10 Mar 2024

THE HAITIAN DIASPORA POLITICAL ACTION COMMITTEE (HDPAC) AND THE OFFICE OF THE HAITIAN DIASPORA (ODIHA) CALL ON THE INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY TO SUPPORT A CONSENSUS GOVERNMENT OF TRANSITION IN HAITI 

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March 8, 2024 (New York, New York)– Since the assassination of President Jovenel Moise, a significant portion of the population in Port-au-Prince has been displaced, and the population across the nation has struggled to survive with severe shortages of food, water and medicine. In the last three years the United Nations has reported communities across Haiti terrorized and some five thousand people killed by well-armed criminal gangs. (https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/haitis-gang- wars-death-toll-doubles-nearly-5000-year-un-2024-01-23/). 

In the last two weeks this situation has evolved into a full scale civil war with organized gangs freeing thousands of dangerous inmates from two prisons and attacking government buildings, the international airport, and several police stations. Death and instability are rising at an alarming and increasing rate. 

Dr. Ariel Henry, and his current government body, has been unwilling and unable to address the pressing problems of insecurity and gang violence. (https://thehill.com/latino/4516984- haitian-advocates-call-for-us-policy-reset-as-crisis-deepens/). 

In order to effectively address the most urgent situation, Prime Minister Ariel Henry must resign immediately. A newly formed neutral organization with the support of all sectors of the Haitian population including the Haitian diaspora must be entrusted to carry out very specific mandates, such as establishing security throughout the country and organizing free and fair elections within a reasonable and specific time-table, agreed to by all stakeholder parties. 

We call upon the international community, primarily the United States of America, to support the new transitional government by providing critical humanitarian support and the deployment of a qualified police force to assist, support, equip and train the Haitian police, in conjunction with the Haitian Military. 

We further call on the United States to take immediate steps to stop the flow of illegal weapons and ammunition from the United States to the violent gangs who have murdered and terrorized thousands of our daughters and sons, mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers. “The time for talks has come and passed. This is a time for decisive actions, and a new transitional government is the first step towards avoiding an all-out civil war in Haiti” said Dr. Georges J. Casimir, President, Haitian Diaspora Political Action Committee (HDPAC). 

HDPAC has endeavored to work with all people of good conscience who would like to see a better, functioning democracy in Haiti. To that end, Ret. Lt. General Russell Honoré has agreed to serve as an advisor to help assist with re-establishing security in Haiti. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russel_L._Honoré). 

“We in the Haitian Diaspora anticipated the worsening of the situation in Haiti; that is the reason why in 2022 we worked with General Honoré to bring the parties together in the Diaspora Unity Summit in Louisiana at Southern University in Baton Rouge in an attempt to solve the problem but the U.S. State Department, France and Canada continued to support Ariel Henry even though the people of Haiti made it clear that Ariel had to go.” (https://www.sulc.edu/news/4660). David L. Alexis, President, Office of the Haitian Diaspora (ODIHA). 

The Haitian Diaspora Political Action Committee (HDPAC), and the Office of the Haitian Diaspora (ODIHA) call on President Joe Biden and his administration specifically the U.S. State Department to actively support the transition of the new government, the extension of TPS (Temporary Protective Status) for undocumented Haitians, and the suspension of deportations back to Haiti. (https://www.wola.org/analysis/a-tragic-milestone-20000th-migrant-deported-to- haitisincebideninauguration/#:~:text=The%20Biden%20administration%20has%20kept,March %202020%20and%20December%202021). 

We hope the international community will allow Haitians to decide for themselves who should lead the transitional government of the second oldest republic in the Western Hemisphere without undue influence or unneeded intervention from foreign entities. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Core_Group#:~:text=The%20Core%20Group%20w as%20established,the%20Organization%20of%20American%20States%20.). 

Dr. Georges J. Casimir President, Haitian Diaspora Political Action Committee (HDPAC) 

David L. Alexis President Office of the Haitian Diaspora (ODIHA)

10 Mar 2024

Pamela Paul: Civil discourse on campus is put to the test

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The same week that a University of California-Berkeley protest ended in violence, with doors broken, people allegedly injured, a guest lecture organized by Jewish students canceled and attendees evacuated by the police through an underground passageway, a group of academics gathered across the bay at Stanford to discuss restoring inclusive civil discourse on campus. The underlying question: In today’s heated political environment, is that even possible?

Over the course of two packed days of moderated and free discussion, we would try to test it out.

Paul Brest, a professor emeritus and former dean at Stanford Law School and one of the conference’s organizers, arrived at Stanford in 1969 in the throes of Vietnam War protests. The windows of the conservative Hoover Institution on campus had to be boarded up. In later years, violence broke out in protests over South Africa.

“Back then, it was students against the institution,” he said. “Now it’s very different because it’s student against student.”

Because I’d written about the difficulties students have had engaging in civil discourse, including a couple of columns on incidents at Stanford, I was one of two journalists invited to take part. Hosted by Stanford Law School and the Stanford Graduate School of Education, the conference brought together professors, deans and academic leaders who were largely liberal, with libertarians and a few conservatives and progressives in the mix. Unfortunately, one of the organizers said, most of the invited progressives — which is to say, the group that currently dominates campus debates — refused to come.

But those who did attend engaged in lively good-faith discussion about several hot-button topics ranging from free expression on campus to institutional neutrality. I’ll write about several of these in the future but will begin with one of the most divisive: diversity hiring statements, the requirement that all job applicants demonstrate their commitment to advancing diversity, equity and inclusion goals.

Brian Soucek, a professor at the UC Davis School of Law and an advocate of DEI statements, started the panel off by making his case. Mere statements of belief in DEI are not enough, he said. In an effort to reach consensus on what a DEI hiring statement should look like, in lieu of UC Davis’ current required statement, he proposed an abbreviated version that asked candidates specifically about DEI shortcomings and gaps in their fields of discipline and concrete steps they’ve taken or plan to take to address them.

The rest of the panel wasn’t having it.

Amna Khalid, a historian at Carleton College, endorsed the goal of diversifying staffs. The problem isn’t principle or legality, she said; it’s practice. Diversity according to whom? And in what context?

“It’s always ‘historically excluded and underrepresented,’” she said. “But historically when? Conservatives could argue they have been historically excluded. What’s underrepresented at Hillsdale College will be different from what’s underrepresented in the UC system.

“We all know that there’s a strong political orientation bias being perpetuated,” she continued. “‘Not a good fit,’ they’ll say. It’s fundamentally dishonest, and it creates more problems than it addresses.”

“People in the most elite systems know how to game the system,” Jeff Snyder, a professor of educational studies at Carleton, added. “It’s a privileged box-ticking exercise that ultimately degrades the purpose.” Together, he and Khalid filed an amicus brief for the plaintiffs against Florida’s Stop WOKE Act.

Imagine flipping the litmus test on its head, Snyder said. Suppose the requirement was a statement of patriotism at the University of Florida. Suppose they say, just as DEI advocates will say, that the definition of patriotism is expansive. And suppose he writes that his vision of patriotism is political protest in the model of Colin Kaepernick. He wouldn’t get the job. Nor would he get a job if he wrote a DEI statement for Carleton saying he mentored members of the campus NRA group or the Young Republicans Club, both of which are underrepresented minorities on campus. DEI statements are inherently ideological. A chilling effect is inevitable.

“What they want are nonstraights, nonwhites and nonmen,” said Musa al-Gharbi, a sociologist at Stony Brook University. “But they don’t say it that way. There’s a lack of forthrightness that breaks people in these situations.” In his field, men are underrepresented and queer scholarship is overrepresented. “But it strains credulity to say that anyone would read a DEI statement about someone’s queer work and say that’s an overrepresented group.”

Soucek gamely continued his defense against what he called “anecdata.” He described an approach Berkeley tried out in 2018, in which it considered candidates’ DEI statements before looking at the rest of their applications. Anyone whose DEI statement didn’t pass the first round was eliminated from the next pool.

“People criticized Berkeley afterward that Berkeley didn’t even consider the applicants’ credentials,” Soucek said. “But I would say that DEI statements are credentials.” And let’s be honest, he said. If you look at the cover letter first, you’re privileging another set of credentials first: people’s names, which can tell you a lot — their institutions, their mentors and connections. This was just another and no less valid approach to narrowing the pool.

Why not anonymize all applications? Khalid responded. In fields like history, political science and computer science, 11 universities dominate 50% of all tenure positions. Whatever they’re doing now, diversity efforts clearly aren’t working. She compared DEI statements with DEI diversity training. “The whole ‘Look into your hearts and say how racist you are’ — that does nothing,” Khalid said. “Painful, excruciating and pathetic is the only way to describe them.”

Simply requiring DEI statements gives a pass to universities for not fixing existing problems, added Carol Sumner, the chief diversity officer of Northern Illinois University. She then raised a question: “Is the statement the problem, or is it the subjectivity of the person reading the statement you don’t trust?”

Richard Thompson Ford, a professor at Stanford Law School, expressed concern that poorly designed DEI encourages essentialist thinking — the idea that all women or members of the group have similar views or experiences. In his view, DEI programs can be “a way to offload responsibility from the rest of the university and take pressure off them for what actually could be substantive policies that are harder and more expensive.”

One thing on which everyone agreed: Schools are failing at real diversity. DEI statements aren’t necessarily helping. Instead of potentially creating new problems, academia needs to fix existing ones.

“We all had the shared view that diversity and inclusion are good but that there are legitimate concerns about how we promote these things,” Soucek said when I spoke to him afterward. Addressing those knotty issues in open dialogue is a good place to start.

Pamela Paul writes a column for the New York Times.

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10 Mar 2024

Column: New QBs coach Kerry Joseph says ‘it’s about trust’ with the Chicago Bears QB — whoever that ends up being

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MOBILE, Ala. — Kerry Joseph doesn’t have any thoughts yet on the Chicago Bears’ biggest offseason decision, the one that holds the key to the NFL draft.

The team’s new quarterbacks coach, hired Friday, doesn’t even know where his office is at Halas Hall. He has been on a whirlwind tour since the season ended, free to seek a new job after the Seattle Seahawks forced out coach Pete Carroll.

Joseph, the assistant quarterbacks coach for the Seahawks the last two seasons, spent one day in Lake Forest interviewing for the Bears job. In between, he was scrambling to get to Mobile, where he’s serving as quarterbacks coach of the American team in the Senior Bowl.

Somehow along the way, Joseph got hooked up with Bears gear and was wearing a team-issued navy hat, navy shorts and gray sweatshirt at practice Tuesday at Hancock Whitney Stadium on the South Alabama campus.

He doesn’t have preliminary thoughts on Justin Fields. Joseph was the assistant wide receivers coach in Seattle in 2021, when the Bears drafted Fields. He has yet to dig in on this year’s draft, in which the Bears hold the first and ninth picks and are in position to select a new quarterback.

“I was getting transitioned to coming out here,” the 50-year-old Joseph said.

It’s the first time he has been an NFL position coach — above the assistant position coach level. The connection is easy to make. He worked with new Bears offensive coordinator Shane Waldron, who came from the Seahawks. The Bears also interviewed Seahawks quarterbacks coach Greg Olson for the offensive coordinator job.

The last first-time quarterbacks coach the Bears hired was Shane Day in 2010 based on his experience working with then-offensive coordinator Mike Martz in San Francisco. Since Day, the Bears have rolled through Jeremy Bates, Matt Cavanaugh, Dowell Loggains, Dave Ragone, John DeFilippo and most recently Andrew Janocko.

It would be overly dramatic to say this is the most important offseason for a Bears quarterbacks coach. There has been urgency to get the position right for the longest time. It just so happens they own the No. 1 draft pick as they prepare to thoroughly examine a talented group of passers, including USC’s Caleb Williams, North Carolina’s Drake Maye (who was a spectator at practice Tuesday), LSU’s Jayden Daniels and Michigan’s J.J. McCarthy.

Joseph, who was responsible for red-zone preparation with the Seahawks, had a hand in helping revive Geno Smith’s career in Seattle as Smith threw for 4,282 yards and 30 touchdowns in 2022. Joseph’s knowledge of Waldron’s system will be critical whether the Bears draft a quarterback or not.

“When you think about Shane and what we were able to do with the (Seahawks) offense, I think quarterback play is about having confidence,” Joseph said. “Quarterback play is just about being competitive. It’s about being smart, being dependable, having a good IQ of the game, being passionate.

“When you think about traits, when you talk about quarterback play and when you talk about Shane’s mentality, it’s just about being connected to the play caller, being connected to the offense. There are some things you’ve got to have and you’ve got to bring to it.”

Joseph was a quarterback at McNeese State and had a 42-11 record as a four-year starter, helping the Cowboys to two Southland Conference titles. He spent time with the Cincinnati Bengals in 1996 as an undrafted free agent before playing in NFL Europe. He tried to make the Washington Redskins as a slot back and then played safety for the Seahawks from 1998 to 2001, appearing in 56 games with 14 starts.

He returned to quarterback in the Canadian Football League in 2003, winning a Grey Cup with the Saskatchewan Roughriders in 2007, when he was named the league’s most outstanding player. After retiring following the 2014 season, he got into coaching at the college level with stops at his alma mater and Southeastern Louisiana before joining the Seahawks as an offensive assistant in 2020.

The diverse background — having played defense in the NFL — gives him a different perspective to teach offensive football.

“It helps me tremendously,” Joseph said, “because playing the safety position, playing that dime (position), playing down in the box helped me understand how defenses attack the offense, how guys fit. So now that I’ve gone back to quarterback, I see it from a defensive mentality.

“Being able to help guys to understand the game, not just from the offensive side but from the defensive side, kind of helped (with) where to put their eyes. That’s what it did for me as a player, and I try to teach it that way with a defensive mentality.”

Joseph will learn where his office is soon, and then he can hit the ground running as the Bears prepare for the draft and install a new offense — quite possibly with a new quarterback. As far as his philosophy on developing a young quarterback, he leaned into some basic tenets.

“I use three things: accountability, responsibility, communication,” Joseph said. “It’s about trust, believing and having confidence in each other. A quarterbacks coach and a quarterback, you’ve got to have those three things.

“Then, hey, it’s about the fundamentals. It’s about developing the fundamentals, developing the mentality to be a good leader. To be a winner. Just willing to compete. There are so many things that I have in my philosophy as a person that I take into the coaching world and into the quarterback room to help develop a group of guys.”

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10 Mar 2024

Chicago Bears zero in on Chris Beatty — DJ Moore’s college position coach — as their wide receivers coach

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Chicago Bears wide receiver DJ Moore could reunite with his former college coach.

The Bears are working to hire Chris Beatty to be their wide receivers coach, though it was not yet official Tuesday morning, a source confirmed. Beatty was Moore’s position coach for two of his three seasons at Maryland, including 2017, when Moore was the Big Ten wide receiver of the year.

Beatty would join the Bears after three seasons as the Los Angeles Chargers wide receivers coach, his first NFL stint after 15 years coaching in college.

He would replace Tyke Tolbert, whom the Bears fired along with offensive coordinator Luke Getsy and three other offensive staffers earlier this month. ESPN first reported the news of the expected hire.

Along with his time at Maryland, where he was promoted to associate head coach and co-offensive coordinator, Beatty was a position coach at Pittsburgh, Virginia, Wisconsin, Illinois, Vanderbilt, West Virginia, Northern Illinois and Hampton. He was the co-offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach under Tim Beckman during his lone season with the Illini in 2012.

A former wide receiver at East Tennessee State and in the Canadian Football League, Beatty started his coaching career at the high school level.

He would be tasked with coaching a wide receivers group that Bears general manager Ryan Poles might look to bolster after it lacked production beyond Moore in 2023.

In his first season with the Bears and quarterback Justin Fields, Moore had a career-high 96 catches for 1,364 yards and eight touchdowns.

But Darnell Mooney had his worst season with 31 catches on 61 targets for 414 yards and a touchdown. And rookie Tyler Scott had a bumpy first season, finishing with 17 catches on 32 targets for 168 yards.

Beatty would be the fifth Bears coaching hire this offseason. They previously hired offensive coordinator Shane Waldron, quarterbacks coach Kerry Joseph and defensive coordinator Eric Washington and are hiring Thomas Brown as passing game coordinator. They also need to hire a running backs coach.

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