An NAACP chapter of a different hue

Benjamin Todd Jealous, who took the helm last year of the century-old civil-rights group the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, is leading efforts to expand the organization’s reach beyond its core constituency of African Americans. The NAACP, which has 2,200 chapters, now includes under its umbrella a group comprising Bangladeshi Americans in Hamtramck, Mich.; chapters in Seattle and San Jose headed by Southeast Asians; and groups in the Southwest that include Latinos and Native Americans. The Post article highlights a chapter in a Maine prison made up mostly of white men.

Full text article by Krissah Thompson is available via The Washington Post, 11/3/09.

End the University as We Know It

GRADUATE education is the Detroit of higher learning. Most graduate programs in American universities produce a product for which there is no market (candidates for teaching positions that do not exist) and develop skills for which there is diminishing demand (research in subfields within subfields and publication in journals read by no one other than a few like-minded colleagues), all at a rapidly rising cost (sometimes well over $100,000 in student loans).

Full-text article by Mark C. Taylor is available via The New York Times, 4.26.09.