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Harvard students and supporters marched through Harvard Square during a rally on Saturday to oppose the Supreme Court’s ruling against affirmation action.
Universities are preparing for the possible end of race-conscious affirmative action.
Randall Robinson, a lawyer, civil rights activist, and educator died from aspiration pneumonia on March 23 in Basseterre, St. Kitts, where he had lived for the past two decades. Robinson was 81 years old.
A native of Richmond, Virginia, Robinson attended what is now Norfolk State University but left to join the U.S. Army. After military service, Robinson earned a bachelor’s degree in sociology at Virginia Union University. He held a juris doctorate from Harvard Law School. At Harvard, it was the first time Robinson had ever sat in a classroom with White students.
After law school, Robinson worked as a legislative aide on Capitol Hill. In 1977, he established the TransAfrica Forum. According to the group’s website, TransAfrica is a “research, educational and organizing institution for the African-American community, offering constructive analysis concerning U.S. policy as it affects Africa and the African Diaspora in the Caribbean and Latin America.” While leading TransAfrica, Robinson became one of the strongest voices in the United States against South African apartheid. In 1994, Robinson went on a 27-day hunger strike to protest U.S. policy toward Haiti.
Robinson worked at Penn State jointly as a professor of law at the University Park campus and as a professor at the Penn State School of International Affairs from 2008 to 2016. He was the author of seven books including Defending the Spirit: A Black Life in America (Dutton, 1998). In the book, Robinson stated “I am obsessively Black. Race is an overarching aspect of my identity. America has made me that way.”
“Randall Robinson was an intellectual giant,” said Victor Romero, a professor of law at Penn State. “His pathbreaking work in the area of international human rights and social justice, especially regarding the history and condition of Africans and African-Americans, was particularly influential and still resonates today.”
Richard D. Kahlenberg, whose hero is Robert Kennedy, wants to build a multiracial progressive coalition.
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A new study led by researchers affiliated with Harvard University finds that older Black patients with advanced cancer are less likely than White patients to receive opioid medications for pain relief in the last weeks of life.
Researchers examined opioid prescription orders for 318,549 Medicare patients over the age of 65 who had poor-prognosis cancers and were nearing the end of life. Between 2007 and 2019, the group experienced a steady decline in access to opioids and a rapid expansion of urine drug screening. Within these broader trends, researchers found small but meaningful divergences between racial and ethnic groups.
Compared with White patients, Black patients were 4.3 percentage points less likely to receive any opioid and 3.2 percentage points less likely to receive long-acting opioids near the end of life. Researchers also found that when Black patients received opioids, they tended to receive lower doses.
The inequities were particularly stark for Black men. “We found that Black men were far less likely to be prescribed reasonable doses than White men were,” said the study’s senior author, Alexi Wright, a gynecologic oncologist and an associate professor at Harvard Medical School. “And Black men were less likely to receive long-acting opioids, which are essential for many patients dying of cancer. Our findings are startling because everyone should agree that cancer patients should have equal access to pain relief at the end of life.”
The full study, “Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Opioid Access and Urine Drug Screening Among Older Patients With Poor-Prognosis Cancer Near the End of Life,” was published on the website of the Journal of Clinical Oncology. It may be accessed here.
A new study found that undergraduate degrees from Princeton, along with Harvard and Yale, offer a leg up in getting a coveted Supreme Court clerkship.
Elementary school students returning to in-person learning in a school in California in 2021. Education deficits were equivalent to about 35 percent of a school year and remained steady, according to a new study.
Kenneth Roth, the former director of Human Rights Watch, in New York last April. The Harvard Kennedy School recently reversed its early decision to reject his fellowship application because of his criticisms of Israel.
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