Sustainable Scotland: UK on verge of "something big" in offshore wind – The Scotsman

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Scott McCallum, a Partner and renewable energy expert with law firm Shepherd and Wedderburn, examines the challenges facing offshore wind in the latest episode of the Sustainable Scotland podcast.

The UK Government has set an ambition to have 50 Gigawatts (GW) of offshore wind power installed by 2030 - a tough target with only 11GW currently installed and 10GW under construction (or close to it).

McCallum said: "Projects which are in their infancy are going to have to contribute towards those 2030 targets. It can only happen if we manage to deploy offshore wind consistently over a longer period of time.

"We can't afford to have the peaks and troughs we've had to date because we will lose the supply chain, we will lose the developers. And well lose the potential benefits to clean energy that can be achieved within the next few years if we get it right."

The speed at which large offshore wind projects were consented (approved) had to improve, McCallum said.

Some projects are taking a decade or more to be consented - and McCallum said challenging issues, like the impact of wind farms on birds, had to be addressed earlier, at the so-called 'pre-application' stage.

"There are a few big issues, where the Government can give more of a steer," he said. "The big one is the impact on birds and in particular, impacts on European protected sites. That's been a reason for a lot of delays because people argue over the science. They argue over the cumulative impacts and whether all the different projects together are having an adverse effect on some protected sites.

"There is an opportunity to take a more holistic approach to protecting the environment, and protecting birds, and put in place measures to create a better environment for birds in the round."

McCallum also said a more strategic approach was needed to get the power generated by offshore wind into the electricity grid.

"There's a real desire to take a more coordinated approach to the grid - to ensure that every new generating station, every new offshore wind farm that comes along, isn't getting its own grid connection," he said.

"The difficulty just now is that its stalling projects getting started because applicants don't know where they're going to be connecting."

McCallum said both consenting issues and grid connections had to be resolved quickly - but if they were, the future was bright.

He concluded: "The UK has a fantastic wind resource. All the world's main offshore wind developers are very focused in trying to develop projects in the UK. We have a very supportive UK Government, and a very supportive Scottish Government.

"All the parts are there to make this work. There are loads of hurdles we're going to have to overcome but if everyone is aligned in trying to find solutions, I think we can achieve something big where offshore wind can genuinely contribute massive amounts to the energy mix in the UK - in terms of clean energy, affordable energy, and security of supply."

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Sustainable Scotland: UK on verge of "something big" in offshore wind - The Scotsman

Heerema Joins Equinor and BP on US Offshore Wind Projects – Offshore WIND

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Equinor has, on behalf of the 50-50 partnership between Equinor and bp, selected Heerema Marine Contractors as a strategic supplier for the development of offshore wind projects on the US East Coast.

Equinor and Heerema intend to enter into a Strategic Supplier Agreement for the transportation and installation services of wind farm foundations and offshore substations for the projects.

This agreement will include the Empire Wind and Beacon Wind wind farms and will cover a firm period of seven years.

Throughout this period, Equinor, bp as 50 per cent joint venture partner, and Heerema will collaborate as exclusive partners in the preparation and Jones Act compliant execution of the projects.

Together, Heerema and Equinor will focus on optimizing the economic benefits the projects can generate for the New York State communities, the Dutch company said.

The award of this unique agreement is yet another chapter in a long history of working together globally with both Equinor and bp on often challenging offshore installation projects, Heeremas CEO Koos-Jan van Brouwershaven said.

We are proud to be selected to join Equinor and bp once again in a frontier market and region. The future of offshore wind relies on strong forward-looking partnerships that recognize the need to secure transport and installation capacity.

The 2.1 GW Empire Wind 1 and 2, and the 1.2 GW Beacon Wind are being developed by a 50-50 partnership between Equinor and bp. Equinor will be the operator through the development, construction, and operations phases of the projects.

Empire Wind, for which Equinor acquired the lease in 2017 and is developing it in two phases, is located 15-30 miles (24-48 kilometres) southeast of Long Island, in water depths of 65-131 feet (20-40 metres).

Beacon Wind is located 60 miles (almost 97 kilometres) east of Montauk Point and 20 miles (32 kilometres) south of Nantucket. The lease was acquired in 2019 and has the potential to be developed with a total capacity of more than 2.4 GW.

We are very pleased to have developed a contractual framework together with Equinor that enables true partnership. Together we have established a basis of mutual trust and transparency as core values, and I am excited to see the benefits of this innovative agreement materialize for both our client and Heerema, Heeremas Director Wind, Jeroen van Oosten, said.

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Heerema Joins Equinor and BP on US Offshore Wind Projects - Offshore WIND

Bayu Undan decommissioning this year as Santos accelerates giant CCS plan offshore East Timor – News for the Energy Sector – Energy Voice

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Australian operator Santos (ASX:STO) is preparing to decommission the floating storage and offloading (FSO) facility, as well as platforms, at Bayu Undan offshore East Timor, as soon as possible, as it accelerates plans for a giant carbon capture and storage (CCS) hub at the mature field.

The FSO, which is due to be disconnected by December latest, could be decontaminated offshore or it might be moved to East Timor, also known as Timor Leste, for treatment. After decontamination the vessel will most likely be shipped to Turkey for decommissioning, industry sources told Energy Voice.

Santos is keen to pull forward decommissioning activities as there is a lot of money at stake to get the production equipment removed as soon as possible with plans to transform Bayu Undan into a giant CCS facility, an industry source close to the project told Energy Voice.

The whole infrastructure needs to be dismantled, including the subsea pipelines, added the source. The Bayu-Undan offshore facilities consist of a floating storage and offloading facility (FSO) and three fixed platforms, a remote wellhead platform (WPI), a compression, utilities, and quarters platform (CUQ) and a drilling, production, and processing platform (DPP).

Gas-liquids production from the Bayu-Undan field in the Timor Sea will likely cease towards the end of this year, operator Santos reported in its latest operational review in April. The continued decline is in line with expectations, said Santos.

Santos is looking at methods of cleaning the Bayu Undan facilities offshore as a base case with an option to bring the FSO into Tibar port in East Timor for further clean up in preparation of going to Europe for final decommissioning, said a Dili-based source.

Santos has always identified that handling of any waste in Timor Leste would have to be done in accordance with Australian / international standards. Currently, there are no facilities to handle all the waste types in Timor Leste, however this is being looked at as part of the decommissioning work scope, added the source.

Local content in East Timor will also be a focus, added a separate industry source.

Bayu-Undan is located 500km offshore Darwin, Australia, in the Timor Sea, and is 250km south of East Timor in waters 80 metres deep.

Santos has proposed to use the Bayu Undan reservoir for capturing and storing carbon dioxide (CO2) from a new field it is developing off northwestern Australia, the $3.6 billion Barossa project, where the gas has a very high CO2 content compared to other projects in the region. Gas from Barossa will be processed at the Darwin liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal in northern Australia for export to countries, such as Japan and South Korea, which are demanding cleaner gas to meet their net-zero aspirations.

Barossa is due to start pumping gas in 2025, and Santos has said it expects Bayu Undan CCS to be ready when the field starts up. It sees the Bayu Undan reservoir eventually being able to store 10 million tonnes of CO2 a year.

Santos South Korean partner in Barossa, energy company SK E&S, is under increasing pressure from Korean financiers to ensure the project has CCS locked in.

Santos aims to take a final investment decision (FID) in 2023 on the CCS project, which it claims has the potential to be the largest in the world. In March, Santos announced it had started front-end engineering and design (FEED) work for the proposed CCS project.

More information on the Bayu Undan decommissioning and contracting scope of work is available here.

Santos has a 43.4% operated interest in Bayu-Undan and Darwin LNG. The remaining interest is held by SK E&S (25%), INPEX (11.4%), ENI (11%), JERA (6.1%) and Tokyo Gas (3.1%).

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Bayu Undan decommissioning this year as Santos accelerates giant CCS plan offshore East Timor - News for the Energy Sector - Energy Voice

Can I invest in an offshore account, then after some years withdraw all the capital? – Moneyweb

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Thank you for your question and for providing clarity as to why you wish to invest offshore. It is important that the decision to invest offshore is not taken as a knee-jerk response to local bad news, so knowing your long-term intention to remain in South Africa is certainly helpful.

Offshore investing is a great way of diversifying your investments across international markets and economies so as to create a distribution of risk and volatility in your portfolio that is less concentrated than a purely South African allocation.

Where an investor is likely to incur expenses in foreign currency, it would make sense for them to build an offshore portfolio in the jurisdiction in which they plan to live and spend. However, you have noted your intention to remain in this country and to use the funds locally. An option therefore may be for you to consider externalising your funds offshore through rand-denominated funds often referred to as indirect offshore investing.

Indirect offshore investing means that no rands are physically transferred by the investor, and their investments remain domiciled in South Africa. There are several global feeder funds offered by various local asset managers who will then invest your funds abroad on an asset swap basis according to the funds investment mandate. These indirect investments can be implemented and allocated relatively quickly and efficiently as you will be making use of the asset managers capacity to externalise funds.

These feeder funds allow you to build offshore exposure into your portfolio while also providing an exchange hedge against currency fluctuations. Any withdrawals and/or disinvestments from such accounts will need to be paid into a South African bank account.

As there is no direct transfer of funds abroad, you will not need to use your Single Discretionary Allowance (SDA) or Foreign Investment Allowance (FIA).

On the other hand, if you intend to use the funds in a foreign jurisdiction such as if you intend to work or study abroad, you may want to consider investing directly offshore using foreign-domiciled investments. This involves the physical transfer of ones rands out of the South African jurisdiction, exchanged into foreign currency, such as the US dollar, and onto an investment platform listed abroad. Once on the foreign platform, your investment may be allocated to the global funds listed and available on such a platform.

To do this, you would need to use either or a combination of your SDA and your FIA, depending on how much you intend to invest. Your SDA is limited to R1 million per calendar year and may be used at your discretion without the need for a tax clearance certificate or other supporting documents. Your FIA allows you to transfer a further R10 million offshore over and above your SDA, although to do this you will need to obtain a tax clearance certificate which, once issued, is valid for a period of 12 months.

Once you have invested directly offshore, withdrawals can generally be paid into an international account in your name provided the account can accept transfers in the domiciled currency of your investment. The funds do not need to move back into or through a South African account unless you so choose.

Depending on the amount you wish to invest keep in mind that offshore platforms have minimum contributions required to establish an account. If these minimums are more than your available funds then the option to use the locally based feeder funds may serve your objective to specifically have offshore exposure. It is, however, important to do your research in respect of investment fees and to select a strategy that is appropriate for your timeline.

It is also important to understand the tax implications of investing through such a structure, together with the consequences that withdrawing or disinvesting will have on your overall financial plan.

Ideally, such an investment should be viewed holistically as part of your overall financial plan to ensure that it is fully aligned with your goals and objectives.

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Can I invest in an offshore account, then after some years withdraw all the capital? - Moneyweb

‘Mama’s boy’ is a flex, not an insult, for a new generation of men – NPR

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Vystekimages/Getty Images/Photononstop RF

Vystekimages/Getty Images/Photononstop RF

It's a simple schoolyard insult.

For eons, people often men hurled "mama's boy" at each other as an emasculating put-down. To be called the son of a mother suggested an essential unmanliness. "Mama's boys" were comically inept, even pathological, in movies and television shows ranging from the pathetic Buster Bluth in Arrested Development to The Waterboy's Bobby Boucher to Norman Bates in Psycho.

Looking way, way back, Beowulf's Grendel could even be called the mother of literary mama's boys.

But a new generation of men seems to be rejecting the toxic masculinity inherent in the phrase and radically reinventing it.

"I am a proud mama's boy," declares Sahil Bloom. The glamorous 31-year-old tech entrepreneur is now awaiting the birth of his own infant son. "I expect him to be a mama's boy, in the same way. In the old sense of the phrase, it was about being a wuss or weak. But there's nothing more powerful than a mother's love."

Tech entrepreneur and proud mama's boy Sahil Bloom poses with his mom. Sahil Bloom hide caption

Tech entrepreneur and proud mama's boy Sahil Bloom poses with his mom.

"I am definitely a mama's boy because I love my mom," agrees college soccer star Shaquan Reid. The 21-year-old Chicago State University sophomore says he owes everything to his mother's encouragement and care. "I like having her around, motivating me, consoling me."

Reid adds that plenty of athletes are self-proclaimed mama's boys, and that's certainly true of such NFL stars as Victor Cruz, John Elway, Terrell Davis, Kurt Warner, Donovan McNabb and Michael Strahan. All starred in mama's boy-themed ads for Campbell's soup. Not long ago, Miami Dolphins linebacker Jerome Baker went viral when he couldn't find his mother in the stands during a 2019 game.

"It's OK to be a mama's boy. There's nothing wrong with it," Baker told NPR. "Everybody knew I was a mama's boy [growing up]. People did try to make fun of me. But I was different. I was proud. Lots of people wasn't proud to be a mama's boy."

"I don't see anything wrong with being a mama's boy," says Shaquan Reid, a soccer star and accounting major at Chicago State. The 21-year-old is pictured with his mom, Jenese Anglin. Shaquan Reid and CSU Athletics hide caption

These days, plenty of strong, loveable male characters who are confidently close to their moms populate screens and pages. Proud fictional mama's boys range from Percy Jackson, of Rick Riordan's young adult series, to Detective Jake Peralta in Brooklyn Nine-Nine to Luke Smith in The Sarah Jane Adventures. Mama's Boy pride is the subjects of songs and speeches.

All this is a far cry from when psychologist and bestselling author Harriet Lerner, the bestselling author of books such as The Mother Dance, first started her practice.

"During my career, mothers received the message, including from therapists, that her closeness to her sons, her failure to 'separate' and to 'let go' of her son, especially around his adolescence and then onward that that would be a danger to the boy," she says. "That could turn him into a mama's boy and damage her son in his journey to manhood. Another false belief that shamed mothers and made mothers even more anxious was the belief that single mothers or households without a man could not raise sons. Because who would teach that boy to become a man?"

Such sexist double standards, Lerner suggests, can also be gleaned from comparing long-held cultural assumptions about "mama's boys" and "daddy's girls."

"Being a daddy's girl is seen as a good thing," she observes. "It means you're adorable and loved, and know how to flirt with men."

Back in the 1980s, when Lerner's two sons were children, Lerner often saw cute little girls wearing t-shirts reading 'Daddy's girl.'

"I didn't know why there weren't any t-shirts that said 'mama's boys,' " she says dryly.

These days, such shirts for boys are easy to find. In fact, Google searches for "mama's boy shirt" have notably climbed for the past few years.

Men who include 'momma's boy' on their profiles have a 7% higher probability of exchanging phone numbers with another user.

Michael Kaye, OkCupid

It wasn't difficult to find data proving we've evolved in our use of the phrase "mama's boy." After all, this is 2022. Every single thing is tracked by some major company, it seems, and "mama's boy" is no exception.

"There's been over 3 million mentions of terms like 'momma's boy' on people's profiles over the past few years," wrote Michael Kaye, the associate director of global communications at OkCupid, in an email. "Between December and April there was a 20% increase in these terms being mentioned. Men who include 'momma's boy' on their profiles have a 7% higher probability of exchanging phone numbers with another user."

Kaye (who also was quick to identify himself as a proud mama's boy in a phone interview) said sure, seven percent might not seem like much. "But when you think about there being millions and millions of people on dating apps like OkCupid, it's actually a pretty high success rate," he points out.

"It's a very clever strategy," agrees Helen Fisher. She's chief science advisor for Match.com. Fisher did not crunch any numbers specifically for the term "mama's boy," but she checked Match.com data about men who reference their moms in their profiles.

"It's only 1.4 percent of men who actually used the terms 'my mother,' my mom' or 'my mamma' but those 1.4 percent of men had a 26 percent increase in the likelihood to resign from the site because they had met somebody," she announced.

That sounds about right to Garret Watts, a 32-year-old YouTube personality and proud mama's boy. When he sees guys using that self-descriptor on dating apps, there's really just one word that comes to mind: honest.

After all, Watts points out, the vast majority of men are technically mama's boys, including himself. "Go ahead and call me a mama's boy," he says. " You're just calling me a human. You're just calling me a base-level emotionally responsible human."

Watts is pleased more people are reclaiming the expression "mama's boy" as a point of pride, but he says fundamentally, it's antiquated. "Let the stigma go," he says. "I say, let the phrase 'mamma's boy' burn. That belongs in the past."

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'Mama's boy' is a flex, not an insult, for a new generation of men - NPR

Reckoning With Harvard’s Ties to Slavery Requires Prison Divestment and Prison Education | Opinion – Harvard Crimson

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The recent Report of the Committee on Harvard & the Legacy of Slavery is a necessary work of scholarship and thought which is long overdue. While in awe of the authors and their superior knowledge of both Harvard and slavery, I remain troubled by something that is missing.

The report discusses the legacies of slavery that remained after the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution conferred emancipation nationwide in 1865. However, it stops short of addressing the full text of the 13th Amendment, wherein slavery is abolished except as a punishment for crime, and makes no mention of Harvards current role in the system that emerged from this exception.

In reality, slavery has never been completely banned in this country or in Massachusetts. The path from slavery and slave patrols to our racist carceral and policing systems is well-documented.

I will not attempt to instruct the reader in the history and horrors of prisons, jails, and detention centers in the United States and Massachusetts, or the violent policing that accompanies them. I have only been arrested and locked up overnight after protesting outside such a facility and know that my treatment was much better than average. It took weeks for me to heal both physically and psychologically from just that little bit, yet others endure much harsher treatment for longer or even die at the hands of this system, which is bolstered by racism.

Incarcerated people are compelled to perform what can best be described as slave labor and the bodies of the criminalized are commodified in business calculations and deals even inside prisons which are not operated by private corporations. I struggle to understand what it can mean for an academic institution to redress its legacy of slavery while ignoring its own ongoing role in perpetuating these unbearable wrongs.

Harvard affiliates and alumni continue to incarcerate other human beings through their work in government and the legal profession. How many advance their careers by producing intellectual justifications for legalized slavery? While other Harvard affiliates already do outstanding work for abolition, what could the institution do to make that the norm?

Although the report recommended many actions Harvard could take to reckon with its historical role in slavery, it did not offer much about present-day abolition. Harvards first step towards abolition must be a commitment to never again invest in corporations that implement or benefit from incarceration, taking guidance from the Harvard Prison Divestment Campaign. The most visibly harmful of these investments are in private prison corporations, but there are many others that exploit prison labor or provide goods and services necessary for the operation of government-run carceral institutions. Without prison divestment, is it not fair to say that slavery continues to fund Harvard University and that Harvard funds slavery?

For as long as slavery continues to exist by any name, abolition demands that we work to liberate those who are not free. Where we cannot yet physically liberate, we must still advance the freedom and dignity of incarcerated people. The students I met while teaching in the Education Justice Project the University of Illinois college-in-prison program offered the most eloquent endorsements of the liberatory value of education that I have ever heard. I can attest to the fact that there are excellent, overachieving students hungry for knowledge, who are locked up with only limited access to reading material and limited study time due to their aforementioned labor.

Several institutions of higher learning offer college-in-prison programs, but potential college students in the carceral system remain overwhelmingly underserved. Some are entirely deprived of their human right to higher education, and others can only access correspondence classes or programs offered by Christian colleges that eschew secular accreditation. It is time to establish a for-credit Harvard-in-prison program which would offer a superior education to the talented students incarcerated in the region.

At present, only a tiny percentage of free people enjoy access to a Harvard education. But is anyone ever admitted to Harvard College from prison? As we continue the work of abolition, why not offer the liberatory power of a Harvard education as one of our efforts? If the institution would support a college-in-prison program, I would, along with other faculty and students, help to make it a reality. Could some of those $100 million dollars allocated towards reckoning with Harvards legacy of slavery be directed towards the liberation of people who are still not free?

Sara M. Feldman is the preceptor in Yiddish in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations.

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Reckoning With Harvard's Ties to Slavery Requires Prison Divestment and Prison Education | Opinion - Harvard Crimson

Making space for abolition in the university The Metropolitan – The Metropolitan

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Keno Evol

Guest Opinion

Black Table Arts Art is the future event, April 24th, 2021. Credit: Uche Iroegbu.

The ongoing project to create abolitionist space in the university, at root, is a desire to be in communion; to be with others on terms not of the institution. As we venture to create these fugitive spaces, one could be reminded of the words of Harvard professor and Brazilian philosopher Roberto Mangabeira Unger in his lectures: Its like we created a space out of our rebellion but what fills the space? How we answer that question has everything to do with the task we take up to carve out places of belonging under conditions of constraint within the university.

When we refer to Black ontology, it seems, we are also thinking of spaces of abolitionwhich is to say, spaces whose existence constitute a combative imagination. The term combative imagination that I offer here speaks to ways of thinking and belonging that undermine state power and, more broadly, systems of authority.

When looking into the labyrinth of Black literature, we find such episodes of this kind of imagination. I am particularly interested in exploring these episodes of Black ontology inside the literary works of Toni Morrison, but also within the lived activism of Cedric Robinson, a political theorist and historian who, in organizing circles, we typically associate with the term racial capitalism. What I am interested in is the kind of ways of being together we find in Black fiction and also the lives of particular activists who clue us into how to keep spaces of abolition flowing inside the university as we recognize it is a place of constant constraint.

If we zoom in on, for example, Toni Morrisons Beloved, that in some ways can be seen as various episodes of Black ontology within each chapter; we see the kind of togetherness that can inform ways of belonging within the university. We can identify within the world of Beloved sensibilities that made relational bonds strong in the antebellum period that can instruct us on how to be together within the university as we try to challenge its power.

Beloved is in many ways a love story situated within terror. It is also a ghost story and a grief story. It tells a nonlinear narrative of Sethe and the consequences that haunt her. As it has been written about for decades, Sethe is a Black woman who, after a life in bondage, escapes to Ohio and now lives with her daughter, Denver, and elderly mother-in-law, Baby Suggs. Some moments of Black ontology that may be able to clue us into ways of getting together in the university are brought to us by way of Sethes daughter, Denver. There is a moment in the novel that almost seems like its own adventure where Denver remembers sneaking away from her home, house number 124; the house in some ways a character unto itself. She ventures to the other house where the other children were, and in this moment of the novel, we see Denver practice what could be described as Black fugitivity towards an education bound up in abolitionist practice as she seeks out the home of Lady Jones:

Once upon a time she had known more and wanted to. Had walked the path leading to a real other house. Had stood outside the window listening. Four times she did it on her owncrept away from 124 early in the afternoon when her mother and grandmother had their guard down, just before supper, after chores; the blank hour before gears changed to evening occupations. Denver had walked off looking for the house other children visited but not her. When she found it she was too timid to go to the front door so she peeped in the window.

What I want to suggest is that, like Denver, this is how we as students and faculty get to places of abolition in the university. In some ways we often feel like were in the woods seeking out other homes. Where the other children, or other students, are. We creep into these places, too timid at times to knock on the front door. We may be new to abolitionist vocabulary and frameworks. We may be unsure of the practical application of a more militant position inside an institution that may seem like an immovable block. What I want to put forward are ways of knowing we may be able to pick up from students like Denver. Morrison continues:

Lady Jones sat in a straight-backed chair; several children sat cross-legged on the floor in front of her. Lady Jones had a book. The children had slates. Lady Jones was saying something too soft for Denver to hear. The children were saying it after her. Four times Denver went to look. The fifth time Lady Jones caught her and said, Come in the front door, Miss Denver. This is not a side show.

So she had almost a whole year of the company of her peers and along with them learned to spell and count. She was seven, and those two hours in the afternoon were precious to her. Especially so because she had done it on her own and was pleased and surprised by the pleasure and surprise it created in her mother and her brothers. For a nickel a month, Lady Jones did what whitepeople thought unnecessary if not illegal: crowded her little parlor with the colored children who had time for and interest in book learning.

Within this episode of Black ontologywhich is to say, Black togetherness we see themes that resonate in Black abolitionist zones within the walls of the university. Denver sees her time spent in the parlor of Lady Jones as precious. Not only, I would say, because shes learning, but also because shes doing so with others in the context of bondage and constraint. Within this example we can see Lady Jones, a light skinned Black woman, being combative toward the state by the very nature of the activity happening within a context of surveillance and terror. Morrison reminds us the attitudes of the white gaze are such that they think the learning of Black children is unnecessary, if not illegal. But also within this moment of ontology, we get a vocabulary of pleasure and surprise. These kinds of zones that are organized by Black women such as Lady Jones instill sensibilities that the enslaved are outlawed in having; later in the book, Denver reminds us that slaves not supposed to have pleasurable feeling of their own; their bodies not supposed to be like that.

Within the happening of the crowded parlor in the woods, we see a practice of fugitive activity. There is also a pedagogy within Lady Jonesto welcome Denver, the outsider by the window, the onlooker who belongs to the dispossessed. This is also an abolitionist sensibility; its an abolitionist sensibility because abolition has always required collective study. And to be clear its not abolitionist first and foremost because theyre studying abolitionist theoryrather because the activity of study by those who are enslaved undermines the authority of the antebellum state. Also, to speak to claritythe goal it seems within the parlor located in the woods of Ohioit isnt first and foremost to overthrow the state, but merely to practice the activity of study outside the gaze of the state. How might our spaces of abolition in the university be transformed and exhalewhich is to say breathe betterby this reframe of the goal? This is not to say we cant imagine learning zones that abolish the university. It is to say that the goal of the spaces we organize within the university need not take on such expectation in order to fulfill its meaning.

The sensibilities we are able to take from Morrisons example of the parlor in the woods are in many ways the kinds of fugitive practices Cedric Robinson dedicated his lifework to. I think it is appropriate to speak about Cedric Robinson as a steward of what he called the Black radical traditionone who traced the origins of flight and fugitivity by Black people across the diaspora. He taught within the university but was first and foremost forged with the people outside the university in taking up the task of liberation. Within the account of his life in works such asCedric Robinson: The Time of the Black Radical Tradition, written by Howard professor Dr. Joshua Myers, we see an embodiment of fugitive practice that relates to Lady Jones. We see this particularly when we look at the ways in which Cedric taught at the University of Michigan in the 1970sfrom the Myers book:

Being in ear shot of Detroit Black radicalism provided important examples to study and engage. Black Studies scholars could not afford to ignore this movement as it provided direct answers to questions of revolutionary organization. It was an instant and example of praxisIn fact, as an early example of Black Studies practice, the entire semester featured both former and current organizers as presentersTeaching at the University of Michigan in both the political science and afro-american and african studies gave Cedric necessary classroom experienceThough the university tried to stop the practice, Cedrics..1972 political science course featured a segment called community control of prisons that was taught by John Sinclair the authority of the prisoner was the perspective that would reveal the prison as a side of oppression and brutality. Perhaps remembering his own experience working for Alameda County, Cedrics discussions closely resembled those we would later describe as prison abolitionists.

Like Lady Jones, Cedric Robinson does the work of Black ontology outside the gaze of authority. Within the university, Cedric is a steward of relationality which emerge abolitionist currents before a vocabulary of abolition entered institutions of education in the 1970s. These spaces of Black togetherness require their stewardswhich is to say those who care for and cultivate the relationships between the people that enter these fugitive spaces.

When thinking particularly about the context in which we find ourselves amidst a district-wide strike in Minneapolis, educators and paraprofessionals are bringing grievances to bear to improve their conditions within the ongoing labor of local education. To carve out abolitionist space in the university is to be in communion with those on strike. To be a steward of Black ontology, and by extension Black abolitionist space in the university, is to be a steward of relations that fill space that is indebted to rebellion outside the university. The desire held within these spaces are impulses first and foremost that seek to sustain the practice, the ongoing-ness, not the institution. To sustain these spaces is to undermine the authority of the institution because theyre not supposed to exist. Its within this ongoing-ness we find a hope to rely on. Joshua Myers reminds us of this in his work on Cedric Robinson:

Cedrics contribution to this theorizing was a talk he titled, Toward Fascism? Race, The Two reservations, and the Materiality of TheoryHe continued: The homeless have developed a knowledge of how to survive and help others survive; they are an enormous resource. I say that we cannot invent this stuff from some university, we can only hope it along.

About the author:

Tikkun Bambara is a writer and arts organizer. He is currently pursuing a degree in Ethnic Studies, and is a student of Black studies and Black poetics. His work zeros in on Black ontology and the Black radical tradition as curricula for the future. He is the founder of a local art cooperative in South Minneapolis for Black artists.

Bambara received the 2022 Minnesota Campus Compact Presidents Student Leadership Award from the Institute for Community Engagement and Scholarship, the Verve Grant, the Beyond the Pure fellowship, The Emerging Writers Grant, and The Spoken Word Immersion Fellowship for his work. His essays are available at MNArtists.com through the Walker Art Center.

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Making space for abolition in the university The Metropolitan - The Metropolitan

How American Exclusion Created the Chinese Church… – ChristianityToday.com

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Chinese Protestant Christianity was born in the crucible of Chinese interaction with European and American missionaries in the 19th century. This was an era marked by the expansion of British and American commercial and military power. After the Opium Wars (18391842 and 18561860), Great Britain successfully pried open China to the West and to Protestant missionaries. Before the United States acquired Hawaii and the Philippines, it was engaged in territorial expansion in North America. This territorial expansion was accompanied by rapid economic development that created a tremendous demand for labor. The abolition of slavery in the British territories (1807) and the United States (1863) only intensified the need for cheap labor globally.

These historical developments explain, in part, the growth of the Chinese diaspora and Chinese immigration to the United States and Canada. A small but significant presence in the Spanish, Portuguese, and Dutch colonies in the 16th through 18th centuries in Asia, the Chinese diaspora grew rapidly during British expansion. Chinese labor was crucial for the growth of the North American West. Much of Californias agricultural industry as well as US and Canadian railroads were built by Chinese contract workers from Guangzhou.

What about the Christians? Most were delighted that the British and American powers had pried China open for the spread of the evangelical faith and cultural uplift. Abolitionists, who fought to eradicate slavery and trafficking, saw new opportunities to share the gospel of liberty and equality globally.

In the 1850s, when Chinese immigrants started to come to the United States in significant numbers, the Western Protestant missionary presence in China was limited to Hong Kong and five treaty ports. American mission societies saw an opportunity to build a transpacific Chinese Christian network that could reap the benefits of American Christianity. But even before the first Chinese church in North America (todays Presbyterian Church in Chinatown, San Francisco) was started in 1853 by four Chinese Christian merchants, obstacles arose that would decisively shape the character of Chinese American Christianity.

First, Chinese immigrants almost immediately faced hostility. Like European immigrants, the first Chinese immigrants were adventure seekers who saw an opportunity to become rich through mining or commerce shortly after the news of gold strikes in California in 1849 spread to China. But in 1852, the state of California passed discriminatory taxes and later attempted to force Chinese out of the mines and stop Chinese immigration.

Image: WikiMedia Commons

Left: Presbyterian Church in Chinatown, San Francisco, started in 1853 by four Chinese Christian merchants. Right: A lily vendor in Chinatown between 1896 and 1906.

Protests from the Chinese associations (including a self-described naturalized citizen and Christian merchant, Norman Asing) could not stem the growing animosity. Even the advocacy of missionaries and mission agencies could do little to prevent the US (and later, the Canadian) government from passing discriminatory immigration and naturalization laws in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Second, the transient, geographically scattered, and male-dominant Chinese immigrants made it nearly impossible to form stable faith communities. This was especially true during the 1850s and 1860s when most Chinese worked in mines scattered across the American West. As the mines dried up, many settled in adjacent small towns. Some started shoe - and cigar-making companies; others entered domestic service.

The construction of the Central Pacific Railroad in the 1860s brought a new wave of contract laborers. Many later worked on railroad construction in Canada, the American South, and the Northeast. A number of white congregations reached out to their new Chinese neighbors through language schools; however, they could not retain them because of cultural-linguistic barriers and Chinese work transience. An attempt to plant a Chinese Baptist church in Sacramento in 1854 was quickly abandoned. Even the Presbyterian mission in San Francisco, the only free standing Chinese Christian church in North America at the time, became inactive by 1860.

In the 1870s, however, a series of events gave birth to North American Chinese Christianity. As the Chinese population nearly doubled to 63,000 by 1870 and approached 105,000 by 1880, animus toward the Chinese intensified. They were blamed for the 1870s economic downturn in the West. Lacking the legal protection that comes with citizenship, Chinese were driven out of mining towns and many were killed. As they fled into Chinatown enclaves, they created segregated urban slums. Fueled by the backlash against Reconstruction in the South, the anti-Chinese movement quickly grew into a national movement leading to the passage of the Chinese exclusion acts of 1882, 1892, and 1902.

During this time, American missionary agencies renewed their efforts to build up and support the Chinese Christian community. Beginning in 1868, Methodist, Congregationalist, Baptist, and Episcopalian missionaries and Chinese pastors were assigned to San Franciscos Chinatown. Before long, women missionaries accompanied them and established English language schools, community centers, and womens rescue homes.

A number of white missionaries gained notoriety for their fearless advocacy of the rights of the Chinese. William Speer (18221904) not only helped plant the Chinese Presbyterian mission in San Francisco, but he also left important testimony in the California state records defending the Chinese in the face of racial prejudice. His successors, Augustus W. Loomis (18161891), Ira M. Condit (18331915), and Donaldina Cameron (18691968) have all left important legacies as supporters of the Chinese in North America. Otis Gibson (18251889), an unflinching ally who started the Chinese Methodist work, set the tone for Protestant advocacy for racial justice. Congregationalist William C. Pond (18301925) was supported by the abolitionist American Missionary Association. He and the Chinese Congregationalist pastors were among the most passionate preachers of the gospel of human equality. Together, these missionaries and Chinese Christian leaders provided stability for the community and channeled denominational attention and support.

The first Chinese converts were clearly drawn to the egalitarianism of an abolitionist-inspired evangelicalism. In a speech at an anniversary celebration of the Methodist Chinese Mission in San Francisco in 1875, Ma See connected the Christian view of a Creator God and Chinese rights: If this world was created by the one universal God; if it belongs to God; if men are all created equal; if all men come from one family; if these things be so, and they are so, then the Chinese, of course have the same right to come to this land and to occupy the land, that the people of any other nation have.

They also distinguished between what they perceived to be authentic and false Christianity. In the North American Review (1887), Yan Phou Lee noted that when the Chinese were persecuted some years agowhen they were ruthlessly smoked out and murderedI was intelligent enough to know that Christians had no hand in those outrages; for the only ones who exposed their lives to protect them were Christians.

While white missionaries have been rightly accused of racial paternalism, they were among the few who protested anti-Asian violence and fought exclusionary and discriminatory legislation, albeit unsuccessfully. They modeled a postmillennial zeal that made public witness an indelible mark of Christian faithfulness. Despite their unequal collaboration with missionaries, Chinese Christians embraced a spirituality that wedded personal connectedness to God with social and political engagement. Together they built a Christian transnational network that envisioned racial uplift and national salvation.

Timothy Tseng is the Pacific Area Director for InterVarsity Christian Fellowships Graduate and Faculty Ministries (GFM) and Co-Executive Director of New College Berkeley. He has served as a seminary professor, founder of a non-profit organization, and pastor. His PhD dissertation was titled Ministry at Arms Length: Asian Americans in the Racial Ideology of American Mainline Protestantism, 18821952.

Originally published on ChinaSource. Used with permission under a content-sharing agreement.

[ This article is also available in and . ]

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Resident calls for council to be abolished over high costs and lack of work – The Northern Echo

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A MARSKE resident has called for the abolition of his local parish council.

Peter Finlinson claims Saltburn, Marske and New Marske Parish Council is not representative as less than two thirds of its members have stood for election, the remainder having been co-opted onto the council.

Mr Finlinson also said the council was not accountable for the money it collected and spent through its parish precept, and attendance by members was in decline.

He said: Parish councils have been dissolved in other parts of the country and savings made.

There are five parish councils across the borough with a combined budget of more than 500,000.

The 80-year-old, a former civil engineer, addressed an annual assembly of the parish council and said a poll of residents living in the parish was required to determine their views.

But the proposal did not win any formal support.

Mr Finlinson was told that all members of the council were hard-working and how regular audits took place.

A statement on behalf of the parish council and its chairman, Councillor Stan Glover said: The overwhelming view of those members of the public who spoke was that the parish council was doing a good job in supporting local groups and that its abolishment would be detrimental to the parish.

Mr Finlinsons proposal received no support from those present and there was no suggestion of it being seconded, so it failed on that basis without the requirement for a vote.

Peter Finlinson, of Marske

Local electors can petition the principal council in their area in this case Redcar and Cleveland for a review to consider the abolition or dissolution of a parish council.

Meanwhile, a poll could be used, for example to ask residents if they maintain confidence in the parish council.

But it would not be binding on the council and would simply express the views of the electorate who vote in it.

Mr Finlinson said: There have been problems with the parish council for a long time, if you make a complaint about them it never gets anywhere.

I am entitled to speak at the parish assembly and entitled to ask for the dissolution.It is wrong to say there is no support, people came up to me after the meeting and asked why they [the council] didnt ask for a vote.

Nobody votes for anybody on the parish council, I dont think people actually know what the parish council do, and even the members themselves I think some of them go for a gossip or a chat, rather than do any particular work.

Mr Finlinson described the parish council as a cost centre which he said could be absorbed into the borough council and done away with.

He said: You wouldnt be dealing with two tiers of local government, which in my view is too many.

I think the general public need to wake up, if you like, to the fact we have another tier of government, which I dont think is working, and which has been replaced in other parts of the country and savings have been made.

Councillor Stuart Smith, left, with current chairman, Councillor Stan Glover

Redcar and Cleveland councillor Stuart Smith, who represents the Saltburn ward and is also a Saltburn, Marske and New Marske Parish councillor, said: Peter has his own personal views.

All parish councillors are volunteers, we dont get paid, and we all are trying to seek to improve the communities in which we live.

We do levy a precept although it hasnt increased for seven or eight years but it does back into the community by awarding groups grants, who would struggle without this funding.

We have a warden in Saltburn, Marske and New Marske, who does a lot of work and also helps the borough council with work they cant do.

If you didnt have the parish council, the burden would go back onto the borough council who would struggle to cover with cutbacks what the parish do now.

Cllr Smith said it was a sad reflection that some people did not want to give up their time to represent their community, but it was also understandable.

They would complain, Im sure, if services the parish council provides disappear, other examples being the Christmas lights switch on and Britain In Bloom, he added.

Parish and town councils are the most local tier of government in England.

They have a range of powers, but these largely extend to local matters such as looking after community buildings, open space, allotments, play areas, some street lighting, bus shelters and car parks.

They can raise money through council tax the parish precept and are required to hold elections every four years.

Keep up to date with all the latest news on our website, or follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

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Resident calls for council to be abolished over high costs and lack of work - The Northern Echo

What we know about Louisiana abortion bill to charge mothers with murder – Daily Advertiser

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SCOTUS draft opinion on Roe v. Wade sparks protests around the country

Protests around the country were ignited by the leaked draft opinion from the Supreme Court on Roe v. Wade.

Damien Henderson, USA TODAY

A Louisiana bill that could charge people who have abortions and those who help them terminate pregnancy with murder has garnered national attention.

The bill comes as the debate surrounding abortion heats up following a leaked opinion from U.S. Supreme Court JusticeSamuel Alito that seems to indicate the overturning of Roe v. Wade, which provides abortion rights.

The bill, which says the unborn should be protected,was moved out of committee earlier this month and heads to the House floor for debate.

Here's what we know about the bill.

House Bill 813, sponsored by Rep. Danny McCormick (R-Oil City) andnamed the "Abolition of Abortion in Louisiana Act of 2022," would define "life" as beginning at fertilization.

It would allow state prosecutors to bring homicide charges against anyone who terminates a pregnancy, including medical personnel.

The bill defines a person as a "human being from the moment of fertilization" and an unborn child as "an individual human being from fertilization until birth."

Related: At Louisiana anti-abortion rally, angst over bill to charge those who get abortions with murder

Louisiana abortion showdown: What's next with bill that could charge mothers with murder?

The bill also directs the state to ignore the U.S. Supreme Court if it disagrees with any high court decision on abortion. It declares that any federal statute, regulation, treaty, executive order or court ruling that tries to supersede the bill's changes would be in violation of the U.S. and Louisiana constitutions and therefore void.

Any Louisiana judge who tries to enjoin, stay, overrule or void any provision of the bill would be subject to impeachment or removal if the bill passes.

The entire text can be read here.

If the bill were to pass, it could criminalize some forms of birth control, emergency contraception and in vitro fertilization (IVF), a complex series of procedures that help with fertility.

The original text of the bill would define "life" as beginning at fertilization.

Fertilization usually happens within 24 hours after sexual intercourse, but the womanmust be ovulating at the time. If ovulation is not happening at that time,fertilization can still occur up to six days after intercourse because the sperm cells can stay in the uterusand fallopian tube for that long.

Birth control works by using hormones to safely stop ovulation. If that doesn't work, birth control will prevent sperm from joining the egg and if that fails, it will thin the uterine wall to prevent implantation.

Plan B and other forms of emergency contraceptives work similarly to standard birth control.

IVF works by collecting mature eggs from ovaries and fertilizing them with sperm in a lab, according to Mayo Clinic. The fertilized embryo or embryos are then transferred to a uterus. The number of embryos transferred depends on the age and number of eggs retrieved.

Shreveport doctor explains: What's the difference in Plan B, birth controls pill?

'We can't wait on the Supreme Court': In Louisiana, abortion could become a crime of murder

McCormick told the USA TODAY Network he doesn't think there's a difference between a womanaborting herpregnancy or killing her2-year-old child.

"Murder is murder,"McCormicksaid."It's real simple. We're having the debate about whether the pre-born have the same protections as the born."

McCormick said the goal of the bill isn't to put people in jail but to "providethe same protections to the pre-born as the born."

Despite abortion restricting bills usually finding support in the Louisiana Legislature, many lawmakers and an anti-abortion group think McCormick's bill goes too far.

"I'm unapologetically pro-life from womb to tomb, but I can't support a bill that could charge the mother with murder; that bill is intense," said Democratic Sen. Katrina Jackson of Monroe.

Jacksonauthorized a constitutional amendment declaring there is no right to and no funding of abortion that was overwhelmingly supported by voters in 2020.

Louisiana Right to Life, the state's largest anti-abortion rights advocate, came out in opposition to McCormick's bill. The group argued it isunnecessary and contradictsits goals.

"Our position has always been women should not be treated as criminals," said Benjamin Clapper, executive director of Louisiana Right to Life, in an interview with USA Today Network. "We believe Louisiana is already prepared to protect every baby from abortion if the Supreme Court overturns (Roe v. Wade)."

More: Louisiana residents more supportive of abortion than previously, survey suggests

Right to Life: Louisiana Right to Life opposes bill that could charge women who have abortion with murder

The bill advanced earlier this month from the House Criminal Justice Committee on a 7-2 vote. It is scheduled to be taken up Thursday on the House floor.

The action taken on the bill by the Louisiana legislature can be tracked on the state's website.

Contact Ashley White at adwhite@theadvertiser.com or on Twitter @AshleyyDi. Reporters Greg Hilburn and Meredith G. White contributed to this report.

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What we know about Louisiana abortion bill to charge mothers with murder - Daily Advertiser

From the Maid’s Room to the Outskirts: How Does Architecture Respond to the Social Changes of Domestic Work? – ArchDaily

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From the Maids Room to the Outskirts: How Does Architecture Respond to the Social Changes of Domestic Work?

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The maid's quarters are "with their days numbered", although they still find a place in the new luxury apartments. The information is from a report published in Folha de S. Paulo in March of this year, which says that in 2018 less than 1% of domestic workers, mostly black women, lived on the premises of their employers - a low number when compared to the 12% of 1995. With the decrease in the number of professionals residing in the employers' homes, the "maid's room" would gradually be no longer part of the architectural plans of Brazilian housing buildings.

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Historically, the social organization based on servitude and slavery adapted domestic spaces according to their hierarchy. If the old sugarcane farms had large houses with all their scale and grandeur, it is because in the basements and slave quarters lived enslaved people who forcibly worked keeping this structure in operation. After the abolition of slavery, these people, now free but without any support to incorporate into society, continued working in the same functions, now out of the need to survive and under similar conditions. In this way, the logic of servitude in Brazilian society is perpetuated, incorporated to this day in the figure of domestic servants.

It is from the abolition of slavery and technological advances in sanitation that the spatial organization began to transform. The large houses migrated to the city and materialized in urban mansions and the slave quarters became the sheds at theback garden that shelters the employees dedicated to the domestic services. The traditional (bourgeois) Brazilian house recognizes three different areas in its spatial organization: social, intimate and service. While the intimate area is reserved for the residents of the house and the social part is dedicated to the entertainment of visitors, the service area is where the support spaces of a residence are located, those directly linked to the services that were performed by the slaves and that should not be revealed to visitors or visited daily by the family.

The sheds contained a bedroom and bathroom where these domestic workers lived and were usually located next to the kitchen and laundry, historically marginalized spaces. With the densification of the cities, the verticalization, and the permanence of a social hierarchy based on domestic services, the employees' dependencies are gradually leaving the sheds and migrating to residential buildings. Until the 1970s, it was common to see small two-bedroom apartments with servants' quarters not only in the wealthier classes, but also in the upper middle class. Among the richest, this practice is reproduced to this day.

The 20th and 21st centuries bring substantial social changes, such as a powerful popular struggle for labor rights and significant technological advances that transform some domestic dynamics. On the one hand, we have greater access to appliances that facilitate and optimize work, in addition to the industrial logic that facilitates access to processed foods. On the other hand, politically there is a set of labor conquests that establish rights and duties for workers and employers, the most recent being approved in 2013, which regularizes the work of domestic workers.

As a result, the number of domestic workers per household has decreased over time, but even so, the little room logic continues to exist. The Brazilian imperial-colonial heritage makes modern domestic servants assume the role of home helpers, which makes them almost indispensable for the family logic of the upper middle class, moreover for power and social status reasons. If the maid's room has remained active all these years, even with the changes in the dynamics of the home, what are the recent factors that make this space begin to disappear from domestic architecture?

First, the last 10 years have been marked by a general shift in labor relations. The idea of entrepreneurship and outsourcing, as well as the increase in the cost of living of the population and the consequent increase in the cost of domestic professionals, causes many domestic workers to be divided into several punctual and daily jobs, instead of a fixed and permanent job. If in the past, it was common to dedicate themselves exclusively to a family, today these professionals move through various workplaces and specialize in specific services, such as cleaning, cooking, etc.

At the same time, with the densification of cities and the scarcity of land, the price of the square meter has risen considerably, so that the real estate market has been building smaller and smaller residential projects and with the area increasingly optimized. In upper-middle-class apartments, the service facilities dedicated to professionals were suppressed, while the laundry room was reduced and the kitchen became a social area. The Folha de S. Paulo report points out that today, while these rooms continue to exist in the largest and most luxurious units in So Paulo, the market offers possibilities for plant adaptations that eliminate this room, with the option of transforming the small room into an office, or expanding the kitchen. Also, there are many refurbishments of old apartments that eliminate the maid's quarters and transform them into social areas.

However, as in the transition from slave labor to free labor, the current domestic worker has not lost the stigma of marginalization in society either. If in the past they were concentrated in the slave quarters, in the back house or in the maid's room, today they occupy the peripheral neighborhoods of cities, facing crowded public transport to move from service to service, lack of access to education, leisure and culture and remain victims of prejudice. Despite the changes in architectural dynamics over the centuries, the spatial organization continues to respond to the same social hierarchy derived from imperial-colonial logic, structurally reproducing racism and sexism.

References:

TIEGHI, Ana Luiza; GAVRAS Douglas. Quarto de servio resiste nos imveis de luxo, mas tem dias contados, 2022. Access here.VIANA, Mara Boratto Xavier; TREVISAN Ricardo. O Quartinho de Empregada e seu lugar na morada brasileira, 2016. Access here.DiEESE, Departamento Intersindical de Estatstica e Estudos Socioeconomicos. Dados atualizados do IBGE. Access here.

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Eliminating Single-Family Zoning Isn’t the Reason Minneapolis Is a YIMBY Success Story – Reason

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Minneapolis appears to be a YIMBY (Yes in my backyard) success story of relaxed zoning regulations leading to increased housing production and declining rents. Its much-ballyhooed abolition of single-family zoning doesn't have much to do with this success, however.

On Tuesday, a (now-deleted) tweet went viral juxtaposing a Slate article about Minneapolis' abolition of single-family zoning with a blog post detailing rising housing production and falling rent in the city. The caption of "how it started, how it's going" leaves one with the implication that the former is responsible for the latter.

A closer look at the numbers suggests that's not true. Housing production is up, and rents do indeed appear to be falling. But the effects of Minneapolis' particular means of eliminating single-family-only zoning, and allowing up to triplexes on residential land citywide, have been exceedingly modest.

Newly legal triplexes and duplexes make up a tiny fraction of new homes being built. Other less headline-grabbing reforms appear to be doing the Lord's work of boosting housing production.

This offers important lessons for cities trying to make themselves affordable places to live. The more radically deregulatory your reforms, and the more types of reform you adopt, the more successful they'll be.

First, some background.

In December 2018, the Minneapolis City Council approved the Minneapolis 2040 comprehensive plan. The plan included a host of reforms and policy goals on everything from employment to stormwater management. The most eye-catching policy was the one legalizing two- and three-unit homes on once-single-family-only zoned land citywide.

Zoning lawswhich regulate how much new housing can be built wherehave been coming under increasing fire for artificially constraining housing supply, which leads more people to compete for fewer homes, thereby driving up home prices and rents. Single-family zoning, in particular, has caught a lot of flak given that it places the strictest limits on density.

Minneapolis, by being the first city to eliminate single-family-only zoning, naturally attracted a lot of attention and positive press coverage (including from me).

The city's single-family zoning reform was implemented in January 2020. But the result was not an explosion in new development.

Rather, from January 2020 through March 2022, Minneapolis approved 62 duplexes and 17 triplexes, according to data collected by the city's Department of Community Planning and Economic Development (CPED). Exactly half of the duplexes and 14 of the triplexes were built on lots that were once zoned for exclusively single-family development.

Jason Wittenberg, a planner with CPED, says the duplex and triplex numbers represent an increase from previous years. They also come at a time when the single-family development of single-family homes is falling.

Any new housing is good housing. But these two- and three-unit developments still represent a tiny fraction of the roughly 9,000 housing units the city permitted during that same time period.

One reason the city hasn't seen more triplexes and duplexes spring up is that it left in place, or only slightly modified, additional regulations that constrain how large these buildings can be, says Emily Hamilton, a housing policy researcher at George Mason University's Mercatus Center.

"Most cities have a lot of components to their single-family zoning. Limiting development to one house per lot is the headline restriction," says Hamilton. "There are also restrictions on how large that lot has to be, how large that structure has to be, how much parking is required, and how far a structure has to be from its lot line."

Minneapolis' reforms do allow for modest increases in building size for duplexes and triplexes in some zoning districts or under certain conditions. But generally, they still require these developments to fit within the same "envelope" as the single-family homes they'd replace.

"It's not enough to create the flexible conditions that are necessary to make it worthwhile to tear down a house that's already there, and build something else," says Hamilton. She recommends much more generous allowances for how much floor area new development can have.

Still, the numbers don't lie and Minneapolis is in fact seeing an increase in new housing development. According to CPED's numbers, the city issued close to 4,000 building permits annually for new housing units from 2018 through 2021. That's an increase from the 2,600 units the city was permitted on average each year from 2013 through 2017.

The city has already permitted some 2,500 units in 2022 so far, reports the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, which puts it well on its way toward surpassing last year's numbers. And that increased supply is having the predictable, desirable effect of suppressing rental prices.

Janne Flisrand, writing at local urbanist blog Streets MN, has parsed rental price data to find that median, nominal rents for one- and two-bedroom apartments are renting for less today than they did in 2018. Median prices for three-bedroom units have ticked up by 2 percent. This is in spite of record inflation and a nationwide trend of rising rents.

What's responsible for the increased housing production then?

Wittenberg credits the city's elimination of parking minimumswhich had typically required one parking spot per housing unitwith facilitating increased construction of smaller apartment buildings.

The city has been chipping away at residential parking minimums since 2009. The Minneapolis 2040 plan eliminated them entirely. (The city has also adopted some rather un-free market parking policies, including parking maximums in some areas and bike parking minimums.)

Data culled by Wittenberg, and shared with Reason, shows that 19 major projects have been approved by Minneapolis' Planning Commission since parking minimums were eliminated. The median project provided .42 residential parking spaces per unit, with smaller apartment buildings typically including even less parking.

"For site constraint reasons and economic reasons, it would have been hard to park those buildings at one parking space per unit," he says. "We're pretty clearly seeing that is making a significant difference."

In January 2021, Minneapolis also implemented additional parts of the 2040 Minneapolis comprehensive plan that allows for larger, denser apartment buildings in more of the city, particularly along commercial corridors and near public transit stops. That's also helped facilitate more development, says Wittenberg.

Flisrand, on Twitter, argues that the fight over eliminating single-family-zoning sucked up most of the attention in the Minneapolis 2040 debate, thus paving the way for more impactful policies like parking minimum elimination and commercial corridor upzoning.

That political dynamic might not replicate everywhere, however. In California, for instance, the state has managed to eliminate single-family zoninglegalizing duplexes and accessory dwelling units everywhere but failed to advance more ambitious bills to upzone near transit stops and job centers.

There are reasons one would want triplex legalization to work beyond its power as a political prop too.

The per-square-foot construction costs of a missing middle duplex or triplex are less than a larger apartment, making it desirable on affordability grounds, says Hamilton. She also says these types of units would expand consumer choice for folks who are done with apartment living but can't afford a single-family home of their own in a given area.

One also doesn't want to learn the wrong lesson that eliminating single-family zoning is the only supply increasing reform cities need to adopt.

There's a certain current of thought on the political leftrepresented most prominently by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (DN.Y.)that supports eliminating single-family zoning in wealthy neighborhoods while also expressing extreme skepticism of denser private, market-rate development elsewhere in the city

But legalizing the latter type of development, at least in Minneapolis's experience, appears to go a lot farther in actually producing more housing units and holding down rents.

More and more jurisdictions across the country are catching on to the fact that their zoning laws are strangling housing production and driving up housing costs, and moving to make changes.

The legislatures of Oregon, California, and Maine have all passed laws eliminating single-family zoning. Other cities and states are looking to follow suit.

The lesson from Minneapolis, at least, appears to be that modest reforms will produce modest results. Slashing regulation with a Randian abandon will do a better job of legalizing housing in a way that leads to actual housing production and falling prices.

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Eliminating Single-Family Zoning Isn't the Reason Minneapolis Is a YIMBY Success Story - Reason

Gotabaya Rajapaksa repeats assurance on executive power, says new govt will… – Hindustan Times

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A day after promising Sri Lanka a new cabinet without Rajapaksas in a televised address, the crisis-hit countrys president, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, on Thursday morning said the new government will be given the opportunity to take the country forward. He yet again repeated the assurance that there will be consideration on the abolition of the executive presidency - which gives sweeping powers to the countrys leader, and has been a key demand of the demonstrators ever since a fresh wave of agitation began over the economic crisis in March.

Steps will be taken to form a new gov to prevent the country falling into anarchy & to maintain the affairs of the state that have come to a halt. A PM who commands majority in Parliament & is able to secure the confidence of the people will be appointed within this week. (sic), the Sri Lanka president tweeted.

The new gov will be given the opportunity to present a new program & empowered to take the country forward. Further, steps will be taken to amend the constitution to re-enact the contents of the 19th Amendment to further empower the Parliament. (sic), another post by the 72-year-old leader read.

With the new government and their potential to stabilise the country, we will have an opportunity to discuss this & work towards a common consensus, the Sri Lanka president said, adding that calls from various factions for the abolition of the executive presidency will be considered.

As the country continues to witness violence and protests, he urged: I humbly request assistance in maintaining the uninterrupted function of the state machinery in order to protect the lives of the people & their property. To maintain continuous supply of essentials without allowing the country to collapse at any point in time.

On Wednesday, in a televised address, the Sri Lanka president stopped short of resigning and announced that a new prime minister and a new cabinet would be appointed this week.

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Class of 2022: ‘We can do this together,’ said mother and daughter, graduating together and ready to continue advocacy through social work – VCU News

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By Mary Kate Brogan

Felicia Smith had long expected to go back to school before she finally became a student in theBachelor of Social Workprogram at Virginia Commonwealth University in 2018. When she first went to college, she stopped her studies to work full-time. She later planned to return to school 26 years ago when she was expecting her oldest child, Raevena return that went on hiatus due to complications during the pregnancy.

This month, both mother and daughter will earn theirMaster of Social Workdegrees in the clinical track from VCUsSchool of Social Workand become eligible for licensure as clinical social workers, while becoming two-time VCU graduates in the process. A drive toward helping others and a desire to create change have motivated both Smiths in their graduate studies.

Felicia, 50, who earned her B.S.W. in 2020 after transferring to VCU from Germanna Community College, and Raeven, 26, who graduated in 2018 with aB.S. in Psychologyfrom theCollege of Humanities and Sciencesand a minor inGender, Sexuality and Womens Studies, didnt always expect to go through the program together. In fact, it took some time for each of them to realize social work might be the field for them: Felicia after volunteering in ministry alongside her husband, Raymond, a longtime U.S. Marine, and Raeven after hearing her mother hint at Raevens budding social work skills while navigating her desire to empower others as a mental health counselor.

I would rip around the house talking about abolition, Black Lives Matter, LGBTQ topics, and my mom was always like, You sound like a social worker, Raeven said with a smile.

Because with social workers, not only do we do the clinical aspect, but were also advocators, Felicia said in reply. We advocate for our clients, advocate for different populations. So we dont just stick with counseling and therapy but the whole gamut, and thats what I love about social work.

So I started doing my research, Raeven said, And I was like, I think Im about this, and I can make this little switch not even a big switch because its always kind of been placed in my path. So my mom has been an inspiration toward becoming a social worker.

When choosing a program for her masters, Raeven had several options, and VCU was most appealing from a financial perspective. That, combined with encouragement from her mom, who was set on VCU for her masters, made the decision to attend VCU easier.

My mom was like, Come on, Raeven, we can do this together. Imagine: We can lean on each other when we need to, and we will both understand what were going through together, Raeven said. At first, I was like, Do I really want to go to school with my mom? Because most people are like, I don't think I could do that, but I was like my mom and me, sometimes we are more like sisters. We bump heads sometimes, but then were like, OK, were cool.

The two enrolled and began taking many of their courses together. Nicole Corley, Ph.D., who taught Raeven and Felicia together in her Sequence Policy course, remembers being surprised to learn they were related.

I would not have known, unless someone explicitly told me, that they were mother and daughter, Corley said. And one of the reasons was because they were equally passionate about pursuing social work and the work that they wanted to do, yet they just had different things that they wanted to do and different approaches and also just different personalities.

Felicia was more extroverted, more talkative, whereas Raven was more introverted, something that I very much am familiar with because I'm the same way, and was a little bit more reserved. Whether reserved or more outspoken, their commitment to social justice work, generally, and working with military and LGBTIA+ populations, specifically, was undeniable. I am grateful for our time together in the classroom and know they will help move the profession of social work forward.

With the racial justice movement happening in the worldand in Richmondaround them during Felicia and Raevens time in the program, Corley recalls the pair working with their classmates to create a space in the classroom for grace, compassion and an honest sharing of their experiences.

Creating such spaces wasnt just something Felicia and Raeven did in the classroom; they were both members of the Association of Black Social Workers at VCU, which Raeven called a cornerstone of her grad school experience. After organizing a panel in fall 2020 to teach others the importance of not retraumatizing Black students when discussing what was in the news at the time, Felicia, whod been part of the student organization as an undergrad, served as the student organizations president in 2021.

My mom was like, Come on, Raeven, we can do this together. Imagine: We can lean on each other when we need to, and we will both understand what were going through together. At first, I was like, Do I really want to go to school with my mom? Because most people are like, I don't think I could do that, but I was like my mom and me, sometimes we are more like sisters. We bump heads sometimes, but then were like, OK, were cool.

I'm older; I didn't go to college to want to even be part of an organization. I just wanted to get my degree and go do what I had to do. But as destiny has it, my vice president at the time talked me into leading, Felicia said.We were able to create a space as Black students in the field of social work, to be able to share our experiences, to help encourage and to navigate through a minority perspective.

Felicia said the lessons shes learned from the student organization and the M.S.W. program, all contextualized by the changes going on in the world around them, will stick with her throughout her career.

Being part of this program, learning what we learned in some of our racial justice components that we have in a lot of our classes, it has empowered me, Felicia said. It has given me confidence as a Black woman that I have a right to sit at this table and advocate for this particular population, regardless of my gender, regardless of my race. The VCU social work program gave me those tools and that confidence to step out and not be afraid to be assertive.

Seeing that assertiveness from my mom definitely inspired me, Raeven said. It was like, If my mom can do it, why cant I?

That experience has helped Raeven come out of her shell and left her with advice for future students in the program.

Ask for what you need; ask for what you want, said Raeven, thinking of professors such as Corley who encouraged her. Thats something that I wish I would have done a little bit more. Go knock on those professors doors, tell the field placement what your hopes and your desires are and where you see yourself, and just keep putting yourself out there. Its intimidating, its nerve-wracking. But you have people who want to see you thrive so just go for it.

Raevens time in the program has affirmed her interest in working one-on-one with LGBTQIA+ individuals after field placements with the YWCA, Advocates for Richmond Youth and Side by Side in Richmond.

Felicia plans to take her skills into the nonprofit world, helping veterans experiencing homelessness to connect with the resources they need. Field placements at the United Community in Fairfax, Virginia, and Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Washington, D.C., solidified that interest. Shes interested in giving back to the military community from her years as a military spouse and seeing the challenges that face veterans, particularly veterans of color.

In a few years, Felicia hopes to be running Faiths Place, an organization of her own for veterans experiencing homelessness, alongside her husband. And, she said, the invitation is open for Raeven to join the family business when shes ready.

In the meantime, the mother and daughter who, Felicia said, thought we were close because we are a military family that lived overseas with no other family but each other will carry a special memory of a time that made those ties even stronger.

My mom has very different identities to her that I had no idea about, Raeven said.

This has brought us even closer just to get to really know my daughter and see her in her authentic arena with her friends, Felicia said, turning to face her daughter, And I guess for you to see me just be Felicia, not Mom.

Geoff LoCicero at the VCU School of Social Work contributed to this piece.

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The Tubman Center’s road to justice and reconciliation | Binghamton News – Binghamton

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We first learn about Harriet Tubman in elementary school: an extraordinary woman who escaped slavery only to return, again and again, to lead others to freedom on the Underground Railroad.

But this great soul was also part of a complex tapestry of abolitionists, challenging the unjust laws and social structures of their day to create a society free from the stain of human bondage. Some achieved prominence in the history books, but many others toiled in relative obscurity, focused solely on the work of justice and liberation.

The collaborative effort to create lasting change is the heart of Binghamton Universitys Harriet Tubman Center for Freedom and Equity, directed by History Professor Anne Bailey and Associate Director Sharon Bryant, also the associate dean of diversity, equity and inclusion for Decker College of Nursing and Health Sciences.

People like Harriet Tubman did amazing work bringing people to freedom from the South to this area and other areas in the North. But she also worked with a group of abolitionists, and that was a multicultural group, both Black and white. It wasnt a one-woman show, Bailey says. In many ways, thats what were doing: Were trying to empower others to be co-conductors with us. Were saying, Join the effort in any way you can.

The center opened in 2019 the 400th anniversary of the consistent presence of people of African descent in North America, and the start of race-based slavery in what became the United States. The centers fundamental mission is to advance justice and equity across multiple dimensions, particularly in history, educational access and success, and in medicine and science, technology, engineering and math (STEM).

Over the past couple of years, many more people have become aware of rampant inequity in American society, and tensions across the political spectrum run high. The Tubman Center is vital in providing a forum for the issues of the day to be discussed and deliberated about, says Dean of Libraries Curtis Kendrick, who serves on the centers advisory committee.

The center is dedicated to honoring not only the contributions of people of African descent, but Black, indigenous and people of color (BIPOC) more generally. Despite the obstacles posed by the pandemic, its work has continued apace, with a springtime speaker series offered through Zoom. In September 2021, the center opened its physical office in Academic B; more than 200 people attended a grand opening ceremony outdoors, with small, socially distanced tours inside the new space.

While the Black Lives Matter movement has sparked interest in matters of racial equity nationwide, Bryant and Bailey describe the Tubman Centers work as proactive and long-term, rather than in reaction to current events. Consistent advocacy on issues related to equity is critical, they say.

Kimberly Jaussi, an associate professor of organizational behavior and leadership in the School of Management, was eager to become involved in the centers work since its start, inspired by Bailey and Bryants vision and its transformative potential. She is currently a member of its advisory board and also served as an ambassador for the centers Truth and Reconciliation initiative, encouraging members of the Dickinson Community (where she is collegiate professor) to participate.

I wholeheartedly believe in the mission of the center to bring equity to the research, teaching and culture of the University, and to do so in a way that honors the truths of our history, she says. It is helping Binghamton become a far more equitable institution, which is very impactful in recruiting both new faculty and future students. It will also directly improve the lives of all stakeholders of the organization.

Truth and Reconciliation

To date, the centers most prominent initiative involved an intensive Truth and Reconciliation process; it led to the creation of 10 recommendations to foster true diversity and accountability at Binghamton University. These recommendations include increasing faculty and staff diversity, along with support and mentoring; establishing systems of accountability to mark how well colleges and departments are progressing toward their goals; strengthening academic and social support systems for BIPOC students; and increasing BIPOC representation among the Universitys senior leadership.

Such changes are needed to fulfill Binghamtons mission of a quality education for all. While progress has been made since the Universitys founding, its still a profoundly white space; out of a total of 1,055 faculty members, 39 are Black, 44 Latinx, 187 Asian or Pacific Islander and six Native American.

Undergraduate student Kelly Wu, doctoral student Amanda Ortiz and Shauna Asson, project coordinator at the Harriet Tubman Center for Freedom and Equity, work together at the center in the Academic B Building. Image Credit: Jonathan Cohen.

The commissions recommendations will do much to enhance diversity on our campus and make Binghamton University a place that is truly welcoming and just, President Harvey Stenger said during the Tubman Centers grand opening. This year we celebrate Binghamton Universitys 75th anniversary, and I can think of no better way to mark the occasion than to recognize the contributions that the BIPOC community has made to our University, and to commit ourselves to becoming a fairer, more equitable campus.

A crucial first step in equity work is listening to voices that often have gone unheard. Starting in the spring of 2021, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) accepted written and video testimonies from faculty, staff, students and alumni, and also held six listening sessions for those who wished to give in-person testimony.

Listening to and reading individual statements and testimonies was humbling, says Kendrick, who served on the TRC panel.

The problems conveyed to us by alumni from the 1990s were remarkably similar to concerns voiced by contemporary students in spite of the intervening years, he says. It was impossible not to be moved by the passion that people spoke with, even about events that transpired many years ago. I felt honored to be part of it as people entrusted us with stories that were deeply personal, and at times, troubling.

Ewuraba Annan shares this assessment. As a masters student in human rights, she both participated as a TRC panel member and worked as a student assistant for the Tubman Center. As difficult as the hearing process was, she also found cause for optimism.

Even during the most emotional sessions, people were still willing to share and have a relationship with the University because they know theres a potential for change, she reflects.

Annans experiences through the Tubman Center helped instill a deeper perspective on the kinds of systemic change needed to create a more equitable University. Both problems and solutions are multi-layered and require participation from everyone on campus, across disciplinary lines, she says.

Since finishing her masters degree in May 2021, she joined the University as an admissions counselor and decided on a career in higher education. Her experiences through the Tubman Center are proving valuable in connecting with prospective students who are interested in equity issues, she says.

A Tubman Center research assistant since her sophomore year, senior biochemistry major Kelly Wu also had the opportunity to hear TRC testimony. The Tubman Center may seem an unusual choice for someone planning a future in laboratory research, but Wu has found her time there deeply rewarding.

Growing up, her family rarely watched the news or discussed politics; her parents also didnt vote. As a result, she didnt truly know the obstacles that many immigrants and minority families face in America.

Working for the center has certainly changed my perspective on the importance of being active in the fight against inequality, she says.

The ambassadors

By the time the TRC listening sessions began, the campus was already engaged in dialogue on equity issues, thanks to the efforts of TRC ambassadors from across the Universitys schools and colleges. These ambassadors hosted lunchtime discussions, shared readings and engaged in one-on-one conversations, all of which promoted participation in the TRC process.

Among them was Christine Podolak, associate director of experiential education for the Master of Public Health program, who led two discussions around the theme of reparations in connection with a spring debate on the issue. She also serves on the Professional Staff Senates new diversity subcommittee, and also helped draft a policy statement related to racism as a public health crisis as a member of the New York State Public Health Associations policy and advocacy subcommittee.

During the past several years, Podolak has read up on social inequities and racism, discussed the topic with colleagues, participated in trainings and workshops, and reflected on her own personal experiences. She realized that she has much more to learn and understand about the true impact of structure and institutional barriers faced by people of color.

I think we all have the opportunity to contribute to this important work and move toward a better, more equitable future, and remember that we always have something more to learn, she says.

Bailey named to NYS African-American History Commission

Binghamton University History Professor Anne C. Bailey was recently appointed by Gov. Kathy Hochul to New York States 400 Years of African-American History Commission.

Hochul cited Baileys commitment to the concept of living history, in which events of the past are connected to current and contemporary issues. Bailey is also concerned with the reconciliation of communities after age-old conflicts such as slavery, war and genocide.

The commission will bring people together via events, activities and educational research. Other appointees to the commission include NAACP New York Conference President Hazel Dukes; CCNY Professor Laurie Woodard; University at Buffalo Professor Henry Taylor; Syracuse University Associate Dean for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Kishi Ducre; Federation of Protestant Welfare Agencies CEO Jennifer Jones Austin and Schomburg Center Director Joy Bivins.

For every reminder of the pivotal role New York has played in the fight for civil rights, there is another, more painful reminder of why that fight was necessary in the first place, Hochul says. We must recognize and acknowledge shameful chapters in our states past, ensure New Yorkers have a better understanding of our history, and fight racism and bigotry in all forms.

Departments, programs and schools are also addressing matters of equity on their own. The University Libraries have undertaken an initiative to identify and mitigate patterns of systemic racism in their operations, for example. Theyre also conducting an audit of their personnel practices to identify and mitigate bias, and assessing their collections to ensure that they more adequately represent perspectives from beyond the dominant culture.

The Libraries also have established an Office of Inclusion, Diversity, Equity and Accessibility, and faculty and staff volunteers have created an anti-racism resource guide, Kendrick says.

Bryant and Bailey find the willingness of their colleagues to explore issues of equity and to correct structural racism encouraging.

It turns out that once we published these recommendations, the very best-case scenario has happened so far, which is that theres a number of folks all across this campus who have taken ownership of them, Bailey says. That says a lot about our campus.

Other initiatives

Since its opening, the Tubman Center also held its inaugural speaker series on the Road to Reparations, held online due to the coronavirus pandemic. The series kicked off with Mary Francis Berry, LHD 99, from the University of Pennsylvania, the former head of the National Civil Rights Commission, followed by Hilary Robertson-Hickling from the University of the West Indies in Jamaica and author, educator and STEM entrepreneur Calvin Mackie. More than 300 people attended the virtual events, which had multiple co-sponsors from across the campus community.

The center is now planning its second springtime speaker series and establishing a faculty affiliate program, as well as fundraising for several initiatives, including a faculty fellowship and a Tubman Scholars program to provide an opportunity for undergraduate and graduate students to understand the roots of equity and freedom work.

One of the goals behind the faculty fellowship is to give BIPOC faculty more opportunities to work on their research and advance their careers. Thats often a stumbling block for people moving through the ranks of academia, Bailey says. Financial resources and mentoring support may help bridge the disparities in faculty diversity numbers, along with promoting excellent scholarship.

Plans are also under development for a future Harriet Tubman statue and memorial garden on campus. The site will represent one stop on the Underground Railroad, as well as identify other abolition sites in Upstate New York.

Having a monument of Harriet Tubman and a memorial garden on campus will prompt all who walk our campus to see, feel and remember the atrocities of slavery and reaffirm a commitment to bring equity and justice to not just our campus, but wherever they walk as alumni, Jaussi says.

Just like conductors on the Underground Railroad, the Tubman Center encourages all members of the campus community to become involved in equity work in whatever way they can, whether through sharing their talent and expertise, volunteering or offering financial support. All are necessary to create a more just society and culture.

That work can evolve, too, much as Tubmans did: After the abolition of slavery, she created a senior home for the formerly enslaved and engaged in other work to support her community. With an eye on the future, she also set aside funds to continue her work long after her death.

Its a wonderful guide for us, Bryant says of Tubman and her legacy. Were trying to move forward in and be present in the now, but also have eyes on the future and how we envision what the center could become.

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The Tubman Center's road to justice and reconciliation | Binghamton News - Binghamton

Farm labourers: The long road ahead – Deccan Herald

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The celebration of International Workers Day calls for a review of the farm labourers' position and their struggle, a subject of far less attention than deserved. The recent farmers' protest witnessed unprecedented support at all levels. Farm labourers were supporting the farmers and raising their own issues as well.

Slogans like 'No Farmers, No Food' excluded almost half of the workforce which comprised the labourers. So, the slogan was changed to 'No Land, No Life' and 'Kisan Mazdoor Ekta Zindabad'. The protest songs also reflected Kisan Mazdoor Ekta, unity between peasant workers and farmers.

The Union government brought the three contentious farm laws alongside the labour codes; the government brought these laws during the Covid-19 lockdown, assuming that people would not get out of their homes to protest. The agricultural community was excluded from the discussions regarding the implementation of these laws which involved the abolition of APMC Mandis, MSP (minimum support price) and land-grabbing by corporates. Farm labourers, despite their high share in these sectors, were absent.

Also Read:Bringing parity in state cooperative laws

Punjab Agriculture University (PAU) data reveals shocking details that almost half of the suicides in the farm sector consist of labourers. Out of a total of 16,606 suicide cases from 2000 to 2015, mostly due to debt, 9,007 were farmer suicides and 7,234 were by rural labourers. The average loan for farm labourers is less than the farmers', who have land as collateral; farm labourers have to struggle for loans. Another PAU study explains that after depeasantisation, most of the farmers work as farm labourers on the very land they once owned.

There is an average debt of Rs 68,329 in every agricultural family in Punjab. Job opportunities in the state are shrinking; families are struggling for a source of income. The situation is getting worse when expenditure is comparatively higher due to inflation. Another PAU study shows that 91 per cent of the families committing suicides depend upon wage labour, their biggest source of income. Only 0.04 per cent of suicide victims' families were engaged in MGNREGA work and 4.48 per cent of these families are involved in government jobs.

To cope with issues of finance, agricultural labourers borrow money as loan. Among the 7,303 agricultural labourers who committed suicide in Punjab from 2000 to 2018, most of the families took loans from non-institutional sources such as money lenders, big landlords, loansharks, shopkeepers, friends and relatives. Only 7.37 per cent of the debt had been borrowed from institutional sources like commercial banks and cooperative banks/societies. Both the psychological stress and socio-economic conditions have forced these labourers to commit suicide.

A long-term suggestion is radical land reform; among the four types of land reforms, land consolidation, land ceiling, land tenancy acts and zamindari abolition act, only the tenancy acts could benefit the farm labourer. Both the state as well as big zamindars are responsible for the failure of these reforms. Furthermore, the green revolution enlarged the gap between big landlords and workers who were either landless or marginalised. The reduction in subsidies post-1990 reforms made labourers vulnerable to either commit suicide or migrate to urban spaces as cheap labour.

Also Read:India considers restricting wheat exports as heat destroys crops

The recent farmers' protest was a landmark event, not just for farmers but also for labourers. For the protracted period of this protest, when farmers were spending time at Delhi borders and other protest sites, farm labourers had complete responsibility of the farm. Though many attempts were made to break Mazdoor Kisan Ekta, it still had a significant impact in uniting labourers and farmers.

Farm labourers have started forming a single class of farmers and farm labourers; now it is up to the farmers to ensure proper space for labourers. Farm unions have to initiate reforms. Some of the farm unions are also labour unions such as the Majdoor Kisan Sangharsh Committee, All India Kisan Mazdoor Sabha and there are many farm unions with labour wings like BKU Ekta Ugrahan, All India Kisan Sabha and a few others. Being in a position of dominance, it is the farm Union's responsibility to include the labourers.

Farm labourers need reforms like minimum wages, reduction in working hours, scholarships for their kids, food security for minimum nutritional requirements, access to public health and alternative employment when there is less agricultural work. In the patriarchal division of labour where fodder collection for cattle and fuelwood is seen as women's work, it is paramount to ensure fodder for farm labourers preventing women farm labourers from sexual harassment and giving them give them a sense of dignity.

Land distribution is a highly caste-based phenomenon and the land ceiling acts failed to materialise. In Punjab, more than two-thirds of agricultural labourers belong to the Scheduled Caste, who own less than 3.5 per cent of the state's agricultural land and comprise around 32 per cent of the state's population. Radical land reforms can secure land for the landless and address the issue of inequalities.

(The writers are PhD scholars at Jawaharlal Nehru University and were part of farmers movement 2020-21)

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The Afro-Venezuelan Culture And History That Is Being Celebrated And Protected – Travel Noire

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On May 10, VenezuelanscelebrateDay of Afro-Venezuelans in honor of the social, political, economic, and cultural contributions Afro-Venezuelans have made in the nations history.

There is much about Afro-Venezuelan culture that remains uncelebrated in the world of Black history. The light at the end of the tunnel for the African Diaspora in this South American country is the instituted Afro-Venezuelan day.

During the 16th century, Spanish colonizers brought enslaved Africans to Venezuela. The enslaved were typically brought to work in copper mines, cocoa agriculture and sugar plantations to Coro and Bura (Yaracuy), Isla Margarita, Cuman and the regions surrounding Caracas.

Much like elsewhere in the Americas and the Caribbean, slave revolts were rampant in Venezuela. Unfortunately, this history was often intentionally undiscussed in historys retellings.

Today there are various accounts of the legacies and contributions of African descendants in Venezuela. For instance, historians often widely cite Pedro Camejo as one African immortalized in Venezuelan history as El Negro Primero, because he was always the first to ride into battle.

During the final battle of Carabobo, Camejo was fatally wounded but returned to General Paz to utter one of the most famous statements in all of Venezuelan history: General, vengo decirle, adis, porque estoy muerto (translation: General, I have come to say goodbye, because I am dead). A statue of Camejo still stands in the Plaza Carabobo in Caracas. It is the only statue commemorating an African in all of Venezuela.

By 1911, the narrative changed significantly when Jos Manuel Nez Ponte became one of the first scholars to center Africans. In doing so he condemned the prioritisation of white slaveocracy in his book A Historical Study on Slavery and Abolition in Venezuela (translated: Estudio histrico acerca de la esclavitud y de su abolicin en Venezuela).

Afro-descendants traditionally lived in the rural coastal zones of the country, but have begun to migrate to urban centers like Caracas, according to Minority Rights Group International. Today there is an increasing amount of pride in Afro-Venezuelan roots in the country, including in identity and Afro hair.

The resistance of Afro-Venezuelans is a huge part of the culture that is, thankfully, gaining more acknowledgement.

On May 10, Venezuelans celebrate their African ancestry with mass ceremonies and parades complete with Afro-Venezuelan dishes, song, speeches, African-inspired artwork and of course, dance.

In 2005, Hugo Chavez, the then president, launched a national initiative to increase awareness and education about the Afro-Venezuelan community. Claiming his own African descent, Chavez established May 10 as Afro-Venezuelan Day.It also sits within Afro-Descendant Monthin the whole of May.

Among Chavezs many policies within this particular moment of embracing and protecting Afro-Venezuelan culture, lies the inclusion of African descent Venezuelans to the education curriculum. Within the commission, a requirement is to examine, advise and propose reforms on racially and culturally appropriate education. Schools must also incorporate the contributions of Afro-Venezuelans in their curriculum.

Chavez also famously passed anti-discrimination laws to further diminish historical inequality and racism in Venezuela.

Related: How Afro-Chileans Are Fighting To Be Recognized In Chile

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The Afro-Venezuelan Culture And History That Is Being Celebrated And Protected - Travel Noire

The Russian War on Ukraine Has Always Been a War on Its Language – Literary Hub

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For Carolyn Forche, because she asked.This is what power really is: the privilege of ignoring anything you might find distasteful.Oksana Zabuzhko*

We must thank fate (and the authors thirst for universal fame) for his not having turned to the Ukrainian dialect as a medium of expression, because then all would have been lost, wrote Vladimir Nabokov in his 1959 study, Gogol. He continued: When I want a good nightmare, I imagine Gogol penning in Little Russian dialect volume after volume. What he calls the Little Russian dialect is none other than the Ukrainian language, which is about as close to Russian as Spanish is to Italian.

Nabokovs dismissal of the Ukrainian language reflects a position taken by countless Russian writers and intellectuals over the last century. Such attitudes have consequences. Its not much of an exaggeration to say that this prejudice has contributed to the slaughter of millions of people and is a significant factor in the war currently being waged by Russia against Ukraine. Putin has expressly stated that he has attacked Ukraine in order to protect the large Russian-speaking population of the easternmost region of the country, known as the Donbas.

Ukraine is the only country I know of that was dreamed into existence by a poet. Born a serf in 1814, Taras Shevchenko was freed from slavery by the efforts of fellow artists. The painter-poet then took on himself the mission of telling the story of the indigenous people of Ukraine in their native tongue. For this the Russian empire punished him with decades of exile and imprisonmentthis despite the fact that he wrote his prose in Russian. His Ukrainian-language poetry, however, had the effect of solidifying and fortifying the indigenous peoples sense of themselves. Ever since, poets have held a singular importance for the culture.

Language can readily become an instrument of oppression. The history of Russian censorship of its own poets is well known thanks largely to Nadezhda Mandelstams account of her husband Osips trials in Hope Against Hope, and its sequel Hope Abandoned. Less well known is the way Russia exerted its hegemony over its colonies.

In 1863, two years after serfdom was abolished in the Russian Empire, the Russian minister of the interior, Petr Valuev, introduced a ban on Ukrainian-language publicationsthough, interestingly, the prohibition didnt extend to fiction, perhaps because the genre was not widely developed in Ukraine yet.

Thirteen years later, in 1876, Emperor Alexander II, while enjoying a spa treatment in the German town of Ems, took time to issue a policy statement further restricting the use of Ukrainian. The new law, which was kept secret from the population, outlawed all publications in Ukrainian, including books imported from abroad. The policy also rendered illegal theater productions and performances of songs in Ukrainian. Russia feared that the indigenous peasant population might began to demand human rights and undermine Russias imperial claims. The prohibition wasnt abolished until 1905.

The assault on Ukrainian culture reached a fever pitch under Stalin in the 1930s. And I dont think theres a Ukrainian writer alive today who isnt aware of what happened during what I call the aborted renaissance.

Imagine 20th-century American literature without Faulkner, Richard Wright, Willa Cather, Hemingway, Zora Neale Hurston, Marianne Moore, William Carlos Williams, Wallace Stevens, James Baldwin Imagine contemporary American literature without them Its unthinkable. But the unthinkable happened in Ukraine.

In 1930 some 260 writers actively participated in the countrys literary life. By 1938 only 36 remained on the scene. Surveying the fates of the missing speaks volumes about the leitmotif of that decade: Of the 224 MIAs, 17 were shot; 8 committed suicide; 175 were arrested or interred; 16 disappeared without a trace. Only 7 died of natural causes. Belorussian culture was similarly decimated and thwarted by Stalin.

The crime for which writers and intellectuals in former Soviet republics were punished was that they dared aspire to autonomy and cultural independence. That Russia remains so threatened by the mere existence of other languages and cultures is a psychosis worth exploring. Racism can take many forms. To skin color and religion one must add an inexplicable insecurity about the shape words take on the page, the sounds they make in our mouths. Behind the paranoia lies the fear that long-buried crimes against indigenous communities might finally see the light of day.

What might once have seemed like ancient history, a record of one of the most terrible periods of the 20th century, was given fresh urgency and relevance with the publication of what historian Timothy Snyder describes as Russias Genocide Handbook, published on RIA Novosti, Russias official state news agency site, on April 3rd, just a few days after the discovery of the mass murders by Russian soldiers in Bucha. As Snyder describes it:

The Russian handbook is one of the most openly genocidal documents I have ever seen. It calls for the liquidation of the Ukrainian state, and for abolition of any organization that has any association with Ukraine. Such people, the majority of the population, more than twenty million people, are to be killed or sent to work in labor camps to expurgate their guilt for not loving Russia. Survivors are to be subject to re-education. Children will be raised to be Russian. The name Ukraine will disappear.

Men hep tavas a golas y dyr is the only line I know in Cornish. From a poem by the great British poet Tony Harrison, it translates to mean the tongueless man gets his land took. While Ukraine has never been tongueless, it has long appeared that way to the world. No more. Freed from the yoke of empire, the country has become a cosmopolitan nation in which identity is not determined by language.

Today, dozens of presses are rushing out translations of work by Ukrainian writers, whether theyre written in Ukrainian, Russian, Belarussian or Crimean Tatar. What kind of shelf life theyll have remains to be seen. But one thing is certain: after this, no one will be able to call Ukraine a non-nation again. It is at best a modest consolation.

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The Russian War on Ukraine Has Always Been a War on Its Language - Literary Hub

THE BIG READ: Professor Sir Geoff Palmer: ‘My family were owned as slaves by Scots. It’s time this nation faced up to its history’ – HeraldScotland

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In a powerful, no-holds-barred interview, Scotlands foremost black academic, Professor Sir Geoff Palmer, says this country must finally acknowledge the horrific truth about slavery, empire and colonialism. Here, he talks to our Writer at Large Neil Mackay

ITS as if fate has been waiting 200 years for Geoff Palmer to come along and finally force Scotland to confront the most shameful aspects of its past.

Our leading black academic is, without doubt, the nations most determined campaigner when it comes to demanding Scotland acknowledges its colonial wrongs and the nations role in the sins of the British empire.

The dreadful irony is that as Scotland finally begins to listen to him, Professor Sir Geoff Palmer is facing the possibility of his own death as he deals with a diagnosis of prostrate cancer at the ripe old age of 82.

Despite the seriousness of his work, and the personal struggles he is facing, he is a man full of laughter. He uses humour to balance out the cruelty he spends his life documenting.

Palmer upends all the lazy preconceptions his detractors throw at him. Some people think I must be the most anti-white person in the world, he chuckles then points out that his wife is white and so are his childrens partners.

Today, Palmer is hailed as the first black person to ever become a professor in Scotland. He is a scientist by training and has been lauded internationally for his work. Currently, hes Professor Emeritus in the School of Life Sciences at Heriot-Watt University. But scratch the surface and you discover that Palmers life here isnt one simply garlanded with praise and acclaim he has experienced appalling levels of racism in his adopted country.

No dogs, No Irish, No blacks

In 1955, Palmer arrived in London from Jamaica as part of the Windrush generation, alone and aged just 14. He was astonished by the racism he witnessed. He remembers the hateful anti-immigrant rhetoric of Enoch Powell, and statements from Conservative politicians like if you want a n***** for a neighbour, vote Labour.

As a young lad you were terrified when you bought the newspaper and saw headlines like 500 more have arrived, Palmer says of the insidious reporting about Caribbean immigration into Britain. That would mean I had to be careful that day.

At the time, London was full of signs reading No dogs, No Irish, No blacks, he recalls. White women would move away from him if he sat near them. The myths and lies they had heard made them think I was a robber, inferior. Palmer quotes from Shakespeare: Mislike me not for my complexion.

Come 1964, Palmer was in Edinburgh embarking on his doctorate. When he tried to rent a room, he experienced racism in Scotland first hand. Id look in the newspaper for somewhere to rent. Id phone and be told to come along. As I walked up the path Id see the curtain move and by the time I got to the door, I was told the room had been taken.

Palmer eventually found lodgings, but even then the rooms where black students could stay came with echoes of empire. Some landladies took in students only from the Caribbean, others only from Africa. It was because these families had some connection to colonialism, he says. Mainly through missionary work, but sometimes the Civil Service.

Slavery and statues

HEREIN lie the roots of Palmers lifelong struggle to make Scotland come to terms with the racism in society and our legacy of empire. He is at the forefront of the campaign for Scotland to recognise the central role it played in slavery and was part of the team which placed a new plaque on the statue of Sir Henry Dundas in Edinburgh detailing the politicians part in the slave trade.

Until recently, Dundas was celebrated as one of Scotlands greatest statesmen. Today, however, the plaque notes he was instrumental in deferring the abolition of the Atlantic Slave Trade, and that as a result more than half a million enslaved Africans crossed the Atlantic. Palmer adds: Yet he stood up there on his statue and nobody asked why?.

He wants cities like Glasgow where many streets are named after merchants involved in slavery to publicly recognise the past in a similar fashion. It has led to clashes with opponents, vilification, and insult. He has been mocked, he says, for being a scientist not an historian, and so considered academically unequipped to judge the past. It is an intellectual insult, Palmer feels, which stings as badly as the N word.

Enslaved family

THE need to make Scotland face up to the past, however, is quite literally in Palmers blood. His family in Jamaica lived on land once owned by Earl Balcarres, a Scottish aristocrat who became governor of Jamaica and a slave owner on the island. The Palmer familys land was once called Marshalls Pen the name of one of Balcarres slave plantations. Theres streets named after Balcarres today in Edinburgh and Glasgow, he says. The Balcarres family seat can be found in Fife.

The word Pen, Palmer explains, means slave pen, the place where enslaved human beings were kept. His family still has a receipt for the land bearing the words Marshalls Pen.

In later life, Palmer realised that the reason his great-aunt was more fair-skinned than the rest of the family is because generations back, one of his female ancestors had been owned and raped by a slaver. There were many other light-skinned Jamaicans besides his aunt all living reminders of the horrors of the past.

Palmer tells the story of Robert Wedderburn by way of illustration. Robert was born in Jamaica in 1762 the son of a Scottish slave-owner, James Wedderburn, and Rosanna, an enslaved woman, who he had raped. Wedderburn sold Roberts mother after he was born while she was pregnant with his third child. Robert went on to become an acclaimed abolitionist.

Someone in my great aunts family wouldve been the same, Palmer says. The woman wouldve had no say in the relationship with the man who owned

her.

Rape and DNA

PALMER explains that his familys small plot of land was bought after slavery ended. When Palmer recently had his DNA analysed, he discovered he was 97 per cent African, and 3% Shetland/Viking meaning it is highly likely a white Scot raped one of his enslaved female ancestors.

Someone from the Shetland/Highland area went to Jamaica, became involved in slavery and Im a genetic product, he says.In one of his many comic asides, used to relieve the horror of the discussion, he jokes that his wife says his Viking ancestry explains a lot.

Palmer says genealogical research revealed that his great-grandfather was a Balcarres slave. His mothers family name was Larmond. Theres a slave called Larmond on the Balcarres slave list.

Palmer notes that it was Sir Henry Dundas who sent Earl Balcarres to Jamaica as governor. He feels it seems almost fated that he would one day confront the legacy of men like Dundas. By way of an easy lesson on just how deeply Scotland was involved in slavery, Palmer says people should flick through the Jamaican telephone directory.

He once studied the listings and found that 60% of the names are Scottish surnames, indicating that nearly two-thirds of the population had ancestors once owned or raped by a Scot. Theres more Campbells in the Jamaican telephone directory than the directories of Edinburgh and the Lothians.

Palmer recently gave a talk where he read out place names like Dundee, Moneymusk, Hampden, Elgin, Aberdeen, Inverness. I asked do you know these places?. Theyre all in Jamaica. My cousin lives near Glasgow in Jamaica.

Its estimated about 30% of the slave plantations in Jamaica were owned by Scots.

Educations failure

SLOWLY but surely, more and more people are now listening to Palmer, despite the stubborn refusal by many to accept what went on in the past. He once appeared as a special guest on the Antiques Roadshow with a silver sugar bowl. The bowl was made to hold sugar from a place where people were being killed to make sugar, he told viewers. Their life span was less than 10 years. He went to the local shops in Penicuik, where he lives, the next day, and a couple of ladies told me that, for the first time, they really understood what slavery was about.

Thats why I speak out because weve had an education system that has avoided slavery, downplayed it, excused it.

He is particularly disgusted by those who say Dundas should be recognised for his role in finally abolishing slavery. Palmer angrily points out that Dundas was responsible for promoting what has been called a gradualist approach to abolition which in reality meant extending the duration of slavery and causing widespread death and suffering.

He notes that at the time, then-Prime Minister William Pitt said gradual abolition meant waiting for some contingency till a thousand favourable circumstances unite together, and as a result the most enormous evils go unredressed. He also quotes the abolitionist Charles Fox who said gradual abolition was gradual murder.

Excuses for evil

PALMER feels many people wouldnt be so quick to defend Dundas if he wasnt Scottish. Theyre defending someone they wouldnt defend normally. In education, he says, there has been a strategy of avoidance. Those who argue against any criticism of the past such as placing plaques on statues are simply making excuses for the evils of slavery. Palmer adds: Theres nobody in Germany making excuses for the Holocaust.

The transatlantic slave trade saw 10-15 million Africans forcibly transported. This was British slavery, and Scotland played a major part in it.

Slavery, he says, is a stain on the soul of all people who know about it and do nothing. We cannot change the past but we can change the consequences of the past, adding: One of the consequences of the past is the racism we see today. We can change that using better education.

A product of suffering

Just a few weeks ago, during another talk, Palmer was told look what slavery has done for you. The speaker, he says, meant Id still be in Africa if my ancestors werent enslaved. It is the same mentality as saying the British empire brought civilisation to those who were colonised, Palmer adds. What these people should realise is that Im the product of the suffering of millions of people Were living in a society where weve inherited the prejudices that black people are inferior.

Too many people in Scotland, Palmer says, have allowed themselves to be comforted by phoney narratives about slavery. He repeatedly hears people claim the Romans had slaves, the Africans had slaves in an attempt to excuse Scotlands role.

He is weary of claims that because some Scots were subjected to indentured servitude a system which saw people working unpaid, often for years, as punishment, debt repayment or a form of apprenticeship that this somehow cancels out the sin of chattel slavery.

Palmer adds, however: I dont believe in taking down statues. Its inconsistent. If you take down a statute, youd have to knock down the Gallery of Modern Art, and nobody wants to do that. The GoMa in Glasgow was once the home of William Cunninghame, a Tobacco Lord who made his fortune from slavery. Palmer simply wants streets, statues and buildings linked to slavery to be clearly marked with signs explaining the past.

Hope for scotland

The public, Palmer believes, is ready for change, despite those who still try to excuse the past. Glasgow University recently publicised its historic links to slavery; Palmer is working with Scottish museums on how to come to terms with the legacy of empire; and Edinburgh Council had him advise on the Dundas statue. There are positive moves, Palmer feels. Canadian authorities are currently talking to him about what they should do with Dundas Street in Toronto.

So Scotland is ahead of Canada, he says. Were discussing it openly at last. Thats good. Were starting to try to address the past. The Jamaican government is aware of whats happening here. People are watching us.

The essence of a good person is to recognise you were wrong and then try to redress that rather than cover it up. Palmer also supports the creation of a Scottish slavery museum. Weve got plenty of stuff to fill it with, he adds wryly.

The Darien scheme

HOWEVER, despite a growing acceptance that Scotland played a central role in the evils of slavery, there is still a long way to go until the nation fully acknowledges its colonial past, Palmer feels. The infamous Darien scheme is proof. In the 1690s, Scotland attempted to establish a colony in Panama. The effort failed miserably and partly paved the way for union with England at which point a combination of England and Scotland working together accelerated empire-building.

If you walked down a street in Edinburgh or Glasgow, I doubt if 1% of people have heard of Darien, he says. Thats the key issue: why dont they know? We can say Scotland must recognise its history, but you cant recognise what you dont know. Palmer puts blame squarely on the education system. Once the public knows this stuff, they get it. Were getting there as a society but theres been too much dilly-dallying when it comes to history.

Scotlands sense of itself as an egalitarian nation also holds the nation back from confronting the past, he feels. Slavery clashes up against that narrative. If you think youre a good person and then learn your relative was actually Jack the Ripper, it can cause a bit of jolt, he says ironically.

People have put forward the perception that Scotland is less racist than England or elsewhere. I say to them: Look around. Look at where you work. Do you have a fair representation of the diversity of society? Look where you live. Because if you dont have a fair representation, then you better think again.

All one humanity

THE failure to deal with the past is what is partly leading to so much tension around race today, Palmer believes. Young black people know what happened in the past, and after the murder of George Floyd which Palmer describes as a crucifixion they felt there was resistance from within parts of the white community to their demands for change. That meant Black Lives Matter campaigners become angry, and we dont want people starting to get aggressive, he adds.

Palmer has no animosity to white people his white wife is from Aberdeen. He has an old-fashioned colour-blind view of race. Were 99.99% the same as far as our DNA. Were one humanity, nothing less, he says. Most of my immediate family is white my son-in-laws, my daughter-in-laws. Ive got mixed race grandchildren oh, and my children, I almost forgot about them. Ive three of those and theyre mixed race, he laughs loud and long at momentarily missing out his own kids.

Given his irrepressible sense of humour, Palmer turns to a joke he once heard in Ireland, when he was consulting for Guinness as a chemist, to explain the ideal society he would one day like to see. I remember this fellow joking that there was once an undercover agent in Kerry during the war, and he was black but nobody noticed. He explodes with laughter. To me, thats brilliant. Weve got to work towards a society where everybody is just like everybody else and nobody notices what colour your skin is.

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THE BIG READ: Professor Sir Geoff Palmer: 'My family were owned as slaves by Scots. It's time this nation faced up to its history' - HeraldScotland

Six Faculty: Election to American Academy of Arts and Sciences – U Penn

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Six Faculty: Election to American Academy of Arts and Sciences

Six faculty and researchers affiliated with theUniversity of Pennsylvania have been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. They are Yale Goldman, Katalin Karik, and Drew Weissman of the Perelman School of Medicine; Nicholas Sambanis of theSchool of Arts and Sciences; Diana Slaughter Kotzin of the Graduate School of Education; and Dorothy E. Roberts, joint appointments in the Penn Carey Law School and School of Arts and Sciences.

They are among more than 260 new members honored in 2022, recognized for their accomplishments and leadership in academia, the arts, industry, public policy, and research.

Yale Goldman is a professor of physiology at the Perelman School of Medicine, with a secondary appointment in the School of Engineering and Applied Science. A Philadelphia native, he has been a fixture at Penn for decades, arriving on campus in the early 1970s as a doctoral student and joining the faculty in 1980. From 1988 until 2010, he served as director of the Pennsylvania Muscle Institute at Penn.

Dr. Goldmans research focuses on better understanding the structural changes that the bodys biological machines undergo. He and his lab have developed novel biophysical techniques to observe this, ranging from nanometer tracking of fluorescent molecules to infrared optical traps, known as laser tweezers. The goal is to make discoveries that, in the long term, lead to better outcomes for those with Duchenne muscular dystrophy, cystic fibrosis, and cardiac myopathies.

A member of the National Academy of Sciences, Dr. Goldman has also served as president of the Biophysical Society and as an editorial board member of the Journal of Physiology and the Biophysical Journal.

Katalin Karik is a senior vice president at BioNTech and an adjunct professor of neurosurgery in the Perelman School of Medicine. She joined the University of Pennsylvania in 1989 and began collaborating with fellow inductee Drew Weissman in 1997. Together, they invented the modified mRNA technology used in Pfizer-BioNTech and Modernas vaccines to prevent COVID-19 infection.

For decades, Dr. Kariks research as a biochemist has focused on RNA-mediated mechanisms, with the goal of developing in vitrotranscribed mRNA for protein therapy. She investigated RNA-mediated immune activation and co-discovered with Dr. Weissman that nucleoside modifications suppress the immunogenicity of RNA. This led to the development of the two most effective vaccines for COVID-19.

Dr. Karik has been honored with the Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences, the Lasker-DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award, the Princess of Asturias Award, and the Vilcek Prize for Excellence in Biotechnology. She continues to work on new therapeutic applications of mRNA therapy.

Diana Slaughter Kotzin, professor emerita in the Graduate School of Education, was the inaugural Constance E. Clayton Professor in Urban Education from 1998 to 2011. She earned her bachelors and masters degrees in human development and a PhD in human development and clinical psychology from the University of Chicago.

Her research interests include culture, primary education, and home-school relations facilitating in-school academic achievement.

Before joining Penn, she taught at Northwestern Universitys School of Education and Social Policyfor 20 years. Previously she was on the faculties of Howard University, Yale University, and the University of Chicago. Among her many awards and accolades, in 2019, the American Psychological Association designated her a pioneer woman of color among the first to break into psychologys ranks.

Dorothy E. Roberts is the George A. Weiss Professor of Law & Sociology, the Raymond Pace & Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander Professor of Civil Rights, and a professor of Africana studies. She is also the founding director of the Program on Race, Science, and Society (PRSS). With appointments in the Carey Law School and the School of Arts and Sciences, Dr. Roberts works at the intersection of law, social justice, science, and health, focusing on urgent social justice issues in policing, family regulation, science, medicine, and bioethics.

Her major books include Fatal Invention: How Science, Politics, and Big Business Re-Create Race in the Twenty-First Century (New Press, 2011); Shattered Bonds: The Color of Child Welfare (Basic Books, 2002), and Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty (Pantheon, 1997). Her newest book, Torn Apart: How the Child Welfare System Destroys Black Familiesand How Abolition Can Build a Safer World (Basic Books), was published in April. Dr. Roberts is the author of more than 100 scholarly articles and book chapters, as well as a co-editor of six books on such topics as constitutional law and women and the law.

Nicholas Sambanis is a Presidential Distinguished Professor of Political Science and director of the Penn Identity & Conflict Lab (PIC Lab). He writes on conflict processes with a focus on civil wars and other forms of intergroup conflict.

The lab works on a broad range of topics related to intergroup conflicts in the world, including the effects of external intervention on peace-building after ethnic war, the analysis of violent escalation of separatist movements, conflict between native and immigrant populations, and strategies to mitigate bias and discrimination against minority groups. His focus is the connection between identity politics and conflict processes, drawing on social psychology, behavioral economics, and the comparative politics and international relations literature in political science.

Drew Weissman is the Roberts Family Professor in Vaccine Research in the Perelman School of Medicine and an internationally recognized scientist whose foundational research with scientific collaborator Katalin Karik led to mRNA vaccines and a highly effective method of curbing the spread of COVID-19.

For decades, Dr. Weissman has studied immunology and the ways mRNA might trigger protective immune responses, first focusing on HIV at the National Institutes of Health and then at Penn, where he turned his attention to developing mRNA vaccines for other diseases and conditions. One goal is to create a pan-coronavirus vaccine, which could prevent all types of coronaviruses, including COVID-19. He has also worked with researchers globally to help them develop mRNA COVID vaccines and to increase access to such vaccines in remote and under-resourced areas.

Dr. Weissman has received many awards, including the Lasker-DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award, the Princess of Asturias Award, the Albany Medical Center Prize in Medicine and Biomedical Research, and the Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences.

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Six Faculty: Election to American Academy of Arts and Sciences - U Penn