A six-year study of Gates Millennium Scholarship Program applicants suggests that black students who major in "high-paying fields" tend to make less money immediately after graduating college than Asian-American and Hispanic-American students who major in the same fields, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education. The study, conducted by the University of Chicago's National Opinion Research Center, monitored approximately 350 students from their high school graduations in the spring of 2000 until 2006. The salaries of black students who majored in science, technology, mathematics or engineering was 50 percent less than that of their Asian and Hispanic counterparts shortly after college, and black students who majored in business or law also made less money, according to the study. The researchers of the study stated that they had insufficient data to examine whether employer discrimination was responsible for the disparities they found.
Voters narrowly rejected a proposed amendment to the Colorado state constitution last Tuesday that would have prohibited public schools and other state agencies from "discriminating against or granting preferential treatment to any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity or national origin," according to Inside Higher Ed. As of Sunday night, 50.7 percent of voters opposed Amendment 46, with 97 percent of precincts reporting, according to the Rocky Mountain News. Previous proposals with similar wording have passed in California, Washington, Michigan and Nebraska. Defenders of affirmative action programs were heavily involved in fighting to defeat the proposal. "People hear that this is a civil rights measure and think it's about ending discrimination and when you tell people that it's about ending affirmative action, they are shocked," Melissa Hart, a professor of law at the University of Colorado at Boulder and opponent of Amendment 46, told Inside Higher Ed.
"Looking after Siegfried Kracauer", an international conference, was held from Thursday to Saturday at the Haldeman Center. The conference, organized by German professor Gerd Gemunden, included eight speeches on Kracauer by visiting professors as well as two film screenings. Kracauer wrote about film theory, among many other topics, during the Weimar Republic in Germany, and later became a film realist and sociologist in the United States. "Kracauer's critical sociology retains its power to fascinate not only on account of its intrinsic historical value, but also for its ability to cast bright analytical light on contemporary problems," according to Adrian Randolph, art history professor and director of the Leslie Center for the Humanities.