Deadline: HBS Summer Venture in Management Program 2009

Release from Harvard Business School:

The Summer Venture in Management Program (SVMP) is a week of Harvard Business School instruction that exposes high-potential college students in the summer between their junior and senior year to the HBS MBA experience and the variety of opportunities a degree in management can afford. Participants from diverse backgrounds spend the week on campus living the MBA student experience - attending classes, analyzing case studies, and debating management issues with peers and faculty. This unique educational experience, in combination with a summer internship at a sponsoring company or organization, gives participants a broader understanding of the challenges business leaders face, the innumerable opportunities that exist in management, and the impact they can have on their community and the world through leadership.

In order to attend, a completed application is due by May 11, 2009. Click here for particulars on the application process.

For more information about this program, please visit the SVMP Website.

Best regards,
MBA Admissions
Harvard Business School

More on imperiled Native languages

From the Seattle Times
This on a last-ditch gathering of Salish speakers from the Pacific Northwest.

Merrie Monarch Festival Winners for 2009 (w/ clip)

Posted by our sister site, IMDiversity Asian-American Village:

The results of the 46th Merrie Monarch Festival, held in Hilo, Hawai'i last week. The new overall winners were Ke Kai O Kahiki, and the Miss Aloha Hula 2009 honor goes to Cherissa Henoheanapuaikawaokele Kane.

The Merrie Monarch Festival was founded for "the perpetuation, preservation, and promotion of the art of hula and the Hawaiian culture through education. The festival is considered the world's premier forum for people of all ages to display their skills and knowledge of the art of ancient and modern hula."

To learn more, see: http://www.merriemonarchfestival.org

The fate of imperiled Native languages

For many indigenous people world-wide, language is an endangered species, and when language dies, so, too, in many ways, does a people. I've seen it in more veiled, deceptive circumstances in the non-indigenous world, such as in Italy where the replacing of perfectly useful Italian words by English is a signpost for the Americanization of the whole society. The disappearance of Native American languages, though, is even more portentous, as it signals the absorption of a people into the culture that historically would rather have been rid of them completely.
Kara Brigg's article in India Today is both a perceptive analysis and a call to action.

Should Columbus Day be shunned?

The recent decision by Brown University to rename Columbus Day "Fall Weekend," and to rededicate the day to educating people about Columbus' legacy as a conquistador and the true history of Native American peoples has caused much controversy around town.
The article I've linked to, thanks much to Patty Talahongva's headsup, talks to the precarious position of the prestigious university, which, having taken the decision, finds itself in the midst of the debate between activist students and Italian-American supporters of Columbus.