“Our Misak Identity Is the Spinal Cord of Our Education”: Oral History of Gerardo Tunubalá Velasco

The Misak people of Colombia are respected worldwide for recovering their ancestral Land, revitalizing their native language and culture, and building an education system from pre-school to university centered in traditional values and worldviews. Through this oral history with Gerardo Tunubalá Velasco, Misak educational leader and co-founder of the Misak University, we learn about his efforts alongside his community to create and sustain an autonomous educational system that guarantees the rights and dignity of Indigenous peoples in Colombia and beyond. His story, grounded in a profound love and communion with Land, speaks of the importance of Land recovery for Indigenous peoples’ sovereignty and resilience. The article opens with an introduction to Gerardo’s ongoing participation in a human rights education class and closes with a reflection by co-author Patricia Rojas-Zambrano, who writes from her positionality as a non-Indigenous Colombian living in the United States today

Volume 5, Special Issue: Human Rights Education & Black Liberation

Situating Black activism and movement building in its historical context, this special issue of the International Journal of Human Rights Education features articles, essays, commentaries, and book reviews that put the longstanding call for Black lives to matter and the quest for Black liberation in conversation with human rights education as a field of scholarship and practice. In this introduction, we first review how movements for Black liberation, primarily in the United States, have drawn on human rights frameworks to seek greater justice; we then introduce the five original articles, five community-based commentaries/notes from the field pieces, and five book reviews/excerpts that comprise this special issue

Editorial Introduction: Human Rights Education & Black Liberation

Situating Black activism and movement building in its historical context, this special issue of the International Journal of Human Rights Education features articles, essays, commentaries, and book reviews that put the longstanding call for Black lives to matter and the quest for Black liberation in conversation with human rights education as a field of scholarship and practice. In this introduction, we first review how movements for Black liberation, primarily in the United States, have drawn on human rights frameworks to seek greater justice; we then introduce the five original articles, five community-based commentaries/notes from the field pieces, and five book reviews/excerpts that comprise this special issue

Profiles in Community-Engaged Learning

To provide a snapshot of the many impressive manifestations of community-engaged learning at the University of San Francisco, a 2014-2015 Faculty Learning Community (FLC), supported by the Center for Teaching Excellence (CTE), has collected the following profiles of selected faculty members across all the schools and colleges. This report was prepared by members of the CTE’s Faculty Learning Community on Community-Engaged Learning: Kevin D. Lo, Facilitator (School of Management), Emma Fuentes (School of Education), David Holler (College of Arts and Sciences), Tim Iglesias (School of Law), Susan Roberta Katz (School of Education), Star Moore (Leo T. McCarthy Center for Public Service and the Common Good), Chenit Ong-Flaherty (School of Nursing and Health Professions), Jennifer Parlamis (School of Management) Susan Pauly-O’Neill (School of Nursing and Health Professions). Our intent with this report is to offer USF administrators and incoming faculty members a sense of what’s being done well in community-engaged learning (CEL), while also pointing out what challenges remain as we establish our identity as a university that prioritizes community engagement. (Incidentally, we prefer the term “community-engaged learning” to “service-learning,” which we feel more precisely defines the scope of our activities. For more about this designation, please see the Executive Report on Community Engaged Learning issued by this same committee in June 2015.) Community-engaged learning as defined by Eyler and Giles is “a form of experiential education where learning occurs through a cycle of action and reflection as students . . . seek to achieve real objectives for the community and deeper understanding and skills for themselves. In the process, students link personal and social development with academic and cognitive development . . . experience enhances understanding; understanding leads to more effective action.” (qtd. in Bandy, Vanderbilt Center for Teaching, “What Is Service Learning or Community Engagement?”). We invited at least two faculty members from each school/college to answer several questions about the application of CEL in their courses. After providing a brief overview of activities in each course, we asked each professor what works well and what challenges persist. The successes and the challenges, as you’ll see, vary widely, and yet they clearly delineate, limited though our present sample size is, the great variety and energy and commitment our faculty have demonstrated in working with community partners and students. It is our hope that this report is merely the beginning of a much more ambitious project to be taken up by the McCarthy Center which will provide many more profiles of professors in the months and years to come

Rare coding variants in PLCG2, ABI3, and TREM2 implicate microglial-mediated innate immunity in Alzheimer's disease

We identified rare coding variants associated with Alzheimer’s disease (AD) in a 3-stage case-control study of 85,133 subjects. In stage 1, 34,174 samples were genotyped using a whole-exome microarray. In stage 2, we tested associated variants (P<1×10-4) in 35,962 independent samples using de novo genotyping and imputed genotypes. In stage 3, an additional 14,997 samples were used to test the most significant stage 2 associations (P<5×10-8) using imputed genotypes. We observed 3 novel genome-wide significant (GWS) AD associated non-synonymous variants; a protective variant in PLCG2 (rs72824905/p.P522R, P=5.38×10-10, OR=0.68, MAFcases=0.0059, MAFcontrols=0.0093), a risk variant in ABI3 (rs616338/p.S209F, P=4.56×10-10, OR=1.43, MAFcases=0.011, MAFcontrols=0.008), and a novel GWS variant in TREM2 (rs143332484/p.R62H, P=1.55×10-14, OR=1.67, MAFcases=0.0143, MAFcontrols=0.0089), a known AD susceptibility gene. These protein-coding changes are in genes highly expressed in microglia and highlight an immune-related protein-protein interaction network enriched for previously identified AD risk genes. These genetic findings provide additional evidence that the microglia-mediated innate immune response contributes directly to AD development

Omecamtiv mecarbil in chronic heart failure with reduced ejection fraction, GALACTIC‐HF: baseline characteristics and comparison with contemporary clinical trials

Aims: The safety and efficacy of the novel selective cardiac myosin activator, omecamtiv mecarbil, in patients with heart failure with reduced ejection fraction (HFrEF) is tested in the Global Approach to Lowering Adverse Cardiac outcomes Through Improving Contractility in Heart Failure (GALACTIC‐HF) trial. Here we describe the baseline characteristics of participants in GALACTIC‐HF and how these compare with other contemporary trials. Methods and Results: Adults with established HFrEF, New York Heart Association functional class (NYHA) ≥ II, EF ≤35%, elevated natriuretic peptides and either current hospitalization for HF or history of hospitalization/ emergency department visit for HF within a year were randomized to either placebo or omecamtiv mecarbil (pharmacokinetic‐guided dosing: 25, 37.5 or 50 mg bid). 8256 patients [male (79%), non‐white (22%), mean age 65 years] were enrolled with a mean EF 27%, ischemic etiology in 54%, NYHA II 53% and III/IV 47%, and median NT‐proBNP 1971 pg/mL. HF therapies at baseline were among the most effectively employed in contemporary HF trials. GALACTIC‐HF randomized patients representative of recent HF registries and trials with substantial numbers of patients also having characteristics understudied in previous trials including more from North America (n = 1386), enrolled as inpatients (n = 2084), systolic blood pressure &lt; 100 mmHg (n = 1127), estimated glomerular filtration rate &lt; 30 mL/min/1.73 m2 (n = 528), and treated with sacubitril‐valsartan at baseline (n = 1594). Conclusions: GALACTIC‐HF enrolled a well‐treated, high‐risk population from both inpatient and outpatient settings, which will provide a definitive evaluation of the efficacy and safety of this novel therapy, as well as informing its potential future implementation

Bringing Human Rights Education to US Classrooms: Exemplary Models from Elementary Grades to University

Bringing Human Rights Education to US Classrooms presents ten research-based human rights projects powerfully implemented in a range of U.S. classrooms, from elementary school through community college and university. In these classrooms, the students—primarily young people of color who have experienced or witnessed human rights abuses such as discrimination and poverty—are exposed for the first time to thinking about their own lives and the world through an empowering human rights lens. Unique in integrating theory and classroom practice, and in addressing human rights issues with special relevance for communities of color in the US, Katz and Spero provide indispensable guidance for those studying and teaching human rights.https://repository.usfca.edu/read_books/1060/thumbnail.jp