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About the American Diversity Report

DL Opinion columns

‘Going Southern’ at the Book Club – by Deborah Levine

originally published in The Chattanooga Times Free Press

It’s wonderful that there are so many book clubs in Chattanooga! Folks gather together to discuss all kinds of books: history, novels, science fiction, mysteries, and poetry. They meet in homes, churches, synagogues, schools, libraries, book stores, coffee shops and more. This weekend I was invited to speak and share one of my books at the East Ridge Library Book Club. As a long time resident of East Ridge, it was truly a pleasure to talk about my book, Going Southern: The No-Mess Guide to Success in the South.

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Advisors, Authors A-H, Education, Inclusion

Renewing Diversity Part 9: Rediscovering My Professional Journey – by Carlos Cortés

For nearly a year I’ve been going through an out-of-body experience. It was launched by a simple request that has turned into a not-so-simple journey.  Here’s what happened.

In the fall of 2024, Steven Mandeville-Gamble, Director of the University of California, Riverside, Library, asked me to donate my professional papers to the library’s Special Collections.  Feeling quite honored, I agreed.  Since then I have been preparing my papers for delivery.  This has involved months of wading through file cabinets, bookcases, and stacks of boxes crammed with books, articles, correspondence, course notes, past public lectures, workshop outlines, video and audio tapes, and published and unpublished manuscripts. 

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Advisors, Authors R-Z, Gender

Survival Matters: Cross-dressing – by Julia Wai-Yin So

Cross-dressing has a Different Meaning at a Different Place in a Different Time

In recent years, with more and more social acceptance of multiple variations of gender identity, cross-dressing has become an empowering tool for transgendered individuals who are out, proud, and loud to assert their gender identity. Notwithstanding, we have to be cognizant of the fact that cross-dressing validates the practice of the binary system of gender. We also have to remind ourselves that the binary system of gender is a social construct and that it is built on a medical model using the binary system of sex. More importantly, cross-dressing carries a different meaning at a different place in a different time. Here, I will describe three specific examples of females cross-dress as males.

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Authors A-H, Healthcare, Storytelling

Your final job interview is with yourself – by Martin Kimeldorf

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Writing your Final Resume

“It’s hard to know when to respond to the seductiveness of the world and when to respond to its’ challenge.  If the world were merely seductive, that would be easy.  If it were merely challenging, that would be no problem.  But, I arise in the morning torn between the desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world.  This makes it hard to plan the day”.
 ~  E. B. White

Somewhere around 1970 I came across the notion of  self-help support groups for the unemployed. They reported remarkable results so I set the task of translating this into a workbook for young adults: Job Search Education. The success of that title brought me some 20+ book contracts of various topics from leisure wellness, to intergenerational programing, to mixology. It’s been a grand trip…and now as I take step back in the last quarter of my life I have found the value in writing one last “resume”. It is directed not at future employers; it is simply a summation for myself. It may inspire you to do the same.

I plotted out an outline that contained the following categories:

  • Student & Early Accomplishments
  • Adult Work Experiences
  • Fun or Humorous (magic, theater, paintings)
  • Volunteer Work
  • My Favorite Saying

Without further ado about nothing (See Shakespeare’s play with that title), I’ll proceed with samples and words.

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Advisors, Authors A-H

Rosh Hashanah 2025 – by Marc Brenman

The Jewish New Year is upon us, but may not feel like new, with vaccines being banned and Trump destroying democracy, making Americans hungrier, dumber, sicker, less safe, and more prone to natural disasters. He’s facing more days in court, alas with a Get Out of Jail Free card form the Supreme Court, which has absented itself from the Constitution. The book of Proverbs says, “To do righteousness and justice is preferred by God above sacrifice” (Proverbs 21:3). The psalmist exhorts: “Give justice to the weak and the fatherless; maintain the right of the afflicted and the destitute” (Psalms 82:3).

Fall is the beginning of the Jewish High Holy day of Rosh Hashanah. It means “the head of the year.” Some say it’s the birthday of the universe, the day God created Eve and Adam. 

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Advisors, Inclusion, Teams & Leaders

Confessions of an unashamed DEI Hire – by Terry Howard

BREAKING NEWS: Recent Department of Labor statistics show that nationwide, Black women lost 319,000 public and private sector jobs from February to July this year compared to 142,000 and 176,000 increases, respectively, by white and Hispanic women. White men saw an increase of 360,000 over that same period of time. 

Now that I got your attention, denial, urge to fact check me or fire off a letter to the editor look, just chill out as we turn our attention to all those unqualified “DEI Hires” we’ve been hearing about. If you believe the pundits, those “DEI Hires” have infiltrated every organization, taken over our nation and taken our jobs, that is except the thousands of (“DEI Hires”?) who, out of fear of deportation, have abandoned the backbreaking jobs picking fruit and vegetables in California, mopping floors in hospitals and putting in long hours in restaurants and on construction sites leaving their employers desperate for new workers.  

Okay readers, let’s peel back the onion on the who and why behind all the “DEI Hire” shenanigans, shall we? 

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Authors I-Q, Education

Bridging the Education Gap – by Muhammad Usman Qazi 

How LearnWithQazi.pk Empowers Underserved Children Through Accessible Online Learning

Education is a fundamental right that opens doors to opportunity, growth, and empowerment. Yet, according to the 2024 UNESCO Global Education Monitoring Report, over 251 million children and youth worldwide remain out of school. This stark reality affects millions, especially in underserved communities where access to quality education is limited due to poverty, geographic isolation, or other barriers.

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Authors R-Z, Native American

Rediscovering What Has Always Been There – by Glenn Welker

‘REMEMBER’
“Treat this earth well:
it is not a present from your parents,
it is on loan to your children.
The people who enrich their minds are those
who keep their history on the leaves of memory.”

INDIANS – NATIVE AMERICANS – ABORIGINALS – INDIGENOUS PEOPLES

Any and all of these terms identify those persons who act as the caretakers of our planet. Some of them, such as the Aborigines of Australia, have sustained the uninterrupted thread of their society for more than 40,000 years. They are the lucky ones.

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Authors A-H, Social Issues

A Brief History of Humankind – by William Hicks

A RACE TO FRUITION OR A FIGHT TO THE DEATH?

In chapter one of his book, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose, Eckhart Tolle writes about “The Flowering of Human Consciousness”, using as a metaphor the appearance of the first flower on the planet as a seminal event in the evolution of the flora with which we humans are most familiar and, nowadays, take almost universally for granted. But the event, deemed somewhat insignificant in the history of the planet, is monumental in that it signals a growth in a direction of fantastic beauty and presence that enhances the very being of the planet itself and its human occupants.

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