Apple, Amazon refuse to release federal diversity data; USA Today.com, 12/8/14

Jessica Guynn, USA Today; Apple, Amazon refuse to release federal diversity data:

"American companies collect and report information about their workforces to the federal government each year in a form called the EEO-1.

The EEO-1 is a standard form which breaks down race, ethnicity and gender of workforces by job classification...

"I hope everyone eventually shares their EEO-1s," Hudnell said. "If we are going to commit as an industry to drive improvement in a collective fashion, we cannot do it with inconsistent data."

Stanford fellow Vivek Wadhwa says Apple and Amazon have a responsibility to the public to be more "publicly accountable for diversity."

The Small Personal Risks That Actually Change Behavior; Harvard Business Review, 11/17/14

Peter Bregman, Harvard Business Review; The Small Personal Risks That Actually Change Behavior:

"We often think of leadership in big, active ways: ambitious visions, well-articulated strategies, convincing speeches, compelling conversations.

Those things can be useful tools for a powerful leader. But they are not the essence of leadership. The essence of leadership is having the courage to show up differently than the people around you.

Most people I know — myself included — stop short of what we can accomplish because, simply put, we’re scared. Of looking bad. Of failing. Of being humiliated. We’re hiding, unwilling to be vulnerable, unsure whether to take a risk. But leadership calls us to step forward first and take the risk that others are afraid to take."

What Will Tim Cook’s Impact Be?; New York Times, 10/30/14

Anna North, New York Times; What Will Tim Cook’s Impact Be? :

"At Time, Daniel D’Addario writes: “Tim Cook has set a new paradigm, describing his sexuality as not merely a small aspect of himself that he needs to get through talking about, but as central to his identity.” And, he adds:

“It’s a sign of how much society has changed even since 2012 that Cook is finally able to present the somewhat revolutionary idea that being gay is not just the same as being straight — that it is not a simple aspect of one’s makeup. It changes the way one views the world, as Cook writes. It also compels one forward to take part in a cause larger than oneself.”

At the Harvard Business Review, Dorie Clark writes:

“Even for those like Tim Cook, who was out to colleagues but not to ‘the world’ at large, the stress of downplaying one’s identity can take a toll. Research by the Deloitte University Leadership Center for Inclusion showed that 83% of gay employees ‘covered’ at work — i.e., even if they were technically out, they still felt the need to minimize their differences by, for instance, not bringing their partner to work functions, or not displaying family photographs at the office. Cook’s coming out demonstrates powerfully to executives at Apple — and elsewhere in the corporate world — that covering is no longer required to succeed at the top.”"

Apple’s Tim Cook Says That He Is ‘Proud to Be Gay’; New York Times, 10/30/14

Brian X. Chen and Vindu Goel, New York Times; Apple’s Tim Cook Says That He Is ‘Proud to Be Gay’ :

"The Valley has also been ahead of the curve in extending employee benefits to same-sex partners and spouses. But tech companies, particularly start-ups founded and staffed largely by young white men, have struggled to deal with a fraternitylike workplace atmosphere inhospitable to women and gay people. Silicon Valley has few prominent executives who are openly gay.

“Thank you Tim for showing what it means to be a real, courageous and authentic leader,” Mr. Zuckerberg wrote on his social network as he shared Mr. Cook’s essay with his followers.

Rob Glaser, chief executive of Real Networks, a maker of media player software in Seattle, said in an interview that Mr. Cook’s step was “hugely positive.”

“Life is about role models,” said Mr. Glaser, who has worked in the tech industry for three decades. “If you’re a 14-year old kid and you find the C.E.O. of one of the most iconic companies in the world happens to be gay, you’ll think, ‘There’s no limit on what I can do.'"”

Tim Cook Speaks Up; Businessweek, 10/30/14

Tim Cook, Businessweek; Tim Cook Speaks Up:

"Being gay has given me a deeper understanding of what it means to be in the minority and provided a window into the challenges that people in other minority groups deal with every day. It’s made me more empathetic, which has led to a richer life. It’s been tough and uncomfortable at times, but it has given me the confidence to be myself, to follow my own path, and to rise above adversity and bigotry. It’s also given me the skin of a rhinoceros, which comes in handy when you’re the CEO of Apple."

Mapping the USA's diversity from 1960-2060; USA Today, 10/22/14

USA Today; Mapping the USA's diversity from 1960-2060:

"The USA TODAY Diversity Index shows diversity has surged in the last 50 years and is expected to continue rising. The U.S. index rose from 20 in 1960 to 55 in 2010. Driven by changing attitudes and a record wave of immigration, the pace of change varies widely, sometimes even in adjacent counties. Explore this map for a county-by-county look at how your area will change."

NIH awards ~$31 million to enhance diversity in the biomedical research workforce; NIH, 10/22/14

NIH; NIH awards ~$31 million to enhance diversity in the biomedical research workforce:

"The National Institutes of Health announced the award of nearly $31 million in fiscal year 2014 funds to develop new approaches that engage researchers, including those from backgrounds underrepresented in biomedical sciences, and prepare them to thrive in the NIH-funded workforce. These awards are part of a projected five-year program to support more than 50 awardees and partnering institutions in establishing a national consortium to develop, implement, and evaluate approaches to encourage individuals to start and stay in biomedical research careers. Supported by the NIH Common Fund and all NIH 27 institutes and centers, 12 awards will be issued as part of three initiatives of the Enhancing the Diversity of the NIH-Funded Workforce program...

Research demonstrates that economic, social, and cultural factors have a powerful impact on the pursuit of science careers, and has provided small scale data on interventions that have the potential to transform biomedical research training if implemented widely. This body of work suggests that a fundamental shift in the way scientists are trained and mentored is required to attract and sustain the interest of people from underrepresented groups in the scientific workforce at all career stages."

NYCC: Diversity and the World Outside Marvel Comics' Window; ComicBookResources.com, 10/22/14

Cardner Clark, ComicBookResources.com; NYCC: Diversity and the World Outside Marvel Comics' Window:

"Marvel Comics creators gathered at New York Comic Con to discuss the topic of diversity through 75 years of Marvel history. Editor Daniel Ketchum moderated Editor-in-Chief Axel Alonso "Ms. Marvel" co-creator and editor Sana Amanat, Kurt Busiek, Kelly Sue DeConnick, writer Kieron Gillen, editor and colorist Marie Javins, editor and "Sabre" writer Don McGregor, and editor and writer Ann Nocenti.

Ketchum started by explaining the theme of the panel: "The World Outside Your Window." "Ever since I started at Marvel, one of the comments that I've heard over and over is that Marvel Comics should reflect the world outside your window, meaning that we aim to capture real-life experiences in the adventures we put on the page, as well as showing that the makeup of our diverse cast of characters -- we want our characters to match the diversity of our audience." Although that has not always been the case in the comics industry, the panelists were eager to discuss the history of diversity at Marvel and suggest ways to make comics more inclusive."

Marvel introduces hearing-impaired hero Sapheara; ComicBookResources.com, 10/21/14

Kevin Melrose, ComicBookResources.com; Marvel introduces hearing-impaired hero Sapheara:

"Remember Blue Ear, the costumed character created in 2012 by Marvel to convince then 4-year-old Anthony Smith that superheroes do wear hearing aids? Well, now meet Sapheara, a pint-sized superheroine with cochlear implants.

She teams with Iron Man and Blue Ear in Sound Effects, a new comic by Marvel Custom Solutions and the Children’s Hearing Institute of New York that addresses cochlear implants, bullying, hearing-loss awareness and hearing-loss prevention. It will be distributed later this month to about 150,000 students in grades 3 through 7 in the New York City area."

What Kind of Town Bans Books?; New Yorker, 10/1/14

Annie Julia Wyman, New Yorker; What Kind of Town Bans Books? :

"The Highland Park Independent School District, and all the other American institutions that still censor books, grapple with a set of very old and perhaps unanswerable questions: What is art, anyway? Must it be good for us? Do we accept a character’s moral flaws if we read about them? Must we experience everything an author puts into a book, or can we skip the things that disturb us or with which we disagree? On one side of the cultural divide, the pro-books side, our answers align against moralistic messages, against utility, against excisions of any kind. We feel that, while art is so powerful it can change lives, it is also so fragile and precious that it badly needs our protection. But there are other answers to these old questions—new perspectives that literary culture allows us to access. The dog from Garth Stein’s novel thinks, “I learn about other cultures and other ways of life, and then I start thinking about my own place in the world and what makes sense and what doesn’t.”* That’s exactly the kind of openness that I want to teach, and exactly what I learned in the place where I grew up."

Supreme Court Hands Gay Marriage a Tacit Victory; New York Times, 10/6/14

Adam Liptak, New York Times; Supreme Court Hands Gay Marriage a Tacit Victory:

"The development, a major surprise, cleared the way for same-sex marriages in Indiana, Oklahoma, Utah, Virginia and Wisconsin. Officials in Virginia announced that marriages would start at 1 p.m. on Monday.

The decision to let the appeals court rulings stand, which came without explanation in a series of brief orders, will almost immediately increase the number of states allowing same-sex marriage from 19 to 24, along with the District of Columbia. The impact of the move will in short order be even broader.

Monday’s orders let stand decisions from three federal appeals courts with jurisdiction over six other states that ban same-sex marriage: Colorado, Kansas, North Carolina, South Carolina, West Virginia and Wyoming. Those appeals courts will almost certainly follow their own precedents to strike down those additional bans as well, meaning the number of states with same-sex marriage should soon climb to 30."

Silicon Valley’s Diversity Problem; New York Times, 10/4/14

Editorial Board, New York Times; Silicon Valley’s Diversity Problem:

"After years of playing down the problem, technology companies like Google, Facebook and Apple now say they’re serious about improving the gender and ethnic diversity of their work forces and corporate boards. Recent data from those companies and others like them confirm what everyone has long known: Most of their employees are white and Asian men. Among technical employees, few are women, and even fewer are Latino or African-American.

Tech companies should care about these numbers. Many studies show that companies with gender and ethnic diversity tend to be more creative and more profitable, because varied perspectives help them design products and services that appeal to a diverse, worldwide audience.

The companies say they’re starting to address the problem by acknowledging it."

Microsoft releases diversity stats, says 'much work' still to be done; CNet, 10/3/14

Mary Jo Foley, CNet; Microsoft releases diversity stats, says 'much work' still to be done:

"Women now comprise 29 percent of Microsoft's worldwide workforce, up from 24 percent over the past year, according to new figures released by the company.

Microsoft made available new diversity stats and launched a new diversity and inclusion Web site on October 3."

For Bill on Disabled Access to Online Teaching Materials, the Devil’s in the Details; Chronicle of Higher Education, 9/30/14

Rebecca Koenig, Chronicle of Higher Education; For Bill on Disabled Access to Online Teaching Materials, the Devil’s in the Details:

"As smart classrooms become the norm on more campuses and online courses proliferate, some observers worry that the digital revolution will leave students with disabilities behind. But a bill under consideration in the U.S. Congress, the Technology, Equality, and Accessibility in College and Higher Education Act (HR 3505), would deal with that concern by creating accessibility guidelines for electronic materials used or assigned by college professors and administrators.

While the bill, known as the Teach Act, has bipartisan support in Congress, several higher-education organizations have raised concerns about what they consider the legislation’s broad language, inflexibility, and misplaced oversight."

GLAAD's Network Responsibility Index, 'Where We Are On TV' Reports Find Surge In LGBT Programming; Huffington Post, 10/1/14

Curtis M. Wong, Huffington Post; GLAAD's Network Responsibility Index, 'Where We Are On TV' Reports Find Surge In LGBT Programming:

"MTV, ABC Family and HBO officials have an extra special reason to celebrate today, as the three networks received "Excellent" ratings on GLAAD's Network Responsibility Index.

Now in its eighth year, the Network Responsibility Index rates TV networks on lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) inclusive content from June 2013 to May 2014, and is one of two GLAAD entertainment reports released Oct. 1. GLAAD assigned grades of Excellent, Good, Adequate, or Failing based on the "quality, diversity and relative quantity" of LGBT representations in each network's original programming, according to the advocacy group's officials...

"At HBO we feel if we are not telling diverse stories then we are missing out on some of the best stories," Lombardo added. HBO's films and series like "The Normal Heart" and "Looking" represented "a part of our history and an ongoing commitment.""

When Diversity Fails the Poor; Daily Beast, 9/28/14

Jedediah Purdy, Daily Beast; When Diversity Fails the Poor:

"Knocking—or praising—schools for their share of Pell Grant recipients really is rearranging the deck chairs here. We need to talk about economic fairness, even justice—an antique-sounding but still important word—not economic diversity. Unless everyone has health care, security, a good retirement, and dignity in their job, people will come to college to escape working-class life, not to represent it, and the idea of diversity between the rich and the poor, the privileged and unprivileged, will be something worse than a joke: a confusion.

This is an argument from the left, but it has a conservative twist. We ask schools, at all levels, to do too much in this country: to make up for deep-seated inequality, to sort children and young adults meritocratically for the market economy, to be more representative and unequal than our divided and unequal society, and, while they’re at it, to pass along precious reserves of memory, beauty, and critical thought that are valuable for their own sakes. Frustration at schools that are trying to do all these things at once spurs periodic fits of bureaucratic intrusion, like the Common Core and the Obama administration’s initiative to rank the country’s colleges and universities along a return-on-investment scale. These only make it harder for education to play its subtle, humanistic, neither-liberal-nor-conservative-but-both role of giving people a space to learn things of no obvious value, because they are strange and interesting, because their value will emerge years later, in the most surprising ways.

This may sound like a luxury, and it is, but it’s also a necessity for a certain kind of civilization."

N.F.L. Examines Its Record on Hiring of Women in Wake of Ray Rice Case; New York Times, 9/25/14

Ken Belson, New York Times; N.F.L. Examines Its Record on Hiring of Women in Wake of Ray Rice Case:

"When N.F.L. Commissioner Roger Goodell was asked last week whether any women had helped him decide to suspend the former Baltimore Ravens running back Ray Rice two games for punching his then-fiancée, he sheepishly said no.

“You’re pointing out exactly what we’re concerned about, that we didn’t have the right voices at the table,” he told the reporter. “We need to get better expertise.”

Steve Bisciotti, the owner of the Ravens, was asked a similar question this week: Were any women involved in his decision to cut Rice and terminate his contract? The answer was similar. “Unfortunately, we don’t have a female president, G.M. or coach,” Bisciotti said.

Goodell and Bisciotti were acknowledging what outside experts and even some who have worked for the N.F.L. have known for years: that the league and its 32 teams have done a poor job hiring women, a deficiency that was laid bare by Rice’s suspension.

“Until they hired a raft of consultants and promoted the woman in charge of social responsibility, it was a bunch of guys in a room,” said Jodi Balsam, a former lawyer at the N.F.L. who now teaches at Brooklyn Law School. “They didn’t have any expertise on the pathology of domestic violence. It’s not that they had bad intentions or were purposely overlooking things because they were motivated to downplay anything that would hurt the league. But they were shortsighted in not having someone in the room to help them understand the pathology.”"

The Importance of Friendship Diversity; New York Magazine, 9/26/14

Ann Friedman, New Your Magazine; The Importance of Friendship Diversity:

"There are a lot of things about my upbringing that I’ve left behind (tuna casserole leaps to mind). But despite the fact that I now live in a majority-minority city and count several people of color among my closest friends, percentage-wise my social circle has remained pretty damn white. In fact, the Public Religion Research Institute found that the average white person’s friend group is a whopping 91 percent white. We’re all living in our own private Iowa. “It’s not that I don’t think white people are unwilling to cultivate real friendships with black people," writes Rebecca Carroll in The Guardian, “it’s that I don’t believe becoming close friends with black people occurs to them at all.”

But I know for a fact that it occurs to at least some of us."

The Business Case for Diversity in the Tech Industry; New York Times, 9/26/14

Farhad Manjoo, New York Times; The Business Case for Diversity in the Tech Industry:

"This week I wrote about Google’s efforts to increase the number of women and minorities who work at the company. Among other programs, Google is running a series of workshops to help employees understand and combat their unconscious biases. Google hopes the plan will put people on alert to the many small ways that its culture may make outsiders uncomfortable.

But several readers have raised a more basic question: Why does Google want diversity? White and Asian men make up the bulk of American software engineering graduates, and Google, like other tech giants, has done extremely well hiring from that pool. If a lack of diversity hasn’t hurt Google so far, why alter how the company works, apparently for reasons of political correctness?

I asked Google’s executives and managers several versions of this question. They said Google’s efforts to increase diversity had little to do with political correctness. Instead, they said, they were directly related to the company’s bottom line: By increasing diversity, Google can improve its products. And it can back up this argument with both research and experience.

“If we have an employee base that reflects our user base, we are going to better understand the needs of people all over the world,” said Brian Welle, the researcher in charge of Google’s diversity training workshops. “Having people with a different worldview and different ways of solving problems gives you the raw materials to be more innovative and to be able to solve problems that nobody has asked before.”"

Exposing Hidden Bias at Google; New York Times, 9/24/14

Farhad Manjoo, New York Times; Exposing Hidden Bias at Google:

"Men make up 83 percent of Google’s engineering employees and 79 percent of its managers. In a report to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission last year, Google said that of its 36 executives and top-ranking managers, just three are women.

Google’s leaders say they are unhappy about the firm’s poor gender diversity, and about the severe underrepresentation of blacks and Hispanics among its work force.

And so they are undertaking a long-term effort to improve these numbers, the centerpiece of which is a series of workshops aimed at making Google’s culture more accepting of diversity.

There’s just one problem: The company has no solid evidence that the workshops, or many of its other efforts to improve diversity, are actually working."

MacArthur Awards Go to 21 Diverse Fellows; New York Times, 9/17/14

Felicia R. Lee, New York Times; MacArthur Awards Go to 21 Diverse Fellows:

"Twelve men and nine women, whose work is as diverse as studying the racial elements in perceptions of crime and translating contemporary Arab poetry, have been named the 2014 fellows of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. The fellowships, based on achievement and potential, come with a stipend of $625,000 over five years and are among the most prestigious prizes for artists, scholars and professionals...

The artists among this year’s winners include Alison Bechdel, 54, a cartoonist and graphic memoirist in Bolton, Vt., whose 2006 memoir, “Fun Home: A Family Tragicomedy,” became a musical at the Public Theater in 2013...

Sarah Deer, 41, a professor at William Mitchell College of Law in St. Paul, develops policies and legislation to combat domestic abuse and sexual violence against American Indian women. Ms. Deer said she would use her MacArthur money to elevate the voices of such women, who she contends have been failed by both tribal courts and federal laws.

“Native Americans are the most victimized group for sexual violence and domestic violence,” Ms. Deer said in a telephone interview. “The treatment of native women that came with early settlement never stopped.”

Mary L. Bonauto, 53, a civil rights lawyer with the Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders in Boston is among the other 2014 fellows whose talents have led her to advocacy work. Ms. Bonauto is credited as a major force behind the same-sex marriage cases that went to the Supreme Court."

Ruth Bader Ginsburg: Watch 6th Circuit For SCOTUS' Next Move On Gay Marriage; Associated Press via Huffington Post, 9/16/14

Brian Bakst, Associated Press via Huffington Post,; Ruth Bader Ginsburg: Watch 6th Circuit For SCOTUS' Next Move On Gay Marriage:

"Ginsburg said cases pending before the circuit covering Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio and Tennessee would probably play a role in the high court's timing. She said "there will be some urgency" if that appeals court allows same-sex marriage bans to stand. Such a decision would run contrary to a legal trend favoring gay marriage and force the Supreme Court to step in sooner, she predicted.

She said if the appeals panel falls in line with other rulings there is "no need for us to rush...

"Having people close to us who say who they are — that made the attitude change in this country," Ginsburg said at the University of Minnesota Law School."

Fall 2014 shows embrace minority leads as networks realise that diversity sells; Guardian, 9/11/14

Brian Moylan, Guardian; Fall 2014 shows embrace minority leads as networks realise that diversity sells:

"There’s also a 2013 study from UCLA that proves shows with greater diversity do better in the ratings. This was true not just in broadcast, but also in cable.

Still, that study showed the the lion’s share of programming on all of television has only 10 percent diversity in the cast. (Another study by the Center for Study of Women in Television & Film found that women account for only 43% of all speaking roles on television, so we still have some way to go on sexual diversity as well.)

But there has also become a broader discussion about diversity on television. In 2012 HBO’s show Girls strangely became ground zero for an internet-wide debate about the lack of people of color on the show in particular and television in general. In 2013 scandal erupted again when Saturday Night Live came under fire for not having any black actresses on its roster. After four months, they hired Sasheer Zamata for the ensemble and two African American women to work as writers.

Conquering diversity seems to be a problem that networks are invested in, if only to improve their bottom line. And if it gets us stories that reflect the actual world we live in, who cares what the result is. Still, there is a long way to go before TV is an actual reflection of our ever-expanding universe. But a bandwagon full of shows about families unlike those in Norman Rockwell paintings is one all the networks should consider jumping on. Hear that, CBS?"

Mostly White Forces in Mostly Black Towns: Police Struggle for Racial Diversity; New York Times, 9/9/14

Shaila Dewan, New York Times; Mostly White Forces in Mostly Black Towns: Police Struggle for Racial Diversity:

"The obstacles to diversity are many, Dr. Lim, the sociologist, said. Candidates usually must pass written tests, physical agility tests, psychological tests, polygraphs and background checks, some of which can have a disparate impact on minority candidates. Qualified black candidates are sought after not just by competing police departments, but also by employers in other industries. And some police chiefs have cited a negative attitude toward law enforcement among blacks that hinders recruiting.

Police departments have tried all kinds of remedies, from personal trainers to help with physical fitness tests to tailored recruiting. (A RAND survey found that women were attracted to the good salaries in policing, blacks to the profession’s prestige and Asians to the excitement of the job.)

But many small departments lack the resources, or the will, to conduct an exhaustive review of their hiring practices."

Top Colleges That Enroll Rich, Middle Class and Poor; New York Times, 9/8/14

David Leonhardt, New York Times; Top Colleges That Enroll Rich, Middle Class and Poor:

"To see which selective colleges are doing the most, and the least, to change the situation, The Upshot has analyzed data for every college with a four-year graduation rate of at least 75 percent. We combined data on enrollment and tuition costs to measure how hard each college is trying to attract and graduate poor and middle-class students. The result is our College Access Index.

Recruiting more high-achieving students from modest backgrounds, says Raynard Kington, the president of Grinnell, in central Iowa, “is the smart thing to do, because the country needs as much brainpower as we can get. And it’s the right thing to do, because it’s not fair that your ability to get a college education can be determined by your ability to buy an education.”

Vassar, the once all-female college in the Hudson River Valley, tops our index, with Grinnell placing second. About 23 percent of Vassar’s freshmen in recent years have received federal Pell grants (which mean they come from roughly the bottom 40 percent of the income distribution), up from 12 percent in 2007. After taking scholarships into account, the average annual cost of attending Vassar for lower-income students is about $6,000. Students cover much of that cost through campus jobs and loans.

The biggest theme to emerge from our analysis is that otherwise similar colleges often have very different levels of commitment to economic diversity. In this area, endowment is not destiny, and prestige is not destiny."

Corner Closet Opens Up a Bit Wider; New York Times, 9/5/14

James B. Stewart, New York Times; Corner Closet Opens Up a Bit Wider:

"Several of Mr. Burgess’s friends pointed out that once his bank went public, he’d be one of the first publicly gay chief executives. “I didn’t really think it was a story,” he said. “It just is what it is. But I did feel a sense of obligation to the generation behind me. We have good gay role models now in professional basketball and football, but there just weren’t many in business. I thought if I could be helpful to somebody, that would be great.”

Mr. Grenfell-Gardner expressed similar sentiments. “I hope the next generation realizes they can be whoever they want to be,” he said.

Mr. Sears said he encouraged Mr. Burgess to speak out. “It’s incredibly important for people to see that there are gay C.E.O.s,” Mr. Sears said. “So for Trevor and Jason to come out publicly as gay, that’s historic. At the same time, it’s mundane. They’re both C.E.O.s with partners and families and they’re just doing their jobs like everyone else. There’s nothing unique about that.”

Even now, Mr. Grenfell-Gardner said: “I don’t really want to be the poster child for gay C.E.O.s. There are so many talented people who have been mentors to me, both gay and straight. I want an environment where diversity is woven into our DNA as an organization. It makes us stronger. Forty percent of my leadership team is female. In the high-performance culture we’re trying to build, respect and tolerance is hard-wired. That’s what’s important to me.”"

Jesse Jackson targets Amazon.com over diversity; USA Today, 9/3/14

Jessica Guynn, USA Today; Jesse Jackson targets Amazon.com over diversity:

"Rev. Jesse Jackson is calling on Amazon.com to release its work force diversity numbers.

The Seattle technology giant is one of the lone holdouts among major technology companies.

Google, Facebook, Twitter and other leading Silicon Valley companies have publicly disclosed the racial and gender breakdown of employees in recent months.

The reports have shown what many have long suspected, that the technology industry is overwhelmingly white, Asian and male."

Gay Groups to March in St. Patrick’s Day Parade as a Ban Falls; New York Times, 9/3/14

Marc Santora, New York Times; Gay Groups to March in St. Patrick’s Day Parade as a Ban Falls:

"The organizers of the New York City St. Patrick’s Day parade said on Wednesday that they were lifting a ban on openly gay groups marching under their own banner, bringing to a close more than two decades of bitter protests and controversy that thrust an annual celebration into the national gay rights debate.

The decision is a striking reflection of the evolution of gay rights in the city and in American society, and is a measure of changing attitudes in the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church."

This Man Changed His Name From José To Joe And Immediately Got More Job Interviews; Yahoo.com

Yahoo.com; This Man Changed His Name From José To Joe And Immediately Got More Job Interviews:

""I had to drop a letter to get a title.""

Why Was Michael Sam Cut By The Rams? Personnel Decision, Not Homophobia; International Business Times, 9/2/14

Thomas Barrabi, International Business Times; Why Was Michael Sam Cut By The Rams? Personnel Decision, Not Homophobia:

"The St. Louis Rams’ decision to cut openly gay rookie defensive end Michael Sam despite a strong statistical performance this preseason led some to question whether his sexuality played a role in his dismissal from the team. But from a football perspective, Sam was always a long shot to make the Rams’ final squad...

Sam cleared waivers on Sunday and is currently a free agent. Still, Meltzer believes that he has both the talent and the fortitude to make it in the NFL.

“I think he has the right perspective. I think he does have enough talent to make the league. He may have to play on a practice squad, but he has the right speed and football intelligence," he told IBTimes. “I don’t think there’s very many teams, if he has the talent, that will stray away from him. I think the biggest problem, which was that initial fanfare, is over now. The next team to take him, it’s not going to be as big of a story.”"

Op-ed: In The Long Run, Michael Sam Being Cut Was About Homophobia; Advocate, 9/2/14

Michelle Garcia, Advocate; Op-ed: In The Long Run, Michael Sam Being Cut Was About Homophobia:

"Did the Rams cut Michael Sam out of sheer homophobia? I doubt it. But it was homophobic reasons that got him to such a precarious position in the first place.

While the Rams were able to at least push this dream of having an out player a little further, and he was given a platform to show the entire league that he has potential for the pros, at the end of the day, the Rams did not have any use for him — they already had a nearly-full slate of defensive linemen, minus the one spot that undrafted rookie Ethan Westbrooks now has. And when 31 other teams had the chance to pick Sam up, it seems none of them needed him (and according to Outsports, at least six teams could probably use his talents right now).

Just in the last year, all of the the professional leagues (the NBA, WNBA, MLB, NHL, and even the NFL) have made several outward attempts to appear more welcoming of LGBT athletes, staff, and fans. I don't want to believe that homophobia still persists in this way in the NFL. Like I said, I don't think Fisher and the Rams are a homophobic bunch; they're the ones who took a chance on Sam, and undeniably stood by him. But looking back, all of the fanfare from these pro leagues feels like simple lip service."

Generation Later, Poor Are Still Rare at Elite Colleges; New York Times, 8/25/14

Richard Perez-Pena, New York Times; Generation Later, Poor Are Still Rare at Elite Colleges: "A series of federal surveys of selective colleges found virtually no change from the 1990s to 2012 in enrollment of students who are less well off — less than 15 percent by some measures — even though there was a huge increase over that time in the number of such students going to college. Similar studies looking at a narrower range of top wealthy universities back those findings. With race-based affirmative action losing both judicial and public support, many have urged selective colleges to shift more focus to economic diversity."

Outdated forms leave same-sex couples confused; Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 8/16/14

Mackenzie Carpenter, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette; Outdated forms leave same-sex couples confused:

"Judge McGough has performed 59 same-sex weddings in Allegheny County since May 20, and while the couples uniformly praise the warm welcome they receive in the Marriage License Bureau, a few find the application form’s designation “unfortunate,’’ he said.

Other counties have not taken the same wait-and-see approach.

In Beaver County, money is tight and new forms weren’t in the cards, so “we just white out bride’ and ’groom’ and replace them with ’applicant,’ ” said Carol Fiorucci, the register of wills, While they wait for the new forms to arrive, “We want to be sensitive to the subject, and we want to be courteous,” she said.

“We had our software companies change our application forms the day after the law changed,” said Michael Ginsburg, register of wills for Westmoreland County, from bride and groom to “applicant.”

On the day a federal judge ruled the state’s ban on same-sex marriage was unconstitutional and the Corbett administration announced it would not appeal, couples started showing up in Mr. Ginsburg’s office for marriage licenses.

“We hadn’t had time yet to make the changes, and when they saw ‘bride’ and ‘groom’ on the forms, some of them were bothered by that,” Mr. Ginsburg said.

“A couple of them got excited, though and started arguing which one was the bride and which one was the groom.”

Late Friday, Holli Senior, a spokeswoman for the state Department of Health, emailed a statement that said since the ruling in May, the department “has been exploring options to determine what changes may be necessary to the state’s marriage application and other vital records forms. We will continue to work with all counties and ensure that they are provided with information as it becomes available.”

Web Trolls Winning as Incivility Increases; New York Times, 8/14/14

Farhad Manjoo, New York Times; Web Trolls Winning as Incivility Increases:

"But Dr. Phillips, of Humboldt State, pointed out that many efforts to curb trolling ran into a larger problem: “To what extent do you want to make it harder for people to express themselves on the Internet?” she asked.

“This is not the good-faith exchange of ideas,” she said. “It’s just people being nasty, and if anything, it might encourage marginalized groups to not speak up.” She added, “On the other hand, by silencing that valve, there’s a lot of other stuff that is important culturally that might also be minimized.”

If there’s one thing the history of the Internet has taught us, it’s that trolls will be difficult to contain because they really reflect base human society in all its ugliness. Trolls find a way.

“It’s not a question of whether or not we’re winning the war on trolling, but whether we’re winning the war on misogyny, or racism, and ableism and all this other stuff,” Dr. Phillips said. “Trolling is just a symptom of those bigger problems.”"

Tallying Female Workers Isn't Enough to Make Tech More Diverse; Atlantic, 8/11/14

Adrienne LaFrance, Atlantic; Tallying Female Workers Isn't Enough to Make Tech More Diverse:

"This drumbeat of diversity data has been anticlimactic, not least because it shows what most people already expected: that leaders in technology are overwhelmingly hiring white men. Often, when companies offered more granular detail, the gender divide was even more pronounced. Company-wide representation of women might be 30 percent, but the percentage of women in tech and engineering roles at Google and Yahoo, for instance, was about half that.

All the companies say they need to do more. Few are willing to talk about the issue beyond what they've released in charts and blog posts. Plenty of people say, or whisper to themselves, that individual companies can't fix the industry-wide "pipeline problem."...

If the industry cannot agree that there are obstacles to women entering the industry in the first place, it's no wonder the scope of the conversation is limited. Even those who fixate on diversity in tech often focus too narrowly on gender. "We'll talk about the fact that there's sexism in tech, but we won't talk about the fact that there's racism," said Tiffani Ashley Bell, CEO of scheduling app Pencil You In. "I feel like that's the safe conversation. And mostly white women are highlighted, and mostly white women are talking about the issue—and they're going to see it from that perspective."

Bell says that without a more open and inclusive conversation about diversity in tech, a few high-profile blog posts about workforce numbers isn't going to make a difference. "You can be well intentioned, but if you don't act on it—if you're not actually doing anything—change is not going to come about just from you wanting to be inclusive," Bell said. "It has to be something you're actively doing. If you want to be more inclusive there are ways to do it."

Sharing data is part of the solution, but it has to be linked with meaningful initiatives to change corporate practices. Companies should release annual reports detailing their progress and publicly assessing the workforce diversification strategies that have and haven't worked. That's the next step."

Many Women Leave Engineering, Blame The Work Culture; NPR, 8/12/14

Nicholas St. Fleur, NPR; Many Women Leave Engineering, Blame The Work Culture:

"Over the course of three years, , a psychologist at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, surveyed 5,300 women who earned engineering degrees within the past six decades in order to figure out why so few stayed in engineering. Fouad reported that only 62 percent of respondents were currently working in engineering. Those who left the field provided their reasons for doing so in the survey.

The answer, Fouad said, was simple:

"It's the climate, stupid!" she said during her presentation, referring to the "old-boys club" workplaces that she says still exist in many engineering organizations.

Respondents in her study reflected her sentiments, with many calling the engineering workplace unfriendly and even hostile to women. They also said they felt that many of these companies did not provide opportunities for women like them to advance and develop.

"Women's departure from engineering is not just an issue of 'leaning in,' " said Fouad, lead researcher of the study. "It's about changing the work environment.""

Apple’s Diversity Mirrors Other Tech Companies'; New York Times, 8/12/14

Brian X. Chen, New York Times; Apple’s Diversity Mirrors Other Tech Companies’ :

"Similar to other Silicon Valley tech companies, Apple has a work force that is composed mostly of men, and most of them are white.

The company on Tuesday published statistics on the makeup of its work force of 98,000 employees in terms of race, ethnicity and sex. It said 30 percent of its employees worldwide were women. In the United States, where Apple is based, 55 percent of the employees are white, 15 percent are Asian, 11 percent are Hispanic and only 7 percent are black...

In an interview, Mr. Jackson said he was glad that Mr. Cook had chosen to reveal the report under his signature. He said the publication of diversity reports by Apple and the other tech companies was a step in the right direction. In the fall, he plans to hold a public forum, which will include the tech companies that have disclosed diversity data, to talk about a plan of action to help close the diversity gap.

“We think Silicon Valley is the fastest growing industry in America,” he said. “We must be forward-thinking and inclusive in ways we have not been before.”"

MLB names Bean its first Ambassador for Inclusion: Former player to provide guidance, training in support of LGBT community in baseball; MLB.com, 7/15/14

Alyson Footer, MLB.com; MLB names Bean its first Ambassador for Inclusion: Former player to provide guidance, training in support of LGBT community in baseball:

"One year after Major League Baseball issued a policy prohibiting players from harassing and discriminating against others players based on their sexual orientation, Commissioner Bud Selig appointed former outfielder Billy Bean as MLB's first Ambassador for Inclusion.

The announcement was made on Tuesday at the T-Mobile All-Star FanFest, following Selig's annual Town Hall Chat on the set of the MLB.com stage at the Minneapolis Convention Center.

Selig and Bean were accompanied by Lutha Burke, the sister of the late former Major League outfielder Glenn Burke.

In his new role, Bean, who made public that he is gay in 1999, will provide guidance and training related to efforts to support those in the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community throughout Major League Baseball. He will work with Major and Minor League Clubs to encourage equal opportunity in accordance with the joint MLB-MLBPA Workplace Code of Conduct.

Bean also will develop educational training initiatives against sexism, homophobia and prejudice, and he will be present at annual industry events, including the Winter Meetings and the MLB-MLBPA Rookie Career Development Program.

"Diversity is a hallmark of our sport, which is fortunate to have an inherent ability to bring people together," Selig said. "The people of our sport have a responsibility to act with a kind of respect and sensitivity that our game's diverse players, employees and fans deserve.

"I wish that our game had someone in place to whom Billy and Glenn could have turned when they played; a friend, listener, a source of support. That's why I am so delighted to make this announcement today."...

Yogi Berra, behind the support of his museum and learning center in New Jersey, is an ambassador of Athlete Ally, and former manager and current MLB executive Joe Torre also offered his public endorsement, signing the Athlete Ally pledge to "respect and welcome all persons, regardless of their perceived or actual sexual orientation, gender identity or gender expression."

And it all begins with education and enlightenment."

Posthumous Recognition: M.L.B. to Recognize Glenn Burke as Baseball’s Gay Pioneer; New York Times, 7/14/14

John Branch, New York Times; Posthumous Recognition: M.L.B. to Recognize Glenn Burke as Baseball’s Gay Pioneer:

"Glenn Burke was 27 when he walked out on Major League Baseball, his promising career as an outfielder undone mostly by the burden of being a semicloseted gay man. It was 1980, and it was more important, Burke later explained, to be himself than to be a professional baseball player.

“It’s harder to be gay in sports than anywhere else, except maybe president,” Burke said in 1982, when he came out publicly in an Inside Sports magazine article. “Baseball is probably the hardest sport of all.”

More than three decades later, and nearly 20 years after Burke’s death, Major League Baseball still has not had an active player publicly disclose that he is gay. There probably are several gay men currently playing, but the sport awaits its Robbie Rogers, its Jason Collins, its Michael Sam.

In the meantime, Major League Baseball is trying to ease the way for those surely to come. As part of a concerted effort to demonstrate an atmosphere of tolerance and inclusion, the league invited Burke’s family to Tuesday’s All-Star Game in Minneapolis — its first official recognition of Burke’s early role in a movement just now gaining traction across the sports landscape.

“He was a pioneer, and should be recognized,” Pat Courtney, a Major League Baseball spokesman, said....

“People are missing out when they decide to let a segment of our society not be what they can truly be,” Lutha Burke said.

But the past couple of years have seen a surge in coming-out stories in sports, as gay athletes recognize a shifting, friendlier environment. Major League Baseball, without an out active player, has decided that it should not idly wait. For more than a year, the league has worked with Athlete Ally, a group with a mission to stamp out homophobia in sports."

The Lost and Found Legacy of Barbara Ringer: Remembering one of the architects of American copyright law—and one of the legal world's pioneering women; Atlantic, 7/11/14

Amanda Levendowski, Atlantic; The Lost and Found Legacy of Barbara Ringer: Remembering one of the architects of American copyright law—and one of the legal world's pioneering women:

"Almost as soon as she joined the Copyright Office, Ringer set about updating the 1909 Copyright Law, an effort that had been tabled due to World War II. She reignited interest in reform, and spent more than two decades proposing legislation, negotiating among copyright owners, and lobbying Congress. She drafted most of the bill by herself.

Ringer’s efforts brought United States copyright law—previously, one that had been passed before the advent of commercial radio, television, and copyright machines—into the modern era. To the chagrin of many, her legislation sparked the trend in expanding copyright protection. The 1976 Copyright Act extended the length of copyright protection, from 28 years under the 1909 Copyright Act to the lifetime of the author plus 50 years. Her efforts also codified the fair-use doctrine, which permits some unlicensed and unauthorized uses of copyrighted works.

And, at her insistence, the Copyright Act used both “he” and “she,” making it one of the first pieces of federal legislation to include dual gender pronouns."

How diversity actually makes us smarter; Washington Post, 7/6/14

Gregory Rodriguez, Washington Post; How diversity actually makes us smarter:

"Successful navigation of this country’s diversity has always required extra thought, and more brainpower. The more diverse the location, the more brainpower required by the people who live there.

In more homogenous parishes, towns, states and countries, residents aren’t necessarily obliged to take that extra intellectual step. In places where the overwhelming majority of residents share a common background, they are more likely to maintain an unspoken consensus about the meaning of institutions and practices. That consensus, Dutch philosopher Bart van Leeuwen reminds us, is enforced “through sayings and jokes, in ways of speaking and moving, and in subtle facial expressions that betray surprise or recognition.” In other words, the way things are is so self-evident that they don’t require a second thought.

Diversity, however, requires second thoughts. When the consensus is challenged in a homogenous place by the presence of new people, things get interesting. The familiar signs and symbols that undergird our implicit understanding of the world can change in meaning. The presence of conflicting worldviews causes confusion, uncertainty, and alienation for holdovers and newcomers alike. These feelings can either cause people to draw back into themselves — or force them to articulate and justify themselves to those who don’t share their view of the world. Or both...

So it should follow that operating in a diverse environment makes you smarter. Not that that makes it any easier. Diversity doesn’t require us simply to learn how to celebrate our differences. It requires us to tax our brains by questioning our worldviews, our beliefs and our institutions."

Want to Brainstorm New Ideas? Then Limit Your Online Connections; New York Times, 7/4/14

Steve Lohr, New York Times; Want to Brainstorm New Ideas? Then Limit Your Online Connections:

"Clustering reduced the diversity of ideas.

The research paper, said Jesse Shore, a co-author and assistant professor at the Boston University School of Management, contributes to “the growing awareness that being connected all the time has costs. And we put a number to it, in an experimental setting.”

The research, of course, also showed where the connection paid off — finding information, the vital first step in decision making. “There are huge, huge benefits to information sharing,” said Ethan Bernstein, a co-author and assistant professor at the Harvard Business School. “But the costs are harder to measure.”

The virtues and drawbacks of connectedness, Mr. Bernstein added, vary according to the context. “It depends on whether the task is information sharing or information interpretation,” he said.

The research was just one experiment in a lab, but it does point to the larger subject of striking a balance between connectedness and isolation in the digital age.

“The connection facilitates the search and discovery process,” said David Lazer, a co-author and professor of political science and computer science at Northeastern University. “Then, you need isolation for most creative thinking.""

Program aims to attract black males into teaching: Teens encouraged to join the profession; Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 7/4/14

Eric Boodman, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette; Program aims to attract black males into teaching: Teens encouraged to join the profession:

"Less than 2 percent of teachers in the U.S. are African-American males, according to Robert Millward, education professor at IUP. To try to increase those numbers, Mr. Millward started the Black Men Teaching Initiative, which led to the teens, male and female, from Homewood Children's Village attending a workshop at IUP.

Through workshops such as this one, billboards on buses and changes in admissions policies, professors and administrators at IUP, California University of Pennsylvania, Point Park University and Community College of Allegheny County are trying to persuade young black men to pursue higher education and to become teachers. The second task is more difficult than the first, Mr. Millward explained...

The organizers of the Black Men Teaching Initiative hope that providing African-American middle and high school students with mentors and role models will create a snowball effect. Stanley Denton, the professor in charge of the initiative at Point Park University, remembers being stared at as he walked the halls of Pittsburgh schools as the district's director of multicultural education...

While outside education experts applaud the effort, they also warn against viewing an increase in the numbers as the only solution. "It can't be seen as a panacea," Mr. Milner said. He mentioned inequitable funding, inadequate resources and under-qualified teachers as hurdles that can trip up black students, regardless of the number of black male teachers.

"Black male teachers can serve as role models, especially for black male students, but what are we going to do to support black male teachers who take on these other layers of responsibility?" he asked."

Penn Hills woman elected president of American Library Association; Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 7/4/14

Stephanie McFeeters, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette; Plum librarian takes lead at American Libraries Association:

"Today's libraries offer patrons much more than books, says Courtney L. Young of Plum, who was inaugurated this week as president of the American Libraries Association. Providing Internet access, career resources and meeting spaces, libraries serve a several different needs, and in her new position Ms. Young plans to boost their role in communities across the nation.

As president of the 56,000-member association, Ms. Young, who is head librarian at the J. Clarence Kelly Library at Penn State Greater Allegheny in McKeesport, said she will emphasize career development, diversity and community outreach. Ms. Young was sworn in Tuesday at the Chicago-based association'‍s annual conference in Las Vegas...

Another of her priorities is ensuring that the association membership is diverse. In addition to strengthening the association'‍s Spectrum Scholarship Program, which helps students from underrepresented backgrounds pursue degrees in library sciences, Ms. Young said she aims to increase minority retention.

As libraries change, collections, too, are becoming increasingly diverse. Besides books and electronic resources, some libraries now lend tools, baking pans and fishing lures, and libraries provide entrepreneurs with meeting spaces as they get their businesses off the ground, Ms. Young said."

Facebook Mirrors Tech Industry’s Lack of Diversity; New York Times, 6/25/14

Vindu Goel, New York Times; Facebook Mirrors Tech Industry’s Lack of Diversity:

"“As these numbers show, we have more work to do — a lot more,” Facebook’s global head of diversity, Maxine Williams, wrote in the blog post announcing the data. “Diversity is something that we’re treating as everyone’s responsibility at Facebook, and the challenge of finding qualified but underrepresented candidates is one that we’re addressing as part of a strategic effort across Facebook. Since our strategic diversity team launched last year, we’re already seeing improved new hire figures and lower attrition rates for underrepresented groups.”

Facebook’s disclosure follows similar reports recently released by other major Internet companies, including Google, Yahoo and LinkedIn. Older Silicon Valley companies, such as Intel, Cisco Systems and Hewlett-Packard, have also released their employment diversity data...

While tech companies say their diversity challenges are largely due to the lack of women and minorities getting science and engineering degrees, Rev. Jackson said the industry’s diversity data show that it has done a poor job of recruiting black and Latino workers even for nontechnical jobs such as lawyers and marketers."

New NPR Chief, Jarl Mohn, Vows to Foster Diversity; New York Times, 6/29/14

Elizabeth Jensen, New York Times; New NPR Chief, Jarl Mohn, Vows to Foster Diversity:

"When Jarl Mohn takes the helm as NPR’s chief executive on Tuesday, he will call on lessons learned from public radio in Los Angeles to address what he says is one of NPR’s most pressing priorities: increasing its reach into communities of color.

Mr. Mohn, who was named to the NPR post on May 9, was chosen in part because of the strong record of diversity at Southern California Public Radio, parent of the Los Angeles station KPCC, where until recently he was the board chairman.

At the time of his appointment, NPR’s board adopted a strategic plan intended to “increase the diversity of the audience by age, ethnicity and geography,” as well as the sources it quotes and the “diversity of NPR talent;” NPR’s newsroom staff is 77 percent white, and its audience even more so, according to a report from NPR’s ombudsman.

Eleven days later, however, NPR announced that it would end “Tell Me More,” its daily show meant to attract African-Americans and other listeners of color...

If NPR is to change, however, accountability is needed, many in the public radio sphere say. “Without some kind of financial ramification, nothing happens,” said Farai Chideya, who hosted a daily show focused on issues affecting African-Americans, which was canceled in 2009."

Among Gay C.E.O.s, the Pressure to Conform; New York Times, 6/28/14

James B. Stewart, New York Times; Among Gay C.E.O.s, the Pressure to Conform:

"That’s not to say there haven’t been any gay chief executives at major corporations — Mr. Browne is unique only because he was outed — and there are gay chief executives today, some of whom lead relatively open lives. But thus far, none have been willing to publicly acknowledge being gay. I reached out to several of them for this article, and all refused to be identified.

That makes the corporate corner suite one of the last frontiers for gay civil rights, now that even a professional football draft pick, Michael Sam, has publicly acknowledged being gay.

This seems especially baffling given recent advances in gay civil rights. And corporate chief executives are ostensibly evaluated by objective measures of financial performance, which should render their sexual orientation irrelevant.

But conforming to social norms has long been an unspoken requirement for the top jobs at public corporations. And even for gay people who have managed to get there, coming out publicly violates a norm that chief executives don’t court personal publicity or raise issues that might distract from the company’s business. “There may be what’s known as ‘pioneer fear,’ ” said Kenji Yoshino, professor of constitutional law at New York University and co-author of “Uncovering Talent, a New Model for Inclusion.” “No one wants to be first, with some asterisk after their name.”

Professor Zweigenhaft added that chief executives typically don’t have the personality of civil rights trail blazers. “The kind of person who becomes a C.E.O. isn’t going to surprise the board by coming out in The New York Times,” he said.

Although women and blacks are more visible, they face similar pressures in the executive suite. “Corporate boards tend to be older, white, male and conservative, and they want C.E.O.s they feel comfortable with,” Professor Zweigenhaft said. “Women who make it to the top need to show they can be one of the guys. African-Americans can’t seem threatening. You’re not going to find Jesse Jackson on any Fortune 500 boards.”"

U.S. Companies Less LGBT-Friendly Than They'd Like You To Believe; HuffingtonPost.com, 6/27/14

Hunter Stuart, HuffingtonPost.com; U.S. Companies Less LGBT-Friendly Than They'd Like You To Believe:

"Yet behind these policies lies a corporate culture years away from actually achieving equality, according to interviews with advocates, diversity leaders and LGBT employees of large U.S. corporations.

One statistic tells that story: There are no openly gay CEOs at any of the country's 1,000 biggest companies, as The New York Times reported last month. Until there are LGBT people filling the top slots at these businesses, no policy change will level the playing field within corporate America, said activists and workers at these companies...

For LGBT workers, having to cover up who you are at work can mean changing everything from your mannerisms and voice to the kinds of pictures you frame on your desk. It also affects casual conversations with coworkers. "You're gonna be careful about how you describe your evenings and weekends. You're going to have to change pronouns," said Tom Lynch of Out and Equal Workplace Advocates, a San Francisco-based nonprofit devoted to making workplaces safe and equitable for LGBT employees...

"Covering," as it's called, is widespread. Twenty-three percent of gay men and 15 percent of gay women believe that covering their identity has helped their careers, according to a 2013 report from the Center for Talent Innovation, a New York-based organization that helps corporations leverage talent from women and minorities."

Harvey Milk honored with postage stamp; Washington Post, 5/22/14

Katie Zezima, Washington Post; Harvey Milk honored with postage stamp:

"The U.S. Postal Service dedicated a stamp to Harvey Milk, one of the nation’s first openly gay elected officials, in a White House ceremony Thursday.

“This stamp reflects our longstanding commitment to civil rights,” said Deputy Postmaster General Ronald Stroman. “Harvey Milk joins other civil rights pioneers who have been honored with stamps including Martin Luther King, Jr. and Caesar Chavez.”

Milk was a San Francisco city supervisor when he and Mayor George Moscone were assassinated at city hall Nov. 27, 1978, by a former city supervisor. Milk was posthumously awarded a Medal of Freedom in 2009."

Untold Stories: The Park Service strives to tell the history of all Americans, but one group has gone almost entirely overlooked; National Parks Magazine, Summer 2014

Rona Marech, National Parks Magazine; Untold Stories: The Park Service strives to tell the history of all Americans, but one group has gone almost entirely overlooked:

"In 1965, most gay men and lesbians never dreamed of coming out publicly. So when a small group of picketers gathered at Philadelphia’s Independence Hall on July 4 of that year with signs that seemed to broadcast their sexual orientation, bystanders were perplexed. One man instructed his children to hold their noses as they walked by. “But you couldn’t really be gay?” people asked. Some thought that they were actors. Or that it was a joke...

Participating in such a protest could lead to arrest, job loss, social rejection, or physical harm. Yet this determined crew of around 40 marched single file for nearly two hours carrying homemade signs with messages such as “Support Homosexual Civil Rights.” They had carefully selected the location at Independence National Historical Park because they wanted to remind—or inform—the public that gay and lesbian citizens did not enjoy the rights enshrined in the nation’s founding documents. To that end, they called the pickets, which recurred each year through 1969, “Annual Reminder Days.”

Historians consider the picket one of the country’s first organized gay rights demonstrations and view it as a momentous step in the global movement for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) equality. Forty years after that fateful march, the state installed a historic marker commemorating the event. “We marched out of the closet and into American history,” Lahusen says.

But the historic marker isn’t on park property, so millions of visitors pass through the park and never learn about the groundbreaking protest. Finally last summer, park guide Michael Doveton decided to do something about what he considered a glaring omission. During Philadelphia’s gay pride festival, he organized a slide show and talk about the demonstration and the history of LGBT rights, a program he plans to continue this year. Next summer, the 50th anniversary of the original protest, a temporary exhibit on gay rights in 1960s America will open at the National Constitution Center.

“We owe it to the public to tell these stories, to tell this history,” Doveton says. “We love to talk about the beautiful moments of the signing of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution but we also talk about some of our shortcomings as well. That’s important because that’s what makes us who we are as a people, as a culture, as a nation. That’s our history. Both the shining and the dark moments.”

Doveton is not a rogue employee. He isn’t fighting against a current. In fact, he was backed by his superiors, all the way to the top reaches of the National Park Service administration, where the call to document LGBT history has been noticeably amplified in recent years. In drips and drabs, park employees are revisiting existing sites to incorporate LGBT history that had been overlooked or actively obscured. At the same time, the Park Service is actively seeking places with a vital connection to gay and lesbian history to add to the National Register of Historic Places or the National Historic Landmark (NHL) program.

The Park Service hasn’t done a great job telling LGBT stories in the last 30 years, says Alexandra Lord, the branch chief for the NHL program, which recognizes sites of national significance. “Now we’re looking to tell this story much more aggressively,” she says.

The attitude within the Park Service reflects a much larger shift—even a groundswell—in the world of public history."

Is Real Inclusiveness Possible?; The Stone, New York Times, 6/22/14

Justin E. H. Smith, The Stone, New York Times; Is Real Inclusiveness Possible? :

"Like many institutions that have become more concerned with equality in the past few decades, academic philosophy today aims to be more inclusive. In general, university departments are now striving to consider the experiences and concerns of a broader range of people than have traditionally played the social and professional role of the philosopher. This makes sense. In an increasingly global intellectual landscape, the removal of barriers to entry for previously excluded groups of people and schools of thought is productive and fair.

It may be, however, that the full implications of the project of inclusiveness have not fully been grasped by the people promoting it. A dwindling number believe that it would be enough to simply change the make-up of philosophy departments without changing the content. Increasingly, these two projects are seen as connected: philosophy will not attract long-excluded groups of people if members of these groups do not see themselves — their traditions, standpoints, and idioms — represented in syllabi and in publications. But what would it mean to reconceive philosophy in order to adequately represent these?"

Elite, Separate, Unequal: New York City’s Top Public Schools Need Diversity; New York Times, 6/22/14

Richard D. Kahlenberg, New York Times; Elite, Separate, Unequal: New York City’s Top Public Schools Need Diversity:

"New York City’s eight selective public high schools base admissions on a single two-and-a-half-hour assessment — the Specialized High Schools Admissions Test — a practice that is unusual among other large public school systems in the nation. The N.A.A.C.P. Legal Defense and Education Fund, along with other groups, has filed a federal civil rights complaint against this arrangement.

In his campaign for mayor, Bill de Blasio called for diversifying these schools...

Demographers rank Chicago’s census tracts from most to least advantaged by six criteria: median family income, average level of education attained by parents, percentage of single-family homes, percentage of homes where English is not the first language, percentage of homeowner-occupied residences, and school achievement scores by attendance area.

The policy has resulted in far more racial and ethnic diversity than in New York City’s elite public schools."

Here Lies Progress: Asian Actors Fill the Playbill; New York Times, 6/22/14

Patrick Healy, New York Times; Here Lies Progress: Asian Actors Fill the Playbill:

"After decades of inching toward center stage, Asian-American theater actors are facing something that they’ve rarely enjoyed in New York: demand.

An unusual bonanza of jobs is in the offing from new shows as well as two anticipated Broadway revivals, “The King and I” and “Miss Saigon.” More plays and musicals are also telling stories from Asian viewpoints, a long-held goal of Asian-American artists. And increasingly, Asians are landing roles that traditionally go to non-Asian actors...

Actors say they are also making steady gains in smaller theaters, landing more roles that they describe as “nontraditional.” In recent months a Japanese-born actor played Romeo opposite a white Juliet at the Classic Stage Company and a Filipino-American actor was Bill Sikes in “Oliver!” More Asian-Americans have also been creating characters named Heather and Claire who were not written specifically as Asian.

“Casting directors are starting to take Asian diversity seriously, after focusing mostly on black and Hispanic actors,” said Pun Bandhu, an actor who was cast as several minor characters in the 2012 Broadway revival of “Wit.”"

Voices: Why our girls are going to coding camp; USA Today, 6/16/14

Elizabeth Weise, USA Today; Voices: Why our girls are going to coding camp:

"Coding's like that. It's a skill, a language, and once you get the concept down, you can apply it elsewhere.

Too often, I sit in meetings or conferences and see something that involves programming come up, and half the people in the room just go blank. It's as if the discussion has moved into Swahili, behind an impenetrable barrier.

What's happening behind that barrier is increasingly the real stuff of civilization. It's what makes our phones work, keeps our schedules, amuses us while waiting in line and even runs the heart monitor on a sick friend.

Whatever our girls end up doing in life, they need to be able to follow those conversations. Maybe they'll become fluent and end up working for Alibaba in Beijing. Or maybe they'll just be able to get by.

Either way, we don't want a huge part of modern life to be utterly alien to them. For too many people, and especially too many girls, computers and the code that runs them make up a country they've never visited."

George Takei Is Still Guiding the Ship; New York Times, 6/13/14

Michael Schulman, New York Times; George Takei Is Still Guiding the Ship:

"Given Mr. Takei’s cheeky advocacy, it is hard to believe that he came out publicly just nine years ago. For that, his admirers can thank Arnold Schwarzenegger, who, when he was governor of California, vetoed a marriage-equality bill. Watching the news on TV at home, Mr. Takei felt his blood boil.

“We agreed that I had to speak out, which meant my voice had to be authentic,” he said in an interview with his husband in their Midtown Manhattan apartment."

U.S. Patent And Trademark Office Cancels Redskins Trademark; Huffington Post, 6/18/14

Shandee Ashtari, Huffington Post; U.S. Patent And Trademark Office Cancels Redskins Trademark:

"The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office canceled six federal trademark registrations for the name "Washington Redskins" on Wednesday on the grounds that the football team’s name is “disparaging to Native Americans” and thus in violation of federal trademark laws banning offensive or disparaging language.

“We decide, based on the evidence properly before us, that these registrations must be cancelled because they were disparaging to Native Americans at the respective times they were registered,” the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board wrote in its opinion Wednesday.

The landmark ruling was filed on behalf of a group of Native Americans."

In Silicon Valley, Searching for Diversity in an Algorithm; Fox Business, 6/9/14

Jennifer Booton, Fox Business; In Silicon Valley, Searching for Diversity in an Algorithm:

"Mountain View, Calif.-based Google said its 46,000-person workforce is “miles” away from where Google would like to be. It blamed education, and touted its efforts to try and fix the problem such as sending engineers to historically black colleges to reinvent IT curriculums and investing in education for girls...

“My concern is the 99% of other companies who want and need diverse teams but don’t have the team to recruit them,” Bischke said. “This could help level the playing field.”

What Entelo provides is more than 20 million profiles of potential employees filled with publicly-available data pulled from sites like Twitter (TWTR) and LinkedIn (LNKD).

Its proprietary algorithms then sort through this information using big data, predictive analytics and social cues, to determine the likelihood that people fall into a number of demographic subsets: female vs. male, white vs. black, etc.. It also identifies U.S. military veterans.

"We realized we could do this with a high degree of accuracy,” Bischke said.

The idea is that it would help companies to more cost-effectively and efficiently scour a wider group of potentially ethnically-diverse and qualified candidates, freeing up resources to focus on innovation, training, and ideally develop these people into future industry leaders."

Colleges and Evangelicals Collide on Bias Policy; New York Times, 6/9/14

Michael Paulson, New York Times; Colleges and Evangelicals Collide on Bias Policy:

"Similar conflicts are playing out on a handful of campuses around the country, driven by the universities’ desire to rid their campuses of bias, particularly against gay men and lesbians, but also, in the eyes of evangelicals, fueled by a discomfort in academia with conservative forms of Christianity. The universities have been emboldened to regulate religious groups by a Supreme Court ruling in 2010 that found it was constitutional for a public law school in California to deny recognition to a Christian student group that excluded gays...

Cal State officials insist that they welcome evangelicals, but want them to agree to the same policies as everyone else. “Lots of evangelical groups are thriving on our campuses,” said Susan Westover, a lawyer for the California State University System. However, she said, there will be no exceptions from the antidiscrimination requirements. “Our mission is education, not exclusivity,” she said.

At Vanderbilt, the decision to push groups to sign antidiscrimination policies was prompted by a Christian fraternity’s expulsion of a member who came out as gay. About one-third of the 35 religious groups on campus have refused to sign and are no longer recognized by the school; they can still meet and recruit informally, and the campus Hillel has even opened its building for meetings of one of the Christian groups.

“I am hopeful for a better future, but I’m not naïve, there are some issues that are irresolvable,” said the Vanderbilt chaplain, the Rev. Mark Forrester, who is a United Methodist minister. “This is a larger social and ethical struggle that we as a society are engaged in.”"

Michael Sam: Rams Teammates 'Respect Me As A Human Being And As A Football Player'; Associated Press via HuffingtonPost, 6/6/14

R.B. Fallstrom, Associated Press via HuffingtonPost; Michael Sam: Rams Teammates 'Respect Me As A Human Being And As A Football Player' :

"Michael Sam is confident he'll be judged on performance.

The first openly gay player drafted in the NFL said Friday there have been no issues fitting in with his St. Louis Rams teammates, no awkward moments in the locker room and that he was accepted right away.

"They respect me as a human being," he said. "And as a football player."

Being a bit of a cut-up helps cut the ice, too. Sam skipped all of the media days last season at Missouri while saving his announcement for February, but teammates will tell you he has quite a sense of humor and is not the least bit sensitive about off-color jokes that can fly behind closed doors.

"If anybody had any reservations about who he was to begin with, he wins them over pretty quick," said wide receiver T.J. Moe, who played with Sam at Missouri. "They're laughing so hard, they can't breathe."

Defensive tackle Michael Brockers said Sam was asked to stand up and tell a joke on Friday. The verdict: "Totally funny."

"We don't really focus on the outside stuff," Brockers added. "He's our brother, he's on our D-line and that's where it sits.""

Expand the Rooney Rule to businesses, too: It should apply to hiring across the Pittsburgh region to equalize opportunities for minorities; Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 6/7/14

Tim Stevens, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette; Expand the Rooney Rule to businesses, too: It should apply to hiring across the Pittsburgh region to equalize opportunities for minorities:

"The roundtable’s first annual event took place May 13, 2013. It was lauded by all parties as a powerful conversation during which companies and corporations looked at how they could move from “well meaning to well doing,” that is, how they could raise their level of commitment and urgency in making the regional workforce more diverse, equitable and inclusive.

The second annual event, hosted by Duquesne University President Charles Dougherty, Mr. Fitzgerald and Mayor Bill Peduto, will take place Monday from 7:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. at Duquesne University’s Power Center Ballroom.

The purpose of the Corporate Equity & Inclusion Roundtable is to see more African-Americans and people of color employed, from entry-level positions to the ‘C’ suite, become business owners and win more public and private contracts for construction projects, goods and services throughout the region.

The roundtable’s vision is to bring about measurable and lasting breakthroughs in workforce diversity, equity and inclusion and in economic opportunities.

The roundtable seeks to identify, develop and implement strategies to overcome challenges within the corporate sector by facilitating collaboration among educational institutions, community organizations, workforce-development agencies and professional organizations.

The roundtable aspires to brand our region as a national leader in creating a strong and meaningful commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion.

At last year’s inaugural roundtable event, Pittsburgh Steelers President Arthur J. Rooney II echoed the roundtable working group in urging corporate Pittsburgh to adopt a “Revised Rooney Rule,” a corporate version of the National Football League’s Rooney Rule. This would make it standard practice to interview African-Americans and people of color not only for top executive positions but for all jobs."

Chester Nez, 93, Dies; Navajo Words Washed From Mouth Helped Win War; New York Times, 6/5/14

Margalit Fox, New York Times; Chester Nez, 93, Dies; Navajo Words Washed From Mouth Helped Win War:

"To the end of his life, Chester Nez recalled the first message he sent over the radio while serving at Guadalcanal: “Enemy machine gun nest on your right. Destroy.”

Receiving the message, American forces eliminated the threat.

Mr. Nez, a former United States Marine who died on Wednesday at 93, had sent the message not in English but rather in a code he had helped create. It originally went much like this: “Anaai (Enemy) naatsosi (Japanese) beeldooh alhaa dildoni (machine gun) nishnaajigo nahdikadgo (on your right flank). Diiltaah (Destroy).”

The code was fashioned from Navajo, the language that Mr. Nez grew up speaking, was later barred from speaking and still later helped craft into a military code so impervious that it helped the United States secure victory in the Pacific in the summer of 1945.

Mr. Nez was the last surviving member of the 29 original Navajo code talkers, who at the urgent behest of the federal government devised an encrypted version of their language for wartime use. They and the hundreds of Navajos who followed them into battle used that code, with unparalleled success, throughout the Pacific theater...

Nor did every account of the code talkers’ work focus on what happened when they returned to the United States. There, for Mr. Nez and others, hardships included post-traumatic stress disorder and marginalization by the very country they had served.

In his many interviews and public appearances, Mr. Nez expressed unmistakable pride in his wartime work. But the irony of what that work entailed was far from lost on him.

“All those years, telling you not to speak Navajo, and then to turn around and ask us for help with that same language,” he told USA Today in 2002. “It still kind of bothers me.”

White House marks LGBT Pride Month on eve of legal gay marriage in Illinois: Presidential proclamation notes anniversary of Stonewall riots and changing views of same-sex marriage across US; Guardian, 5/31/14

Jessica Glenza, Guardian; White House marks LGBT Pride Month on eve of legal gay marriage in Illinois: Presidential proclamation notes anniversary of Stonewall riots and changing views of same-sex marriage across US:

"Sunday is the first day of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) Pride Month, an occasion marked by the White House and couples in Illinois, the most recent state to begin issuing same-sex marriage licenses.

"This month, as we mark 45 years since the patrons of the Stonewall Inn defied an unjust policy and awakened a nascent movement, let us honor every brave leader who stood up, sat in, and came out,” read a presidential proclamation issued on Friday.

The Stonewall Inn is often referred to as the “birthplace” of the modern gay rights movement. In 1969, New York City police raided the bar and arrested customers on “public morals” charges, sparking demonstrations that summer..."

And as Friday's presidential proclamation pointed out, many LGBT couples around the world face persecution and discrimination.

"In many places around the globe, LGBT people face persecution, arrest, or even state-sponsored execution,” said the proclamation. "This is unacceptable. The United States calls on every nation to join us in defending the universal human rights of our LGBT brothers and sisters.”"

An identity to call their own: A new open life: Amid continued discrimination and harassment, the transgender community is having its moment; Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 6/1/14

Mackenzie Carpenter, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette; An identity to call their own: A new open life: Amid continued discrimination and harassment, the transgender community is having its moment:

"The "T" in LGBT - the last letter in the acronym representing lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender individuals - is finally getting its turn in the spotlight.

Even as Pennsylvania became the 19th state last month to allow same-sex marriage, the small but increasingly visible transgender wing of the LGBT movement is moving aggressively to secure the same protections won by gay rights groups over the past two decades.

In a historic move at the end of April, federal officials codified protections for transgender students under Title IX, a federal civil rights law that prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex in federally funded education programs. And on Friday, Medicare lifted its ban on coverage for sex reassignment surgery...

This Friday, Pittsburgh's growing transgender movement will be out in force for 2014 Pittsburgh Pride, an LGBT celebration running through June 15. TransPride, a local advocacy and support group, will be hosting a series of events showcasing the artistic and musical talents of trans people. It's the most extensive spotlight on this community during the annual celebration of the LGBT movement so far, says TransPride co-founder Chance Thomas.

First, an explainer: Unlike the other letters in LGBT, transgender is about how an individual identifies, as male or female. Being lesbian, gay or bisexual is about sexual orientation."

X-Men, Not All Fiction; New York Times, 5/30/14

Brent Staples, New York Times; X-Men, Not All Fiction:

"The X-Men movies offer an allegory of 20th-century race hatred that features mutants with special powers as the despised minority and the military industrial complex as the principal instrument of persecution.

The first film, released in 2000, embraced this theme explicitly; it situated the childhood of a mutant named Magneto in the horrors of the Holocaust and the Auschwitz death camp.

The race history references in the seventh and latest film, “X-Men: Days of Future Past,” are oblique by comparison. But pay close attention and you will notice the writers directing your attention ever so briefly to the Jim Crow-era United States and a time when federal policies toward black people resembled the “master race” theories of the Nazis more closely than many Americans understand.

The tipoff in “Days of Future Past” comes in a snippet of dialogue spoken by, of all people, a tour guide working at the Pentagon, where Magneto, who manipulates metal with his will, is held captive by the military.

When someone needs a bathroom, the guide responds blithely that there are lots of them to be found because the Pentagon was built during segregation, but then leaves it there."

The uncomfortable role white people play in diversity; CNN, 5/28/14

Susan Bodnar, CNN; The uncomfortable role white people play in diversity:

"Racism is just another word for hating our realness.

Our commonality as a country derives from the fact that we all have an identity just beneath the surface of our skins.

The variety of stories that inhabit the people who call this country home -- from the brutality of slavery to the flight from genocides to the call to some better god -- enable democracy's creative synergy.

The hands that have built the instruments of modern America have been every color, every nationality and every religion.

I want to be part of a world that loves and embraces humanity as a diverse and interconnected organism. I want to be part of a world that accepts that every difference has a color, and every color has a unique meaning.

How do I do this?

I realized that it starts at home.

Rather than teaching my kids that they are white, I want to impart to them that they are part of a kaleidoscope -- lots of continually shifting colors and shapes."

Google's White Male-Heavy Staff Underlines Tech's Diversity Problem; NPR, 5/29/14

Elise Hu, NPR; Google's White Male-Heavy Staff Underlines Tech's Diversity Problem:

"All the talk about is confounding when you hold it up against this data; if the technology industry is truly a meritocracy, does it follow that the people with merit are overwhelmingly white and male?

Google brings up the pipeline problem as a possible explanation for its whiteness: It has limited hiring pools of people of color and women...

Education in STEM fields (science, technology, engineering and math) is important, to be sure. We've reported on the social science that shows stereotypes lead girls to quit science.

But there are other ways to think about the utter dominance of white males in tech: Technology journalist Kara Swisher and tech mogul Vivek Wadhwa blame laziness in hiring.

The data are helpful. As our guest blogger Catherine Bracy wrote for us last summer, closing the gender gap in technology on the extent of the problem."

Google Releases Employee Data, Illustrating Tech’s Diversity Challenge; New York Times, 5/28/14

Claire Cain Miller, New York Times; Google Releases Employee Data, Illustrating Tech’s Diversity Challenge:

"Of its United States employees, 61 percent are white, 2 percent are black and 3 percent are Hispanic. About one-third are Asian — well above the national average — and 4 percent are of two or more races. Of Google’s technical staff, 60 percent are white, 1 percent are black, 2 percent are Hispanic, 34 percent are Asian and 3 percent are of two or more races.

In the United States work force over all, 80 percent of employees are white, 12 percent are black and 5 percent are Asian, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Google’s disclosures come amid an escalating debate over the lack of diversity in the tech industry. Although tech is a key driver of the economy and makes products that many Americans use ever yday, it does not come close to reflecting the demographics of the country — in terms of sex, age or race. The lopsided numbers persist among engineers, founders and boards of directors."

Review - 'Days Of Future Past' Proves 'X-Men' Still Among The Best; Forbes, 5/28/14

Mark Hughes, Forbes; Review - 'Days Of Future Past' Proves 'X-Men' Still Among The Best:

"If you’ve seen any of the X-Men movies, you know that the general conflict tends to involve humans distrusting mutants, mutants trying to convince humans to accept them, and Xavier trying to convince Magneto to coexist peacefully with humans while Magneto attempts to wage a war he considers self-defense. And much of that dynamic is at work in DOFP. Except it’s all upended, because now they all know Magneto was right that humans would eventually try to exterminate mutants. Except that only happens precisely because Magneto’s hostility causes another mutant to commit a crime eventually bringing about the extermination of mutants. Except Xavier isn’t sure he believes his own rhetoric anymore and is ashamed that Magneto was apparently right all along. Except Magneto resorts to the very actions against his own kind that he has long raged against when committed by humans. And so on.

It’s a story filled with those sorts of exceptions, taking the familiar and finding a new approach that breaths fresh life into age-old themes. And that’s the key, really, to why this franchise has continued to deliver solid stories time after time. The themes it repeats are the sort that always resonate, because they continue to be relevant to our modern lives.

The fear of those who are different, and the fanatical belief that they threaten to destroy us if we don’t destroy them first — this absolutism, this certainty of the righteousness of immoral actions under the belief it is self-defense against those who would do the same to us, drives so much of our more obvious global conflicts, but also more subtly speaks to the underlying cause of many of our social conflicts as well. And as in the film, it is very easy to lose hope, to lose faith, to retreat and refuse to listen to the warnings of what fruit those seeds will eventually bear. The film speaks to the fundamental truth that we cannot afford inaction in the face of such threats — threats arising from the nature of our struggles against one another (and thus against ourselves), threats caused precisely by the nature of fanaticism and absolutism that forever seek an enemy with which to do battle, as such extremes inevitably must.

Those battles between extremists willing to annihilate one another, under the moral certainty that their own immorality is justified, have always threatened the existence of us all, and we will rise or fall, live or die, together. That is the truth at the heart of the X-Men films, and while it’s a theme visited time and again in this series, it has never been so resonant nor so fully realized as in DOFP. We see this theme realized in the arcs of several characters, each of whom examine the theme in radically different ways and end up at different perspectives. Even when certain of them reach the same final conclusions, they arrive there in unique ways and — especially in the case of Mystique — there is a great deal of nuance and inner conflict over the implications of each choice, including the final climactic one. Never before in the series have so many X-Men experienced this level of soul-searching, nor been this alive and defined, which is saying a lot in light of how great most of the other films have been."