Addressing the Crisis in Academic Publishing; Inside Higher Ed, November 5, 2018

Hans De Wit and Phillip G. Altbach and Betty Leask, Inside Higher Ed; Addressing the Crisis in Academic Publishing

[Kip Currier: Important reading and a much-needed perspective to challenge the status quo!

I just recently was expressing aspects of this article to an academic colleague: For too long the dominant view of what constitutes "an academic" has been too parochial and prescriptive.

The academy should and must expand its notions of teaching, research, and service, in order to be more truly inclusive and acknowledge diverse kinds of knowledge and humans extant in our world.]

"We must find ways to ensure that equal respect, recognition and reward is given to excellence in teaching, research and service by institutional leaders, governments, publishers, university ranking and accreditation schemes."

Stan Lee Spoke Out Against Bigotry, Again And Again; Comic Book Resources, November 13, 2018

Hannah Collins, Comic Book Resources; Stan Lee Spoke Out Against Bigotry, Again And Again

""None of us live our lives in a vacuum," Lee wrote in 1970, "none of us is untouched by the everyday events about us -- events which shape our stories just as they shape our lives." Here, Lee directly addressed readers who had been disgruntled by his "moralizing," a bell continues to be rung to this day. "They [Marvel comics readers] take great pains to point out that comics are supposed to be escapist reading and nothing more. But somehow, I can't see it that way. It seems to me that a story without a message, however subliminal, is like a man without a soul."

It's alarming and disappointing that so much of what Lee railed against over 50 years ago still feels so prescient in 2018. He also made mention in the same column of his talks at college campuses where "there's as much discussion of war and peace, civil rights, and the so-called youth rebellion as there is of our Marvel mags per se," and Lee continued to connect with people, face-to-face, as recently as last year. A 94-year-old Lee recorded a video message for Marvel's YouTube channel in response to the violent white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia in August 2017, reaffirming that Marvel's stories "have room for everyone, regardless of their race, gender, religion or color of their skin. The only things we don't have room for are hatred, intolerance or bigotry.""

Libraries are about democracy, not just books; The Age (Melbourne, Australia), October 9, 2018

Christie Nieman, The Age (Melbourne, Australia); Libraries are about democracy, not just books

[Kip Currier: This article provides a persuasive, nuanced first-hand account by a librarian in Victoria, Australia about the vital role of libraries in communities as incubators for democratic values like access to information, analog and digital literacy, and an informed, educated electorate.

It can be easy to talk about and wax eloquently about the importance of democracy--at least, in places where, thankfully, free speech enables that kind of discourse.

The harder job of walking the talk, in terms of public infrastructure development and sustainability, is what the author of this piece unpacks for us:

Informing, reminding, and inspiring people why democracy requires necessary investment--in the short-term and for the long-term public interest--for civil societies to take root and thrive. Investment in public interest-committed institutions like libraries. For the benefit of everyone.

As quantitative and qualitative data (see here and here) and experiential stories demonstrate time and time again, libraries are local community, regional, national, and transnational anchors and portals to the kinds of activities and values that are necessary for democracies to grow and flourish. For people of all walks of life.]

"Certainly, once upon a time, a public library was a collection of books. But it was never only that. The mission of a public library is, and always was, to allow whole community access to knowledge, information, literature, and cultural participation. Every single day, your public library aims to provide something necessary or enriching – for free – for you and every individual in its locality. It aims to do this even for those who never darken its door, just in case one day they do. A public library is an instrument of democracy. Its mission is access for all, no one left behind...

These days access and full participation is simply not possible without some level of digital literacy. Teaching this skill has become fundamental to the age-old library mission. Daily, I teach older people and new arrivals how to use email and show people from all walks of life how to scan their documents, search for jobs, submit online forms to Centrelink...

Not by mistake is "Libraries Change Lives" the name of the new Public Libraries Victoria Network campaign - a slogan for a collaborative effort to educate people about libraries and ensure they are well funded, now and far into the future.

Libraries need to be protected. By all of us, for each other. And and we need to remember that libraries are not just nice, they are necessary."

Publishers Call Out Target for 'Censoring' Book Descriptions; Publishers Weekly, September 13, 2018

Claire Kirch, Publishers Weekly; Publishers Call Out Target for 'Censoring' Book Descriptions

"According to Ohio State University Press director Tony Sanfilippo, Target’s move might be a well-meaning policy gone awry. “I understand that they might want to avoid controversy. But if they want to keep Nazis off their site, or Nazi-themed products out of their search results, there are ways of doing that that don’t censor. If you can’t say 'Nazi,' you can’t stop Nazis. And if you can’t search for books about the trans community and trans issues, your search engine and your corporate philosophy are morally flawed.""

How can we better serve LGBTQ journalists?; The Poynter Institute, September 14, 2018

Daniel Funke, The Poynter Institute; How can we better serve LGBTQ journalists?

"Striving to dismantle otherness in order to come up with solutions to journalism’s biggest problems is a constant thread at NLGJA. This year, one of the event’s main panels was made up almost entirely of people of color. There were sessions on how to cover the transgender community, telling stories about bisexuals and diversity and intersection. Some of the issues journalists highlighted include:

• Deadnaming transgender people in obituaries.
• A lack of sensitivity from newsroom leaders about stories that could potentially be triggering for reporters of diversity.
• Missing out on important local stories about the LGBTQ community because of national political coverage.
• A lack of support for journalists who experience trauma on assignment.
• Covering stories about transgender people that don’t involve death or hardship."

AI4All Extends The Power of Artificial Intelligence to High School Girls; Getting Smart, March 1, 2018

Getting Smart Staff, Getting Smart; AI4All Extends The Power of Artificial Intelligence to High School Girls

"In 2015, Stanford’s Fei-Fei Li, Olga Russakovsky, and Rick Sommer started a summer camp to address the diversity crisis. The early programs, focused on high school girls, had incredible results including increased technical ability, connections to role models, and a sense of belonging in computer science and AI for participants.

A new nonprofit, AI4ALL, was formed last year to extend access to summer programs like the one launched by Li, Russakovsky, and Sommer–beginning with Stanford, Carnegie Mellon University, Berkeley, Princeton, Boston University, and Simon Fraser.

The mission of AI4ALL, according to Posner, is to increase diversity and inclusion in the field and to make sure the benefits are widely shared by democratizing access to tools and involveing [sic] diverse voices in the field."

WIPO Traditional Knowledge Committee Begins Work On Core Issues; Indigenous Peoples May Be Left Out; Intellectual Property Watch, August 27, 2018

Catherine Saez, Intellectual Property Watch;

WIPO Traditional Knowledge Committee Begins Work On Core Issues; Indigenous Peoples May Be Left Out

"The World Intellectual Property Organization’s committee seeking to find solutions against misappropriation of traditional knowledge opened this morning. While delegates are expected to negotiate wording of a potential treaty, the fund allowing indigenous peoples to participate in the discussions is empty with no foreseeable new donors, described by the chair as a historical situation. The committee is also trying to agree on recommendations for the upcoming WIPO General Assembly next month. On core issues, such as what the protection should cover, who would benefit from it, and under which conditions, delegates still have to find common positions."

Kelly Marie Tran: I Won’t Be Marginalized by Online Harassment; The New York Times, August 21, 2018

Kelly Marie Tran, The New York Times; Kelly Marie Tran: I Won’t Be Marginalized by Online Harassment

"Editors’ note: The actress deleted her Instagram posts this summer in response to online harassment. Here she speaks out for the first time...

"I want to live in a world where children of color don’t spend their entire adolescence wishing to be white. I want to live in a world where women are not subjected to scrutiny for their appearance, or their actions, or their general existence. I want to live in a world where people of all races, religions, socioeconomic classes, sexual orientations, gender identities and abilities are seen as what they have always been: human beings.

This is the world I want to live in. And this is the world that I will continue to work toward.

These are the thoughts that run through my head every time I pick up a script or a screenplay or a book. I know the opportunity given to me is rare. I know that I now belong to a small group of privileged people who get to tell stories for a living, stories that are heard and seen and digested by a world that for so long has tasted only one thing. I know how important that is. And I am not giving up.

You might know me as Kelly.

I am the first woman of color to have a leading role in a “Star Wars” movie.

I am the first Asian woman to appear on the cover of Vanity Fair.

My real name is Loan. And I am just getting started."

OIF Responds to Library Bill of Rights Meeting Room Amendment; American Libraries, July 10, 2018

American Libraries;

OIF Responds to Library Bill of Rights Meeting Room Amendment

 

"“As cited in the interpretation, there are two prominent cases addressing public library meeting rooms. One involved religion. One involved a white supremacist group. In both cases, the library prohibiting the groups use of space lost lawsuits and were forced to change their policies.

“The Library Bill of Rights Meeting Room amendment should serve as a catalyst for library staff to review or establish policies with assistance from their legal counsel. We encourage libraries to adopt policies that govern meeting space use while meeting the needs of the community that they serve."

The Iceman Cometh Out; New York Times. February 19, 2018

Stephanie Burt, New York Times; The Iceman Cometh Out

"Superhero comics address, and empower, straight white nerdy boys. That’s been true of most comics, for most of their history. But is it the genre’s central truth? For some of us, it never was. As Ramzi Fawaz, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, has pointed out, superhero comics are the only popular genre in which anomalous bodies are not just tolerated but celebrated: The same thing that makes you look weird means you can save the world. Moreover, comics — because they involve stories of human (and superhuman) conflict and change; because they show hand-drawn pictures, with stylized faces; because they often appeal to us first in childhood — invite identification: We read them in search of ourselves, or our future selves.

These facts about comics explain — in part — why the X-Men became the most successful superhero franchise of the 1980s. Mutation, the source of X-powers, could stand, well or badly, for stigmatized real-world identities, as well as for the outsider status most kids, at some point, feel. The best X-books integrated real-world diversity too. Under Chris Claremont (who wrote many of them from 1975 to 1991) the core cast included a few women of color, one of them a virtual god, along with very strong hints of queer sexuality. More than almost any other gaudy bang-pow-pop cultural property, X-books offered — then and since — an imaginative space where L.G.B.T. readers could feel at home."

Read Ryan Coogler’s Heartfelt Thank You to Black Panther Fans; Comic Book Resources, February 21, 2018

Geoff Miller, Comic Book Resources; Read Ryan Coogler’s Heartfelt Thank You to Black Panther Fans

"Black Panther took the world by storm on its way to a historic opening weekend, and director Ryan Coogler has now shared his heartfelt thoughts on the film’s resounding success.

“I am struggling to find the words to express my gratitude at this moment, but I will try,” the filmmaker wrote in a letter posted on Twitter by Marvel Studios. “Never in a million years did we imagine that you all would come out this strong. It still humbles me to think that people care enough to spend their money and time watching our film. But to see people of all backgrounds wearing clothing that celebrates their heritage, taking pictures next to our posters with their friends and family, and sometimes dancing in the lobbies of theaters often moved me and my wife to tears.”"

Google has fired the employee behind that controversial diversity manifesto; Washington Post, August 7, 2017

Jena McGregor, Washington Post; Google has fired the employee behind that controversial diversity manifesto

""If you think about the continuum of the workforce, you’ve got one end where people are going to say this person should be fired," Kropp said, while on the other end, there appear to be employees who may agree with his remarks. "Whatever Google decides to do, they're going to be potentially disappointing somebody along one of those groups or making them angry."

The company’s new vice president for diversity, integrity and governance, Danielle Brown, who started at the company just weeks ago, had put out a statement in recent days expressing her disagreement with the essay, as did other executives. Brown wrote in an internal response that "like many of you, I found that it advanced incorrect assumptions about gender," and that "we are unequivocal in our belief that diversity and inclusion are critical to our success as a company."

Ari Balogh, vice president of engineering at Google, wrote in a statement that "sharing different perspectives is an important part of our culture," but "one of the aspects of the post that troubled me deeply was the bias inherent in suggesting that most women, or men, feel or act a certain way. That is stereotyping, and it is harmful.""

A Google engineer wrote that women may be unsuited for tech jobs. Women wrote back.; Washington Post, August 6, 2017

Cleve R. Wootson Jr., Washington Post; A Google engineer wrote that women may be unsuited for tech jobs. Women wrote back.

"In a screed that rocketed around Silicon Valley this weekend, a software engineer at Google blasted the company's efforts to increase the number of minorities and women in its ranks and leadership positions.

The essay, reported by Motherboard and posted by Gizmodo, was posted on an internal Google forum by a male software engineer and titled “Google's Ideological Echo Chamber.”

The author has not been publicly identified, but his words have sparked a backlash. Critics say his sentiments reflect a tech company culture that's unwelcoming or even hostile to women and minorities. Another fear: The engineer's words reflect the unspoken thoughts of many others in an industry dominated by white men."

Hey Marvel, please don’t take away female Thor’s hammer; Salon, August 5, 2017

Mark Peters, Salon; Hey Marvel, please don’t take away female Thor’s hammer

"The commercial success is an especially delicious rebuke to anyone who thinks diversity is killing Marvel. The issue of gender in comics is timelier than ever thanks to a depressing recent incident on Twitter, which should be the name of the Norse realm of the trolls. A group of female Marvel editors were recently blasted with online harassment just for posting a picture of them drinking milkshakes. This picture, no different from thousands posted online every day, somehow drew angry trolls out their holes, issuing rape threats and complaining about how women and SJWs are ruining comics. This burst of ugliness provoked the #makeminemilkshake hashtag, which catalyzed an outpouring of support.

You don’t have to be Heimdall the all-seeing to notice that female Thor is more important than ever in a world where women are treated like garbage, by garbage people, just for daring to work in the comics industry. So let the Odinson keep playing with his ax and keep that hammer right where it is, Marvel."

Spider-Man: Homecoming Cast and Crew Address Film’s Diversity; Comic Book Resources, June 26, 2017

Lisa Granshaw, Comic Book Resources; Spider-Man: Homecoming Cast and Crew Address Film’s Diversity

"Everything that’s been released so far about Sony Pictures and Marvel Studios’ upcoming Spider-Man: Homecoming film has shown an impressive range of diversity among the cast. Its level of inclusion and representation is something not seen often enough in superhero films — or movies in general — and has not gone unnoticed before its July release...

Actor Tony Revolori (The Grand Budapest Hotel), who plays Flash Thompson in the film, discussed how it felt to represent the Latino community in the well-known comic book franchise.

“It’s wonderful,” Revolori, who is American of Guatemala descent, told reporters including CBR. “I think the fact that when you see the film, there’s not a single line of exposition as to explain why I look the way I look and I think that’s wonderful that I just am in the movie. It’s not about being a certain race, it’s not about doing anything. I think that’s the kind of diversity we need in Hollywood now."

Some white ‘Star Trek’ fans are unhappy about remake’s diversity; Washington Post, June 23, 2017

Travis M. Andrews, Washington Post; Some white ‘Star Trek’ fans are unhappy about remake’s diversity

"Indeed, the ‘Star Trek’ series, as Manu Saadia put it in the New Yorker, has always been about inclusion, diversity and breaking down human-made social barriers. Saadia wrote:

Each successive “Star Trek” cast has been like a model United Nations. Nichols’s black communications specialist worked alongside George Takei’s Japanese helmsman and Walter Koenig’s (admittedly campy) Russian navigator. Leonard Nimoy’s Spock was half-human, half-Vulcan, and he bore traces of the actor’s own upbringing in a poor Jewish neighborhood in Boston. The Vulcan hand greeting, for instance, which Nimoy invented, is the Hebrew letter shin, the symbol for the Shekhinah, a feminine aspect of the divine. The original series aired only a few years after the Cuban missile crisis, at the height of the Vietnam War and the space race, and its vision of a reconciled humanity was bold. Nichols, who considered leaving the show after the first season, has said that she was persuaded to stay on by Martin Luther King, Jr., who told her that he watched “Star Trek” with his wife and daughters.

This isn’t the first time an entry in the “Star Trek” series has come under fire for including ever more diverse characters. Just last year, the film “Star Trek Beyond” portrayed Sulu as a gay man. It was the first time the series featured an openly gay character, and some fans were furious."

Rooney Rule legacy touches entirety of NFL and beyond; Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, April 14, 2017

Brian Batko, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette; 

Rooney Rule legacy touches entirety of NFL and beyond

[Kip Currier: Standing across the street from St. Paul's Cathedral in Pittsburgh's Oakland neighborhood today, the site of Dan Rooney's funeral, I overheard a news reporter filing a story behind me say "Dan Rooney said you can get just about anything done if you share the credit."] 

"Chairman of the Fritz Pollard Alliance, a foundation promoting equality in coaching, scouting and front-office jobs for NFL teams, Mr. Wooten worked closely with Mr. Rooney to develop a league policy requiring teams to interview minority candidates. Eventually — and, as Mr. Wooten remembers, reluctantly — it would be named after an Irishman who grew up on the North Side.

“The thing about it is, he really didn’t want it to be called the Rooney Rule,” Mr. Wooten, 80, said over the phone from his Texas home on what he called a sorrowful evening for him and his organization. “I told him, ‘As much as I respect you, and will always do what you recommend, I don’t want to call it anything else but the Rooney Rule. Because you are the one that made it happen. You, and you alone, made it happen.’ ”

Undoubtedly, it was also the brainchild of people such as Mr. Wooten and the two attorneys he called on his victorious day in 2002 — Cyrus Mehri and the late Johnnie Cochran — but Mr. Rooney was the driving force behind it.

As Mr. Wooten sees it, no other NFL power broker would have been able to persuade the entirety of league ownership to vote in favor of the rule. But Mr. Rooney did, with alacrity, and now it’s viewed by many as a move that opened the gates for some of the sport’s finest coaches, including the Steelers’ Mike Tomlin."

Uber Needs To Do Better When It Comes To Diversity; Huffington Post, March 28, 2017

Ryan Grenoble, Huffington Post; 

Uber Needs To Do Better When It Comes To Diversity

"After years of keeping its diversity data hidden away, Uber released its first diversity report Tuesday, under the direction of its new Chief Human Resources Officer Liane Hornsey.

The report revealed that Uber employees are mostly white and mostly male, especially at the more senior levels of the company. A full 78 percent of Uber’s workers at the director level or above are men, and 76.7 percent of the company leadership is white.

Tuesday’s disclosure is part of a concerted PR effort to right the ship at the company after a series of scandals. Uber has faced allegations of rampant sexual harassment from former employees; a high-profile lawsuit that contends Uber stole trade secrets from a Google-founded competitor; numerous high-profile departures; and a video showing CEO Travis Kalanick telling off a driver.

“​This report is a first step in showing that diversity and inclusion is a priority at Uber,” Kalanick said in a statement. “I know that we have been too slow in publishing our numbers — and that the best way to demonstrate our commitment to change is through transparency.”"

A Blind Theatergoer's 'Hamilton' Lawsuit Aims Spotlight On Broadway Accessibility; NPR, March 14, 2017

Jeff Lunden, NPR; 

A Blind Theatergoer's 'Hamilton' Lawsuit Aims Spotlight On Broadway Accessibility

""I think what this suit brings to light is that you have a hidden population out there that is not gaining the full access to Broadway," says attorney Scott Dinin, who is representing Lasser in the class-action suit against the show's producers and theater owner...

"Certainly once a show sets up a sustained run — and when we look at musicals that run five, 10, 15, 20 years — it really is a very small price to pay for opening up a show to a much, much wider audience," Sherman says.

That's really what Dinin, Lasser's attorney, is trying to say with this legal action. He is not seeking damages for his client — he can't, under the terms of the ADA. He is trying to make sure that theater becomes more inclusive, by spotlighting the problem, using Broadway's biggest hit.

"Audio description is so necessary," Dinin says. "It's the right thing to do. It's not that expensive. And it's just a thinking process. It's a mindset. We have to get a mindset: How do we increase inclusion? It should be top-of-mind. Equality, accommodation and respect. Because once people put that at the decision-making table, all the services will flow from that.""

Law Professors Address RCEP Negotiators on Copyright; Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF, February 24, 2017

Jeremy Malcolm, Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF); 

Law Professors Address RCEP Negotiators on Copyright

"Next week the latest round of secret negotiations of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) kicks off in Kobe, Japan. Once the shy younger sibling of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), the recent death of the TPP has thrust RCEP further into the spotlight, and raised the stakes both for its sixteen prospective parties, and for lobbyists with designs to stamp their own mark on the text's intellectual property and e-commerce chapters.

Our last analysis of RCEP pointed out some of the ways in which the then-current leaked text represented an improvement on the TPP, but how other parts of it—including those on copyright enforcement—repeated its mistakes and failed to seize opportunities for improvement. This week, over 60 copyright scholars released an open letter that sets out their views of what negotiators ought to do in order to address these problems...

The RCEP negotiators evidently haven't taken the failure of the TPP to heart, or they would be doing more to ensure that their negotiations are inclusive, transparent, and strike a fair balance between the interests of copyright owners and those of the public."