The League of Iowa Human & Civil Rights Agencies

(Des Moines, IA) --- The 5th Annual Iowa Youth Congress will be held Friday, November 12, 2010, 9a-4p, in the House Chamber at the Iowa State Capitol. The Iowa Youth Congress (IYC) is a civic leadership development opportunity for Iowa high school students, administered by the Iowa Department of Human Rights (DHR), with a special emphasis on the recruitment of students of color and students with disabilities. The event was created and is presented by DHR’s Office of Latino Affairs.

A woman in her mid-30s wearing a hijab, the traditional Muslim head covering, comes to an urgent care center complaining of leg pain. The first thing she asks: “Are there any woman doctors around?”

She declines to be alone in an exam room with a male doctor. She does not want to be touched by a man who is not a family member, even as part of a medical examination.

It’s a hypothetical situation, recounted in a new paper in The Journal of Medical Eth...

Single Parents, Around the World

By Catherine Rampell

Published March 10, 2010, New York Times

A sizable minority of children in rich countries live with just one parent — a parent who is likely to be female, and also likely to be working.Those are some of the takeaways from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and ...

Minority babies set to become majority in 2010: Year could be tipping point when non-white newborns outnumber white

Updated March 10, 2010, Associated Press

WASHINGTON - Minorities make up nearly half the children born in the U.S., part of a historic trend in which minorities are expected to become the U.S. majority over the next 40 years. I...

Google’s Computing Power Betters Translation Tool

By Miguel Helft, New York Times 

Published: March 8, 2010

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. — In a meeting at Google in 2004, the discussion turned to an e-mail message the company had received from a fan in South Korea. Sergey Brin, a Google founder, ran the message throu...

Teachers Suspended Over Role Model Choice 

By Jennifer Steinhauer

Published: March 4, 2010 (New York Times)

LOS ANGELES — His name has not been released, so it was not possible Thursday to ascertain what an elementary school teacher here was thinking when he pinned a photo of O. J. Simpson on the shirt of a second-g...

BRAVADO DESIGNS specializes in breast-feeding bras, which feature cups that unfasten singly and stretchable fabrics that accommodate size fluctuations during pregnancy and nursing. But when it comes to marketing, the bra company emphasizes another type of support: emotional. An information section on the Bravado Web site features dozens of suggestions from Heather Kelly, described as a certified lactation consultant, from hand positioning while nursing (“Imagine you’re holding a s...

The board that controls schools in Raleigh voted 5 to 4 on Tuesday to begin moving away from a policy of busing children throughout the district to achieve economic diversity. Under the plan, subject to final approval this month, students would no longer be assigned by socioeconomic background, and “community assignment zones” would restrict busing distances. Wake County’s current plan, adopted in 2000, kept schools racially integrated but grew unpopular with parents.

The Web site Inside Higher Ed reports that the University of Pennsylvania admissions office is expanding the boundaries of its so-called affinity outreach — a Penn engineering student might reach out to a high school senior interested in engineering, a black alumnus might call on a potential applicant who is black — to include applicants who might be gay.

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Balan Nur had worked for Alamo Rent-A-Car for two years, wearing a headscarf as part of her Islamic religious practice during Ramadan. But after 9/11, she was told that Alamo's dress code prohibited head coverings, and she was subsequently fired for refusing to remove it. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission brought a suit on her behalf, alleging religious discrimination. Result: The court found in favor of Nur and eventually granted her more than $280,000 in damages. "No person should...