BPR Fall 2024 Issue 2

EDITORS’ NOTE

Silence is frequently conceptualized as the handmaiden of exclusion, oppression, and kleptocracy, an ever-present and suffocating miasma that chokes away hopes of change. But silence is far more than a garrote—in the right hands, it represents the possibility of better things against a present backdrop of cacophony, and even the stillness of a well-ordered political life. Political silence can be worth sticking up for. Many of our worst ideas survive rounds of heated debate but quickly flounder under silence’s damning gaze, while many of our best take shape out of a formless quiet.

One such idea emerges from a painful historical silence—the legacy of mistreatment that many Native Americans have endured at the hands of the US government. Today, Indigenous people continue to suffer from sharply elevated rates of health conditions due both to the systemic inaccessibility of medical care and to a lack of understanding about what care should look like. In “Old Wounds, Ancient Remedies,” Mia Madden argues that, to right these wrongs, the federal government should fund traditional Native American health practices that are both scientifically sound and culturally competent through Medicaid.

Scientific soundness itself is a topic entangled in a silence that can be difficult to break. In “False Discoveries, Real Consequences,” Bryce Vist explores a troubling affliction: the growing body of scientific literature that cannot be replicated. The cause? Researchers’ concerted efforts to tamper with data to achieve their desired results—and to silence those who speak out about it. Per Vist, to restore public trust in the integrity of scientific research, the federal government must begin perceiving statefunded scientific misconduct as what it is: fraud.

Meanwhile, state intervention is required to combat silence of another kind—that provoked by infinite arbitration clauses, which corporations sneak into terms of service, employment contracts, and bank account terms. These clauses deprive Americans of their right to due process, and corporate

Just as state action can be required to abolish silence, governments can be culprits in enforcing malicious muteness. Mateo Navarro contends that Israel’s blatant disregard for journalists’ lives serves to silence dissent about the ongoing war in Gaza and its human toll. What’s more, the campaign to tarnish the reputations of recently killed reporters grants Israel impunity for their deaths. “The Looms We Have Lost” probes the deadliest period for journalists in at least three decades—and wonders how many stories will remain untold because of it.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, state-imposed silences will always be vulnerable to speech from the subaltern. Zoe Yu’s “The Right to Have Rights” explores what it means to be a Hongkonger after the passage of the 2020 National Security Law, which muzzled the formerly vibrant “Pearl of the Orient.” In Yu’s telling, though all may appear quiet aboveground, resistance from below and from within the diaspora keeps the spirit of Hong Kong very much alive.

Ironically, we hope this special feature leaves you anything but silent— whether it be moved or angered, wiser or more knowledgeable. But in the same breath, we would beseech you to appreciate silence when it comes and not to shatter it too quickly. To consider silence is to project a voice into the void, and as Friedrich Nietzsche wrote, to gaze into the void is to allow the void to gaze into you.

— Isabel & Bryce

EXECUTIVE BOARD

EDITORS IN CHIEF

Isabel Greider

Bryce Vist

CHIEFS OF STAFF

Gus LaFave

Alexander Lee

CHIEF OPERATING OFFICERS

Rohan Leveille

Caroline Novatney

MANAGING EDITORS

Harry Flores

Elliot Smith

CHIEF COPY EDITORS

Grace Leclerc

Miguel Valdovinos

INTERVIEWS DIRECTORS

Ariella Reynolds

Benjamin Stern

DATA DIRECTORS

Ryan Doherty

Amy Qiao

CREATIVE DIRECTORS

Thomas Dimayuga

Haimeng Ge

Grace Liu

DESIGN DIRECTORS

Natalie Ho

Hannah Jeong

Hyunmin Kim

MULTIMEDIA DIRECTORS

Matias Gersberg

Mitsuki Jiang

WEB DIRECTOR

Akshay Mehta

DIVERSITY OFFICER

Jordan Lac

BOARD OF ADVISORS

Zander Blitzer

Alexandros Diplas

Allison Meakem

Gabriel Merkel

Tiffany Pai

Hannah Severyns

Mathilda Silbiger

INTERVIEWS BOARD

INTERVIEWS DIRECTORS

Ariella Reynolds

Benjamin Stern

DEPUTY INTERVIEWS

DIRECTORS

Alexander Delaney

Matteo Papadopoulos

Eiffel Sunga

INTERVIEWS ASSOCIATES

Charlie Adams

Chloe Christy

Michael Citarella

Theodore Fisher

Amish Jindal

Matthew Kotcher

Mira Mehta

Maria Mooraj

Raghav Ramgopal

Nash Riebe

Avital Strauss

Ellia Sweeney

Michele Togbe

Simon Wordofa

Charles Wortman

DATA BOARD

DATA DIRECTORS

Ryan Doherty

Amy Qiao

DATA ASSOCIATES

Brianna Cheng

Nikhil Das

Caleb Ellenberg

Alex Freehoff

Chai Harsha

Wesley Horn

Jo Kavishe

Jed Morgan

Na Nguyen

Tiziano Pardo

Sita Pawar

Logan Rabe

Max Robinson

Ariel Shifrin

Shane Walsh

Alex Wick

Jiayi Wu

William Yu

WEB BOARD

WEB DIRECTOR

Akshay Mehta

WEB DEVELOPERS

Brianna Cheng

Shafiul Haque

Nitin Sudarsanam

Hao Wen

COPY EDIT BOARD

CHIEF COPY

EDITORS

Grace Leclerc

Miguel Valdovinos

MANAGING COPY

EDITORS

Tiffany Eddy

Renee Kuo

COPY EDITORS

Vivian Chute

Nicholas Clampitt

Harshil Garg

Jason Hwang

Zoe Kass

Davis Kelly

Andrea Li

Christina Li

Rachel Loeb

Tanvi Mittal

Shiela Phoha

Ava Rahman

AnnaLise Sandrich

Vanessa Tao

MULTIMEDIA BOARD

MULTIMEDIA DIRECTORS

Matias Gersberg

Mitsuki Jiang

MULTIMEDIA ASSOCIATES

James Emans

Thomas Faries

Solomon Goluboff-Schragger

Max Haimes

Tanvi Mittal

Elizabeth Sepulveda

Jack Stein

Allan Wang

Erica Yun

Leyad Zavriyev

BUSINESS BOARD

BUSINESS DIRECTORS

Rohan Leveille

Caroline Novatney

BUSINESS ASSOCIATES

Aditi Bhattacharjya

Junkai Gong

John Lee

Brynn Manke

Manav Musunuru

Jack Plucker

EDITORIAL BOARD

MANAGING EDITORS

Harry Flores

Elliot Smith

SENIOR EDITORS

Hayden Deffarges

Amina Fayaz

Elsa Lehrer

Stephen Robinson

EDITORS

Tianran (Alice) Cheng

Daphne Dluzniewski

Mitsuki Jiang

Kenneth Kalu

Jodi Robinson

Keyes Sumner

Evan Tao

Aman Vora

Sofie Zeruto

STAFF WRITERS

Gigi Alioto-Pier

Phil Avilov

Ophir Berrin

Taari Chandaria

Madeleine Connery

Jacqueline Dean

Neve Diaz-Carr

Dasha Dmitrieva

Jeffery Gao

Wesley Horn

Chiupong Huang

Cecilia Hult

Jordan Lac

Noah Kim

Daniel Kyte-Zable

Adora Limani

Mia Madden

Brynn Manke

Satoki Minami

Kayla Morrison

Julianna Muzyczyszyn

Tess Naquet-Radiguet

Mateo Navarro

Asher Patel

Yael Ranel Filus

Sonya Rashkovan

Annika Reff

Nicolaas Schmid

Siyuan (Michael) Shui

Ellie Silverman

Allan Wang

CREATIVE BOARD

CREATIVE DIRECTORS

Thomas Dimayuga

Haimeng Ge

Grace Liu

DESIGN DIRECTORS

Natalie Ho

Hannah Jeong

Hyunmin Kim

GRAPHIC DESIGNERS

Thanutchpatch (Punch)

Kulphisanra

Ryan Scott

Marie You

PR LEAD

Fah Prayottavekit

ART DIRECTORS

Ziwei Chen

Anna Fischler

Bath Hernández

Margaryta Winkler

Angela Xu

DIVERSITY TEAM

DIVERSITY OFFICER

Jordan Lac

DIVERSITY ASSOCIATES

Alex Delaney

Jiayi Wu

COVER ARTIST

Lily Engblom-Stryker

ILLUSTRATORS

Olivia Bartsch

Ruobing Chang

Kex Huang

Yan (Jessica) Jiang

Yushan Jiang

Larisa Kachko

Paul Li

Sitong Liu

Carmina Lopez

Haley Maka

Sarah Mason

Anum Naseer

Sofia Schreiber

Samantha Takeda

Haley Vallarta-Sheridan

Zimo Yan

Qingyang (Tiffany) Zhu

The Silence Issue

New Power in Name Alone by Daniel Kyte-Zable

Chișinău at a Crossroads by Julianna Muzyczyszyn

An interview with Shai Davidai by Ariella Reynolds

Buck of the Irish by Rohan Leveille The Sahara Shuffle by Elsa Lehrer

An interview with Jen Gennai by Sonya Rashkovan

Special Feature: Silence

New Power in Name Alone

Anguilla should be wary of its newfound domain-name goldmine

by Daniel Kyte-Zable ’27, an Applied Math concentrator and Staff Writer for BPR illustrations by Zimo Yang ’26, an Illustration major at RISD and Illustrator for BPR

AI startups have an unexpected business partner: the tiny Caribbean island polity of Anguilla. In 1980, Anguilla, a territory of the United Kingdom, was awarded the .ai domain name by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA). This fairly arbitrary assignment—while innocuous at the time—has proved a boon amidst the AI boom.

While established technology companies have opted not to register websites with .ai— Google DeepMind, ChatGPT, and Meta all prefer ai.com—many AI startups have sought .ai websites to boost their public stature. Elon Musk’s startup xAI notably falls in this basket. Since 2022, an influx of domain registrations has significantly boosted Anguilla’s economy, with experts estimating that the nation is earning approximately $3 million per month from licensing .ai domains. Vince Cate, an Anguillan who has helped to administer the island’s newfound fortune, predicts that such domains will bring in $75 million—about 10 percent of its GDP—by 2025.

With only 35 square miles of territory and a historical reliance on tourism and fishing, Anguilla has typically had little cash to spend. The effects of this sudden influx of wealth have therefore been significant: Anguilla has used the funds to provide free healthcare for senior citizens, expand the island’s sole public high school, improve its airport, and double its budget for sports and other events. The timing of the boom is equally fortunate, as it follows a period of devastation caused by Hurricanes Ernesto and Irma. Anguilla’s situation is not without precedent. Twenty-eight years ago, Tuvalu licensed its domain name, .tv. Tuvalu used the funds from .tv registrations to finance joining the United Nations, bring electricity to parts of the island chain, and create scholarships. However, while Tuvalu outsourced the management of its domain name to outside companies, Anguilla has taken the matter into its own hands and enforced direct control.

A cautionary tale lies in the story of Niue, an island nation in the South Pacific that missed out on a possible fortune. In the 1990s, Niue sold the rights to its .nu domain to an American businessman in exchange for internet connectivity on the island. “.nu” translates to “.new” in many Germanic languages, including Dutch, Swedish, and Danish, and as .nu websites gained popularity in Europe, Niue lost out on millions in potential revenue.

Bill Semich, the businessman who bought the rights to .nu, has since made a fortune. Niue, meanwhile, sought income through unconventional methods such as selling stamps and coins to collectors and renting out its international dialing code—a choice that eventually led to complaints from citizens who received

unwanted sex calls from Japan in the middle of the night. Though Niue attempted to seek $30 million in damages from the Swedish Internet Foundation—the organization that eventually took possession of .nu—it lost the case. Experts within Niue estimate that if the domain had reverted to the island’s ownership, it would have added about $2 million to annual revenue. As such, Anguilla should be wary of selling its rights to .ai, even amidst a possible future devaluation of AI startups as investors acquaint themselves with the potential limits of AI’s capabilities.

Anguilla’s newfound goldmine is a technology-enabled product of the modern age. Tiny island polities and American technology companies are being bound together by shared concern over a novel type of strategic resource. This link, however, is tenuous—domain names have little connection to the geography of these island states and rest purely on the IANA and its arbitrary naming conventions. The islands cannot control whether a particular domain name will suddenly become popular overseas, and the companies cannot control nations’ randomly assigned internet suffixes. Globalization and digitization have ensured that developments in one nation seldom stay in local waters. Fate has intertwined Anguilla with an AI boom happening an ocean away—but whether it overentangles itself in the promise of short-term revenue remains to be seen.

“Niue, meanwhile, sought income through unconventional methods such as selling stamps and coins to collectors and renting out its international dialing code — a choice that eventually led to complaints from citizens who received unwanted sex calls from Japan in the middle of the night.”

Chișinău at a Crossroads

by Julianna Muzyczyszyn ’27, an International and Public Affairs and English concentrator and Staff Writer for BPR

On September 2, in a village outside Chișinău, Moldova, a young woman, known to her associates as Ana Nastas, handed out a stack of anti-EU leaflets rife with misinformation that had been produced by Ilan Shor, a Russophilic Moldovan oligarch and politician. Just six days earlier, Ana had 15,000 Russian rubles (a little over $150) funneled into a Russian bank account recently opened in her name, using only a photograph of a forged identification card. She was one of many Moldovan citizens regularly paid to attend protests and spread pro-Russian electoral propaganda—and one of the 130,000 bribed for their votes. But her name wasn’t really Ana Nastas, and she wasn’t interested in supporting Shor’s political efforts: She was an undercover journalist infiltrating the ranks of his organization.

This covert operation, sponsored by the independent newspaper Ziarul de Garda, revealed propaganda distribution, vote-buying, and electoral interference by Russian-backed politicians in Moldova on an unprecedented scale. Its purpose? To sway the October 20 referendum that would decide whether Moldova embarked on a path to EU accession or abandoned its European dreams in favor of Russia.

The pivotal October referendum asked citizens whether they supported amending the constitution to enshrine the country’s goal of acceding to the European Union. The results were strikingly close and contested—50.46 percent of voters endorsed the constitutional amendment, while 49.54 percent opposed it. The victory of the “Yes” vote does signal a meaningful commitment to a pro-European trajectory and the goal of EU accession by 2030, but the significant domestic opposition to the referendum implies future resistance to Europeanization. The European Union therefore has a limited-time opportunity to harness the momentum created by the referendum to legitimize Moldova’s European ambitions—even if doing so necessitates concessions on the economic and political structures required for accession. With Russia already invading Ukraine and scuttling

The European Union should look beyond Moldova's economic and social frailties in evaluating the country's accession aspirations

hopes of Georgia joining the European Union, it is only a matter of time until Moscow tips the scales back in its favor. The European Union cannot wait for a more economically stable or LGBTQ-friendly Moldova.

The history of Moldova-EU relations is complex, if short. Formal ties began with the Partnership and Cooperation Agreement in 1994, which laid the groundwork for economic collaboration and political dialogue. Two decades later, pro-European president Nicolae Timofti signed the EU-Moldova Association Agreement, which deepened economic links. Following the Russian invasion of Ukraine in March 2022, Moldova, along with Georgia and Ukraine, formally applied for EU membership in an effort to reorient itself to the West in the face of Russian aggression. Moldova was promptly granted candidate status, with accession conditional on instituting judicial reforms, anticorruption measures, and improved human rights protections. In response, the Moldovan government approved a National Action Plan for EU accession for 2024 to 2027, outlining specific measures to align with the EU acquis across 33 chapters. Accession negotiations opened in June 2024.

Even as Moldova has moved closer to the European Union in policy, its geopolitical and cultural identity has remained shaped by its precarious position between Europe and Russia. Today, the nation is largely divided between pro-European and pro-Russian orientations, often along ethnic and linguistic lines: Ethnic minorities, including Russians, Ukrainians, and the Gagauz, a Turkic-speaking Orthodox Christian group, tend to reject EU membership and support closer ties with Russia. This Russophilic stance is due not only to cultural affinities but also to Moldova’s economic dependence on Moscow.

Moldova’s economy has, in fact, long been propped up by trade with Russia, which Moscow has historically weaponized. In 2006, it embargoed Moldovan produce after Moldova’s government rejected a federalization plan proposed

illustration by Sitong Liu ’25, an Illustration major at RISD and Illustrator for BPR

by the Kremlin. Moldova also relies heavily on Russian energy, creating a substantial vulnerability for Russia to exploit. From 2022 to 2023, Russian state-owned Gazprom cut gas deliveries to Moldova by 30 percent—which, in tandem with a bombing campaign of Ukrainian electricity infrastructure, caused a period of blackouts. Dependency on Russia as a trade partner has forestalled economic development and trapped Moldova in a coercive economic relationship. The only remedy is integration into European markets.

Beyond covertly propping up Russophilic parties and politicians, Russia’s economic and information wars in Moldova have a secondary aim of distancing the country’s values from those of the European Union. Opposition parties frequently weaponize widespread anti-LGBTQ+ sentiment to discredit pro-European President Maia Sandu, going as far as creating deepfakes of her speaking in support of the LGBTQ+ community. Anti-EU evangelism frequently features references to the EU’s “homosexual propaganda” and fearmongers about EU integration disrupting cultural and religious norms in Moldova. These disinformation campaigns impede progress toward human rights for LGBTQ+ people, which the European Union has mandated as a condition of accession. As such, Russia’s covert operations not only push Moldovans away from Western values but also simultaneously drive EU leaders away from Moldova. Moldova’s economic dependence, fear about Russian military presence in the breakaway Transnistria region, and inability to defend itself from a disinformation war waged by the Kremlin actively hamper efforts to develop in line with EU demands. Even still, a majority of Moldovans favor EU accession.

The eastward expansion of the European Union is an essential geopolitical move. For Moldova, joining the European Union represents a path toward security, economic growth, and alignment with Western values. EU membership offers a free flow of people, goods, and services across borders, includes smaller states in major geopolitical discussions, and grants access to powerful, stable Western allies. But crucially, for the European Union, supporting Moldova’s accession means fighting back against Russia’s growing influence, strengthening its eastern flank, potentially boosting the future reconstruction of Ukraine, and promoting democratic norms across the continent. Just as EU membership would liberate Moldova from economic dependence on Russia, it would distance the two countries diplomatically. There is historical precedent for accession weakening ties between Russia and candidate states even prior to EU entry. For instance, Bulgaria and Romania introduced visa requirements for Russia in the run-up to their 2007 accession.

The European Union has witnessed the destabilizing effects of Russian interference in states that express pro-Western ambitions. Of the three states that make up the Association Trio— Moldova, Ukraine, and Georgia—only Moldova remains relatively unscathed by Moscow. For the latter two, it may be too late. Ukraine is in the throes of a brutal Russian invasion that will leave the country economically and socially devastated and likely partially annexed. Georgia recently took a hard pro-Russian shift in a dubious election that saw a radically Russophilic party retain power, largely due to popular fears of future Russian aggression. The promise of eventual accession is simply not enough to reassure citizens and states that their futures lie with Europe, not Russia—and crucially, not enough to dissuade the Kremlin from interfering with, coercing, or actively invading candidate countries. We may never know whether more proactive cooperation with Ukraine and Georgia might have impeded or even prevented Russian efforts to pull these states deeper into its sphere of influence. LGBTQ+ rights and economic stability can come later—if the European Union wants to counteract the rapidly encroaching Russian domination of Eastern Europe, it must act now to prevent Moldova from suffering the fate of many of its neighbors.

“With Russia already invading Ukraine and scuttling hopes of Georgia joining the European Union, it is only a matter of time until Moscow tips the scales back in its favor.”

Opening the Open Letter

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Just after Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, 2023, Shai Davidai stood on the campus green at Columbia University and read his “Open Letter to Every Parent in America.” In an appeal that has garnered over a quarter of a million views on YouTube alone and an interview with 60 Minutes, he argued that some university leaders have been supporting pro-terror campus organizations. What makes this public advocacy remarkable is that Davidai is not a professional activist—he is an Assistant Professor at the Management Division of Columbia Business School. With a PhD from Cornell University and over a decade of research on how people make judgments about ideology and politics, Professor Davidai already has a lengthy CV containing dozens of publications in leading psychology journals.

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An Interview with Shai Davidai

Ariella Reynolds: You popped onto all our devices when your video, “An Open Letter to Every Parent in America,” hit social media just after the October 7 attack. Your message was clear: Universities cannot protect students from pro-terror student organizations. Could you please walk us through what, from your perspective, is happening?

Shai Davidai: Maybe two days after the October 7 massacre, there was a letter that came out at Columbia that was co-signed by two organizations, SJP [Students for Justice in Palestine] and JVP [Jewish Voice for Peace]. In that letter, they called the October 7 massacre a historic win, a historic day. They called it resistance. They kept referring to what Hamas did as freedom fighting and resistance—justified

Interview by Ariella Reynolds ’27

Illustration by Anum Naseer ’25

resistance. This was echoed by the national SJP letter that called October 7 a justified resistance, by all means necessary, using “#Al-Aqsa Flood,” which is the name given to the massacre by Hamas. When I say that these are pro-Hamas organizations, that’s what I mean; they use the rhetoric and the names that Hamas gave the massacre. They justify it, and they celebrate it. There’s no difference between my eight-year-old son and the eight-year-old kids who were kidnapped into Gaza just because they’re Israeli. They’re not soldiers. They’re not oppressors. They’re eight years old. When I say that the university gives them support, I mean exactly that. These organizations are recognized chapters in the university. They get funding, they get space, and they get the stamp of approval just like any other organization. That’s my problem with that.

AR: With groups shouting over one another, discourse seems to have degenerated. In your mind, what is the path forward? How can we protect all students on campus?

SD: First of all, I believe in discourse. I personally went online, and I said that I would like to organize a group of Israeli, Palestinian, and American students and faculty that will call for peace and a two-state solution. I would call for a Palestinian state, and whoever’s on the other side would join me by acknowledging the existence of Israel. For me, that’s discourse. Let’s build something together. I have received multiple emails from Israelis and Jewish people saying, “I will join this,” and exactly zero emails from people on the other side who are willing to acknowledge the existence of Israel publicly.

I think because universities have not set boundaries on what can be said, the conversation is happening between people at the extremes. That’s not how you have a conversation. You need to set some boundaries when it comes to violent rhetoric. That way, by definition, we’d move toward each other. But I’ll be honest with you, it’s hard for me to have a discourse with someone who celebrates Hamas because Hamas has stated a few things: They have stated that their goal is the eradication of Jews from Israel and that they will repeat October 7 however many times they need to.

AR: Thirty-six student groups at Harvard signed a letter saying Israel was responsible for Hamas’s attacks. Days after those groups signed the letter, several students actually retracted their statements, with a few saying that they hadn’t even seen the letter. What are your thoughts on how this happens?

SD: I see this as a problem of identity. People in the United States—and I guess in many other Western countries now but certainly in the United States—buy into an identity and not into values. What we should be doing is thinking about all of our values. What is my stance on A, B, C, D, and E? Then, based on my stance, I would choose my political leaning. But that’s not what people do. People choose after identifying with a political leaning. I am a Democrat, and because I’m a Democrat, now I have to buy into the entire package, A, B, C, D, and E. I have to buy into it wholeheartedly because Democrats, just like Republicans, have a loyalty test. You are not a true Democrat if you are not committed to all five things. What we’re finding out now is that A, B, C, and D were good things, or good in

“I see this as a problem of identity. People in the United States—and I guess in many other Western countries now but certainly in the United States—buy into an identity and not into values.”

my view as a liberal. Pro-choice, common sense gun laws, curbing climate change, stuff like that. But E was the denial of the existence of Israel. People are saying, “Oh, these are Democrats. I’ll just buy into that. I’ll sign onto the letter.” Identity politics has completely taken over everything. That’s a problem because it doesn’t allow for real discourse within the Democratic Party or within the Republican Party. You either are this or that and if not, then you’re not part of us. That is just false.

AR: Finally, what projects are you currently working on? Do you anticipate that you’ll be focusing mainly on research, activism, or a blend of the two in the coming months?

SD: I would hope to just focus on my work because I love my work. But in reality, I’m doing both. I’m teaching, and I’m doing all the activism. I’m speaking to a lot of Jewish communities, mostly young people who are reconnecting with their ethnic identity—not their religious identity, their ethnic identity—and realizing, “Hey, there’s a lot of strength. I shouldn’t be ashamed of being Jewish.” In terms of research, I’m still working on my own research on economic inequality and economic mobility, but I’m also now getting more and more engaged in research on antisemitism because we also need to understand the psychology of antisemitism, understand that this is a real problem and that it needs to be stamped out. I’m a researcher. This is how I know how to do things, so that’s how I’ll do it.

* This interview has been edited for length and clarity. Read the full interview at brownpoliticalreview.org

Buck of the Irish

American corporations dictate Ireland’s tax policy— at the expense of the world and the Irish people

by Rohan Leveille ’26, an Economics concentrator and Chief Operating Officer for BPR illustrations by Haley Maka ’26, an Illustration major at RISD and Illustrator for BPR

Ireland is your favorite multinational corporation’s favorite country. Why? Over the last 25 years, the country has molded itself into a leading corporate tax haven, shielding businesses with subsidiaries in Ireland from worldwide taxation. Drawing on its EU and OECD membership (which allows it to sign crucial tax agreements with other Global North countries) and buoyed by an army of corporate lobbyists, the island nation has pursued a tax regime that maximizes foreign investment at the cost of everything else. The trade for Ireland was this: In exchange for helping companies dodge their global tax obligations, it received revenue and jobs to help boost

short-term growth. In the long term, however, its choice has resulted in corporate dominance over Ireland’s politics and economy. The government has seemingly abandoned the interests of its citizens, arguing in court against receiving $14 billion in avoided taxes from Apple. Meanwhile, the boons of foreign investment are felt across the country, but only by the lucky class of foreign-employed workers, who make almost double the wages of their domestically employed counterparts. With new changes to the global tax regime and domestic inequality on the rise, it is time for Ireland to buck its current economic model and try something new.

Over the past 75 years, the Irish government has had a longstanding policy of attracting foreign direct investment with low taxes. For years, conservative commentators and business leaders raved about the “Celtic Tiger,” a nickname for the super-powered Irish economy of the 1990s and 2000s. Spurred by foreign investment, the country ascended from relative poverty to become one of Europe’s wealthiest nations. From 1987 to 2003, GDP jumped from 70 percent of the EU average to 136 percent, and unemployment dropped from 17 to 4 percent.

The Great Recession of 2007–2009 inflicted pain across Europe, but it killed the Celtic Tiger. Overreliance on US foreign investment in good times meant overexposure to the struggles of American firms in crisis, and Ireland found itself at the mercy of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) by 2010. A rescue package saved the country from bankruptcy, but the average worker lost about 10 percent of their income to IMF-imposed austerity. By 2012, the Irish economy began to grow again, but with the help of new methods to attract US corporations.

To understand the Irish economy post2008, it suffices to understand the actions of

“What did Ireland get in return for selling out its economy to corporations and its politics to lobbyists? Not much.”

one man: Feargal O’Rourke. Hailing from a center-right political dynasty and sporting a background as an accountant and former leader of PricewaterhouseCoopers Ireland, O’Rourke advocated exclusively for the tax interests of the companies he advised. Having gained power after the recession, O’Rourke brokered relationships between his clients (including Google, Facebook, and LinkedIn) and politicians, including his cousin, Finance Minister Brian Lenihan. Under O’Rourke’s guidance, Ireland spent the 2010s creating various accounting schemes allowing corporations to move profits from high-tax to low-tax countries at will. Apple, for instance, used Ireland to transfer almost $150 billion in global profits to Bermuda, one of the most notorious global tax havens, using the complexities of international tax law.

Corporate taxes are, in theory, fairly simple: Companies pay some of their profits as taxes to the country where they make those profits. Multinational corporations, however, are more confusing. How does one locate the “source” of profit when different business divisions are spread across continents? This is the weakness that O’Rourke and Apple exploited. Apple established multiple subsidiaries in Ireland,

across Europe, and in Bermuda, funneling its European profits into zero-tax Bermuda by way of Ireland. Despite being little more than a mailbox, the Bermuda office “owned” the rights to all of Apple’s valuable intellectual property (IP), which it “licensed” to its Irish subsidiary— which, in turn, licensed the IP internationally. Conveniently, those licensing fees happened to sum to about the same amount as Apple’s worldwide profits. Since the Irish subsidiary paid nearly its entire profit to the Bermuda entity, it appeared on paper to have zero profits—meaning it had no taxable income. The result? For every million euros the company made in profit, it only paid 50 in taxes.

The specific loophole that Apple and others used, called the “Double Irish,” was closed after international backlash—but not before shielding almost $100 billion of annual revenue. O’Rourke, for his part, has not been deterred; with a steady stream of new loopholes, scores of tech and pharmaceutical companies are setting up Irish offices. Digital and intellectual assets are inherently mobile: Tax-averse companies can shift these assets nearly at will to minimize the tax bill. New avoidance vehicles used by giants like Google and Apple, such as the “capital allowance for intangible assets,” are so powerful that one IP transfer from Apple increased Ireland’s annual GDP by 26 percent.

What did Ireland get in return for selling out its economy to corporations and its politics to

lobbyists? Not much. The two main boons of its tax scheme are jobs and revenue, but both fail to live up to the hype. Many corporations are merely checking the box when creating offices in Ireland. In 2008, then-Facebook executive Sheryl Sandberg extolled Ireland’s “world-class” talent pool when the company made the island its international headquarters but told friends in private that the operation would be “tiny.” These patchwork foreign jobs also mask deeper inequities in the Irish economy: Poverty rates and income inequality are both well above the EU average, and upward price pressure from foreign jobs has created a wildly expensive housing market. Further, the country has long suffered from a lack of infrastructure investment—despite the billions in corporate tax the country steals from its neighbors, Ireland has no metro system and an ancient energy grid. Political rot has also taken hold in the country. Given O’Rourke’s dictatorial power over tax decisions, little honest discussion about the country’s priorities is allowed. Instead, Irish ministers and their corporate allies regularly quash opposition to the country’s permissive tax laws. When opposition politicians questioned the latest harebrained tax scheme in the legislature, the ruling party condemned their concerns as irresponsible and unpatriotic. With lobbyists writing bills and the economy dependent on the accountants of American corporations, do Irish voters actually have a voice?

Ireland is now in a predicament entirely of its own making. Reliant as ever on multinational corporations for jobs, the country has failed to create an economy based on anything besides tax cuts. A reckoning is coming—and it is not for Ireland to decide when the storm hits. New international treaties have sought to set a lower bound on corporate taxes, which will limit the utility of a tax haven like Ireland. And, any cut to the US corporate tax rate (which President Donald Trump has proposed) will cost Ireland billions of dollars and thousands of jobs. Beyond these practical challenges, there are moral concerns. Billions and billions of dollars have been stolen from governments worldwide—dollars that should be improving the lives of their people, not lining the pockets of shareholders. Ireland now faces a choice: Does it shift toward an economy that prioritizes its citizens and its global standing, or does it stay this short-sighted and self-destructive course?

The Sahara Shuffle

Macron’s move to rekindle ties with Morocco risks severing France’s relationship with Algeria for good

by Elsa Lehrer

’25, an Economics and International and Public Affairs concentrator and Senior Editor for BPR illustration by Fah Prayottavekit ’27, an Illustration major at RISD and PR Lead for BPR

French President Emmanuel Macron touched down in Rabat, Morocco, on October 28, stepping into a city decked out in French and Moroccan flags. He arrived accompanied by a delegation of 130 people, including ministers, business leaders, and French-Moroccan artists and celebrities. Three days of speeches, formal dinners, grand gestures, and a welcome ceremony at the Royal Palace sent a critical message: France is looking to rekindle its alliance with Morocco. This rapprochement follows a rough period for Franco-Moroccan relations marked by French visa restrictions on Moroccan citizens and overtures toward Algeria—Morocco’s neighbor and historical rival. Now, Macron is pivoting back, eyeing Morocco as an important partner for France’s future. However, he must ask himself whether this move is worth the risk of irreparably damaging relations with Algeria.

France and Morocco share deep historical ties—Morocco was a French protectorate in the early 20th century. Approximately 820,000 Moroccans live in France, forming the country’s second-largest diaspora after Algerians, while at least 41,000 French nationals reside in Morocco. However, relations between France and Morocco have soured in recent years, most notably after the “Pegasus Affair” in 2021, when allegations surfaced that Moroccan intelligence had used Israeli spyware to target the phones of Macron and his associates. Though Morocco denied

the accusations, the scandal fueled mistrust in France. A few months later, France halved the number of visa approvals for Moroccan citizens, intending to pressure Morocco and other Maghreb countries into accepting the repatriation of individuals with expulsion orders from French territory. Tensions came to a head in January 2023, when the European Parliament passed a resolution co-sponsored by Macron’s political group, Renew Europe, that called for greater media freedom and fair trials for imprisoned journalists in Morocco. Ahmed Touizi of the Moroccan Authenticity and Modernity Party dismissed the resolution as a “desperate attempt to influence Morocco’s judiciary” and further claimed that “behind the scenes of this decision hides a country which we had thought of as a friend and a solid partner, but the smell of gas has made it lose it”—a less than oblique reference to Paris. This tension ultimately prompted the recall of the French ambassador in Morocco, and following the Atlas Mountain earthquake in September 2023, Morocco declined French humanitarian aid.

In July 2024, France took a major step toward mending fences by supporting Morocco’s autonomy plan for Western Sahara, a disputed territory largely annexed by Rabat in 1975. Morocco still controls nearly 80 percent of the area, including its Atlantic coast, which is home to significant phosphate reserves and fertile lands.

“This tension ultimately prompted the recall of the French ambassador in Morocco, and following the Atlas Mountain earthquake in September 2023, Morocco declined French humanitarian aid.”

The remaining 20 percent is administered by the Algeria-backed Polisario Front, a political vehicle for the Sahrawi ethnic minority that has sought full independence for the region since 1973. The Polisario declared the formation of the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR) in 1976 and has consistently demanded a UN-supervised referendum on self-determination. Morocco’s plan offers the region a degree of self-governance under Moroccan rule, with its own parliament and government, but has failed to win widespread international approval. Macron’s recognition of Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara was therefore a meaningful gesture— France has traditionally taken a neutral stance on the issue, alongside most other countries. France’s position as a nuclear power and permanent member of the UN Security Council carries considerable weight, and French recognition of Morocco’s claim to Western Sahara may be the country’s most impactful diplomatic victory since the United States made a similar acknowledgment in 2020.

France’s desire to secure a valuable ally in North Africa is timely: Morocco is uniquely positioned as a stable partner linking the Arab world and Africa. The kingdom boasts strong energy, industrial, and health sectors—all areas ripe for French investment and cooperation. Strategically, a foothold in Morocco benefits

France’s efforts to regain influence in Africa amidst growing competition from global powers like China and Russia. For its part, Morocco has positioned itself as a key diplomatic and economic player through substantial investments in infrastructure, banking, and telecommunications. For example, the $1.2 billion Dakhla Atlantic Port, under construction in Western Sahara and backed by the United Arab Emirates, has the potential to become a trade hub connecting Africa and Europe to other markets. Alongside economic efforts, Morocco wields soft power, offering scholarships to African students, building mosques in African countries, and promoting moderate Islam through initiatives like the Mohammed VI Foundation for African Ulemas. Moroccan diplomats have also succeeded in gradually breaking Rabat’s isolation on the issue of Western Sahara through decades of negotiation. After previously withdrawing from the African Union (AU) over the inclusion of the SADR, Morocco not only rejoined the AU in 2017 but even successfully persuaded several African nations to establish consulates in the occupied Western Sahara cities of Dakhla and Laayoune.

In Rabat, aiming to fully reboot a partnership that had grown cold, Macron proposed a “new strategic framework” to Moroccan King Mohammed VI, selling it as an opportunity for France and Morocco to address immigration, climate change, and national security together.

“But as Macron has fostered closer ties with Morocco, he has simultaneously accepted alienation from Algeria.”

By endorsing Morocco’s autonomy plan, Macron has clearly chosen a side in the long-running Morocco-Algeria rivalry, and his calculation seems to be that strengthening ties with Morocco is worth the risk of alienating Algeria.

Relations between France and its former colony Algeria have been strained for years. Although France has made some efforts to address the painful legacy of its colonial rule, it has never issued a formal apology for its 132 years of occupation. In October 2021, ahead of Algeria’s 60th anniversary of independence, Macron accused the Algerian government of distorting historical events. He claimed its narrative was “not based on truths” and driven by “hatred toward France.” In response, Algeria temporarily recalled its ambassador to Paris and restricted French military aircraft from using its airspace. In another incident in early 2023, Algeria recalled its ambassador after Franco-Algerian activist Amira Bouraoui, who had been convicted in Algeria of “insulting the president” and “offending Islam,” was allowed to escape to France. Bouraoui had been detained in Tunisia, and the French media reported that pressure from Paris influenced Tunisian authorities’ decision to let her leave. Algeria slammed the incident as a breach of its sovereignty, alleging involvement by French diplomatic and security officials.

Though there were signs that France and Algeria were trying to repair their strained relationship in the first half of 2024, Macron’s support for Morocco’s Western Sahara autonomy plan was the breaking point. After Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune was reelected in September 2024, he wasted no time in taking a swipe at France in his first televised interview. Tebboune openly accused France of genocide during its colonial rule and demanded accountability for the atrocities it committed. Efforts to address historical grievances have ground to a halt, and Tebboune blamed the impasse on a

vocal minority in France that he says harbors deep-seated hatred for Algeria. Adding fuel to the fire, he condemned the nuclear tests France had conducted in Algeria’s Sahara between 1960 and 1966, which left behind toxic, radioactive waste. Some of the waste remains exposed, posing ongoing risks to local communities, and France has neglected to clean up the sites or inform the Algerian government where buried waste remains. “If you want friendship,” Tebboune declared, “clean up the nuclear test sites.”

In response to Macron’s support for Morocco’s position, Algeria has taken the dramatic step of severing trade ties with France. Though intended as a show of national pride, this choice could backfire economically. With high inflation and persistent unemployment, an isolationist approach to trade could deepen Algeria’s economic challenges. Algeria’s economy is heavily reliant on hydrocarbons, particularly oil and natural gas, which have driven much of its economic activity for decades. France is Algeria’s third-largest export destination, accounting for nearly 12 percent of the country’s total exports. Meanwhile, the economic impact is likely to be limited in France; Algeria is a relatively small market compared to France’s extensive trade network in Europe, Africa, and the Middle East.

Ultimately, France’s support for Morocco signals the start of a transformative alliance between the two nations: France is looking to restore its African presence through Morocco’s diplomatic and economic reach, while Morocco hopes to gain more legitimacy in its claim over Western Sahara. But as Macron has fostered closer ties with Morocco, he has simultaneously accepted alienation from Algeria. Although Algiers has historically been a crucial partner, and although France may have a moral obligation to help its former colony, Macron has decided to jettison this relationship in favor of a more profitable one.

Silent Biases, Loud Results: Equity and AI

Perhaps no one has done more to advance Google’s founding principle, “Don’t be evil,” than Jen Gennai. An AI leader at Google for 17 years, Gennai founded its Responsible Innovation Team to ensure fairness, privacy, and safety in the use of AI. Today, Gennai is Head of Responsible AI at a boutique consultancy focused on compliance.

by

Sonya Rashkovan ’27

Illustration by

Anum Naseer ’25

Sonya Rashkovan: You were at Google for 17 years. Can you talk about how your view of the tech sector changed during that time?

Jen Gennai: When I first joined Google, it was during this very optimistic time—around 2007, 2008—in which technology had a lot of promise. I don’t know if it was just my personal nature of being more cynical that made sure I never fell into the tech utopia, like, “Tech will solve everything.” I thought it was going to have the potential to solve many things and make lives easier. But technologies like social media then brought their own harms and challenges. While there was a brief peak of people getting very excited about social media, very quickly it came down around misinformation, the scale of spreading false news, the impact on children, and the impact on women.

As AI was being advanced at that stage, our CEO, Sundar Pichai, had said that Google would be an “AI-first company.” My team, my leadership, and I said that it should be a responsible AI-first company and avoid the issues that social media has caused in the AI space.

SR: What are the risks of AI or algorithmic biases? If a lot of biases are not “in your face,” what are the risks of these silent biases?

JG: Unfortunately, bias pervades the whole life cycle of technology development. It’s about helping people see and understand: What are my personal biases? How do I mitigate them as I design the technology? The data itself can be biased, either by over-anchoring on a certain group or completely excluding other groups—and everything in between. You have to really analyze your data and see how representative it is of a population.

SR: During your talk at Brown’s Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs, you spoke about realworld cases you saw at Google. One was that when searching for the term “CEO,” Google Images showed only white men, which is not representative of what a CEO looks like. How did you identify and solve that kind of problem?

An Interview with Jen Gennai

JG: We jumped on the problem: How big is this? How do we identify it? Who is affected? Is it by gender? Is it by race? And we worked with the product engineering team. They wanted to be careful that they weren’t putting their thumb on the scale and editorializing our image search results either, but something had to be better than what we had. We started looking at data and discussing how the existing datasets were also based on their own biases and stereotypes, whether news stories, Getty Images, or other image sources that were already weighted to be more white, more US, or more Western. We had discussions of what good looks like: Does it look like fifty-fifty? Everyone said, “No,” because that’s not a reflection of the real world, and that would be putting our thumb on the scale. But still, why are we missing women, people of color CEOs? And the response was: We need to build out more diverse datasets.

SR: Election results came out in November. Elon Musk is one of Trump’s biggest donors, and he’s an anti-DEI and pro-innovation voice in Silicon Valley. Is there still hope for AI ethics to remain a policy topic for the next four years? Who will advocate for those whose voices may be silenced during this new administration?

JG: America has about 335 million people or so, and the variety of differences within that populace is what makes it strong, amazing, and creative but also resilient in times like this. I believe that there will be an understanding that the voice of the people will be heard. The fact that two billionaires are claiming to represent the needs of people who are definitely not billionaires, I think, will become clear very quickly.

Many of us have lost attachment to our communities, and this may be a painful way of getting back to that. Maybe it will be an opportunity to get back to the roots of community-based activism and positivity. In this age of loneliness, I think that could actually be a positive thing.

* This interview has been edited for length and clarity. Read the full interview at brownpoliticalreview.org

Interview

You Choose, You Lose

by Amina Fayaz ’26, an International and Public Affairs and English concentrator and Senior Editor for BPR

illustration by Larisa Kachko ’26, a Painting major at RISD and

Illustrator

for BPR

Abortion is a guaranteed right in Nepal’s constitution. However, doctors and healthcare providers often find themselves barred from offering abortion services—not by local authorities, but by laws made over 7,000 miles away in the United States. Like many nations in the Global South, Nepal receives significant US healthcare aid, but this support comes with hefty strings attached. In 1973, the US Congress passed the Helms Amendment to the Foreign Assistance Act, prohibiting the use of foreign aid for “abortion as a method of family planning.” Since its enactment, the law has been enforced as a total ban on funding for abortion and related care, abandoning even exceptions US law commonly allows for, such as cases of rape, incest, or danger to the mother’s life. The global gag rule, an executive order first introduced by former President Ronald Reagan and later expanded during President Donald Trump’s first term, took this policy further, banning NGOs from so much as discussing abortions if they receive US global health assistance—even if they use non-US-provided funds for their abortion-related care.

In Nepal, where 74 percent of family planning aid comes from the United States, these policies have devastating and often deadly consequences. Providers are caught in a web of restrictions and fear, unsure whether offering abortion care—even when constitutionally protected—might jeopardize the critical funding on

America’s abortion wars are undermining the fight for reproductive rights in the Global South

which their facilities depend. Nepal is far from alone. Across the Global South, US policies pressure healthcare providers to follow conservative American legislation—undermining local laws and resulting in countless preventable deaths. To truly support women and girls worldwide and restore the integrity of American foreign aid, the Helms Amendment and the global gag rule have to go.

Fifty-two years ago, the Supreme Court issued its ruling in Roe v. Wade, declaring that the Constitution protected the right to abortion. Although the decision was a triumph for reproductive rights, it also invigorated the anti-abortion movement that persists today, spurring opponents to mobilize against reproductive rights wherever they could. With the women’s rights movement gaining momentum and constitutional protections newly enshrined, openly targeting abortion rights at home was politically challenging. However, reproductive rights in the Global South presented an easier, less visible target for conservative activists and lawmakers.

Over a decade before Roe, Congress passed the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961, establishing the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). The act coincided with a period of mass decolonization in the Global South and, by emphasizing nonmilitary economic assistance as a humanitarian effort rather than a tool of imperialism, marked a major shift in US foreign aid policy. By the early 1970s, USAID supported health initiatives throughout the Global South—including abortion services— as part of its broader humanitarian mission. Anti-abortion groups saw these programs as prime targets for their cause and pressured lawmakers to act.

To appease the domestic pro-life movement, pro-choice legislators sacrificed the reproductive rights of women abroad. In December 1973— less than a year after Roe—Congress passed the Helms Amendment to the Foreign Assistance Act with bipartisan support. USAID swiftly protested the amendment, emphasizing that the Foreign Assistance Act “explicitly acknowledges that every nation is and should be free to determine its own policies and procedures with respect to population growth and family planning.” The Helms Amendment, however, stripped nations of this autonomy, restricting reproductive rights that were, at the time, constitutionally protected in the United States. By doing so, the Helms Amendment transformed

“In a world where unsafe abortions claim the lives of millions of women, predominantly in the Global South, US laws are contributing to countless preventable deaths not only at home but also abroad.”

the Foreign Assistance Act into a tool of colonial control—directly undermining its original decolonial intent.

Despite these concerns, many elected Democrats saw the amendment as a pragmatic strategy to ease tensions with conservative colleagues in a nation increasingly polarized by abortion. But in allowing the amendment to pass, they ultimately turned the reproductive rights of women in developing countries into bargaining chips in an American political struggle.

The Reagan administration doubled down on this approach with the 1984 Mexico City Policy, known as the global gag rule, which barred organizations receiving US family planning funds from providing abortions, even with non-US resources. In 2017, Trump dramatically expanded the policy to apply to NGOs receiving any US health-related funds, forcing many organizations to halt life-saving services. Rural Nepalese clinics were hit particularly hard, and many were forced to shut down, blocking the nation’s most vulnerable from accessing essential care. Due to confusion surrounding the executive order, the quality of Nepalese maternal and child health services decreased across the board, not just in abortion-related care. NGOs that continued to provide abortion services were excluded from consultations with the Nepalese government due to concerns about violating US laws. Even though abortion is legal in Nepal, its government was forced to distance itself from organizations providing abortion care. While President Joe Biden repealed the gag rule, it returns with each Republican president, creating a damaging cycle of fear and funding uncertainty.

Even as the United States has returned abortion rights to state discretion with Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the Global South has moved forward. In 1973, only one of the 56 nations receiving US health assistance permitted abortion on broad grounds; today, 48 of those 56 countries permit abortion in at least

one instance, with 34 having more liberal abortion laws. In Cambodia, Mozambique, and Nepal, abortion is fully legalized.

Despite this legal progress, US funding restrictions are holding these nations back. Although the global gag rule was not in effect under the Biden administration, its cyclic return makes it well-nigh impossible for the low-resourced, stretched-thin NGOs working in the Global South to establish robust abortion services. And with Trump’s second term just beginning, the global gag rule is poised to be reinstated with even more severe consequences. Under Project 2025, a conservative agenda linked to Trump, organizations will be prohibited from offering abortion services if they receive any US foreign aid, not just health assistance. The Helms Amendment, which remains in place, further obstructs access—not only by barring aid-supported facilities from providing abortions but also through confusing enforcement that deters many facilities from offering services they are technically permitted to provide.

In a world where unsafe abortions claim the lives of millions of women, predominantly in the Global South, US laws are contributing to countless preventable deaths not only at home but also abroad. Experts estimate that repealing the Helms Amendment alone could save 17,000 lives each year. Women and girls are dying because of laws crafted thousands of miles away by lawmakers over whom they have no democratic influence. American foreign aid claims to uplift and support lives throughout the world, yet restrictive policies like these treat women in developing nations as pawns in American political battles. Today, the Abortion Is Health Care Everywhere Act aims to repeal the Helms Amendment, while the Global Health, Empowerment, and Rights Act seeks to end the gag rule permanently. If Congress passes these measures, US aid can truly serve its mission: supporting health and dignity, not imposing moral diktats from Washington.

SPECIAL

FALSE DISCOVERIES,

CONSEQUENCES

Bryce Vist

Zoe Yu

Mateo Navarro

FEATURE 32 35 SILENCE

DISNEY PLUS (MINUS RIGHTS)

OLD WOUNDS, ANCIENT REMEDIES

Evan Tao

Mia Madden

Science’s

twin replication and fraud crises

FALSE DISCOVERIES, REAL CONSEQUENCES

require robust state action if institutions fail to self-regulate

WRITER: Bryce Vist ’25, an Economics and International and Public Affairs concentrator and Editor in Chief for BPR

ILLUSTRATOR: Ranran Ma ’25, an Illustration master’s student at RISD and Illustrator for BPR

In September 2024, Eliezer Masliah, the head of the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH’s) neuroscience division, stepped down from his post after Science found evidence of addition, deletion, and mirroring of images in 132 papers he authored between 1997 and 2023. Prior to the discovery of his misconduct, Masliah was a preeminent researcher in the fields of Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases, having published over 1,100 papers that racked up more than 170,000 citations enough to make him one of the top 10 cited scientists in both fields.

Masliah’s research has served as the theoretical underpinning for an entire generation of Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s drugs, most of which have failed. Therapeutics such as prasinezumab, which targets a particular protein that Masliah identified as linked to Parkinson’s, have registered null (no better than placebo) results in clinical trials after years of painstaking research. By repeatedly doubling down on theories he knew had no sound scientific basis, Masliah marginalized alternative research pathways that were unable to gain funding due to widespread acceptance of his hypotheses. It is impossible to know precisely how much money was spent on Masliah’s dead ends or how many lives were lost while scientists wasted time and attention on false mechanisms of action. But the NIH alone spends $3.8 billion per year on Alzheimer’s research much of it motivated by Masliah’s “insights” and the disease kills 120,000 people annually in the United States, to say nothing of research or mortality elsewhere.

Few scientific fraudsters of Masliah’s ilk ever receive meaningful criminal penalties. The state does not shy away from severely punishing financial or other kinds of fraud, even when those frauds impact small segments of the population and have few knock-on effects. To restore integrity and public trust in science, the federal government must put scientific fraud on an equal footing with other types of fraud and prosecute research misconduct assiduously.

Good, reliable science is of vital public importance. For governments, social science informs policy proposals on everything from efficient taxation to environmental policy. For private actors, otherwise risky moonshot projects like the development of a novel Covid-19 vaccine under extreme time constraints can make fiscal sense if the state contributes research funding and expertise. When private actors succeed thanks to government support, they share the wealth through both taxation and positive spillover effects. It should therefore come as no surprise that highly developed states

“It is impossible to know precisely how much money was spent on Masliah’s dead ends or how

many lives were lost while scientists wasted time and attention on false mechanisms of action.”

dedicate huge sums to subsidizing research and development (R&D): The US federal government spent over $185 billion on R&D in 2022, and OECD governments as a whole spent over $540 billion.

But when the state funds scientific projects, it does so under the assumption that scientists use the money responsibly and report their results honestly. Failure is a normal part of the scientific process but fraud is not. When unscrupulous researchers such as Masliah instead use state funds to produce fake research that serves only to advance their careers, they are simultaneously guilty of violating the public trust and of simple fraud the appropriation of government money under false pretenses.

The clearest indication of science’s mounting unreliability problem is the “replication crisis,” or the growing body of scientific work whose conclusions cannot be replicated when researchers copy the exact methodology provided by a paper’s original authors. Unscrupulous researchers looking for landmark results often employ a toolkit empowering them to transform nonsignificant results into lucrative blockbusters. Their lineup includes techniques as straightforward as changing a 0 to a 1 in an Excel spreadsheet or photoshopping images to show effects where none exist and as subtle as p-hacking, a form of misconduct in which researchers add or delete data points until their claimed finding is “significant” that is, having a 1 or 5 percent chance of occurring by random chance (the most common significance thresholds used in nearly all disciplines). Papers from all scientific fields tend to have significance values that cluster around the 1 and 5 percent thresholds a clear sign that fraudsters are p-hacking their data to achieve marginal significance.

The replication crisis would be bad enough if it manifested only in relatively new findings that have not been built upon by later researchers, but a distressing proportion of foundational results have been rendered non-replicable. The situation is particularly dire in fields like psychology. The world-famous Milgram Experiment, which has been cited for over 60 years as evidence that people will commit immoral acts under even marginal pressure from an authority figure, was recently tarnished by new accounts proving that Milgram selectively presented his data in sensationalist ways. Other baseline experiments in psychology, such as the Asch conformity experiments and the Zimbardo prison experiment, have been either fundamentally misinterpreted or outed as fraudulent.

“When the graduate student who uncovered inconsistencies in Gino’s research took her findings to other professors, she was told to drop the allegations or face career suicide.”

Though psychology has probably been hit hardest by the replication crisis, fields traditionally perceived as more quantitatively rigorous have not been spared. A 2021 economics paper by Adrien Matray and Charles Boissel, which purported to show that hiking dividend taxes increased firm investment, was retracted after replication researchers found clearcut data manipulation. At even more rarefied heights, all-star behavioral economics researcher Francesca Gino was placed on administrative leave from Harvard Business School after a graduate student who was unable to replicate Gino’s results found substantial evidence of data manipulation.

The rot even extends to disciplines like medicine, in which image manipulation is the technique of choice. The Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, an ultra-prestigious research institution affiliated with Harvard, was forced to correct more than 30 papers earlier this year after independent researchers uncovered pervasive image manipulation linked to Dana-Farber scientists to say nothing of the Masliah case.

Research misconduct at academia’s highest levels is worsened by a pervasive culture of silence and a total lack of self-regulation. When the graduate student who uncovered inconsistencies in Gino’s research took her findings to other professors, she was told to drop the allegations or face career suicide. Her PhD advisors refused to approve her thesis unless she stopped investigating Gino. Though Masliah was removed from his

position as head of neuroscience at NIH, it is unclear whether he was retained by the agency in another capacity. For their part, young scholars know that success in their fields is highly dependent upon publication in prestigious journals even if they must torture the data until it confesses the desired result.

Academic journals owned by prestigious publishers such as Springer and Elsevier have been caught waving through articles with sections obviously written by ChatGPT with some peer reviewers leaving comments authored by the same source. A paper in Frontiers in Cell Development and Biology was retracted after readers spotted plainly AI-generated images that featured spelling errors and massive scale distortion. One of the article’s peer reviewers, reached for comment by Vice, claimed that image review was not his responsibility.

If scientific institutions are unwilling to self-regulate, then governments must step in. Though some worry that criminalizing scientific fraud will have a chilling effect on research, there is little reason for honest scientists to fear the lawman’s grasp. In the same way that no prosecutor would bring charges against a financial advisor for merely losing a client’s money, researchers need not fret about facing a criminal penalty for an experiment that does not work. But if researchers accept state funds and manipulate their data, fraudulently add or delete data points, and intimidate others into silence, they must be held accountable.

Scientific fraud statutes should therefore clearly designate the research practices that cross the line into fraud data addition or deletion, image duplication or manipulation, withholding of relevant results, and statistical manipulation designed to make nonsignificant results significant and prescribe penalties at least as severe as those applied against limited financial frauds, which tend to have localized effects that entail little social disruption. The first step toward restoring public trust and integrity in science is rehabilitating the reputation of scientists, and the first step toward that rehabilitation is exposing and sequestering those who have caused science to fall into disrepute. Otherwise, we may be doomed to a future of fraudulent results and failing trust.

Addressing a double silence

THE RIGHT TO HAVE RIGHTS

in post-National Security Law Hong Kong

WRITER: Zoe Yu ’27, a History and Ethnic Studies concentrator

ILLUSTRATOR: Bath Hernández ’26, an Illustration major at RISD and Art Director for BPR

So long as we ignore Hong Kong, a global commitment to fundamental human rights and dignity will remain unrealized. If you cherish what Hannah Arendt in The Origins of Totalitarianism calls “the right to have rights,” or the right to belong to a political community where you can articulate thoughts and be understood, you are a Hongkonger. We are fighting not only against, but within, a double silence: one imposed upon us by the propaganda machine of the Chinese state and one we have imposed upon ourselves by way of self-censorship, apathy, and misinformation. From Hong Kong residents to international sympathizers, we must actively engage in open dialogue and solidarity for a common human cause.

In May 2024, 32 tracks of “Glory to Hong Kong”—the unofficial anthem of the 2019–2020 protests—were removed from multiple streaming platforms due to a local court order, reflecting the broader effort to silence not just political dissent but voices of resistance in music and art. In that hollowed void rang the crushing silence brought on by the National Security Law, quietly enacted in 2020 by Beijing, bypassing the Hong Kong legislature. Under its vague provisions, permanent residents of Hong Kong who commit “secession,” “subversion,” “terrorism,” or “collusion with foreign forces” can face penalties as severe as life imprisonment. With such a broad definition, any media Beijing disfavors can be immediately “disappeared.”

The invisible cloak of silence ever thickens as a city once known for its cacophony seems to settle into harmony: Since 2021, all K-12 schools in Hong Kong, under a mandate by the Education Bureau, have had to perform weekly flag-raising ceremonies and sing the official Chinese national anthem alongside a new nationalist curriculum. The dichotomy of voices could not have been starker than on October 1, 2024, when the People’s Republic of China marked its 75th anniversary with a grand banquet in Beijing, while Hong Kong commemorated the 10th anniversary of the pro-universal suffrage Umbrella Movement in the diaspora, from the “Treasure in Decade - Hong Kong Protest Archival Exhibition” in The Hague, Netherlands, to an intimate Zoom panel discussion hosted by Global Hong Kong Studies at University of California, Davis that drew around 200 attendees.

Poignantly, literary and media censorship is a well-worn fact in Chinese history, as it is in global histories of censorship growing out of the processes

“The invisible cloak of silence ever thickens as a city once known for its cacophony seems to settle into harmony.”

of nation-building. The dismissal of literary works between 1949 and 1966 during the Maoist Cultural Revolution and the 1951 murder of journalists hearkens back to third century BCE Emperor Qin Shi Huang’s “burning of books and burying of scholars [焚書坑儒].” Before the 2015 kidnapping of Causeway Bay Books staff and the closure of pro-democratic outlets like House News in 2014 and Apple Daily in 2020, Hong Kong was a safe haven for Chinese writers publishing critical political commentary. Now, the Hong Kong government, complying with the authoritarianism of the Chinese Communist Party, has thrust us back into another wave of ideological purges, sending Hong Kong communities into a panopticon. Seventy percent of journalists in the city have self-censored in 2023, and 900 have lost their jobs.

Since the 2020 crackdown on the months-long pro-democracy demonstrations in Hong Kong—a movement fueled by broader demands for democracy and sparked by then-Chief Executive Carrie Lam’s proposed law allowing the extradition of Hong Kong suspects to mainland Chinese courts—Hong Kong has been narrated as a lament. After months of police brutality and counterforces demonstrating in streets and train stations, residents have resorted to self-censorship and exile, and the international community has mourned the loss of freedom in Hong Kong. Reports of activists being arrested and charged proliferated. Communities and families in exile sit around their dinner tables, shaking their heads at the sobering news on the television. But dwelling on these jeremiads alone serves no purpose—especially when we are urgently facing a government imposing upon the city an illusion of peace, even as participating in primary elections could be considered a crime. We cannot afford a narrative of defeatism—one

where the struggle for Hong Kong’s freedom is reduced to an abstract tragedy rather than a political struggle demanding immediate action.

The action takes place in the subaltern—where resistance thrives beyond the spotlight. Pro-democracy voices, finding local publications and news outlets increasingly impenetrable, have sought refuge in less conventional spaces: Zoom rooms, advocacy and art venues in the diaspora, and private conversations among family and friends. As scholars Fred Moten and Stephan Harney articulate in The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning & Black Study, it is in these spaces that alternative knowledge and new forms of resistance can emerge. However, unlike the poet Li Bai, who exiled himself to escape political turmoil, we cannot retreat forever. Our subaltern space is a temporary refuge—a springboard from which to amplify our voices and press for governmental action. Self-censorship can, if used strategically, become a form of resistance.

The term “Hongkonger” has evolved into a dynamic political and cultural symbol, constantly shifting in meaning. It represents solidarity, resistance, and an identity shaped by Hong Kong’s complex history. Unfortunately, it has also been co-opted by some to signify separatism—whether geopolitical, cultural, or ethnic. When ethnically Chinese Hongkongers reject their Chineseness, they neglect a history marked by dynastic China’s Century of Humiliation, the struggle of a fledgling republic to unify under socialism, and its eventual descent into authoritarianism. On the other hand, the degree to which they reject Chineseness—an act partly rooted in sinophobia, a cousin of Orientalism and one of the West’s most harmful ideological constructions that has now infiltrated even the minds of those it seeks to ridicule—may more likely be a reflection of the level of oppression imposed by the authoritarian government. The

“It is not worth it to silence ourselves this way—through misinformation and apathy— especially when it is a silence we can choose to break. In doing so, we lose the true meaning of being a Hongkonger.”

despotism of the Chinese government, in other words, has reached a point where individuals feel compelled to disown their ethno-national identity altogether. The radicalism of the government fueled the radicalism of the revolution. Meanwhile, the United States, with its own contradictions, watches the drama unfold through lenses of both detached amusement and McCarthyist paranoia. The global tendency to compartmentalize Hong Kong’s struggles—treating them as distant or unrelated to our own or simplifying them for ideological convenience—represents a deliberate erasure, a refusal to engage with the full complexity of the situation.

It is not worth it to silence ourselves this way—through misinformation and apathy—especially when it is a silence we can choose to break. In doing so, we lose the true meaning of being a Hongkonger. It is not about whether one is Chinese or not (which does not even begin to address Hong Kong’s ethnically diverse population); it is about the act of speaking out. As novelist and scholar Viet Thanh Nguyen said, “What seemed to be dissonance at some point in the past will become common sense in the present.” In this unfolding dialectic, the voices of the oppressed—once dismissed as noise—will shape Hong Kong’s future. Nguyen also coined the term narrative plenitude to describe how marginalized communities must fight to tell their own stories. Hong Kong urgently needs its own narrative plenitude. We cannot allow the state, the illusion of the panopticon, or our own ignorance to silence us.

Israel’s campaign against journalists threatens

THE LOOMS WE HAVE LOST

to dash any trace of accountability for the Gaza war’s destruction

WRITER: Mateo Navarro ’27, a Neuroscience and International and Public Affairs concentrator and Staff Writer for BPR

ILLUSTRATOR: Christine Wen ’25, an Illustration master’s student at RISD and Illustrator for BPR

Today marks the deadliest period for journalists in at least 30 years. Tomorrow promises to continue the trend.

On April 1, the Israeli Knesset unanimously passed a law that allows the government to ban foreign broadcast media from operating within Gaza. The state is authorized to confiscate equipment and shut down broadcasting sites if it deems them a threat to national security. Yet, for local journalists on Palestinian soil, Israel’s media blackout has had much deadlier implications. The Committee to Protect Journalists has reported that a staggering 137 journalists have been killed and 47 injured in the Israeli incursions into Palestine and Lebanon since October 7, 2023. Freelance journalists and reporters for the Qatar-based media outlet Al Jazeera have become targets of bombardments, airstrikes, and long-range sniper fire—even when outfitted with blue “PRESS” flak jackets and helmets. Journalists, weaving the truth of attrition on and away from the front lines, are drowning in the deadliest media suppression of the 21st century.

As the death toll continues to grow, Israeli news sources and Western media more broadly have enacted a campaign to delegitimize murdered Palestinian journalists. Labeled as “terrorists” or “security threats,” journalists disseminating on-the-ground information about the ceaseless war in Gaza are denigrated, silencing Palestine’s cries to the world. Many journalists, only recently martyred, are defamed and denounced, the fabric of their stories torn to shreds. As local voices and live coverage dissipate, uninformed residents of the United States become increasingly ignorant of atrocities committed on land far too disconnected from home. The silence deafens, and impunity festers.

On July 31, 2024, Ismail al-Ghoul, one of Al Jazeera’s most prolific wartime journalists, was killed in a drone strike while bearing the unmistakable press insignia. Months before, in the northern Rimal neighborhood of Gaza City, al-Ghoul had been abducted, beaten, and interrogated for 12 hours by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) during his coverage of the al-Shifa hospital siege. Al-Ghoul was one of six journalists identified as fighters for Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad by the IDF, which claimed to have discovered documentation that associated them with the militant groups. The IDF’s accusations against al-Ghoul, which labeled him as an elite fighter in the Nukhba brigade of Hamas’s military, have major holes. One of the most

“Many journalists, only recently martyred, are defamed and denounced, the fabric of their stories torn to shreds.”

conspicuous inconsistencies is the claim that al-Ghoul earned a military rank in 2007, when he was only 10 years old. Instead, suppression of journalistic coverage as the IDF destroyed al-Shifa appears a likelier motivation for al-Ghoul’s forceful detainment.

Less than three months after al-Ghoul’s death, 19-year-old Hassan Hamad, a freelance journalist for the Gazan news organization MediaTown, was killed by Israeli artillery fire in the Jabalia refugee camp, located in northern Gaza. Ashraf Mashharawi, a colleague of Hamad’s at MediaTown, claims that the shell that hit Hamad’s bedroom was “fired intentionally to target him.” For more than a year, Hamad had been reporting on Israeli ground operations in Jabalia, noting the increasing prevalence of tanks, troops, and heavy airstrikes in the vulnerable refugee camp. Prior to his death, he received multiple threats through WhatsApp from Israeli area codes advising him to stop recording Israeli incursions into the Gaza Strip. One read, “We’ll come for you next… This is your last warning.” The threats were not idle: Israeli artillery shells and quadcopter drones had repeatedly targeted Hamad before. His story is evidence of a widespread epidemic of journalistic silence in Gaza: another innocent voice ripped from the fabric.

Yet, nuances in Gazan journalism are evident as well. Hamad’s MediaTown is closely associated with Al Jazeera, where al-Ghoul worked. Al Jazeera is the primary organization providing firsthand accounts of the war and Gaza’s humanitarian crisis and has come under fire from the Israeli government for allowing commentary from Hamas officials without criticism. Al Jazeera is funded by Qatar, a nation that has served as a refuge for Hamas’s political leaders. Hamas has even operated a political bureau in its capital, Doha, since 2012. However, Qatar has been the primary mediator in ceasefire and hostage negotiation efforts. The nation also recently promised to expel Hamas leaders amid pressure from the United States and Israel.

Despite Al Jazeera’s complex relationship with the war and its belligerents, the fact remains that killing journalists prevents any story from being woven for the world, no matter the organization’s background. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is using the law blocking international journalism to isolate Al Jazeera reporters and freelance journalists, a blockade method of censorship that enables a rolling wave of media blackouts in the warzone. Combined with recent smear campaigns against Al Jazeera journalists, actors like Hamad and al-Ghoul are neatly swept under the rug. Historically, occupying governments have labeled journalists as criminals to make citizens question the validity of local reporting. Many commentators believe the current assaults on journalists in Gaza serve to deliberately conceal the wartime destruction of Palestine, allowing the Israeli government to act without facing retribution. In the words of Sherif Mansour, the Middle East coordinator for the Committee to Protect Journalists, “Impunity acts like a virus; it knows no borders and, like violence, it knows no boundaries.”

In Gaza, journalists have faced extreme risks in their mission to promulgate news on the world stage. They move among the 90 percent of Gazans who are displaced and bear witness to deadly Israeli airstrikes, the targeted destruction of 80 percent of Gaza’s infrastructure, and the weaponization of food and medical care. Gazan journalists are instrumental in exposing wartime events in great detail, and Israeli forces have repeatedly and mercilessly marked them for death. Media silence becomes a loaded weapon, breaking down the last pillar of humanity left amid razed cities and falling debris.

Independent reporting is a charge to write the world as it is, not as we hope it to be. It articulates the ambiguous and brings voice to the voiceless. Without it, the stories of Palestinian humanity near the Mediterranean Sea, woven into black and white netted scarves, drape unseen onto the rubble of a lost war. Voices are hushed, the hands of those who loomed the truth long buried under sandy coastal soil.

Through the gray of the conflict in Gaza, journalists stagger forward to relay a simple truth: What is silenced can be forgotten, and what is silenced can be repeated.

DISNEY PLUS (MINUS RIGHTS)

Forced arbitration allows corporations to escape liability for harming consumers and workers

WRITER: Evan Tao ’27, an International and Public Affairs and Anthropology concentrator and Editor for BPR

ILLUSTRATOR: Anna Fischler ’25, an Illustration major at RISD and Art Director for BPR

In 2023, a New York doctor died from an allergic reaction to food served at a Disney World restaurant, despite taking every precaution to notify the waiter of her allergy. Citing the restaurant’s negligence, her widower sued Disney for wrongful death. Disney moved to have the lawsuit thrown out on the grounds that he had signed a forced arbitration clause in the fine print of his Disney+ subscription four years prior. A similar incident occurred in 2022 when a couple was critically injured after their Uber driver ran a red light. The New Jersey Court of Appeals ruled that they couldn’t sue Uber because their daughter had placed an UberEats order that included a forced arbitration clause three months prior. In 2014, a cruise ship employee was raped by a coworker and sued her employer for failing to ensure her safety. Again, a judge blocked the lawsuit because of a forced arbitration clause in her contract.

Forced arbitration clauses are often included in subscriptions, terms of service, employment contracts, and credit card and bank account terms. They state that disputes with a company must be settled by a private mediator, ostensibly a neutral third party, rather than publicly litigated through a lawsuit. Arbitration clauses are not required to have sunset dates, so you

may be permanently unable to sue a bank you created an account with, for instance, even years after closing that account. These “infinite arbitration clauses” silence Americans, denying them their constitutional rights to due process and a jury of their peers while allowing companies to escape legal liability and public scrutiny.

Because arbitration is confidential, for every high-profile case like the ones mentioned above, many more go unpublicized. According to the American Association for Justice, the number of arbitration clauses increased every year from 2018 to 2022. Over 98,000 arbitration cases were filed in 2022, up from under 21,000 in 2021. However, the increased volume of cases did not lead to more consumer wins: The total success rate for plaintiffs was 0.7 percent in 2022, down from 3.4 percent in the year prior.

The reason for this low success rate becomes clear when we look at who is doing the arbitrating—not neutral judges and juries but corporate lawyers biased by close ties to the companies. Defendant companies can steer cases toward arbitrators of their choosing, and arbitrators who want to be hired again are incentivized to treat the company favorably. The whole system is one giant conflict of interest.

“As account-based services like Disney+ gather more and more names into their sinister black books, consumers sign away their right to a fair trial and unwittingly silence themselves.”

This rigged system relies on consumers and employees not reading or understanding arbitration clauses buried in the fine print, which calls into question the integrity of their consent. A 2024 survey of around 1,000 American consumers found that 97 percent had created an account that included an arbitration agreement, but most either did not know about it or did not understand what it meant, believing they still had the right to a class-action lawsuit.

Since 2011, the Supreme Court has issued a slew of decisions consistently expanding the power of arbitration clauses. In one such case in 2023, Coinbase, Inc. v. Bielski, the majority ruled that district courts must pause litigation if the company appeals the arbitrability of the case. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote in a dissenting opinion that the Court had invented “a new stay rule perpetually favoring one class of litigants—defendants seeking arbitration.”

Corporate consolidation has further broadened the scope of arbitration clauses. Because of conglomeration, a consumer who signs one company’s infinite arbitration clause could be precluded from suing any distant cousins in its corporate family. For example, in 2020, a court ruled that a customer could not sue DirecTV for making allegedly illegal telemarketing calls since she had signed an arbitration clause with AT&T Mobility, and both LLCs were affiliates of AT&T, Inc.

Moreover, subscription services are being newly adopted by nearly every company, from Tesla to HP. Unlike traditional product sales, subscription services are contractual, giving companies greater leeway to insert arbitration clauses. As account-based services like Disney+ gather more and more names into their sinister black books, consumers sign away their right to a fair trial and unwittingly silence themselves.

The growing power of corporations has resulted in a legal system more closely resembling feudal Europe than a modern liberal democracy. As in medieval times, workers and consumers must indenture themselves to rigged contracts simply to access employment or basic goods and services. The constitutional rights to due process and to a jury of one’s peers have fallen into the unaccountable hands of a techno-capitalist aristocracy. Without greater accountability, corporations will continue to abuse consumers and workers. The federal government must use antitrust action to end infinite arbitration clauses before we retrogress into the Dark Ages.

The United States has an obligation to fund

OLD WOUNDS, ANCIENT REMEDIES

Native American traditional healing practices

to rectify health disparities and historical harms

WRITER: Mia Madden ’27, Applied Math-Economics concentrator and Staff Writer for BPR

ILLUSTRATOR: Carmina Lopez ’25, an Illustration major at RISD and Illustrator for BPR

“I knew immediately that I was in the right place. A traditional practitioner did prayers for me. They shared some songs with me. They put me in the sweat lodge and I could identify with those ceremonies. And from that day moving forward, I was able to reconnect to my spiritual and cultural upbringing,” said Emery Tahy of his experience with the Friendship House, a Native-led recovery treatment center. Tahy explained that his experiences with addiction and recovery are inseparable from his experience as a Native American and that traditional medicine played a transformative role in his healing. For many Native Americans, stories like Tahy’s are familiar—and amplified by the deep cultural disconnect many Indigenous communities face.

The trust responsibility to American Indians and Alaska Natives—a legal obligation between the government and Native Americans built from historical treaties—requires that the US government “[ensures] the highest possible health status for Indians and urban Indians and to provide all resources necessary to effect that policy.” However, the state of American Indian/Alaska Native (AI/AN) healthcare in the United States is dire. The Indian Healthcare Service (IHS), the federal agency that provides medical care to 2.8 million Native Americans through a network of hospitals, clinics, and health centers across the country, is chronically underfunded. As a

“During

the height of the opioid crisis, the Native American community saw overdose deaths reach a rate almost three times that of white Americans.”

result, its hospitals struggle to find staff and provide adequate care. Native Americans experience disproportionately high rates of chronic conditions such as heart disease, obesity, and diabetes, as well as mental health conditions. Studies estimate that one in five Native American young adults (18–25) have a substance use disorder, 40 percent higher than the national average. During the height of the opioid crisis, the Native American community saw overdose deaths reach a rate almost three times that of white Americans. The US obligation to ensure the health of Native Americans is clearly being neglected, yet many policymakers remain silent about the issue.

Funding is not the only issue, however. As patients like Tahy explain, the Native American experience with addiction is also a result of the prejudice, racism, and segregation felt by their communities. For example, poverty rates and pollution tend to be higher in Indigenous communities. These same communities tend to lack access to affordable, quality healthcare and are disproportionately uninsured. Native youth have fewer protective factors—healthy and secure relationships, access to quality healthcare, bicultural competence, and participation in school, as well as hobbies or activities—and more risk factors—including discrimination, alienation from broader US culture, generational trauma, and personal experience with violence—for substance use disorders than other youth. This means that Native American youth are left especially vulnerable to substance use disorders. Culturally competent care promotes protective factors by engaging family members, recognizing cultural differences, encouraging discussions about trauma, and uplifting aspects of Native cultures.

Traditional healing is care rooted in tribal values—addressing physical, emotional, spiritual, and mental health needs. Although different tribes have their own unique implementations of traditional healing, they all revolve around these four cardinal aspects of health. Examples of traditional healing practices include participating in talking and healing circles, making art, preparing and eating Indigenous food, storytelling, and using sweat lodges. Despite the differences between traditional healing and Western medicine, the two do not oppose each other. Both can be leveraged to comprehensively treat patients.

Many tribal leaders have claimed that Western medical practices alone cannot be used to treat many Native Americans—and have been proven right. In fact, traditional healing practices, when integrated into addiction

“Federal and state governments must expand Medicaid funding for traditional healing practices and accessible community-based solutions that put Native people first.”

recovery, have proven to lead to higher engagement and improved outcomes for Native Americans. In urban communities, where Indigenous patients come from more diverse backgrounds, treatment plans that combine Western and traditional practices have been especially successful. Cultural identity and spirituality are critical aspects of substance abuse recovery for Native peoples. As a licensed therapist and member of the Lone Pine Paiute-Shoshone Tribe, Kiana Maillet explains, “It is vital that we honor our traditional ways of healing… Without it, we are missing a piece of who we are.”

Until recently, affordable care of this kind was inaccessible to many Native Americans. But in October 2024, California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Oregon started a two-year pilot program that expanded Medicaid coverage to traditional healing practices provided by the IHS. The National Council of Urban Indian Health recognized this expansion as a landmark on the journey toward improved health outcomes and the growth of culturally appropriate healing practices. However, funding and accessibility remain paramount issues for Native Americans and the IHS. For example, an estimated 70,000 AI/AN people are eligible but not enrolled in Medicaid. This does not include those who are not enrolled and do not have access to IHS services.

To make matters worse, during President Donald Trump’s first term, his administration allowed states to shrink Medicaid eligibility by expanding Section 1115 demonstration policies. These policies allow states more flexibility in implementing Medicaid programs by granting them the ability to limit retroactive eligibility, impose work and community engagement requirements, and implement flexible benefit designs with capped funding models. As a result, some states adopted restrictive Medicaid policies that

limited access. Policy changes such as these disproportionately hinder access to Medicaid for Native Americans, abrogating the federal government’s trust responsibility. Tribal leaders advocated for exemption from these policies, but results have been inconsistent across states and limited largely to members of federally recognized tribes. Given Trump’s return to office, federal and state policy options may become even more limited.

Some tribes have begun experimenting with community-based healthcare solutions rather than relying on underfunded IHS hospitals. Community clinics have improved access to consistent, reliable healthcare for Native Americans and represent the self-reliance that tribal members desire after generations of mistreatment at the hands of the federal government. These projects have relied on a variety of funding sources such as grants, nonprofit organizations, Covid-19 relief funds, and tribal money—particularly profits from casinos. However, many tribes do not have access to fund stockpiles and are still struggling to make do with federally funded care.

The recent expansions of Medicaid in California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Oregon are steps in the right direction, but there is still a long way to go to successfully uphold the commitments made to support the health of Native peoples in the United States. Federal and state governments must expand Medicaid funding for traditional healing practices and accessible community-based solutions that put Native people first. In order to wholly fulfill their obligations, all states should make traditional healing Medicaid eligible and boost AI/AN Medicaid enrollment. It is nonnegotiable that health disparities in the United States must be addressed in more holistic ways to promote the health and well-being of the Native American population.

What’s at Steak

Cultivated meat is not a cure-all for the ills of

animal agriculture

by Nicholas Clampitt ’26, a Political Science and Science, Technology, and Society concentrator and Copy Editor for BPR

illustration by Paul Li ’28, a prospective Architecture major at RISD and Illustrator for BPR

Against the backdrop of a rapidly growing market for plant-based alternatives, an even bolder product has emerged: lab-grown, or cultivated, meat. Industry trailblazers like GOOD Meat are attempting to produce animal flesh through nonviolent means with the hope of ushering in an era of “slaughter-free” meat. The process entails extracting animal stem cells, which are then “cultivated” in bioreactors to create muscle, fat, and connective tissue—the three components of meat. The final product emulates the savory, juicy mouthfeel of traditional meat while ostensibly avoiding the harms of conventional production.

A driver of this innovation has been the increase in public disillusionment with the meat market, which treats animals as inanimate products that can be subjected to gravely inhumane conditions. With roughly 140,000 chickens alone slaughtered every minute, the scale of the global market is elephantine. Further discontent stems from the vast quantities of land and water that meat production requires, as well as the remarkable 14.5 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions it yields.

In the summer of 2023, the United States— the world’s top producer of beef and chicken— greenlit the sale of cultivated meat from two California companies in exclusive restaurants. The eventual aim is to make such alternatives mainstream, address the world’s growing appetite for protein, and appeal to mindful meat eaters. However, the cultivated meat industry is by no means a silver bullet. The need for a viable alternative to the current system of meat production is clear—but before transitioning to an entirely new industry with hefty issues of its own, we must take steps to improve animal agriculture as it stands.

There are various ethical, environmental, and political factors that make the lab-grown meat industry a less-than-perfect solution to the ills of animal agriculture. For starters, the production of cultivated meat currently requires

deriving stem cell cultures from fetal bovine serum (FBS), a substance harvested from cow fetuses during the slaughter of their mothers, yet cultivated meats are advertised as “slaughter-free.” Although companies are beavering away to find alternatives, extraordinary advancements in biochemical engineering will be necessary before cultivated meat can be produced at scale without FBS.

Moreover, the current environmental impact of cultivated meat remains unclear. While labgrown meat would certainly eliminate much of the methane generated by cattle, it still requires incredible scaling to manufacture for mass consumption, which, through carbon dioxide emissions, may outpace the long-term warming impact of beef production. The intense purification process cultivated meat must undergo further pushes its global warming potential “orders of magnitude higher” than standard beef production—even before accounting for transportation and product loss, both of which would contribute to this incipient industry’s carbon footprint as they do with traditional meat.

Furthermore, cultivated meat will have to clear huge sociopolitical hurdles before mass consumption can occur. Even with aggressive growth estimates topping out at a mere half of 1 percent share of the meat market by 2030, the industry has nonetheless faced incessant opposition. Pushback from the traditional meat industry, which argues that cultivated meat will undercut cattle ranchers, has prompted preemptive bans in Florida, Alabama, and Iowa. Representative Dean Black (R-FL) went so far as to deem lab-grown meat sacrilegious, declaring, “[Cultivated] meat is not meat… it is made by man, real meat is made by God Himself… If you really want to try the nitrogen-based protein paste, go to California.” Moreover, meat eaters and vegans alike have reportedly found cultivated meat “disgusting.” Although there is greater acceptance when consumers are informed about the technology and its

advantages, it is unlikely this will outpace the involuntary inhibitions Americans hold about lab-grown meat. As such, cultivated meat will not be the panacea for the flaws of meat production. Relying on flashy, high-tech alternatives is not the solution and overlooks the need for broader, more sustainable changes across agriculture. Real change needs to be made to food production as it stands today—and science can play a vital role in these efforts. Capital must be directed toward innovative technologies and practices that can increase agricultural productivity and sustainability. Additionally, animal husbandry and crop cultivation themselves can be transformed. Integrated farming is a system that combines livestock and crop production to fulfill both ecological and economic demands. It incorporates methods such as allowing livestock to graze on crop remnants, fertilizing crops with manure, and having animals assist with weed control. Animals on integrated farms enjoy increased outdoor access, a lower risk of contracting infectious diseases, and less psychological distress. Using integrated production, farmers can improve biological diversity, strengthen the long-term productivity of their farms, and increase cost-effectiveness—all while subverting the harsh realities faced by animals in factory farms. The US government should incentivize transitioning to these practices through the farm subsidies that currently line corporate pockets. However, such an approach will not work without first undermining Big Meat’s harmful consolidation of the market and control of public policy. Small, local farmers and laborers across all sectors of production need to be central to these efforts. Furthermore, high-income countries at large must reduce their meat consumption if they hope to meet climate change goals and ensure the future of food security. A solution to the global food crisis cannot be made artificially—instead, our food systems must undergo transformations rooted in science, sustainability, and, above all, reality.

The Choice is Nuclear

Biden’s reversal on arms control threatens to usher in an era of nuclear instability

by Jordan Lac ’27, an International and Public Affairs and Applied Math concentrator and Diversity Officer and Staff Writer for BPR

illustration by Oli Bartsch ’26, an Illustration major at RISD and Illustrator for BPR

The year is 1979. A young senator from Delaware walks into the Kremlin to discuss nuclear arms control amid the Cold War. He would go on to be an outspoken advocate for nuclear nonproliferation and arms control for most of his long career. Fast forward to 2017: The same man emphatically stated, “As a nation, I believe we must keep pursuing the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons—because that is the only surety we have against the nightmare scenario becoming reality.”

But today, the proliferation of nuclear weapons has only accelerated. A single detonated warhead would still plunge the world into an unequivocal hell. Arms control works to mitigate this risk by building confidence among all governments that nuclear powers hold the mutual belief that nuclear wars can never be won and must never be fought.

Yet that senator—President Joe Biden— seems to have changed his priorities right as he stepped into the role of commander-in-chief. While the subtleties of Biden’s nuclear proliferation policy pale in comparison to President Donald Trump’s brash and unpredictable nuclear musings, Biden’s ideological discontinuity on nuclear weapons should nonetheless be scrutinized. Neglect of arms control is not neutral. Biden has doomed the current arms control regime to a silent death as the United States and the world rapidly forget their commitment to the eventual elimination of nuclear weapons.

The nuclear landscape in 2020 did not evoke optimism, largely due to many Trump-era policy changes. Iran had stopped limiting its uranium enrichment and severely curtailed International Atomic Energy Agency inspections in the wake of the United States reneging on the Iran nuclear deal two years prior. The United States had

withdrawn from several key arms control agreements, and negotiations over others had fallen through. The Pentagon had reversed a decadelong policy of disclosing how many nuclear weapons were in its arsenal with no explanation.

Biden lived up to the title of “lifelong champion of nuclear arms control” during his presidential campaign. He advocated for reduced reliance on nuclear weapons, suggested budget cuts to the Trump administration’s nuclear spending, and shifted to a “no first use” policy. Promises of a return to the Iran nuclear deal and prioritization of denuclearizing North Korea left many nuclear security experts hopeful that the next administration would be a step in the right direction for nonproliferation.

A president who had long supported nonproliferation and appeared to understand the importance of arms control in making the world safer seemed sure to promote progress. In particular, many anticipated cuts to the over $1.7 trillion nuclear modernization program that had bloated under Trump. The program proposed building new types of nuclear weapons to “expand” deterrence options despite proponents providing no evidence that current capabilities were insufficient. Near the beginning of his administration, Biden initiated a months-long review of US nuclear strategy by the Pentagon, producing the 2022 Nuclear Posture Review (NPR). For those watching to see how Biden would approach nuclear issues, this was his opportunity to set American nuclear policy back on the track of arms reduction.

Yet, the opposite happened. The United States still reserves the right to the first use of nuclear weapons, and Biden moved forward with the nuclear modernization program, which today is billions of dollars over budget and years behind schedule. What changed?

Soon after entering the Oval Office, Biden was confronted with a tumultuous international security landscape: a warmongering Russia, an increasingly belligerent China, and a perennially

“But today, the proliferation of nuclear weapons has only accelerated. A single detonated warhead would still plunge the world into an unequivocal hell.”

destabilized Middle East. With Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, a major nuclear power had turned its revisionist aims into military aggression against a sovereign state. In the face of this new reality of emerging threats and noncooperation, Biden and his administration have prioritized increasing capabilities over arms control.

Compounding the pressure on Biden to continue strengthening the American nuclear arsenal was the threat posed by China’s expanding and diversifying nuclear capabilities. The 2022 NPR explicitly mentioned China as “the overall pacing challenge for US defense planning and a growing factor in evaluating our nuclear deterrent.” To many in the national security sphere, having a strong nuclear deterrent seemed much more pressing than arms control, and the Biden administration agreed.

However, arms control cannot wait until strategic competition has subsided and international security challenges are resolved. Biden’s advocacy as a senator during the height of the Cold War was a powerful statement on the importance of nuclear arms control in mitigating risk, especially in the face of great power competition. Today, that competition has returned. Nearly all nuclear states are growing their arsenals, and the world’s major powers are engaged in an arms race that no politician seems to want to stop.

The United States is actively contributing to the escalation of the arms race instead of trying to curtail it, signaling to competitors like

“With each dollar poured into building a new submarine or innovating a new missile, the risk of one day having to use them grows.”

Russia and China that it is no longer interested in the stability of mutually assured destruction and would rather try to gain nuclear superiority. This prompts adversaries to believe that one day, their opponent might strike them first. A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson recently accused the United States of being the aggressor, pointing to its nuclear modernization and firstuse policy. No nuclear-armed country seems to believe that “a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought,” and the mutual understanding of the stability of deterrence appears to be dead.

Today, we are building new weapons, but America is not any safer. Adding new weapons has not and will not fundamentally change America’s ability to deter attacks. Rather, massively increasing our arsenal has caused a costly and destabilizing cycle of convincing every other adversary to do the same. With each dollar poured into building a new submarine

or innovating a new missile, the risk of one day having to use them grows.

After a Trump presidency that destabilized nuclear norms, the United States needed a stabilizing Biden administration that reestablished a commitment to arms control. Biden had the opportunity to reverse course when he entered office and have the United States resume its place as a leader in nonproliferation efforts. Instead, he failed to change other nations’ beliefs that the world’s leading superpower, and the only country to have ever used a nuclear weapon, is no longer committed to arms control—and that they shouldn’t be either.

This is how Biden has helped to passively usher in an era where, in his own words, we are once again facing “the prospect of Armageddon.” Joe Biden, once a champion of arms control, went silent at the culmination of his long career. Unfortunately for the rest of the world, that is Biden’s nuclear legacy.

How Supermarkets Failed U.S.

Supermarkets’ anticompetitive practices breed food deserts in the United States

by Brynn Manke ’28, a Political Science and Economics concentrator and Staff Writer and Business Associate for BPR

illustrations by Tiffany Zhu ’25, an Illustration major at RISD and Illustrator for BPR

For roughly a century, supermarkets have dominated everyday Americans’ shopping routines. We buy medicine from their pharmacies, vegetables from their produce sections, bread from their bakeries, and cleaning supplies from their aisles. A hallmark of convenience and capitalism, the supermarket has undeniably established itself as a necessity in the 21st century. Yet this convenience is enjoyed unequally: 18.8 million Americans live in areas with low access to supermarkets, in part because when a supermarket chain closes a location, it can, and often does, block competitors from taking its place in a bid to redirect customers to the chain’s other

locations. In high-poverty areas, this practice creates widespread food insecurity. How can we begin to fill the voids shuttered supermarkets leave behind? The answer may lie in federal antitrust law.

In the wake of a supermarket’s closure, two major corporate practices perpetuate food insecurity. Supermarket chains may impose restrictive “scorched-earth covenants in their deeds of sale that [forbid] any future owner from operating or allowing a supermarket at that location.” Or, they may “simply leave the building vacant,” a practice known as “going dark,” which similarly prevents competitors from using that location to provide services to former customers.

These practices form part of a discriminatory process dubbed “supermarket redlining”—a consequence of a campaign perpetuated by the Federal Housing Administration from the 1930s to the late 1960s that drove Black people to urban centers and facilitated “white flight” to the suburbs. The redlined parts of town, where most minority populations were forced to reside, were deemed “unappealing for major supermarket chains.” As a result, supermarkets abandoned Black neighborhoods with disproportionately high poverty rates, following their more profitable white customers into the suburbs. As

supermarkets left, other companies were either unwilling or unable to replace them due to restrictive covenants and going dark, and food deserts emerged in their wake.

Disparities in supermarket access remain significant today. In 2002, there were roughly four times as many supermarkets in predominantly white areas compared to mostly Black ones. For instance, a 2018 study found that 31.5 percent of Black Baltimore residents lived in food deserts, or “Healthy Food Priority Areas,” compared to just 8.9 percent of the city’s white residents.

Some areas have taken steps to combat this crisis. A 2018 Washington, DC law prohibits both scorched-earth covenants and going dark; an encouraging report found that 20 new

“Food deserts, scorched-earth covenants, and going dark are all consequences of redlining policies and failing antitrust law.”

Hardware & Supply Corp., a New Jersey District Court defined the market for a single grocery store as both Medford and Marlton, two adjacent towns. This definition allowed the court to declare that a supermarket in Marlton had violated a Medford store’s restrictive covenant, which prohibited a competing supermarket from opening nearby. Decisions like this can be quite damaging, especially when imposed on low-income Americans, who are both less likely to live in neighborhoods that contain supermarkets and less likely to have consistent access to transportation. Taking these facts into account, the geographic market for a grocery store must be more narrowly defined in antitrust decisions to account for individuals who cannot conceivably travel far for their groceries.

starting a business in the near vicinity,” concluding, “restrictive covenants may increase business activity.” Ultimately, the majority reaffirmed the legitimacy of scorched-earth covenants, even when they pose a detriment to the well-being of low-income communities. Today, New Brunswick is the 13th most severe food desert out of 50 in the state of New Jersey.

supermarkets opened in DC within five years of the law’s enactment. In Washington State, the state Attorney General forced the grocery store chain Albertsons to remove a scorched-earth covenant that had transformed Bellingham’s Birchwood neighborhood into a food desert for eight years—a “huge victory for the community.”

However, legislators and activists fighting for similar progress face setbacks from courts that consider the impacts of anticompetitive practices from the perspective of “the average consumer”—a middle-class American with access to a vehicle or public transportation and enough expendable time to travel across town for groceries. A court must define a business’s market to assert that it is violating antitrust law, and the assumption that shoppers have access to transportation leads many courts to label entire cities rather than distinct neighborhoods as markets. In Acme Markets v. Wharton

Even when courts do recognize that scorched-earth covenants and going dark might negatively impact low-income Americans, they often fail to curb these harmful anticompetitive practices. In the 1980s in New Brunswick, New Jersey, the supermarket Davidson Bros. imposed a restrictive covenant declaring that its closing location “shall not be used as and for a supermarket or grocery store of a supermarket type, however designated, for a period of forty (40) years.” Ten years later, in Davidson Bros., Inc. v. D. Katz & Sons, Inc., the New Jersey Supreme Court rejected the argument that “there is need for a supermarket for some unspecified number of low and middle-income residents who presumably do not drive.” The court also argued that “businesspersons, either as lessees or purchasers may be hesitant to invest substantial sums if they have no minimal protection from a competitor

A successful lawsuit initiated by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to block a merger between Albertsons and Kroger demonstrated a novel determination to restrain supermarkets’ monopolistic practices at a higher level. The suit focused on how the loss of competition between the two retailers might facilitate a surge in prices for consumers, a critical consequence of supermarket conglomeration. Although this suit represented a step toward an America with expanded food accessibility, the FTC should expand its argument in future suits to underscore the store closures that occur in the wake of major mergers. By basing its argument solely on price levels, the FTC neglected the millions of Americans who reside in food deserts where food availability, not pricing, is the main scourge.

Food deserts, scorched-earth covenants, and going dark are all consequences of redlining policies and failing antitrust law. Piecemeal, state-by-state court decisions will not be sufficient in protecting low-income Americans from systemically-rooted food insecurity. Even if DC is strengthening its supermarket antitrust legislation and Washington State is taking steps to address the role of monopolistic practices in breeding food deserts, many other parts of the country are not. Federal action is urgently needed. The FTC’s lawsuit against Kroger and Albertsons represents a new era for consumer protection; however, its argument failed to acknowledge the risk of food scarcity, not just higher prices, in the aftermath of major supermarket mergers. It is imperative that the US government clearly and explicitly recognize the harm that scorched-earth contracts and going dark thrust upon low-income communities and put these woeful practices to a definite end.

Navigating Global Public Health Crises and Preparing for the Next Pandemic

An Interview with Dr. Ashish Jha, Dean of the Brown University School of Public Health

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Dr. Ashish Jha is a globally renowned public health leader currently serving as the Dean of the Brown University School of Public Health. Appointed by President Biden as White House Covid-19 Response Coordinator in March 2022, Dr. Jha led initiatives that enhanced treatment and vaccine accessibility, improved testing, and strengthened national stockpiles. Prior to his current role, he was the K.T. Li Professor of Global Health at Harvard University and Director of the Harvard Global Health Institute.

Avital Strauss: Looking back on the Covid-19 pandemic, in what ways was the US response effective, and in what ways was it ineffective? How will these lessons be used to confront future public health crises?

Ashish Jha: I would say the US response was pretty mixed. One prime example of its failure was how disastrous testing was in this country. We had no real surveillance system and no real testing infrastructure. That meant that we didn’t know where the virus was spreading and led to what I believe was a major fault of the initial response, which was that we had to have these nationwide lockdowns instead of having targeted lockdowns.

The second clear failure around that time was communication. Many important concepts were never articulated

Interview by by Avital Strauss ‘27

Illustration by Anum Naseer ‘25

or effectively communicated to the public. For example, why were we locking down? Usually, in pandemic responses, you want to have scientists leading the communication. Instead, we had the president. To say that he was ineffective would be an understatement. You generally don’t want presidents leading public health responses because presidents are inherently political figures. People who love the president will be very likely to listen, and people who hate the president will not. That’s true whether it’s Donald Trump or Joe Biden.

Where we did extraordinarily well during the pandemic was in building vaccines and treatments. Our medical countermeasure program, Operation Warp Speed, was incredibly successful. We also did pretty well during the pandemic in terms of innovation around healthcare delivery, telemedicine, and test-to-treat programs.

AS: How can governments balance public health needs with individual freedoms? In the United States, is the American tendency to think individualistically rather than in community-oriented ways a barrier to public health?

AJ: With individualism, the biggest issue is how much people trust the government to not misuse their information. People have a lot of mistrust of government, especially at the federal level. However, people tend to actually have much higher trust in government at the local and state levels. Those levels of government are the ones actually running the test and trace programs. So, I have my doubts that there is truly deep-seated skepticism of and negativity toward local government that would prevent us from effectively implementing these testing and surveillance programs.

Regarding broader individual versus community interests, I spent a lot of time during the pandemic thinking through these issues and talking to red state governors. I’m not so convinced that this was as problematic as it was made out to be. While many Americans value individualism, they also care about their families and neighborhoods. If we remind people that the reason they should be doing certain things like wearing masks and isolating themselves is not for society but for the people they love, that is powerful. I think that is true in conservative places and liberal places.

AS: There’s a discussion about Disease X, referring to a placeholder concept of an uncharacterized pathogen that could emerge as a public health crisis. Without knowing what Disease X might be, how do we know how to prepare for it? Relatedly, how do countries navigate the competing needs of investing in public health initiatives with benefits that won’t be realized for a while, like preparing for Disease X, versus investing in current healthcare needs and improvements to healthcare systems?

AJ: By definition, we don’t know what virus or pathogen will show up in Disease X. However, we have a sense of what families of viruses are more and less likely to become Disease X. In preparation for Disease X, we should start working on developing general vaccines. If we had done this kind of preparation 10 years ago, that would have included coronaviruses because that was one of the buckets of viruses we worried would cause a global pandemic. More likely than not, the next pandemic will arise from one of the families of viruses that we would assess in this process.

“If you decide that public health is a liberal ideal and you are a conservative, you’re going to be much less open to listening to public health. That’s a problem.”

The best way to prepare for future pandemics is to fight current pandemics better today. For example, if you want to develop a vaccine against Lassa fever, why don’t you use some of that technology to try to figure out a vaccine against tuberculosis? Of course, there have to be additional investments, but the practice of running responses against various illnesses through developing diagnostic tests that are cheap and easy to scale is ingrained in our public health system. So, I think that you can address current public health issues and prepare for future pandemics simultaneously without one effort taking away from the other but instead propelling it forward.

AS: From a public health perspective, should we be worrying about climate change? For example, with climate change rapidly worsening, scientists are warning that ancient viruses frozen in the Arctic permafrost could be released, bringing about other pandemics. What is the public health response to such threats?

AJ: Climate change is the biggest threat to public health that humanity faces. I’ve been saying that for about 10 years. I see climate as the ultimate threat multiplier. For instance, we’ve always had pandemics. We’re going to have more pandemics. These permafrost threats might bring about a pandemic. Climate change is going to cause more droughts, which will bring about malnutrition and the negative health effects that come alongside that. The naysayers say that we have always had these climate disasters. With climate change, they are becoming more severe, and climate change is going to tax healthcare and public health systems around the world. We need to study these issues to understand not if climate change is real but how it is impacting our lives. Then, we have to start building systems to try to mitigate it.

AS: Why is public health a political issue?

AJ: It’s always been political. I’m not bothered by the fact that public health is political. In my view, public health being political is just another way of saying public health raises issues for which there are competing views, and politics is a process by which we resolve those things. Where I think public health has become a problem is that it has become partisan and tied to political identities. If you decide that public health is a liberal ideal and you are a conservative, you’re going to be much less open to listening to public health. That’s a problem. The way you modernize public health is by reaching out to people across communities, listening to what their issues are, and helping everyone see how public health can be useful for what matters most to them.

*This interview has been edited for length and clarity. Read the full interview at brownpoliticalreview.org

DESIGNED FOR DEPRAVITY

Censorship laws must be expanded to ban AI-generated child sexual abuse material

by Tess Naquet-Radiguet ’27, a Behavioral Decision Sciences and Political Science concentrator and Staff Writer for BPR

by Sadie Levine ’25 , an Illustration master’s Student at RISD and Illustrator for BPR

Paint me a picture of anguish. Tell me a story of hurt. Make it aching… agonizing. Let it scintillate with tortured tears and sing with cries of pain. Let it reverberate in darkness and bleed through curtains of silence. Let it corrupt innocence, pervert curiosity, and debase delight. Paint me a picture gleaming with debauchery.

Or is that too abstract?

This is one tale of generative AI (GAI). Trained on increasingly large datasets, GAI is able to construct strikingly beautiful or horribly sickening illustrations from incoherent prompts, tipping toward one or the other with minute alterations. Prompt, revise, repeat. It is a meticulous process—if not an artistic one—to achieve the desired result. Despite the advancement of machine learning platforms, GAI remains contingent on human prompting and, if left unregulated, allows for the intentional and systematic creation of perverse illustrations. When the images produced by GAI are entirely fake, it seems impossible to fully restrict the sickening without censoring the beautiful—which should elicit concerns given the recent increase in AI-generated child sexual abuse material (CSAM). Fully fictitious CSAM consequently exists in a liminal space—neither fully unregulated nor sufficiently restricted—and the time has come for it to be addressed within the law. Its existence and potential proliferation pose threats to children’s online safety and raise questions about the normative morality of child pornography. Even when AI-generated CSAM is entirely fake, it subverts the ethical considerations underlying existing legislation, and regulations surrounding its creation should therefore be rooted in those same moral principles. The emergence and

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rise of AI-generated CSAM accordingly require the establishment of new precedents in federal legislation that more strictly censor its production and distribution.

Tell me a story of irrelevance. Lawsuits against AI-generated CSAM are likely to be dismissed in federal court, as they extend beyond the scope of precedents set by landmark cases governing child pornography. Normally, to warrant censorship under the First Amendment, content must qualify as “obscene,” a label only applied if that content passes a stringent three-prong test. New York v. Ferber, a 1982 watershed case, held that child pornography could be censored under the First Amendment even if it did not pass the normal obscenity test—a ruling solely rooted in concerns about the harm that befalls children actively involved in the production of CSAM. Ferber therefore made no provisions for censoring sexual material depicting fictional children. GAI has the ability to entirely omit real people in its production of CSAM, rendering the precedent set by Ferber extraneous.

Paint me a picture of hypocrisy. Brought to court in 2002, Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition clarified that depictions of adults playing children in sexual scenarios did not fall under the Ferber ruling, thereby allowing such material to circulate. Sensible minds in the deliberation process argued that children who were inevitably exposed to these scenes might be more susceptible to pedophilic abuse, but the Supreme Court ultimately affirmed that the potential for crime did not warrant a restriction of free speech. This ruling could establish a troubling precedent for future cases determining whether fictional CSAM is legally protected. After all, since Ashcroft holds that using adults to mimic CSAM is constitutionally safeguarded, it would stand to reason that the artificial reproduction of child pornography would be as well: No children are directly exploited in the production of either type of content. Perhaps the threat posed by generated images did not seem salient during Ashcroft ’s time, but today, as our real and virtual worlds become increasingly intertwined, it has become critical. Evidently, neither Ferber nor Ashcroft is expansive enough to curtail the rapidly developing AI-generated CSAM market. Make it sinister… malicious. The majority in Ferber stated that child pornography is “intrinsically related to the sexual abuse of children,” underscoring the psychological damage people incur from knowing a digital record of their abuse exists. If the creation of AI-generated CSAM is legally permitted, children will inevitably discover it online, recognize their vulnerability to predation, and infer they may one day fall victim to such abuse—or worse, be reminded of the sexual abuse they have already endured. This experience would undoubtedly inflict profound

psychological damage on impressionable minds. When the minimum age of consent in the United States is 16 years old, we cannot, in good conscience, accept the digital representation of acts children would be legally incapable of assenting to. Should the circulation of material that could be interpreted as abuse be constitutionally protected? Should the right to produce material that could promote the victimization of children be defended? If the instinctive answer to the latter is apparent, so should the former. Any alternative is a deplorable and apathetic normalization of child abuse.

Let it breed perversion and impotence. Let it fester in the embers of perjury. Since the technology employed to produce AI-generated CSAM has only recently been developed, it is unconscionable to decide cases on its use under existing precedents. Decisions that could not conceive of the scale at which GAI would expand the CSAM market cannot truly determine the legality of actions that seemed unfathomable just years ago. Fragments of existing legislation may provide a basis on which to establish new legal frameworks, but laws restricting the creation and distribution of AI-generated child pornography should be built on cases of first impression—that is, cases where existing precedents are not expansive enough to secure an indictment. These laws should, however, reflect the latent morals underlying Ferber ’s precedent. If AI-generated images contain illustrations of people that could be construed as children, they should have no legal right to be sexually explicit in nature. Defending the creation of such repugnant material, even if it does not involve children’s active participation, would be a reprehensible endorsement of depravity.

Even rationalizations proposing that AI-generated CSAM might decrease the demand for real child pornography fall short of a semblance of speciousness. GAI is trained on datasets that include real CSAM, suggesting that the continued existence of AI-generated child pornography would rely on the perpetuation of its nonfictional counterpart. One’s existence would bolster the other’s proliferation rather than constrain it. Harm reduction to real children is therefore a laughable pretext for endorsing the creation of AI-generated CSAM, which would instead revictimize abused children, infringing on their right to dignity and integrity. Justifications for this new form of child pornography also blatantly ignore society’s tendency to lower the standard for what is morally acceptable when acts of deviance are repeatedly perpetrated.

Creating CSAM in any form is the paragon of perversion and should be censored to the greatest possible extent. Its unrestricted propagation will likely cause irreparable damage to children’s

development, which is increasingly shaped by online exposure. When the inherent immorality of child pornography is widely accepted, why should the extent of condemnation differ if the existence of the children portrayed cannot be substantiated? Expanding censorship laws around AI-generated CSAM would simply reflect a legal execution of the ethical principles already administering daily life. Private indignation is necessary but insufficient. If outrage is the antithesis to apathy and the conduit for change, let it serve its purpose. Let its power percolate.

“Harm reduction to real children is therefore a laughable pretext for endorsing the creation of AIgenerated CSAM, which would instead revictimize abused children, infringing on their right to dignity and integrity.”

In Word but Not in Deed

Color-blind readings of the Constitution hamper the fight for substantive equality under the law

by Sofie Zeruto

’26, a Political Science concentrator and Editor for BPR illustrations by Haimeng Ge ’25, an Illustration major at RISD and Creative Director for BPR

The 14th Amendment of the Constitution declares that no state shall “deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” The language is plain and simple—a conscious choice for a country still reeling from a bloody civil war fought over slavery. In 1868, there was no question who the Equal Protection Clause’s intended beneficiaries were: Black Americans, particularly people just freed from slavery in the South. Introducing the amendment to Congress, Senator Jacob Howard stated its purpose as protecting “the black man in his fundamental rights as a citizen with the same shield which it throws over the white man.”

Supreme Court justices and constitutional scholars alike have argued that the Constitution does not see racial distinctions, often employing

the phrase “color-blind.” The omission of race in the 14th Amendment, despite its intended purpose, raises the question of whether the US Constitution’s statutory color blindness is its greatest strength or most overlooked failure in solving modern issues of racial equality postCivil War.

Before the color-blind reading asserted itself in over a century of precedent, the NAACP points to several instances in which reparatory “color-conscious” laws either took root or gained political momentum just before and after the 14th Amendment was ratified. Union General William Tecumseh Sherman’s Special Field Order No. 15 granted some recently freed Black Americans in 1865 the right to claim 40 acres of land off the coast of South Carolina, Georgia,

“The color-blind argument, though effective, has limited reach in the fight for equality beyond ending segregation.”

and Florida. While President Andrew Johnson overturned this order shortly after assuming the presidency, another reparatory movement gained momentum in 1894 when several bills were introduced to the Senate to provide compensation to former slaves.

However, two years later, a new ideology would begin to take root: one beneficial to the cause of desegregation and broader protections for minority groups beyond Black Americans yet inadvertently detrimental to the cause of reparatory law. In Justice John Marshall Harlan’s famous lone dissent in Plessy v. Ferguson, he wrote, “Our Constitution is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens.” Frederick Douglass, along the same lines, noted that the language of the Constitution “is ‘We the People,’ not we the white people.” The color-blind interpretation was likewise employed by Thurgood Marshall when he argued Brown v. Board of Education before an all-white court in 1954. Marshall asserted that the key issue with Plessy was that it was, in fact, color-conscious and that our Constitution is incompatible with a segregated society. The neutrality of the 14th Amendment, as understood by Harlan, Douglass, and Marshall, has served as one of its assets: Despite its race-specific intentions, equal protection has prevented government discrimination on the basis of all racial and ethnic backgrounds, genders, and sexual orientations.

The color-blind argument, though effective, has limited reach in the fight for equality beyond ending segregation. Undeniably, our society has long been, and continues to be, color-conscious, and a Constitution that fails to recognize this

“While a color-blind constitution succeeds in creating procedural equality under the law, it fails to penetrate the social realm, where collective disparate treatment of minority communities can maintain historical inequalities just as effectively as if they were endorsed by law.”

cannot rectify it. As we strive toward realizing a multiracial representative democracy, the Equal Protection Clause’s omission of race has presented a grave challenge for constitutional lawyers to navigate. No longer a tool for liberation, today’s biggest fans of the color-blind reading of the Equal Protection Clause are conservative justices like Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito. They argue that equal protection addressed vaguely to all “persons” under the law renders any reparatory law that accounts for race—such as affirmative action—unconstitutional.

Under this constitutional theory, the pursuit of lived equality has reached an impasse. While a color-blind constitution succeeds in creating procedural equality under the law, it fails to penetrate the social realm, where collective disparate treatment of minority communities can maintain historical inequalities just as effectively as if they were endorsed by law. This is not the reality that civil rights champions like Thurgood Marshall sought to create; rather, conservative judges have co-opted their arguments to maintain the status quo under the guise of procedural fairness. The Constitution enshrines the Equal Protection Clause as both a law and a

principle that extends to the substantive domain: A diverse democracy cannot exist without lived equality, equal opportunity, and respect between all of its citizens. Today, color-blind constitutional readings have been weaponized against solving modern issues of racial inequality, thus undermining democracy altogether.

While no sitting justice denies the outcome of the Brown decision, its color-blind reasoning has been taken out of context by the conservative majority of the court. Legally, they have a powerful argument. Because the 14th Amendment states that “no person” can be denied equal protection, and the words of the Constitution do not detail how histories of discrimination may be redressed, the purely textualist case against weighing race in university admissions practically builds itself. Yet decisions like 2023’s Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard College, which effectively killed affirmative action, expose the limitations of this reasoning. Universities across the country have since seen minority enrollment plummet, signaling that color-blind equal protection under the law does not produce the equality that is necessary for the pursuit of the Constitution’s

broader democratic ideals. Thus, while the color-blind argument may once have been an effective appeal to both civil rights leaders and the public at large, today there is an evident struggle to reverse course back to the original principle of the 14th Amendment: substantive equality. Within the Equal Protection Clause, it is clear throughout American legal history that there is both a statute and a principle at work. When the lived experiences of communities produce obvious disparities in our society, the principle of equality enshrined in the 14th Amendment must expand to lift those individuals up. In a hypothetical, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson illustrated this gap between legal and lived equality by presenting the Court with two in-state applicants to the University of North Carolina. One is white and a fifth-generation legacy of the school, while the other is Black and, due to legacies of legal discrimination and slavery, had no such advantage. A color-blind, conservative legal interpretation of the 14th Amendment would deny the Black applicant any affirmative action, while the lived phenomenon of legacy admissions would grant the white applicant an active preference. Guided by a substantive doctrine of equal protection,

this is blatantly unjust. Policies such as affirmative action that seek to remedy racial inequalities brought about by earlier discrimination should be seen as constitutional extensions of the original intent of the Equal Protection Clause—providing reparatory equal protection in the substantive domain.

Perhaps it would have been better for mid20th-century constitutional lawyers to ascribe the language of the 14th Amendment Equal Protection Clause not to the notion of color blindness but rather to inclusivity. While the notion of our Constitution being both color-blind and color-conscious seems an oxymoron, coupling the latter with a principle of inclusivity appears to make more argumentative sense. The truth is that the Constitution is both a legal document and a declaration of our principles. While mentions of

“The truth is that the Constitution is both a legal document and a declaration of our principles.”

race might be absent in the raw text, the American principle of equality must be contextualized by the original intention of the clause and the systemic racial disparities in our current society. Equal protection is not a one-size-fits-all solution. The Supreme Court, as a counter-majoritarian feature of our democracy, exists in part to protect the rights of the minority, and it is failing to do so. Equality must exist beyond words in a statute or an argument. If the conservative justices of the Court looked up from the trivialities of their textual debates, they would witness the millions of Americans now suffering from their decisions.

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