February Conferences: Faith Perspectives on Immigration; 'The Missing Girls of China and India'

Two February programs at Samford University will explore critical ethical issues in international contexts. Both are free and open to the public, with convo credit available to students.

Feb. 2 - 4 - Immigration: Perspectives in Theology, Public Policy and Ethics.

Bible scholar and immigration specialist Dr. M. Daniel Carroll will give a series of lectures and participate in other programs at Samford's Beeson Divinity School. He is a professor at Denver Seminary in Colorado and a specialist in international social action and theology. His topics over two days will include: “Ground Rules for a Constructive National Conversation on Immigration”; "Where to Begin the Immigration Conversation”; “Immigration Legislation”; and “Immigration: What Would Jesus Do?”

A panel discussion on Wednesday, Feb. 3, at 3 p.m. will be co-sponsored by Beeson and the Mann Center, with center director John C. Knapp serving as moderator. Panelists will include Carroll, Hispanic Interest Coalition of Alabama executive director Isabel Rubio, and Beeson Divinity professor Osvaldo Padilla. The program will be in Hodges Chapel. For more information on any of the presentations, call 205-726-2731 or click here for the news release.

Feb. 26 - The Missing Girls of China and India: What Can Be Done?

One of the greatest, but barely-noticed, violations of human rights today is the large-scale elimination of females from the populations of China and India. Over the last generation China has eliminated approximately ten percent of females at birth, India perhaps as many as five percent, leading to a loss of tens of millions of females. Sex-selective abortion is widely practiced in both nations, and other causes include sex-selective infanticide, abandonment, and discrimination in allocation of food and medical care.

The Missing Girls of China and India: What Can Be Done? will feature several of the leading experts on these extreme forms of discrimination against females: Susan Greenhalgh, Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Irvine; Valerie M. Hudson, Professor of Political Science at Brigham Young University; Sunil K. Khanna, Associate Professor of Anthropology at Oregon State University; Feng Wang, Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Irvine; David M. Smolin, Professor of Constitutional Law, Cumberland Law School. The conference is open to the public and co-sponsored by Cumberland Law School's Center for Biotechnology, Law and Ethics; Cumberland Law Review; Cumberland Women in Law; Cumberland Christian Legal Society; and the Mann Center. For more information call 205-726-2418 or click here for a more detailed program summary.

Business Exec, Author Cantrell to Speak March 10

Wes Cantrell will speak at Samford University on March 10 at 1:00 p.m. in the Brock Forum of Dwight Beeson Hall. Mr. Cantrell is the retired chairman and CEO of Lanier Worldwide, which he led through a successful merger with copier manufacturer Ricoh, and a member of the boards of Ann Taylor Stores and Wells Real Estate Funds. His books are High-Performance Ethics: 10 Timeless Principles for Next-Generation Leadership and the just-published From The Shop Floor to The Top Floor: Releasing The CEO Within. "Greed offers one of the great - and often fatal - illusions of life," he writes. "It offers satisfaction if we'll only remain unsatisfied, a dull-witted bargain that [ethical] leaders vet and reject." He presentation, which is free and open to the public, is part of the Mann Center's continuing series, the A. Gerow Hodges Lectures in Ethics and Leadership. Convo credit is available to students.

News and Views

Nurses once again are the professionals Americans trust most. Eighty-three percent of Americans say nurses have either very high or high ethical standards, positioning them at the top of Gallup's annual ranking of various professions. They have retained the No. 1 spot in the poll for the last decade. Rounding out the top five are pharmacists, medical doctors, police officers and engineers. The bottom five - or least trusted - are members of Congress, car salespeople, United States Senators, stockbrokers and HMO managers. The December 2009 survey marked the first time the honesty and ethical standards of members of Congress were ranked as "low" or "very low" by a majority (55 percent) of Americans.

Only 28 percent of global companies – and less than half of those with market capitalizations of more than $10 billion – have labor and human rights policies covering their global supply chains, according to an analysis of 2,500 companies by Harvard Law School's Pensions Project and ASSET4. “Benchmarking Corporate Policies on Labor and Human Rights in Global Supply Chains,” finds that even "fewer have follow up procedures; only 15 percent have issued a detailed LHR code of conduct for their suppliers." About 43 percent of companies based in Europe have labor and human rights policies for suppliers, compared to only 23 percent of US companies and 20 percent of Asian firms. The industries most likely to have such policies are those that have experienced negative publicity about abuses by suppliers.

Incidents of health-care fraud are increasing with the downturn in the economy, according to a survey of ethics and compliance professionals by the Health Care Compliance Association. One quarter of respondents reported an increase in the last year in the number of incidents of actual or attempted fraud. By comparison, 13 percent had seen fewer such incidents. The study asked about five types of fraud: illegal kickbacks and Stark (self-referral) violations; services not provided as claimed; services not medically necessary; hospital stays not supported by medical necessity; and reimbursement claims for durable medical equipment.