Daily Lumina News 050624

In Florida, which, along with Texas, has the most extreme anti-diversity, equity, and inclusion laws in the country, virtually all DEI staff have been fired or reassigned and offices shuttered—but that’s not the only story. There is also mounting resistance to the laws.
Students are devising creative workarounds. And while some wary faculty members are recasting their lectures, others are boldly standing their ground.

Talk to student protesters across the nation, and their outrage is evident: The extent of death and destruction in Gaza has galvanized them, and they are willing to risk arrest to defend the Palestinian cause.
However, many students associate the Israel-Hamas war with other issues such as policing, the mistreatment of Indigenous people, racism, and the effects of climate change.

The proportion of male college students is now a record-low 41 percent, according to the U.S. Department of Education. That’s a complete reversal of the situation 50 years ago. Men are also seven percentage points more likely than women to drop out of college.
Colleges are testing out several strategies to reverse those trends. That includes everything from sending out targeted emails to prospective male students highlighting a school's hunting classes to providing peer and professional mentors, summer internships, networking events, and priority registration.

Serena Ahmad is serving a 14-year sentence at the Denver Women’s Correctional Facility. She's also the first incarcerated woman in the United States to teach as an adjunct professor at a women’s facility.
Ahmad is a part of Adams State University's new bachelor's degree program. The effort gives a unique opportunity to incarcerated women in Colorado, something that educators and correctional staff say they hope to see more of in the future. Women make up eight percent of Colorado’s incarcerated population, but this is the first four-year degree available in the state’s prisons for women.

The 2024 college graduation season is well underway, even as protesters continue to occupy lawns on campuses across the nation.
But students aren’t the only ones pushing their institutions to divest from companies that support Israel’s war in Gaza; commencement speakers are now getting in on the activism, too.

Some employers are up front and blunt about hiring older workers: They’re not interested.
There’s never a good excuse for ageism, but it is especially troubling at a time when more older adults are choosing to stay in the workforce longer out of necessity or because they just enjoy working. In this interview, several chief executive officers and thought leaders weigh in on age bias in the workforce—and what employers should be doing about it.