Hungry for change: the Sydney Food Fairness Alliance

The Sydney Food Fairness Alliance is one of a growing number of nascent food movements in Australia to have emerged out of concern for the country’s food future, as well as the deleterious effect the present food system is having on its citizens’ health and the continent’s fragile environment. The Alliance’s structure and activities clearly position it as a new social movement (NSM) engaged in collective action on a specific issue, in this instance, food security/justice, and operating outside the political sphere while aiming to influence and affect societal change. Food security as a human right lies at the heart of the Alliance’s philosophy, and equitable, sustainable food policies for New South Wales are a core focus of its advocacy work. The authors argue that the Alliance is a distinctive food movement in that it positions itself as an \u27umbrella\u27 organization representing a wide range of stakeholders in the food system. This chapter reflects on the values, achievements, issues of concern, strengths and weaknesses, and future of the Sydney Food Fairness Alliance. This resource is Chapter 8 in \u27Food Security in Australia: Challenges and Prospects for the Future\u27 published by Springer in 2013

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Are Asian Americans POC? Examining Impact of Higher Education Identity-Based Policies and Practices

Asian Americans may not be considered “people of color” (POC) in higher education because of stereotypes of Asian Americans such as the model minority myth. White supremacy creates a racial hierarchy that creates a misperception that Asian Americans are not marginalized compared to other POC in order to cause strife among all racial minority groups. In higher education, this racial hierarchy manifests through exclusionary practices in diversity programming, recruitment, and admissions that can lead to the disconnection of Asian Americans from the rest of the POC community. Issues regarding affirmative action and the recent Harvard lawsuit are salient examples that are indicative of Asian Americans’ separation from “typical” POC groups in society and higher education. The exploration of this topic through scholar- ship and the author’s personal narrative as an Asian American in higher education will lead to recommendations for creating connections to the POC community for and with Asian American students while highlighting inequitable practices and policies

When Claims Collide: Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard and the Meaning of Discrimination

This term, the Supreme Court will decide Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard College (SFFA v. Harvard), a challenge to Harvard College’s race-conscious admissions program. While litigation challenging the use of race in higher education admissions spans over five decades, previous attacks on race-conscious admissions systems were brought by white plaintiffs alleging “reverse discrimination” based on the theory that a university discriminated against them by assigning a plus factor to underrepresented minority applicants. SFFA v. Harvard is distinct from these cases because the plaintiff organization, SFFA, brought a claim alleg ing that Harvard engages in intentional discrimination by penalizing Asian American applicants despite their status as people of color. SFFA alleges that Asian American applicants are discriminated against in the college ad-missions process because Harvard undervalues standardized test scores and other “objective” factors on which Asian American students in the aggregate outperform other applicants. Yet, at the same time that a Massachusetts district court considered SFFA’s claims, on the other side of the country, a coalition of students of color, including Asian American students, brought Smith v. Regents of University of California, a lawsuit arguing that standardized test scores were racially biased against them and that reliance on standardized test scores was itself discriminatory. The claims in these cases provide an entry point for considering what I call “mirror” claims of discrimination, in which allegations of discrimination are brought challenging both sides of an issue or policy decision, in this case the use of standardized test scores in the college admissions process. This Article argues that with-out a contextual analysis that is grounded in white supremacy, discrimination claims lose their meaning and could be actionable on competing sides of many issues and policy decisions. Instead, courts have a duty to provide guidance about when liability exists by considering how racial disparities in power and resources operate in the context of a particular claim. First, I argue that one way of distinguishing between what appear to be mirror discrimination claims is to ask whether there is a strong basis in evidence to believe that a policy or decision would entail liability for disparate impact discrimination. If so, avoiding disparate impact liability provides a defense against a claim of intentional discrimination and a basis for distinguishing the reverse action. Next, I consider how to analyze mirror claims that involve intragroup variation within a protected group, such as in the Smith and SFFA cases where there are contested arguments about how different subgroups of Asian American applicants are impacted. I argue that for an intentional discrimination claim to succeed, it should address, rather than ignore, how intragroup differences contribute to experiences of subordination. Finally, I argue that, as Harvard students testified, diversity within diversity can challenge stereotyping and essentialism and provide a pathway to combat subordination

A New Test for the Absorption Mechanism of GPS Radio Sources Using Polarization Properties

We consider the use of polarization properties as a means to discriminate between Synchrotron Self-Absorption (SSA) and Free--Free Absorption (FFA) in GHz-Peaked Spectrum (GPS) sources. The polarization position angle (PA) of synchrotron radiation at high frequencies for the optically thin regime is perpendicular to the magnetic field, whereas it is parallel to the magnetic field at low frequencies for the optically thick regime. Therefore, SSA produces a change in PA of $90^{\circ}$ across the spectral peak, while FFA does not result in such a change. We analyzed polarization data from VLA observations for six GPS sources to see if such a change in PA was present. Our results indicate that there is no significant evidence for $90^{\circ}$ change in PA across the spectral peak, suggesting that FFA is more likely than SSA for low-frequency cutoffs in these sources