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FRIDAY • FEBRUARY 28 • 2014
IN LBJ’S SHADOW 50 years later, Johnson’s ‘Great Society’ has transformed our lives in more ways than we know, presidential historian says u By Peter Hancock u
After half a century, a leading presidential historian says, President Lyndon Johnson’s “Great Society” initiatives still have a profound impact on the way most Americans live. And, in ways both positive and negative, the legacy of Johnson’s presidency still casts a shadow over his successors in the White House and over American politics generally. “It did transform our lives in ways I’m not sure many people necessarily appreciate,” said Richard Norton Smith, a historian and biographer who was also Richard Norton Smith the first full-time director of the Dole Institute of Politics on the Kansas University campus. Smith, whose career also includes stints heading the Dwight Eisenhower, Gerald Ford and Herbert Hoover
Ron Barrett-Gonzalez, a Kansas University professor of aerospace engineering, says the current mandatory agreement that faculty have with the university concerning intellectual property severs the link between faculty and industry and is ‘flat-out unethical.’
KANSAS UNIVERSITY
Faculty seeking more rights on patents By Ben Unglesbee Twitter: @LJW_KU
Please see LBJ, page 2A
A faculty group in Kansas is fighting for intellectual property rights on inventions that university employees create off campus. The Kansas chapter of the American Association of University Professors is trying to persuade the Kansas Legislature that it’s in the state’s interest to ensure faculty retain the right to patent technology they develop on their own time. Ron Barrett-Gonzalez, a Kansas University professor of aerospace engineering and head of the Kansas AAUP chapter, said the university has every right to patent inventions that faculty create in the course of university research. The problem for him is that mandatory university contracts on intellectual property are binding through the entire year, including the summers, when many faculty leave. His worry is that the agreement could potentially prevent faculty members from collaborating with companies that wouldn’t want to turn over patents to Please see FACULTY, page 2A
THE OFFICIAL 1964 WHITE HOUSE PORTRAIT OF PRESIDENT LYNDON BAINES JOHNSON
Outside Lawrence, gay discrimination already legal in Kansas By Sara Shepherd Twitter: @saramarieshep
Kansas has attracted an onslaught of national criticism over a proposed bill that media often have summarized as allowing discrimination against gays. Lost in the fray has been the status quo: Kansans don’t need this law to legally discriminate
against people based on their sexual orientation, legal experts say. With few exceptions — namely, Lawrence — they already can. “There’s nothing in current law in Kansas that prohibits individuals from discriminating against each other on the basis of sexual orientation,” said Washburn University
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Cloudy Business Classified Comics Deaths
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Low: 15
Today’s forecast, page 10A
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crimination statutes, Rich said. A number of those include sexual orientation as a protected category, but Kansas is not among them. The Kansas Act Against Dis— Bill Rich, Washburn University law professor crimination — which addresses employment relations, public School of Law professor Bill prohibit private discrimination accommodations and housing Rich, whose area of expertise based on sexual orientation ei- — prohibits discrimination is constitutional law. Likewise, ther. Please see BILL, page 2A he said, federal law does not Most states have nondis-
There’s nothing in current law in Kansas that prohibits individuals from discriminating against each other on the basis of sexual orientation.”
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Flu season slowing The flu season in Lawrence and across the state appears to winding down after a relentless strain hit many people hard. Page 3A
Vol.156/No.59 28 pages