanor Holmes Norton, a woman at the forefront of various social causes, are connecting the past with the present."

Source: AARP, the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights (LCCR), and the Library of Congress.

Link to online Resource

Scholars at Risk Network

"Scholars at Risk members save lives by providing sanctuary to professors, lecturers, researchers and other intellectuals who suffer threats in their home country. Through temporary academic positions, SAR members help scholars to escape dangerous conditions and to continue their important work. In return, scholars contribute to their host campuses through teaching, research, lectures and other activities." Source: Scholars at Risk, New York University

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Behind the Pay Gap

Pay Gap Exists as Early as One Year out of College,Says New Research Report

"New research released in April 2007 by the American Association of University Women Educational Foundation shows that just one year out of college, women working full time already earn less than their male colleagues, even when they work in the same field. Ten years after graduation, the pay gap widens." Source: American Association of University Women

Link to download site (Report is free but registration required)

Most Web 2.0 Users Are Really Just Couch Potatoes.

from BusinessWeek's Bruce Nussbaum: "A study by Bill Tancer, an analyst with Hitwise, which measures Web 2.0 audiences, shows that only a tiny fraction of people using social media actively participate. A miniscule 0.16 percent of visits to YouTube actually involve people putting a video up on it, according to his online surfing data. All the rest are visits by people watching the videos of that tiny fraction."

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The NRA's Image Improves as Support for Gun Control Slips

"Public opinion surveys taken before the Virginia Tech shootings, showed that over time Americans had become less disposed to support gun control measures than they were in the years surrounding the Columbine school shootings in 1999." Source: Pew Research Center for People and the Press

Link to online report

After the Tragedy: Va. Tech Shootings Revive Debate over Gun Control

"The rampage at Virginia Tech that left at least 33 people dead Monday touched a nerve over gun control on college campuses, including among Virginia lawmakers who had recently sparred over a firearms ban at the Blacksburg, Va., campus.

The most recent legislative debate in Virginia, one of 48 states that issue permits allowing citizens to carry concealed firearms, arose after Virginia Tech disciplined an unnamed student who brought a firearm to class in 2005.

State Del. Mark Cole (R) this spring failed to push through a measure that would have let students with concealed-carry permits bring firearms on campus, trumping the school’s policy prohibiting them. The legislation languished in a subcommittee after a hearing. A similar measure failed last year." Source: Stateline.org

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Reasons vs. Causes: Emergence as experienced by the human agent

Abstract: "Because they are in constant interaction with each other, human beings are often agents within emergent collective processes. Although they are then acting as particles in a field-type phenomenon, their awareness of what they are part of entails that they hold views about why they’re acting the way they do, these, they call “reasons.”

Should physicists dismiss such “reasons” as being illusory causes of events? “Reasons” are actually important explanatory factors of emergent phenomena involving human beings. Awakening and then responding to a catastrophic process will often signal a bifurcation in the physical emergent process. Coordinated behavior can interrupt a positive feedback by generating a counteracting negative feedback.

“Natural” laws were called after “legal” laws; in return, compliance to legal laws by human agents allows their behavior to appear organized, as if by a “natural” law. “Following a rule” conflates the logic of “causes” with that of “reasons” as it connects in phase space the “cause” at the origin (efficient cause) and the “reason” (final cause), the goal that is a representation of the end." Source: Structure and Dynamics: eJournal of Anthropological and Related Sciences: Vol. 2: No. 1, Article 1.

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Teens, Privacy & Online Social Networks

Managing online identities and personal information in the age of MySpace

"Much of the media coverage surrounding young people and online social networks has focused on the personal information teens make available on these internet spaces, where users can create a profile and connect that profile to others to create a personal network. Are teenagers sharing information that will harm their future college or job prospects? Or worse, are they sharing information that puts them at risk of victimization?

A new survey and a series of focus groups conducted by the Pew Internet & American Life Project explore questions of teen online privacy protection from several perspectives: by looking at the choices that teens make to share or not to share information online, by examining what they share, by probing for the context in which they share it and by asking teens for their own assessment of their vulnerability." Source: Pew Internet & American Life Project

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Most Say Imus's Punishment Was Appropriate

Whites Say Imus Story Has Been Overcovered, Blacks Disagree

"Americans, both black and white, generally agree with the punishment radio host Don Imus received for the racist and sexist remarks he made about the Rutgers University's women basketball team. Nonetheless, there are substantial racial differences in views of Imus's punishment, and an even bigger gap in opinions about news media's coverage of the story.

FigureMajorities of both whites (53%) and African Americans (61%) who have been following the Imus story say that the punishment he received was appropriate. But roughly twice as many whites as blacks believe his punishment was too tough (35% vs. 18%). On April 12, the talk show host's morning radio program was cancelled by CBS. A day earlier, a cable television simulcast of the program on MSNBC was cancelled by NBC." Source: Pew Research Center for People and the Press

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Public Knowledge of Current Affairs Little Changed by News and Information Revolutions

"Since the late 1980s, the emergence of 24-hour cable news as a dominant news source and the explosive growth of the internet have led to major changes in the American public's news habits. But a new nationwide survey finds that the coaxial and digital revolutions and attendant changes in news audience behaviors have had little impact on how much Americans know about national and international affairs." Source: Pew Research Center for People and the Press

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Why Has the Economy Become Less Volatile?

"Congress is concerned with the health of the U.S. economy, which affects the living standards of all Americans. The 2001 recession was unusually mild and brief by historical standards. At 120 months, the expansion that preceded it had been the longest in U.S. history. Is this a coincidence? A body of research concludes that it is not. Since 1984, the volatility of economic growth has fallen by more than half. Before 1984, the fluctuations in quarterly growth rates were much more extreme from one quarter to the next. After 1984, the changes from quarter to quarter have become much smoother. Economists have coined this phenomenon the "great moderation." There are three competing theories for what has caused it. One theory is that structural changes within the economy have made it less volatile. Changes in the structure of the economy include a smaller manufacturing sector, better inventory management, financial innovations, and deregulation. Most economists have concluded that the shift in production across different sectors since 1984 has not been large enough to account for most of the great moderation. A second theory is that improved policy is the cause of the great moderation. In particular, some economists blame the deep and long recessions of the 1970s and 1980s on bad monetary policy; they credit improved monetary policy for the subsequent improvement in economic performance. They point to the simultaneous decline in the volatility of price inflation as evidence supporting their theory. But better policy is usually credited with creating longer economic expansions and shallower recessions. A smoother business cycle is only part of the great moderation; it can also be seen in terms of lower volatility from one quarter to the next. The third theory is that the great moderation is simply a case of better luck, while the 1970s and early 1980s were filled with bad luck, in the form of a series of economic shocks that barraged the economy." Source: Congressional Research Service

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Regulation of Health Benefits Under ERISA: An Outline

"The Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) sets certain federal standards for the provision of health benefits under private-sector, employment-based health plans. These standards regulate the nature and content of health plans and include rules on health care continuation coverage, guarantees on the availability and renewability of health care coverage for certain employees and individuals, limitations on exclusions from health care coverage based on preexisting conditions, parity between medical/surgical benefits and mental health benefits, and minimum hospital stay requirements for mothers following the birth of a child. This report discusses certain health benefit requirements under ERISA, as well as proposed legislation in the 110th Congress that would affect the provision of health benefits." Source: Congressional Research Service, Library of Congress

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The Constitution and Racial Diversity in Elementary and Secondary Education: A Legal Analysis of Pending Supreme Court Cases

The diversity rationale for affirmative action in public education has long been a topic of political and legal controversy. Many colleges and universities have established affirmative action policies not only to remedy past discrimination, but also to achieve a racially and ethnically diverse student body or faculty. Although the Supreme Court has recognized that the use of race-based policies to promote diversity in higher education may be constitutional in two recent cases involving the University of Michigan's admissions policies, the Court has never considered whether diversity is a constitutionally permissible goal in the elementary and secondary education setting. To resolve this question, the Supreme Court agreed to review two cases that involve the use of race to maintain racially diverse public schools. Specifically, the Court will consider whether the school plans at issue violate the equal protection guarantee of the Fourteenth Amendment. The cases are Meredith v. Jefferson County Board of Education and Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1, and the Court's decision is expected to be issued during its 2006-2007 term. This report provides an overview of the lower court decisions in the two cases, coupled with a discussion of the factors that the Supreme Court is likely to consider on review. Source: Congressional Research Service, Library of Congress

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Juvenile Justice: Rights During the Adjudicatory Process

"As more attention is being focused on juvenile offenders, some question whether the justice system is dealing with this population appropriately. Since the late 1960s, the juvenile justice system has undergone significant modifications resulting from U.S. Supreme Court decisions, changes in federal and state law, and the growing belief that juveniles were increasingly involved in more serious and violent crimes. Consequently, at both the federal and states levels, the juvenile justice system has shifted from a mostly rehabilitative system to a more punitive one, with serious ramifications for juvenile offenders. Despite this shift, juveniles are generally not afforded the panoply of rights afforded to adult criminal defendants. The U.S. Constitution requires that juveniles receive many of the features of an adult criminal trial, including notice of charges, right to counsel, privilege against selfincrimination, right to confrontation and cross-examination, proof beyond a reasonable doubt, and double jeopardy. However, in McKeiver v. Pennsylvania, the Court held that juveniles do not have a fundamental right to a jury trial during adjudicatory proceedings." Source: Congressional Research Service, Library of Congress

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Training module on documentary scriptwriting now available online

"UNESCO, in partnership with the Public Service Broadcasting Trust (PSBT) of India, has just released a training module entitled "How to write a documentary script", an easy-to-use self-training tool providing basic knowledge for potential content creators.

The tool, prepared by Trisha Das, analyses the two stages of documentary scriptwriting, the pre-shoot or shooting script and the post-shoot script, providing basic knowledge and useful advice for those being initiated in documentary making.

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U.K. Social Trends 37

"An established reference source, Social Trends draws together social and economic data from a wide range of government departments and other organisations; it paints a broad picture of British society today, and how it has been changing.

There are 13 chapters each focusing on a different social policy area, described in tables, figures and text: population, households and families, education and training, labour market, income and wealth, expenditure, health, social protection, crime and justice, housing, environment, transport, lifestyles and social participation.

The pdf file provides links to Excel spreadsheets which contain the data for each table, figure and map."


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Canada Study: Year end review of the economy

" In retrospect, the most surprising development in Canada’s economy last year was not that a surge in oil prices or the bursting of the American housing bubble failed to dampen growth, according to a year-end review of the economy.

Instead, the surprise was that so many people continued to underestimate the ability of Canadians to react and adapt to fast-changing or unexpected circumstances, the review suggests.

The theme that really stands out is the adaptability of Canadians faced with rapid changes in their economy, it concludes. The most dramatic example of this was the increased migration of people to oil-rich Alberta during the past year.

The study, published today in the online edition of Canadian Economic Observer, concludes that Alberta’s dominant role in economic growth was the biggest economic story of the year.

Going back several years, the economy has been hit with a number of shocks which in the past could well have triggered a slowdown or even recession. Instead, growth has been remarkably stable since 2003."

Source: Canadian Economic Observer

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Short-term and long-term effects of United Nations peace operations

"Earlier studies have shown that United Nations peace operations make a positive contribution to peacebuilding efforts after civil wars. But do these effects carry over to the period after the peacekeepers leave? And how do the effects of UN peace operations interact with other determinants of peacebuilding in the long run? The author addresses these questions using a revised version of the Doyle and Sambanis dataset and applying different estimation methods to estimate the short-term and long-term effects of UN peace missions. He finds that UN missions have robust, positive effects on peacebuilding in the short term. UN missions can help parties implement peace agreements but the UN cannot fight wars, and UN operations contribute more to the quality of the peace where peace is based on participation, than to the longevity of the peace, where peace is simply the absence of war. The effects of UN missions are also felt in the long run, but they dissipate over time. What is missing in UN peacebuilding is a strategy to foster the self-sustaining economic growth that could connect increased participation with sustainable peace." Source: World Bank Policy Research Working Papers

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IZA - The Power of the Family

"The structure of family relationships influences economic behavior and attitudes. We define our measure of family ties using individual responses from the World Value Survey regarding the role of the family and the love and respect that children need to have for their parents for over 70 countries. We show that strong family ties imply more reliance on the family as an economic unit which provides goods and services and less on the market and on the government for social insurance. With strong family ties home production is higher, labor force participation of women and youngsters, and geographical mobility, lower. Families are larger (higher fertility and higher family size) with strong family ties, which is consistent with the idea of the family as an important economic unit. We present evidence on cross country regressions. To assess causality we look at the behavior of second generation immigrants in the US and we employ a variable based on the grammatical rule of pronoun drop as an instrument for family ties. Our results overall indicate a significant influence of the strength of family ties on economic outcomes." Source: Institute for the Study of Labor

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National Security Letters in Foreign Intelligence Investigations: Legal Background and Recent Amendments

"Five federal statutes authorize intelligence officials to request certain business record information in connection with national security investigations. The authority to issue these national security letters (NSLs) is comparable to the authority to issue administrative subpoenas. The USA PATRIOT Act expanded the authority under four of the NSL statutes and created the fifth. Thereafter, the authority has been reported to have been widely used. Prospects of its continued use dimmed, however, after two lower federal courts held the lack of judicial review and the absolute confidentiality requirements in one of the statutes rendered it constitutionally suspect." Source: Congressional Research Service, Library of Congress

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