The Roy Wilkins Center for Human Relations and Social Justice will host a conference on racial inequality and public procurement and contracting from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m on Wednesday, May 11, in Cowles Auditorium at the Humphrey Center. The conference will bring together national academics and experts to discuss the best practices, methodologies, and development of new tools for increasing small business participation in both public and private contracting activities. The conference is aimed to reach academics, policy makers, business owners, and the public. Tickets at http://procurementandcontracting.eventbrite.com.

The Center on Women and Public Policy will host a meetings of the Women and Politics Book Club on Wednesday, May 11, at 5 p.m. in Freeman Commons (Room 205 Humphrey Center). Big Girls Don't Cry: The Election That Changes Everything for American Women, by Rebecca Traister, covers the 2008 presidential election. This event is free and open to the public.

"Social policy is a pillar of our teaching and research program," said J. Brian Atwood, dean. "Women and public policy is an important concentration and an element of our curriculum that makes the Humphrey School degree programs unique."

As associate director and then interim director, Fitzpatrick has lead several major, multi-year research projects. In partnership with the Women's Foundation of Minnesota, she directs the Status of Women and Girls in Minnesota project, a new initiative that systematically examines key indicators for women and girls in Minnesota, raises public awareness of issues important to the lives of women and girls, and identifies policy solutions for decision makers. She also leads the center's research efforts in the area of women and electoral politics, including a longitudinal study examining the effectiveness of programs designed to help women achieve elected office. Finally, Fitzpatrick directs the Infinity Project, a collaboration of legal scholars and lawyers working to increase gender diversity on the federal bench.

Before joining the center, Fitzpatrick served as a program director for the Center for School Change, conducting major research projects on education policy with such partner organizations as the National Governors Association and the Gates Foundation. She holds a bachelor's degree in political science from the University of Minnesota and a master's degree in public policy from the Humphrey School of Public Affairs.

Co-author Marcie Rendon, Ojibwe playwright, poet, and writer adds, "Art keeps Native people alive. Young man brought back from the dead decides to pursue art and now makes a career on the plains of 'Pleasantville' in Fargo, North Dakota. Father paints spirit of daughter killed in school bus accident into each work of art he creates. Man rehabs self from debilitating stroke by carving images out of stone."

The study finds Ojibwe artists are more likely to be self-employed than artists in general. Few work for commercial or nonprofit employers, the legacy of discrimination, poor access to arts training, and living far from employment centers. Some are successful entrepreneurs, while many travel to sell work at Indian markets and powwows. Overwhelmingly, the artists interviewed would like to concentrate more on their art and make more income from it.

Many Ojibwe artists do not see themselves as individuals pursuing a career, but anchor their artwork in community cultural practice. Native values, such as gift-giving, cooperating, and "not standing out," clash with Western norms of artistic aspiration and self-promotion. Nevertheless, many Ojibwe artists have been successful in bridging traditional with contemporary artistic forms and content.

McKnight Foundation program officer Vickie Benson welcomed the findings by saying "Despite remarkable creativity and great demonstrated skill, most Native artists in Minnesota have not received the respect, the attention, or the financial resources their cultural contributions merit. We at The McKnight Foundation were pleased to support this report's research into the multiple barriers our state's Native artists face in developing their work."

The study showcases pioneering efforts that offer Ojibwe artists opportunities to present and earn income from their work. "There are one-of-a-kind instances where a Native entrepreneur creates a place for young musicians to practice, record, and perform (Cass Lake's North Star Coffee Bar); visual artists to hang, speak about, and sell their art (Two Rivers Gallery); and authors to read and sell their work (Birchbark Books)," says Markusen. "In other cases, non-Native patrons or managers dedicate a space for Native artwork (Todd Bockley Gallery, the Mahnomen Shooting Star Casino gift shop, Fond du Lac's Min No Aya Win Clinic, Grand Portage Lodge, and Mille Lacs Grand Casino and Hotel)."

The report makes recommendations for artists, arts resource/space managers, tribal leaders, funders, city leaders and Native arts organizations, among others, to raise the visibility of the value and impact of Native work and to build careers and good incomes for Native artists. "We believe that, through the talents of many of our interviewees, Minnesota and neighboring states could build a reputation for distinction in Woodland Indian art, comparable to the place Pueblo and Navajo art holds in the southwest," says Markusen.

The complete study, including profiles of more than 50 artists and pioneering arts managers, can be found online at www.hhh.umn.edu/projects/prie. The study was funded by The McKnight Foundation, in support of an environment in which artists are valued leaders in our community. While supplies last, copies are available from McKnight by calling 612-333-4220.

The Humphrey School ranks among the top professional schools of public affairs at public universities in the country. The Institute is widely recognized for its role in examining public issues and shaping policy and planning at the local, state, national, and international levels, as well as for providing leadership and management expertise to public and nonprofit organizations. The Institute offers four graduate degrees, plus a Master in Development Practice degree in international development that will welcome its first cohort in August 2010.

Painting credit: Jim Denomie, Untitled Portraits; Photo credit: Cheryl Walsh Bellville

"The biggest mistake that people make when they try to evaluate the 'costs' of immigration is to look at short-term costs, without taking into consideration the long-term benefits that accrue when immigrants enter the labor force," says Professor Katherine Fennelly, the lead researcher for the study. Fennelly has an established career in research on immigrants and refugees in the United States, as well as the preparedness of communities and public institutions to adapt to demographic changes.

Minnesota has a small but rapidly growing population of immigrants relative to the United States as a whole. The foreign-born population comprises seven percent of Minnesota's population compared with 13 percent nationwide. This includes both documented and undocumented individuals, with a wide range of ages, backgrounds, educational levels, and skills.

According to the report, immigrants supply many economic contributions:
- Foreign-born workers account for the majority of growth in the labor force in Minnesota.
- Immigrant-owned businesses generated $331 million in net income in Minnesota in 2000.
- Hispanic-owned firms in the state have grown 350 percent since 1990.
- The U.S. Labor Department reports that the nation has an immediate shortage of nurses, yet the average wait for a nurse to get a "green card" is six years. Rural Minnesota faces a predicted shortage of 8,000 registered nurses in the next decade.
- The U.S. Council of Economic Advisers estimates that the country's net gain from immigration is $37 billion per year.
- Nationwide, immigrants represent 25 percent of physicians and 40 percent of engineers holding doctoral degrees.
- Immigrants are important to the statewide business community in two respects, says Bill Blazar, senior vice president of public affairs and business development at the Minnesota Chamber, the state's largest business advocacy organization.

"We've been dependent on immigrant workers throughout our state's history. There's no evidence that the future will be different from the past," says Blazer. "Secondly, an increasing number of businesses are being created by immigrants."

Federal immigration reform is essential for the state to continue to realize fiscal benefits from immigration, the report argues. The authors recommend increases in visas to match the demand for labor and a clear path to legalization.

In addition, the study calls for local efforts to ensure the full social and economic integration of immigrants. This can be done primarily through state-supported efforts to improve high school graduation rates for immigrant youth and employer-sponsored programs that ensure opportunities for job training and advancement.

The Minnesota Business Immigration Coalition is comprised of the Minnesota Chamber of Commerce, Minnesota Agri-Growth Council, Minnesota Nursery and Landscape Association, Minnesota Milk Producers Association, Minnesota Restaurant Association, and Minnesota Lodging Association.

The full report is available here.

A free, public forum to discuss the findings of this report will be held from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. Nov. 12 at the Humphrey School. It will include several presentations and a question-answer session with the audience.

Participants will be:

Dean Brian Atwood of the Humphrey School of Public Affairs

Professor Katherine Fennelly of the Humphrey School

Bill Blazar of the Minnesota Chamber of Commerce

Rodolfo Gutierrez of HACER to discuss the need for credible research on immigrants

Minnesota State Demographer Tom Gillaspy to address Minnesota's aging population

Professor Raymond Robertson of Macalester College to talk about Mexican workers competing with or complementing U.S. workers

Ana Luisa Fajer Flores, Consul General of Mexico in St. Paul

The students focused on the effectiveness of the Housing First programs, which are part of Heading Home Hennepin, a 10-year joint initiative between Minneapolis and Hennepin County that has as its goal ending long-term homelessness in the community by 2016.

Housing First programs help individuals and families access housing as soon as possible, then provide support services that will allow them to sustain housing long-term. The study matched 250 program participants with comparable individuals who did not receive housing services.

"Our initial results are promising," says Hanratty, an expert in the economics of poverty and comparative welfare systems. "They show that the program has been able to stably house people who have been homeless for a long time, sometimes up to 10 or 20 years."

The research team found that the Housing First programs dramatically reduced county shelter use, decreasing demand by nearly 36 percent. The students also documented a reduction in arrests, as well as increases in the stability of public health insurance coverage among program participants.

"On a personal level," says Hanratty, "individuals indicated feelings of personal safety and a greater sense of autonomy from finally 'having their own key.'"

The Humphrey School students who conducted the research as a part of their final capstone project, which partners students with community organizations to provide targeted, practical research and analysis.

A detailed report, including a wide array of statistics, is available for review on Heading Home Hennepin's website at www.headinghomehennepin.org

Despite decades of progress, there still is great disparity between Minnesota men and women, and boys and girls, according to new research by the Institute's Center on Women and Public Policy and the Women's Foundation of Minnesota.

"Since gaining the right to vote in 1920, women have made great strides toward equality. We've changed laws, practices, and attitudes to promote fairness and opportunity," says Lee Roper-Batker, president and CEO of the Women's Foundation of Minnesota. "But today, our research shows that women in Minnesota continue to be shortchanged in wages, safety, health, and leadership. By shortchanging women, we're hurting families, communities, and the entire state."

Economics

On average, a woman in Minnesota earns $1 million less over a lifetime when compared with a man. According to Deb Fitzpatrick, director of the Center on Women and Public Policy, "The wage gap shortchanges Minnesota women and their families an average of $11,000 each year. Imagine what $11,000 more a year could buy--down payments for homes, better neighborhoods and health care, higher quality childcare, or even a family vacation."

And despite women in Minnesota earning the majority of post-secondary degrees, this often increases the wage gap, which can result in a loss of $2 million dollars in wages over a lifetime.

Safety and Security

"Minnesotans have settled for a 'D' in safety, with one in three of our daughters, mothers, and sisters surviving sexual or physical violence by mid-life," says Roper-Batker. From "hostile hallways" in schools to intimate partner violence in the home, women are at risk. "Ensuring only 67% of Minnesota's women and girls' safety is a failing grade," she says.

Health and Reproductive Rights

The study also outlines a "wellness gap" between men and women, with almost twice as many girls as boys in Minnesota reporting suicidal thoughts or suicide attempts. Some girls of color--and Native American girls in particular--are at the highest risk.

And, while data shows that fewer 9th graders are having sex, the number of sexually active girls and boys not using birth control is on the rise.

Power and Leadership

At 34 percent, Minnesota is a national leader in the proportion of women serving in the state legislature. Still, "women remain underrepresented in the Minnesota state house, courthouse, and boardroom," says Roper-Batker. "Progress has flat-lined. Our economy and policies are compromised when we continue to leave half the state's talent on the sidelines." Although women win electoral races at equal rates as men, fewer women are running for elected office, and there is a dearth of female leadership in the top positions of Minnesota's Fortune 400 companies.

While much of the data is alarming, Fitzpatrick remains upbeat. "We will use this report as a much-needed jolt to jumpstart social change and inspire more of our citizens, philanthropists, teachers, and leaders--women and men alike--to create fairness, safety, wellness, and equality for all of Minnesota's women and girls," she says. "Action overcomes despair."

For more information or to read the full report, please visit www.hhh.umn.edu.

In a stunning rejection of this as-applied constitutional challenge to NJ Transit's affirmative action program for DBEs, the Honorable Susan D. Wigenton, United States District Judge. ruled on October 19, 2010, that the statistical evidence and empirical analysis produced by the University of Minnesota research team provided the requisite proof for NJ Transit's DBE program to be implemented in accordance with the federal regulations and that the agency's program satisfied the multi-pronged strict scrutiny test.

The key issues in the case were whether NJ Transit's DBE program determined the amount of racial discrimination to be corrected by its affirmative action program and then implemented the program while maximizing race-neutral alternatives to race-conscious goals. Myers led a Humphrey School research team that conducted NJ Transit's 2002 disparity study and the organization's DBE goals reports for the past decade.

The District Court ruling is one of first impression in the District of New Jersey. Only a few Circuit Courts have ruled on the issue and currently are split. Wigenton's opinion bridged the split in the Circuit Courts by adopting the majority opinion and ruling that NJ Transit also would have won under the minority analysis. The Court found that Myers' goal setting supported NJ Transit's program and rejected the opinion of the plaintiff's expert--Dr. John Lunn of Hope College--that better alternative analysis to quantify racial discrimination existed.

Myers found in his analysis, for example, that although Asian American firms face higher utilization rates relative to non-DBEs, they receive lower contract amounts than similarly situated firms, a stronger measure of discrimination than simply the disparities between availability and utilization. The full opinion can be found here.

The Atlantic Legal Foundation can still appeal the determination to the Third Circuit Court of Appeals.

Myers, who is hearing impaired, had agreed to conduct interviews as part of the selection process for a special Fulbright program for Chinese doctoral students and post-docs. Because it is difficult to find certified real-time captioners in China, Myers arrived at the American Embassy for the interviews armed with his laptop and an arrangement for remote captioning. Remote captioning involves captioners who are located "remotely" from the meeting site and listen to and caption meetings via a speakerphone.

"I have used remote captioning all over the world," says Myers.

But not in a U.S. Embassy building in China. As recent news about Google's decision to redirect users of its Google.cn search site to its uncensored site in Hong Kong revealed, the Chinese government monitors internet traffic within the country. The U.S. Embassy would not allow an unsecured internet connection, meaning no remote captioning.

"All of a sudden, I became the subject of controversial conversation about disabilities," Myers recalls.

That experience and the opportunity to meet with leaders in the disability advocacy community in Beijing gave Myers the idea of applying economic analysis tools to the question of income and other disparities among those with and without disabilities in China.

"My original intent was to provide a statistical analysis of how individual income relates to disability, but what's really more interesting is the politics of disability policy in China," he says.

Following on the United Nations declaration of 1981 as International Year of Disabled Persons, China conducted its first scientific count of persons with disabilities in 1987, finding 4.6 percent of the population to be disabled. The Chinese government has in recent years enacted a variety of new laws, including the Law on the Protection of Disabled Persons, Regulations on the Education of Persons with Disabilities, and the Regulations on Employment of Persons with Disabilities, to acknowledge the rights of China's estimated 82.7 million persons with disabilities and, in 2008, ratified the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

But, says Myers, unlike the federal Americans with Disabilities Act, which provides uniform measures of protection against discrimination, or the Social Security Disability Insurance, which also provides federal uniformity in income support programs for those with disabilities, there really is no national program in China to provide income and other support for those with disabilities. "It doesn't matter if you are deaf in New Mexico or blind in New Hampshire, everyone who meets the same eligibility, work history, and dependent qualifications receives the same treatment," Myers says, referring to Social Security Disability Insurance, which provides income support and subsidized medical care to qualified applicants in the United States.

Instead, health, education, and employment services in China are provided by a network of Disabled Persons' Federations spread throughout the country. The burden is not on employers and government agencies to provide rights and protections but on the person with the disability to complain about discrimination. China has no policy on accommodations for persons with disabilities, and medical care and subsidies largely are a local government responsibility, with sizeable variations across provinces.

It is a reactive policy, says Myers. "The policy does not ask, 'what can I do in order to assure that people with pre-existing disabilities can be fully employed so as to increase the probability of fulfilling their promise.'"

As Myers was considering the differences in income for majority Han and minority populations in urban and rural China, he used a similar lens to look at income disparities between those with and without disabilities in city and country settings.

With the help of Professor Ding Sai, his colleague at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Myers analyzed the Chinese Household Income Project Survey (CHIPS) data from 2002. Merging the urban and rural data sets, he found that, while 3.1 percent of the total populations surveyed were disabled, 6.1 percent of urban dwellers reported being disabled. Further limiting the data set to those of employment age (between the ages of 18 and 60) revealed similar results.

Myers found that there was a higher disability rate in urban areas than in rural areas; that healthy, working-aged persons with disabilities had lower incomes than persons without disabilities; that equally qualified persons with disabilities had lower incomes; and that much of the gap in income is unexplained.

"Economists call that unexplained gap discrimination," says Myers.

Myers presented these results to Chinese academics and scholars at a number of institutions, including Tsinghua University, Inner Mongolia University, and Yunnan University for Nationalities.

The comments and explanations they put forward interested Myers. Some hypothesized that disability status is under-reported in rural areas because of the stigma attached to having a disability. Some argued that disabled children in rural areas were subject to infanticide or abandonment because, without Social Security or a guaranteed pension system, rural residents rely on healthy adult child to take care of them in their old age.

"Disability statistics in China are very political," says Myers. "As Stanford University anthropologist Matthew Kohrman argues, there is a desire to produce a final disability count that was 'not too high or too low,' one that balances the desire for scientific validity with the need for national stability."

Now Myers is more than an "accidental analyst." He has begun to compare disability policies and disparities in earnings of persons with disabilities in the United States and China. Myers and his colleagues will present their findings at the Pacific Rim 2009 Conference at the Center on Disability Studies at the College of Education at the University of Hawaii.

Professor Morris Kleiner will offer a discussion of "Employer Reaction to Union Organizing" at 11:30 a.m. on Wednesday, January 19, at the Humphrey Center. He will be joined by a distinguished panel of experts, including Barb Kucera, director of the Labor Education Service at the University of Minnesota, and Marlin Osthaus, regional director of the National Labor Relations Board. The National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) affirms that it is national policy to favor collective bargaining in the private sector, but it has been one of the most controversial pieces of labor legislation passed during the New Deal era. Unions and firms' representatives have tried to change the law at various times. This group will explore some of the reasons for the decline in unions in the private sector and alternative policies, and take questions from the audience. This is the latest in a series of discussions about how the Humphrey School is working on public policy matters in Hubert Humphrey's legacy, during the centennial year of his birth.

The Roy Wilkins Center for Human Relations and Social Justice will host Rucker C. Johnson of the University of California-Berkeley to present the paper "Long-run Impacts of School Desegregation and School Quality on Adult Attainments" on Thursday, April 21, at the Humphrey Center. Johnson is an assistant professor in the Goldman School of Public Policy. His graduate and postdoctoral training is in labor and health economics and his work considers the role of poverty and inequity in affecting life chances. Click here to see a copy of the paper. This event is free and open to the public. Please RSVP by emailing rwilkins@umn.edu.

The Humphrey School's Diversity Committee will host an opportunity to engage faculty, staff, and students in an honest conversation about diversity at the School, focusing on race and its intersection with multiple identities. Through the use of facilitated circle dialogues, this event will encourage participants to approach issues of race and identity both from a personal and institutional perspective. RSVP at http://onehumphreydialogue.eventbrite.com/.