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136 Promoting equityAssistant Secretary for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor in the US StateDepartment, a former AI board member, conceived a way out of the impasse.Begin by bringing to trial a random sample of the internees. Unfortunatelythe Rwandan government was unhappy that the sample selected did not includetheir favorite candidates for trial and the scheme was not adopted. Ittook a decade to come up with a system including village courts to resolvethe problem.A few months after the invasion of Iraq, it became imperative to identifythe location and needs of schools in the country. Initial efforts at repair andrehabilitation had been unsuccessful because the schools could not be located— no street addresses were available in Iraq. Using teachers on school holidayfor the survey, we managed within two weeks to find the locations (using GPS)and to gather information on the status and needs of all but a handful of thehigh schools in the country. A later attempt to do a census of the region inIraq around Kirkuk proved impossible as each interested ethnic group wasdetermined to construct the project in such a way as to inflate the proportionof the total population that came from their group.Other projects in aid of human rights include work with Palestinian universitiesin the Occupied Territories, as well as with universities elsewhere in theMiddle East, North Africa, Latin America, and the South Pacific on curriculum,faculty governance, and training. A current endeavor involves workingthe American Bar Association to survey Syrian refugees in Jordan, Lebanon,and Turkey in order to document human rights abuses. Designing and implementingan appropriate survey has presented a huge challenge as more thanhalf of the refugees are not in camps and thus are difficult to locate as well asoften reluctant to speak of their experiences.12.6 Underrepresented groupsWomen are by no means the only underrepresented group among mathematicians.In the spirit of the Scott Award is my commitment to increasing theparticipation of African Americans, Latinos, American Indians and AlaskanNatives, Native Hawaiians and other Pacific Islanders. including National ScienceFoundation and Alfred P. Sloan funded programs for young students(Hayden and Gray, 1990), as well as support of PhD students, many of whomare now faculty at HBCUs. But certainly much remains to be done, here andabroad, in support of the internationally recognized right to enjoy the benefitsof scientific progress (ICESCR, 2013).Efforts in these areas are designed to support what Elizabeth Scott workedfor — equity and excellence in the mathematical sciences — and I am proudto have been given the award in her name for my work.

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