BPR Fall 2018 Issue 2

FALL 2018

ISSUE 02 SPECIAL FEATURE

REVOLUTION

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Editors’ Note “You say you want a revolution / We all want to change the world.” Revolution is a potent term: it screams drastic change and rapid transformation. The word evokes memories of political overhaul and dreams of new technology.

Today, we all want revolutions. We rush to attach the label to anything disruptive. From the scooter revolution the the 3D printing revolution, revolutionary energy is everywhere. The chaos of change is overwhelming, so the word “revolution” is ubiquitous, baiting clicks and evoking passionate responses. But a once-loaded term has a new connotation: the instantaneous and rapidly evolving revolutions of 2018 relay a different tone than those in our history textbooks.

“You say you got a real solution / We’d all love to see the plan.” The revolutions of old seemed to present permanent solutions and precipitate irreversible consequences. The so-called revolutions of today challenge the conventional meaning of the term. Do the Iranian Revolution and the self-driving car revolution deserve the same moniker? The Haitian Revolution and the NBA 3-point revolution? News outlets seem to think so: Give “revolution” a search on Google News. It is employed with little to no discretion.

Carelessly attaching the word “revolution” to a news headline risks draining its semantic significance. We threaten to conflate it with frequent change, distracting from genuine revolutions while we inflate relatively petty change. The term is in need of a refresh: What makes a revolution? How do past revolutionary changes still affect our world today? Which forces are currently prompting dramatic shifts for our future?

In this issue of the Brown Political Review, our writers think critically about what “revolution” means in 2018. Quinton Huang critiques Xi Jinping’s contemporary contradictions of the Chinese Communist Revolution. Nicole Comella draws attention to the fading legacy of the Cuban Revolution of the 1950s. Mary Dong chronicles the Information Revolution, which continues to spread to new industries and helps solve important problems every day. Finally, Alexi Kim looks at the series of failed attempts to create a Russian technology revolution and the country’s desperation to break into consumer tech.

The Beatles put it best in their 1968 track “Revolution”—“We all want to change the world.” On the 50th anniversary of that year, chock full of revolutionary change, that spirit has not faded. The energy has moved from Paris, to Prague, and now to Providence: We all want revolutions. BPR keeps its eyes forward: Last issue we explored sustainability and building for the next generation. In this magazine, we articulate the ways in which revolutions are altering our future. We don’t claim to be able to predict the future, but “Don’t you know it’s gonna be alright.”

Michael & Olivia

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SEXUAL

The ‘Sexual Revolution’ became the moniker used to describe the changes in sexual attitudes and behaviors in the 1960s & 1970s.

REVOLUTION

The movement cast aside traditional sexual restraints, uprooted conventional sexual morality, and began a decade of...

the t of ut u o o ing ing com t & liv e , clos edlock w f o

fre & e e lo as ve ys ex

s& une n, m com bitatio a coh

,

The Sexual Revolution was, in part, facilitated by the development of the birth control pill, approved by the FDA in 1960, which differentiated procreation from sex.

and X-rated movie theatres & fullfrontal foldouts.

Additionally, the legalization of abortion in the United States, which gave women greater control over when and if they wanted children, came in 1973 with Roe v. Wade.

Americans in the 1970s disrupted many sexual taboos.

What was once sexually deviant behavior was now acceptable.

The Joy of Sex, Alex Comfort’s vividly illusrated sex manual, spent 11 weeks at the top of the New York Times bestseller list.

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Open homosex ua

lity

Deep Throat [1972] was made with a $47,500 budget. It quickly became the most profitable movie of its time, grossing roughly $50m at the box office.

cial interra hips ns io relat

Founded in 1953, Playboy spearheaded the commercial sex movement.

& casual nudity

all became more widely accepted.

The 60s & 70s were the golden age of the porno.

It was the first time in history where pornographic material was semi-legitimized.

INFOGRAPHIC Klara Auerbach

MASTHEAD Executive Board

Copy Edit

United States

EDITORS IN CHIEF Michael Bass Olivia Nash

( continued )

( continued )

Gabriela Gil Patrick Gilfillan Christopher Lewis Eliza Namnoum Michael Power Achutha Srinivasan Brendan Sweeney Jason Tang Gabriela Tenorio Huayu Wang Rachel Yan

Jackson Segal Emily Skahill Jamie Solomon Cartie Werthman Lucia Winton

CO-PRESIDENTS Ashley Chen Mike Danello CHIEF OPERATING OFFICER Owen Colby SENIOR MANAGING EDITOR Angie Kim CHIEF COPY EDITOR Sam Parmer INTERVIEWS DIRECTORS Maya Fitzpatrick Cayla Kaplan CONTENT DIRECTORS Allison Meakem Jeremy Rhee DATA DIRECTOR Aansh Shah MARKETING, OPERATIONS & BUSINESS DIRECTORS Bridget Duru Anna Marx CREATIVE DIRECTOR Klara Auerbach MEDIA DIRECTORS Luke Landis Eileen Phou PODCAST DIRECTOR Emily Skahill COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT DIRECTOR Simran Nayak

Editorial SENIOR MANAGING EDITOR Angie Kim MANAGING EDITORS Mary Dong Christian Hanway Emily Yamron ASSOCIATE EDITORS Emma Blake Aidan Calvelli Noah Cowan Uwa Ede-Osifo Jack Glaser Peter Lees Anagha Lokhande Nathaniel Pettit Marianna Scott Maia Vasaturo-Kolodner Lucy Walke Leticia Wood

Copy Edit CHIEF COPY EDITOR Sam Parmer ASSOCIATE CHIEF COPY EDITOR Namsai Sethpornpong COPY EDITORS Karina Chavarria

Interviews INTERVIEWS DIRECTORS Maya Fitzpatrick Cayla Kaplan INTERVIEWS ASSOCIATES Sai Allu Jordan Allums Grace Banfield Breanna Cadena Jack Thomas Doughty Jack Makari Charles Saperstein Glenn Yu

Content CONTENT DIRECTORS Allison Meakem Jeremy Rhee

Culture SECTION MANAGERS Jamie Flynn Hugh Klein Erika Undeland ASSOCIATE SECTION MANAGERS Anna Corradi Tristan Harris STAFF WRITERS Kate Dario Angela Luo Kavya Nayak Madeline Noh Ava Rosenbaum Alex Vaughan-Williams

United States SECTION MANAGERS Sophia Petros Brendan Pierce Carter Woodruff ASSOCIATE SECTION MANAGERS AJ Braverman Nicholas Lindseth STAFF WRITERS Luke Angelillo Matthew Bailey Roxanne Barnes Zander Blitzer Ashley Chen Indigo Funk Jonathan Huang Ellie Papapanou

World SECTION MANAGERS Dhruv Gaur Sean Joyce Simran Nayak ASSOCIATE SECTION MANAGERS Chris Kobel Annie Lehman-Ludwig STAFF WRITERS Samy Amkieh Karina Bao Josh Baum Drew Bierle Anchita Dasgupta Fayez Fayad Quinton Huang Zoë Mermelstein Leonardo Moraveg Jack Otero Ye Chan Song Cameron Tripp Edward Uong

Data DATA DIRECTOR Aansh Shah ASSOCIATE DATA DIRECTORS Julia Gilman Zachary Horvitz CHIEF PLATFORM ARCHITECT Tyler Jiang DATA ASSOCIATES Eleanor Avril Prakrit Baruah Erika Bussmann Rohit Chaparala Sophia Chen Sarah Conlisk Benjamin Gershuny Peter Kelly Malavika Krishnan Dheeraj Namburu Huayu Ouyang Charlotte Perez Kyle Qian Andrew Wei

Marketing, Operations, & Business ( continued ) Julia Hondros Miles Jasper Jasrine Kaur Dham William Pate Stephanie Kendler Calista Shang Claire Zhang

Media MEDIA DIRECTORS Luke Landis Eileen Phou MEDIA ASSOCIATES Raphael Cohen Clara Devine-Golub Melis Gökalp Antonia Huth Jenna Israel Selene Luna Ambika Miglani Maya Smith Yashi Wang

Podcast EXECUTIVE PRODUCER Emily Skahill PODCAST ASSOCIATES Izzy Belleza Aidan Calvelli Kris Cho Noah Cowan Kate Dario Tobi Lepecki Rachel Lim Ali Martinez Sam Parmer Ella Rosenblatt

Creative CREATIVE DIRECTOR Klara Auerbach DESIGN DIRECTOR Gabrielle Widjaja DESIGN CONSULTANT Nick Konrad DESIGNER Mei Ahn ASSISTANT ART DIRECTOR Sabrina Futch COVER ARTIST Mackay Hare

Marketing, Operations & Business MOB DIRECTORS Bridget Duru Anna Marx SOCIAL MEDIA DIRECTOR Maria Hornbacher MOB ASSOCIATES Max Alweiss

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

TABLE of CONTENTS Editor’s Note

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Sexual Revolution: Creative Feature

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Masthead

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UNITED STATES

A Common Goal Brendan Pierce Developing American unity through soccer

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Gayle Goldin Rhode Island State Senator

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No Right to Choose Olivia George Interest groups in Rhode Island block reproductive freedom

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INTERVIEW Michael

Mattox Assistant Bureau Gang Coordinator, LAPD

Injunction Dysfunction Roxanne Barnes California shifts away from gang injunctions

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Televised Trauma Camila Pelsinger The problem with displaying graphic violence against black bodies 17 IJINTERVIEW William Keach Professor of English at Brown University

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Tar Heels & Manure Lagoons Ellie Papapanou North Carolina environmental justice

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INTERVIEW Osama

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Siblani Founder of Arab American News

TABLE OF CONTENTS

SPECIAL FEATURE : REVOLUTION

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The Broken Promises of Revolution Quinton Huang China’s doubles down on ethnic oppression 26 A Revolution on Life Support Nicole Comella Why Cubam doctors are leaving the profession

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IJINTERVIEW Jennifer Lambe Assistant Professor of Latin American and Caribbean history at Brown

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Big Data Takes a Byte Mary Dong The Information Revolution heads for health care

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INTERVIEW Vidya

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Narayanan Research Director of the Computational Propaganda Project

Sputnik Sputtering Alexi Kim Russian tech fails to take off WORLD

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Liquid Gold Madeline Noh The need to regulate breast milk markets

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An Asymmetric Affair Tarana Sable Curbing Bahraini authoritarianism

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Vigilante Injustice Leticia Wood Mob Justice in Ghana and the need for police reform

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Building Bridges in the Balkans Allison Meakem China’s Belt and Road threatens EU accession 48 What’s Going On At BPR

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UNITED STATES 8

percent of youth soccer players, while those who make less than $25,000 annually consist of only 13 percent. Youth soccer in the United States is inaccessible, and nobody seems to care.

UNITED STATES

A Common Goal Developing American unity through soccer

On October 10, 2017, United States Soccer hit a stunning low point.

Needing only a draw to advance to the 2018 World Cup, the men’s national team instead lost 2-1 to low-ranked Trinidad and Tobago, marking the first time that the US would not qualify for a World Cup since 1986. For a nation supposedly intent on competing on the global soccer stage, the loss exposed the cold truth about American soccer: It is headed in the wrong direction. Indeed, a year after the catastrophe in Trinidad, US men’s soccer remains rudderless. The men’s national team is experiencing a dearth of experienced talent due to a broken academy system.

In the aftermath of the crushing failure to earn a World Cup spot, fingers were pointed in all directions, but no one addressed the main factor holding back US Soccer. The United States’ lack of success in men’s soccer can be boiled down to this curious statistic: Families who make over $100,000 annually account for 35

Youth soccer in the United States relies on expensive club teams that kids must join to get noticed by talent scouts and colleges.

The system has been dubbed “pay-to-play,” since parents must often spend over $10,000 per year for their kids to join some soccer clubs. Low-income soccer players in the US are thus never given a fair chance to compete.

One study found that low-income boys are 50 percent more likely to participate in basketball than soccer due to cost. As Villanova sociology professor Rick Eckstein put it, the result is a “system more attuned to identifying the best payers than the best players.” This is highly ironic, considering the sport has historically been viewed as the world’s great democratic game due to its inherent simplicity.

By setting financial barriers and failing to cultivate its best athletes, the US has consigned itself to generations of relative mediocrity in international men’s soccer.

Of course, US women’s soccer has charted an entirely different course. The women’s national team is a globally dominant force despite relying on the same pay-to-play system as the men’s team. However, women’s soccer in the US has unique advantages that overcome the problem of expensive youth soccer. In many countries, women’s soccer was banned until fairly recently, but Title IX, which ensures that federally-funded programs spend just as much on women’s soccer as on men’s, gave the US a head start.

Largely as a result of this, the United States boasts more than half of the world’s women’s youth

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US A COMMON GOAL

soccer players. Still, the women’s national team is not representative of the general population, reflecting barriers that exist at every level of American soccer.

The US youth system must rapidly change to start developing the country’s top male talent before the United States hosts the 2026 World Cup. And the federal government can catalyze that change. A government-subsidized program aimed at making soccer more affordable for all Americans would increase US Soccer’s competitiveness on a global scale and bring about positive impacts for the country as a whole.

At first glance, the US government spending millions of dollars in the name of developing soccer might appear to be pure fantasy.

Yet local organizations such as DC’s Open Goal Project and San Antonio’s Urban Leadership Academy provide blueprints for such a program. The Urban Leadership Academy employs a blend of fundraising efforts, networking with local businesses for partnerships, and selective scholarship offerings to keep the seasonal costs of club soccer between $350 and $750. Using these existing local programs as models, the government could subsidize a national network of similar organizations that strives to break down the financial barriers to kids’ soccer dreams.

Belgium offers a model of success. In response to a disappointing exit during the group stages of the 1998 World Cup, the Royal Belgian Football Association partnered with the national government to create eight fully funded “Topsport” academies that recruit the most talented teenagers around the entire country regardless of income level. With graduates including Thibaut Courtois, Kevin De Bruyne, and Dries Mertens,

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the academies have played a major role in the recent success of a Belgian “golden generation,” which managed a third-place finish at the 2018 World Cup. With a similar initiative, the US government could usher in a new era of American soccer characterized by inclusion and success.

A subsidized program aimed at tackling socioeconomic inequality in the sport would improve the diversity of soccer in the United States, where many see the activity as a “rich, white-kid sport.” The thousands of dollars in annual expenses clearly present a significant barrier to entry for many. For example, although

“ The US youth system must rapidly change to start developing the country’s top male talent before the United States hosts the 2026 World Cup. ” soccer is overwhelmingly popular among Latin Americans, they are “scantily represented” in US soccer programs, in part because of the cost barrier.

This diversity problem is on full display in the makeup of the men’s national team itself. Only a third of the current roster is non-white, and several of the non-white players grew up overseas. Locally based, government-sponsored organizations could lower the costs associated with youth soccer and make it an equal-opportunity sport. Although such a program would ultimately cost run a high bill, countries such as China are

spending billions to accelerate the development of their national soccer teams. If the United States is truly serious about putting on a good showing in 2026, a better, more inclusive youth system is of paramount importance.

A competitive US men’s team could also improve domestic unity in the US. Not only would the public root for a diverse men’s national team by 2026, but a successful run in a World Cup on home soil promises to bring the country closer together.

The French “Black, Blanc, Beur” team’s triumph in the 1998 World Cup is a telling example. During a period of heavy racial tensions, the victory of the diverse French national team offered a brief respite from national politics and a sign of French unity. For the United States, a successful showing at the 2026 World Cup with a diverse men’s national team could do the same.

As it stands, soccer is broken in the United States. The Beautiful Game has been twisted into the equivalent of a gated community—open only to those fortunate enough to be able to pay their way in. For every Clint Dempsey who somehow scrapes and sacrifices their way to a college scholarship, there are thousands of young Americans who are forced to relinquish their soccer aspirations each season due to financial barriers.

A government initiative to spread soccer to everyone, regardless of background, would save the US from embarrassing itself at the 2026 World Cup. It would also present an opportunity to end the pervasive inequality of US soccer and build an inclusive national movement behind the sport.

AUTHOR Brendan Pierce ’19 is a Political Science concentrator and a US Section Manager at BPR. ILLUSTRATOR Franco Zacharzewski

INTERVIEW GAYLE GOLDIN

Interview with

Gayle Goldin Gayle Goldin is a Democratic State Senator in Rhode Island. Since she was elected in 2013, Goldin has represented District 3 of Rhode Island. Goldin currently serves as the Vice Chair of Senate Health and Human Services and co-chairs the Rhode Island Democratic Women’s Caucus. As a part of the Senate, she has pushed for legislation on issues including paid family leave, voting rights, equal pay, and reproductive rights.

What is the state of reproductive rights in Rhode Island?

Since 1986, the Rhode Island state constitution has said that women do not have the right to an abortion. Since then, the Democratic Party has put the protection of abortion and reproductive rights into its platform, but it has made no difference—a significant number of Democratic members of the Rhode Island General Assembly are still endorsed by Right to Life. There have been multiple laws passed that limit reproductive rights which have been struck down because they’re unconstitutional in the state or inconsistent with federal law. For instance, one law requires that a woman who wants to have an abortion must notify her spouse.

Even in 2013, the legislature passed (and then-Governor Chafee vetoed) a bill that would have created a “choose life” license plate. The revenue would have funded the Knights of Columbus [a Catholic group which opposes abortion] and crisis pregnancy centers, which are fake medical centers that are completely unregulated and designed to prevent women from getting abortions.

What factors do you think help foster this anti-abortion environment in Rhode Island?

Rhode Island has the highest percentage of Catholics and the most Catholic legislature of any state, in the country. The result of this is that the Catholic Church has tremendous influence in the state, even if Catholic Rhode Islanders do not necessarily agree–if you look at the polling on Catholics’ views on reproductive rights, it differs strongly from what the Catholic Church says. Many people do not realize that the Catholic Church itself has a lobbyist in the state house, almost exclusively working to influence Catholic members of the legislature to limit reproductive rights. The Catholic Church also actively goes after Catholic legislators by taking out ads in newspapers and putting things in their church bulletins–they basically take out these ads with legislators’ pictures on them and say: “these people are trying to kill your babies.” It is very aggressive and intentionally designed to intimidate legislators.

Can you speak about your experience introducing the Reproductive Health Care Act? How was it received by your fellow legislators?

The Speaker [Democrat Nicholas Mattiello] is quoted saying that women are taking up too much oxygen with this. I have had colleagues tell me not to worry about it—that when it really becomes a problem, they will take care of it. That’s really just a sexist way of saying: “You’re being hysterical,’” and ‘why are you worrying about something that doesn’t matter?’ Frankly, the Majority Leader [Joseph] Shekarchi essentially said that in front of a group of Democratic women.

Women’s concerns about our current president, and his attacks on women and women’s reproductive rights, have been dismissed as something that needs to wait until some dramatic thing happens—but those things have already happened.

Do you think there is space in the Democratic Party for people who are anti-abortion?

I believe a fundamental tenet of the Democratic Party is treating people with dignity and understanding that there are consequences to not doing so. I believe that all Democrats should be able to at least say, even if they think that abortion is a decision they would never make for themselves, that they can recognize that people have the right to their own privacy and the right to make decisions about their own body.

INTERVIEWER Charlie Saperstein ILLUSTRATOR Eliza von Zerneck

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US NO RIGHT TO CHOOSE

1973

Roe v. Wade

Source: Guttmacher Institute

UNITED STATES

No Right to Choose Interest groups in Rhode Island block reproductive freedom

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On an April evening earlier this year, women wearing scarlet cloaks filed into the Rhode Island State House, oversized bonnets obscuring their faces. The costume was a nod to Margaret Atwood’s novel The Handmaid’s Tale, which depicts a dystopian New England in which women are deprived of their rights and exploited for reproductive purposes. It has recently emerged as a feminist symbol aligned with the advancement of women’s rights, particularly reproductive

US NO RIGHT TO CHOOSE

freedom. Despite taking place in a notoriously blue state, this demonstration met immediate backlash: “You’re disgusting pigs!” shouted a man as the women proceeded down the corridor.

“Shameful! Shameful!” called another.

That night, six bills on reproductive rights were heard by the Rhode Island House Judiciary Committee, five of which endeavored to limit reproductive rights.

Though none of the anti-abortion bills moved forward to a floor vote, neither did the only bill in support of pro-choice policies.

The Reproductive Health Care Act (RHCA) was not passed and remains stuck in committee.

Stagnant progress on this issue may seem surprising in light of Rhode Island’s voting tendencies.

Having only voted for Republican presidents four times in the past 90 years, the state is widely considered a Democratic stronghold. In fact, Democrats control every major political office and outnumber their Republican colleagues 8 to 1 in the state senate. This reputation, however, does not denote progressivism on all issues: Indeed, Rhode Island has unconstitutional abortion restrictions on the books.

One such restriction prohibits insurance coverage for an abortion unless the person receiving it has paid a premium for a policy that gives them the option to abort. Another requires prior notice to a spouse. A third outlaws abortion procedures after as few as 12 weeks. These restrictions unsurprisingly earned Rhode Island an ‘F’ in the 2016 NARAL Pro-Choice America grading of state laws.

Though over 60 percent of Rhode Island residents support legalized abortion, the state’s General Assembly is run almost entirely

by Democrats backed by pro-life

organizations. In fact, the four male Democrats who lead the General Assembly have each been endorsed by anti-choice organizations at some point during their careers. Though the RHCA simply seeks to codify the rights upheld by Roe v. Wade in state law, it has proved unpalatable for the anti-abortion Democrats who populate the state’s senate.

Democratic Speaker Nicholas Mattiello has even declared that a public debate on the “divisive” abortion issue is not “of real concern.”

With the recent confirmation of Justice Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, state codification of Roe has arguably never been of greater concern. Kavanaugh has long advocated for anti-choice policies. As such, the erosion of Roe is now a much more likely outcome, which would allow states greater autonomy in the restriction of reproductive rights.

The need to ensure reproductive justice in the state of Rhode Island is dire.

Though being pro-choice and Democratic are often assumed to be interlinked, Rhode Island’s political landscape proves otherwise. Fewer than 12 percent of the state’s registered voters are Republican, but 42 percent are Roman Catholic, the highest percentage of Catholics in any US state. The Church consequently wields significant power and has been forthright in striving to straitjacket the RHCA’s advancement.

Thus far, it has been successful: Edith Ajello, one of two Providence Democrats responsible for first introducing the RHCA, was approached by 10 of the bill’s 36 initial co-sponsors who asked that their names be removed from it. These legislators cited pressure from churchgoing constituents who were mobilized by handouts distributed at

Sunday Mass, which included the pictures and contact information of RHCA sponsors.

More troubling still, productive dialogues between pro- and antichoice advocates are waning.

Anti-choice organizations are digging in their heels to ensure that their platform extends beyond the walls of Rhode Island’s legislature.

In 2016, a portrait of Governor Gina Raimondo was removed from the wall of notable alumni at her Catholic preparatory school after she met with Planned Parenthood. Even more extreme, Mary Sorrentino, former director of Planned Parenthood Rhode Island, was excommunicated by a Catholic bishop for her work on abortion access.

Providence Bishop Thomas Tobin cited support of abortion as “a cause of scandal,” asserting that pro-choice politicians “demonstrate an inexcusable lack of moral courage.” With each of these actions, the Church further propels polarization and limits pluralistic debate.

“I am tired of hearing of stories privately that people are too afraid to talk about publicly,” declared Sorrentino of the government’s stunted ability to debate reproductive rights in the wake of Church intervention.

It is essential that legislators have the ability to act without fear of personal retaliation from anti-choice groups. In this forthcoming legislative session, the “blue wave” of progressivism must not collapse before it brings reproductive rights to the shores of the Ocean State.

AUTHOR Olivia George ’22 is an intended Public Policy and History concentrator.

INFOGRAPHIC Klara Auerbach and Huayu Ouyang

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INTERVIEW MICHAEL MATTOX

Interview with

Michael Mattox Sergeant Michael Mattox is currently the Assistant Bureau Gang Coordinator for Operations-Central Bureau of the Los Angeles Police Department. In this role, he has administrative oversight for the gang and narcotics units of Central, Rampart, Newton Street, Northeast, and Hollenbeck area commands. Since joining the Los Angeles Police Department in 1983, Sergeant Mattox has worked as a patrol officer, accident investigator, researcher, patrol sergeant, academy instructor, and assistant watch commander.

Do you view gang injunctions as an effective practice?

Initially, it was a very useful tool. You need a certain level of articulated suspicion to detain someone in the field, including gang members. With the injunctions, however, the officers didn’t need any extraneous, full legal justification to conduct a field stopped interview and detention beyond the fact that this person was in violation of a court order.

It had an immediate impact on gang activity. Over time, it has become less effective, to the point where many gang officers right now find the utility of many of these injunctions to be almost nil. This is because we are not allowed to add new people to the Cal Gang database due to the moratorium placed on serving new gang members. The inability to serve new gang members, paired with the fact that as gang members age, their injunctions do too, caused the validity and utility of these injunctions to incrementally decrease over time. Without being able to update the database, the system became overloaded with people whose street level crime activity was very low.

How does the police department work with community partners, such as Gang Reduction Youth Development (GRYD)?

Generally speaking, those relationships have worked out very well. The one point of contact where we both are careful about exactly what that cooperation looks like would be in intervention. GRYD acts as a channel of information exchange, involving ex-gang members who commonly act as a buffer. Obviously, the police department is not in the business of sharing information with criminal gangs, but the main purpose of that is to reduce the incidence of retaliation. Gang officers in LAPD will immediately respond to areas where retaliation could occur, while the intervention people will attempt to calm the waters and talk to the involved parties to try and prevent this from going any further. However, you’ve got former gang members and police officers—there’s an obvious trust issue there. Generally speaking, that’s an aspect of the GRYD program that is very sensitive—it is

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potentially one of the most useful, but also potentially one of the most problematic facets.

The other aspect, prevention, includes service providers, who are people trying to stop others from becoming or continuing to be involved in gangs. They provide education, job training, and counseling. Our officers make referrals to these agencies whenever they encounter a situation in which they think some individual or their family may benefit from outreach.

Can you speak to the racialized nature of gang injunctions?

The gang is the gang. It’s a simple fact that in the City of Los Angeles, most of our active street gangs are Black and Hispanic. That’s just a fact of life. I have to deal with reality— these are political questions that are of no interest to me.

The simple fact is that these gangs, whatever the race of the gang, impact communities. These Black and Hispanic gangs are preying on their own Black and Hispanic communities.

Police understand that it is a big political question, but frankly, they have no patience for that. As far as the racialized aspect, are there white gangs? Absolutely. Are they of the same nature of the Black and Hispanic gangs that we deal with in Los Angeles? Not so much. That’s just the way it is.

Other parts of the country will be different, but here in the City of Los Angeles, this is no longer a white-majority city and it has not been for quite some time. That’s the majority of our population, so that’s how we will commonly identify gang members.

INTERVIEWER Cayla Kaplan ILLUSTRATOR Eliza von Zerneck

US INJUNCTION DYSFUNCTION

cooperative policing solutions.

Injunctions have been in wide use for the last two decades.

Many of them address already-illegal activities, such as underage drinking or drug possession; the additional restrictions they impose are justified under rules governing “public nuisances.”

However, imposing a gang injunction on an individual requires little more than mere suspicion: One might be served on the basis of something as trivial as an arm tattoo.

UNITED STATES

Injunction Dysfunction California shifts away from gang injunctions

In September 2017, the Supreme Court of California heard a case from Peter Arellano, a Los Angeles local who was legally barred from standing with his family in his own front yard.

Since the height of gang violence in the 1980s, California has served members of Arellano’s community, along with dozens of others across the state, with gang injunctions—civil actions that prohibit specific individuals from engaging in particular activities within a clearly defined target area. In other words, injunctions prevent alleged gang members from going about their normal lives. This past March, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) won a preliminary ruling to bar Los Angeles from imposing injunctions, claiming that they illegally strip away civil liberties.

Now, over 9,000 LA residents are free from arbitrary restrictions on their day-to-day activities.

Simultaneously, police officers and community leaders find themselves in a transition period with no clear path forward. In fact, because incidents of violent

gang crime in California dropped significantly with gang injunctions, the state is now considering re-implementing the policy.

Though the significantly lowered crime rate may seem attractive, closer analysis reveals that gang injunctions and their associated limitations on civil liberties are racist and can be largely ineffective. As Californians seek to fill this policing gap, they should look to superior community-based and

“ Imposing a gang injunction on an individual requires little more than mere suspicion: they might be served on the basis of something as trivial as an arm tattoo. ”

Furthermore, individuals have historically not been able to file for appeal on injunctions. For a practice meant to lower gang involvement, gang injunctions are a bizarre violation of civil rights that have only served to unfairly catch more people in the gang net. But closer examination of their history reveals that gang injunctions aren’t malfunctioning—they’re fulfilling their original, discriminatory purpose.

Gang injunctions have been prejudiced from their inception. The first injunctions were served to the Playboy Gangster Crips, who were active in a neighborhood called Cadillac-Corning.

Interestingly, Cadillac-Corning was nowhere near the most crime-ridden area in the city, nor were the Playboy Gangster Crips the most dangerous gang. They were, however, close to a nearby upper-class white neighborhood.

A report from researcher Ana Muniz states, “the injunction was meticulously designed to control the movement of Black youth by criminalizing activities and behavior that is unremarkable and legal in other jurisdictions.”

Police officers specially designed these injunctions by interviewing Black and Hispanic youth about their social behavior in order to craft policies that reflected their observations. Though officials

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US INJUNCTION DYSFUNCTION

claim that gang injunctions are race-blind, these restrictions are very specifically written to target the habits of young men of color, and they were never intended to combat gang violence in a substantive way.

Instead, the practice merely shifts gang violence away from white communities. It’s widely understood that gang injunctions contribute to gentrification, considering they explicitly disallow individuals from being in certain places. This creates the perception of safety—also often rooted in racism and classism— which raises housing prices in the area. Yet pushing out people thought to be affiliated with gangs, regardless of whether they actually are, does nothing to solve the root of the problem.

Some officials wrongly attribute the recent crime rate drop to gang injunctions. Proponents of the practice argue that quarantining people under these modified vagrancy laws is helpful, but concede that the laws have been too rigidly applied in the last decade.

This argument hinges on the premise that no other forces could claim credit for the reduction in gang crime. In reality, researchers attribute this decrease to a variety of factors, namely a combination of economic shifts, changing patterns of organized crime, and community action. This last element may be the alternative to facilitate a smooth transition away from injunctions.

Both New York and California have recently increased funding for community gang prevention programs within their most gang-affected cities. For the last two years, California has given $10 million to flesh out a program called CalGRIP: California Gang

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Reduction, Intervention and Prevention. One of its youth programs, the Gang Reduction and Youth Development (GRYD) program, combines school programs and evening outdoor activities with individual tracking and support methods.

Reports suggest that, “more than half of the eligible at-risk youth who were enrolled in GRYD and retested six months later now had risk levels that would be considered ineligible.” Violent crime decreased in program-targeted

“ Closer examination of their history reveals that gang injunctions aren’t malfunctioning— they’re fulfilling their original, discriminatory purpose.

” areas, though it is important to note that, in many areas, crime was already decreasing before the program went into effect.

Regardless, the program has been successful in its goal of reducing gang involvement and improving behavior through better community-building alternatives.

Boyle Heights in LA is one neighborhood benefiting from such community-based action.

Precincts in the neighborhood all have at least one Hispanic officer, which more closely represents its demographics and helps prevent racial profiling. As a result, officers have formed

more collaborative relationships with community members by working with programs like GRYD to increase communication and to implement reformative rather than punitive justice.

The community is also very proud of the impact of Summer Night Lights, a GRYD program that organizes weekend events, hosts activities for kids, and employs over 1,000 youth between the ages of 14 and 24. The results of youth prevention programs and community-based policies demonstrate that early and consistent intervention is much more effective in preventing gang violence than gang injunctions.

During this transition away from injunctions, policymakers in Sacramento’s budgeting meetings should stress the importance of these programs. Not only do they prevent violence through full community engagement, but they also do so without infringing upon anyone’s civil rights.

California has taken major steps in the right direction by barring further injunctions, but the state needs to lend support to more effective and fair models of crime prevention.

Community-based policing and youth programs, both shown to effectively decrease gang violence, demand state resources. These innovative programs accomplish all that gang injunctions claim to, while uplifting communities in the process.

AUTHOR Roxanne Barnes ’21 is a Public Policy concentrator and a US Staff Writer at BPR.

US TELEVISED TRAUMA

UNITED STATES

Televised Trauma The case against displays of graphic anti-Black violence

In the age of 24-hour news cycles, media companies seek increasingly appalling and shocking images to captivate the attention of viewers. However, these companies’ pursuit to publish the most sensational footage comes at a heavy price. Indeed, it has become fairly common to see Black people being harassed, attacked, and murdered by police officers in our daily newsfeeds.

The pervasive dissemination of these shocking images bears resemblance to the circulation of grisly photographic displays of lynching during Jim Crow that perpetuated Black victimization and catered to sadistic voyeurism.

One hundred years later, videos of Black death inundate our TVs, phones, and computers with little to no warning.

The harms created by media companies sensationalizing Black death far outweigh any benefits that the mass circulation of such images might have: They dehumanize the Black people who occupy our screens, leaving yet more trauma and anti-Black sentiments in their wake.

On August 26, 2015, a white reporter and cameraman were shot dead on live television.

Immediate backlash followed the initial publication of this footage, and in solidarity, many major news outlets chose not to air the video. Yet the same courtesy was not extended to graphic footage depicting the murders of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile just one year later. Instead, their deaths flooded all mainstream media outlets, unfazed by ethical concerns.

Alton Sterling’s girlfriend begged media outlets to stop playing footage of her boyfriend’s murder for the sake of her son, who was

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forced to repeatedly watch his father’s death on his television.

However, the trauma of watching this graphic footage is not limited to the family and friends of the victim: Black viewers experience collective trauma rooted in the racial stresses that already permeate their daily lives.

Research from the University of Connecticut about racial trauma and post-traumatic stress disorder suggests a direct correlation between exposure to graphic images of Black pain and increased anxiety and depression among Black people.

Moreover, the mass circulation of Black pain has ramifications for non-Black viewers: The constant stream of footage subconsciously affirms the inevitability of tragedy and thus normalizes violence against Black bodies.

Even more alarming is how the repeated exposure to Black suffering fuels the stereotype that Black people are more resistant to pain. Indeed, studies from Harvard Divinity School confirm that many Americans believe Black people have a higher pain tolerance than white people.

Another study found that when comparing images of suffering among white and Black people, white participants felt significantly more empathy for the pain of their white counterparts.

These findings could explain the results of similar studies that revealed medical providers to be far less likely to provide pain medication for Black patients than for white ones. Hence, the graphic images of violence against Black citizens both shape the subconscious perceptions of even the most well-intentioned viewers and create adverse consequences for Black people.

One could argue that ceasing to distribute the graphic content of Black death would obscure the

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reality of race-based violence in the US. However, the very idea that we must bear witness to tragedy to be moved to action is undermined by the political activism ignited by mass shootings with no graphic documentation. The Parkland shooting in February gained national attention and reignited debate on gun control, despite the lack of video footage depicting any death or injury. Press coverage of the tragedy featured humanizing images of the victims smiling, in stark contrast to the gruesome images of Black victims of police brutality. Why is the humanity of white victims protected, while that of Black victims is deemed disposable?

Media companies committed to ethical reporting must consider the impact of constant exposure to Black suffering on all psyches.

The images of Black death and powerlessness that once circulated on lynching postcards are today transmitted across screens where no postcards could ever reach.

Such wide and frequent dissemination of this footage demands a re-evaluation of its value.

Racial discrepancies in media coverage continue to shape the US’ racist collective consciousness. To spread such footage, despite tangible and devastating consequences to viewers, is to prioritize profit and ratings over human dignity.

AUTHOR Camila Pelsinger ’21 is an International Relations and Cognitive Neuroscience concentrator.

ILLUSTRATOR Julie Benbassat

“ To spread such footage, despite tangible and devastating consequences to viewers, is to prioritize profit and ratings over human dignity. ”

INTERVIEW WILLIAM KEACH

Interview with

William Keach William Keach is a Professor of English at Brown University. Professor Keach, a Rhodes Scholar, taught at Rutgers before coming to Brown in 1986 and was supported by a Guggenheim Fellowship from 1988 to 89. He is the author of Elizabethan Erotic Narratives (1976), Shelley’s Style (1984), and Arbitrary Power: Romanticism, Language, Politics (2004), and has edited Coleridge: The Complete Poems for the Penguin English Poets series (1997). Professor Keach has been an advocate for Stand Up for Graduate Student Employees at Brown.

What is Stand Up for Graduate Student Employees (SUGSE)? How are you involved with them?

SUGSE is a group of graduate students at Brown that believes in the formation of a graduate student union. They are acting in response to the National Labor Relations Board’s (NLRB) 2016 Columbia decision, which recognizes that graduate students are not only students, but also employees of the university. Graduate students are teachers’ assistants and even teach their own courses here, as is the case in my department. They’re lab technicians doing indispensable research work, and because it is work, they ought to be recognized as employees, and as employees, they ought to have the right to organize in their own interests.

Before we form a union, we need to hold a vote among graduate students to see if enough people actually want this. My involvement with the group, as well as Alex Gourevitch’s from the Political Science department, is not to advocate for student unionization itself but rather to help make the case to the administration that graduate students should be allowed to vote for unionization and ensure that that vote will be recognized by the university administration in good faith.

Do you think Brown graduate students should be able to unionize?

I believe that any employee who works for a salary or a wage should be in a union. It is a critical way by which people in our economy identify their conditions of work and employment, represent themselves, and organize to advance their cause. For graduate students specifically, quite a number of them are married. They have families to support, transportation expenses, housing expenses. It is not that the school does not provide any services, but the students have little voice in telling the administration what is and isn’t adequate.

There are other issues, too. For example, how a department establishes and enforces guidelines about the working relationship between a graduate student and a tenured faculty— terms such as how many hours a TA has to work—are often

fluid, varying from one department to another. A union would become a base of operation for defining and asserting concerns and desires for improvements in a range of areas like that.

What pushback have you received from the Brown administration?

The administration’s position has always been simply that Brown should follow the law. However, the NLRB has changed its opinion four times in the past couple decades about whether or not graduate students can form a union. I remember vividly the nature of the administration’s stance and advocacy in the past, such as during the NLRB’s decision on Brown’s unionization effort in 2004. Back then, I was working with graduate students trying to form a union under the Bush administration’s NLRB. I remember attending the NLRB meeting in Boston with Ruth Simmons, who was President of the University at that time, and Nancy Armstrong, a prominent scholar in my field and former Chair of our English Department. They went to Boston to argue very strenuously against any idea that Brown students could form a union, and eventually the NLRB ruled that they could not. It was interesting because I felt the liberal progressive cover of Brown University peeled back. It was like hearing the management of a corporation coming in very decisively against what its workers wanted to do.

When Provost Locke argues that Brown wants to obey the law, what he is saying is that graduate students can form a union as long as the NLRB says so. However, the NLRB is an inescapably politicized body. I acknowledge that it is a practical problem to go against the NLRB if it ruled differently, but the administration should pick a side. It is the right thing to do, whether or not the NLRB says so. This is important considering that if the NLRB reversed its ruling after we voted on a union, we would not want them to disband the union.

INTERVIEWER Glenn Yu ILLUSTRATOR Eliza von Zerneck

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US TAR HEELS & MANURE LAGOONS

UNITED STATES

Tar Heels & Manure Lagoons North Carolina communities push for environmental justice

For Elsie Herring, time spent outdoors is strictly determined by the industrial hog farm hidden just behind the trees that line her property. Herring has learned to avoid opening her window, sitting on her porch with friends, or drinking water from her well, when the farm disperses hog waste from its collection area across nearby fields. Herring lives in Duplin County, North Carolina, on a plot of land that has been in her family for over a century.

The county, like many in the state, is home to more than just the Herrings and their neighbors.

More than 2.3 million hogs call Duplin County home, outnumbering people almost 40 to 1.

Like many others across the state, Herring, a Black woman, recognizes how little control she has over protecting her quality of life: “They’ve polluted our water, disrupted our quality of life. So why are we being subjected to being forced to live with animals and their waste? So the pork industry can make a profit.�

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Unsurprisingly, the hog industry is an economic boon to the state. But at what cost does North Carolina reap these benefits? Despite the immense economic prosperity these hog operations bring to some, concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) have brought devastation and life-threatening consequences to others. Equally unsurprising is that CAFOs have a disproportionate impact on low-income communities and communities of color in the state. As a result, their prevalence is an environmental justice issue and should be treated as such by providing reparations and support to those suffering from the impacts of the industry.

Herring is one of many North Carolinians whose well-being exists at the constant mercy of the hog industry. Swine CAFOs dominate much of the North Carolina landscape. The state is second in the nation in terms of pork production, and the industry, responsible for over 46,000 jobs,

Duplin County is unique in that for each human resident, there are forty corresponding pigs in a CAFO

US TAR HEELS & MANURE LAGOONS

accounts for an estimated $11 billion in business per year. The majority of these hogs belong to the largest pork producer in the world: Murphy-Brown LLC, the hog producing arm of the corporate giant Smithfield Foods Inc. The problems CAFOs present is massive: CAFOs can house anywhere from hundreds to millions of animals. Such a heavy concentration of hogs translates into equally massive volumes of waste. In fact, Duplin County’s hogs alone generate 15,700 tons of waste per day—around twice as much as the waste produced by the entire population of New York City.

To manage this, feces is stored in “manure lagoons,” open air pits the size of football fields or larger.

This waste is usually not treated to remove disease-causing pathogens, nor to remove chemicals, pharmaceuticals, heavy metals, or other pollutants. To empty these lagoons, the stored waste is sprayed onto crop fields like the one next to Herring’s home.

The sensory details associated with CAFOs—the overwhelming odor resulting from spraying animal feces across fields on an excruciatingly hot summer day— are undoubtedly unpleasant, but the health effects associated with them are far more nauseating.

Source: Rolling Stone

Living near CAFOs exposes residents to many toxic gases and hazardous chemicals including ammonia, hydrogen sulfide, and methane. Hydrogen sulfide poisoning can cause chronic headaches, nausea, burning eyes, and irreversible brain damage.

Elevated levels of nitrates in drinking water can cause “blue baby syndrome,” a potentially fatal blood disorder. For Herring and many others, these risks aren’t abstractions. They’re a brutal reality.

Living near a CAFO causes harm that can follow residents for the

One pig creates 14 lbs of waste every day.

rest of their lives. A 2018 study of communities in the southeastern corner of North Carolina, led by Duke University’s Julia Kravchenko, concluded that communities located near CAFOs had higher infant mortality rates due to anemia, kidney disease, tuberculosis, and septicemia.

Even after adjusting for socioeconomic factors known to affect people’s health, life expectancy in these communities remains lower than the state and national averages. On top of physical symptoms, Herring emphasizes the anxiety and depression her community faces. CAFOs dramatically reduce the opportunity for the people who neighbor them—totaling nearly 960,000 in North Carolina—to pursue healthy and happy lives.

Not all North Carolinians carry the burden of CAFOs equally.

CAFOs are largely concentrated

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in the eastern half of the state, in an area known as “the Black Belt,” where a majority of the state’s African-American population resides. Following the abolition of Slavery, the descendants of slaves remained quarantined in this region through sharecropping and tenant farming practices, preventing wealth accumulation. Even those who desired to move west were often barred from doing so as a result of racially restrictive covenants and redlining.

The placement of CAFOs is anything but coincidental. The majority of these operations have been established in places considered to be “paths of least resistance.” Affected communities are typically poor, lacking the financial resources, education, and legal connections necessary to combat industry action.

Minorities and low-income folks are disproportionately burdened with the environmental, socioeconomic, and health effects of swine waste while simultaneously being stripped of the opportunity to reap associated economic benefits.

Time has brought little change: A 2014 study from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill found that, compared to white people, Black people are 54 percent more likely to reside near these hog operations, Hispanics are 39 percent more likely, and Native Americans are more than twice as likely. These residents continue to experience disproportionately high rates of poverty, unemployment, substandard housing, and low educational attainment.

Despite the incredible power the pork industry wields in the Tar Heel State, the public’s efforts to limit its pull are finally beginning to materialize. After decades of the state government siding with CAFOs and

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“ The sensory details associated with CAFOs—the overwhelming odor resulting from spraying animal feces across fields on an excruciatingly hot summer day— are undoubtedly unpleasant, but the health effects associated with them are far more nauseating. ”

minimizing their regulation, a series of lawsuits over the past few years have been lost by the corporate giant Smithfield Foods over the odor and noise created by hog farming. In June, Herring’s own Duplin County was involved in one of these suits and was awarded $25 million, although this amount was later reduced to $630,000 because of the state cap. Furthermore, this October, Smithfield Foods was backed into actions that they had claimed to be economically infeasible for years. The company pledged to cover the lagoons with plastic in order to contain the smell and capture the methane produced.

While these concessions demonstrate progress, Duke University’s Ryke Longest, an advocate in the effort to rein in hog farming, is not so quick to celebrate the significance of this announcement. To Longest, the effects of such a proposition cannot be understood until the technicalities of this plan are revealed.

Sacoby Wilson, a University of Maryland environmental health

professor, highlights the importance of communicating with, educating, and involving those who are directly affected by this environmental justice issue. His scientific initiatives have mobilized North Carolina’s communities to get involved in data collection, which he notes has significantly empowered citizens.

“When we train residents to do sampling, they understand the science of the process,” says Wilson. “They can go to the town council, they can go to the media, they can explain it. That’s powerful. It helps build up a community’s ability to be more involved in decision making.”

Despite these recent strides, there is no reversing the devastation that has already been inflicted upon Herring and the thousands of North Carolinians in her position. Though improving conditions for future generations is undoubtedly imperative, the citizens who have been harmed deserve significant reparations for their years of suffering; the recent cases against Smithfield Foods are just the beginning.

While instances of overt racism and xenophobia dominate American headlines, it is critical that the United States looks deeper. More subtle instances of racism and injustice, manifested in inequities like North Carolina’s CAFOs, also demand our attention—and immediate action.

AUTHOR Ellie Papapanou ’22 is an undecided concentrator and a US Staff Writer at BPR. INFOGRAPHIC Klara Auerbach and Dheeraj Namburu

INTERVIEW OSAMA SIBLANI

Interview with

Osama Siblani Osama Siblani was born in Beirut, Lebanon in 1955, and moved to the United States in 1976 to pursue higher education. From humble beginnings, Mr. Siblani rose to become a highly influential champion for the Arab-American community in the Dearborn, Michigan area and nationally. Siblani founded the Arab American News to expose the biased fashion in which major Western media outlets portray the happenings of the Middle East. During the 1991 Gulf War, Siblani became a tireless advocate for the rights of Palestinians, striving to abandon the era of that identity being constrained to the “P” word. Having now published the Arab American News for 32 years, he is versed in the milieu of the Arab-American identity and the nuances of his community.

Was the Arab Spring a series of revolutions? What role did social media play in the Arab Spring?

I do not believe that the Arab Spring was composed of revolutions. The intention of these movements was to begin a revolution that would progress. The original participants simply used social media to mobilize, something social media was very effective at. I believe that many factors were interjected to essentially hijack and change the direction of these movements. Their organizing was intended to encourage their governments to evolve, never to lead to usurpation and regime changes. The factors that led to this hijacking varied across national lines. For example, in Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood was extremely important. They tried very hard to take the revolution into their own hands, greatly dividing the masses once popularly unified. Upon successful usurpation, the Muslim Brotherhood received a rebel mandate that exploited its political inexperience, devastatingly crushing their newfound regime. This political weakness allowed rich Arab nations, especially Saudi Arabia and Qatar, to reverse the trends of the Arab Spring by funding media movements to dismantle the Muslim Brotherhood’s influence or embolden it.

Can you discuss why the Arab Spring never spread to the oil-rich Arab Nations?

The oil-rich Arab Nations were actually the countries where the movements should have begun. The monarchs in these nations were financing the Arab Spring. They were using their media outlets, like Al Jazeera, to divert attention to other regions and insulate their nations from revolution. As a result of this manipulation, Egypt is now ruled by a ruthless dictator, Al-Sisi. His rule effectively sequesters an infectious revolutionary spirit that could potentially invade the wealthy Arab nations. The manipulation of media outlets, including social media, is preventing people from organizing.

Do people trust social media in Syria and Saudi Arabia?

People no longer trust social media, especially after its influence was dismantled and then corrupted. Many people believe social media outlets, especially Facebook, are a farce for a greater system of oppression. In Syria, social media has failed to capture the transition of power from Bashar to ISIS in sentiment, greatly morphing our understanding of the state of affairs there. For many who previously begged to flee the original regime, they would now rather live under Bashar than ISIS. These social media outlets cannot be used to voice certain sentiments, largely because of Saudi Arabian influence over the media.

The Washington Post is a transparent media outlet in the region. As you may know, prominent journalist Jamal Khashoggi was killed in the Saudi Consulate in Turkey, a nation, which like Khashoggi, is sympathetic to the Muslim Brotherhood and anti Saudi Arabia. Saudi intervention in this ruthless manner is indicative of them wanting to maintain ideological monopoly in the Arab world. Khashoggi was a target of Saudi Arabia because of his confirmation of citizen’s suspicions that social media and news in general is a farce for a greater system of sentiment suppression in the region.

INTERVIEWER Jack Doughty ILLUSTRATOR Eliza von Zerneck

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The Broken Promises of Revolution China doubles down on ethnic o A Revolution on Life Support Big Data Takes a Byte Sputnik Sputtering

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Why Cuban doctors are leaving the pro

The Information Revolution heads for health car

Why Russian tech fails to take off

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The Broken Promises of Revolution China doubles down on ethnic oppression Under the guise of an anti-terrorism campaign, the Chinese government has established Muslim detention and re-education camps in the northwestern Xinjiang this year. In reality, this policy is a form of cultural erasure that aims to repudiate practices and names that do not reflect traditional “Chinese” heritage to assimilate all under a “great rejuvenation of the ‘Chinese’ nation.”

This assimilationist ethnic policy has been spearheaded

by General Secretary Xi Jinping, who regularly exploits revolutionary idealism to legitimize his rule. Under Xi, the party has frequently drawn on the legacy of the 1949 Chinese Revolution to justify its actions. Slogans such as “never forget our original aspirations, firmly keep in mind our entrusted mission” bring the Revolution’s messages into public spaces throughout China. Xi even referred to his official ideology as the continuation of China’s “great socialist revolution.”

But the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)’s attempt to assimilate ethnic minorities under a nationalist “Chinese” label stands in stark contrast to its stated goal

of reviving revolutionary ideals.

In fact, China’s aggressive policy toward ethnic minorities is not only bad on face, but also politically dangerous. Such a policy betrays the promises the CCP made to minority ethnic groups during the revolution and revives racial ideologies that the revolutionary-era CCP fought against.

It is important to prevent the CCP from manipulating history for its own ends by declaring ethno-nationalistic policies part of maintaining the Revolution’s legacy.

Indeed, by doing so, the Party is repeating mistakes its former Nationalist enemies made that led to ethnic revolt and rebellion. Following this path again today will erode the potential for a harmonious, multiethnic China.

During the Revolution, ethnic minorities were vital to the CCP’s success. As the CCP came to power in 1949, it prioritized the right to self-determination and preservation of the culture of ethnic minorities. On the famous Long March in 1934, the CCP journeyed through regions populated by ethnic minorities where its only option for survival was to negotiate and work with local minority

leaders. In exchange for help fighting the enemy Nationalists, the Communists promised to recognize the unique ethnic identities of minority peoples and protect both their cultures and languages. After the CCP victory, the Common Program of 1949 codified these promises into law, guaranteeing regional autonomy for ethnic minorities, protection of their languages and cultural practices, and full recognition of minority nationalities by the central government.

This respect for ethnic minorities aided the Communists’ victory because of its stark contrast with the Nationalists’ approach. The Nationalists pushed for an assimilationist policy designed to mold a “single-nation race,” which lost them the support of minority groups. The Communists seized this opportunity, championing minority rights to build a broad coalition of people opposed to Nationalist policies. These tenets persisted once the Communists took power. In a famous 1956 document written by Chairman Mao Zedong, he stressed to his comrades the importance of “combatting Han Chinese chauvinism” and rejecting the

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“bullying” of minority peoples.

Of course, the CCP’s early ethnic policy was not entirely beneficent. The Party often used the central government to tightly control “autonomous” minority governments, and there is ample evidence that the goal of its autonomy pledge was to maintain the territorial unity of China, not to deliver true self-governance. But despite its flaws, the relatively benevolent attitude of the Revolution-era CCP toward ethnic minorities is starkly different from the Sinicization measures being pushed by the government today.

In Xinjiang alone, current reports have documented numerous attempts to impose severe restrictions on the practice of Islam, the use of the Uighur language, and the performance of traditional arts. Scholars of Uighur culture and writers reporting on the Uighur community have suddenly disappeared.

The Chinese government has begun to openly push and defend Sinicization in Xinjiang through press releases, documentaries, and op-eds, publicizing its intent to remold Uighur cultural practices and painting them as an ethnic group susceptible to radicalization and in need of modernization.

In stark contrast, Islam in Xinjiang flourished in the early 1950s, though it was more intensely regulated. Efforts to follow through on promises to the Uighurs led the state to support Uighur-language schools and recognize key heritage sites and art forms. The government placed Uighurs in decision-making positions previously only held by Han Chinese officials and chastised Han Chinese people who belittled minorities or otherwise contradicted the ideal of interethnic equality. Today’s government, despite its rhetoric to the

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contrary, is worlds removed from practicing what the CCP originally preached.

it risks reliving their mistakes, fomenting ethnic conflict, and delegitimatizing its own rule.

The CCP gives two main justifications for its current policies towards ethnic minorities. The first is that the detention camps can combat the rise of Islamic extremist ideology, which they argue is present in Uighur Islamic practices.

Still, General Secretary Xi continues to evoke the revolutionary past to link his rule to the glory of the Communist liberation. But radical Sinicization policies make clear that the current government is betraying

The second is that assimilation is necessary for ethnic unity; on this view, China can be stable and prosperous only when a single Chinese-nation race is cemented. This belief, which arose in the early 2000s after significant ethnic unrest in Xinjiang and other places during the 1990s, solidified as state policy under General Secretary Xi in response to another bout of ethnic violence in 2014.

These arguments, though problematic, are neither novel nor implausible. But claiming that the motivations behind the push for assimilation are faithful to the ideals of Chinese communism is deeply hypocritical and dangerous. By using the same language of assimilation and “single-nation race” that the Nationalists did before Communist ascendency, the CCP under General Secretary Xi looks and acts like its former enemies, employing the same “bullying” approach to ethnic minorities it derided in the past.

This about-face could have serious political consequences.

After all, the Nationalists’ inflammatory ethnic policy undermined its rule and contributed to its fall from power. The two successful ethnic rebellions that occurred in Xinjiang under Nationalist rule were reactions to harsh bans on Islamic practices and ruthless purges of minority leaders. If the CCP looks and acts like the Nationalists in the ’30s and ’40s,

“ The Chinese Communist Patrty’s attempt to assimilate ethnic minorities under a nationalist Chinese label stands in stark contrast to its stated goal of reviving revolutionary ideals. ” the CCP’s original promise of minority group recognition and is reverting to the ethnocentric ways that the Party campaigned to abolish. The CCP is going down the path of “Han Chinese chauvinism” that Chairman Mao warned about in 1956. Both Mao and history tell us this chauvinism will weaken the state and exacerbate ethnic tensions. Far from leading a “national rejuvenation,” Xi’s policies will leave the Chinese Revolution’s hopes of a harmonious multi-ethnic China to die.

AUTHOR Quinton Huang ’19 is a History concentrator and a World Staff Writer at BPR. ILLUSTRATOR Jonathan Muroya

SPECIAL FEATURE

A Revolution On Life Support Why Cuban doctors are leaving the profession

In Cuba, what do a Coco Taxi driver, an Airbnb host, and a waitress have in common? In Cuba, They could all have previously worked as physicians. In the country’s current economic landscape, where depleted material resources and a mixed economic system have left doctors with little financial incentive to continue their work many have abandoned their posts to pursue better incomes by working in the tourism industry.

Unless the Cuban government takes action, the dearth of doctors will continue to worsen.

If the government wishes to maintain the ideals of the Cuban Revolution—eradicating poverty and instituting racial, class, and gender equality—it must raise wages for doctors.

In 1953, Fidel Castro and physician Ernesto “Che” Guevara led a six-year insurrection against Cuba’s corrupt, US-backed

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military regime. The revolution instilled an ideology that is now considered to be the longest standing socialist experiment in modern history. Castro’s vision produced one of the best health care systems in the world. With an infant mortality rate of 6 out of 1,000 births and an average life expectancy of 78 years, Cuba’s universal health care system rivals those of high-income countries and ensures that modern medicine is accessible for all, not just the most well-off.

Its commitment to preventative medicine and primary care is unprecedented. For example, Cuba became the first country in the world to achieve zero transmission of mother-to-child HIV infection. The liberties compromised to attain these outcomes may be called into question, but no one can contest the efficacy of the system’s programs.

Cuba’s healthcare vision hinges upon its physicians. The archetypal Cuban doctor does more than perform checkups: They advocate for clean water, supervise pesticide spraying, and carry out home visits. During the revolution, physicians were envisioned as the revolution’s “army of white coats” fighting for social change—and many still live up to this title. Currently, Cuba has the most doctors per capita of any country in the world.

But recent economic changes have prompted many of these doctors to move away from the profession.

Following the Revolution, Cuba’s economy was entirely state-run, with heavy subsidization from the Soviet Union to compensate for the crippling US embargo.

But after the Soviet Bloc fell in 1991, the pressure from the US embargo and the increasing demand for globalized practices forced monumental reforms.

To keep the island afloat, the government was forced to make

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“ Currently, Cuba has the most doctors per capita of any country in the world. But recent economic changes have prompted many of these doctors to move away from the profession. ” provisions for private businesses and self-employment.

The biggest shift was the introduction of the Cuban convertible peso, or the “tourist dollar.” With the national peso still in play, the government effectively installed a two-tiered economy, which led to a rise in income inequality. This change left doctors, who formerly occupied a prestigious post, in a position of relative economic disadvantage.

Currently, doctors make around 67 USD per month, while nurses make a mere 40 USD. Waiters, cab drivers, and tour guides can easily earn 10 to 20 times this amount thanks to tips from tourists. But wages aren’t the only thing driving doctors out of the field: The Cuban medical system is strained to its limit.

Cuba capitalizes on “medical diplomacy,” in which thousands of Cuban doctors work abroad to increase diplomatic ties and receive material resources in return. Cuba sends thousands of Cuban doctors to Venezuela in return for their oil, making Cuban doctors the island’s most treasured form of capital. In fact,

over 25,000 of the country’s 90,000 doctors currently work abroad. In addition, Cuba has a booming health tourism sector, offering innovative procedures such as Cimavax, a vaccine for lung cancer. Overseas work and health tourism earn the country billions of dollars each year.

Patients claim that the absence of so many doctors and the disproportionate allocation of medical supplies has led to a reduction in the quality of care. Furthermore, the system suffers from a serious lack of material resources: Patients are often expected to bring their own non-medical supplies, and doctors are forced to work with minimal or dated medical devices. Abysmal pay and a sobering lack of resources render the often stressful, preparation-heavy medical profession less than enticing.

The advent of private tourism in Cuba has brought more jobs and a higher standard of living—but at what cost? As luxury hotels and fashion houses buy real-estate in Old Havana, the two-tiered economy solidifies, leaving many Cubans behind. Cuba now faces the gargantuan task of defining the modern meaning of its Revolution. A clear-cut solution is hard to find, but one thing is evident: Cuba must face the consequences of capitalist microcosms within its state-run economy or risk harming the original revolucionarios, doctors and nurses. If the Cuban government wants to uphold the legacy of the revolution, it must raise wages for its doctors. By closing the income gap between physicians and other private sector jobs, Cuba would rededicate its commitment to its doctors and maintain the practice of “revolutionary medicine.”

AUTHOR Nicole Comella ’19 is a Public Health concentrator.

ILLUSTRATOR Liam Archibald

INTERVIEW JENNIFER LAMBE

Interview with

Jennifer Lambe Jennifer Lambe is an Assistant Professor of Latin American and Caribbean history at Brown University. Professor Lambe has conducted extensive research on the medical system in Cuba, focusing more specifically on the history of mental illness and mental healing. Her first book, Madhouse: Psychiatry and Politics in Cuban History, was published in 2017. Lambe is currently working on projects related to leisure time in revolutionary Cuba and the transnational history of psychiatric dehospitalization.

Lambe is a graduate of Brown University and earned her doctorate at Yale University.

How does the medical system in Cuba work, and how has the role of physicians evolved since the Cuban Revolution?

Cuba has a very distinguished history of medicine and centralized health care, and Cubans have long prided themselves on their important medical and scientific contributions. Starting in the 19th century, the medical class in Cuba was professionalized to a significant degree and became a point of national pride for the country. The medical developments that Cuba is known for did not simply emerge after the Cuban Revolution in 1959, but had been established in the country a century before.

Post-1959, the government consolidated its authority over Cuba’s private medical system. However, a number of other factors contributed to the centralization of health care. First would be the mass exodus of physicians from Cuba, which changed the actual personnel of the Cuban medical class. By the late 1960s, a new generation of medical professionals emerged who were trained by the Revolution and loyal to the Revolution’s ideas around health care. Many sectors of the revolutionary state became important parts of the provisioning of health care, such as launching vaccine and eradication campaigns for polio. With these changes, Cuba saw the extension of health care to historically underserved rural areas. While there was resounding success from these early campaigns, after the installation of the US embargo and the Cuban government’s radicalization, shortages in medical supplies and medication became an extremely difficult problem for the government. Ultimately, while the Revolution took very important steps to extend public health, Cold War hostilities and particularly the lack of diplomatic relations with the US left Cuba scrounging for the kinds of medical supplies it needed to deliver that health care.

Can you describe Cuba’s system of medical diplomacy?

Is the practice of medical diplomacy ultimately beneficial or detrimental to the country’s physicians and patients?

The first thing to think about is whom the system of medical diplomacy benefits. In some of the places that Cuban doctors

are sent, what Cuban physicians are able to contribute to local public health is really significant. On the other hand, the consequences of those missions for Cuban medical professionals themselves are more ambivalent. In many cases, Cuban physicians are being sent into areas with pretty challenging working conditions and are not being paid that much. On one hand, I think that these programs are an important source of revenue for the Cuban state, and burnish Cuba as a worldwide medical power. On the other hand, at the level of the individual practitioner, the system of medical diplomacy is a lot to ask—to be away from your family for so long, to work in these harsh conditions. In general, we have good reason to be sympathetic to the plight of individual medical practitioners in Cuba who, compared to their counterparts elsewhere, do not enjoy the same kinds of professional and economic circumstances. They do, however, enjoy social prestige—doctors have always been very respected and valued in Cuba. From the perspective of an ordinary Cuban, while they still have access to doctors, even if it is fewer than before, they are more frustrated by the lack of access to medicine and resources.

Do you believe the medical system in Cuba can be improved simply by discouraging out-migration through raising wages for doctors?

I think it is clear that the centralization of health care has had important consequences on Cubans. Additionally, the issue of material scarcity has been one of the country’s most enduring challenges, and raising doctor’s wages will not solve that issue in any way. The idea to discourage out-migration from the medical field is great in principle. However, due to the system of dual currency, where state employees are paid in one currency and tourism runs in another (and the exchange rate is 1 to 24), the amount by which salaries would have to go up for medical professionals is not within a practical threshold.

INTERVIEWER Maya Fitzpatrick ILLUSTRATOR Eliza von Zerneck

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SPECIAL FEATURE BIG DATA TAKES A BYTE

SPECIAL FEATURE

Big Data Takes a Byte The Information Revolution heads for health care

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Over half a century ago, American mathematician and philosopher Norbert Wiener stated that “information is information, not matter or energy,� effectively dubbing data the third constituent of the universe. The trend is evident: Information, now predominantly digital, impacts every aspect of our lives, and its effect will only continue to grow. Across public and private sectors, data scientists have found ways to leverage new data collection and processing tools to gain profound insights and facilitate unprecedented collaboration.

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to an information explosion, with over 90 percent of all data in the world having been generated in the last two years.

Much of this data is derived from the digital footprint of individuals; the unprecedented amount of accessible behavioral information allows researchers to gain a view into human nature and to use that newfound insight to advance private and public objectives. This explains why machine learning and Big Data engineers are two of the top emerging jobs on LinkedIn, and why positions for data scientists have grown over 650 percent since 2012.

Across the board, industries have made the shift from traditional experience-based decision making to more robust, dataguided management. In fact, research shows that companies using data-driven decision making have achieved 5 to 6 percent higher productivity gains than those that do not.

This profound shift in our way of life, spurred by the rapid proliferation of digital information, is nothing short of revolutionary.

Indeed, the term “Information Revolution” was aptly coined to capture the new economic paradigm beginning in the late 1990s.

This period has been driven by a radical shift from traditional methods of problem solving to data-driven decision making.

Gary King, Director of Harvard’s Institute for Quantitative Social Science, predicts that “the march of quantification, made possible by enormous new sources

of data, will sweep through academia, business and government. There is no area that is going to be untouched.”

The tremendous effects of the information revolution can largely be attributed to recent and rapid advancements in computing that make it possible to collect, store, and analyze increasingly large quantities of data. As a result, innovators can use this enormous amount of accessible information to create updated digital tools. Though information has played a pivotal role in every era of history, this cycle has led

Aside from harnessing Big Data to generate profits for businesses, data scientists are also addressing high-impact societal problems. Seth StephensDavidowitz, author and former data scientist at Google, reveals how trends in searches can illuminate complex social issues.

One such example is the United Nations Global Pulse. The initiative applies Big Data to development and humanitarian action to support a range of projects, from using satellite images of roofs to measure poverty in Uganda to mining tweets to gain insights into the Indonesian food crisis.

Despite the widespread application of data science techniques to the world’s biggest challenges, there is one key sector that is lagging behind. Adoption of data-driven technologies in the spheres of medicine and public health has been concerningly

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slow, a consequence of ethical and privacy concerns. Still, data science holds great promise to positively transform healthcare by improving the performance and productivity of physicians.

The health care sector is notoriously tardy in adopting datadriven solutions, due in part to the difficulty of accessing medical datasets, which often contain sensitive information. In the United States, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) creates obstacles to working with patient data in non-medical settings. HIPAA serves a critical role in maintaining privacy but also makes it challenging to share datasets and crowdsource ideas from the public, a time- and cost-efficient way of problem solving often employed in other sectors.

Yet another difficulty in adopting these data-driven health policies is the knowledge gap between physicians and data scientists.

Both are highly specialized professions with little crossover: Highly-trained doctors are unlikely to know how to build a machine learning model, and data scientists aren’t usually well-versed in patient care. This gap blocks the flow of ideas from both ends: Data scientists racing to develop better fitness trackers or hard-to-navigate health record platforms aren’t addressing the most pressing health care concerns, and physicians, feeling threatened by the prospect of being replaced, are reluctant to pursue automation.

Even with these challenges, there is hope for Big Data in medicine, and progress is indeed being made. With greater processing power and more precise software, it’s now easier to anonymize, standardize, and share medical data across hospitals and research institutions.

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Easy access to related cases will allow doctors to improve patient care and enable them to make high-impact predictions without needing any HIPAA-protected information. For instance, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is able to predict flu outbreaks by leveraging mined data about purchasing patterns at pharmacies, and Google Flu Trends attempted to solve the same problem by using flu-related Google searches, though it was ultimately discontinued due to limited success.

With increased access to medical data, it’s important that physicians and data scientists engage in meaningful collaboration.

Online data challenges are a great start. Medical organizations such as the Radiological Society of North America are beginning to post computer-aided detection competitions on Kaggle, the world’s largest online community of data scientists and machine learning enthusiasts, to promote the use of data science in medicine. Recently, a pneumonia detection challenge run in concert with the National Institutes of Health provided over 100,000 anonymized chest X-rays to the public for data analysis in order to create an automated solution to pneumonia diagnosis and treatment.

In addition to these online challenges, long-term, in-person partnerships between data scientists and medical practitioners are valuable. One undergraduate research team at Brown University is working with radiologists from Rhode Island Hospital to create an algorithm that detects strokes. With over 85 percent accuracy, the project is just one example of the promising applications of Big Data in medical image analysis.

Even though Big Data has an auspicious and revolutionary

“ The Information Revolution is in full swing as unfathomably large amounts of data are being generated and analyzed every single day.

” future in health care, it’s important to recognize that the end goal is not to replace human physicians.

Rather, tools such as computer-aided diagnosis aim to reduce errors and increase productivity, thus allowing doctors to spend more time doing research and building meaningful relationships with patients. Through newly-developed technology, data scientists can help alleviate the burnout crisis facing physicians worldwide, thereby improving quality of care for patients and quality of life for doctors.

Constant advancements in technology have become such a norm that it’s easy to forget we are living out a revolution. The Information Revolution is in full swing as unfathomably large amounts of data are being generated and analyzed every single day. With so much information, data scientists should focus on using Big Data to solve specific, high-impact issues. On that front, health care is a sector filled with untapped potential that data science can help explore, one gigabyte at a time.

AUTHOR Mary Dong ’21 is an Applied Mathematics–Computer Science concentrator and a Managing Editor at BPR. ILLUSTRATOR Katie Kwak

INTERVIEW VIDYA NARAYANAN

Interview with

Vidya Narayanan Dr. Vidya Narayanan is the Research Director of the Computational Propaganda Project at Oxford University. Her research focuses on artificial intelligence and how it can be employed for the greater good of society.

What is the Computational Propaganda Project? What is your role in this project?

The Computational Propaganda Project looks at computer-based propaganda and how automation has been used to further this propaganda. Since I joined the project last November as a research director, we have been studying automated online content production. This project began with tracking the 2016 presidential elections in the United States. We produce a number of documents, specifically “data memos” and peer review publications. These memos and papers cover topics including the elections in Colombia, Mexico, and, most recently, the presidential election in Brazil.

We study misinformation—“junk news”—mostly hosted by Twitter, Facebook, and WhatsApp. I am a computer scientist, so my main research focuses on some of the impacts of advanced AI techniques on information creation, like altering text to image, and vice versa. One of my principal research interests is to explore how these techniques can impact presidential campaigns, especially in regions of the world where democracy is less stable than the Western world.

How does your team track political bots?

It has historically been quite difficult to detect bots. There are a number of research groups that are actively engaged in analyzing patterns of bot behavior. One strategy for differentiating bots from credible news sources is looking at five established criteria: professionalism, style, bias, counterfeit, and credibility. Our group looks at high-frequency accounts to examine their tweeting patterns, especially if they are active during elections. If these accounts tweet more than 50 times a day, there is a high likelihood that there is some kind of automation—even the most prolific commentators and journalists do not have that kind of tweeting pattern.

Bots had a notable impact on the 2016 US elections. We know for sure that there were higher than average levels of misinformation, particularly in swing states. Also, Twitter users got more misinformation and conspiratorial news than professionally produced news. When we track elections, we track hashtags that are relevant, such as #USMidterms2018, and

extract tweets that have been posted using these hashtags.

Users in the swing states shared more of these sensational news stories that were not necessarily true than users in other states. We also tracked candidate mentions during the Mexican and Swedish elections. We try to identify high frequency tweeting accounts and identify if they are particularly supportive of certain agendas, especially malicious ones.

What are governmental and regulatory organizations doing to prevent these bots from having an unfair impact on political events? On an individual level, what can we do to distinguish real news from misinformation?

In terms of Twitter, once you have identified a bot, it will be shut down immediately. It is people who are serious about interfering with the democratic process that use bots and trolls in order to push the discussion in whatever direction they wish. A combination of fake news, rumors, and doctored images manipulate the public’s trust. There are organizations that have been trying to combat these regulatory measures such as Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation, which made it illegal to use one’s personal information without their consent. In our eagerness to shut down bots, it is equally as important to recognize that it must not be confused with shutting down the voices of those who don’t agree with us. I think that combating these issues requires a holistic approach.

Researchers are working with people like civil activists and policymakers to educate people not to believe everything they see. When examining bot activities, it is important to realize that there is a business model behind their operations.

They are configured to maximize engagement, and this has been best achieved when the information pushed to users creates an emotional connection with them, which is not at all professional. We have to be wary of this emotional nature to distinguish between fake and professional news.

INTERVIEWER Sai Allu ILLUSTRATOR Eliza von Zerneck

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SPECIAL FEATURE

Sputnik Sputtering Russian tech fails to take off

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International recognition—or perhaps wariness—of Russia’s technological skills is prevalent.

However, Russia’s advanced cyber capabilities are not a new development by any means. Russian scientists have been at the forefront of technology for decades.

Russian technologists invented the first digital computer, the laser, and the transistor, among many other devices. More recently, Russia demonstrated its advanced technical capabilities in its interference in the 2016 US presidential election. Yet, despite the country’s enormous technological potential, Russia

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[RUSSIAN TECH]

“ Russia’s global share of hightechnology exports is a meager 0.3 percent. Around the world, consumers generally opt to purchase devices from companies based in the US, South Korea, China, and Japan. ” institutes whereby scientists received funding based purely on the interests of political leaders. Cold War pressures meant the majority of state funding went toward missile and nuclear development instead of commercial products that Russian citizens preferred. In the same period, US companies expanded into consumer technologies, which eventually led to the rise of today’s American technology titans, such as Apple and Microsoft.

plays a microscopic role in the commercial technology industry.

The promise of technological revolution hasn’t yet materialized in Russia.

Russia’s global share of high-technology exports is a meager 0.3 percent. Around the world, consumers generally opt to purchase devices from companies based in the US, South Korea, China, and Japan.

Much of Russia’s lag in the international technology market stems from Soviet legacies of highly-centralized, state-controlled

Following the collapse of the Soviet Union and the onset of the dot-com boom in the late 1990s, there was a lack of political interest and ability to decentralize technology industries. In the 1990s, President Boris Yeltsin faced skyrocketing inflation as he attempted to liberalize markets, which fractured the once-secure Russian technical intelligentsia.

When he first became president in 2000, Putin seemed less excited to galvanize the scientific community and instead relied on Russia’s massive oil reserves for state profits. Russian scientists, unable to reach a consensus on what the future of Russian science should look like, failed to initiate consumer-oriented reform. In fact, the first serious

promise of a technological revolution did not manifest until 2008 under President Dmitry Medvedev.

After being elected, Medvedev announced plans to build a Russian Silicon Valley, which he dubbed “Skolkovo.” The tech city would have cost $4 billion to construct and was intended to house 50,000 of Russia’s brightest researchers and provide free university tuition to STEM students. Skolkovo presented an opportunity for Russia to diversify its economy and enter the international technology market.

The early success of Medvedev’s technological initiative increased potential for competition with US firms, but the project failed to have a real impact on retention rates of Russian scientists.

Today, many CEOs and technologists in Silicon Valley are Russian emigrants who left in search of greater opportunities. If Skolkovo had been able to retain more scientists, Russia’s entrance into the IT market could also have presented cheaper, more modern services to worldwide customers, adding new competition to, or even displacing, dominant US companies. While this would have been painful in the short run, retaining Russian tech talent

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might have eventually pushed US firms to more aggressively sponsor and support domestic STEM programs to foster homegrown talent and might have increased product quality as a result of greater competition.

Ultimately, however, Medvedev’s technological revolution was unsuccessful. Skolkovo failed to attract a significant number of Russian scientists, as the specter of state interference in research continued to haunt the Russian tech community.

However, Medvedev did push new legal protection reforms, including changes to Russian federal law to allow the intellectual property rights of inventions made under government-funded research to be transferred to contractors. This reform would have enabled technologists to work increasingly with private investors. But the reform was ultimately rendered inadequate, primarily because intellectual property was transferred via government auctions, and the state was able to earn an outsized profit. More importantly, it did not apply to defense or security technology and failed to explicate a process for cases of noncompliance or patent theft.

When Putin was re-elected for a third presidential term in 2012, he reversed virtually all progress advanced by Medvedev. Whereas Medvedev had viewed technological innovation as fundamental to improving Russia’s economic future, Putin cut Skolkovo’s funding and suspended several of its executives who had been accused of embezzlement and misappropriation of state funds after Kremlin anti-corruption agents raided their offices. Such actions sparked a new wave of Russian emigration abroad: From 2013 to 2014, the number of Russian scientists applying for US visas nearly doubled.

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However, Putin has recently promised a new technological revolution. In March 2018, he announced that Russia must “develop a progressive legal framework and eliminate all barriers for the development and wide use of robotic equipment, artificial intelligence, e-commerce, and Big Data processing technology” and promised to build new tech cities in Gatchina and Dubna. Putin’s state address seems promising—but then again, so did a similar speech by Medvedev in 2008.

The policies necessary for Russian scientists to reduce dependence on state funding and enter foreign markets will need to involve both broad scale economic liberalization and top-down political reform.

The Russian tech sector must be free to innovate and develop products in response to market demand rather than state needs.

This is troublesome given that the motivation Putin cited in his 2018 speech was to ensure that Russia can compete with other countries’ development of weapons. In fact, the Politburo, the policy-making body under the Soviet regime, made the same mistake of investing in technological development for the sole purpose of militarization during the Cold War. While Russia needs to gradually reduce the tech industry’s dependence on the state, it is crucial to make sure that this transition happens in a measured manner, so as to avoid industry collapse or permanent stagnation. In addition to funding STEM programs at the secondary and university levels, the state should take other active measures, such as facilitating relationships with foreign firms and experts and providing incentives for young talent to stay in the country.

“ Putin’s state address seems promising—but then again, so did a similar speech

by Medvedev in 2008. “ Finally, Putin must avoid geopolitical conflicts and combat perceptions that his administration is illiberal. Putin’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 and other scandals, including the poisoning of an former Russian spy in Great Britain and attacks on Syria, led US and European states to impose sanctions, withdraw their tech ties, and scare new generations of technologists out of Russia.

It remains unclear whether this fresh attempt at a Russian technological revolution will be successful. Even if fledgling companies are able to produce competitive products, they will still have to contend with established international firms. The good news is that, if successful, a Russian tech renaissance would not only foster greater competition among global firms but would likely increase economic and political freedom for Russian citizens as a result of the policies needed to bring it to fruition.

AUTHOR Alexi Kim ’20 is a Political Science concentrator.

ILLUSTRATOR Jiani Yu

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Liquid Gold The need to regulate breast milk markets Dubbed “liquid gold,” human breast milk is packed with nutrients and immune factors that provide a variety of health benefits to newborns. In recognition of the vast benefits of breastfeeding, countries across the globe have set up modern milk banks that receive and store healthy, screened breast milk from donors and provide it to babies in need. Over a decade ago, the Human Milk Banking Association of North America and the United Kingdom Association of Milk Banks worked together to set up the International Milk Banking Initiative, which operates in 33 countries to promote safe, ethical, and accountable milk banking around the globe.

In recent years, another form of breast milk sharing has spiked in popularity: breast milk markets.

These markets differ from milk banks in that they’re economic exchanges through which women are compensated for providing their breast milk. They range from formal companies such as Prolacta Bioscience, which adds nutritional elements to the milk before providing it to neonatal intensive care units, to informal Craigslist-esque websites such as

Only the Breast. The rise of these markets, in conjunction with the continued expansion of existing donor banks, carries a multitude of positive social impacts. But as breast milk becomes increasingly commodified, clear regulations on its exchange must be enacted to protect mothers and infants alike.

“ Opposition from corporate interests stands in the way of ensuring the safe and ethical trade of breast milk ” Breast milk endows many positive health outcomes upon babies who consume it. It promotes sensory and cognitive development and has been shown to protect infants from sudden infant death syndrome and jaundice, among many other

ailments. The demand for breast milk is especially high for premature babies due to the protection it provides them from sepsis and other possibly fatal diseases: Neonatal intensive care units in the US demand about 63 million ounces of breast milk per year.

The impact of breast milk sharing is astonishing: Brazil, for instance, has witnessed a 73 percent decrease in infant mortality rate since the inception of its first breast milk bank in the 1980s.

Currently, hospitals and new mothers make up a large portion of breast milk seekers, since not all babies are able to consume their own mother’s milk. There are many reasons for this. Some people who give birth suffer from medical conditions or treatments that prevent their breasts from producing milk. For example, undergoing a C-section or simply having insufficient glandular tissue can prevent lactation.

Giving birth prematurely can also prevent the development of enough glandular tissue to lactate. In addition to these new mothers, male couples and single fathers also seek breast milk for their children.

Luckily, this demand is met with a reliable supply. People may seek to donate or sell their breast milk for a variety of reasons.

Often, those who breastfeed naturally over-lactate, producing more milk than their child can consume. Breast milk markets create new economic opportunities for mothers; by selling milk that may otherwise be wasted, new parents now have a unique option to alleviate the financial burden of a newborn child.

Though breast milk sharing holds great promise, it can only reach

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its full potential if policymakers address the ethical and health considerations associated with this practice. Unlike the heavily regulated donation of blood or organs, the donation and sale of breast milk is relatively unregulated in the US. In fact, there are currently no laws regarding the sale of human breast milk.

Economic incentives may give rise to shady markets in which unscreened, potentially spoiled breast milk is sold through

“ Economic incentives may give rise to shady markets in which unscreened, potentially spoiled breast milk is sold through unregulated vendors. ” unregulated vendors; such unscreened milk could even contain diseases such as HIV or hepatitis, putting vulnerable infants at risk.

Furthermore, low-income women may be exploited in this exchange. There’s been much controversy surrounding the sale of Cambodian mothers’ breast milk to US company Ambrosia Labs: While some argue that the practice was a precious economic opportunity for Cambodian women—with a relatively generous pay of $0.50 per ounce—others, including the UNICEF, chided the exchange as “exploiting vulnerable and poor women for profit and commercial purposes.” In 2017, the Cambodian government instituted a ban on exporting breast milk.

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Yet, there are similar concerns within domestic contexts, with powerful corporations and wealthy individuals exploiting low-income mothers who have few other options. Particularly in the US, the idea of sharing breast milk is understandably questionable because of its complicated history rooted in inequality and oppression. During the 18th century, African women were brought across the Atlantic to work as wet nurses for white families. This commodification of Black female bodies to benefit white families presents historically racist, sexist, and classist associations with breast milk sharing systems. After the end of slavery, in the 19th and 20th centuries, upper class families often hired wet nurses, usually women of a lower socioeconomic background, to breastfeed their newborns. This left wet nurses with no choice but to feed their own babies formula.

A similar narrative of commodification may taint breast milk sharing today if policymakers don’t set clearer rules and crack down on underground breast milk markets, both in the US and around the world.

Without a doubt, advances toward breast milk markets and banks have been met with resistance. In particular, opposition from corporate interests stands in the way of ensuring the safe and ethical trade of breast milk. A staunch opponent to the movement is the lucrative instant formula business, which has strong conservative political support. Siding with the industry, President Trump’s administration derailed the passage of a World Health Organization resolution supporting the promotion of breastfeeding. Increased breast milk sharing means fewer formula purchases and lower profits for corporations. Unsurprisingly, This is a chain of events companies will

do anything to prevent. Nestlé, for instance, tried to convince mothers in developing countries that formula is indispensable, despite research showing that formula is less healthy and more expensive than breast milk.

These challenges are all the more reason for lawmakers to protect mothers’ and infants’ well-being.

Still, steps can be taken to tackle the potential problems with breast milk markets down the line.

Different countries have vastly different regulations surrounding breast milk, but in the US and elsewhere there is a dire need for more stringent rules controlling its exchange. Lawmakers should look to the organ and blood donation system for guidance: These donation pipelines are lengthy and complex processes with many layers of regulations and screenings—even blood donations, which are commonplace and informal, involve stringent qualifications and regulations. Furthermore, human breast milk should be pasteurized, an efficient and inexpensive process applied to cow and goat milk that kills many pathogens.

With stricter regulations, governments can limit the consumption of potentially unsafe breast milk and work to prevent the exploitation of women through this gray market.

Though there is much to be done, there’s no doubt that breast milk banks and markets are pushing the boundaries of what can be shared, and, in their course, challenging traditional concepts of motherhood. Breast milk sharing has the potential to bring in a flood of positive social and public health impacts; it just needs a clearer set of guidelines to keep it on the right track.

AUTHOR Madeline Noh ’22 is an intended Public Health and Psychology concentrator.

ILLUSTRATOR Maddie Brewer

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An Asymmetric Affair Curbing Bahraini authoritarianism In October 2018, Saudi Arabian operatives killed a Saudi journalist, Jamal Khashoggi, at the country’s consulate in Istanbul.

Khashoggi was a prominent critic of the Saudi regime, but his murder still shocked the greater international community. The Saudi government has never endorsed the assassination of journalists. His death garnered such widespread international attention that even President Donald Trump, whose foreign policy is characterized by a laissez-fare attitude toward human rights violations, initiated a public response.

However, if President Trump was genuinely interested in punishing regimes for their violent crackdowns on dissent, he would have already addressed lesser-known but equally concerning events unfolding just off the Arabian Peninsula in the Kingdom of Bahrain. The kingdom’s royal family exercises authoritarian power, representing only the interests of an elite minority group who hold the majority of positions of power in the kingdom: the Sunnis. The Shi’a majority, on the other hand, has limited social mobility and faces routine discrimination.

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Shi’a clerics are often arbitrarily detained and prohibited from performing religious services or visiting certain mosques.

Bahrain’s Shi’a majority has continuously protested against the monarchical regime since the outbreak of the Arab Spring in late 2010. Bahraini law enforcement responds to these protests with brutal crackdowns on free speech: Protesters are frequently incarcerated without due process, and allegations of torture number in the hundreds.

Meanwhile, prominent dissidents are often deported, stripped of their citizenship, or sentenced to jail time in mass trials that try hundreds of individuals simultaneously.

Altogether, these acts render fair judicial decision-making impossible.

The human rights situation has further deteriorated since the beginning of 2017. In January, Bahrain executed three prisoners who confessed under the duress of torture to killing three policemen in 2014. These executions were the first in the kingdom since 2010. Five months later, law enforcement killed five protesters and detained hundreds at a protest

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in Diraz–one of the country’s worst crackdowns on protesters since 2011. In June 2017, the government ended any pretense of tolerance for free speech by shutting down the kingdom’s last independent newspaper. In doing so, the government successfully stifled the democratic reform movement in Bahrain and laid the groundwork for further escalation of human rights abuses by eliminating the checks and balances imposed by a free press.

A crucial component of Bahrain’s consolidation of power is its relationship with the United States.

One of the most strategically important American naval bases is located in Bahrain. The US has a

strong incentive to encourage the continuity of government: If the current regime were to collapse, the US would have to nurture a relationship with a new Bahraini government in order to guarantee continued access to the Persian Gulf. Consequently, the countries share a symbiotic relationship: Bahrain provides the US access to the Persian Gulf, and the US offers Bahrain the foreign support it needs to weather domestic instability and maintain strong defense capabilities.

Although the relationship between Bahrain and the US is interdependent, it is simultaneously asymmetric. The US is a global superpower; Bahrain is barely visible on a map. The US relies on Bahrain for a massive naval fleet that could be relocated if necessary; however, the Bahraini regime depends on this crucial alliance for its survival.

Because the US–Bahrain relationship is heavily skewed, the US is able to strongly influence Bahraini policy. In fact, the chronology of Bahrain’s deteriorating human rights record demonstrates that President Trump’s behavior toward the kingdom has exacerbated the violence against local protesters. Rather than incentivizing the Bahraini government to end its continued abuse of power, the US has enabled it.

Altogether, President Trump has led an approach defined by the US turning a blind eye to increasingly severe crackdowns on free speech.

An operative element of the US-Bahrain relationship is the sale of American F-16 jets to Bahrain. In March 2017, President Trump inked a contract selling the jets to Bahrain, disregarding an Obama-era freeze on the deal until human rights conditions improved. In doing so, he eliminated leverage that could have pressured Bahrain to end its

crackdown on dissent.

It is no coincidence that Bahrain’s first three executions since 2010 were carried out days before President Trump’s inauguration, or that the country’s crackdown on protesters came two days after President Trump assured Bahrain there would be “no strain” in relations with his administration.

Admittedly, the increased crackdown on dissent is not wholly tied to US attitudes. Conditions in Bahrain began to deteriorate in mid-2016, which prompted international concern and the Obama administration’s decision to halt the F-16 deal in the first place.

However, President Trump’s disregard for human rights in Bahrain has allowed further repression in the state. Before President Trump’s election, no dissidents or prisoners had been killed in Bahrain since 2014; since his inauguration in 2017, at least eight killings have been recorded.

Bahrain’s other foreign allies, who tend to completely ignore the crackdowns, also share the responsibility for responding to this situation. The country’s other key Western ally, the United Kingdom, also opened a naval base in Bahrain in April and has remained silent on the issue of human rights in the country.

This tacit approval of dissident abuse in Bahrain is unacceptable. The US and the UK should use their considerable influence in Bahrain to rally against the cruel, corrupt, and unnecessary treatment of protesters who demand the democratic freedoms Western nations claim to hold so dear.

AUTHOR Tarana Sable ’22 is an intended Political Science and Middle East Studies concentrator.

INFOGRAPHIC Julia Gilman and Klara Auerbach

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Vigilante Injustice Mob justice in Ghana and the need for police reform

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On May 29, 2018, Major Maxwell Mahama was out jogging in the Ghanaian town of DenkyiraObuasi when locals took notice of the gun he had in his pocket, assumed he was a thief, and instigated a mob attack against him. The innocent army officer died after being violently stoned, hanged, and set alight by a furious crowd in the country’s Central Region. Recordings of the lynching quickly spread online, rightly sparking outrage in Ghana, where mob justice has risen to unprecedented levels.

In a year when hundreds have already died due to mob violence, Mahama’s death set off an explosion of fear and anger over vigilantism that prompted a quick response from authorities. Shortly after the event, the Inspector General of Police, David Asante Apeatu, announced measures to eradicate mob justice in Ghana, focusing on “stern enforcement of the law.”

But expanding the scope of the corrupt police force is misguided, since fears of police inadequacy are what led to vigilantism in the first place. To truly counter mob

justice, police reform needs to tackle the root of the problem— corruption—and refocus its efforts to include community policing rather than militarization.

According to Transparency International, 92 percent of Ghanaians believe that the police are either corrupt or extremely corrupt. Across the country, extortion and bribery are widespread.

Police often collect private debts, create illegal checkpoints, and carry out arrests to elicit payments from detained citizens. A staggering 79 percent of Ghanaians have reported paying bribes to avoid punishment. This extortion is paired with a chronic delay in court cases, which often holds victims in jail for months as they await trial. Ghana’s Chief Justice, Sophia Akuffo, recently noted that this ineffectiveness is often what motivates mob justice: People feel there is no “point of reporting to the police or going to court… or waiting for the judicial outcome, because it will take too long.” This combination of police corruption and judicial inaction has spawned a culture of exacting instant “justice.”

WORLD VIGILANTE INJUSTICE

“

A staggering 79 percent of Ghanaians have reported paying bribes to avoid punishment.

”

It’s not as if Ghanaian politicians haven’t sought changes before: As part of an ambitious policy reform experiment in 2010, Ghana doubled police salaries. This change was motivated by the belief that police were turning to petty corruption, such as demanding bribes from truckers on highways to pass their checkpoints, because their salaries were too low.

Unfortunately, a study from the International Growth Centre found that salary reform worsened petty corruption rather than reducing it. Raising salaries caused a 19 percent increase in elicited bribes and increased the value of bribes taken at each individual stop by about 26 percent.

This endemic problem requires systematic reform.

Community policing models are built to encourage and promote partnerships between police and communities. Community policing has been implemented across the world with massive success. In the late 1990s, Cincinnati adopted a “Community Problem Solving Policing” strategy that required the police to connect with members of the community and listen to their concerns rather than focus on maximizing arrests.

In the 15 years after the program’s implementation, the city saw a 69 percent reduction in police use of force incidents and a 42 percent reduction in citizen complaints of police tactics. This approach has also been employed in less developed areas: In Coimbatore, India, a city with a history of religious violence, the community formed a committee aimed at keeping police informed on changing community dynamics.

The police also instituted an anonymous complaint system aimed at increasing accountability. The police were required to attend attitudinal change

workshops and seminars to help inform the way they interacted with the community. When the community has an active relationship with the police, actual productive means of justice can develop and thrive, something that the Ghanaian police force desperately needs.

In Ghana, community policing could take the form of introducing transparent disciplinary procedures, effective mechanisms for complaints, and an anti-corruption strategy based on good management and supervision controls. At the community level, officials can hold community activities and public forums for members of the community to actively voice their concerns to specifically increase public participation in policing. Opening information flows between the police and the community both allows the police to explain their procedures and the public to hold them accountable, giving citizens more options than taking to the streets when they are frustrated with police activity.

Furthermore, community policing can improve police– public relationships by strengthening social bonds and dynamics within communities; it’s harder to demand a bribe from someone whom you know and care about.

Mike Brickner of the ACLU notes that community policing is not “just about responding to crimes but instead hearing about the overall health of the community.”

By targeting issues prioritized by the community, police can build trust, helping to change their negative public perception while holding them to a higher standard of accountability.

In nearby Nigeria, community policing was introduced as a pilot policy reform in 2004 to address mutual distrust that had developed between the public and the police. The Nigerian government

used massive awareness and sensitization campaigns such as the “Police Is Your Friend” movement, created through a partnership between the Nigerian Police force and the National Association of Nigerian Students.

The movement targeted public perceptions of police and opened channels of feedback. Nigeria also introduced intensive training programs such as a day-long national human rights workshop for the Commissioners of Police that focused on how human rights-oriented police messaging and strategies can increase public trust. Police performance, bolstered by increased information flows, demonstrated increased intelligence and improved criminal investigations. The conflict prevention and reduction initiative yielded positive results: The crime rate fell, and most importantly, communities who participated in this reform perceived a general decrease in levels of corruption and acknowledged this in public meetings.

Corruption is one of the fundamental challenges of government, regardless of a country’s location, wealth, or political structure. Its manifestation in police forces is particularly malignant, as erosion in the faith of the justice system can result in public anger playing judge, jury, and executioner. In Ghana, restoring public trust in police will be no easy task.

By reorienting policing toward community-based methods instead of militarization, the government can attack mob justice at its pernicious root. A trusting relationship between the public and the police promises to curb the violence that has stolen the lives of Mahama and so many more.

AUTHOR Leticia Wood ‘22 is an intended Cognitive Neuroscience and Africana Studies concentrator and an Associate Editor at BPR. ILLUSTRATOR Mackay Hare

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WORLD BUILDING BRIDGES IN THE BALKANS

WORLD

Building Bridges in the Balkans China’s Belt and Road threatens EU accession

This summer, tourists flocking to the coastal Croatian city of Dubrovnik were greeted by a group very much out of place amidst the ancient fortified walls and orange-roofed buildings that have become associated with HBO’s Game of Thrones. Between trips to landmarks often associated with Khaleesi and her counterparts, visitors found themselves surrounded by hordes of Chinese police officers patrolling the town’s cobblestone streets.

The security personnel, deployed through a new collaborative effort between the Croatian Interior Ministry and the Chinese Ministry of Public Security, allegedly sought to provide Chinese tourists with feelings of enhanced personal safety throughout their travels.

The “Joint Police Patrol,” however, is just the most visible example of heightened Chinese involvement in the Balkans. In a time of immense Balkan instability and change, the region— largely unguarded and vulnerable as a bloc—is involved in a tug-of-war of hegemonic proportions between the traditional soft power measures of

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the European Union and the new, radical approach of China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). But while President Xi Jinping’s aid programs are ostensibly aimed at Balkan stability, they may have the opposite effect by undercutting EU development programs and consequently driving Balkan countries further from the longterm security they seek.

The Balkans have long been viewed as the powder keg of Europe. The region is composed of states of the former Yugoslavia, whose violent breakup in the 1990s is still deeply ingrained in recent memory. The new states that rose out of the ashes and pain of the 1990s— Croatia, Slovenia, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Macedonia, and hotly-contested Kosovo—exist in a climate of immense instability and inequity, where conflict could potentially break out at any instant.

It is not simply this internal discord that characterizes the Balkans as a region of extreme vulnerability; on the international scale, the territory remains relatively bereft of geopolitical alignment, save for EU members

Slovenia and Croatia. In a world where multinational bodies have gained exceptional prominence, the Balkans’ continued absence from these groups is both curious… and inviting. China has mobilized to exploit this enticing vulnerability, attempting to craft a sphere of influence in Europe.

Upon Xi Jinping’s ascent to the position of General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party in 2012, Chinese foreign policy departed from historically reserved global engagement to an increasingly emphatic international presence, perhaps best exemplified by the BRI, which launched in 2013. Marketed as an opportunity to restore the glory of the Silk Road, the BRI provides development aid to over 65 countries worldwide.

The motives behind Chinese expansion aren’t necessarily sinister; rather, it is the practical consequences of China’s programs that provide cause for concern. China sees the Balkans as a key gateway to European markets and hopes to buy friends among countries that might eventually join the EU. At the surface, China’s investments in business

WORLD BUILDING BRIDGES IN THE BALKANS

“ China’s unconventionally straightforward approach is alluring to many countries frustrated by the bureacractic hurdles and sluggish timeframes associated with Western aid institutions.

”

and infrastructure provide aid to countries in need. But digging deeper, these programs actually pose a challenge to the longterm development and stability of the region.

The BRI differs from Western aid projects in that it provides fast-paced, visible infrastructure programs with no fineprint policy provisions. China’s unconventionally straightforward approach is alluring to many countries frustrated by the bureacractic hurdles and sluggish timeframes associated with Western aid institutions.

Over the past few years, China has subtly funneled over $10 billion into the promotion of infrastructure projects throughout the Balkan region. From bridges connecting Croatia’s discontiguous coastline to an ambitious overhaul of Montenegro’s highways, Chinese industry has been chugging away at projects dismissed as too ambitious by Western donors and domestic governments.

The implementation of these projects, however, could not have come at a worse time. The

presence of no-strings-attached Chinese aid diminishes any incentive to enact stabilizing reforms that would pave the way to future EU membership, and many of China’s programs blatantly violate the EU’s regulatory standards.

China’s construction of coal plants throughout the region, for instance, directly counteracts EU efforts to reduce carbon emissions. A highly publicized Chinese plan to build a railway between Belgrade and Budapest was halted due to outcries over its violation of EU infrastructure regulations. Workers in a Serbian steel mill have reported sharp declines in safety following a Chinese takeover of the industry.

In addition to the myriad regulatory violations that have accompanied the BRI’s regional proliferation, Balkan countries have become increasingly saddled with debt to Chinese firms. The debt accrued by Balkan states in Chinese infrastructure projects could be enough to stymie any hope of ever being taken under Brussels’ wing.

Meanwhile, in February, the European Commission released a comprehensive roadmap aimed at achieving EU accession of Serbia and Montenegro by 2025, along with broader plans for the long-term integration of six Western Balkan states. However, in order to achieve EU membership, countries must meet an exhaustive list of economic and political standards, which is proving difficult for Balkan states.

And therein lies the issue: As long as these benchmarks seem lofty and unachievable, Balkan countries will continue to choose easyily accessible aid over longterm reform. The Serbian government, for example, struggling with economic stagnation and social instability, knows that it won’t meet the requirements for EU membership any time soon.

The country has every reason

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WORLD BUILDING BRIDGES IN THE BALKANS

to forego the difficult process of aligning its policies with the EU’s in favor of immediate Chinese aid. This subsequently contributes to deregulation and drives Serbia further from its ultimate goal.

“ The presence of no-stringsattached Chinese aid diminishes any incentive to enact stabilizing reforms that would pave the way to future EU membership. ” That the Balkan states would opt for short-term solutions is unsurprising given their tenuous history, which is full of short-term stopgaps. Still, EU membership for Balkan countries may not be so far off after all, permitted they do not lose sight of the long run.

But it’s hard not to be wooed by the flashy and new, given the region’s vulnerable state and desire for any modicum of certainty. The onus now rests on the EU: In order to save its reformist agenda, it must take several steps to present Western aid, and ultimately EU membership, as a viable and immediate option. This can be done by mobilizing financial resources and accelerating the timeline for project approval. Currently, there is a time lag of about one year between project agreement and

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implementation in EU projects; this delay incentivizes turning to Chinese aid, which is remarkably swift by comparison. However, the EU must emphasize that its funds for infrastructure and economic development actually far outdo China’s in longterm effect. The EU provides grants; China only provides loans.

Furthermore, the EU must clearly communicate that Balkan accession is a goal to which Brussels is truly committed and an investment that will benefit all parties.

could provide. But China’s emphasis on efficiency undercuts the EU’s focus on sustainability, paradoxically undermining its own interests. It is therefore imperative that the EU clear the path to membership in order to incentivize reforms that could allow the region to achieve a long-sought equilibrium.

Ultimately, both the EU and China hold Balkan stability as a common goal. It’s in China’s best interest to abide by EU regulatory standards, as the success of Chinese investments in the Balkans is contingent on the stability that EU membership

AUTHOR Allison Meakem ’20 is an International Relations concentrator and a Content Director at BPR. ILLUSTRATOR Ellen He

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