January 25, 2022
The Women's Power Gap at Elite Universities: Scaling the Ivory Tower is the second in a series of two reports examining compensation and top leadership among the country’s 130 major research universities (R1 as defined by the Carnegie Classification). For updates on the Initiative and to learn more, visit WomensPowerGap.or
January 12, 2022
When Joel Sakyi first arrived at Penn State, he found himself far from home and in search of organizations and people to connect with. This yearning led him to join BLUEprint, a peer mentoring program focused on offering cultural, social, and academic support to students of color, specifically those who are first-year or change-of-campus students. His experience with BLUEprint inspired him to found Vybrnt, a social networking platform which launched in October 2020.
January 11, 2022
Black Americans experience a higher mortality rate every year than white Americans are experiencing during the coronavirus pandemic, finds Elizabeth Wrigley-Field of the University of Minnesota.1 Her analysis focuses on death rates and compares the scale of this pandemic to racial inequality, which she calls “another U.S. catastrophe.” Using demographic models, Wrigley-Field estimates how many deaths of white Americans would be needed to raise the white age-adjusted mortality rate to the best-ever (lowest) Black age-adjusted rate. At least 400,000 excess deaths of white Americans—deaths above and beyond the number expected in a non-pandemic year—would be needed to reach the best mortality rate ever recorded for Black Americans, which occurred in 2014, she finds. Black Americans’ age-adjusted, confirmed COVID-19 deaths are more than 2.5 times higher than that of white Americans, she reports.2
December 8, 2021
Walter B. Saul High School in Philadelphia is Pennsylvania’s largest high school of agricultural science. It’s located, surprisingly, in an urban and not rural setting, along Henry Avenue in the Roxborough neighborhood of Philadelphia. For eight decades, it has attracted and prepared students for agricultural jobs or post-secondary studies. In addition, today’s graduates also enter careers in hi-tech ag-related businesses. Saul students told me it takes a commitment just to attend classes there as many have to take two or three public transit buses daily for up to two hours to and from the 130-acre campus.
December 6, 2021
Amid a growing furor over critical race theory, Matthew Hawn told his high school students in rural Kingsport, Tenn., that White privilege is ‘a fact’
November 12, 2021
In the latter half of the 1800s, the Indian conflicts (skirmishes, wars) in America were at an end. The vanquished Native Americas were herded to reservations. But the question emerged about what to do with the Indian children. The American government decided that Native American children should be reeducated and “Americanized.” They should be taught skills that would enable them to become productive citizens of society outside of the reservation. Thus, thousands of Native American children were separated from their parents and sent to special boarding schools to become educated and “Americanized.” https://footnote.wordpress.ncsu.edu/2021/11/10/the-carlisle-indian-industrial-school-11-12-21/
November 2, 2021
A new fellowship in the Office of the Vice Provost for Educational Equity aims to help faculty members develop as leaders in diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) while creating opportunities to make a positive impact at Penn State. The Equity Leadership Fellows Program, launched this past summer, is designed to recognize faculty members’ ongoing efforts to foster greater DEI across the University while helping faculty further develop their knowledge and expertise as leaders in fostering a more equitable and inclusive institution. Equity Leadership Fellows work alongside senior faculty mentors, collaborate on initiatives across the Office of the Vice Provost for Educational Equity, and have the opportunity to shadow senior-level DEI administrators and others whose portfolios include this area of emphasis.
September 8, 2021
The majority of universities in the Big Ten Conference have a smaller percentage of Black undergraduates enrolled at their institutions than they did 20 years ago. And those drops came despite impressive gains in the overall racial/ethnic diversity of American students at these institutions across the same time period.
September 3, 2021
The Pennsylvania State University campuses are located on the original homelands of the Erie, Haudenosaunee (Seneca, Cayuga, Onondaga, Oneida, Mohawk, and Tuscarora), Lenape (Delaware Nation, Delaware Tribe, Stockbridge-Munsee), Shawnee (Absentee, Eastern, and Oklahoma), Susquehannock, and Wahzhazhe (Osage) Nations. As a land grant institution, we acknowledge and honor the traditional caretakers of these lands and strive to understand and model their responsible stewardship. We also acknowledge the longer history of these lands and our place in that history.
August 31, 2021
Diversity, equity and inclusion should be a required part of engineering schools’ curricula, argues Alec D. Gallimore. In technical fields, we often pride ourselves on our objectivity -- as though the work exists outside ourselves. In engineering, we have historically believed that we could make technologies that work for anyone, regardless of the identity of the engineer or the user. We have believed that technological progress was inherently making the world a better place. And, in many ways, it has. From the wheel to the automobile, the printing press to the internet, eyeglasses to orbiting telescopes, engineering has expanded humanity’s horizons and improved the human condition. But it has become clear that such technologies and systems do not benefit everyone equally. At times, they can even actively harm some groups. Unintended consequences can occur, because engineers are people, too -- people shaped by their cultures, with biases and blind spots.
August 28, 2021
Who Was Emmett Till? In late summer 1955, Mamie Till chose to lay the body of her only child, Emmett, in an open coffin, believing that “the whole nation had to bear witness to this” — this Black child of Chicago who had been murdered and mutilated by white men in Mississippi. “They had to see what I had seen,” she wrote in her memoir. Hundreds of thousands of mourners lined up to witness for themselves the horror wrought on the 14-year-old victim, and many, many more saw it when photographs of his body were published in Jet magazine. From that moment until today, Emmett Till has shaped the civil rights movement in America. Here is a look at who he was, the outrage at his murder and the acquittal of his killers, and his enduring legacy.
August 13, 2021
Penn State Extension Master Gardeners expected there would be a renewed interest in home gardening in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. As a result, they developed the 10-part “Victory Garden Reinvented!” webinar series to support gardeners across the country. In 2021, the Master Gardener program and the Penn State Extension horticulture team expanded this effort — aiming to reach the Latino community — and the webinars now are available in Spanish.
July 13, 2021
The city of Charlottesville, Virginia on Saturday removed two equestrian statues from its public square that for nearly a century honored Confederate leaders Robert E. Lee (pictured above) and Stonewell Jackson (below). Hours later, City Council decided to take down two statues deemed offensive to Native Americans.
June 30, 2021
Today the Cultivating Change Foundation announced the recipients of its annual Cultivator of Change and Cultivating Change Ally awards. Through its annual awards program, the Foundation recognizes individuals and organizations that help to advance its mission to value and elevate LGBTQ+ agriculturists through advocacy, education, and community.
June 20, 2021
We might count Juneteenth among those things Black people have long enjoyed that white folks don’t know about — like Frankie Beverly and Maze. The fact that such things exist might still be a shock to some; Americans are used to having Black culture to draw from like a renewable well. But no matter how aware or steeped in Black music and meanings, white people can still be surprised by the depth of things that Black people have kept alive for generations, kept to themselves in churches and barbershops, beauty salons and artistic salons, or laughed about over barbecue and red drink. These are the habits of freedom, rituals of the heart and mind. There’s a whole canon of Black cookout music that folks sing along to — if you’re lucky enough to get invited.
June 10, 2021
Women play an integral part in farming, either as a principal operator or as a decision-maker. In 2019, more than half (51 percent) of all farming operations in the United States had at least one woman operator, according to the 2019 Agricultural Resource Management Survey (ARMS). Women were the “principal operator,” meaning they are primarily responsible for the day-to-day operation of the farm, on 14 percent of operations. In 37 percent of operations, women were the “secondary operators,” involved in decisions for the operation but not the principal operators. Farms with principal female operators contributed more than 4 percent of the total value of production in 2019.
May 25, 2021
A $4 billion federal fund meant to confront how racial injustice has shaped American farming has angered white farmers who say they are being unfairly excluded. But the $4 billion fund has angered conservative white farmers who say they are being unfairly excluded because of their race. And it has plunged Mr. Lewis and other farmers of color into a new culture war over race, money and power in American farming. “You can feel the tension,” Mr. Lewis said. “We’ve caught a lot of heat from the conservative Caucasian farmers.”
April 15, 2021
HARLEM, Manhattan (WABC) -- Congressman Tom Suozzi was joined by Harlem leaders Thursday to announce he is introducing legislation that would award a Congressional Gold Medal to the 369th Infantry Regiment, better known as the Harlem Hellfighters. The Harlem Hellfighters Congressional Gold Medal Act would bestow what Suozzi calls long-overdue recognition of the bravery and outstanding service of Harlem Hellfighters during World War I.
March 16, 2021
American Farmland Trust is partnering with Minorities in Agriculture, Natural Resources, and Related Sciences (MANRRS) to increase opportunities for minorities in agriculture, conservation, and related fields. David Haight, vice president for programs with American Farmland Trust, says he’s hopeful the partnership will help advance inclusion in agriculture and provide opportunities for those who have been underserved. Listen to audio recordings by David Haight, vice president for programs with American Farmland Trust, and Ebony Webber, MANRRS Chief Operating Officer.
March 5, 2021
A debt-relief program would be a step in repairing more than a century of discrimination by the Department of Agriculture. Many white people have become aware in the last year of the discrimination that Black Americans face in policing, voting, health care and more. Few, however, may recognize that systemic racism led to another grave injustice, one that underpins many other forms of exploitation: More than a century of land theft and the exclusion of Black people from government agricultural programs have denied many descendants of enslaved people livelihoods as independent, landowning farmers.
February 25, 2021
A new analysis by Stanford researchers shows that while diversity breeds innovation in academia, diverse perspectives and ideas aren't rewarded. Women and racial minorities introduce scientific novelty at higher rates than white men across all disciplines, the analysis shows, but they are less likely to benefit — either through sought-after faculty jobs or respected research careers.
February 14, 2021
Informed by the notion of gaslighting, we offer “racelighting” as a concept to represent a unique type of gaslighting experienced in the daily, normalized realities of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color. Racelighting refers to the process whereby People of Color question their own thoughts and actions due to systematically delivered racialized messages that make them second guess their own lived experiences with racism. When racelighted, People of Color may begin to question their interpretation of reality and begin to wonder if they are being overly sensitive. In our own experiences, racelighting most often occurs when other Black people question our mistreatment. When this mistreatment is called to the attention of the perpetrator, the perpetrators’ passionate delivery of innocence and claims of the victim’s misinterpretation can be incredibly convincing.
January 31, 2021
The administration has pledged to make agriculture a cornerstone of its plan to fight warming, but also to tackle a legacy of discrimination that has pushed Black farmers off the land.
January 26, 2021
The Biden administration has pledged a “major mobilization of effort and resources” to address these challenges and advance racial equity in America. And across the nation, decision-makers in all levels of government, the private sector, higher education, and the philanthropic community are striving to understand how systemic racism operates in organizations and in society, and grappling with how best to combat it.
January 23, 2021
Hank Aaron, who faced down racism as he eclipsed Babe Ruth as baseball’s home run king, hitting 755 homers and holding the most celebrated record in sports for more than 30 years, has died. He was 86. The Atlanta Braves, his team for many years, confirmed the death on Friday in a message from its chairman, Terry McGuirk. No other details were provided. Playing for 23 seasons, all but his final two years with the Braves in Milwaukee and then Atlanta, Aaron was among the greatest all-around players in baseball history and one of the last major league stars to have played in the Negro leagues.
January 21, 2021
An executive order instructs all federal agencies to “root out” systemic racism from programs and institutions and rescinds Trump's controversial effort to excise so-called “divisive” diversity training programs from agencies and federal contractors. On President Biden’s first day in office, he signaled a major shift in the administration’s approach to racial issues, signing an executive order ending the Trump White House’s policies that denied the existence of systemic racism in the United States and ordering agencies to “root out” systemic racism and other forms of discrimination both in the workplace and in their public-facing programs.
December 17, 2020
More than 3,400 players from seven leagues that operated from 1920 to 1948 will now be considered major leaguers in a move that will shake up the record books. On Wednesday, Major League Baseball took one of its biggest steps to redress past racial wrongs: It formally recognized several of the Negro leagues as on par with the American and National leagues, a distinction that will alter the official record books to acknowledge a quality of competition that the long-excluded players never doubted.
October 5, 2020
When it comes to the hiring and retention of faculty of color, the situation across higher education is, as the saying goes, “déjà vu all over again.” Colleges and universities seem trapped in a time loop, issuing proclamations and statements similar to those made by our predecessors decades ago with limited success. Campus activists are wondering: Can academe live up to its promises this time?
September 18, 2020
The nexus of Black Lives Matter protests and a pandemic that disproportionately kills Black and Latinx people (1) highlights the need to end systemic racism, including in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), where diversity has not meaningfully changed for decades (2). If we decry structural racism but return to the behaviors and processes that led us to this moment, this inexcusable stagnation will continue. We urge the Academy to combat systemic racism in STEM and catalyze transformational change.
September 15, 2020
Here are eight tips for organizations embarking on a diversity, equity, and inclusion process. My diversity, equity, and inclusion consultancy, the Winters Group, has conducted thousands of focus groups with Black and brown employees who report more toxic environments than their white coworkers. In addition, the results of our cultural audits often show statistically significant disparities for Black and brown people in hiring, promotions, involuntary terminations, and performance reviews.
