Anti-Hmong Comments Set Off a Law School

The law school dean the University of Wisconsin at Madison sent an e-mail message to students and faculty members last week apologizing for the hurt caused by a professor?s anti-Hmong comnents during a class lecture, while also saying that no harm had been intended by them.

?All of us in the Law School administration deeply regret this unfortunate course of events,? wrote Kenneth Davis, the dean. He added that the professor involved, Leonard Kaplan, ?feels deeply sorry that his classroom remarks have caused so much pain for some of his students.? Of the law school more broadly, the dean said: ?I can assure you that the school takes very seriously the professional conduct of our faculty, both in and out of the classroom. The Law School also takes very seriously our long-held core values of diversity, fairness, and respect for all.?

?I want to be clear that this is not about dealing with controversy material because we do that all the time as a law school,? Davis wrote. ?We want to deal with that controversy critically and see if the students can make their own conclusions for it.?

Kaplan?s comments were made in a Legal Process course, in lecture on ?legal formalism and its potential for adverse consequences to various ethnic minorities? according to the dean. (Kaplan declined to comment.)

According to e-mails circulating in the law school that officials have not contested, in the course of his lecture, Kaplan made comments such as ?Hmong women are better off now that Hmong men are dying off in this country? and ?all Hmong men purchase their wives, so if he wants to have sex with his wife and she doesn?t consent, you and I call it rape, but the Hmong guy is thinking, ?man, I paid too much for her.? Kashia Moua, a law student who was present during the lecture, sent out an e-mail report about the class and that e-mail then spread, leading to a forum last week.

Moua?s e-mail called the professor?s comments ?incredibly offensive and racist? and urged the student body to ?proceed in holding Kaplan and our administration accountable for these comments.?

Davis, the dean, noted in his e-mail that none of the student he had spoken with who had attended the lecture believed that the remarks ?were motivated by animus or ill will toward any particular racial group.? However, students agreed that ?uniformed and disparaging racial stereotypes? resulted.

Donald Downs, political science professor and the president of the Committee for Academic Freedom and Rights at UW, is a colleague and friend of Kaplan?s and said that ?based on what I know of him, I don?t think he would intentionally try to offend students on those types of categories ? he was just trying to portray a point of view.?

Accused baby snatcher faces federal charge

A woman accused of snatching a newborn girl from a hospital and taking her 100 miles to New Mexico was arraigned Tuesday on a federal kidnapping charge.Rayshaun Parson, 21, did not enter a plea in her appearance before U.S. Magistrate Judge Nancy Koenig, and no bail was set. The judge set another hearing for Friday and was expected to appoint a public defender.The infant, Mychael Darthard-Dawodu, was found Sunday in Clovis, New Mexico. She had been snatched the day before, when she was just 3 days old, from Covenant Lakeside Hospital in Lubbock. (Watch the security camera footage )According to court records, Parson appeared in Clovis with a baby on Saturday. She had previously told people there she was pregnant "but never really was," according to an FBI affidavit.She was extradited from New Mexico on Monday on a Texas charge of suspicion of kidnapping. The baby girl, meanwhile, was back in her mother's arms."We're just happy to have her back," the Mychael's grandfather, Darrell Darthard, said at a news conference.The baby had been taken by a woman posing as a medical worker, who walked out of Covenant Lakeside Hospital with the baby hidden in her purse, police said. Authorities said they received several tips that led them to Clovis.Police found the baby in one home there with an adult female, while Parson was found at another residence, Lubbock police Lt. Scott Hudgens said. (Watch how the newborn was found )Parson has had dealings with the law before. In 2004, a protective order was issued against her in a domestic violence incident involving a boyfriend, according to New Mexico online court documents. In 2005, she was charged with fraud, according to the court documents. There was no immediate response to a call seeking information.

Employee web use a major security risk for companies

Social networking sites are not only biting into workplace productivity -- they can also pose a major security risk, new research shows.

In a national survey of more than 800 employees across a range of industries, more than half said they spent at least an hour a week accessing blogs, chat rooms, videos, and other social networking tools and services at work, according to Clearswift, a Redwood, Calif.-based internet security consulting firm.

Of those, 46 per cent said they regularly discussed work-related issues online, the survey found.

Beyond so-called Web 2.0 sites, 71 per cent also said they used Web-based email at work for personal messages, in additional to their workplace provided email account, the survey found.

Clearswift COO Ian Bowles said that despite the well-known dangers of online viruses, bugs, spam, and scams, most business owners are still far too casual with the internet.

He said the survey results should "raise a red flag" for employers about their susceptibility to data leaks over the Web.

"It's clear from the research that organisations need to take a closer look at the social media sites that their employees are using at work to make sure that sensitive business issues and information is not being discussed," Bowles said in a statement.

Still, more than half of the employees polled said they felt entitled to use the internet for personal reasons at work, the survey found.

In recent years, many businesses have included an "acceptable use" policy for workplace internet use in updated employee handbooks -- only 29 per cent of the business owners surveyed by Clearswift outright banned the use of social networking sites at work.

Nancy Cooper, an employment law attorney with Portland, Ore.-based Bullivant Houser Bailey PC, advices employers to have policies in place for blogs, chat rooms, and other online activity. Though employers can't necessarily prevent workers from accessing Web 2.0 sites, they can make it clear there will be consequences for sharing confidential business data, said Cooper, an Inc.com columnist.

Firing an employee for an online infraction is now common enough that legal experts refer to it simply as "dooced," a term coined from a case involving the author of a blog named dooce.com who was fired for posting angry messages about her employer and co-workers.