What We're Reading

This communication is our June 2023 IDEA (inclusion, diversity, equity, antiracism) Dispatch, a digital newsletter that highlights various media to foster discussion about IDEA topics and to promote understanding, inclusion, and belonging in our department. The IDEA Dispatch is lovingly compiled for you by Ann Marie Thompson, Andrew Wong, and Meghan Lane-Fall. Feel free to send us leads, and have a great weekend!

Seminars and Other Events (Eastern Time; free Unless Otherwise Noted)

• Philadelphia Obon Festival
  Saturday, August 12, 2023, 3-7 p.m.
  Shofuso Japanese Cultural Center in Fairmount Park
  free day full of cultural performances and activities
• Obon Lantern Floating Ceremony – Okuribi
  August 19, 2023, 7:00 pm - 9:00 pm
  Registered participants can launch floating lanterns on Shofuso’s pond to honor loved ones.
  The cost of $30 includes a floating lantern
• Festival of India at Penn's Landing
  Saturday, August 19, 2023 | Noon-7 p.m.
• Caribbean Festival at Penn's Landing
  Sunday, August 20, 2023 | Noon-8 p.m.
• Ukrainian Folk Festival in North Wales
  Sunday, August 27, 2023 (12:00 – 8:00PM)
  Takes place at the Ukrainian American Sports Center
  1 Lower State Rd, North Wales, PA 19454

What We're Reading

Articles, News and Opinions:

• Thomas Jefferson University president who liked controversial tweets resigns
• Doctors Are Leaving Academic Medicine. Most Of Them Are Women
• Opinion: We Must Treat the Black Maternal Health Crisis With the Urgency It Deserves
• Do Black patients fare better with Black doctors?
• Opinion: Selective Research from the AAMC The Association of American Medical Colleges goes cherry-picking for data supporting “racial concordance” in patient treatment.
• Opinion: There Is Only Male and Female. Women Pay the Price When We Pretend Otherwise
• Opinion: Gender Is Not a Binary. The Science Is In and There's No Legitimate Debate
• When Ideology Corrupts Medicine—and How One Reporter Exposed it A conversation with Hannah Barnes about the medical scandal at Tavistock, the UK’s flagship youth gender clinic.
• Opinion: My Research on Gender Dysphoria Was Censored. But I Won’t Be.
• Munk debates podcast: Be it resolved, affirmative action should be based on class, not race Arguing for the motion is John McWhorter, Associate Professor of English at Columbia University, and the author of Woke Racism: How a New Religion Has Betrayed Black America
  Arguing against the motion is Randall Kennedy, Harvard Law Professor and the author of For Discrimination: Race, Affirmative Action, and the Law
• Opinion: Justice Roberts Chose Colorblindness Over the Constitution
• Opinion: Affirmative Action Is Finally Dead. It's Time for Real Equality
• Opinion: The Fury in France—and Across the West France has endured a week of riots. The violence began on June 27—the day that 17-year-old Nahel Merzouk was killed by a policeman in the Parisian suburb of Nanterre during a traffic stop.
• Braver Angels Gettysburg conference seeks to depolarize the nation
• Braver Angels’ Quest for Civic Renewal
• Certainty Is a Psychological Trap and It's Time to Escape
• Opinion: A Medical School Treatment for DEI
• Allen JS, Oxentenko A. Four Lessons Learned From Career Pivots in Academic Medicine. J Med Internet Res. 2023 Jun 13;25:e47641. doi: 10.2196/47641. PMID: 37310784; PMCID: PMC10337368.

Books

• Freewater—Amina Luqman-Dawson pens a lyrical, accessible historical middle-grade novel about two enslaved children's escape from a plantation and the many ways they find freedom.
  Winner of the John Newbery Medal, winner of the Coretta Scott King Author Award and a New York Times Bestseller