The Trump Administration Takes Affirmative Action against Admissions in the US Universities

According to reports this week, Donald Trump administration is planning to investigate and sue US universities over affirmative action admission policy that are perceived to take discriminate against white applicants. Which could once again risk the policies of many Universities.

Reports from The New York Times stated that the US Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division was searching for lawyers to carry out an investigation and possibly sue universities and colleges over “intentional race-based discrimination”

This move could possibly be another attack on the US higher education sector under the presidency of Donald Trump, after recent funding cuts, putting a travel ban on some international and putting criticism on particular campuses.

The New York Times states that the civil right division’s “front office” would be run the Justice Department, appointing the White House political appointees to work, rather than the staffed civil servants from educational opportunities section. 

The assault on affirmative action was aligned in a wrong way with the longstanding goal of widening participation in US higher education, stated by Kristen Clarke (President of the lawyers’ committee for civil rights), to the times.

 “The move is clearly disturbing”, she further said. “The move could invite a lot of chaos and bring fear in the colleges and universities, which would feel that the government may take action against them and spoil their efforts to maintain a certain level of diversity in their campuses”

Professor Neal H. Hutchens at the University of Mississippi stated to the Chronicle of Higher Education that the recent administrative actions could “put a chill” on our long efforts to improve diversity on campus.

He further stated, “The government should focus more on providing good means to ethnic minority students, which could create a safe and protected environment, instead of creating more hurdles for them”

The US Supreme Court already upheld a case on the use of affirmative action admissions policy last year, voted in favor of the University of Texas, by four to three on a particular program. However, there are already several lawsuits pending against other institutions like University of North Carolina and Harvard University.

US Actor George Clooney and Wife Amal Clooney Launches a Support Campaign for Educating Syrian Children

According to the statement released on the official website of Clooney foundation for justice, Famous actor George Clooney and wife Amal Clooney recently launched a campaign to support education for Syrian refugees in Lebanon.

The initiative is a partnership between the Clooney Foundation and Google.org, with an additional $1 million technology grant from the IT giant HP. Summing the overall value of the partnership to be $ 2.25 million.

In their recent statement, George Clooney and Amal Clooney said. “The lives of thousands of young Syrian refugees are at risk, which is on the verge of losing their part in the society completely. We took this initiative to provide a doorway for them to earn a formal education. They should not get the punishment of getting born at the wrong place and the wrong time. Thus, we certainly don’t want to lose an entire generation.

 “This partnership with UNICEF is definitely going to help around 3000 currently out-of-school refugee students this year, this will include establishing seven public schools to give crucial learning opportunities. This will also help support to make use of the technological tools in these schools for providing advanced learning systems for Lebanese children in the region,” the reports said.

According to UNICEF, the respective Lebanese party has already shown signs of praising the Hollywood star. Beirut is “deeply grateful” for the initiative taken by the Clooney family, said the Lebanon’s education minister, Marwan Hamadeh.

George Clooney is a US actor, director, and producer born on May 6, 1961, in Lexington, Kentucky. He has received three Golden Globe Awards for his work as an actor and two Academy Awards, one for acting in Syriana (2006) and the other for co-producing Argo (2012).

Five Things That You Can Do To Make Your Students Succeed

Student success must be the ultimate goal for every teaching professional.  A teacher might be trying his best to make student success. But not able to find the right techniques to get positive results on many occasions. For a particular teacher, a student’s success may only be in the form of excellent grades, for others it might be increasing their involvement in class. Regardless the way you measure success, being a teacher, the best you can do is to make your students work up to their full potential.

Following are the five practices that you can make use to help your students succeed:

Create a Healthy Learning Environment

The first thing being a teacher you must make sure, is to develop a healthy learning environment. A classroom environment must be comfortable for students where they can ask as many questions as they want, without any hesitance. Teachers must be very encouraging to make students ask all types of questions regarding their taught lessons and should answer them accordingly.

Make Use of Visual Aids to Deliver Lectures

This practice of using visual aids in delivering lectures is a good way to increase students’ involvement in class. Teachers can make use of slides, graphical presentations and informative videos related to a certain topic which can provide them an effective means for clearing students’ concepts and grasping all the topic information with ease.

Use Practical Examples in Their Teaching Methods

Another way to transfer the right concept to students is making use of the practical examples. This will not only make them engage in learning the lesson but could also open their minds to develop their own versions of examples. Moreover, students can directly relate their acquired knowledge into practical situations every day.

Set High Level of Expectations

Though each student has its own potential but setting a high level of standards for each of them will eventually make them a hard worker. They key factor here is to push students towards their optimum potential, allowing them to achieve excellent results. They should be made to continue work harder by encouraging them on regular basis.

Arrange Competitions among Them

Teachers must keep a regular practice to develop a sense of positive competition among their students. Quiz competition and group activities can come in handy to facilitate student to work in small groups and learn from each other’s research work on particular topics.

Teachers are the best source of knowledge for students. Being a teacher you must keep goals to make your students achieve success. You can practice the points discussed above and make your students achieve success over a short period of time.