SoCal Minds

On Latinas, Asian immigrants, Obama election...

From Pepperdine, Claremont McKenna College & USC

With the winds gusting with almost Santa Ana velocities, maybe it's time to duck indoors and catch a busy, informative day of free, public talks and discussions:

• In Malibu at noon, a California Lutheran professor and Trojan Ph. D. will delve into the peculiar, low-calcium diet favored by Latinos and other issues that leave Latinas, in particular, at apparent high risk of osteoporosis. That's the brittle bone disease that afflicts as many as one in three Latinas older than 50 and helps explain why hip fractures in Latinos older than 50 have doubled in California in the last 25 years, says the prof, who is researching the issue in Ventura County. He's also investigating changes in bone and muscle among the elderly, in general, as well as bone differences by ethnicity.

Why do Latinas need to be aware of diet, brittle bone disease?

• In Claremont at 4:15 this afternoon, the chair of the religious studies department will explore what role faith and religion may have played in the 2008 presidential elections, and, in particular, the ascendance and victory of Barack Hussein Obama. How did a liberal Protestant with a Muslim heritage so sway Catholics, evangelicals, Jews, women and people of color to his cause and what does that triumph portend for future campaigns, especially the role of religions and the religious in them?

Exploring role of religion, religious in 2008 presidential campaign 

• In Exposition Park at noon, a panel of experts and activists will dissect and discuss the burgeoning presence and importance of Asian immigrants in the Southland workforce, asking how this population fits into historic patterns, what special needs and challenges it might have, why it fails to attract the public and media attention paid, say, to its Latino counterpart, and, of course, whether it might be organized and how by ever-present and traditionally powerful Los Angeles labor unions.

What's ahead for growing number of Asian immigrants in LA workforce?

A bounty of attention to all things Korean

From Pepperdine, USC, Claremont McKenna College & UCLA

Although young crooner John Park (a Northwestern Wildcat) failed to make the giant pop culture breakthrough via American Idol celebrity, matters connected with Korean culture get ample consideration on campuses across the Southland:

In Malibu, today and Saturday, the 24th annual Korean American Student Conference will run in full force with seminars, speeches, presentations and entertainment, including the highlight Asian American talent showcase, Kollaboration 10, which will be in downtown Los Angeles. The conference, which began at Princeton, will bring together students of Korean descent along with such community figures as KW Lee, a pioneering and always acerbic journalist, and John Suh, CEO of the path-breaking online legal service LegalZoom. The entertainers scheduled for the conference include comedian Danny Cho and the Asian American band 'Seriously.'

Photo: pioneering journalist KW Lee

24th annual Korean American student conference in Malibu

Click here for full conference information

In Exposition Park, Trojan experts say they will launch an initiative to scrutinize a critical, long-term concern affecting the two Koreas: What might be the future economic, political and human security issues of a potential reunification of the North and South? While many policy experts have examined the prospective and immediate crisis and military concerns that are forecast by a sudden merging of the nations on the divided Korean peninsula, scholars from the Korean Studies Institute and the Korea Chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies program will work with colleagues in Southern California, the U.S. and overseas to collaborate on information and ideas with a longer-horizon view of Korean unification and its potential effects.

Photo: Korean Studies Institute director David Kang

Scholarly scrutiny with long view on possible effects of Korean unification

In Claremont, a scholar from Boston on Monday night will explore how North Korea dealt with women's liberation during the brief time from 1945-1950, the 'liberated space' of the immediate post-colonial period. Though women in the Communist north got institutional impetus to join in new political and economic roles in the post-war mass mobilizations, their lives also remained constrained, and, instead, there emerged the Hermit Kingdom's iconic 'revolutionary mother' figure, she says. Her 6:45 p.m. talk is free and open to the public. 

Examining women's liberation in post-colonial North Korea

In Westwood, five diverse area specialists -- with the sponsorship of the Bruins, Trojans, the Korean Culture Center of Los Angeles and the Southern California Association of Korean Studies -- gathered recently to discuss a range of contemporary issues confronting the North, South and the East Asian region. They tackled politics and corruption in Seoul, attitudinal differences and similarities between those in the South and North, particularly as seen in pop culture and the increasing economic power in the South.

Symposium focuses on contemporary issues of the Koreas 

Local colleges get low marks on sustainability

From Claremont McKenna College

Here's a way to either demonstrate research independence or maybe how to tee-off the homeys: The folks at the Roberts Environmental Center have turned their scrutiny from corporations, industries and even nations and focused now on the sustainability practices of top liberal arts colleges nationwide. They gave top marks for green thinking and doing and social consciousness and vision to Williams (A+), Bucknell (A-), Amherst (B+), Colorado (B+) and Gettysburg (B+) colleges. But the researchers zinged local institutions, giving mediocre marks, at best, to: Pitzer (C), Harvey Mudd (C-), Scripps (D) and Occidental (D-). Ouch. To be clear, in methodology terms, the study relies on publicly available information on sustainability issues, particularly as places post it on web sites. Nations, industries and corporations have gotten clued in to internet reporting of this information because of an international, industry-supported initiatives. Colleges have their own similar programs but the researchers criticized schools for their haphazard, fuzzy efforts on sustainability and transparency. By the way, U.S. News and World Report rankings were used to determine which were the top 50 liberal arts colleges. And the researchers left their own institution out of the study and they clearly say why.

Criticism for haphazard, fuzzy public reporting of work on green, social consciousness issues 

The Chronicle of Higher Education take on sustainability study

What can we learn from imperial China, Rome?

From Claremont McKenna College

With the United States slogging through a protracted Great Recession and seeking to deal with mounting unemployment and mountains of debt, much of the chattering class has turned to talking about the possible demise of the American empire. Sounds like the perfect time for historical perspective on the courses of civilizations, the very topic that two scholars will tackle in a Wednesday program in Claremont on 'Rome and China: New Frontiers in Imperial History.' The free, first-come public program will feature experts on two of the world's great civilizations in a dialogue on how empires rise and fall and what that means for not only their peoples and times but for the planet long after.

A multi-disciplinary dialogue on history with contemporary resonance

There's no whiling away this wet weekend

From Claremont McKenna College, the Keck Graduate Institute, UCLA, CSULB, CalArts, the Huntington

Yup, lots more goes on in Southern California than just the capacity to make a right turn on red (see old Woody Allen jibe).

Just a reminder of the variety of intellectual activity occurring in the area: While some scholars from across the country today and Saturday will be considering the influence of Christianity in Modern East Asia, others will be assessing what science knows about 'dark matter' in the universe and how it gets detected, while still others will be learning how to persuade the FDA they have a drug to deal with a rare disease.

And, of course, those who fancy Japanese gardens and kimono could always sneak away for a program combining the two topics or they could join in for either a Bonsai-a-thon or a recounting of a noted, century-old Japanese-inspired garden. Or maybe on a rainy weekend with the kids getting a little crazy and making their parents that way, too, it will be time to slip downtown for an international children's film festival at Redcat? Or quick, this will be the last chance to catch that play that captures the quirky life of a pioneering rocket scientist with a dark, eccentric personal life, um, maybe what could be called a Pasadena Babalon?

$6 million in gifts to joint science department

From Claremont McKenna College, Pitzer & Scripps

The largest academic enterprise of the Claremont Colleges, a joint effort that combines biology, chemistry and physics in a single department, has just gotten a total $6 million funding boost from donors, $5 million from the Sidney J. Weinberg, Jr., Foundation and a $1 million matching gift from the Roberts Challenge. The donations will support student and faculty research and engagement, as well as providing support for a new dean for the joint science department, which advocates say offers small class sizes, rigorous teaching and research and the opportunity for students to work across disciplines.  

Boost for Claremont Colleges' combined biology, chemistry, physics enterprise

How San Diego stacks up on spending, services

From Claremont McKenna College

Interesting new information out of the Rose Institute of State and Local Government, which, in cooperation with the nonprofit, online news source, 'Voice of San Diego,' has just scrutinized San Diego county services and spending on public protection, welfare, mental health and other public assistance. And while the neighbor to the South no longer is a GOP bastion -- it actually splits three ways now, among upward-trending Democrats and decline-to-state voters and Republicans -- some traditions die hard. In brief, in comparison with Californians in the 11 other most populous counties, the folks yonder spend well on public protection and poorly on social services and assistance to those in need. Interesting that the parameters of this scrutiny, in defining 'public protection' doesn't include fire protective services -- or are the shameful shortfalls there both so obvious and intractable? By the way, the data provided also could be shuffled to see how, say, Los Angeles and Orange counties stack up, since researchers say they aimed to find consistent, reliable sources of comparative data.

Claremont scrutiny sizes San Diego up against 11 other big counties

Click here to view the full report

A pro bono plea to law students, lawyers, judges

*From Claremont McKenna College & Southwestern

Calling all law students, lawyers and jurists: Some ambitious undergrads need help as they conduct the American Mock Trial Association's regional tournament in the midst of tough economic times. The aspiring legal eagles out in Claremont run their mock trial program with student leadership and without the common trappings of hovering faculty and attorney counsel. That can make the hurdles huge for them in handling the logistics and finances of conducting the Feb. 20-21 event in Southern California in which they say 30 teams with more than 200 competitors from three states will take part. The state budget crisis really complicated their planning as they could not secure donated courtroom space as they had in the past. But the college president and a state lawmaker have pitched in so they now will partner with Southwestern Law School and the Los Angeles Superior Courts. Southwestern is providing the mock trial program financial support and use of its facilities, while Assemblyman Mike Eng's office helped secure the use of the Stanley Mosk courthouse. Now, though, the students need at least 100 volunteers with legal training to judge the competition.

*Full disclosure: I'm a writing and editing consultant for Southwestern Law School

Undergrads running mock trial program seek 100 legally trained judges

Click here to learn more, volunteer

Student startup gets special froth: $10,000

From Claremont McKenna

Could dudes in college ask for more: Beer, the Bay Area and a shot of real bread to figure how to share it all with good buds? Well, actually, that's a more serious formula for a possible start-up deemed the winner of a recent entreprenurial and official grant of $10,000. It will go to three chaps who pitched the idea in a business class of running tours of craft beer breweries in the San Francisco area, a venture that the grant capital will aim to turn into reality. The students say they had studied the wine industry and wanted craft beers to adopt a successful strategy from it: consumer education. Ah, so now they get a little dough to back up their concept with, um, research -- in aforesaid beer manufacturing locales up north, with bartenders, vendors, enthusiasts and online, for example, in sudsy forums. If they convince their generous business mentors that they have met their required goals and they have a viable, potential business, then they qualify for the full award.

Venture capital awarded to pitch for tours of Bay Area craft beer breweries

A $250,000 prize for educating kids in India

From Claremont McKenna

Pratham -- India's largest nonprofit focused on education and an organization that has sought to improve the reading, writing and basic arithmetic skills of tens of millions of children ages 6-14 -- has won a $250,000 prize for extraordinary leadership in the nonprofit sector. The college administers the Henry R. Kravis Prize, named for an alum who was a founding partner of the investment fund Kohlberg Kravis Roberts. Besides its direct literacy programs, Pratham also works to provide preschools and early childhood education, to train teachers, volunteers and government officials, to assist the most vulnerable and poor youngsters and to improve computer literacy. It also publishes low-cost books and helps evaluate the quality of Indian education annually.

Pratham, largest Indian nonprofit on education, honored for its leadership, work

Click here to learn more about Pratham