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Going! Going! ....?
For years, after Vatican II, the issue of the Catholic identity of colleges and universities, was, for the most part, avoided. Most institutions were, in effect, drawing upon previously accumulated capital.
John Paul II's Ex Corde Ecclesiae brought the issue to the center of attention once again, and a number of institutions belatedly responded with new mission statements that stressed not only "Jesuit" or "Vincentian" or "Augustinian," but their commitment to the "Catholic" tradition.
Some promising Catholic Studies Programs were initiated, as was, in some places, the attempt to begin serious conversation about the Catholic Intellectual Tradition.
But still the crucial issue of "hiring" has not been seriously confronted (though, if I remember correctly, the Steinfels broached this subject more than 15 years ago).
Now, an article in the current America (available only to subscribers -- the August "grace period" having expired!) broaches the problem acutely.
The author, a faculty member at Notre Dame (no, not that faculty member) pulls no punches: he cites some fascinating details.
Here is his radical prescription for what he fears will be an otherwise terminal illness:
The matter of hiring Catholic faculty has been of concern at Notre Dame for
some time. The Rev. Robert Sullivan, of the history department and the
Erasmus Institute, now heads an effort to identify able Catholic scholars.
He also heads an ad hoc committee on recruiting outstanding Catholic faculty members, appointed by Provost Burish. One of the charges for this committeeis to identify "the best practices for hiring Catholic faculty members." One can only hope and pray for the success of these endeavors.
It must be understood, however, that this is not a matter that can be
massaged by minor measures. The temptation for administrators is to hope
that a little adjustment here and a bit of tinkering there might improve the
situation without stirring faculty opposition. Settling for minor measures
in the present circumstances, however, indicates a complicity in the
secularization process. A major change in the hiring process is required,
and the need for it must be approved at the level of the board of trustees
and implemented with courageous leadership, whatever faculty resistance it
If the seemingly inevitable downward trend in the Catholic percentage of the
faculty is to be arrested and reversed, a major board decision calling for
two-thirds of all future appointments to be committed Catholic scholars is
essential. This would require very different ways of hiring from the
department-based procedures of today. The university would need to engage in what might be termed strategic hiring or hiring for mission. A recognition
that this approach is crucial to its identity could drive the endeavor. It
would require Notre Dame (and other schools that want to preserve their
Catholic mission and character) to be truly different from their secular
"preferred peer" schools. Failure to take such action, however, will lead
schools like Notre Dame to merely replicate such secular institutions and to
surrender what remains of their distinctiveness. This is surely a sad
prospect for those who hoped, with Ex Corde Ecclesiae, that a Catholic
university might constitute "an authentic human community animated by the
spirit of Christ."
About the Author
Rev. Robert P. Imbelli, a priest of the Archdiocese of New York, is Associate Professor of Theology Emeritus at Boston College.
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I'm of two minds about this. Part of having a "Catholic mission and character" should involve a truly Catholic openness to the gifts of non-Catholics. Why would it detract from the Catholicism of the university if a Methodist teaches music or math? Methodists are Christians--why wouldn't they make a contribution to "an authentic human community animated by the spirit of Christ." A Catholic ecclesiology is engaged with non-Catholics; why shouldn't this engagement be palpable and real on campus?On the other hand, is there something distinctive about the Catholic outlook that would affect, for example, the way economics is conveyed? Is literature, taught by a Catholic, differently-oriented than as taught by e.g. a non-believer?
It will be interesting to see what will win out for bright high school graduates and/or their parents -- a catholic education dedicated to, (usually a strong concervative) catholic identity or a better secular education with more prestige. I find it interesting that the two men that conservative catholics are most proud of went to non catholic undergraduate and graduate(law) schools...Alito and Roberts And they, themselves are suppose to be outstanding catholics!I can remember in the baby boom years, when I had young children, and the question was, "where do you send your children for high school? Should it be the catholic high school where they would get a good education or the public high school where they would get a better education? The better public high school education won out for most parents who were concerned for their children's future. And the parents who opted for for that decision were pre-vatican II, well educated in the faith catholics, that were produced by that supposed gold standard of catholic education of the 1950's.
Those of you interested Commonweal's review of the Morey/Piderit book can read it here:http://www.commonwealmagazine.org/article.php3?id_article=1734&recalcul=oui
Bravo to "America" for publishing this article. But it is long in the coming. Having read the magazine regularly for the last 17 years, I can't recall any article that significantly questioned or discussed how well Jesuit colleges and universities have preserved their Catholic identity. Unfortunately, when it comes to things Jesuit, "America" tends to resemble more the cheerleader than the journalist. Since Vatican II, have Jesuit institutions done anything that we may now see as mistaken or misguided? Has everything been absolutely wonderful for the past four decades? Let's see if "America" will publish some articles that are both reflective AND self-critical of Jesuit insitutitons.
All who value Catholic higher education should be grateful to Father Miscamble for writing, and to America for publishing, this disturbing description of the attenuation of the Catholic character of Notre Dame. The general theme will be familiar to all who have examined recent studies such as Catholic Higher Education by Piderit and Morey. With respect to Notre Dame, a comprehensive analysis appears at www.projectsycamore.com, the homepage of Project Sycamore, a non-profit established by Notre Dame alumni. Most alumni dont like to hear this and dont want to believe it. The place looks the same when they visit, and the University incessantly tells them its getting better every year. Notre Dames formidable public information machine proudly points to the crowded chapels and the hours students spend in social service; priests still are much in evidence; the grotto remains a treasured place of peace and prayer. While all of this is real, it's fatally deceptive, as a former Provost of Notre Dame, James T. Burtchaell, C.S.C., has explained in his landmark study The Dying of the Light. The student body continues as before at Notre Dame 85% of the students are Catholic and the old religious practices continue even as the faculty is being secularized. With the infrastructure gone, the superstructure ultimately collapses. But then its too late. As Father Burtchaell says, the alumni begin to worry that their university might lose its religious identity after it already has.At Notre Dane, it is already very late. Catholic representation on the faculty has fallen steadily and precipitously from 85% in the 1970s to 53% in 2006. Applying a minimal discount for nominal and heterodox Catholics, there is no longer the majority of Catholic intellectuals that the schools Mission Statement declares is essential to the schools Catholic identity. Worse, as Father Miscamble points out and the Provost has predicted, because of the heavy concentration of Catholics retiring, unless there is a major turnaround there will soon not be even an arithmetical majority. While, as Father Miscamble notes, the President, Father Jenkins, understands the problem and has put in place some measures designed to solve it, the question is whether this will suffice. Hiring has been largely controlled by the faculty. Most of them oppose paying any attention to whether a candidate is Catholic, as a 2003 study set forth in the Project Sycamore materials shows; and a number are actually hostile to mission hires, according to Father Miscamble. Will they bow to exhortation? It seems unlikely, to put it conservatively.. Past administrations have not been indifferent. The secularizing elements of the faculty so far have largely, though not uniformly, ruled.The University has so far been reluctant to disclose last years hiring results to the extent it has in the past, which does not inspire confidence. It says that in the largest of the colleges over 50% of new hires are Catholic, but theres nothing new about that sort of figure. As Father Miscamble stresses, a bit over 50% is not close to enough even to maintain the unsatisfactory status quo. He puts the figure at two-thirds. This corresponds with Project Sycamores estimate, which it advised the University it would use unless told it was badly off the mark. The University did not take exception. Assuming, then, as seems almost certain, the situation remains grim, the question is whether those in governance will be willing exercise their residual authority despite the very real risk of vocal opposition and resentment of substantial elements of the faculty. And even some snickers and sneers from secular academe. Stay tuned to www.projectsycamore.com.
I wonder what Fr. Sullivan and Fr. Miscamble make of the hiring of the well-respected historian Mark Noll, an Evangelical.
I hope they will say, but I would be astonished if they didn't regard it as a first-rate appointment. Certainly the Project Sycamore organizers do. (I note the link to Project Sycamore in my earlier comment is not live, though the second is. All interested in Notre Dame should examine what's there. Again, the address is www.projectsycamore.com.) The point is not to revert to the monolithic faculty of 40 years past, and certainly not to denigrate the important contributions of non-Catholic faculty. But Notre Dame purports to be Catholic and has declared that, to be Catholic, it must have a "predominant number of Catholic intellectuals" on the faculty, a term that all agree means a solid majority. The point, as Father Miscamble stresses, is to meet this requirement. Or, I add, concede that it can't or won't, so as not to be guilty of false advertising. Had Notre Dame not turned its back on Eamon Duffy, a sorry episode related by Father Miscamble, it might have had an extraordinarily powerful duo in Professors Noll and Duffy.
Without pretending to know what Fr. Sullivan and Fr. Miscamble would say, here is what Fr. Michael Buckley, S.J., said in the Winter 2007 issue of B.C. Magaziine(http://bcm.bc.edu/issues/winter_2007/c21_notes/schools-of-thought.html)"Without Catholic scholars, intellectuals, professors, and a corresponding core curriculum, the Catholic identity will inevitably failliving on only in the catalogues and official pronouncements of the university after the faculty has long since ceased to espouse the vision.The presence of Catholic intellectuals is obviously necessary and urgent, but not sufficient. Essential is the presence on the faculty of members of other traditions, both religious and humanistic. They should find in the Catholic university a strong support for the religious and humanistic values they represent, a support they might not find in any number of other academic institutions."Hiring for mission does not preclude hiring non-Catholics; but, clearly a critical mass of Catholic scholars is crucial.
Since the Jesuits have been mentioned, it is worth noting that the latest issue of "Conversations on Jesuit Higher Education" (not yet on their website) is devoted to what place theology and philosophy should have in a core curriculum. It includes a survey of 23 Jesuit colleges and universities with regard to requirements in those two areas. The most any one of them requires is three courses in each area; most seem to require two in each; one of them requires only one course in each area. Some replies speak of courses in Religious Studies rather than of Theology, so it is difficult to know whether any courses specifically on Catholic theology are required. It would appear that in some places it would be possible to fulfil the requirement by a course, say, on Meso-American Creation Myths and another on Post-Modern Critiques of Religion.I do not believe that the whole burden of the Catholic identity of a college or university should be borne by the Theology Departmentfar from it! But if we dont want our students limping when they leave our institutionswell-developed in the area of their major, but weak in the adult appropriation of their own faith, then requirements in that area certainly need to be looked at.Curriculum and faculty--the two basic issues, I think. If not, why bother?
It also might be worth discussing (at some point )different pedagagical approaches to the adult appropriation of faith. Especially important to parents, I would think, is the continuity or discontinuity that is presumed between the students' prior catechesis and the theological instruction of the university.
Curriculum and faculty are "the two basic issues," as Fr. Komonchak says, but I also wonder how much the quest among universities for inclusion in the upper echelons of the "U.S. News & World Report" rankings has affected Catholic universities, especially ND, Georgetown, and BC, and how much the Catholic identities of such institutions may have suffered as a result of the competition to achieve higher and higher rankings.
Father Buckley's succinct statement put it very well indeed. With respect to the state of affairs at Notre Dame, Dr. Jude Dougherty, Dean Emeritus of of Catholic University's School of Philosophy, put it even more succinctly in a letter to Project Sycamore: ""It all comes down to this: At its highest levels, the Holy Cross Fathers and the Board, the University must decide before it is too late whether it wants to be a Catholic University or merely another secular university. " The point about the curriculum is very important and deserves full treatment in another article. The character of the education obviously depends both on who teaches and what is taught. The gutting of the core curriculum at Notre Dame has evidently paralleled that at the Jesuit institutions. Though Father Miscamble praises the Theology Department as one exception to the general pattern, that may not matter much to the typical student . Only three hours over four years need be devoted to a distinctively Catholic subject; and that course as described is limited to "the Bible and early Catholic traditions." Another three hours must be taken, but they may consist of studying medical ethics, or war and peace, or poverty, or "Gendering Christianity." With this feeble a theology requirement, one may reasonably question the strength of the claim of these institutions to afford a Catholic education. (As to Philosophy, again only six hours are required and Notre Dame, and here there is the overarching faculty commposition question.) If Notre Dame is still the most Catholic of the major universities, as it may well be, the bar has been lowered so much through changes in faculty and curriculum that the praise is faint indeed.
Today, 9.2.2007, a few days after the publication of this article in America, not one comment has appeared on America's website, but twelve are here at Commonweal! Please tolerate several disparate statements from me. Neither Fr. Miscamble nor the commentators have mentioned how Notre Dame gets "sold" to potential undergrads: It is a school that brings prestige to the student (even if he barely graduates); it provides networking for jobs because of one's classmates and acquaintances, and its football team is renowned. If alumni complain that it is no longer very Catholic, that complaint may be simply that Notre Dame's faculty no longer belongs to our tribe. Or, perhaps, the alumni wish to turn the clock back to an everybody-is-my-kind age when they themselves have plunged into a varied, pluralist world of business. It annoys me that some Catholic high schools likewise offer exclusiveness, networking, and athletics while boasting their Catholicism.
Interesting post and comments.In my experience, Catholic schools of all kinds tend to rest on their title, their associations (with a parish, diocese, or religious order) or even their history--and that's not so terribly different from most Catholics who don't renew their intentionality on a regular if not daily basis.Hiring Catholic faculty may be a piece of the picture. But from the outside looking in, I see the tireless promotion of the culture of sport. Is it really necessary? Or does it keep big-pocketed alumni happy? Just like any other secular learning institution.
I am now entering my twentieth year at Notre Dame. From my perspective in the Theology Department, too often made the locus for carrying the Catholic character of the place, I do think that Bill Micamble makes some persuasive points and some others that are a tad over heated. For those alumni who worry about what is going on at Notre Dame a few salient points may not be out of place> We have 250 students majoring in theology; we offer on a volunteer basis one credit courses under the rubric :Know Your Catholic Faith." Students compete to be accepted in the Alliance for Catholic Education where they go off to teach in under served Catholic schools for two years; The Institute for Church Life has just started another pogram called ECHO to train catechists for a two year commitment in parishes around the country. Ten percent of our graduating class goes off to do service with the poor each year. That we need more Catholic intellectuals who join the faculty is a high priority. Recently, a distinguished alumnus has endowed four chairs to recruit distinguished Catholic scholars in a spectrum of disciplines. Here is a major probelm: many of our brightest students choose law school over PhD programs (much to my sadness). I keep pleading with them to go to graduate school since the last thing this country needs is another lawyer.Is the cup half empty or half full? I do not know. I do know this: all the old grousing alumni and others who lament the absence of Catholic faculty need to know that it is not easy finding committed Catholic professors and, secondly, if they spent some time in an state suppported school (as I did) they would begin to realize how Catholic Notre Dame is. A crisis is both a warning and a time of opportunity. It is that sense in which, as Piderit and Morey show in their book, that Catholic schools like Notre Dame are in crisis.
Larry,Thanks for the further detail.There certainly is a half-full glass(un buon rosso italiano, spero).And I could cite similar positive signs about B.C.I agree with the warning/opportunity perspective.But, as you suggest, the challenge is great;and perhaps, for some schools, it is too late.Or, as John Meier used to intone in Dunwoodie days."zu spaet!"
I leave it to others to judge whether the extensive analyses and the sources upon which they are based that are set forth at www.projectsyhcamore.com amount to grousing by superannuated (and, for the younger supporters, perhaps immature) alumni. I am put in mind of the Wall Street Journals observation this past week with respect to the governance dispute at Dartmouth: Like administrators at most universities, these academic elites expect only money -- not opinion and oversight -- from their alumni donors. But if Professor Cunningham, in speaking of what he knows, really means to say that those who take a view different from his must have had no experience with secular universities and do not appreciate how much more Catholic is Notre Dame, or that they must think there is an ample supply of outstanding Catholic scholars eager to come to Notre Dame, he is simply wrong. If he will examine the credentials of our board, he will find persons with extensive experience on the faculties of both secular and Protestant universities as well as Notre Dame, and there are many more with similar experience among our supporters. We know full well that Professor Cunninghams litany of worthy programs and notable achievements could be greatly extended. Dean Roche did so every year in his annual reports to the faculty, an excellent source. For my part, as I have said, I think Notre Dame is probably the most Catholic of the major Catholic universities, though I confess inadequate knowledge of the others to be confident of my view. And it is true that the proportion of Catholics on the faculties of the top secular universities, from whom Notre Dame prefers to draw, is far lower I think around six percent than the proportion of Catholics in the population.I suggest that none of this really advances the discussion but rather tends to detract from the central point of agreement, namely, that there is a crisis in Catholic education generally, and at Notre Dame specifically, with respect to Catholic identity, and that the question that must be answered now is what should be done about it. This, after all, is the burden of Father Miscambles article. So far, I have not seen in these interchanges any discussion of the steps he proposes. The four additional chairs referred to by Professor Cunningham, while welcome, are insignificant in relation to the problem. If I understand Father Miscamble, he is arguing that experience teaches that exhortation by the Administration will not be sufficient, and that new measures must be adopted that will in substance limit, if necessary, the virtually free hand heretofore enjoyed by faculty. What is to be said about that? I add a question bearing on the supposed difficulty of attracting enough qualified Catholic candidates to reverse the downward trajectory. Father Jenkins, Provost Burish, I take it Father Miscamble, and others deny that this is an insurmountable problem. Notre Dame, after all, is widely regarded as the premier Catholic University. Dean Roche has reported that the great majority of those who have joined the faculty in recent years listed Notre Dames Catholicism as their principal reason. Professor Brad Gregory stands as an outstanding example. But assume that, nonetheless, to hire the high proportion of Catholics now necessary to maintain a predominant number would require that in some, perhaps a number, of instances the best qualified candidate would have to be passed over. Not that the Catholic would not be fully qualified. No one goes so far as to argue that. But the Boston College or St. Louis graduate would be taken from time to time over the Harvard or Stanford graduate. This puts the question that I suggest is at the heart of the matter: Is excellence as measured by secular academe to be preferred over Catholic identity when a choice must be made? Is maintaining a predominant number of Catholic intellectuals worth sacrificing a few places one way or the other in the U.S. News & World Report ranking?For a good while, Notre Dame and other universities didnt face a choice. The number of Catholics was ample. And so it went year by year until now, with Catholics retiring at a high rate, it will take a brave and decisive effort to stop the train. But, again, which is more important? This is a crucially important governance issue and should be addressed honestly and decisively by the Board and, at Notre Dame, the Fellows. At the moment, on paper, Catholic identity should trump. Will it in practice?
At Catholic University a few years back, one of our departments, famous for its accomplishments in the study of the Catholic Church, saw the last Catholic on the faculty retire. The administration insisted that they had to hire a Catholic to replace him. The faculty of the department regarded this as an infringement on their academic freedom and integrity. The department was told that they would lose the faculty slot unless they hired a Catholic. Which was done. There had been a similar case a couple of years earlier, and once again it took the intervention of higher administration for the issue to be resolved.
I am not sure what William Dempsey's main point is. If he is sayig that we ought to hire a greater number of Catholics on the faculty, I cannot but agree; if he thinks that is an easy task then we do not agree. We actually have a mechanism in place to search out such faculty and they work very hard at it.He further thinks that four endowed chairs is a drop in the bucket. Wrong! Distinguished scholars draw graduate students who become later colleagues; they also draw younger faculty who wish to be in their company. Some faculty (I would number myself among them) were drawn to Notre Dame precisely because it is a Catholic university.
Why there should be fewer top-rank Catholic scholars today escapes me. But it does raise an issue that was part of the argument that John Tracy Ellis made over fifty years ago: whether we dont have too many Catholic colleges and universities, whether we might be better off if we had fewer but better institutions. I havent heard this discussed much.
Regarding the unnamed Department at C.U.'s capitulation, it seems to confirm the suspicion that, whatever our mission statements may profess, Marx had it right about the bottom line.Superannuated alumni unite!
About a year ago, BC held a gathering to discuss Monsignor John Tracy Ellis's famous question a half century ago -- where are the Catholic Salks and Oppenheimers? etc. Apparently the participants disagreed as to whether things had improved much in the past half century. Micamble's piece suggests that there is now no shortage of good Catholic candidates for academic appointments. I wonder if he's not a bit too optimistic; it's hard to think of all that many Catholic intellectuals who have made a mark on American public life, and that situation may be replicated in the numbers of younger men and women getting PhDs and ready for the job market. Of course we should be concerned about institutions keeping alive a Catholic environment, and serving the highest Catholic values, rather than going secular. But perhaps we ought to be even more concerned about the lack of interest (to use no stronger words) in the intellectual life among those picked by Rome to be our putative leaders, and who are charged with implementing Ex Corde. Don't get me wrong; the bishops may all be brilliant men, for all I know, deep thinkers doing their best to grapple with burning questions, turning over all variety of possible answers in their minds, and discussing them with others. But if they are so, they do an extraordinarily effective job of hiding it, so that in their public voice, they seem interested only in making pronouncements from on high, as if that solved all problems. How refreshing it would be if we could actually see them so grappling, and be assured that they had listened intelligently to the arguments of all sides. Instead one can only wonder if, in this case, they have read anything of what's been coming out over the last few years (such as that of our own Dennis O'Brien, whose The Idea of Catholic University appeared in 2002). So I wonder if, in the minds of many, this attitude might not seem to reflect a distrust, even fear, of intellectual inquiry. And I wonder if, to young American Catholics considering an academic career, this public attitude might not suggest that one must abandon the intellectual life if one is to be a good Catholic; or that one must abandon Catholicism if one is to be a good intellectual.That is certainly the message put forth all too often by the would-be bishops of the secularist academy; it is too bad if it is seemingly reinforced by the Church's own leaders. (On this subject, those of you who have access to the NYT be sure to read Peter Steinfels's article last Saturday on the disastrous effects of the Roman campaign against Modernism a century ago. It's at:http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/01/us/01beliefs.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
My main point is to suggest that it might be a good idea to focus squarely on what I take to be Father Miscamble's main point, i.e., that the attenuation of Catholic presence on the faculty due to the hiring policies of a large number of faculty departments has gotten to the stage that only some form of active intervention by those in governance, or at least the threat of it, will halt the secularization process. Is this true at Notre Dame? At other Catholic institutions? The course of events at Notre Dame seems to me to support that conclusion, as does Father Komonchak's telling example at CUA. At Notre Dame, Dean Roche's dark warnings to the faculty in his 2003 report were followed by two years in which the hiring of Catholics plummeted to around 40%. Judging from the Administration's unwillingness so far this year to disclose with any precision the resullts of last year's hiring, the work of Father Sullivan to which Professor Cunningham refers seems plainly to have fallen short. What stands in opposition to Father Miscamble's conclusion other than faculty resentment ? Why should it prevail? It did not at CUA, to its credit.
An addendum: I have just read an article in a student publication in which Father Sullivan states: The goal of the University is to annually exceed 50% in the hiring of instructional faculty" and that this goal was in general met last year. This is most dispiriting. Nothing Father Sullivan says suggests that meeting this goal will preserve even the slim arithmetical Catholic majority that existed last year. Surely it will not. Surely this goal has been met often in prior years as Catholic representation has stseadily declined. With the heavy concentration of Catholics retiring, this newly declared goal is a sentence to minority status in short order. Something between 60 and 70%, for reasons I have given earlier, is evidently necessary. Father Miscamble puts the figure at two-thirds. Moving the goalposts back to where the ball lies is not really to win the game. Rather, it is to sacrifice the school's claim to a robust Catholic identity, which the Mission Statement tells us "depends upon" a majority Catholic faculty. The Administration has until now consistently proclaimed this as its goal. Its new majority hiring goal, however satisfactory it might sound to the unknowing, is in fact hostile to the Mission Statement, as anyone familiar with the facts will immediately understand. One hopes there is something so far undisclosed that will erase these unhappy implications.
If one talks about percentages across the entire university it should be kept in mind that in certain fields (engineering comes immediately to mind) there is a grave shortage of Westerners who go on for PhD work; in other fields, where is no shortage of PhDs, industry and other private entities compete for their services. If you have a diminshed pool and then you stipulate that the candidate must be a Catholic you can see why there might be a hiring problem. Let us suppose that there is a Catholic candidate but he or she is a mediocre teacher/researcher - does one still go for the Catholic? Such issues arise less frequently in the College of Arts and Letters but when one looks at the university as a whole the matter becomes quite complicated. It is one thing to send down a mandate ex altissimis that two thirds of all faculty hires must pass the Catholic test and it it is quite another matter to implement that mandate across the entire university.I was actually on the committee that framed the mission statement (a task I would only wish on my worst enemies) and stand by the commitment that we need a Catholic majority at Notre Dame but the idea of setting exact quotas may not be the way to do it.
It is gratifying to learn that a scholar of Professor Cunningham's stature helped formulate, and stands by, the Mission Statement requirement of majority Catholic faculty. That standard is unquestionably not fully satisfactory, but the alternative is something like "critical number," which translates to "enough," which can mean whatever those in charge say it means.I know a good deal has been said about the importance of Catholic faculty in engineering and the like in contrast to liberal arts, and Professor Cunningham's observations about supply are certainly pertinent. I leave those matters to him and others better informed than am I. And of course no one should countenance the hiring of a mediocrity just to raise the Catholic head-count. However, the issue has not been joined on that basis, at least in Arts & Letters, and it is hard to imagine that it could be. That something else is at work is evidenced by the fact, reported by Dean Roche last year, that for a number of years six departments had hired Catholics at about a 60% rate and another six at about a 30% rate. Professor Cunningham's department and the Law School are particularly impressive success stories. No one has suggested that any department has hired mediocrities. The problem is that, as the Baylor study showed, some 60% of the faculty are simply unwilling to take Catholicism into account at all, and indeed there may be some hostility to hiring Catholics in some quarters. (I might note that Boston College was part of that study. If memory serves, it came out about the same as Notre Dame. The study is accessible at www.projectsycamore.com.)Whether a precise arithmetical quota is the correct answer may be fairly debatable, as Professor Cunningham suggests. Some flexibility reflecting the nature of different departments and schools and existing ratios might be reasonable. I do not understand Fr. Miscamble to suggest otherwise, though I could be wrong about that. But if not something of this sort, then what? Surely this new goal of an overall 50% hiring rate is simply surrender. It is to sacrifice what is necessary to what may be achievable without offending the faculty in CUA style. So it seems to me, at any rate.
Mr. Dempsey--I didn't go to college at ND, but I have two siblings who did, and a nephew who is a sophomore there now. However, I did attend a Catholic university, and I do have concerns about what appears to be the increasingly secular nature of that institution.I have a question if you don't mind. In your comments about the critical need for "a majority Catholic faculty" at ND, how, if it all, are you defining "Catholic"? Is it enough to be a baptized Catholic intellectual who is academically qualified, or must the applicant satisfy some litmus test of orthodoxy? Father Miscamble alludes in his article to Eamon Duffy's perceived orthodoxy as being a reason Duffy was not extended an offer by ND. If Fr. Miscamble is correct about the Duffy matter, then that is certainly a shame. But it would be equally a shame if a qualified candidate were not extended an offer merely because he or she was associated with the Catholic left. IMO, for a university to be truly Catholic, the full spectrum of Catholic intellectual thought should be reflected in the faculty and made available to the student body.
William Collier has put his finger on an important point. We speak of it as the conundrum of the "check the Catholic box" - are to hire someone who checks "Catholic" but hasn't a clue or any interest in matters Catholic or someone who is not a Catholic but who is open to and sympathetic about the Catholic mission of the university. Picking the first person ups the "quota" but is of little existential value.
Larry,With regard to your last: d'accordo.I have a number of colleagues who are not formally Catholic, butwho, in my opinion, are animae naturaliter catholicae, and who want to teach at a university in the catholic tradition and contribute greatly by their presence and expertise.But I would also suggest an addendum to another of William Collier's points.It would be a shame if a qualified candidate were not extended an offer merely because he or she was deemed "conservative."
A question for those more familiar with Catholic higher education than I am: There are at least several Catholic academic Catholic professional associations; the Catholic Historical Association is one, and there's one for Philosophy, I believe. Do they exist in other fields -- the natural sciences, social sciences, English and foreign literature, etc? If they do, do they keep any rosters of say, emerging Catholic PhDs, which could be useful for search committees? If not, why not? And if they do, do search committees at Catholic institutions use them? And if not, why not? From years and years in the hiring business, I'm quite aware that, if you're interested in, for instance, affirmative action, while it's not entirely legal to say, We're looking for an African American historian of the American early twentieth century (or anything else) there are certainly informal ways of finding out what the AA talent pool is. Side note: there are at least two, and probably only two, African-American social historians of the Sung dynasty (960-1279 AD for those whose Chinese history is weak) here in the US (that's a pretty recondite field). One is on the faculty of my institution and the other one used to be. Affirmative action certainly helped us chase them down; but with their credentials, we'd have hired them like a shot quite apart from affirmative action.
I'm chiming in late here, and haven't yet been able to read Fr. Miscamble's article, but I'd like to add something to Professor Cunningham's observations about faculty recruitment. I'm a practicing Catholic who was an ND undergrad and is now a faculty member at Georgetown University. Despite Notre Dame's many virtues, its location undoubtedly makes it harder to draw faculty who have spouses with established careers, as many younger faculty do. This is particularly the case when the spouse is not in academia and hence, can't readily be employed by the university. It would be interesting to know how Catholic faculty hiring at Notre Dame has been affected by the increasingly widespread two-body problem. I would bet a lot that it makes it especially difficult to hire Catholic women faculty.
An important point indeed. Dr. Cunningham's observations show why there is not today a majority of Catholics in any meaningful sense of the word on the Notre Dame faculty. When even a very conservative discount is appplied to the 53% figure to take account of dissident and heterodox and nominal or "cultural" Catholics, any claim that there is truly a "predominant number of Catholic intellectuals" collapses. I presume that's one reason why the author of the Statement, then president Fr. Malloy, said that it requires "more than a mere majority." Why does not the University do a better job in telling a "paper Catholic" from a real one? In a recent interview Father Sullivan said that there were legal inhibitions. Surely the University's lawyers cannot be giving any such advice. This notion is insupportable on its face. If it is not unlawful for Notre Dame to establish a policy of according preferences to Catholics in hiring, as it most assuredly is not, then obviously it could not be illegal to find out whether an applicant is in fact, rather than simply in name, a Catholic. At a recent panel discussion, Professor Walter Nicgorski pursued this subject with an eye toward improvement in a process that is plainly inadequate to its purposes in at least some circumstances. I have been heavily involved in hiring in various fields for a long time, and while academic hiring no doubt presents its own problems, I simply cannot believe that if one really wants to find out whether a check mark is only that, one almost always can. I suspect that it is the attitude described by Professor Cunningham -- t he desire to add a number to to the "Catholic "column -- that is the principal culprit.All should agree with Nicholas Clifford's view that the full range of Catholic thought ought be represented, but I doubt that all do. It may go one way at, say, Ave Maria, but II cannot imagine that at Notre Dame or any other of the major Catholic universities it is the "left" rather than the "right" that is slighted..On anoher point, I might have supplemented Father Komonchak's account by noting that a similar episode occurred at Notre Dame during Fr. Malloy's tenure when he granted tenure to a C.S.C. over faculty objections. What I understand to have been a similar uproar ensued. Dr.Cunningham could speak to this much better than I.
Making Catholic institutions attractive places for first rate Catholic scholars to teach would seem to be a good idea. But I doubt that overriding the judgment of departments in order to impose Catholic candidates they don't believe otherwise qualified to teach in their programs can possibly be the way to go.
Ms. Gannon: Who said anything about hiring Catholic candidates thought otherwise not to be qualified? That wasn't the issue in the two cases at CUA. The department's complaint was not with regard to specific candidates..
In the case of Notre Dame, there is the additional problem that it is located in South Bend. And there seems to be nothing in South Bend except Notre Dame (even the Studebaker plant has shut down). A colleague of mine taught for a semester at ND. A month or two into his sojourn, his heart leapt when someone said, "Let's go down to the mall." He was thinking of the Mall, in D.C., with its many museums. The other person was thinking of the South Bend shopping mall. If Notre Dame were located somewhere else, they would be stealing all our best people.Miseree mei, Domine, secundum multituduben miserationum tuarum miserere mei.
Having spent several years in New Haven after South Bend, I can testify that the malls and all else are not distinguishable. Yale does pretty well nonetheless. Still, living in Washington, I take Father Komonchak's point. But this raises a related consideration he touches upon.. As Prof. Gregory, who came to ND from a tenured Stanford position, said to the Wall Street Journal, were ND not Catholic no scholar who could choose a "Top Ten" (or, I should think, a Top 20 in a more exciting place) would select ND instead. What this means, I suggest, is that as ND's Catholic identity weakens it gradually moves into the worst of all worlds: that of a weakly Catholic universithy of diminished secular standing. Almost as bad as getting whomped by Georgia Tech. And I quite agree with Father that it is not a question of forcing candidates deemed unqualified upon the faculty. The question is, rather, should the faculty turn aside fully qualified candidates to such an extent that the policy established by those in governance is undermined. Put differently, who's in charge, anyway? Or, more accurately, who should be.
Fr. Komonchak: I assumed the department would not have chosen the Catholic candidate in question as the best qualified applicant, or there would have been no problem. CU's method of "resolving" the situation might well make well-qualified scholars think twice before committing to a career there.
Ms. Gannon: As I said, the dispute was not over specific candidates but about the general principle that an important department should not be without Catholics on its faculty..
Relative to the disadvantage of living here in South Bend I will only comment as I always do. If you want to be a great scholar/teacher location is unimportant if the university community is a good one, the library is excellent, and the students (like those in Lake Wobegon) are above average. The nice thing about this place is that there are few distractions. A true scholar must practice a certain asceticism. I do not understand how the distiinguished scholars ar BC and CUA contributint to this discussion get anything done with the cornucopia of distractions their locations afford. I do take the point that the issue of finding job opportunities for married couples creates its own difficulties. I actually like it here for the precise reason that not much is going on even though Chicago is just a short ride away and sometimes exerts its siren call. After all, I abandoned the sybaritic joys of Florida for the more austere pleasures of northern Indiana and have not regreted it at all. Finally,: for the cost of a house, say, in Boston, in South Bend you could buy a shopping mall. Maybe that is why we we have attracted three former Harvard professors to our department even though none, to my knowledge have actually purchased a shopping center.
Ms. Gannon: By shifting the subject from an "unqualified" to the "best qualified" candidate, you have changed the framework of the discussion. As Father Komonchak has said in relation to the Catholic University dispute in particular, and as I say in relation to the situation in general, the issue of giving the faculty free rein does not appear in any important way in the context of hiring someone who is unqualified. It arises, rather, in terms of someone the faculty department considers "best qualified." Best qualified, that is, by the standards of the elite secular academe. The most publications, the most prestigious publisher, degrees from a Top Five University, and the like. Here is the problem: In his landmark study, Professor George Marsden of Notre Dame concluded: "Once a church -- related institution adopts a policy that it will hire simply 'the best qualified candidates,' it is simply a matter of time until its faculty will have an ideological profile like that of the faculty at every other mainstream University." So, in the end, here is the choice: an elevated ranking by secular academe or a fine genuinely Catholic University. Should Notre Dame or any of the other major Catholic universities aspire to be another Harvard or rather to be the finest Catholic University in the world? (For reasons I've given, I think to aim at the former is to miss both targets in the long run, but assume I am wrong about that.) Up until now, Notre Dame has played both hands, but that game Is over. It's decision time for all major Catholic universities, so far as I can tell,, and as Father Imbelli has suggested, it may be too late for some. Perhaps even for Notre Dame. 66
I have some questions:1. There are an awful lot of disciplines where it is not immediately obvious that stressing your religious persuasion (of whatever denomination) is at all connected with professional opportunities. When you talk of hiring "Catholic" faculty, what does this mean for biology, chemistry, or other natural and physical sciences? Catholic schools make up only a small number of the overall academic positions available -- unless one has one's heart set on teaching at Notre Dame, why would individuals in these disciplines identify themselves, as such, as "Catholic intellectuals"?2. How does stressing Catholic identity play out in terms of tenure determinations? Wouldn't a non-Catholic academic think long and hard before committing to ND if there were an inherent bias in favor of Catholic identity? I say this because the wife of a friend of mine many years ago was denied tenure at ND and according to my friend (who admittedly was biased) she was passed over in favor of people who were viewed as more Catholic than she was (though she actually was Catholic). I think she definitely would have gone elsewhere if she had understood at the outset that she would be judged by such a standard. The two body problem is probably most acute for female faculty, but my friend was a stay at home dad who adored South Bend.3. Does each department have to come up with a statement of how it advances the school's mission through coursework, lectures or other initiatives, with corresponding budget figures tied to the meeting of those goals?
One small clarification with reference to a comment by Mister Dempsey. The faculty does not have "free rein" over appointments. A department may recommend a person but that recommendation must be approved, first by the dean, who recommends to the provost. In other words, not to put too fine a point on it, the faculty proposes but the administration disposes.
Dr. Cunningham: You are of coursse correct. What I had in mind was not the right, but the practice, and I should have said so. The problem is that the residual authority has not been employed in such fashion as to arrest the precipitious decline in Catholic faculty. Put differently, to insure meeting the Mission Statement's requirement that there be a Catholic majority. The school's Catholic identity, the Statement declares, "depends" on it.Now, on that subject, all interested in Notre Dame should be on the watch for a change in that Mission Statement that would end this requirement and substitute a goal of hiring a Catholic majority each year. I mentioned this before. Father Sullivan, who heads the relevant faculty committee has recently reframed the Mission Statement this way. That might appear a relatively benign change. But in fact, because of the heavy concentration of Catholics among current and prospective retirees,tthe change would be decisive. If a bare majority are hired each year, the result, we calculate, would be a continued rapid reduction in Catholic faculty that would not level off until the 20-30% range, and it would stay there as long as the eye can reach. I mean 40 years and more. Barbara: Those are good questions that Dr. Cunningham and others, but not I, could answer with authority. I will say only this. First, there has been a good deal written about the relevance of the Catholicism of instructors in the sciences, physics, and the like, and the subject, I understand, was carefully considered by the ND Administration in formulating its Mission Statement. So it is an issue that has been taken seriously. The question of supply raised by Dr. Cunningham is a different matter. Second, on anecdotal and some actual evidence, my impression is that non-Catholics at Notre Dame are at least as likely to be granted tenure as Catholics, all else being equal. That is the logical result of a faculty that is already, for practical purposes, minority Catholic. Beyond that, my understanding is that the affirmative action policy (which applies also to women and minorities) applies to hiring, but not to tenure. I quite agree that this is how it ought to be. Third, as to integrating the Mission Statement into what goes on in the classroom, all I can say is that a solid majority of Notre Dame professors, in the 2003 Baylor study available on the Project Sycamore site, www.projectsycamore.com, said that, if asked to do so, they would not know how to approach such a task. So it would appear there are no requirements of the sort you describe.In all these matters, it is important to recognize that, notwithstanding the torrent of press releases and the like stressing Notre Dame's Catholicism, Catholics (excluding nominals and dissidents) are already in a minority , and it may not be a very large one, on the faculty.
Seriously, William, I think you've plugged your Web site enough in this thread.
Thanks for another plug, Mr. Gallicho; but I quite agree with you that another was not at all needed. My purpose was simply to provide a link to the Baylor study, which provides such a compelling demonstration of how faculty attitudes are in the way of hiring Catholics at Notre Dame and Boston College that it deserved a plug. Or so I thought, anyway.
Forgive the late contribution to the thread; I'm a new subscriber to the forum, so I'm doing the equivalent of wandering through the stores in the mall.I'm not a faculty member anywhere, but I did attend a Catholic college (Loyola Chicago). Reflecting on my undgraduate deeds and missteps, I confess that it isn't self-evident to me that the denomination or even the faith of an individual professor, matters very much in creating a Catholic environment. Even in the three theology courses I sweated through - two of which were taught by Catholic priests - the professors were all about exposing us to the material and getting us to think, and very little about sharing their faith or their beliefs with us.I'm wondering if faculty composition isn't being so focused upon because it is so easily measured, rather than being genuinely intrinsic in determining the Catholic character of a university. Since we obviously have Catholic faculty in this thread, I'd welcome their input on this.I did have one priest instructor, a Jesuit decidedly of the old school who memorably reminisced at one point while walking us through "Models of the Church", "I taught Fr. Dulles his Latin", this while taking issue with Dulles' interpretation of "subsists in" in Lumen Gentium - one teacher of all the faculty in 4+ years of undergraduate study who began each class with a prayer. That I remember him, and his praying, while having forgotten the names of nearly all of my other instructors all these years later, speaks of something about the distinctively Catholic character of a university.I believe the notion we've inherited from our parents and grandparents of what makes a university Catholic is a kind of ill-defined mishmash of courses being instructed by priests and nuns; compulsory mass attendance at least once per week; a student body that is almost entirely if not 100% Catholic; and separate dorms for men and women. Not all of these are even possible anymore, and most may not even be desirable, but if those days have passed, then what are the characteristics that make a contemporary institution Catholic? One more miscellaneous reflection: for me, the undergraduate years were spiritually fruitful; but that was due to an almost accidental confluence of circumstances (too dull to relate here) that did not occur for most of my college friends. At least in those days (in the early '80's), one could enter Loyola as a freshman and exit four years later as a graduating senior, and, beyond the mandatory nine hours of theology, have an extremely minimal encounter with the Catholic Church and her intellectual tradition.


text:
- BSO Case Number: BS01-08-7885
- PIO Number: 01-8-22
- Date: Aug. 16, 2001
- Time: 2117
- Place of Occurrence: SW 42 Avenue and 18 Street, unincorporated West Hollywood
- BSO Deputies Thomas Palmer, Tom Brent and Wayne Holbrook
- Warren Aiken, 42, 4/9/59, 4023 SW 19 Street, uninc. W. Hollywood
Description of Incident:
A career criminal who shot toward deputies Thursday night was arrested early today following a three-agency manhunt.
At 9:17 p.m. BSO deputies responded to a 911 call from a citizen who said a man was carrying a gun in the 4000 block of SW 19th Street near West Hollywood. As deputies approached, they saw a man running down an alley, heading toward Pembroke Road. As Deputies Thomas Palmer, Tom Brent and Wayne Holbrook pursued the man he fired a shot toward them. The fleeing suspect then crossed Pembroke Road and entered Hollywood.
A large perimeter was established and BSO deputies teamed up with Hollywood and Miramar Police to search for the suspect. Several residents called to report seeing an armed man on the run. At about 1 a.m. a Miramar K-9 team caught the suspect hiding in a sand pile behind Riz Garden Supplies at 6040 Pembroke Road. A double-barrel rifle was found in the 6000 block of Mayo Street. The suspect later admitted the gun was his. He also admitted firing toward the deputies, but said he only wanted to stop them from chasing him.
The suspect, Warren Aiken, 42, was charged by BSO with three counts of Aggravated Assault on a Law Enforcement Officer, Possession of a Firearm by a Convicted Felon, and Resisting Arrest with Violence. A records check reveals that Aiken has been arrested 16 times on felony charges, has been convicted nine times, and is currently on parole.
- THIS REPORT BY: Sgt. J. Murray, Lt. M. Frise, Dist. 1 Jim Leljedal / PIO Det. K. Erwin, Sgt. E. Baker, CI 8/17/01 1515
Posted At: 08/17/2001 03:14 PM
- photo of Aiken - Warren Aiken
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Entries in 'playstation 3' (28)
Gran Turismo creator describes PS3 development difficulties
The CEO of Gran Turismo developer Polyphony has had some less than kind words to say about the PlayStation 3.
Last-gen Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 5 IS coming out in the UK
Contrary to previous reports, the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 SKUs of Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 5 are going to be released in the UK.
Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 5 is not being released for last-gen consoles in UK
Activision has no plans to release the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 SKUs of Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 5 in the UK.
Settlement process underway for 2011 PSN hack
PlayStation Network users involved in the 2011 hack of Sony's console service are at last being offered legal restitution in the form of free games, subscriptions and themes.
Lego Batman 3 PS3 bundle lands in November
A new PlayStation 3 hardware bundle headlined by Lego Batman 3: Beyond Gotham is heading to retail in North America later this year, Sony has announced.
Free-to-play Ace Combat hits PS3 next month
Free-to-play title Ace Combat Infinity will launch next month on PlayStation 3, publisher Bandai Namco has announced.
Minecraft sells 1m copies on PS3
Minecraft has already sold 1m copies on PS3, following its launch on PlayStation Network in December.
Minecraft finally arriving on PS3 this week
The long-awaited release of Minecraft on PS3 is just hours away, Mojang has confirmed.
Yamauchi says Gran Turismo 7 could hit PS4 next year
Gran Turismo 7 could be released on PS4 as early as 2014.
Gran Turismo 6 getting GPS course maker
Ever wondered how quickly you could make it to the local Budgens if you drove a Nissan GTR?
Now PS3 sales reach 80m units
Sony has revealed that worldwide PS3 sales have, as of November 1st, reached 80m units.
PS3 was delayed for one year after plans to ship without a GPU were scrapped
Part of Ken Kutaragi's vision of the PS3 was for the console to ship without a dedicated graphics processor, with the now infamous Cell chip handling ALL the processing.
Report: 3.1m Xbox One and PS4 consoles could be sold this Christmas
Xbox One and PS4 should generate at least £1.2bn for UK retailers this Christmas.
Grand Theft Auto V PSN pre-loads prove how much further console digital has to go
Amazon would get a copy of GTA V to you on release day (or even before that if you're lucky) for £35. So why would you spend £50 on a ...
Sony says Rain is due in October as PSN game gets release date
Digital curiosity Rain has been dated for PS3.
PS3 price cut to €199; Sony to offer discount on PS4 titles
Sony has cut the price of the PlayStation 3 to €199 in Europe.
Gran Turismo 6 release date is confirmed
Sony has confirmed flagship racer Gran Turismo 6 will launch on PS3 December 6th.
PS3 outselling Xbox 360 in the UK this summer
PlayStation 3 was the No.1 console of the summer in the UK with some help from 2013's second best selling game.
PS4 will not repeat PS3 losses, Sony vows
Sony will not suffer financially in an effort to get PS4 out of the door, it has vowed.
Angry Birds Star Wars will hit consoles November 1st
Rovio has confirmed Angry Birds Star Wars will debut on consoles this November.
The Mark of greatness: Profiling Mark Cerny, the man who made the PS4
He built arcade classic Marble Madness. He produced Sonic 2. He brought Crash and Spyro to market. Oh, and his PS4 design reignited passions for Sony. MCV meets Mark Cerny ...
PS3 topples Xbox 360 in June
PlayStation dominated a decent month for UK games retail in June.
The Last of Us is No.1. Again.
It's week five for The Last of Us at No.1. The PS3 exclusive continues to dominate and will continue to dominate because there's almost nothing out for retailers to sell ...
Traditional Ratchet and Clank series returns this autumn on PS3
There's yet another game coming out at the end of the PS3's lifecycle.
GT6 heads to Goodwood Festival
Sony is taking Gran Turismo 6 to this weekend's Goodwood Festival of Speed.


text:
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| Carvalho, O., MaxiQuim Assessoria De Mercado, Porto Alegre, Brazil
[natural gas]
Brazils economic improvement was remarkable over the
past decade, following many years of slow growth. On average,
the Brazilian gross output of goods and services increased at
an annual average of 3.6% from 2000 to 2010, despite the global
financial crisis. From the long-term perspective, this rate
means a great achievement from years past. During the 1980s,
Brazils gross domestic production (GDP) expanded at
1.6%/yr, while, in the 1990s, it accelerated to a mere 2.5%/yr,
as shown in Fig. 1. According to
analysts estimates, the Brazilian GDP may have expanded
by 2.7% in 2011, and it could accelerate over the next five
years. This growth is linked to the anticipated new
infrastructure investments needed to host two major sports
events: the World Cup of Soccer in 2012 and the Olympic Games
in 2016.
Fig. 1.
Brazils historical GDP trends:
Mr. Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was the countrys
president from 2003 to 2010. His main achievement was keeping
economic fundamentals unchanged (such as the floating currency
and inflation-target monetary policy), while reducing inequality
through comprehensive social programs. Over the past five
years, roughly 45 million citizens were able to climb from
poverty into the middle class, which created new demand for
automotive, construction, electronics,
cosmetics, chemicals and other products.
Mrs. Dilma Rousseff, after serving as Minister of Energy and
Chief of Staff of Lulas government, was appointed the
candidate of the central-left-wing Workers Party, and she
beat the Brazilian Social Democracy Partys candidate,
Jóse Serra, in a runoff election in late 2010. On Jan.
1, 2011, Mrs. Rousseff officially assumed the presidency of
Brazil, with the task of accelerating the nations
progress through better management of the governments
investments, while expanding social programs and reducing
inequality. Her first year was marked by a reduced tolerance to
corruption among ministers and their assistants. She also
promoted the acceleration of several infrastructure projects in partnership with the
private sector in many areas.
Unlike developed countries, tight fiscal policies and
healthy government revenues led to improved ratings by global
agencies such as S&P, Fitch and Moodys to Brazilian
sovereign debt and local companies. Combined with healthy trade
surpluses and historical highs on foreign direct investments
into Brazil, such ratings led to significant amounts of hard
currency entering the country, which has been strengthening the
Brazilian real. The downside from this situation is that the
strong currency is taking its toll on the industrial sector,
especially those more exposed to foreign competition, such as
chemical and petrochemical producers.
Brazils petrochemical industry is widely based on
naphthas, which are supplied by the state-controlled oil
company, Petrobras, or via imports, as shown in Fig.
2. The country is a net importer of naphthas and
condensates. In 2006, the first ethane-based cracker came
onstream in Rio de Janeiro. The company, Rio Polimeros, is now
part of the petrochemical giant Braskem.
Fig. 2. Naphtha
supply and demand: 20022011.
Naphtha prices in the domestic market, supplied by
Petrobras, are settled on a monthly basis and are pegged to the
average benchmark price for Antwerp, Rotterdam and Amsterdam
(ARA) naphtha. In our view, the chances for a formula based on
benchmark prices are slim over the medium term, since the
country will remain a net importer. Due to strong
transportation fuel demand, local naphtha production allocated
to petrochemical applications has been falling; the gap between
demand and supply is covered by naphtha imports, which
accounted for more than half of the countrys needs in
Renewable feedstock alternatives. Due
to Brazilian expertise in the ethanol business, companies, such as
Braskem and Dow are advanced in using bioethanol as feedstock
for polyethylene (PE) production. Braskem has been operating
its 200,000-tpy (200-Mtpy) ethanol-to-ethylene unit since 2010
in Triunfo, in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, where the
company has several polymer units. Dow has announced a
memorandum of understanding with Mitsui to study construction
of an integrated sugarcane-ethanol-ethylene-PE unit in the
state of Minas Gerais. This unit would have an estimated 350
Mtpy of PE capacity and should come onstream in 2014.
In the conventional feedstock scenario, Petrobras has
made several significant discoveries in offshore Brazil, which
is known as the pre-salt oil layer. At remote locations (200
miles from the coastline) and in ultra-deep (20,000-ft) waters,
these large reserves now define Brazil as a significant energy
producer. The new oil reserves are a future feedstock resource for the
petrochemical and chemical industries.
Petrobras is also building four large refineries over the
next five years; they will increase the countrys refined
product output from 1.8 million bpd to 3.2 million bpd in 2020.
Two of the refineriesComperj, in the Rio de Janeiro area,
and RNEST, in Suape, Pernambucoare in advanced construction and equipment-purchase
stages. Both refineries should come online in the next two
years. The other two refineriesPremium I, in the state of
Maranhão, and Premium II, in the state of
Cearámay see project construction accelerate over
the next few years, and they are expected to come onstream
later this decade.
Fig. 3 shows the locations of the main
petrochemical sites and product capacities within Brazil. Until
2002, there were several small and nonintegrated companies. The
large petrochemical company Braskem was created through the
merger of seven companies that year. During the next four
years, Braskem was the nations only integrated
petrochemical company, combining the production of monomers and
resins at its Camacari site in the state of Bahia. In 2006, the
Rio Polimeros complex became the nations only integrated,
gas-based petrochemical unit in Rio de
Fig. 3. Location of
domestic crackers, with capacities and
ownership structure, as of 2011.
In March 2007, another significant event changed the picture
of the Brazilian petrochemical industry. A consortium of
companies formed by Petrobras, Braskem and Ultra, announced the
acquisition of Group Ipiranga, which, at that time, was a
partner of Braskem in Copesul, the naphtha-based cracker in
Triunfo. That move turned Braskem into the only owner of the
petrochemical complex of Triunfo, thus consolidating its
leadership position in the region. In August 2007, Petrobras
announced the acquisition of Suzano PetroquÍmica, which
was one of Brazils major PP producers. This move made
possible the merger of all petrochemical assets of the Suzano
Group (those acquired by Petrobras) and Unipar Group into one
large and integrated petrochemical company later known as
In 2010, after months of negotiations, Braskem and Petrobras
reached an agreement to acquire Quattors shares from
Unipar Group. This movement led to the ultimate consolidation
in Brazil, which now has one producer of polyolefins. It also
increased Petrobras stake in the Brazilian leading
petrochemical group to 47%, while Odebrecht holds 51% of the
voting shares.
Overall, domestic demand for resinsLDPE, LLDPE, HDPE,
PP, PS and PVCshowed healthy growth, as illustrated in
Fig. 4. However, during 2009, with the global
financial crisis, industrial activity slowed and demand for
resins decreased. During 2011, another soft patch for resin
demand was partially explained by destocking, especially in the
second half of the year.
Fig. 3. Commodity
resin demand: 20052011.
However, over the last six years, domestic demand for
thermoplastic resins grew nearly 6%/yr. In particular, LLDPE
demand, which grew 13%/yr, was fostered by the substitution of
LDPE in film applications. Another fast-growing resin was PVC,
which was boosted by strong expansion in construction markets.
Outlook. Many previously announced petrochemical projects
came online on schedule, such as Braskems ethanol-to-ethylene unit in Triunfo,
the refinery-gas-based ethylene unit and
LLDPE/HDPE plant in Sáo Paulo, and some new propylene
units at Petrobras refineries. Others are still in
development, including the new butadiene unit at Braskems
Triunfo site, the new purified terephthalic acid (PTA)/PE
terephthalate (PET) unit of PetroquÍmica Suape in the
state of Pernambuco, and the PVC unit of Braskem in the state
of Alagoas.
Two other important projects have been reformulated: 1) the
Comperj project in Rio de Janeiro, for which a new
configuration will be announced by Petrobras and Braskem, and
2) the Mitsui/Dow integrated sugarcane-to-polyethylene complex
in the state of Minas Gerais. Table 1
summarizes the progress of announced petrochemical projects. HP
All comments are subject to editorial review.
All fields are compulsory.
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A searchable database of project activity in the global hydrocarbon processing industry
Engineers and designers are highly skilled individuals. Forcing them to enter design changes using tables, forms and spreadsheets is unproductive and uneconomical, and it increases the likelihood of human error—this is the way that most instrumentation software systems currently work. For too long, software vendors have denied engineers and designers the simple practicality of a graphical visual engineering interface with "drag and drop" capability and inbuilt intelligence, ensuring changes are automatically replicated into all the associated data and databases.
Is 2016 the peak for US gasoline demand?
Too soon to tell
July 2016


text:
I have a Pangolin Performance (panp4i) that had working sound in Intrepid. I upgraded to Karmic, and while sound worked fine in the LiveCD, it no longer works in my installed version. Unfortunately, I do not recall if it ever worked after installation.
I have attached some diagnostic screenshots and command line dumps in a tgz file. It contains two folders:
- current diagnostics
- liveCD diagnostics
Each contains these files:
- gnovolman hardware.png
- gnovolman input.png
- gnovolman output.png
- lsmod.txt
- lspci.txt
- packages.lst
The screenshots are of gnome-volume-manager. You can see that the LiveCD version has devices listed, but the current version is empty or has a dummy entry.
There is also a file called "package.lst.diff" that contains the diff of the sorted respective packages.lst files.
I would be grateful for any assistance in this matter, as I currently have absolutely zero audio capability.


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How effective is the Dvorak keyboard layout (or other alternative layouts) at improving efficiency/productivity at the computer? Has any research been done on improved typing speed or productivity?
Putting a group of QWERTY typists against a group of Dvorak typists is not proper research.
Dvorak research is usually biased, as to get a perfect measurement, you would have to compare a person typing QWERTY for X years against the same person typing Dvorak for Y years. And even then, the setting he will be in will most likely differ.
You should base yourself on pure analysis rather than actual typist research, as these are way better at showing the differences between various keyboard lay-out.
Let me show you some statistics for your post...
QWERTY lets your fingers travel
The home row is used about three times more and the bottom row is reduced a lot, rather than going from top to bottom over and over again.
is turned into
Let me show you some statistics for Josep's post...
QWERTY lets his fingers travel
Again, we see that Dvorak let's the home row used a lot more than any other row.
is turned into
Just by this non-biased, you can tell that it's just 4%.
Check out the second bulletin list on Wikipedia and feel free to play with the analyzer yourself.
Two notes I'd like to add to what's been said already:
Depends on what you're doing. I find that it makes typing general papers (reports, memos)—"formal" documents much easier. It just feels better and there is less fatigue. Oddly enough, less formal documents (chat, for example), might feel a bit weirder; there may not be any improvement. For coding, it is sometimes slower, especially as many symbols are at the nether regions of the keyboard and accuracy suffers there. YMMV.
I learned typing in QWERTY in high school but never had much need to type a lot. I broke my arm and lost some movement in my right arm. After I went to college I could not stand typing papers for more than an hour at a time because my wrist would hurt to much. I then started typing DVORAK to see if it would help with comfort and it completely has. I will have a little soreness if I am at the computer all day, but generally I'm fine.
That being said, I agree with the other people who said DVORAK is more for comfort than efficiency. You actually may lose some productivity because of shortcut keys moving around etc. I still type with QWERTY and DVORAK because I support other people's computers for a living but I am about 60 wpm in DVORAK and 45 wpm in QWERTY. My recommendation is if you are planning on making a living by sitting at a computer, switch to DVORAK for comfort but know that you will take a hit in productivity for at least 4-6 months.
For considering effectiveness of Dvorak layout, I think you should also consider the learning curve to "master" it.
We are so used with QWERTY that it feels natural for me. While that might make me type 4%, 10% slower than on Dvorak, my productivity bottlenecks are others, such as external distractions, not focusing on the right things (my own distractions), non-effective meetings, etc.
So, say I'm willing to master it. It will take a long time and a lot of effort (while having lot less productivity typing slow) and the gains would be very low. So, is this efficient? Is it really worth it?
I guess I would only learn that just if I typed a lot, to avoid wrist pains. Even though I think that ergonomics would matter more than that, in this case.
Dvorak is a great security bonus too. When someone finds my computer unlocked, they can't update my Facebook to something nasty our send out a company-wide embarrassing email :) . Plus I use the Das Keyboard which has unmarked keys :)
I type on Dvorak and have for the last 6 years. I have to switch back when at someone else's keyboard. I'm slower on qwerty, but that's changing. Dvorak is way more comfortable and I never get tired from typing.
In windows, I map Ctrl-Shift-1 to set keyboard to Dvorak and Ctrl-Shift-2 to set it to Qwerty. I disable the toggle shortcut as that causes more inadvertent switches.
For my phone's keyboard I use Swype. Much faster than any other keyboard on a phone. As a side effect, it's teaching me Qwerty layout.
I personally type in both. I prefer Dvorak, although that may be for status and preference reasons rather than actual efficiency. I believe that having learned Dvorak two or three years ago I may have put more effort into it. I know I'm quicker and more accurate, but it may simply be because I learned later.
Switching back and forth isn't much of an issue for me, because I typed in qwerty for so long. I generally have an minute or two of confusion and then it clears.
Most Windows 7 machines can be set to use Dvorak by using the Language bar. The only portability issues I run into are in other people trying to use my left handed mouse and weird unmarked keyboard. Generally, though, I convert really well now that I'm comfortable in both, but I consider it more a preference than an efficiency thing.
Qwerty touch typer for 10 years, Dvorak touch typer for 8 years.
Comparing myself to my peak speed at Qwerty and peak at Dvorak I would say it's about the same. The difference is negligible.
Dvorak vs Qwerty
Pros Dvorak
The benefits really stop there
I usually don't recommend changing. I changed because of tendentious / RSI, slowed me down for 2 weeks while i learned it. Gave me a chance to heal some... but overall I usually do not recommend it.
I switched as part of a formal research study when I worked at Tektronix Computer Research Lab on human factors engineering in the 80's.
I don't have a copy of my final report, but to summarize:
Nearly 30 years later, I still use Dvorak, and won't go back.
As a security plus, I use Dvorak proximal patterns for passwords that are simple to remember and quick to type, but which are completely meaningless to Shoals typists. For example, "4puk7ghm" is the first-finger column of right and left hands in Dvorak but are all over the place on Shoals. It also tends to meet security systems' password constraints.
To those worrying about "two on a tube" pair programming, I actually found it to be an advantage, as long as you can quickly change with a hot key or physical switch.
I worked with someone who was constantly grabbing the keyboard or mouse, and having to switch layouts both tempered that person's "grabbiness," and also allowed for a "context switch" period in which to gather thoughts.
This is similar to requesting others first ask, "May I interrupt?" rather than just launching into asking something. I also switched to left-mousing for the same reason. In pair-programming, good fences make good neighbours… :-)
One other thing worth noting that I haven't seen mentioned here: the Dvorak layout was designed for English prose, not computer programming, which generally contains a lot of non-alphabetical characters. Other languages or a specialized vocabulary also may temper some of Dvorak's advantages.
More anecdotal evidence pro Dvorak: I have a programmer friend who switched to Dvorak from Qwerty a summer ago when he started having shooting pains in his wrists. Now his speed is about 20 wpm slower (85+ instead of 115) but is he going to go back? (Ans: Dvorak has completely eliminated his wrist pains.)
I was also at the same point: completely comfortable in Dvorak, but my typing speed was about 60-70 WPM compared to a former 80-90(?) in Qwerty. Even if I have to toggle it before others can use my computer, Dvorak is supremely more comfortable. (Then I found Typeracer and Typing.io and broke a barrier I didn't think I could.)
I don't buy the whole "Dvorak is better because alternating fingers." Would you rather type "asdfjkl;" or "ajskdlf;" ? To me, much of Dvorak's comfort comes from more sequences being of the first runny kind than in Qwerty. (I also don't buy the "more-used letters on home row" because what's more-used for me is different (cough Vim) and it's more natural to splay my hand than curl 8 fingers on the middle row.)
For what it's worth, Dvorak is a pain for programming, but an addiction to Typing.io fixed that. I just count my blessings I don't have to program on a German keyboard anymore.
Another marginal benefit to knowing Dvorak: I went to type something on my friend's computer (I was in my back-to-Qwerty phase at the time):
Finally, it's not how fast you type; it's all about your cognitive load.


text: Please use a separate income report form for each fundraising activity. Student Activities will not accept more than $1.00 in change and more than $20 in dollar bills per fundraising income report. Please use a local bank to exchange your coins and dollar bills. All cash being submitted must be in denomination order and all bills must be right-side up and facing the same direction. Your completed income report and money should be turned in to the Front Desk at the Center for Student Activities, Leadership and Service, Kimmel 704E.


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So we had our Favorite Detroit Malaise Car poll last week, from which the '78 Cadillac Eldorado emerged triumphant (the combo of a 500 cubic-inch engine and T-tops proved unbeatable). But what about Malaisemobiles from across the waters? This poll includes the rebadged imports sold by Detroit as part of their "if you can't beat 'em, put your name on 'em" strategy of the era, in addition to straight-out imports. Jump like a UH-1 leaving the roof of the US Embassy in Saigon to see the contestants!
Note: Since we've got two apiece '74 Porsche 911s and '77 Toyota Celicas, I'm choosing one apiece (yes, we have two '78 Colts, but one is a sedan and the other is a wagon). Now on with the Malaise!


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Your order must total $99.00 before tax and shipping. Free Shipping on Ground Deliveries only going to one delivery location in the continental U.S. only, additional locations are $8.95 each. May not be combined with other coupons or promotional offers. Coupon not valid on our selection of Tervis or Louisville Slugger products. Offer not valid on previous orders.
Expiration: December 31, 2015 Code: SHIPPING99
Fun yet sophisticated and creates a perfect bar or cocktail table accessory for any decor. Set of 100 party coasters, 4" in diameter. Heavy paperboard coasters with their first name initials above their last name. Printed with ink color of your choice. Creates a perfect bar or cocktail table accessory for any decor. Typestyle and positioning only as shown.
Ampersand will always appear between initials as shown.


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What is the proper way to write an Eszett on paper with a pen? In English we are told to start letters at the top, but the ß only has ends at the bottom, so what is the proper way to draw the letter?
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In German there is not a single "proper" way to write letters in handwriting. There are regional variations (see here for details).
For schools in Germany there are federal regulations that define how pupils learn to write. Most widely used are the "Lateinische Ausgangsschrift" and the "Vereinfachte Ausgangsschrift". In these the letter 'ß' is written as follows:
"Vereinfachte Ausgangsschrift":
"Lateinische Ausgangsschrift":
A picture is worth a thousand words:
Somehow like that. It depends - as always - how the previous letter ended, and what the next letter is.
I just write it like my greek beta
There are some people writing it with an upstroke (quite similar to user unknowns proposal) like that: taken from WikiBooks German
Other variants, which are no more/not yet teached in Germany, are from the Schulausgangsschrift (left) and the proposed Grundschrift (right)


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FOLLANSBEE - Leaders of a summer reading program hope to encourage children to enjoy reading by getting them involved in books in a creative way.
Youth in grades one through six have been challenged to create their own stories, drawings and artwork based on the variety of books they have read since the program began on June 24.
And their parents, family members and other community members are invited to see their work and learn more about the voluntary summer program at an open house to be held from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. Thursday at Jefferson Primary School.
Article Photos
GETTING CREATIVE — Brooke County children painted scenes from books they have read during the Energy Express summer reading program under the direction of young adult mentors recruited by the Brooke County West Virginia University Extension Service. Participants included, clockwise from left, Hope Taylor, Bryson Hawkins, mentors Jocelyn King and Paraag Gupta, Dylan Debnar and mentor Ben Arthurs. - Warren Scott
Many schools are quiet during the summer, except for maintenance workers and construction crews busy with repairs, additions or cleanup efforts they hope to complete before the new school year begins.
But for the last four years, the Brooke County West Virginia University Extension Service has held the Energy Express summer reading program at Jefferson Primary School.
This year 48 children from various areas of Brooke County have enrolled in the half-day, six-week program, where they receive additional instruction in reading using books geared toward their age group and take up pencil, paint brush, paste and other materials to recreate scenes and characters from their reading.
"Each Friday they get a book to take home and keep. That's always a big thing for them," said Audrey Kocher, a Brooke County schoolteacher who serves as site coordinator for the Brooke County program.
She added the books fall into a different weekly theme: myself, family, friends, home, community and making the world a better place.
In keeping with the last theme, organizers of the program are collecting school supplies to be distributed to Brooke County children during the open house and the program's regular hours, from 7:30 a.m. and 1:30 p.m. Monday through Friday through Aug. 2.
In addition to the WVU Extension Service, this year's program is supported by AmeriCorps, which pays stipends to young adult mentors who lead the children in the various activities; and funds remaining from a $2,000 Community Participation grant secured by former state Delegate Roy Givens last year.
Liz Gatts, the program's liaison with the Brooke County WVU Extension Service, said she's applied for two possible grants to fund it next year.
Kocher said support from AmeriCorps has allowed the program to divide the children into groups of eight for each classroom, a ratio that allows them more one-to-one instruction.
The program targets children who receive free or reduced meals during the school year but is not limited to them and provides free breakfasts and lunches during the program as part of C.H.A.N.G.E. Inc.'s summer food program.
The Weirton-based community action agency also provides nutritious meals at several public parks as well as a few other school-based programs through a federal grant from a separate program.
Unlike school breakfasts and lunches, meals at Energy Express are served family style, with bowls placed at the center of the tables and the children encouraged to display good manners while passing the food around.
Energy Express isn't a new program, having begun 20 years ago in West Virginia, but it's relatively new to the Northern Panhandle. Response to the Energy Express program in Hancock County has been so strong that it's offered at sites in Weirton and Chester.
The three are among 80 held throughout the state, Kocher said.
She said there's much interest in Energy Express in Brooke County, too, but transportation has been a barrier. The children's parents must bring them to the school, and that's not always feasible for working parents, she explained.
But Kocher and Haley Dalton, community coordinator for the program, encourage children's parents and other family members to visit during the open house or at other times, possibly as guest readers.
Dalton noted one pupil's mother visited recently and he was excited about showing her the art he had created.
"I think they do better (in school) when the parents are involved," she said.
Kocher agreed, saying, "Parent involvement is part of the Energy Express model."
Dalton is one of eight college and high school students with various career goals who serve as leaders for the program.
A Weirton resident, Dalton will be attending West Virginia Wesleyan College this fall and pursuing a career in nursing. She said working with Energy Express gives her good experience working with other people.
Kocher said many of the mentors have found the program has helped them to hone supervisory and communication skills needed in various fields.
A visit to the various classrooms reveals that mentors and children both are having fun.
"It's really fun. I get to make stuff out of cardboard and paper and I get to draw," said Kris Obeldobel, a pupil from Colliers.
"We do fun stuff. We play a lot of games," said Grace Douglas, a pupil from Wellsburg.
Among her favorite games is "Assemble This," which challenges the children to work together to form the shape of a common object or animal, explained Kevin Kidd, a West Virginia University student serving as mentor.
Pupil Will Coy of Follansbee said he has enjoyed reading various books, including an installment of the "Diary of a Wimpy Kid" series.
Maria Elliott, a pupil from Wellsburg, said she has enjoyed the artwork and reading "Riding Freedom," a novel inspired by the true story of a woman who posed as a man to serve as a stagecoach driver.


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Cyprus's Debt Conundrum
The debt troubles of Cyprus, a small Mediterranean island economy accounting for 0.2% of the economic output of the euro zone, are creating headaches for the entire 17-nation currency bloc.
Officials from the country's would-be official creditors, euro-zone governments and the International Monetary Fund are now poring over the government's finances and asking this question: Would a radical solution to cut the country's debt upset the precarious stability of the euro area, or is Cyprus too small to make waves?
The euro zone's debt crises have come in two stripes. The problems of Greece and Portugal arose out of troubled government finances while those of Ireland and Spain derived from struggling banks. Cyprus falls into the latter category. The assets of its banks exceed 800% of gross domestic product, and they were hit hard by Greece's debt default.
As a result, Cypriot banks need up to €10 billion ($13.3 billion) to rebuild their capital cushions. With private investors ruled out by the banks' parlous finances—and the euro zone yet to follow up on its promise to allow its bailout fund to recapitalize banks directly—the government is the only possible source for that money.
Borrowing that money from the euro-zone bailout fund and the IMF—together with another roughly €7 billion needed to right the government's own shaky finances—would bloat the government's debt beyond 140% of GDP. That debt load is likely unpayable and more than half of it would be owed to the official creditors. Unhappy about taking that risk, they are looking for ways to reduce the size of their bailout. "The real conundrum is that the country requires an awful lot of money," says Alessandro Leipold, a former IMF staffer now with the Lisbon Council, a Brussels-based think tank.
Yet, he adds, not only did the euro zone promise that Greece's debt restructuring was a one-off, but a restructuring of Cypriot government debt isn't going to help much to ease the country's debt burden.
An analysis from Kedran Panageas of J.P. Morgan JPM -0.36 % in London explains why. Cypriot government debt is estimated at €15.3 billion, €7.9 billion of which is issued under domestic law.
In theory, as Greece's slick restructuring of its domestic-law bonds shows, domestic-law debt should be easy to restructure. Trouble is, according to Ms. Panageas, some 87% of this debt is owned by Cypriot banks. If they are forced to take losses on their government-debt holdings, the government would be need to borrow even more money to cover those losses. The net gain would be small.
The other €7.4 billion of government debt is hard to restructure for different reasons. About €3.8 billion is in international bonds issued under English law, which is relatively friendly to holdouts from a restructuring. Holders would be unlikely to back a substantial voluntary restructuring of these bonds—a 75% majority would need to agree, Ms. Panageas says. If Cyprus tried to force a restructuring against the wishes of investors, it would likely end up being sued and its international assets put at risk of court-ordered seizures.
The remaining €3.6 billion is official loans, including €2.5 billion from Russia. These are also difficult to restructure, though there are hopes that Moscow will be willing to extend maturities and reduce interest rates.
These hurdles are why officials are looking closely at the banks to see if they can find ways to pare debt there. But the pickings are slim. Ms. Panageas estimates banks have issued €1.2 billion in subordinated debt and €500 million in senior debt. If the holders of subordinated debt are forced to take 80% write-downs, and the holders of senior debt 40%, that would reduce the banks' capital requirements (and hence the government's need to borrow) by a net €1 billion, or 5% of GDP.
This leaves few remaining options for reducing the size of the bailout. One, which is being privately discussed by officials, is the possibility of forcing bank depositors to make a contribution. Ms. Panageas estimates that a contribution of 1% on deposits would generate savings of €850 million, or 5% of GDP. That would be reduced by 30% if insured deposits of under €100,000 were excluded. Given many uninsured depositors are Russians, officials are conscious that burning them would make it more difficult to persuade Moscow to ease the terms of its loan to Cyprus.
In an assessment published this week, Standard & Poor's says involving depositors and even senior bondholders would represent "a new dimension of the euro-zone crisis management" that could "reverse the stabilization of deposits in other periphery countries." It says "contagion risk remains, in our view." In other words, missteps over Cyprus could wreck the current calm.
The creditor debate thus goes round in circles. Some analysts say the country's debt problems will, in part, be assumed away by building in privatization revenues and tentative future income from the country's as-yet-undeveloped gas fields.
The negotiations officially await the outcome of Cypriot elections on Sunday. And they have a deadline: In June, S&P points out, a €1.4 billion bond comes due, equivalent to 8% of GDP. If Cyprus's problems aren't resolved by then, a messy default would follow.
Corrections & Amplifications
Kedran Panageas, an analyst at J.P. Morgan, is a woman. An earlier version of this article incorrectly referred to her in later references as Mr. Panageas.
Write to Stephen Fidler at email@example.com


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Posted on
March 28, 2011 02:16
by Brian A. Vandiver
Yesterday, the EEOC's final regulations for the ADA Amendments Act ("ADAAA") were made public. The EEOC originally proposed its implementing regulations (the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking or "NPRM") for the ADAAA on September 23, 2009. After receiving hundreds of comments and conducting several public meetings, the EEOC revised its regulations. According to the EEOC, the"final regulations modify or remove language that groups representing employer or disability interests had found confusing or had interpreted in a manner not intended by the EEOC." The EEOC provides the following examples of how the final regulations differ from the NPRM:
• Instead of providing a list of impairments that would "consistently," "sometimes," or "usually not" be disabilities (as had been done in the NPRM), the final regulations provide the nine rules of construction to guide the analysis and explain that by applying those principles, there will be some impairments that virtually always constitute a disability. The regulations also provide examples of impairments that should easily be concluded to be disabilities, including epilepsy, diabetes, cancer, HIV infection, and bipolar disorder. • Language in the NPRM describing how to demonstrate that an individual is substantially limited in "working" has been deleted from the final regulations and moved to the appendix (consistent with how other major life activities are addressed). The final regulations also retain the existing familiar language of "class or broad range of jobs" rather than introducing a new term, and they provide examples of individuals who could be considered substantially limited in working. • The final regulations retain the concepts of "condition, manner, or duration" that the NPRM had proposed to delete and explain that while consideration of these factors may be unnecessary to determine whether an impairment substantially limits a major life activity, they may be relevant in certain cases. At first glance, many of the revisions contained in the ADAAA's final regulations appear to be somewhat favorable to employers and the ADA's other covered entities. Nonetheless, there is little dispute that the ADAAA and its final regulations have made and will to continue to make defending ADA claims more difficult. Employers and other covered entities under the ADA should review their policies and practices to ensure compliance with the ADAAA and its final regulations.
The EEOC's press release is available here: http://www.eeoc.gov/eeoc/newsroom/release/3-24-11.cfm
The EEOC's final regulations for the ADAAA and other documents relating to the ADAAA and its final regulations are available here: http://www.eeoc.gov/laws/statutes/adaaa_info.cfm
Categories: Employment/Labor Law


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Real Men Do Get Cancer: Risks, Prevention and Treatment of Male-Specific Cancers
Last Modified: December 4, 2003
Conference Dates: March 20, 2004
Conference Location: City of Hope National Medical Center, Duarte, CA
Sponsoring Group: City of Hope Clinical Cancer Genetics Education Program and Divisions of Medical Oncology & Surgery
Conference Web Page URL: www.cityofhope.org/ccgp
Topics Covered: This topic will address important advances in screening, treatment, prevention and understanding of the genetics of prostate, testicular and other cancers affecting men. Primary care physicians, urologists, oncologists, surgeons, radiologists, and other allied health care professionals who participate in this course will learn evolving techniques for early detection and prevention of prostate cancer, as well as recent advances in surgical, radiological and systemic treatment of prostate, testicular and other cancers, and issues of survivorship for male gender cancers. They will also learn about the impact of genetic etiology on the treatment and management of renal cancer and about hereditary cancer syndromes that predispose men to breast, colorectal and genitourinary cancers, and how to identify patients in their practice who are appropriate for genetic cancer risk assessment services.
Conference Objectives: See website for details
Who Should Attend: urologists, urological oncologists, surgeons, radiation oncologists, primary care physicians, allied healthcare professionals
Conference Agenda: see website for details
Registration Information: see website for details
Conference Fees: $100
Continuing Education: Yes