The Right to Be Racist in College: Racist Speech,White Institutional Space,and the First Amendment

Throughout the post–civil rights era, colleges and universities across the United States have periodically experienced explicitly racist incidents on their campuses. From the hurling of racial slurs at students of color, to the hanging of nooses on campus, to students donning Ku Klux Klan outfits or throwing “ghetto” parties that caricaturize communities of color, these incidents challenge the notion that modern racism has changed to a more subtle form, referred to as color‐blind racism. We place these incidents within a broader context of race and institutions, suggesting a connection between overt racist expressions and the more covert elements of neoliberal color‐blind racism. Through a critical discourse analysis of news stories about these incidents, the website of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, and the controlling legal cases involving racist expression on campuses, we suggest that explicitly racist incidents operate in tandem with neoliberal educational policies and color‐blind racism to mark and reinscribe colleges and universities as white institutional spaces.     

Making a case for personal safety: perceptions of vulnerability and desire for self-defense training among female veterans

We assessed perceptions of vulnerability and the desire for personal safety/self-defense (PS/SD) training among 67 female veterans receiving outpatient mental health treatment, primarily for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) from sexual and/or physical trauma. Consistent with the literature on the impact of such training on nonclinical populations and on individuals with visual impairments, the results of this study indicate that traumatized female veterans believe that PS/SD training would be an effective and powerful addition to more traditional treatments for PTSD. Study participants indicated they believe such training would positively affect their sense of personal safety; promote increased competence in thwarting future assaults; improve their self-esteem, confidence, and assertiveness; and reduce avoidant and agoraphobic behaviors. These pilot results support the development of an adjunct intervention to augment current PTSD treatments for women veterans with histories of sexual and physical trauma.     

The impending transformation of public choice scholarship

I am grateful to Charles K. Rowley and Karen I. Vaughn for valuable advice on many of the issues I address here, and to the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation for its continuing support of my scholarly efforts.     

Examination of newspaper coverage of Hate Crimes: A moral panic perspective

The role of the media in the construction of social problems is well documented in the social science literature. In some cases, the process of constructing social problems creates a moral panic. In this paper, we contend that a moral panic occurred in the late 1990s regarding hate crimes because of the disproportionate amount of media attention given to the issue. From this panic grew a movement to enact the Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 1999. We quantify Goode and Ben-Yehuda’s (1999) indicators of a moral panic by triangulating sample data, official statistics, and editorials/opinion polls. Results suggest that a moral panic over hate crimes occurred in America during 1998 and 1999.     

Background correction in forensic photography. II. Photography of blood under conditions of non-uniform illumination or variable substrate color--practical aspects and limitations

The combination of photographs taken at wavelengths at and bracketing the peak of a narrow absorbance band can lead to enhanced visualization of the substance causing the narrow absorbance band. This concept can be used to detect putative bloodstains by division of a linear photographic image taken at or near 415 nm with an image obtained by averaging linear photographs taken at or near 395 and 435 nm. Nonlinear images can also be background corrected by substituting subtraction for the division. This paper details experimental applications and limitations of this technique, including wavelength selection of the illuminant and at the camera. Characterization of a digital camera to be used in such a study is also detailed. Detection limits for blood using the three wavelength correction method under optimum conditions have been determined to be as low as 1 in 900 dilution, although on strongly patterned substrates blood diluted more than twenty-fold is difficult to detect. Use of only the 435 nm photograph to estimate the background in the 415 nm image lead to a twofold improvement in detection limit on unpatterned substrates compared with the three wavelength method with the particular camera and lighting system used, but it gave poorer background correction on patterned substrates.     

An empirical study of tissue banking in Australia: navigating regulatory and ethical challenges

Collections of tumour samples can be an invaluable resource for medical research. There are, however, numerous ethical and legal challenges associated with tumour banking. While there has been extensive discussion of these issues in the legal and ethical literature, there are few available empirical data in relation to the activities of tumour banks in Australia, their practices around ethically charged issues, and their success in implementing complex regulatory guidelines. The aim of this study was to gain more information about the activities of tumour banks in New South Wales, Australia, with a particular focus on their management of, and attitudes towards, ethical and regulatory issues. A survey of 27 tumour collection and research facilities was conducted using a 55-item questionnaire. There is significant heterogeneity of research methodologies as well as of methods for gaining consent and ensuring donor privacy, and there is general concern among the research community about ethical and regulatory issues related to tumour banking. Heterogeneity of practice and uncertainty about ethical and regulatory requirements is problematic in its potential to hinder research and its potential to generate the space for unethical practice, whether intentional or unintentional. There is a pressing need to address these issues so that tumour banks can be used in the most ethical and efficient way possible.     

Alprazolam-related deaths in Palm Beach County

Alprazolam is a commonly prescribed benzodiazepine. The abuse of benzodiazepines is most frequently seen in conjunction with the abuse of other drugs. Only rare fatalities have been attributed to alprazolam alone. We undertook a retrospective review of cases investigated by the Palm Beach County Medical Examiner's Office in which postmortem toxicologic studies indicated the presence of alprazolam, to further study the pattern of alprazolam abuse. Our review consisted of 178 cases, including 87 in which death was attributed to combined drug toxicity, 2 to alprazolam toxicity alone, 44 to trauma, 12 to natural causes, and 33 to another drug or drugs. Cocaine and methadone were the most common cointoxicants in the cases of combined drug toxicity, while heroin was less frequently detected. There was considerable overlap in the postmortem blood alprazolam concentrations among the groups. The overlapping ranges of concentrations of alprazolam detected indicate that it may be difficult to define a lethal alprazolam range, and that it may not be possible to determine the actual role of alprazolam as a causal factor in cases of combined drug toxicity. This study confirms that alprazolam alone is rarely a cause of death, and that alprazolam abuse usually occurs within a polydrug use pattern. The high incidence of cocaine as a cointoxicant has not been previously reported.