2023
September
06
Wednesday

Monitor Daily Podcast

September 06, 2023
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Ira Porter
Education Writer

Issues important to higher education seem endless.

The United States Supreme Court ended race-based admissions in June, which I’m sure made millions of teenagers of color around the country and the world anxious about whether they would get accepted into dream schools. Legacy admissions for scions of wealthy or well-connected alumni at some of those same schools were challenged as a result of that same ruling, sending shivers of nervousness to privileged people, too.

Artificial intelligence threatens to take away the discovery process of young people studying and figuring out problems on their own by giving them the words to craft would-be research papers. National security concerns have pushed some campuses to ban TikTok on their public Wi-Fi. Students can’t afford housing. Controversial faculty appointments have been made and rescinded. Financially strapped universities are cutting majors and disciplines. A war on woke education finds new targets daily.

With all of this before us, I will travel to California this week to gather with reporters at the Education Writers Association conference on higher education. We will talk about how we can best present these stories to the public. Every issue matters deeply to someone, from the pots of gold available in reshuffling in athletic conferences, to the urgency of finding housing to keep students from being homeless.

I am honored to be able to present some of these issues to you in the Monitor’s pages, and I hope along the way that you suggest a story or two to me. School is back in session. What will we uncover this year?


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Today's stories

And why we wrote them

Fulton County Sheriff's Office/Reuters
A combination picture shows police booking mug shots of former President Donald Trump and 11 of the 18 people indicted with him, including (left to right, and from the top down) lawyers Ray Smith, Rudy Giuliani, Jenna Ellis, and Sidney Powell; former Georgia Republican Party leader Cathy Latham; Trump campaign attorney Kenneth Chesebro; former Georgia Republican Party leader David Shafer; Republican poll watcher Scott Hall; lawyer John Eastman; Harrison Floyd, former head of Black Voices for Trump; and former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows.

The Georgia case against Donald Trump and his 18 co-defendants, all of whom have pleaded not guilty, is massive and complex. Each individual’s legal strategy has the potential to impact the rest.

Graphic

Sea ice is shrinking. These maps show by how much.

Heat waves this summer from the U.S. to Europe and Asia have caught the world’s attention. But it has also been unseasonably warm in the Antarctic winter – with visible effects.

SOURCE:

National Snow and Ice Data Center

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Jacob Turcotte/Staff

In a Hungarian high school, members of the long-oppressed Roma community are taking inspiration from the way another such group, the Dalits in India, set its sights on reform and took control of finding a better future.

Jacob Turcotte/Staff

Books

Portrait photo © Jeanne Van Atta
Laura Meckler

Do efforts to racially integrate cities help schools with equity as well? In “Dream Town,” reporter Laura Meckler examines her Ohio hometown’s tenacious push to help students.

Points of Progress

What's going right

This week’s progress roundup offers hope that compassion is making a difference worldwide. Chile is paying attention to gender equality in its foreign affairs. And community collaborations in Tanzania made a rebound possible for the rare kipunji monkey. 


The Monitor's View

In an opinion survey this year in 12 leading economies, people from Italy to China said they were more concerned about corruption than climate change. Such a popular expectation of integrity in governance helps explain why this week’s summit of the 20 biggest economies, known as the Group of 20, includes a renewed focus on lifting standards on accountability and transparency – which range from whistleblower protection to anti-bribery enforcement.

Together, the G20 countries can set an example for the rest of the world because they account for 80% of the global economy – and more than 90% of foreign bribery convictions. This year’s summit host, India, has won some consensus among the group on how to cooperate better on asset recovery, or the winning back of stolen money sent abroad by corrupt players.

One recent example of asset recovery includes the United States’ repatriating $332 million linked to the former Nigerian dictator Sani Abacha and his co-conspirators. Britain is considering a measure to give law enforcement new powers to seize digital assets, which are often used to transfer ill-gotten gains. Such progress builds on the G20’s work over nearly a decade of summits to use the group as a vehicle for improving clean governance everywhere.

“Corruption is a crime that crosses borders,” according to the Accountability Lab, an anti-corruption activist group. “That is why international cooperation and collaboration are essential and have been a key area of focus for the G20 for many years.”

One helpmate for the G20 on fighting corruption is a Paris-based group of 38 developed countries called the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. In 1999, the OECD approved the Anti-Bribery Convention, the first binding international instrument to focus exclusively on bribery in business transactions. The work against corruption, says former OECD Secretary-General Angel Gurría, makes economies more productive, governments more efficient, and institutions more trusted.

“In short,” he said, “integrity delivers better lives.”


A Christian Science Perspective

About this feature

Each weekday, the Monitor includes one clearly labeled religious article offering spiritual insight on contemporary issues, including the news. The publication – in its various forms – is produced for anyone who cares about the progress of the human endeavor around the world and seeks news reported with compassion, intelligence, and an essentially constructive lens. For many, that caring has religious roots. For many, it does not. The Monitor has always embraced both audiences. The Monitor is owned by a church – The First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston – whose founder was concerned with both the state of the world and the quality of available news.

We can feel a deep sense of connectedness, even when alone, by digging into our unity with God, divine Love itself.


Viewfinder

Monicah Mwangi/Reuters
A delegate from the Indigenous Maasai community blows a horn as he arrives at the Africa Climate Summit 2023 in Nairobi, Kenya, Sept. 6, 2023. The three-day summit, which tens of thousands of global delegates attended, concluded today with the Nairobi Declaration. Among other points, it said Africa is ready to lead on clean energy and care for the environment but needs industrialized countries to support initiatives through more robust investment, rather than just offering aid amid crises. It also called for financial reforms to ease borrowing costs, as well as a global carbon tax. The declaration will be in play at a United Nations climate conference later this month in New York and the COP28 climate conference to be held in Dubai in late November.
( The illustrations in today’s Monitor Daily are by Karen Norris. )

A look ahead

Thank you for joining us today. Please come back tomorrow when columnist Ned Temko looks at how a “forever war” between Ukraine and Russia can be prevented. With an outright victory unlikely for either side, diplomatic negotiations seem inevitable. The question is when the two sides will come to that conclusion themselves. Kyiv’s current counteroffensive might have a role to play.

More issues

2023
September
06
Wednesday

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