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Adtalem global education director sells $361,549 in stockMany of us have felt it, and now it's official: "brain rot" is the Oxford dictionaries' word of the year. Oxford University Press said Monday that the evocative phrase "gained new prominence in 2024," with its frequency of use increasing 230 per cent from the year before. Oxford defines brain rot as "the supposed deterioration of a person's mental or intellectual state, especially viewed as the result of overconsumption of material (now particularly online content) considered to be trivial or unchallenging." The word of the year is intended to be "a word or expression that reflects a defining theme from the past 12 months". "Brain rot" was chosen by a combination of public vote and language analysis by Oxford lexicographers. It beat five other finalists: demure, slop, dynamic pricing, romantasy and lore. While it may seem a modern phenomenon, the first recorded use of "brain rot" was by Henry David Thoreau in his 1854 ode to the natural world, Walden. Oxford Languages President Casper Grathwohl said that in its modern sense, "'brain rot' speaks to one of the perceived dangers of virtual life, and how we are using our free time." "It feels like a rightful next chapter in the cultural conversation about humanity and technology. It's not surprising that so many voters embraced the term, endorsing it as our choice this year," he said. The 2023 Oxford word of the year was "rizz," a riff on charisma, used to describe someone's ability to attract or seduce another person. Collins Dictionary's 2024 word of the year is "brat" –- the album title that became a summer-living ideal.Web3mediabreaks Upcoming Expo To Showcase Trending Technologies, Tools And All Things Podcasting
The AP Top 25 men’s college basketball poll is back every week throughout the season! Get the poll delivered straight to your inbox with AP Top 25 Poll Alerts. Sign up here . DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. (AP) — Jao Ituka led Jacksonville State over East Carolina on Thursday night with 18 points off of the bench in an 86-78 victory. Ituka shot 5 for 10 (2 for 6 from 3-point range) and 6 of 8 from the free-throw line for the Gamecocks (4-1). Jaron Pierre Jr. added 16 points while shooting 4 of 10 from the field and 7 for 11 from the line while he also had six rebounds and six assists. Michael Houge had 15 points and shot 6 of 11 from the field and 3 of 3 from the free-throw line. RJ Felton led the Pirates (4-1) in scoring, finishing with 20 points, seven rebounds and three blocks. C.J. Walker added 20 points and seven rebounds for East Carolina. Yann Farell also had 12 points. Ituka scored 10 points in the first half and Jacksonville State went into halftime trailing 39-37. Jacksonville State used a 13-2 second-half run to take the lead at 71-66 with 3:52 remaining. Houge scored 12 second-half points. ___ The Associated Press created this story using technology provided by Data Skrive and data from Sportradar .The AP Top 25 college football poll is back every week throughout the season! Get the poll delivered straight to your inbox with AP Top 25 Poll Alerts. Sign up here . North Carolina has interviewed former New England Patriots coach and six-time Super Bowl champion Bill Belichick for its head coaching position, two people with knowledge of the situation said Thursday. Both people spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because the school isn’t commenting publicly on its search. Belichick’s interview, first reported by Inside Carolina, comes a week after the school fired its winningest coach in College Football Hall of Famer Mack Brown. The school announced Nov. 26 that Brown wouldn’t return for a seventh season in his second stint at the school, with Brown staying on to coach last weekend’s rivalry loss to N.C. State. Former Cleveland Browns coach Freddie Kitchens is working as the interim coach for an upcoming bowl game as UNC conducts it search. Moving on from the 73-year-old Brown to hire the 72-year-old Belichick would mean UNC is turning to a coach who has never worked at the college level, yet had incredible NFL success alongside quarterback Tom Brady throughout most of his 24-year tenure with the Patriots that ended last season . In the time since, he had been linked to NFL jobs , notably the Atlanta Falcons in January. RELATED COVERAGE No. 2 Texas goes for a title in its first SEC season, but must get by No. 5 Georgia CFP berth at stake when No. 10 Boise State hosts No. 19 UNLV in Mountain West title game No. 18 Clemson needs to slow down SMU QB Kevin Jennings to win 9th ACC title game, secure CFP spot UNC’s opening comes at a time of rapid changes in college athletics with free player movement through the transfer portal and players able to cash in on their athletic fame with endorsement opportunities. There’s also the impending arrival of revenue sharing, part of a $2.8 billion antitrust settlement proposal that gained preliminary approval by a judge in October. “I think it’s a great time for me to get out,” Brown said after Saturday’s loss to the Wolfpack. “This isn’t the game that I signed up for. It’s changed so much.” In an UNC-produced podcast earlier this week, athletic director Bubba Cunningham said all the coaches the school is talking with about its job “are playing,” with college football having reached its conference title games before unveiling the 12-team College Football Playoff and bowl assignments. Cunningham said then that “fit” was the most important thing in finding Brown’s successor. “There’s a certain person that’s best suited at the right time, at the right place,” he said. “And right now, that’s we’re looking for: Where are we today, who can lead us in the next three, five, 10 years?” ___ Get poll alerts and updates on the AP Top 25 throughout the season. Sign up here . AP college football: https://apnews.com/hub/ap-top-25-college-football-poll and https://apnews.com/hub/college-football
Dublin midfielder Peadar Ó Cofaigh Byrne has sounded a note of caution around the sweeping rule changes to Gaelic football. All seven of the Football Review Committee’s ‘rule enhancements’ sailed through Special Congress at Croke Park this morning , meaning that the Leinster club final that Ó Cofaigh Byrne played in for Cuala against St Mary’s Ardee was one of the last games of its kind before the changes are ushered in next year. Speaking after his side scored a nervy one-point win to secure their first provincial football title, Ó Cofaigh Byrne said: “I don’t know, it’s a dramatic change, obviously, and whether or not it’s been properly tested and seen if they’re going to work or not, I don’t know, we’ll have to see. That’s just the nature of it. READ MORE: Jim Gavin hails 'Great opportunity for football' and says, 'Negativity surprises me' READ MORE: Eamonn Fitzmaurice says 'the joy of playing football' will return after new rules passed at GAA Special Congress “To have that many changes all at once, I’d be, I don’t know, a bit cautious of. A massive change like that, there’s probably things that haven’t been thought of, of what managers are going to get around some way. “Look, it’ll be great to actually get out and try and do it and see if it works and if it makes the game better, brilliant, but there are some points that will be definitely more difficult. I know at some of our clubs games, it’s just one ref there, how they’re going to manage some of them rules, I’m not sure, especially in club. Inter-county, it’s great, it’ll make the game quicker but it’ll be interesting to see how it actually pans out.” One rule in particular that should play to Ó Cofaigh Byrne’s strengths given his size is the fact that the kickout has to travel beyond a new 40-metre arc, which should create more contests for possession in midfield. “As a midfielder, I’m tall enough so anything that’s going out can’t be enough but, again, I don’t know if we’re just putting the game back 20 years where it’s just lumped out long and it’s just a massive battle. That might be great but it might not be. It’s kind of hard to tell yet. “There’s a lot of teams that go long a lot and they get a lot of joy, which is great. Galway are very good at it but it’ll be interesting to see. It’s kind of hard to tell at this stage.” His manager, Austin O’Malley, said the Allianz League will provide the “acid test” for the new rules. He said: “Obviously what we got in the sandbox games, they are sandbox games, they’re not the cut and thrust of being that competitive in terms of whether your life is depending on whether you get to a national final or you’re relegated or so on so I think that will give the Football Review Committee a lot more food for thought. “In general I think we’re blessed to have the calibre of men in the Football Review Committee to keep counsel over that and make those decisions. I think they’re pretty well stocked and I would fully endorse and back wherever they come with.” To keep up to date with all the latest GAA news, sign-up to our GAA newsletter here.
By Lindsay Shachnow On a recent day in early December, Northeastern University law students gathered in a classroom in Boston to listen to a broadcast of a U.S. Supreme Court case’s oral argument . The high-profile case, the students learned, challenges a Tennessee law banning gender-affirming health care for transgender minors and imposes civil penalties on doctors who violate the restrictions. Similar laws have been passed in several other states. A few hundred miles south of Boston, American Civil Liberties Union attorney Chase Strangio stood before the Supreme Court justices in Washington D.C., asserting that the Tennessee law violates the Equal Protection rights of transgender adolescents. That day, Strangio became the first known transgender person to argue before the highest court in the land. “I don’t think he’ll stop fighting until he’s out of breath,” Strangio’s former Northeastern University Law professor Libby Adler told Boston.com. “ He’s a model for what [law students] are training for, and what they can go out there and do.” Strangio grew up in Newton, in what he described as an “upper middle class suburban community.” For his brother, Noah Strangio, it was an “idyllic place to grow up.” “I think I really struggled as a kid and was really lost,” Chase Strangio told Boston.com in a recent interview. “I had a fire inside me that I knew would eventually find its way out, but I suffered and stressed a lot before it did.” Chase, four years ahead of his brother in school, went to Newton North High School, where he was an avid soccer player. Noah attended Newton South. The family of four was paired off: Chase was constantly with their mother, Joan, while Noah was with their father, Mark. “My mom would often be taking Chase to soccer games,” Noah told Boston.com. “On the average weekend my dad and I would go on hikes and go and see movies.” Chase’s parents divorced when he was in his sophomore year of high school. Joan, a former social worker, remained a constant presence in her children’s lives. Meanwhile, Chase’s father remarried. Tensions brewed. Chase never stayed with his brother at their father’s house, Noah recalled, and the two fought often. “He would stop by our house, and they would have heated discussions,” Noah remembered. “For Chase, that certainly created, I would say, an even further wedge between them.” For years, Chase challenged his father on his political views, but ultimately decided to stop discussing it with him. “My way of approaching it now is to not really talk about it,” he said. “It continues to be one of the things that I just simply don’t understand, but don’t really engage in regular exchange about.” After high school, Strangio was ready to leave New England. He packed his bags and shipped off to Grinnell College, a private liberal arts school in the midwest. In 2004, he moved back to Boston and worked at GLBTQ Advocates and Defenders for several years before enrolling in law school at Northeastern. But Strangio worried he might never be seen as a legitimate courtroom advocate. His fear, he wrote in a recent New York Times op-ed, was reinforced during his first year in law school. “One of my law school professors at Northeastern told our class that we needed to abide by traditional gender norms in court,” he wrote. “She instructed that women should wear skirts to appear before juries, and after a presentation in class she told me that I was too ‘soft-spoken’ to be seen as an effective male advocate.” But Strangio kept his head up. “It gave me a very negative feeling of my first year of law school overall,” he told Boston.com. “But as in all institutional aspects of life, you will encounter people who are bringing in the overall biases and power dynamics of the professions and society in which you’re engaging, and that was what happened in my first year.” While pursuing his law studies, Strangio lived in Jamaica Plain, where, he said, he found comfort in the neighborhood’s “queer community.” After his first year, things got better. He served as a research assistant on a clinical project to support LGBTQ youth for Professor Libby Adler. Over the course of his studies, the two developed a close relationship. As a student, Adler said Strangio suffered from what she described as “chronic dissatisfaction.” “He’s always got his eye on who’s suffering and who’s left behind,” Adler said. “He doesn’t rest.” Strangio came out as transgender while he was attending Northeastern, and had access to medical care that he said made him “feel more at home” in his body. “We talk about this care as life saving,” he said. “To be alive ... also means to have the life you want to lead.” After graduating from Northeastern in 2010, Strangio secured a fellowship at the Sylvia Rivera Law Project, where he co-founded the Lorena Borjas Community Fund, which provides bail assistance for LGBTQ immigrants. Strangio spoke about the fund during his job interview for the ACLU. While he was younger than most other applicants, James Esseks of the ACLU said Strangio’s initiative to create the fund won him over. “It’s one thing to have an idea, another thing to make it happen,” Esseks told Boston.com. “That’s exactly the kind of initiative that I prize.” Esseks and Strangio now direct the ACLU LGBTQ & HIV Rights Project together. Since he started in 2013, Strangio has worked on his fair share of cases at the ACLU, including a challenge to North Carolina’s law prohibiting transgender people from accessing restrooms and Donald Trump’s ban on transgender service members from serving in the military. “In terms of what it means to be a trans person litigating trans cases, I think, of course, I have a personal connection to the material impact of the work, and I also can relate to my clients’ experiences to an extent,” he said. “We’re all bringing our subjectivity to bear on our interpretation of the law and our interest in how any one or another legal problem impacts us.” Strangio also defended whistleblower Chelsea Manning, a transgender woman who was arrested for disclosing classified documents about the U.S. government to WikiLeaks. While working on Manning’s case, he met documentary filmmaker Nadia Hallgren. The two became fast friends. “His brain is just very sophisticated in the way he thinks and problem solves,” Hallgren told Boston.com. “At the same time, he is self deprecating, down to earth, funny, fun, caring ... there’s not a lot of people like that.” In 2016, Strangio wrote a letter to then-President Barack Obama, pleading for Manning’s release. Strangio’s calls were answered when Obama commuted most of Manning’s remaining sentence the following year. Hallgren was assigned to document Strangio’s work representing Manning in the film “XY Chelsea,” including their first meeting at a military prison in Kansas City. “He’s so magnetic,” Hallgren said of Strangio. “I think people don’t intend on him being the center of a story, and the minute they meet him, it’s just like, it’s so obvious.” On the day of his oral argument at the Supreme Court, Strangio felt at ease. He had reread all the briefs and relevant cases, and regularly spoke out loud to himself, practicing hypothetical answers to his own hypothetical questions. “At that point I felt like I knew what I knew, and so I was ready to do it and to have it be done,” he said. About two weeks before his court appearance, Strangio spoke on the phone with his brother for an hour and a half. They talked about everything from movies, to parenting, to the election. Strangio sounded noticeably relaxed, a change that Noah observed in his brother over the years in the way he came to approach his work. On the long-awaited day, Strangio traveled to the court alone. He recalled meeting a colleague at security and talking with the opposing council before it was his turn to make his case. “During the argument itself, you are so present, you almost don’t know what is happening,” he said. “You’re so connected to the exchanges.” Noah planned to be in the room with Chase while he spoke before the court. But things took an unexpected turn when his wife went into labor with their second child the day before — three weeks early. The brothers caught up on the phone the following day. “Half the conversation ... was about me. Chase asked me about the baby and the birth, and how my toddler was doing,” Noah recalled. “There was a level of zen or serenity from Chase.” The argument itself went as expected, Chase told his brother. But the most memorable moment of the day, Chase said, took place outside of the courtroom. “I think the really most powerful part for me was coming out of the courtroom to the rally outside, to seeing trans young people and their parents, and seeing so many members of the community just out in the cold reveling in the joy of just being together, being alive, being able to be who they are,” he said. “It was a really beautiful rally, and gave me a lot of hope for the future.” A decision is expected in U.S. v. Skrmetti in the spring or early summer of 2025. Lindsay Shachnow Lindsay Shachnow covers general assignment news for Boston.com , reporting on breaking news, crime, and politics across New England. Boston.com Today Sign up to receive the latest headlines in your inbox each morning.
US stocks traded mostly higher on Monday, with technology stocks helping the Nasdaq and the S&P 500 hit records as members of the Federal Reserve talked about the potential for another interest rate cut later this month. Fed President Raphael Bostic told reporters on Monday that while he's undecided on whether to cut rates at the Fed's FOMC meeting on December 18, he's keeping his "options open." "The risks to achieving the committee's dual mandates of maximum employment and price stability have shifted such that they are roughly in balance, so we likewise should begin shifting monetary policy toward a stance that neither stimulates nor restrains economic activity," Bostic wrote in an essay released on Monday. Meanwhile, Fed Governor Christopher Waller said Monday that he is "leaning toward" an interest rate cut. "Based on the economic data in hand today and forecasts that show that inflation will continue on its downward path to 2 percent over the medium term, at present I lean toward supporting a cut to the policy rate at our December meeting," said at a forum in Washington. According to the CME FedWatch Tool, markets see a 77% chance of a Fed rate cut at the December 18 FOMC meeting. That chance was at 65% earlier this morning. With the third-quarter earnings season mostly over, investors will turn their attention to economic data as the holiday shopping season heats up. The retail deal season continued following Black Friday, with Cyber Monday deals set to take over this week. According to data from Mastercard Spending Pulse, there was a 3.4% year-over-year increase in US retail sales on Black Friday, which included both in-person and online sales. The bulk of the Black Friday sales gains came from online sales, which were up 14.6%, compared to just a 0.7% increase in in-store sales, according to Mastercard. "Black Friday was a good indicator of how the holiday season is positively shaping up," said Michelle Meyer, chief economist at Mastercard Economics Institute. "Our real-time insights show that consumers are comfortably in the gift-giving spirit as price reductions and deals occur across sectors, supporting budgets for holiday shopping." Turning to economic data this week, investors will be eyeing November auto sales data on Tuesday, ADP employment data on Wednesday, and the November jobs report on Friday. The November nonfarm payroll report on Friday will be a particularly important input for the Fed's next policy decision as it looks to gauge how much it needs to do to prop up the economy. Economists expect 214,000 added in November, for a spike in hiring activity following October's dismal reading of 12,000 new hires. Read the original article onCanadian Conservative Party Leader Pierre Poilievre told reporters on Sunday that he felt “badly” watching leftist Prime Minister Justin Trudeau make the rounds at President-elect Donald Trump’s estate Mar-a-Lago, lamenting his “position of weakness” and describing Trudeau as having “lost control.” Trudeau was in Florida for a surprise dinner with Trump on Friday night following an explosive message Trump posted last week to his social media website Truth Social in which he vowed to implement a 25-percent tariff on Canadian and Mexican goods until both countries helped America curb mass migration and drug trafficking. The message caused alarm in Canada, which sends nearly 77 percent of its exports to the United States. In Mexico, leftist President Claudia Sheinbaum responded to Trump with the threat of imposing her own tariffs on American goods, ultimately holding a call with Trump that lowered tensions between the two. Trudeau, however, did not immediately comment on the matter and later claimed to hold a “ good call ” himself with Trump, leaving politicians both to the left and right of the prime minister concerned that he was not taking the matter seriously enough. Both Trump and Trudeau described their encounter in Florida as productive, but divulged few details on any agreement, a result that Poilievre, speaking to reporters, lamented as not securing any deliverables for Canada. “While I’m a critic of Mr. Trudeau’s, I did feel badly that he went in with such a position of weakness,” Poilievre said on Sunday. “Normally when a prime minister goes to the United States to meet a president, they’re looking to make gains. What gains did we hear from Mr. Trudeau? None, he’s just trying to limit losses.” “All Justin Trudeau offers is minimizing losses,” he continued. “This is the consequence of having a weak prime minister who has lost control: lost control of our borders, lost control of immigration, lost control of crime and drugs, and lost control of our economy.” “Canadians are paying a dreadful price for everything that Justin Trudeau has broken,” he concluded. Trudeau arrived on Florida on Friday evening and attended a dinner with the president-elect alongside a small selection of his cabinet, including Minister of Public Safety Dominic LeBlanc, who described the gathering as “a very warm, cordial meeting.” “I saw very much the mutual respect and warmth between the two leaders,” LeBlanc said in an interview following the encounter. Trudeau posted a photo to his social media accounts alongside Trump thanking him for his reception, adding, “I look forward to the work we can do together, again.” Trump described his meeting with the Canadian leader as “very productive” in his own social media message on Saturday. “We discussed many important topics that will require both Countries to work together to address,” Trump wrote, “like the Fentanyl and Drug Crisis that has decimated so many lives as a result of Illegal Immigration, Fair Trade Deals that do not jeopardize American Workers, and the massive Trade Deficit the U.S. has with Canada.” “I made it very clear that the United States will no longer sit idly by as our Citizens become victims to the scourge of this Drug Epidemic, caused mainly by the Drug Cartels, and Fentanyl pouring in from China,” he added. “Too much death and hardship!” Trudeau was home by Saturday morning. The Globe and Mail noted that, while Trump and Trudeau both described their meeting positively, Trudeau returned “without any guarantees that Mr. Trump would drop the tariffs.” Trump promised in late November that he would impose a 25-percent tariff on both Canada and Mexico. “On January 20th, as one of my many first Executive Orders, I will sign all necessary documents to charge Mexico and Canada a 25% Tariff on ALL products coming into the United States, and its ridiculous Open Borders,” he asserted on Truth Social. “This Tariff will remain in effect until such time as Drugs, in particular Fentanyl, and all Illegal Aliens stop this Invasion of our Country!” “Both Mexico and Canada have the absolute right and power to easily solve this long simmering problem. We hereby demand that they use this power,” he concluded, “and until such time that they do, it is time for them to pay a very big price!” While Poilievre was naturally the most critical Canadian politician of Trudeau’s visit to Mar-a-Lago, several regional leaders in Canada indicated over the weekend that they would independently be pursuing the economic interests of their provinces in the absence of solid leadership out of Ottawa. “We’re saying to the Americans, we are your solution to energy security. We are your solution to energy affordability,” Alberta Premier Danielle Smith said on Sunday, lamenting onerous taxes on fossil fuels imposed by Trudeau’s government. “You can’t take that message to the table when you’ve got these additional taxes and production caps layered on top.” “We have to have a cohesive message, and part of this is going to be a bit of a climbdown for Justin Trudeau and some of the bad policies that he’s enacted over the last number of years,” she added, according to Canada’s Global News. The premier of British Columbia, David Eby, told reporters in response to the original Truth Social post that his province would seek independent “opportunities” to trade with America, hopefully exempt from the proposed 25-percent tariff. “We’re going to continue to do our work to expand those trading opportunities,” he promised, calling British Columbia’s past efforts to also seek other markets outside of America “definitely the right direction” and that he would seek other markets “given the instability south of the [Canadian] border.” Ontario has already began an advertising campaign for its markets separate from the rest of Canada. Premier Doug Ford launched an ad campaign, Global News reported on Saturday, worth tens of millions of dollars to highlight Ontario as a “key trading partner,” apparently independent of the rest of Canada. Follow Frances Martel on Facebook and Twitter.
AP News Summary at 1:00 p.m. EST
Loáisiga guaranteed $5 million in 1-year deal with Yankees as he returns from Tommy John surgeryFrench government faces collapse as no-confidence motions submittedDiversity statements will no longer be used in University of Michigan faculty hiring, promotion and tenure, a move applauded by critics who have called the practice "litmus tests" that limit diversity of thought while diversity advocates said the process was "preordained" and dishonest. Provost Laurie McCauley announced the decision Thursday based on a recommendation from a UM faculty working group to end diversity statements. But the recommendation is "deceptive," coming after the regents rejected a previous recommendation to keep the diversity statements, a faculty leader said. Diversity statements are documents written by faculty job candidates that let applicants explain to a search committee the distinct experiences they would bring to the university along with their commitment to diversity. The statements help search committees identify applicants "who have professional skills, experience and/or willingness to engage in activities that would enhance campus diversity and equity efforts," according to a University of California at San Diego statement referenced by UM's Center for Research on Learning & Teaching. McCauley's announcement came hours before the Board of Regents is scheduled to meet and a protest is planned beforehand at UM President Santa Ono's house. Many in the UM community are concerned the regents may dismantle a multimillion dollar diversity, equity and inclusion effort built after the school was at the center of a decade-long national debate around affirmative action in higher education, and DEI programs have been under attack across the nation.. "Diversity, equity and inclusion are three of our core values at the university," McCauley said in the University Record, an internal UM publication for faculty and staff, in announcing the end of diversity statements. "Our collective efforts in this area have produced important strides in opening opportunities for all people. As we pursue this challenging and complex work, we will continuously refine our approach.” But there is more that happened in this process, UM Faculty Senate Chair Rebekah Modrak wrote on the University Record page under the announcement. After the regents called for diversity statements to be banned last summer, McCauley formed a faculty committee to review diversity statements in the spirit of shared governance that came up with a different recommendation, Modrak wrote. "My understanding is that the committee’s first report recommended that the use of diversity statements should be up to each unit, a recommendation that honors our decentralization, independence, and academic freedom," Modrak wrote. "The Regents rejected that report and central leadership didn’t support their own faculty committee. Sending a committee back to work to give a second report with preordained results is neither honest nor respectful of faculty expertise. The University Record’s erasure of the Regents’ autocratic hand in this process is also deceptive." Regents will not vote on the provost's action, but may discuss it during the meeting, said Regent Sarah Hubbard, one of two Republicans on the eight-member UM board. "I applaud the provost for ending the practice of requiring diversity statements," said Hubbard. "This policy change removes a barrier to diversity of thought on campus by eliminating the ideological litmus test." No action is expected during Thursday's meeting around other DEI issues, added Hubbard, who previously said the regents have been looking for a long time at the university's DEI efforts and want to realign funds closer to student scholarships. Any budget decisions wouldn't happen until next year when budgetary decisions get made, she said. Even so, hundreds of students, faculty and staff demonstrated on campus earlier this week to show support for the university's DEI programs, and others are planning to attend the protest organized by UM's Black Student Union before the regents meeting and show up to the official meeting. UM's decision to discontinue diversity statements came after the statements were also eliminated in May at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and in June at Harvard University’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences. In June, UM's provost charged the eight-member faculty working group to examine diversity statements, though the university did not have an institutional policy on the statements but units did have the discretion to ask for them. The working group recommended the end of the statements after reviewing other policies and surveying more than 2,000 faculty members. “Critics of diversity statements perceive them as expressions of personal identity traits, support of specific ideology or opinions on socially-relevant issues, and serve as a ‘litmus test’ of whether a faculty member’s views are politically acceptable,” the working group wrote in its report. “Thus, as currently enacted, diversity statements have the potential to limit viewpoints and reduce diversity of thought among faculty members.” The working group said it acknowledged the concerns. "But, well-written diversity statements do not necessarily require expression of one’s identity, and they need not express one's beliefs or stances on socially-charged issues," the working group wrote. "Instead, well-written diversity statements contain reflections of how identity has shaped a faculty member’s approach with their students, how they work with their colleagues, and how they interact with society. These are desirable features of current and future U-M faculty members, and this information should be considered when potential faculty are hired and current faculty are promoted." The work group also offered two other recommendations, including that the university "can and must" incorporate of content about DEI into teaching, research and service statements. "Through this incorporation, the problematic features of diversity statements can be eliminated, while the useful and necessary information that exists in diversity statements can be saved and placed where it more naturally belongs," the group wrote in its report. However, UM did not adopt those recommendations. UM's decision to discontinue diversity statements followed other steps the university has taken in recent months that supporters said will create an environment that expands diverse views on campus. They include the regents' controversial adoption last month of a policy on institutional neutrality that prohibits some officials from taking public stances on political and social issues not related to the internal governance of the university. Last month the Faculty Senate passed a resolution censuring the Board of Regents and accusing the regents of "increasingly exhibiting authoritarian tendencies, and silencing free speech. ©2024 The Detroit News. Visit detroitnews.com . 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