Minnesota Law School Drops Exclusion Of Whites And Males From Diversity Scholarship

 by Jonathan Turley,

There is a curious resolution of a civil right complaint against University of Minnesota Law School over a diversity fellowship sponsored by the law firm of Jones Day. Despite being created by a law firm and administered by a law school, the fellowship violated federal law in excluding white and male applicants. The law school finally threw in the towel, but there remains an uncertainty over whether the school is engaging in a subterfuge by opening up the scholarship while retaining its original purpose.

The Jones Day Diversity Fellowship launched in December 2022 to extend full tuition for three years at the law school. The scholarship also allows the recipient to work as a summer associate at Jones Day, one of the most sought-after firms for summer employment. The firm website maintains that “We aggressively pursue hiring, retaining, and developing lawyers from historically underrepresented groups and backgrounds.”

Various conservative sites have slammed the diversity fellowship, which was the subject of a civil rights complaint by Adam Kissel.

The September 2023 complaint to the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) is now closed following a settlement to drop any “preference based on race or sex.”

The question is what difference the settlement will make in actual awards.

Law schools have been accused of “gaming the system” on admissions criteria for years to circumvent federal law and governing cases on the use of race or gender. Those concerns only increased after the Supreme Court categorically rejected the use of race in admissions in Students for Fair Admissions Inc. v. President & Fellows of Harvard College and Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. University of North Carolina.

Critics are still unclear on how Jones Day and Minnesota Law School will achieve its diversity goals without applying such a preference, even if the applications are not limiting on the basis of race.

The university maintains that it will not impose threshold exclusions of whites and males but will select applicants “based on their commitment to enhancing diversity and inclusion” and “whose life experiences bring unique, extraordinary, or other fresh perspective to campus, including first generation college graduate and students from socioeconomically challenged backgrounds.'”

This is a recurring complaint for Minnesota. It came under fire last May when the Office of Undergraduate Students created a paid internship program application to only non-White applicants.

The question going forward is whether there is a viable basis to challenge the program on an “as applied” theory. If whites males continue to be excluded, the challengers could return to allege that nothing changed beyond the language.

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/minnesota-law-school-drops-exclusion-whites-and-males-diversity-scholarship

When Medicalization Goes Too Far

 Within the first 5 minutes of comedian Kevin James' comedy special Irregardless, he recounts a conversation he had with his doctor during a routine appointment. It went something like this:

Doctor: Everything looks really good. I do want to let you know though, you are prediabetic.

James: [Chuckles] Who isn't?

James: Do I have diabetes?

Doctor: No.

James: But I could get diabetes?

Doctor: Yes.

[There's a brief pause as James thinks about this.]

James: Do you have diabetes?

Doctor: No.

James: But could you get diabetes?

Doctor: I guess so.

James: Let me tell you something, you're prediabetic.

In this bit, James suggests that medicalization has gone too far, and I tend to agree with him. However, medicalization isn't inherently bad; it's simply the process by which human conditions that weren't previously considered to be pathological come to be defined as medical conditions and treated as such. Examples includeopens in a new tab or window halitosis, obesity, infertility, impotence, menopause, alcoholism, and grief.

As it turns out, the boundaries between health and disease are a little blurry. Therefore, sociologists developed the concept of medicalization in the 1970s. They wanted to study how something people once considered to be a normal part of life came to be viewed as a medical condition warranting medical intervention. Researchers Wieteke van Dijk, PhD, et al. explainopens in a new tab or window, "Society's norms and values develop at a continual pace, influencing all of us in our perception of health, [and] what constitutes a medical problem." However, where to draw the line between what's considered normal and what's a medical problem is often rife with controversy.

For instance, when is a fasting glucose level considered "elevated"? If a patient has a fasting glucose level of 105 mg/dL, do they have prediabetes? According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the answer is "no," but clinicians following the American Diabetes Association (ADA) criteria would likely say "yes." That's because diagnostic criteriaopens in a new tab or window differ. The ADA "defines prediabetes as a fasting glucose of 100–125 mg/dL and/or an A1C of 5.7% to 6.4%." The WHO, on the other hand, "defines prediabetes using a narrower fasting glucose range of 110–125 mg/dL" and does not use A1C.

The difference between these two organizations' diagnostic criteria matters because it drastically affects how many people are told they have prediabetes. According to a research paperopens in a new tab or window published in 2020, the prevalence of prediabetes based on ADA criteria was roughly double the prevalence of prediabetes based on WHO criteria. More specifically, "Out of 8844 individuals, prediabetes was identified in 3492 individuals [...] according to ADA and 1382 individuals [...] according to WHO criteria."

If I was Kevin James and my healthcare provider told me I had prediabetes, my next question would be, "What are the chances that prediabetes will progress to diabetes?" According to the CDCopens in a new tab or window, "Without taking action, many people with prediabetes could develop type 2 diabetes within 5 years." However, this ominous warning doesn't actually answer the question. How many is "many"? For far too long, these kinds of ambiguous, ominous claims were pretty much all we had to go on.

Fortunately, further researchopens in a new tab or window has helped elucidate the lifetime risk of developing type 2 diabetes for adults who have been diagnosed with prediabetes. Moreover, it indicates that the prediabetes threshold matters greatly when it comes to identifying those at high risk of type 2 diabetes. For 45-year-olds with ADA-defined prediabetes, the 10-year risk of diabetes was 14.2% for women and 9.2% for men. For 45-year-olds with WHO-defined prediabetes, the 10-year risk of diabetes was 23.2% for women and 24.6% for men.

This study suggests that the ADA prediabetes diagnostic criteria cast far too wide a net. Millions of Americans are told they are at risk for diabetes when in fact, the vast majority of them will never develop diabetes. Unfortunately, this kind of overdiagnosis and perceived fear-mongering can erode people's trust in the healthcare system.

Kevin James expands on this from the patient perspective. He says, "What's with the pre-? That's how this world operates. Pre-. Fear. You might. Almost. You don't know. [...] Everything's fear." Some may argue that a little dose of fear might motivate people to make healthier lifestyle choices. However, as clinicians, we should not resort to such tactics. Rather, it's our duty to provide patients with the most accurate information possible.

In the U.S., the threshold for what constitutes a medical condition and therefore necessitates medical treatment has been continuously lowered. Identifying this trend and simultaneously recognizing that other developed countries are resisting it are the first steps towards reevaluating our current practices.

Shannon Casey, PA-C, is a physician assistant and former assistant teaching professor in the Department of Family Medicine at the University of Washington. She writes at The Medical Atlasopens in a new tab or window.

https://www.medpagetoday.com/opinion/second-opinions/109429

'More Women Are Drinking Themselves Sick'

 When Karla Adkins looked in the rearview mirror of her car one morning nearly 10 years ago, she noticed the whites of her eyes had turned yellow.

She was 36 at the time and working as a physician liaison for a hospital system on the South Carolina coast, where she helped build relationships among doctors. Privately, she had struggled with heavy drinking since her early 20s, long believing that alcohol helped calm her anxieties. She understood that the yellowing of her eyes was evidence of jaundice. Even so, the prospect of being diagnosed with alcohol-related liver disease wasn't her first concern.

"Honestly, the No. 1 fear for me was someone telling me I could never drink again," said Adkins, who lives in Pawleys Island, a coastal town about 30 miles south of Myrtle Beach.

But the drinking had caught up with her: Within 48 hours of that moment in front of the rearview mirror, she was hospitalized, facing liver failure. "It was super fast," Adkins said.

Historically, alcohol use disorder has disproportionately affected men. But recent dataopens in a new tab or window from the CDC on deaths from excessive drinking shows that rates among women are climbing faster than they are among men. The Biden administration considers this trend alarming, with one new estimate predicting women will account for close to halfopens in a new tab or window of alcohol-associated liver disease costs in the U.S. by 2040, a $66 billion total price tag.

It's a high-priority topicopens in a new tab or window for the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Department of Agriculture (USDA), which together will release updated national dietary guidelines next year. But with marketing for alcoholic beverages increasingly geared toward women, and social drinking already a huge part of American culture, change isn't something everyone may be ready to raise a glass to.

"This is a touchy topic," said Rachel Sayko Adams, PhD, MPH, a research associate professor at the Boston University School of Public Health. "There is no safe level of alcohol use," she said. "That's, like, new information that people didn't want to know."

Over the past 50 years, women have increasingly entered the workforce and delayed motherhood, which likely has contributed to the problem as women historically drank lessopens in a new tab or window when they became mothers.

"Parenthood tended to be this protective factor," but that's not always the case anymore, said Adams, who studies addiction.

More than 600,000 people in the U.S. died from causes related to alcohol from 1999 to 2020, according to research published in JAMA Network Open last yearopens in a new tab or window, positioning alcohol among the leading causes of preventable deathopens in a new tab or window in this country behind tobacco, poor diet and physical inactivity, and illegal drugs.

The World Health Organizationopens in a new tab or window and various studies have found that no amount of alcohol is safeopens in a new tab or window for human health. Even light drinking has been linked to health concerns, like hypertension and coronary artery diseaseopens in a new tab or window and an increased risk of breast and other cancersopens in a new tab or window.

More recently, the COVID-19 pandemic "significantly exacerbated" binge-drinking, said George Koob, PhD, director of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism at the National Institutes of Health, as people used alcohol to cope with stress. That is particularly true of women, who are more likely to drink alcohol because of stress than men, he said.

But women are also frequently the focus of gender-targeted advertising for alcoholic beverages. The growth of rosé salesopens in a new tab or window and low-calorie winesopens in a new tab or window, for example, has exploded in recent years. New researchopens in a new tab or window published by the International Journal of Drug Policy in February found that the "pinking of products is a tactic commonly used by the alcohol industry to target the female market."

Also at play is the emergence of a phenomenon largely perpetuated by women on social media that makes light of drinking to deal with the difficulties of motherhood. The misperception of "mommy wine culture," said Adams, is that "if you can drink in a normal way, a moderate way, if you can handle your alcohol, you're fine."

And while it's unclear to what extent memes and online videos influence women's drinking habits, the topic merits further study, said Adams, who with colleagues last year found that women without children at age 35 are still at the highest risk for binge-drinking and alcohol use disorder symptoms among all age groups of women. But over the past two decades, the research concluded, the risk is escalating for both childless women and mothers.

These factors at play, coupled with the pressure to fit in, can make excessive drinking a difficult conversation to broach. "It's a very taboo topic," Adams said.

And when it does come up, said Stephanie Garbarino, MD, a transplant hepatologist at Duke Health, it's often surprising how many patients are unaware how their drinking affects their health.

"Often, they didn't know there was anything wrong with what they're doing," she said. She is more frequently seeing younger patients with liver disease, including men and women in their 20s and 30s.

And public health and addiction experts fear that alcohol-related liver disease among women will become a costly issue for the nation to address. Women accounted for 29% of all costs associated with the disease in the U.S. in 2022 and are expected to account for 43% by 2040, estimated a new analysis publishedopens in a new tab or window in the American Journal of Gastroenterology in February.

National dietary guidelines advise women to drink no more than one alcoholic drink a day. Those guidelines are up for a five-year review next yearopens in a new tab or window by the USDA and HHS, which has called a special committee to examine, among other questions, the relationship between alcohol consumption and cancer risks. The report will be made public in 2025.

When Canada published guidanceopens in a new tab or window in 2023 advising that drinking any more than two alcoholic beverages a week carried health risks, Koob sparked backlashopens in a new tab or window when his comments to the Daily Mailopens in a new tab or window suggested that U.S. guidelines might move in the same direction. The CDC report published in Februaryopens in a new tab or window suggested that an increase in alcohol taxes could help reduce excessive alcohol use and deaths. Koob's office would not comment on such policies.

It's a topic close to Adkins' heart. She now works as a coach to help others -- mostly women -- stop drinking, and said the pandemic prompted her to publish a book about her near-death experience from liver failure. And while Adkins lives with cirrhosis, this September will mark 10 years since her last drink.

"The amazing thing is, you can't get much worse from where I got," said Adkins. "My hope is really to change the narrative."

https://www.medpagetoday.com/gastroenterology/generalhepatology/109404

Adams’ debit-cards-for-migrants scheme makes no sense

 After months of delay, the Adams administration’s Roosevelt Hotel welcome center on Monday is finally handing out its first debit cards to migrants staying at hotels, to buy food and baby supplies.

The city says it’s starting with 115 families, giving each family of four $350 a week over a six-week “pilot.”

This program still raises more questions than the city has answered.

Why the no-bid, single-vendor contract? 

When the Adams team told the city’s Housing Preservation and Development Department in December that it had to use MoCaFi, a small-scale, New Jersey-based minority-owned vendor and not even consider any other firms, the reasoning was that it’s an emergency.

Taxpayers sure paid MoCaFi as if it were an emergency, handing the firm $574,000 in late January.

But Monday is April 1. So for the first three months of this contract — a full quarter of the contract’s year-long term — migrants didn’t see a dime.

Those three months, plus the months last year that the city spent drawing up its contract with MoCaFi, were plenty of time to do a competitive-bid process.

And it’s not like MoCaFi has some amazing secret capability no other firm has.

All the company is doing is handing the city pre-paid, restricted Mastercards to hand out.

Last week, when the mayor promised us bold new gun-detection technology in the subways, he vowed that over 90 days, competing firms could present ideas.

Why didn’t he similarly invite financial firms and benefit firms to propose plans to help migrants buy food?

How is the city choosing families to participate in the debit-card program? 

A true pilot — to see if giving people these cards is cheaper than buying food for them, as the city insists it will be — would have randomly selected participants and a random control group.

Without a transparent process for lottery selection, the city risks favoritism — the city workers or contract workers pick their favorite families or people they think, after weeks of observation, are likely to be the most responsible.

If families can only buy food and baby supplies, as a top city official said last week, and if the cards can only be used at “bodegas, supermarkets, markets,” why doesn’t the city just buy these products wholesale? 

The pilot’s purpose is, again, supposed to be saving money because the city’s food contractor throws away so much prepared food for migrants. 

But core Manhattan, where migrant hotels are concentrated, isn’t exactly teeming with cheap supermarkets and baby-supply stores.

Plus, migrants don’t have cooking facilities or refrigerators in their rooms, so they’ll be highly limited in what items they can buy to economize.

Why doesn’t the city simply buy diapers, baby food, cereal and basic nonperishable food items, store them in a central location and let migrants “shop” for items there via voucher?

The city could even invite local vendors to offer choices of grab-and-go prepared food.

Giving people $350 a week to go to Manhattan bodegas and buy the most expensive baby food in the Western world doesn’t make tremendous sense from a money-saving point of view.

Do the debit cards go with the migrants if they leave city shelter? 

It’s city policy to ask migrant families to reapply for shelter after 60 days.

But the city’s responsibility to provide migrants with three meals a day is part of the city’s responsibility to provide shelter.

In other words, once migrants leave city shelter, they must find their own food, too.

So if and when migrant families find their own housing after 60 days, will they be able to take their debit cards with them?

If not, Adams just created a huge reason for migrants to stall on leaving city-paid shelter.

A family of four that leaves a shelter, presuming that family would also leave its debit-card benefit behind, would be losing $1,400 a month.

If migrants won’t lose these debit-card benefits when they leave city shelter, isn’t the mayor just creating an open-ended benefit for people who, because of their immigration status or lack thereof, don’t qualify for federally funded food stamps?

Adams deputies are a little cautious about all this.

Last week, Deputy Mayor Anne Williams-Isom said that “we can take a look at it after six weeks and see what’s working and what’s not.”

Not Adams: “It’s a complete win,” he said on the radio last week.

For whom?

Nicole Gelinas is a contributing editor to the Manhattan Institute’s City Journal.

https://nypost.com/2024/03/31/opinion/adams-debit-cards-for-migrants-scheme-makes-no-sense/

UC Berkeley accused of segregation by allegedly banning whites from community farm

 The University of California at Berkeley is under fire for allegedly banning white residents from using a community farm on Saturdays in a move one critic slammed as “systemic racism.”

The university told The Post it is investigating claims that the “Gill Tract Community Farm” in nearby Albany offered its space on Saturday exclusively to “Black, Indigenous, and People of Color,” after a complaint with the US Department of Education by the Mountain States Legal Foundation.

“UC-Berkeley thinks that racial segregation is progressive now, but it’s no different than segregation of the past,” said William Trachman, general counsel for the group.

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The University of California at Berkeley is under fire for allegedly banning white residents from using a community farm on Saturdays.@gilltractfarm/Instagram

“Preventing Caucasians from accessing Berkeley’s College of Natural Resources Farm on Saturdays is a clear violation of Title VI, which bars educational institutions from engaging in or allowing race discrimination,” added Trachman, a UC-Berkeley alumnus himself.

He said the feds should open a sweeping audit of every UC-Berkeley program to ferret out what he claimed was “systemic racism.”

Launched in 2013, the farm is a partnership between UC-Berkeley and the surrounding neighborhoods. Students and faculty conduct urban farming research and grow crops to prepare healthy meals as part of the “food justice” movement, according to the farm’s website.

The complaint includes an email from a farm program manager telling someone, “Saturdays are exclusively BIPOC. Exceptions have only been made for events that are BIPOC-centered and with plenty of advance notice and planning.”

“I trust you stand in solidarity with upholding boundaries around that safe and sacred space,” the farm manager said.

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“UC-Berkeley thinks that racial segregation is progressive now, but it’s no different than segregation of the past,” said William Trachman, general counsel for the group.Getty Images

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Launched in 2013, the farm is a partnership between UC-Berkeley and the surrounding neighborhoods.Getty Images

A UC-Berkeley rep said it had not be aware of the discrimination complaint until contacted by The Post, which provided a copy of it.

“The anonymous texts attached to the complaint have no specific information about time or place. And, as you can see, the Gill Tract’s website and calendar make no mention whatsoever of any program or activity of the sort described in the complaint,” said UC-Berkeley spokesman Dan Mogulof.

“Having said that, the university takes complaints like this extremely seriously and I can assure you that on Monday I will contact the appropriate people on campus in an effort to determine what the facts are,” he said.

The challenge to alleged UC-Berkeley’s segregated farming practice comes after the US Supreme Court ruled last June that colleges’ race-conscious or “affirmative action” admissions policies were unconstitutional and had to be scrapped.

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Students and faculty conduct urban farming research and grow crops to prepare healthy meals as part of the “food justice” movement, according to the farm’s website.@gilltractfarm/Instagram

More college race-conscious and “diversity, equity and inclusion” programs created to advance opportunities for black students and other minorities have come under legal scrutiny, amid complaints they amount to reverse discrimination.

Last week, a federal discrimination complaint was filed against a Minnesota college scholarship named after George Floyd that is only available to black students.

The complainant in that case, the Equal Protection Project of the Legal Insurrection Foundation, has also filed claims of discrimination against other race-based exclusionary or preference programs, including against the SUNY Buffalo Law School and Medical School.

https://nypost.com/2024/03/31/us-news/uc-berkeley-accused-of-segregation-by-allegedly-banning-whites-from-community-farm/