Despite crime rates that have fallen for decades, the United States still imprisons far more of its population than any other country in the world. COVID-19 has forced Americans to take a closer look at our society — including the millions behind bars in jails and prisons where infections are hard to contain. While some county jails have released thousands of detainees to slow coronavirus’ spread, prisons have been reluctant to follow.
UNI Associate Professor of Literacy and Education Shuaib Meacham helps teach future educators how to handle race in the classroom. He also leads a local hip hop literacy program to help connect youth to their love of language, and is helping launch a new project aimed at showcasing Iowa’s diversity. Here, he discusses his work and offers advice for using this unprecedented moment to create lasting change.
Amid protests across the country and world last week calling for racial justice, University of Northern Iowa Athletic Director David Harris shared some of his personal thoughts and life experiences in a conversation with Assistant Vice President of Alumni Relations Leslie Prideaux.
Widespread protests over the death of George Floyd swept the nation for a second week, with tens of thousands of mostly peaceful protestors vowing that his death at the hands of Minneapolis police would at last spark change.
The protests that have occurred in hundreds of cities, including in the Cedar Valley, have placed a powerful spotlight on racist practices endemic in American society. The message was clear: institutions, including college campuses, must respond.
Older now but unbowed, nine members of a group that came to be known as the UNI Seven walked across a Maucker ballroom stage Monday night to be honored for their work sparking change on campus some 50 years ago.
Before Rosie the Riveter ever rolled up her sleeves, there were the women of World War I.
Women like Maria Botchkareva, a Russian Army officer who formed the Women’s Battalion of Death, an all-female combat unit that won respect for their toughness fighting on the front lines. Or Edith Cavell, a British nurse working in German-occupied Belgium who helped hundreds of Allied soldiers escape the country.
Three weeks remained before Iowa’s first-in-the-nation caucuses, but rounds of media interviews and education events had left UNI political science professor Donna Hoffman’s voice scratchy and fading. So when a French news outlet reached out to Hoffman — one of several UNI experts on Iowa’s idiosyncratic method for selecting presidential candidates — her voice couldn’t quite manage another phone or video interview.
The Black Student Union at the University of Northern Iowa launched a celebration Monday of Black History Month with a kick-off ceremony at the Maucker Union, featuring chants, poetry and interpretive dances.
