A digest of Baltimore news from local sources.
From The AFRO American: Johns Hopkins University Announces $25 Million Faculty Diversity Plan
"Johns Hopkins University recently announced it is committing more than $25 million in new funding over the next five years toward recruiting and retaining diverse faculty members.
"The details of the faculty diversity plan were announced by Hopkins Provost Robert C. Lieberman and the deans of the university’s schools in a letter to the campus community. The initiative, the letter said, came out of the annual deans’ meeting last spring and was developed over the past year after intensive data trend analyses, consultation, comparison with peer institutions and other efforts.
"The initiative 'will support our firm commitment to locate, attract, and retain the best and most talented faculty, representing a broad diversity of backgrounds, thought, and experiences,' the letter read. 'Each academic division of the university will develop and execute a detailed plan, tailored to its specific academic discipline, to enhance faculty diversity and cultivate an environment that is inclusive of diverse scholars.'”
From The Baltimore Sun: Housing Policies Still Pin Poor in Baltimore, But Some Escape to the Suburbs
"Danielle Hill has a secret, one she shares with dozens of other residents of Baltimore public housing. It goes like this: They don't live in the city.
"Instead, they live in Anne Arundel, Baltimore, Harford and Howard counties, in houses purchased by the Housing Authority of Baltimore City. Thousands more have moved to the counties with special rent subsidies in a companion program.
"Hill's family is among nearly 10,000 black women and children who have moved into overwhelmingly white, prosperous suburbs through a court-ordered relocation program designed to combat the intense inner-city segregation and poverty forged by decades of discrimination.
"That relocation program — one of the nation's largest — has been discreetly rolled out to avoid the political and community opposition that routinely arises to defeat proposals for building subsidized housing in Baltimore's suburbs. Hill's Cockeysville townhouse, for example, was purchased by the city through a nonprofit organization based in the suburbs, with little notice to elected Baltimore County officials or the public.
"'We did it very much under the radar,' Amy Wilkinson, fair housing director for the Housing Authority of Baltimore City, said of the home purchases. 'We met very early on with the county executives. They understood we had to do it. Their request was to make sure [the homes] are really scattered and make sure we do it quietly.'”
From The Washington Post: On Policing, the National Mood Turns Toward Reform
"In Chicago, Mayor Rahm Emanuel fired his police chief and faces a growing clamor for his resignation.
"In Baltimore, Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake fired her police chief and abandoned plans to seek reelection.
"And in San Francisco, protesters are demanding the head of yet another police chief, prompting Mayor Edwin Lee to vow last week to overhaul police procedures regarding deadly force.
“'Black lives do matter,' Lee (D) assured reporters.
"Across the nation, protesters are no longer satisfied with indictments or special prosecutors when evidence emerges that someone has died unnecessarily at the hands of police. Instead, they have been seeking — and increasingly securing — the ouster of top officials, as well as concrete steps toward real reform and accountability.
“'In my lifetime, I haven’t experienced a moment like this,' said Craig Futterman, a law professor at the University of Chicago who founded the school’s Civil Rights and Police Accountability Clinic. 'I’m usually more of a cynic and a skeptic, but this feels different.'
'Activists and criminal-justice experts say the national ethos regarding race and policing has changed dramatically since a black teenager was shot to death by a white police officer in Ferguson, Mo., in August 2014. Since then, sustained protests in multiple cities, an aggressive social media campaign and a steady drip of viral videos revealing questionable police shootings have eroded the societal reflex to defend police and blame the dead victim.'"