Article here. Excerpt:

'As the legal industry places more emphasis on diversity, the scrutiny hasn't escaped one of the profession's most exclusive corners: high-stakes mergers and acquisitions.

But for Wall Street firms that rarely hire laterals, ensuring diversity on trusted deal teams can be especially challenging, and efforts to retain and promote diverse lawyers early in the associate cycle are especially critical.

Some firms in that group, including Cravath, Swaine & Moore and Sullivan & Cromwell, say they are making progress on that front.

Diversity is permeating the consciousness of clients, said Joseph Frumkin, managing partner of Sullivan & Cromwell's M&A group. When Frumkin was pitching in a beauty contest for a $40 billion deal and brought a female associate who did much of the preparation work, he said, the firm got hired.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'The former politician made the comments on the drive show with Dan Wootton, during a discussion on whether a man or a woman should replace Strictly Come Dancing judge, Darcey Bussell.

"If a woman could replace Len Goodman, why shouldn't a man replace Darcey Bussell? What's the difference?" Ms Widdecombe said.

"Are we going to decide things on merit, or are we always going to decide things according to a gender, a sexual orientation, colour and age, and all these other things."

She added: "There is no argument at all that makes it right to discriminate against someone, which is what you do in positive discrimination."'

Article here. Excerpt:

'Some Microsoft employees are openly questioning whether diversity is important, in a lengthy discussion on an internal online messaging board meant for communicating with CEO Satya Nadella.

Two posts on the board criticizing Microsoft diversity initiatives as “discriminatory hiring” and suggesting that women are less suited for engineering roles have elicited more than 800 comments, both affirming and criticizing the viewpoints, multiple Microsoft employees have told Quartz. The posts were written by a female Microsoft program manager. Quartz reached out to her directly for comment, and isn’t making her name public at this point, pending her response.

Article here. Excerpt:

'What a surprise that a former Obama administration official has expressed such contempt for the rule of law – again.

Suzanne Taylor, the interim systemwide Title IX coordinator for the University of California, has again dared the judicial system to force UC to abide by court rulings that found its sexual misconduct proceedings lacking in fairness to accused students.

She writes in a Daily Californian op-ed that the UC will pick and choose what it wants to follow in court rulings “unless and until we are absolutely legally required” to follow the full rulings. As noted by Brooklyn College Prof. KC Johnson, who chronicles Title IX litigation, UC has been on the losing end of 11 lawsuits by accused students.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'The backlash against the tech industry-wide push to hire more women and minorities has flared again — this time at Microsoft.

Some employees on an internal message board questioned the tech giant's efforts to shift the demographics of its largely white and Asian male workforce, asking for evidence that a diverse workforce benefits Microsoft. Eighty-seven percent of Microsoft employees are white or Asian and more than 73 percent are men, according to the company's most recent diversity report.

"Does Microsoft have any plans to end the current policy that financially incentivizes discriminatory hiring practices?" asks one post written by a female engineer on Yammer, the internal message board. "To be clear, I am referring to the fact that senior leadership is awarded more money if they discriminate against Asians and white men."

Article here. Excerpt:

'Nelson also has rules for communication at The Riveter designed to keep conversation open and civil. When she worked as a lawyer, Nelson says men would sometimes talk over her in meetings or repeat an idea she had just put forth. She makes it a policy now to call out those men, to make them aware of their behavior and how it affects others in the workplace. “It might embarrass him the first time it happens,” Nelson says. “We all get embarrassed at work. I think we have to accept that and embrace that as part of the learning process.”'

Article here. Excerpt:

'Depending on the week and whether employment equity (or EE) targets are being met, the Canadian Forces periodically closes some of its approximately 100 occupations or trades to any applicants but women.

The information is contained in so-called weekly “processing cheat sheets” used by recruiting staff — some of which were obtained by the National Post — and was confirmed by a military source.

The Post isn’t identifying that source, at the source’s request, for fear of repercussions.

But the commander of the recruiting group, Colonel Luc Sabourin, also confirmed in a telephone interview Thursday that the forms “are a weekly tool to allow us to meet our designated EE (employment equity) targets.”

Sabourin agreed that in practice, it means that if a white male was applying for a job that was temporarily open only to EE candidates, he would be informed the occupation was full and other job possibilities discussed.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'Avital Ronell, a professor of German and Comparative Literature in the College of Arts and Sciences, who was found responsible for sexually harassing a former graduate student will return to teaching this fall.

An internal Title IX investigation, first reported by the New York Times, found Ronell responsible for physical and verbal harassment of graduate student Nimrod Reitman but later cleared her of other charges including sexual assault and stalking.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'The real problem with current divorce law is that already does precisely what Mr Gauke will allow it to do more: excises justice from the legal system and turns the law into an instrument of plunder. One spouse can unilaterally abrogate the marriage contract without having to show any legally recognized transgression by the other, and without having to incur the consequences, and then collude with divorce practitioners against an innocent spouse, confiscate his children, loot everything he has, and even threaten him with jail if he fails to cooperate.

The very concept of "no-fault" justice is an oxymoron. It is no justice at all, and when the judiciary stops dispensing justice it starts dispensing injustice. There is no third alternative.

Article here. Excerpt:

'The “White male titans” of classical music are putting young people off the art form, the Royal Albert Hall director has claimed.

While Mozart, Beethoven and Bach are all household names, female composers and those from ethnic minority backgrounds are much less celebrated, according to a new survey.

Young people are also suffering from a lack of access to the genre because of the poor levels of music education in the UK, says Lucy Noble, artistic and commercial director at the Royal Albert Hall.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'If you can think of a problem, there’s likely a researcher somewhere trying to develop an artificial intelligence to solve it. But while AIs themselves have grown more diverse in recent years, the researchers creating the systems haven’t.

According to a new report out of New York University’s AI Now Institute, the AI industry is still dominated by white men — and this “diversity crisis” is partially to blame for the biased AIs we’re seeing crop up around the globe.

“To date, the diversity problems of the AI industry and the issues of bias in the systems it builds have tended to be considered separately,” the researchers wrote. “But we suggest that these are two versions of the same problem: issues of discrimination in the workforce and in system building are deeply intertwined.”'

Also see https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ai-bias-problem-techs-white-male-workforce/.

Article here. Excerpt:

'A former Student Government leader who was kicked out of school in May 2017 for allegedly assaulting a female student in his dorm room has gotten the expulsion removed from his record.
...
The turnaround in the Goetz case began in December, when three Pinellas County circuit judges ruled that Goetz’s rights of due process were denied by both the university’s student conduct board and Dean of Students Jacob Diaz.

Reversing their own June 12, 2018, ruling, the judges said the board and the dean relied on a summary of an investigative report – “the only document on which USF relied in presenting its case” – in making their decisions.

That meant, the judges wrote, that some evidence and testimony that went into the investigative report was not made available to Goetz, whose “due process rights were violated by the nondisclosure of information that either directly or materially affected what was actually presented at the hearing.”

The judges ordered a rehearing.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'Jolene Doherty, now aged 18, was jailed for life in January for knifing fellow teenager Conner Cowper to death at a house party.

Doherty was 17 at the time of the murder, in April 2018, but when she turned 18 last month her identity could be revealed.

She gave birth behind bars, but prison sources claim the young mum has been bragging about the brutal killing to other inmates, telling them that she hates men.

A prison source claimed the convicted killer said her hatred of men was the reason for the murder at a flat in Holytown, near Motherwell, North Lanarkshire, in April last year, the Evening Times reported.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'Law enforcement is continuing to investigate whether the teen at the center of a statewide manhunt acted alone.

The search for Sol Pais ended Wednesday at the base of Mount Evans when she was found dead near Echo Lake.

“She appeared to have died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound,” said FBI Denver Special Agent in Charge Dean Phillips. “It appears she took her own life.”'

Article here. Excerpt:

'It seems like only yesterday when Democratic Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand was slamming Donald Trump for his “dangerous rhetoric” in the wake of his tweet regarding Ilhan Omar’s 9/11 remarks. Actually, it was four days ago:
...
The morning after her packed event in Davenport, I follow Gillibrand south to Muscatine—she is on a Mississippi River tour, visiting some of the Iowa counties that flipped from Obama to Trump in 2016—and she seeks me out to make sure I’ll be at her official campaign kickoff that coming Sunday, outside of the Trump International Hotel & Tower in New York. “We’re gonna punch Trump in the face!” she tells me, smiling broadly, literally jumping up and down. “It’s the New York way!” Then she hops in her car to race to her next event.'