Month: April 2005

UC Rethinks Rejection of Men’s Literature Course

In January, the University of California reversed itself and agreed to accept for transfer credit a course taught by Professor David Clemens at Monterey Peninsula College, “Literature By and About Men.”

In December 2004, Clemens complained that the University of California had rejected his literature course for transfer credit because, the university claimed, the course had a “narrow focus” and “no comparable course in lower division” existed at any of the University of California’s nine campuses.

Clemens wrote following the university’s decision that,

While I don’t question U.C.’s woeful admission that not even one campus offers a course in literature by and about men, U.C. does accept, for lower division transfer from community colleges, such English courses as “Images of Women in Western Literature” from Saddleback, “Contemporary Women Writers” from Santa Barbara, “Women Writers” from Foothill, “Introduction to Gay and Lesbian Multicultural Voices in Literature” from Diablo Valley, “Women in Literature” from Santa Rosa, “Images of Women in Literature” from Santa Monica, “Changing Images of Women in Literature” from Butte, “U.S. Women’s Literature” and “Her Story: Women’s Autobiographical Writing in Multicultural America” from Chabot, “Literature By Women” from Sierra, and “Literature By and About Women” from Shasta, among dozens of other clearly thematic literature surveys.

By what process can U.C. analysts find “Literature By and About Men” not comparable to “Literature By and About Women”? Apparently, U.C. sees comparability as defined only by gender, not by level or type of course, thereby applying a standard of gender discrimination that produces an inequitable, politicized curriculum and differential treatment based solely on sex.

After Clemens wrote about his course’s rejection on a number of web sites dedicated to academic freedom, the University of California initiated its own appeal of the course’s rejection. According to a press release from NoIndoctrination.Org,

Shortly thereafter, Professor Clemens learned that U.C. had a change of heart. It decided it would initiate its own unusual appeal of the course’s rejection. Dawn Sheibani, UC’s Principal Analyst for Community College Articulation, explained to Professor Clemens that U.C.’s rejection was in part because “we have never seen this before” while admitting that such reasoning sounded like “Catch 22.”

After further review by U.C. faculty, “Literature By and About Men” has now been accepted for transfer, making it the only English course in the nine campus U.C. and 109 campus California community college systems to survey “multiple sources, enactments, and depictions of maleness, manhood, and masculinity in essays, films, short stories, and poetry either by men or about men.” “I’m sure the publicity played a big part in U.C.’s decision to recant,” states Professor Clemens.

Sources:

A Victory for Gender Equity at the University of California. Press Release, NoIndoctrination.Org, January 24, 2005.

Sex and the Multiversity. David Clemens, December 20, 2004.

Indiana Court Rules Lesbian Partner Must Pay Child Support

In February, the Indiana Court of Appeals ruled that a lesbian woman must pay child support for a child conceived by her partner before the two separated.

In 1997, the woman adopted her partner’s in 1997 when the two were involved in a relationship. After the relationship dissolved, the biological mother of the children sought and received a child support order while the non-biological mother sought to dissolve the adoption.

Lower courts had overturned the support order, but the Indiana Court of Appeals upheld the order. Judge John G. Baker wrote in a 22-page ruling that,

Whether a person is a man or a woman, homosexual or heterosexual, or adoptive or biological, in assuming that role, a person also assumes certain responsibilities, obligations, and duties. That person may not simply choose to shed the parental mantle because it becomes inconvenient, seems ill-advised in retrospect, or becomes burdensome because of a deterioration in the relationship with the children’s other parent.

Baker’s ruling followed a November 2004 case in which the Indiana Court of Appeals ruled that same sex partners could adopt the children of their partners and still retain parental rights

Source:

State Appeals Court Extends Parental Rights to Gay Woman. Associated Press, November 29, 2004.

Lesbian Ordered to Pay Child Support. Associated Press, February 18, 2005.

Lesbian Partner Ordered to Pay Child Support. Axcess News, February 19, 2005.

Number of People Learning English to Double — English to Come Close to Universal Language

David Graddol with the UK’s British Council recently published a report on the status of English, reporting that the number of people worldwide learning English will double to almost two billion over the next decade as English becomes more pervasive throughout the world.

English is already the closest thing to a universal language, with an estimated 25 percent of the world’s population speaking English to some level of competence. And the number of people learning English is about to rise dramatically.

According to Graddol’s report, about 1 billion people today are learning English throughout the world, and that number will grow to 2 billion over the next decade. By 2020, half the world could speak English.

By the end of the century, English will likely vie with Chinese, Spanish and Arabic for dominance as a near-universal language.

Of course this could, ironically, leave native English speakers out in the cold since so few native English speakers learn other languages. In a press release announcing the release of his study, Graddol said,

The fact that the world is learning English is not particularly good news for native speakers who cannot also speak anther language. The world is rapidly becoming multi-lingual and English is only one of the languages people in other countries are learning.

The biggest loser in the linguistics war is apparently French, which is losing ground to English and German in areas that used to be heavily French-speaking.

Frankly, I’m waiting for the big Latin resurgence to sweep the world. Now there’s a language.

Sources:

English ‘world language’ forecast. The BBC, Sean Coughlan, December 9, 2004.

Two billion people to learn English. British Council, Press Release, December 9, 2004.

Locust Swarms Diminished, But Effects Remain for West Africa

2004 saw the worst locust swarms in West Africa in 15 years. Toward the end of the year, the swarms began to become less ever as internationals efforts to control began to have their effect, but in their wake the locusts left problems that many West African nations will have to deal with for years to come.

Mauritania was the worst hit by the 2004 locust plague, with much of the country’s crops for the year lost to the insects and lower-than-expected rainfall. The World Food Program estimated earlier this year that 60 percent of Mauritanians will not have enough to eat without emergency aid due to the locust swarms. It is trying to raise $31 million to fund food aid and other projects in Mauritania in 2005 and 2006.

World Food Program director for Mauritania, Sory Ouane, told The BBC,

Entire harvests where people have invested their money, time and toil for so long, are simply gone. We must act now. The right assistance now for the people of Mauritania will go a long way — not only to save lives today but also to help people avoid falling into a cycle of food crises that could last for years to come.

Coming up with aid might prove difficult. The WFP reported that almost all aid to Africa disappeared as donor nations focused their aid attention on the nations ravaged by December’s tsunami.

Sources:

Appeal for locust-hit Mauritania. The BBC, January 17, 2005.

Living With Locusts – The Bitter Irony Of Mauritania’s Food Crisis. Press Release, World Food Program, March 7, 2005.

Crops Cold Comfort For Hungry Refugees. Reuters, February 3, 2005.

Africa Fights Locust Plagues. Brian Handwerk, National Geographic Channel, January 7, 2005.

Surprise — Free Trade Works Out In The End

Despite Adam Smith’s definitive explanation of how free trade could benefit both parties engaging in trade, pretty much every society is skeptical of free trade and that other country stealing our jobs. So, today, we have the specter of some of the richest nations in the world appalled at the thought of having to compete with some of the poorest nations, and all too happy to condemn the developing world to poverty by closing off markets.

Surprisingly there isn’t actually a lot of research looking at how free trade affects industrialized countries, but Virginia Postrel published an article in the New York Times in January that explored just this topic.

She reported on an academic study of the effects of the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement. The study, by Daniel Trefler of the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto.

Trefler’s study focused on the effects that liberalizing tariffs between the two countries had. Postrel writes,

Before the agreement went into effect in 1989, more than one in four Canadian industries were, in fact, protected by tariffs of more than 10 percent. Those industries included not only businesses known for their protectionism, notably apparel makers, but manufacturers of a wide range of products, from beer and pretzels to coffins, plastic pipes and paper bags.

Before the agreement, imports from the United States faced an average tariff of 8.1 percent and an effective tariff of 16 percent. The effective rate included import taxes on the final product and tariffs plaid on raw materials. Someone importing a chair could face a direct tariff on furniture, for example, but could also pay indirect tariffs on wood and upholstery fabric.

At the very beginning of the free trade agreement, those industries that were the most heavily protected took big hits as imports from the United States became even cheaper. According to Trefler, such industries, saw employment declines of as much as 12 percent, and the free trade agreement as a whole reduced employment by 5 percent in industries that had previously been protected by tariffs.

But, over the long run, the Canadian economy regained those jobs and has one of the healthier industrial bases in the developed world. According to Trefler,

Within 10 years, the lost employment was made up by employment gains in other parts of manufacturing. . . The average effect of the U.S. tariff cuts on Canadian employment was thus a wash: the employment losses by less-productive firms offset the employment gains by more productive firms.

And rather than force Canadian wages into a downward spiral, as had been predicted by opponents of the free trade agreement, Canadian wages increased by 3 percent over the eight years studied. A small increase to be sure, but not the predicted decline.

So what did Canadians get out of the free trade agreement if employment was a net wash and wages increased just slightly? It got a big productivity boost. Postrel writes,

The big story is that lowering tariffs set off a productivity boom.

Formerly sheltered Canadian companies began to compete with and compare themselves with more-efficient American businesses. Some went under, but others significantly improved operations.

The productivity gains were huge. In the formerly sheltered industries most affected by the tariff cuts, labor productivity jumped 15 percent, at least half from closing inefficient plants. “This translates into an enormous compound annual growth rate of 1.9 percent,” he [Trefler] wrote.

But closing plants is not the whole story, or even half of it. Among export-oriented industries, which expanded after the agreement, data from individual plants show an increase in labor productivity of 14 percent. Manufacturing productivity as a whole jumped 6 percent.

Free trade — its good for you. Even you folks in the industrial world. So loosen up those protectionist tariffs and quotas already, and give the developing world a fair chance.

Source:

What happened when two countries liberalized trade? Pain, then gain. Virginia Postrel, The New York Times, January 27, 2005.

Plague Outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo

At least 61 people died in February during an outbreak of the pneumonic plauge in the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of Congo.

About 350 people who worked in a mine in the northern Oriental province were infected with the disesae earlier this year, with at least 61 of them ultimately succumbing to the disease.

The pneumonic plague is the rarest and most deadly of the three types of plague. Unlike bubonic and septicimic plague, the pneumonic form of the disease can be passed from person to person through infected droplets transmitted by coughing or sneezing.

According to the World Health Organization, it is almost always fatal if not treated, but responds well to antibiotics. Unfortunately, the Democratic Republic of Congo is still a relatively chaotic place after the end of its four-year civil war in 2002, and more than 2,000 people who worked at the mine quickly left and dispersed after the outbreak of the disease became widely known.

Plague, of course, used to be a major worldwide killer, famously wiping out a significant proportion of the European population in the late medieval period. The World Health Organization reports that in 2003 there were only about 2,000 cases of the disease worldwide, but almost all of those occurred in Africa.

Sources:

Plague outbreak kills 60 in Congo. The BBC, February 18, 2005.

DR Congo plague outbreak spreads. The BBC, February 23, 2005.

Plague Outbreak in Eastern Congo. Cynthia Kirk, Voice of America, March 2, 2005.

Deadly Plague Outbreak Feared in Congo . Craig Timberg, Washington Post, February 18, 2005.

Locust invasions on West Africa. IRIN News, December 2004.