Brown Political Review - Winter 2013 Issue

WINTER 2013 / VOLUME II ISSUE 4

How to Save the City

by Michael Tamayo

Jim Yong Kim

Sponsored by:

The World Bank president on the next wave of development

Arianna Huffington

The Huffington Media empress predicts the political future

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CONTENTS STAFF

Features

Executive Board

HOW TO SAVE THE CITY What Vallejo’s past can teach a plummeting Detroit.

Michael Tamayo

EDITORS-IN-CHIEF ALEXANDROS DIPLAS & BEN WOFFORD CHIEF-OF-STAFF SOFIA FERNANDEZ GOLD ASSOCIATE CHIEF-OF-STAFF MEGHAN HOLLOWAY SENIOR MANAGING EDITOR CAROL KIM MEDIA DIRECTOR EMILY KASSIE INTERVIEWS DIRECTOR ANNIKA LICHTENBAUM ONLINE DIRECTOR MATTHEW MCCABE BUSINESS & MARKETING DIRECTOR ELENA SALTZMAN LAYOUT & ART DIRECTOR KATRINA MACHADO

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SMART INTELLIGENCE Responding to NSA outcries abroad, reforming espionage at home.

Ariadne Ellsworth

Editorial

SENIOR MANAGING EDITOR CAROL KIM NATIONAL MANAGING EDITOR LAUREN SUKIN GLOBAL MANAGING EDITOR BENJAMIN KOATZ EDITORS-AT-LARGE MINTAKA ANGELL, SADHANA BALA, MATTEO CAVELIER RICCARDI, MICHAEL CHERNIN, NOAH FITZGEREL, ALEX LLOYD GEORGE & JESSICA KENNY

Copy Editorial

CHIEF COPY EDITORS ALEXIA RAMIREZ & ALEXA VAN HATTUM COPY EDITORS SARAH DOMENICK, STELLA KIM, LAURA KIRK, ANNE MOODY, ELI MOTYCKA, THOMAS NATH, DYLAN C. PLATT, DORI RAHBAR, LIZ STUDLICK & EDLE ASTRUP TSCHUDI

Media

MEDIA DIRECTOR EMILY KASSIE ASSISTANT DIRECTORS CAROLINE FENN & BEN SADKOWSKI CONTENT CREATORS HANNAH PULLEN-BLASNIK, EUGENIA LULO, NINA ROESNER, SHOSHANA SALZBERG, MARIA PAZ ALMENARA & ALIF IBRAHIM

Interviews

INTERVIEWS DIRECTOR ANNIKA LICHTENBAUM ASSISTANT INTERVIEWS DIRECTORS OMAR BEN HALIM & HENRY KNIGHT INTERVIEWS ASSOCIATES ANNETTE LOPEZ, SABIN RAY, SAMUEL RUBINSTEIN & SARAH SACHS

Online

ONLINE DIRECTOR MATTHEW MCCABE ASSOCIATE ONLINE DIRECTOR NEIL SINGH WEBMASTER TANAY PADHI COLUMN MANAGERS LENA BARSKY, CLARA BEYER, CARTER JOHNSON & BEN WOLKON

Columnists

FEATURED COLUMNISTS MINTAKA ANGELL, DANIEL DUHAIME, GRAHAM SHERIDAN, MEG SULLIVAN, FRANCIS TORRES & CARLY WEST

Staff Writers

STAFF WRITER MANAGING EDITORS MINTAKA ANGELL & MIGUEL PIMENTEL STAFF WRITERS ATHENA BRYAN, MATTEO CAVELIER RICCARDI, ALEX LLOYD GEORGE, HASSAN HAMADE, STELLA KIM, JAMES KONSKY, EMMA MOORE, JOAQUIM SALLES, BRENNA SCULLY & EDLE ASTRUP TSCHUDI

Business & Marketing

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Magazine in Numbers

Dispatches

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PUBLIC PRAYER COMES BACK TO COURT Lena Barsky HOW AMERICA’S SEX ED SUPPORTS RAPE CULTURE Clara Beyer MALALA: THE TALIBAN’S SHOT HEARD ‘ROUND THE WORLD Carly West DOWNTOWN PROVIDENCE POLICY Graham Sheridan

National

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Global

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THANK YOU FOR VAPING Athena Bryan PLAYING SECOND FIDDLE Emma Dickson FADING INK Malana Krongelb TEST, RETEST, LEGISLATE Adam Bouche AMERICA DIAGNOSED Lauren Sukin

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BUSINESS & MARKETING DIRECTOR ELENA SALTZMAN SALES ASSOCIATES CHIAMAKA ANYOKU, GRAHAM ROTENBERG & STEPHEN STAHR MARKETING & OUTREACH ASSOCIATES ALLIE VALICENTI, ISABEL DIAWARA & OLIVIA PINCINCE

THE POPE WHO TAKES SELFIES Dylan C. Platt WHEN BUDDHISTS GO TO WAR Edward Clifford BREAKING BADGERS Adam Savat A STRONGER BREW Matteo Cavelier Riccardi MARRIAGES OF GENOCIDE Emily Kassie

Interviews

Layout & Art

LAYOUT & ART DIRECTOR KATRINA MACHADO ASSOCIATE LAYOUT DIRECTORS BEN BERKE & LIZ STUDLICK INFOGRAPHICS MARLENA MORSHEAD & STANLEY STEWART CHIEF GRAPHIC DESIGNER ANISA HOLMES DESIGN ASSOCIATES ELIZABETH BERMAN, MARLENA MORSHEAD & STANLEY STEWART

Artists

STAFF ARTISTS GOYO KWON, KATRINA MACHADO, EMILY REIF, SHEILA SITARAM & OLIVIA WATSON CONTRIBUTING ARTISTS MARIA PAZ ALMENARA, ANISA HOLMES & JULIA LADICS DISPATCHES KATRINA MACHADO COVER ARTIST MARIA PAZ ALMENARA & EMILY REIF

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ARIANNA HUFFINGTON JIM YONG KIM JACK MARKELL MOHAMMAD FADEL ROBERT CASEY GREGORY MANKIW

THE MAGAZINE IN NUMBERS THE PERCENTAGE OF SOLDIERS WHO HAVE FOUGHT IN IRAQ AND AFGHANISTAN WHO HAVE BEEN DIAGNOSED WITH PTSD

250,000 MUSLIMS HAVE BEEN KILLED IN THE MIDDLE EAST

BY THE UNITED STATES SINCE THE BEGINING OF THE WAR ON TERROR, WHILE THE NUMBER OF U.S. TROOPS THAT HAVE DIED SINCE THEN IS

APPROXIMATELY EDITORIAL CARTOONISTS HAVE FULL-TIME POSITIONS WITH DAILY NEWSPAPERS HALF OF WHAT THAT NUMBER WAS YEARS AGO

KRONGELB p. 12 SUKIN p. 16

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OVER

6,600

SUKIN p.16

TAMAYO p. 18

MILLION:

CHANGE IN POPULATION OF DETROIT, 1950-2011

THE NUMBER OF FOLLOWERS OF POPE FRANCIS’ TWITTER FEED

PLATT p. 22

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ONLY 33 OF THE 535 BOUCHE

OFFICIALS SERVING IN THE HOUSE AND SENATE HAVE TECHNICAL TRAINING IN p. 15 SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

THE DECLINE IN SMOKING HAS BEEN CONSIDERABLY LESS FOR THE DISADVANTAGED: THE WEALTHIEST FAMILIES SAW A THOSE IN THE LOWEST INCOME BRACKET, HOWEVER, EXPERIENCED ONLY A

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THERE CLIFFORD p. 24 ARE 62%DROP IN SMOKING FROM OVER MONKS IN BURMA

1965 TO 1999

DECREASE IN THE SAME TIME PERIOD

ROUGHLY 1 PERCENT OF THE POPULATION OF THE ENTIRE COUNTRY IS A PART OF THE BUDDHIST INSTITUTION

BRYAN p. 9

DISPATCHES PUBLIC PRAYER COMES BACK TO COURT LENA BARSKY

the “Lemon Test” that is still used to decide questions of separation of church and state today. In Lemon, the Court examined whether Rhode Island and Pennsylvania violated the Establishment Clause by making financial aid available to “church-related educational institutions.” Chief Justice Warren Burger wrote for the eight-justice majority (Justice Thurgood Marshall recused himself) and articulated the three parts of the Lemon Test. In order for a statute “dealing with religious establishment” to be constitutional, the statute must have “a secular legislative purpose,” it must have “principal effects which neither advance nor inhibit religion,” and it must not “foster an excessive government entanglement with religion.” For a statute not to violate the Establishment Clause, it must fulfill all three prongs of the Lemon Test.

If I were a Supreme Court Justice and had to apply the Lemon Test to the situation in Town of Greece v. Galloway, the results would be something like this: Greece’s practice of prayer before town meetings has no legislative purpose; it also seems to foster an excessive entanglement between the town board of Greece and religion generally. It could be argued that the principal effects of the town prayer neither advance nor inhibit religion, but in my Lemon Test analysis, the Greece town board’s practice of saying a prayer before each town meeting fails two out of three prongs of the Lemon Test, and thus violates the Court’s interpretation of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. However, the issue at hand in Town of Greece v. Galloway is trickier: because the issue of religious establishment in question is a practice — starting each town meeting with a prayer — and not an actual statute, the Lemon Test cannot necessarily be applied in this circumstance. The Nine might decide to do so, but they are more likely to rely on precedent that speaks specifically to public prayer instead of precedent from Lemon or Everson.

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On November 6, the Supreme Court heard Town of Greece v. Galloway. This case addresses the issue of religion as it intersects with governance, one of the thornier legal questions to emerge from the application of the Bill of Rights. The legal website SCOTUSblog currently considers Town of Greece v. Galloway to be one of the five “Major Cases” of the 2013-2014 term because of the “separation of Church and State” question at the heart of the case.

The facts in Town of Greece v. Galloway are as follows: Greece, a town in New York, is run by a five-member town board that holds monthly, public “town meetings.”

According to the website Oyez, these town meetings have begun with “a prayer given by an invited member of the local clergy” since 1999. Greece “did not adopt any policy regarding who may lead the prayer or its content,” but more often than not, the prayer was delivered by “Christian clergy members.”

Eight years later, in 2007, town residents Susan Galloway and Linda Stephens “complained about the town’s prayer practices,” and after their complaint, “there was some increase in the denominations represented.” Despite this change, Galloway and Stephens sued their town in February 2008, claiming that “the town’s practices violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment by preferring Christianity over other faiths.” A U.S. district court ruled in favor of the Town of Greece, but then the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit reversed the decision, affirming Galloway and Stephens’ claim that the Establishment Clause had been violated. The Town

of Greece appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, and the petition was granted in May 2013. The question before the Court is, as Oyez explains, whether “the invocation of prayer at a legislative session violate[s] the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment even in the absence of discrimination in the selection of prayer-givers and content.”

The Establishment Clause of the First Amendment is the first clause in the amendment, and reads, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.” The Establishment Clause “forbids the government from establishing an official religion, but also prohibits government actions that unduly favor one religion over another… [or] from unduly preferring religion over non-religion, or non-religion over religion.”

The Supreme Court did not apply the Establishment Clause to the states until its 1947 case Everson v. Board of Education, in which New Jersey provided reimbursement to parents for the cost of sending their children to parochial schools using public buses. In a 5–4 decision written by Justice Hugo Black, the Court held that the Establishment Clause, as applied to the states through the Fourteenth Amendment, was not violated

by New Jersey because “services like busing and police and fire protection for parochial schools [were] ‘separate and so indisputably marked off from the religious function’ that for the state to provide them would not violate the First Amendment.” Black’s decision cited Thomas Jefferson, saying, “the clause against establishment of religion by law was intended to erect ‘a wall of separation between church and State.’” Ever since Everson, the Court has tried to apply Jefferson’s philosophy to questions of religion and government.

Despite this seeming finality, new cases have caused the Court to revisit the church–state question. Perhaps the most famous Establishment Clause case is Lemon v. Kurtzman (1971), which established

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The case law surrounding the issue of public prayer is extensive. The most monumental case about public prayer is Engle v.

Vitale, a landmark 1962 decision in which the New York State Board of Regents mandated that every school day start with the recitation of a “short, voluntary prayer.” The prayer in question was considered “nondenominational,” but in a 6–1 vote (Justices Byron White and Felix Frankfurter recused themselves), the Court found the mandated prayer to be unconstitutional. Oyez explains: “By providing the prayer, New York officially approved religion,” and as such violated the Establishment Clause.

One year after Engle was decided came Abington School District v. Schempp (1963), in which Pennsylvania public school students were required to read “at least ten verses from the Bible” at the start of every school day. The Court found this practice unconstitutional because “the required activities encroached on both the Free Exercise Clause and the Establishment Clause… since the readings and recitations were essentially religious ceremonies and were ‘intended by the State to be so.’” Wallace v. Jaffree (1985) addressed a law that mandated teacher-led prayer in Alabama public schools, and the Court also held this statute unconstitutional. There, according to Oyez, the Court “appl[ied] the secular purpose test” from Lemon, which “asked if the state’s actual purpose was to endorse or disapprove of religion,” and the six-justice majority held that Alabama’s law “was an affirmative endorsement of religion.”

Next came Lee v. Weisman, a 1992 case in which a middle school in Providence, Rhode Island invited a rabbi to speak at its graduation. An angry parent brought suit against the middle school principal, and the Supreme Court, in a 5–4 divide, found the practice in violation of the Establishment Clause. Finally, in the 2003 case Santa Fe Independent School District v. Doe, Santa Fe’s policy to allow “student-led, student-initiated” prayer before football games was held in violation of the Establishment Clause. Justice Stevens explained in his 6–3 majority opinion that “the football game prayers were public speech authorized by a government policy and taking place on government property at government-sponsored school-related events,” and also that Santa Fe’s “policy involved both perceived and actual government endorsement of the delivery of prayer at important school events.” Clearly, in Stevens’ eyes, there was too great of a connection between the gov-

ernment of Santa Fe and its public schools to allow any sort of endorsement of religion to take place on public school grounds.

With all of these cases under our belts, it’s worth taking another look at Town of Greece v. Galloway. If the Court rules in Town of Greece v. Galloway according to the “no prayer at public school” precedents that have been set by Engel and its progeny, the practice of beginning each town meeting with a prayer will be struck down. The decisions in both Lee and Santa Fe address practices and not statutes, providing a precedent for Greece’s own practice of prayer before the meetings, and in both Lee and

Santa Fe the Court held the religious practices unconstitutional. It follows, then, that the prayer in Town of Greece v. Galloway would also be seen as a violation of the Establishment Clause. However, the current Roberts Court does not always place stock in precedent, and thus it’s quite possible that this case will fall the other way. In either case, Town of Greece has the potential to become a stalwart in church-state jurisprudence. u

HOW AMERICA’S SEX ED SUPPORTS RAPE CULTURE CLARA BEYER Sexual education in the United States is far from perfect. It varies widely from state to state — and even school to school — but at its worst it can shame rape victims, spread misinformation and exclude everyone who isn’t heterosexual and cisgender (those who don’t identify with their gender assigned at birth).

Given the potential pitfalls, you might wonder why we teach sex ed in the first place. Sometimes, of course, we don’t. Only 22 states have required sex education in their public schools, and only 19 of those states require that the curricula are “medically, factually or technically accurate.”

But when we do teach sex ed, it’s usually presented to parents and school boards as a way to stifle the adverse effects of adolescent sexuality. This is part of why abstinence has become such a focal point in many schools’ curricula, along with a series of initiatives under the George W. Bush administration that provided federal funding to abstinence-focused programs.

When your goal is to prevent teen pregnancy, persuading teenagers not to have sex seems like a good way to make that happen — although whether such a feat is actually possible or effective is another story. Similarly, the spread of sexually transmitted infections (STIs) is seemingly contained if nobody ever engages in any sexual activity with anyone else, ever.

If your only objectives are preventing teen pregnancy and STIs, teaching abstinence does seem like a foolproof way to avoid those things.

But the current narrow focus on unplanned pregnancy and STIs completely ignores another, equally pressing problem: rape. And given America’s increasingly obvious problem with addressing this crime (consider schoolteacher Stacey Rambold, sentenced to a month in prison for raping a 14-year-old student who, Montana District Judge G. Todd Baugh said, “acted older than her chronological age”) policymakers should take rape into consideration when designing sexual education curricula.

One of the most important elements of being a sexually mature adult is understanding consent: how to ask for it, how to give it and how to understand when it is and is not valid. But right now, most sex ed programs in the United States don’t teach that at all. Sure, they might include a lecture here and there on how “no means no,” and if you say no to somebody, they should stop. But the bulk of consent isn’t about saying “no.” Much of it is respectfully learning to take “no” for an answer.

And understanding consent is often about learning when and how to say “yes.”

The current obsession with abstinence hinders our schools’ ability to teach these lessons. We can’t teach students to navigate their own boundaries while simultaneously dictating where their boundaries should

them correctly.

7. Sex can also have emotional and social consequences. You should consider these consequences when you’re making decisions. But everybody is different, and everybody experiences sexuality in different ways.

8. Abstinence works too. If you decide you don’t want to have sex, that’s great.

You’re in high school, and there’s plenty of time for sex later on, if you want. Like any other sexual decision, it’s entirely yours to make. u

MALALA: THE TALIBAN’S SHOT HEARD ‘ROUND THE WORLD CARLY WEST

Malala Yousafzai is a young girl with a heroic story and an inspiring message.

When Malala was only 11, she began writing a blog for the BBC about life under the Taliban. In response, the rogue movement tried, unsuccessfully, to silence her voice.

For her public championing of girls’ education, the 16-year-old Pakistani girl was shot in the head and neck while riding a school bus on October 9, 2012. Malala, who survived the incident, has since been exalted in Western media, heralded as the “bravest girl in the world” by CNN and granting interviews with Christiane Amanpour and Diane Sawyer. She spoke at the World Bank to recognize International Day of the Girl and was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Malala’s campaign for girls’ education is one of the most urgent and necessary of our time. Educating girls is the single most powerful tool we can provide to young women, the world’s most vulnerable demographic. Beyond the opportunities it provides for each young girl, education is a consistent determinant of positive social development, in areas ranging from women’s and familial health to poverty reduction and equitable growth.

Malala has repeatedly stated that her efforts to spread girls’ education not only reflect her own struggles, but also those of young girls across the Swat Valley and across the world who face insurmountable

obstacles to their education. And while Malala’s public message has stayed consistently focused on education, some have questioned whether her iconic status has been misappropriated for Western political agendas.

Much of this resistance is coming from within Pakistan itself. According to The New York Times, the reaction of Pakistanis seems to “stem from sensitivity at Western hectoring, a confused narrative about the Taliban and a sense of resentment or downright jealousy.” There has been reference to Malala as that “BBC blogger,” which depicts her as something of a Western agent, out of touch with her own people’s interests and concerns. Some have inferred that her vocal resistance against the Taliban transitively suggests her approval of Western policy in the region. Other critics of Malala have suggested that her well-publicized ordeal is but one instance of a larger Western imperialist project, that continues to use girls and women as pawns against the Islamic threat. These suspicions are not unfounded — the CIA has a long record of using various personnel, including civil society workers, as informants.

The website Storify recently collected tweets discussing “Why Conspiracy Theories About Malala Go Viral,” which details several criticisms of Malala’s rising popularity. One common frustration with Malala’s fame is that the hypocrisy of one brave girl is idealized, while so many others are forgotten. Simply because Malala was given a mouthpiece in Western media, she has a privileged position that supposedly allowed her to be rescued from her plight and catapulted into the limelight. Innocents are killed everyday, both by the Taliban and by U.S. forces, yet this particular victim has risen to international heroine status. One rotating web photo depicts the circulating images of little Afghan girls in wheelchairs, victims of U.S. drones and then the radiant face of Malala Yousafzai.

It’s not difficult to imagine why Malala’s global platform could serve to perpetuate Western sentiments about the Middle East and South Asia, and thus reassure the U.S. public of the effectiveness of its military presence in the region. In heaping praise on Malala, Western audiences may turn a blind eye to their government’s role in Pakistan’s struggle with the Taliban and promote a simplistic view of international conflicts.

Malala’s story could also conceivably further reinforce the pro-war agenda re-

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be. And we can’t teach students to consent to sex that they actively desire, while at the same time telling them they shouldn’t desire sex at all. It’s hard to believe that “no means no” — that is, “no” is the final answer — when you have also been taught that everyone is supposed to say no, all the time, no matter what they actually want to do.

American teenagers leave these abstinence-focused programs having been told that everyone should resist sex all the time.

Then they are released into a media environment that expects them to have as much sex as possible. No wonder they’re confused about consent. Perhaps as a result, we hear story after shocking story about high school boys violating, harassing and abusing their own classmates. While Steubenville and Maryville made national news, sexual assault at school happens more often than you would think. Abstinence-focused programs may not cause rape culture, but they certainly aren’t helping.

So what should schools teach instead?

Here is my recommended primer from the Clara Beyer school of sex ed.

1. First of all, there is the human body. Learn how to label the vas deferens!

Maybe someday this information will be useful.

2. Your sexual choices are yours. No matter whom you’re attracted to, what you want to do with them or what kind of relationships you want to have, you are not wrong for wanting those things.

3. You get to decide where your boundaries are. You should be able to expect other people to respect those boundaries. You have the absolute final word on your sexual decisions.

4. Other people’s boundaries are equally important. Violating someone else’s physical boundaries is never okay.

5. The only way you can be sure that someone wants to have sex (or do anything sexual) is to ask. If that someone says yes, then go right ahead. If no, you should assume that’s the final answer, although you can ask the person to keep you posted if he or she changes his or her mind. If the person is blackout drunk, be a decent person and get him or her a glass of water.

6. Sex does have consequences. STIs are bad, and most high school students aren’t trying to get pregnant. Luckily, there are ways to prevent the spread of STIs and there are ways to prevent unwanted pregnancy. They are usually effective if used correctly — so you should learn to use

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garding the drone attacks in Pakistan — an agenda Malala herself has stated she opposes. Proponents of such attacks may interpret Malala’s ordeal as confirmation that drone strikes are effective and appropriate.

In fact, several reports have demonstrated that drone strikes have killed many civilians and only instill a profound fear among the general population in Pakistan and elsewhere.

The threat of the Pakistani Taliban who inflicted this terrible tragedy on Malala has only been exacerbated by the Western presence in the region. Human rights groups and NGOs have consistently highlighted the worsening plight of women since the 2001 U.S. invasion, despite Western rhetoric and aid programs. The Taliban are motivated by forces deeper and more complex than hatred and misogyny; the ongoing Western occupation of Afghanistan has exacerbated animosity towards values and institutions associated with the West.

In September, President Barack Obama defended the U.S. presence in the Middle East, calling the United States “exceptional” on the world stage. So how is this grand vision of social responsibility to be reconciled with the sobering foresight of Edward Said, who, in 2003, wrote in the preface of his contentious yet canonical text, “Orientalism”: “Every single empire in its official discourse has said that it is not like all the others, that its circumstances are special, that it has a mission to enlighten, civilize, bring order and democracy, and that it uses force as a last resort. And, sadder still, there always is a chorus of willing intellectuals to say calming words about benign or altruistic empires, as if one shouldn’t trust the evidence of one’s eyes watching the destruction and the misery and death brought by the latest mission civilizatrice”?

Time and again, U.S. rhetoric and values are not translated to real global impact.

Malala, who champions young girls’ rights, may indirectly provide fodder for intrinsically contradictory political agendas.

Though history may prove that the her impact ultimately furthers the American sense of exceptionalism, her message, in the end, is not just political. Malala has handled the varied doubts and accusations with grace and a single-minded focus on her cause: the 600 million-plus adolescent girls in the developing world who do not have access to education, thereby lacking the means through which to empower themselves and

their communities. A global effort to improve girls’ access to education is not solely about overcoming the Taliban, but about surmounting the various social, economic, legal and political obstacles that have prevented millions of young girls from fulfilling their potential. u

DOWNTOWN PROVIDENCE POLICY GRAHAM SHERIDAN Sometimes the biggest political events can seem the most distant for the typical Brown student. What are we to do about Syria or targeted drone strikes? I will readily admit to not being as brave as Malala, the Pakistani girl who was shot for going to school. However, if you want to see the effects of some policy decisions here in Rhode Island, take a trip downtown and check out the newly reopened Providence Arcade.

The Arcade was one of the first enclosed shopping malls in the United States.

It was named “the Arcade” long before video games were invented, when the word meant “indoor public shopping space,” not “place where video games are played.” Built in 1828, the building looks like a Greek temple; inside, beautiful wrought iron soars upward to the skylights high above. It looks lovely — and you can live there! The bottom floor is reserved for retail, but the upper two floors offer micro-loft apartments for those who are willing to live cheaply in a small space without a stove. Many are, judging from the fact that every unit has

been leased. Once all the tenants move in, I predict a good burst of activity downtown (or “Downcity” as the locals call it); the increased residential density will bring some life and some extra spending to the Downcity area.

Rhode Island policy deserves credit for shaping the redevelopment of the Arcade: the restoration was funded with the historic preservation tax credit, which means 22 percent of the cost is covered by a voucher that the restorer can use against its taxes, or sell to someone else who wishes to reduce her tax burden. The program includes a cap for any one project at $5 million in credits. Historic tax credits are a clever way for the government to subsidize good activities without actually making an outlay.

Last year, Rhode Island had a bit of a political scuffle over historic tax credits.

The program had been closed for a few years after the laws enacting the credits had expired. Finding the right balance between raising revenue and subsidizing development became a delicate operation. During the housing bubble, so many people were taking advantage of the program that the state had to close it due to the amount of foregone revenue. Now, the program has been tweaked and reopened.

Reintroducing the program is a timely action by the Rhode Island legislature. In a highway project similar to Boston’s “Big Dig,” Providence rerouted its interstate highways to unify its downtown. Previously, the old jewelry-manufacturing district had been cut off from the rest of downtown, but since I-195 was relocated, there should be a surge in applications now that so many more historic buildings are connected to Downcity. Perhaps someone will even use the credits to open a grocery store: as I’ve written before, there’s evidence to show that a real grocery store would help convince the next wave of urban dwellers to move downtown.

Many of the debates on College Hill can seem well past the reach of a typical student. But if you want to support people rehabilitating lovely, old buildings here in Providence, the next time you have to study, take your gear downtown. Stop in the Arcade and buy a coffee at the new shop in the building, New Harvest Coffee Roasters, and do your studying there. Keep your money local and get your homework done.

What could be better? The city of Providence — as well as your grades —will reap the benefits. u

THANK YOU FOR VAPING Will e-cigarettes be a drag on Big Tobacco?

STORY BY ATHENA BRYAN / ART BY SHEILA SITARAM

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with the possibility of creating a more even distribution between wealthy and less wealthy households.

Another downside of sin taxes is that they threaten to starve out the flourishing boutique industry of vaping culture. Italy’s recent experience is a pertinent warning against such policies: its e-cigarette industry, once booming at three-figure growth rates, came to a grinding halt after the state levied a heavy sin tax on the product.

The tax deterred consumers, but its consequences did not stop there — small busi-

nesses and startups shied away, evidenced by a 99 percent decrease in e-cigarette business license requests just two months after the tax was levied.

E-cigarettes also present a unique opportunity for the tobacco industry to finally diversify. Prohibitive policies like sin taxes allow Big Tobacco — a powerful lobbying force — to maintain control of the nicotine industry. Established tobacco companies have the capital needed to absorb high taxes, and have indeed shown an interest in the nascent boutique industry, evidenced by the U.S. company Lorillard’s $135 million purchase of Blu eCigs in 2012. While the e-cigarette industry isn’t particularly diversified, increasing taxes and threatening strict regulation will only serve to further discourage startups that could help e-cigarettes thrive and combat the negative influences of an oligarchy.

The best counterpoint to the emergence of e-cigs is the feared unraveling of years of public health progress. In addition

to levying prohibitive economic policies, the anti-smoking campaign has largely centered on fighting the symbolic appeal of cigarette smoking — one that has long been tied up in marketing strategies that emphasize rebelliousness and sexuality. Because this battle has so heavily targeted the visual allure of smoking, the potential of e-cigarettes to re-normalize the finger-to-lip gesture would undo the work of many years and millions of dollars.

Renormalization, however, would help diminish the socioeconomic disparity between smokers and non-smokers. If e-cigarette usage can avoid the stigmatization of regular cigarettes, more people might indulge in them than they would in regular cigarettes. Their lower health risks would also lessen the socioeconomic gap seen in the physical and economic costs borne by cigarette users. In order to accomplish this, however, e-cigarettes would have to take control of the entire nicotine industry, spreading awareness of their product and its benefits across socioeconomic strata.

No good comes of the upper classes puffing on less carcinogenic alternatives while the poor continue eroding their health on traditional cigarettes. The U.S. e-cigarette industry may have doubled its sales figures from 2011 to 2012, but it is still a niche market when compared with traditional cigarettes — making just $1.7 billion versus the latter’s $80 billion this year.

The e-cigarette provides a unique opportunity to wean smokers off of its carcinogen-heavy predecessor and reduce the sociological impact of cigarette taxation — currently shouldered disproportionately by low-income populations. The potential benefits from a larger e-cigarette industry are many, but the appeal of the product alone will not be enough to reform the industry, not only because of structural barriers to raising awareness, but also because of the threat of increased regulation. All this potential is close enough to touch, but if mishandled, it threatens to vaporize on the horizon. u ATHENA BRYAN ‘15.5 IS A HISTORY CONCENTRATOR AND A STAFF WRITER AT BPR.

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he electronic cigarette, or the e-cigarette, is an old product revolutionized by a sleek, modern platform.

Instead of burning tobacco, a small, battery-powered device converts liquid nicotine into vapor. Although e-cigarettes’ safety has not been conclusively researched, they don’t contain the tar or carbon monoxide of traditional cigarettes. Today, a subculture of “vapers” frequent e-cigarette lounges, which target younger, more health-conscious populations. In this way, e-cigarettes introduce a paradigm shift by presenting nicotine as a relatively harmless substance — a marked contrast to nicotine’s carcinogenic history. As a healthier, less expensive alternative to traditional cigarettes, e-cigarettes could actually level the current negative impact of cigarettes across U.S. socioeconomic strata.

Although the number of smokers has fallen in the United States after decades of public campaigns and policies targeting tobacco use, the decline has not been uniform. While the wealthiest families saw a 62 percent drop in smoking from 1965 to 1999, those in the lowest income bracket experienced only a 9 percent decrease in the same time period.

Among the policies to combat tobacco is the sin tax — the most damaging to economically vulnerable segments of society and the least effective when curbing demand. Despite the overall decline in smoking, revenues from tobacco taxes have shown significant and steady yearly growth. Preying on inelastic demand does little besides generate revenue. In addition, sales taxes are functionally regressive — because all consumers pay the same amount of money for a product, those with a lower income pay proportionally more of theirs than someone with a higher income. And the regressive nature of the cigarette sales tax is exacerbated by the fact that lower-income people smoke in higher proportions.

This problematic side effect of the current economic distribution of smokers could be reversed if e-cigarettes took hold. They are a relatively harmless vice that appeal to a wider range of consumers — and a less expensive alternative to traditional cigarettes,

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The story of the right-hand man.

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STORY BY EMMA DICKSON / ART BY MARIA PAZ ALMENARA

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n the night of his reelection on November 7, 2012, President Barack Obama referred to Vice President Joe Biden as “America’s Happy Warrior.”

Many Americans know Biden as a veteran negotiator who has been forgiven for many more slip-ups than his boss, but beyond this, they know little about him — nor, for that matter, the office he holds. Other than being a heartbeat away from the presidency, the actual role of the vice president is nebulous, often seen as neither policy planners

nor critical negotiators. In short, Americans tend to know what VP’s get away with — “potatoe” or even accidental shootings — but not what they get done.

President Barack Obama’s choice for vice president illustrates some of the central principles and practices of the job. George Stephanopoulos wrote that Biden’s selection to join the 2008 Democratic presidential ticket was the outcome of a clear choice between a type of candidate to “represent what Barack Obama represents: change,”

or “a known quantity” with the national security experience Obama lacked. The Obama team eventually determined, like many before it, that the vice presidential candidate’s personal and professional characteristics should fill the gaps in Obama’s profile. Biden demonstrated principles that Obama did not possess, the main benefit of which was a potential ability to carry key demographics and states. Time magazine postulated in 1988 that vice presidents are selected only to win their home state, and to refrain from harming the campaign in any other capacity. In that sense, Biden was a coin toss. His tendency to speak out could have caused harm to the Obama campaign, but his appeal delivered not only his home state (the crucial Delaware) but also other constituencies. Fortunately for the president, Biden was a boon, not a bust.

What Biden offered the Obama campaign resembled a checklist of electoral qualities and little else. Biden breathed life and humanity into a campaign often characterized as overly professorial and polished. He had insider experience, but never succumbed to the old boy politics or corruption that many Americans can often smell on their senior politicians. It didn’t hurt that Biden is a white, Roman Catholic, older male from Pennsylvania — that is, he filled some key demographic needs. And Biden’s professional career, upbringing and attitude connected him to members of just about every socioeconomic class: Americans will probably always want to have a beer with Joe Biden. Even his incontrovertible policy expertise fulfilled an explicitly electoral need. His experience as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee supplemented Obama’s perceived lack of foreign relations experience, and his reputation as a tough political fighter who wouldn’t shy away from conflict made him formidable in debates. His 36 years of service in the Senate meant Obama would inherit a substantial national fundraising and support network.

The example of Biden illustrates a campaign’s critical motivation for selecting a VP: the attention he or she will draw or the constituencies drawn out, rather than the significant policy decisions made, or the many more requirements that winning the vice presidency would entail. When Democratic presidential candidate Walter Mondale selected Geraldine Ferraro as his VP in 1984, it was primarily because his campaign was in such drastic trouble that his

him, either. Situated in one of the highest ranking offices in American politics, LBJ famously remarked, “I now know the difference between a caucus and a cactus: in a cactus, all the pricks are on the outside.”

Johnson’s vice presidency is a sharp contrast to Dick Cheney’s. Biden once asserted that “Bush is sort of a blank slate and Cheney was his imprint.” So instrumental was Cheney in formulating Bush-era policy, especially the invasion of Iraq, that he is frequently cited as one of the most powerful vice presidents in the history of the office. “Gatekeeper for Supreme Court nominees, referee of Cabinet turf disputes, arbiter of budget appeals, editor of tax proposals and regulator in chief of water flows in his native West,” waxed a 2007 profile in the Washington Post. Dan Quayle recently recalled a conversation with Cheney in which he discussed the historically apolitical role of the VP, to which Cheney re-

WHEN DAN QUAYLE REFERENCED THE HISTORICALLY APOLITICAL ROLE OF THE VP, CHENEY RESPONDED, “I HAVE A DIFFERENT UNDERSTANDING WITH THE PRESIDENT.” sponded, “I have a different understanding with the president.”

In an earlier era, the VP was even more powerless. The Constitution provided that electors from the Electoral College voted for the list of candidates running for President. The one with the most votes became commander-in-chief, and the runner-up vice president. Often this meant the president might have a second-in-command from an entirely different party, disincentivizing the president from giving the VP much power — exactly what happened during the Adams-Jefferson administration of the 1790s. The arrangement increased incentives for a coup d’état, with the VP seizing control upon the president’s death creating the possibility for dramatic policy changes. This was a partial motivation for the 12th Amendment, which required electors to cast their votes separately for the president and vice president, in essence creating the ballots we see today.

A president that agrees with the VP is more likely to delegate substantive tasks and important platforms to the vice president, and is more likely to listen attentively to the VP’s opinions. This characteristic

has sparked a modern evolution in the office, more a partnership than a hierarchy. “You work for the president and the vice president,” National Security Advisor James Jones was reported to have said to his White House staff on the first day of the Obama administration.

Asked if “vice presidents matter much” in the 1992 Presidential Election, Republican VP candidate Dan Quayle was straightforward: “The American people vote for the President. The American people vote for the top of the ticket.” Today, fewer voters focus only on the presidential candidates, though the top of the ticket still remains the prevailing factor for many voters. In this increasingly polarized era, voters may give more weight to the vice presidential candidate than has historically been the case.

VP candidates conceivably can win votes by tipping the scale in favor of their presidential nominee partner. Recently, it seems the most important decision a campaign can make is the selection of a running mate.

In 2008, voters brought up concerns about Sen. John McCain’s age amid doubts of Sarah Palin’s qualifications for executive office, which some have said afforded Obama and his more strategic selection, Biden, an electoral advantage, especially among female voters.

And yet the perception of the VP’s negligibility persists, and in politics, perception is fact. This stems largely from the notion that the vice president can only step in during unlikely catastrophe. Woodrow Wilson’s vice president, Thomas Marshall, once said, “I was the Wilson administration’s spare tire — to be used only in case of emergency.” Though we may hope the vice president is never needed, voters would be smart to scrutinize the VP as much as the presidential candidate. The elected VP may or may not agree with all of the boss’ policies, and even when the president survives his term, VP’s can still serve as temporary presidents. Cheney did so twice during medical procedures Bush had in office.

The VP is not only a president-in-waiting, but also a confidant, adviser and congressional liaison. Given the position of power available to the vice president and the growing role and impact that many in the position continue to accrue, it’s not just reasonable, but also increasingly necessary for voters to consider checking the spare tire before checking the ballot box. u EMMA DICKSON ‘16 IS A POTENTIAL POLITICAL SCIENCE CONCENTRATOR.

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advisers believed picking a woman would bring media coverage and possibly boost the ratings of the campaign. George W. Bush was said to have picked Dick Cheney as much for personal reasons as political ones — he wanted both a second-in-command, and more importantly a confidant who would be loyal to the Bush family and the administration’s agenda. Presidential candidates deliberate over a lot of aspects when choosing a VP, but ideology is not always the most important one.

Presidential candidates are not the only ones deliberating before the ballot is finalized. The VP candidates themselves have a substantial decision to make. After all, their role is a months-long battle followed by a years-long struggle. In making this decision, prospective candidates tend to be wooed by the prospect of national recognition and political legitimacy; perhaps this is the reason that many have used it as a launching pad for presidential bids. Then again, only 14 vice presidents have served as commander-in-chief.

Although Article II sets up the vice president as the presidential successor, the Constitution does not guarantee much experience or responsibility during the VP’s term in office. The VP role is also detailed in Article I, which assigns the VP duties as president of the senate. But modern politics dictates that the president pro tempore assumes this role, and although the VP is given the tie-breaking vote in the Senate, it’s an almost comical obligation given the recent political climate. The only other constitutional duty of the position, in accordance with the Twelfth Amendment, is to preside over the session of the Senate in which electoral votes are counted. In this position, many vice presidents have had to announce their own successor rather than their reelection. This limited constitutional specificity leaves the role of the vice president a considerably malleable one based on the characteristics and experience of those who occupy it.

Lyndon B. Johnson is remembered as a powerful president. But when LBJ was serving as John F. Kennedy’s vice president, he was largely powerless. He was kept busy at the White House, encouraged not to talk with reporters, never given a full-time staff and authorized only to review, rather than influence, foreign policy. He attempted to exercise some authority in the Senate, only to discover that the members of the Democratic caucus were not particularly fond of

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FADING INK Can the political cartoon still be the vanguard of democracy?

STORY BY MALANA KRONGELB / ART BY GOYO KWON

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olitical cartoons are everything that a reader could want in a news source: funny, clever, honest, charismatic and not too bad to look at, either. The early 1970s were the end of the American political cartoon’s heyday, a time when information came from only a scant array of independent sources: a daily dose of Cronkite, the local newspaper and the pungent political commentary offered by editorial cartoons. While media choices were limited locally, national offerings were diverse. Political cartoons served a vital role in American democracy and their power was acknowledged throughout the political landscape.

The Pulitzer Prize-winning “Herblock” (or Herbert Block) of the Washington Post brandished a pen so sharply against Nixon’s throat that the chief executive was allegedly compelled to cancel his subscription in order to protect his daughters. The image of Nixon “mugging” Lady Justice, as the cartoon was titled, was published just days after Nixon fired special prosecutor Archibald Cox, and it added to heated calls for Nixon’s impeachment. Now that the news industry has concentrated into enormous conglomerates, and as it struggles to cope with the technology age, the potent editorializing of cartoons has become more rare. Political cartoons, an American staple since Ben Franklin’s “Join or Die,” have now joined other dying media artifacts.

Present-day political cartoons rarely serve as the local watchdogs they once were.

As the influence of local newspapers have yielded to large conglomerates, the task of

bringing corruption to light — which historically has fallen on the shoulders of the cartoon — has lost an ally. Surviving newspapers have been firing their cartoonists and printing more syndicated, nationally focused cartoons, and today there are fewer cartoonists to serve the necessary vigilante role. But it was not always the case.

In another age, the fall of Boss Tweed, the politician who symbolized the patronage and corruption of Gilded Age New York

THE UPSTART CARTOONIST OF 2013 FAILS TO GET THE MAINSTREAM EXPOSURE OF YESTERYEAR; APPROXIMATELY 80 TO 90 EDITORIAL CARTOONISTS HAVE FULL-TIME POSITIONS WITH DAILY NEWSPAPERS, HALF WHAT THAT NUMBER WAS 25 YEARS AGO. City, demonstrated the power that cartoons once exerted over politicians. Thomas Nast, a cartoonist for Harper’s Weekly, brought Tweed’s unscrupulous behavior into the public domain. For an immigrant population largely unable to read in English, an image really was worth a thousand words.

Nast was the son of German immigrants and could not read well, but he created visually daring cartoons that related to his readers. Perhaps the most famous anti-Tweed cartoon, entitled “Who Stole the People’s Money?”, depicted Tweed prominently placed within a circle of Tammany Hall cohorts pointing to each other to avoid

taking responsibility. The image underscored the malfeasance within Tweed’s ring and became an iconic image. Following the assault, Tammany Hall began to crumble amidst vitriolic public opinion, and lesser party bosses seized the opportunity to take Tweed down in court. It’s no wonder that Tweed reportedly commented, “I don’t care a straw for your newspaper articles; my constituents don’t know how to read, but they can’t help seeing them damned pictures!”

Eighty years later, Herblock was instrumental in pointing out another social ill through the cartoon medium. He coined the term “McCarthyism” by penning a picture depicting the Republican elephant being tugged toward a tar-and-smear platform, only a few weeks after Senator McCarthy announced his list of communists supposedly lurking within the State Department.

With this cartoon, Herblock alerted the American public to the dangers of McCarthy’s purges. During what became known as the Second Red Scare, cartoons provided a valuable watchdog service for the public.

Without them, a crucial element of public discourse has fallen to the wayside.

Though the accessibility of information has improved since the McCarthy era, the notion of a baseline media source has vanished. Instead, media conglomerates are specialized and partisan, despite their monikers like the “Fair and Balanced” Fox or the “Leader in News” CNN. Online, though, media diversity has exploded, and people now have a cornucopia of blogs and Internet news outlets to sample. With this,

the likelihood of a single political cartoon gaining widespread recognition has diminished. As the cartoon has declined, modern satire has attempted to fill the gap left behind. Although sources such as The Daily Show, The Colbert Report and The Onion offer valuable criticism of the political climate, they remain explicitly partisan. Aggravating today’s problem of biased media is the reality that the consumers of modern satire consist mainly of niche demographics — individuals who already agree with the leanings of the media source and who are looking more for affirmation than new information. These consumers also tend to be liberal, educated and young. In comparison, during their union with newspapers, political cartoons were a populist form of media, easily accessible to young and old, educated and uneducated. Today’s satire, though valuable, ultimately causes further

media divides and corresponding ideological gaps in American society. No more evident are those ideological gaps than in the brocade halls of the Capitol.

Technology constantly tests the interactions between media, government and citizens. Political cartoons are “an irreverent form of expression, and one particularly suited to scoffing at the high and the mighty,” said Herblock. “If the prime role of a free press is to serve as [a] critic of government, cartooning is often the cutting edge of that criticism.” As the political cartoon struggles to stay afloat amidst a growing jumble of online news sources, the United States loses the foremost layer of commentary available for the defense of its political institutions. On the other hand, the bloom of electronic media outlets does provide cartoonists more opportunities for publication

Still, the upstart cartoonist of 2013 struggles to get the mainstream exposure of yesteryear; approximately 80 to 90 editorial cartoonists have full-time positions with daily newspapers, half what that number was 25 years ago. A survey of the members of the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists showed that 72 percent believed up-and-coming cartoonists would not have the chance to be employed by a single establishment. As a result of decreased institutional hiring of cartoonists, many now disseminate their work online for free.

While some online cartoonists have managed to make space for themselves, gaining popularity and followers, such cartoons are rarely political in nature. For most, the transition to online content has meant that there are fewer opportunities to get paid for cartoons. This makes life difficult for the aspiring cartoonist, diminishes the preva-

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Political Cartoons Over Time 1754 Benjamin Franklin, “Join or Die” Originally published on May 9, 1754.

1792 Isaac Cruikshank, “The Friends of the People” Originally published on November 15, 1792.

1870 Thomas Nast, “Who Stole the People’s Money?”

Originally published c.1870

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1911

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Puck Magazine, “The Helping Hand” Originally published on April 26, 1911.

2011 Joyce Mary Wallace, “Hypocrites” Originally published on June 16, 2011.

lence of the craft and decreases the numbers and power of those in the traditional political cartoon field.

Some cartoonists have found ways to utilize the Internet as a platform to adapt to a changing market, chiefly through the animated cartoon. Though many editorial mainstays have criticized this form, others have incorporated it into the increasingly diverse set of artistic styles from which political cartoonists can draw. “While I still begin each cartoon by following the news, taking notes and sketching cartoon ideas, I now have color, motion, music and sound effects all at my disposal,” wrote Pulitzer Prize winner Mark Fiore, who now works exclusively in the animated medium. “Done correctly, an animated political cartoon can reach inside someone’s brain and grab just

AS THE POLITICAL CARTOON STRUGGLES TO STAY AFLOAT AMIDST A GROWING JUMBLE OF ONLINE NEWS SOURCES, THE UNITED STATES LOSES THE FOREMOST LAYER OF COMMENTARY AVAILABLE FOR THE DEFENSE OF ITS POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS. the right spot.” The Internet also lacks the same editorial restrictions that have been present since the merger of cartoon and newspaper. Clay Bennett, a cartoonist for the Christian Science Monitor, now posts rejected pieces that CSM did not want to run, after simply removing the name of the publication. The Internet revolution has birthed a very democratic byproduct: the possibility for total artistic freedom of expression.

“I feel a little like Mikhail Gorbachev at the end of the Soviet Union,” said Ted Rall, the President of the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists, “I feel a little like I’m presiding over the beginning of the end.” Across the board, technology has revolutionized the manner in which news is delivered to the American public, and editorial cartoons have not been exempted from these changes. While this shift has provided new forms and outlets for the creativity of the political cartoon, its alteration of the American media structure may also spell the end of an American tradition. u MALANA KRONGELB ‘17 IS A POTENTIAL HISTORY CONCENTRATOR.

TEST, RETEST, LEGISLATE Can the scientific method catalyze bipartisan bonding?

STORY BY ADAM BOUCHE / ART BY KATRINA MACHADO

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seen as a weak point for science — a supposed lack of credibility — especially to an austerity-hungry Congress that either wants to act with 100 percent certainty or not at all. But instead of being the safeguard they view themselves as, Congress’ lack of action actually hinders scientific certainty.

The cycle of mutual uncertainty places the country at risk of stagnation at a time when action is needed to spur critical innovations that historically have been propelled by government funding. A scientifically based political discourse could help elected representatives understand the sequence of continual questioning and retesting that is used to produce knowledge.

Holt argues that science forces discourse away from the spin of conventional, ideology-driven politics, because it is inextricably fettered to evidence. “Evidence has a democratizing effect that is healthy for our country,” says Holt. He argues that politicians need to “learn to refine [their] understanding of a question based on evidence” in order to revise and construct better policies.

A new Congressional status quo of evidence-based argumentation would help liberate politicians from ideological pressures by allowing balance and flexibility in politics. And to a public weary of rehashed vitriol and recycled debates, the scientific method could provide an insightful gust of clean air to displace stale arguments. While broadened dialogue between politicians and scientists may be a first step, Foster, the other physicist in Congress, worries that dialogue may not be enough. A wide gap exists, he says, between science’s long-term benefits and the short-term political “investments…all about getting [re]-elected” that politicians make.

But the barriers aren’t just on the side of the politicians. According to Cornelia

Dean, a science writer for the New York Times, there is pressure within the scientific community to keep a distance from politicians. Some argue that time spent away from the lab bench is time wasted. There is also a fear among scientists that political action will result in criticism from the scientific community. Carl Sagan, often credited for popularizing science through the television program “Cosmos,” was famously denied admission to the National Academy of the Sciences due to his outspoken political views and his success as a personality in the public sphere. Dean argues that scientists must overcome these obstacles and change the culture of condemnation in order to provide for the greater good, but that “as a group, scientists and engineers have exempted themselves…to a degree that hurts us as a society.” As voters of an influential nation and as stakeholders in the collective human fate, the public is in a unique position to compel scientists and engineers to engage with politics.

Likewise, Congress must realize that it can no longer shirk the imperatives that scientific research brings to light. Quality controls ought to lie at the heart of politics as well; as policies are assessed and updated, they should be revised in a manner that is consistent with scientific fact and the scientific method of observation, questioning and testing. The empirical process of science, a factual basis on which value judgments can be weighed, could be the key to realizing this reality. Instead of holding out on action for a certainty that may never come, taking scientifically informed chances is the best way to ensure that humanity is not caught unprepared before environmental, social and economic problems swell to unmanageable proportions. u ADAM BOUCHE ‘14 IS A GEOLOGY-BIOLOGY CONCENTRATOR.

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oliticians have a difficult time grasping the scientific method. All too frequently, scientific knowledge and research is hastily dismissed during the formulation of policy. At a time when 84 percent of the public believes that science is beneficial to society, and 75 percent believes that it’s appropriate for scientists to engage in political debates, politicians nevertheless continue to forgo scientific research, effectively creating a barrier between policy and science. While scientists can be as “arrogant and pigheaded” as anyone else, says U.S. Congressman Rush Holt (D-NJ-12), it doesn’t excuse Congress devaluing the scientific process and the research it produces. Holt should know; he’s one of only two physicists currently serving in the House of Representatives.

Only 33 of the 535 officials serving in the House and the Senate have technical training in science and technology. As a former physicist at Fermilab, the premier particle physics research laboratory in the United States, Dr. Bill Foster (D-IL-14) can testify to the lack of a scientific approach in political discourse. He once witnessed a fellow Democrat advocate for an energy policy with supporting statements such as “windmills poll so well”. This is but one of many instances which illustrate a ubiquitous lack of scientific understanding and demonstrate the need for Congressional deliberations to employ a rigorous, fact-supported framework like the scientific method.

The scientific method generates a thorough understanding of natural phenomena.

But even the best understanding is neither immutable nor free from errors and biases.

Particularly in recently established fields, each paper published can alter the common scientific understanding of the facts, especially when studies attempt to model and predict events. This constant revision is

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AMERICA DIAGNOSED First there was Vietnam Syndrome.

Now America is coping with cultural PTSD. STORY BY LAUREN SUKIN / ART BY GOYO KWON

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n the years after the Vietnam War ended, Americans were said to have suffered “Vietnam syndrome,” a cultural condition that led to averseness to war. Today, the American public has been defined by the advent of terrorism, which has produced a similar social effect. More than 10,000 citizens exposed to the September 11 attacks have been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), an anxiety disorder most commonly associated with soldiers returning from war. Of the troops coming home from Iraq and Afghanistan, 12 to 20 percent have been diagnosed with PTSD, and their stories have increased awareness of the visceral impact that war can have. Individuals with PTSD were once dismissed as hysterical, nervous or simply insane. But while our society has come to accept and offer help to those with the disorder, many PTSD survivors continue to experience feelings of alienation, which compounds the symptoms of the illness — much like our war-weary country itself.

One of the diagnostic conditions of PTSD is avoidance.

The rocky past of U.S. foreign policy has demonstrated that the American government is far from a well-mannered beast.

Take, for example, the U.S. Navy’s conquest of the Philippines in 1899, and the subsequent deaths of 200,000 to 400,000 Filipinos, or the bloody CIA-funded Contra wars in Nicaragua. Over the years, the United States managed to kill more than 250,000 Muslims in the Middle East. While the violence isn’t new, the threat of terror has significantly influenced the U.S. political process and our method of militarism, framing and justifying external violence in a context reminiscent of the Cold War fears of communist regimes — but this time, with more nebulous and globalized threats.

Many Americans prefer to forget this past. The dismissal of state-sanctioned violence is no more unique to our country than the ideology of exceptionalism is to any powerful nation. Exceptionalism is the driving force behind these dismissals; it allows us to recreate America’s past through rose-colored glasses. Yet the problem is worth examining. Terrorism falls into the

historical pattern of American forgetfulness that arises when we ignore violent patterns. The many instances of past domestic terrorism that Americans choose to forget mirror the avoidance that characterizes PTSD. Earlier instances of terrorism in America produced polarized reactions. In 1910 the Los Angeles Times building burned to the ground. The crime was ultimately traced to the McNamara brothers, both members of the Iron Workers Union. The union had turned to violence as a negotiating tactic, but a mistake meant that the bomb went off before workers had left the building. Twenty-one people died. The McNamaras were eventually captured, but many labor leaders stood in support of them; when the brothers pleaded guilty, they were accused of betraying the labor movement. The range of responses to this event distinguishes it from 9/11, which cultivated widespread patriotism. But the McNamara affair only illustrated a divide in society, as some even encouraged the violence.

Theodore Kaczynski, the Unabomber, identified his own activities as terrorism.

Throughout the course of his infamous career he killed 23 individuals by sending bombs to universities and airlines. If the McNamara brothers are the extreme of today’s liberal left, Kaczynski is the opposite.

In his manifesto he claimed that leftist governance had created an over-mechanized society that suffocated freedom and destroyed individual power.

These are just two examples of pre-9/11 terrorism, and they were met with reactions radically different from the reception of the Twin Towers’ fall. Modern terrorism has certainly changed our perceptions; no sensible journalist would sympathize with the cause of the Twin Tower bombers because of their violence and hatred for the United States. Yet Kaczynski and the McNamara brothers were also violent, and both sought to radically change and destroy governance.

The fact that today terrorism is viewed as a quality solely endemic to people from the Middle East shows a systematic culture of avoidance that has grown out of American exceptionalism, and which allows us

to overlook the history of white domestic terrorism in America.

Kaczynskis and McNamaras are more similar to the average American than they are often portrayed. The Liberty City Seven of the Sears Tower plot, the underwear bomber, the Fort Hood shooting — none of these instances perfectly fit the radicalized Muslim stereotype. In this there is a new type of avoidance, as we ignore the developments of post-9/11 terrorism that should have changed our perceptions.

Rhetoric with regard to terrorism is racially charged, even though Ted Kaczynski was a white atheist, Terry Nichols of the Oklahoma City bombings was a white Christian and Jim Adkisson of the Knoxville church shooting was a white neocon-

servative. No matter what the real terrorist looks like, the pictured image continues to be of a poor, Middle Eastern, Muslim male.

Not only does empirical evidence contradict this particular stereotype, but even within Middle Eastern, Muslim countries, women are actually more likely to support terrorism than their male counterparts, and the poor are less likely to be jihadist.

Furthermore, we have become numb toward international acts of terrorism. We prefer to picture terrorism as an act specifically against the West, when the reality is far from it. Numb to the effects of violence

have marred U.S. actions even in recent decades. General George MacArthur’s underestimation and consequent miscalculation of the power and organization of Chinese and Korean forces in the Korean War was similarly due to racism and dismissive stereotyping. This reflects our modern terrorist stereotype: a Middle Eastern, Muslim terrorist that is easily identifiable and easily defeated.

Our current view of terrorism harkens to Peter Berger’s social constructivism — relying upon framing and categorization mechanisms in order to construct a coherent view of the world. But it’s also important to remember that the way we rely on these social categories is more than just a coping method against terrorism. Instead, it’s an active process of socialization. If culture can be determined by patterned ways of thinking, by the ghosts of society’s fears and hopes that dominate our very actions, then terrorism is the maker of an entirely new culture. This new generation of Americans — not just Generations X and Y, but a complete reconfiguration of the American psyche across all ages — lives in a world

America. In 2002, Michael Howard in Foreign Affairs called the event “an insult to American honor” and dismissed the idea of declaring war on terrorism because it “confers on [terrorists] some kind of legitimacy,” giving them “a status and dignity that they seek and that they do not deserve.”

Howard’s commentary can be viewed through the lens of post-crisis hysteria: America was shocked and awed. While they may seem overly nationalistic, Howard’s opinions aren’t signals of a new historical trend. This kind of dismissal isn’t far-off from the racialized arguments that

marked forever by the events of 9/11.

Adding to our mass anxiety, Americans have experienced a major loss of faith in security in the last decade — and a concurrent loss of faith in the enemy. Philosopher Carl Schmitt famously theorized that politics is a product of a relationship between enemies that value one another.

With terrorism, though, the enemy is neither identifiable nor respected. This sets the stage for intense anxiety over our enemies and leads to the unjust warfare that Schmitt opposes.

The final diagnostic condition of PTSD

is negative recurrence.

Mass media may be just as guilty as policymakers in our collective PTSD. Through oft-repeated media messaging and cultural cues, we have become adjusted to the reality of terrorism. And in our anxious comfort with the new, dangerous status quo, we have also become numbed to terrorism — both in our own history and global current events.

But the impact of terrorism’s emergence as a real threat does not end with numbing or with anxiety. Fear of the terrorist is a recurring, thematic element in a variety of cultural contexts. One of these is an expanded rhetoric of patriotism and accompanying xenophobia.

American culture portrays threats and horrors as ubiquitous, surprising and foreign. Black Hawk Down, Iron Man, The Hurt Locker and Captain America — all tell the story of singularly motivated terrorists, and these movies generally focus on the otherness of the terrorists as well as the simplicity and hatred driving their efforts.

This discourse doesn’t recognize the more complex psychology and motivation behind most attacks, nor does it portray terrorists as what they often are: one of us. Terrorism discourse has even been borrowed for advertising, like PETA’s Turkey Terrorist ad, which depicts a renegade turkey threatening violence and seizing a grocery store.

Our national rhetoric, whether it’s from social or traditional media, has increasingly been focused on terrorism and its implications. Terrorism has subtly infiltrated even the most mundane forms of media, causing Americans to re-experience fear of terrorism in our daily lives.

If the goal of terrorism is to disrupt American society, it has succeeded. Since 9/11, we’ve seen a precipitous drop in terrorism as a global threat, but much of our lives are still framed in the context of it — whether we are actively avoiding it, worrying anxiously about it or being subconsciously inundated with its imagery. As our veterans cope with the after-effects of their time spent in the theater of war, we too face certain stresses arising from our experiences with terrorism. PTSD may be defined as a disorder that affects individuals. But American society is experiencing its symptoms. Maybe the next time we are on the brink of war, we will recall George H.W. Bush’s restraint and address Americans’ “PTSD syndrome.” u LAUREN SUKIN ‘16 IS A POLITICAL SCIENCE AND LITERARY ARTS CONCENTRATOR AND NATIONAL MANAGING EDITOR AT BPR.

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from our own catastrophic collective experiences, coverage of the more than 35 terrorist attacks abroad that occurred in July of this year was minimal.

Another diagnostic condition of PTSD is anxiety.

Terrorism as a global phenomenon has profoundly impacted American culture.

It has made a tangible impact on our daily lives by increasing security and surveillance — and not just on airplanes, but in most public settings and through our use of technology as evidenced by the recent furor over the NSA’s domestic spying program.

The modern threat of terrorism is both innovative and global. Terrorists’ tools are new, even if the concept of terrorism is not. Terrorists can come from any nation, including one’s own. And so terrorism emerges as an entity that is both ostracized from our society and always among it. This level of uncertainty produces extreme anxiety: we like answers.

Public opinion is fundamentally shaped by that nebulous enemy. The events of 9/11 were not just an attack on American soil; they were an attack on the idea of

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WHAT VALLEJO’S PAST CAN TEACH A PLUMMETING DETROIT.

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t will arise from the ashes.” It seems fitting that Detroit’s city motto involves rebirth from ruin. Detroit’s long-chronicled decline finally culminated in July 2013, when it became the largest American city in history to file for bankruptcy. Notorious for chronic financial difficulty, corruption and crime, Detroit has declared itself bankrupt as the final step in a path of misfortune and urban decay.

Municipal bankruptcy is a tricky endeavor, often misunderstood by outside observers.

Since bankruptcy is often the last resort for a city, it’s tempting to believe that city leaders will cooperate despite their differences, with no room for petty poli-

STORY BY MICHAEL TAMAYO / ART BY BEN BERKE tics when the city coffers are empty. But the reality is that bankrupt cities are actually more politically charged, more filled with distrust.

The simple solution, cooperation, is often unattainable. I grew up as a citizen of “The City of Opportunity,” Vallejo, California. In 2008, during my sophomore year of high school, Vallejo declared bankruptcy, and I observed local politics bring out the worst in the city. The atmosphere was anything but cooperative. At stake when a city declares bankruptcy is something that runs deeper than a city’s finances. It penetrates the city’s business climate, bolsters crime, seeps into the city’s morale and the psychol-

ogy of its residents and cuts into the heart of the city itself. For that alone, Vallejo can teach us a lot. It can contextualize life in a bankrupt city and explain the role that politics and policy played in moving Detroit, or any city, toward insolvency. Maybe it can even suggest a way to move forward.

Vallejo is a city of about 118,000, situated in the northeastern corner of the San Francisco Bay Area. A Six Flags amusement park sits nearby. Golf courses are strewn throughout and palm trees line the waterfront. Vallejo is a stone’s throw from wine country and a ferry ride from San Francisco. But Vallejo’s peaceful façade belies a darker reality that its residents have to cope

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cities actually pave their streets? That’s not here,” Batchelor responded. The quality of life in the city only continues to plummet.

These conditions made Vallejo’s “City of Opportunity” motto seem like little more than jest. One city councilmember has even suggested taking down the signs around the city displaying the credo. The story is a reminder that bankruptcy is not just financial. It alters the psychology of its residents — affecting business, increasing crime and degrading the landscape of the city. Vallejo Vice Mayor Stephanie Gomes has correctly argued that bankruptcy “brings a brutal recognition of the new normal” to residents’ way of life. Empty coffers are intimately related to the rest of the city’s problems, sometimes causing them, sometimes making them impossible to solve.

“I WATCHED THE CITY TRANSFORM INTO SOMETHING UNRECOGNIZABLE. THERE ARE SHOOTINGS FOR WEARING THE WRONG COLOR, SHOOTINGS AT LITTLE LEAGUE GAMES.”

At the time, Vallejo was the largest city in United States to have declared itself bankrupt. It destroyed the morale of its citizens. The city became a punching bag in the national media, crowned with dubious distinctions such as the sixth most miserable city in America (though on the same list, Detroit earned the top spot). The population lost faith in their city and its government. For anyone who lived there, Vallejo’s anguish was palpable, and so too will be Detroit’s as it suffers the consequences of its own bankruptcy.

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ow do a city’s finances become unwieldy enough to file for bankruptcy in the first place? And what would compel politicians to sign their hometowns

up for bankruptcy when they should know how traumatic it is? In the cases of Vallejo and Detroit, a combination of structural factors played a major role in their bankruptcies, several of which emerged in both cities well before their officially filing.

What car manufacturing was to Detroit, shipbuilding was to Vallejo. Much has been made of Detroit’s struggle to redevelop its local economy while the auto industry has slowly left the city. Vallejo’s own struggles mirror these efforts. Vallejo was home to the Mare Island Naval Shipyard, the first U.S. Navy base on the West Coast and one of the busiest naval shipyards in the world.

At its peak, Mare Island employed over 41,000 workers, and the base was vital to Vallejo’s local economy for most of the city’s history. But Mare Island was steadily downsized in the decades following World War II, until it finally closed in 1996. The closure drained millions of dollars from the local economy. This is startlingly comparable to the problems in Motor City, whose automobile industry bled for decades as more production moved out of the city, causing high unemployment and a lack of resources for both citizens and government. Detroit’s shrinking tax base due to an accompanying population decline made solvency even more difficult. Both cities, then, have lost the lifeblood of their local economies when their biggest industries declined.

Ongoing pension crises haven’t helped, causing resources to dwindle in both cities.

In Vallejo, 80 percent of the city’s budget was wrapped up in police and firefighting salaries, pensions and overtime. Eventually, the city had only $6 million to satisfy $382 million in claims, but had no way to raise money quickly enough to keep up. In Detroit, a similar trend has unfolded over the course of many years. Without reform, almost two-thirds of the city’s budget will be devoted to pensions and benefits owed to city workers by 2017. In total, the city has accumulated a whopping $18 billion in debt that it has little hope of paying back.

In each city, these structural budgeting problems only culminated in bankruptcy at the occasion of a sudden downward turn. For Vallejo, it was the collapse of the housing bubble during the recession. Property values plummeted by an average of 67 percent, decimating what had been reliable property tax revenue that was pushing the city forward — albeit slowly — even after Mare Island closed. For Detroit, it was state intervention in the city’s finances that triggered the downfall. Several months after a

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with every day. “In essence,” said writer Ron French, “Vallejo is Detroit with palm trees.”

Since declaring bankruptcy, Vallejo’s high crime rate has risen due to cutbacks in the police force. One officer even estimated that Vallejo’s crime rate had surpassed that of nearby cities, such as Compton, by 2010.

Crime is indeed rampant, with most crimes shrugged off by residents as “just another day in Vallejo,” no matter how bizarre they sound: a man attacking children in a public park with a machete in one hand and a gun in another; a fourteen-year-old boy abducting an elderly woman, sexually assaulting her, demanding ransom from her family, and leaving her beaten in a ditch; or a mob of 40 teenagers beating a city worker, fracturing his skull, jaw and collarbone and knocking out some of his teeth. There are also shootings for wearing the wrong color in the wrong neighborhood, armed robberies at Starbucks, stabbings at McDonald’s and shootings at Little League games.

A Detroit-Vallejo comparison has its problems, of course, particularly in a demographic sense. The suffering that has arisen in Vallejo would be magnified in a city like Detroit. Vallejo has not seen the population decline in the past decades that Detroit has: While Detroit’s population has declined from a peak of 2 million in 1950 to about 710,000 in 2010, Vallejo’s population has increased from 26,000 in 1950 to about 118,000 today. Detroit is an urban center, while Vallejo is a suburban one, and at the height of the recession, Detroit’s unemployment rate peaked at 27.8 percent, while Vallejo’s unemployment rate peaked only at 15.3 percent. But the two are comparable in other ways — they share the decay that inevitably creeps in after economic hardships, a reality that Vallejo’s citizens have had to suffer intimately.

Over time, I watched the city transform into something unrecognizable. When Vallejo declared bankruptcy, city services were effectively reduced to zero, catalyzing a host of problems for residents. Prostitutes began soliciting at night in alarming numbers and leaving used condoms on the sidewalks. Severe funding issues forced the city to close several public schools. Half of Vallejo’s storefronts became empty, and the other half began announcing to patrons that they accept food stamps. Foreclosures are now common. Properties are often auctioned off at the steps in front of City Hall.

Former City Manager Phil Batchelor was once asked to describe the state of Vallejo’s road maintenance. “Do you know that some

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CITY COUNCIL MEETINGS WERE LITTLE MO RESIDENTS TO RANT. ONE RESIDENT BROUG PIG’S HEAD TO A MEETING, CLAIMING TH

BY ITS POLICE AND FIRE UNIONS.

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state takeover of Detroit’s books, Michigan concluded that the city’s finances were beyond saving, after officials discovered that the city had only $7 million in revenue to pay for a $1 billion budget in 2013. The state of Michigan then prompted the city to file for bankruptcy, just shortly after the takeover.

Although bankruptcy was triggered by a single event in both cities, it was not a singular catastrophe but rather was a downward spiral years in the making, one that dragged numerous institutions — not just industry — down with it. For instance, in the midst of financial catastrophe, it’s tempting to think that cities as desperate as Vallejo or Detroit would have no room for petty politics — that political actors under pressure will cooperate with each other for the betterment of their cities. The unfortunate truth, however, is that political gridlock and entrenched agendas are what helped lead to bankruptcy in the first place.

And the difficulties only worsened in the period leading up to bankruptcy; staunch ideology and agenda-seeking caused the dysfunction and stalemate that became entrenched political norms by the time cities were forced to seek protection from their creditors. Politics is anything but absent in a bankrupt city.

In the months leading up to Vallejo’s bankruptcy, city council meetings were little more than outlets for residents to rant at the city council. One resident brought a freshly butchered pig’s head wrapped in twine to a meeting, claiming that the city was “hogtied” by its police and fire unions.

It’s true that the public safety workers unions held tremendous political muscle in Vallejo and exerted influence over the vast

majority of its budget. Before bankruptcy, the average beat cop made $122,000 before overtime, and the average firefighter made $130,000. Salaries ballooned up to $231,000 for police captains — roughly the same as the salary of the Vice President of the United States. Moreover, both police and firefighters were able to retire at age 50 with a pension equal to 90 percent of their final pay, assuming 30 years on the job. Recognizing how unsustainable this arrangement was, the city administration attempted to negotiate with the police and fire unions to reform pay and benefits for their employees, but with no success. Both sides accused the other of not negotiating in good faith.

One councilmember claimed the unions offered her an endorsement if she promised to “stay bought,” and in return, the unions attacked the city for threatening to void their fairly negotiated contracts. The political stalemate only compounded the financial difficulties that had plagued the city for years, and helped speed up the march toward bankruptcy in 2008.

The same narrative is unfolding in the Motor City. The city’s unions, residents, legislators and creditors find themselves in a free-for-all, with each party demanding that its interests be represented fairly in the final agreement. Detroit’s pension plans are not equivalent to the overly generous deals that unions received in Vallejo, but with three retirees for every worker paying into the plan, and with costs projected to keep increasing, a pension crisis looms large over the city. The United Auto Workers, Detroit’s largest and most famous union, is taking a hardline stance and refusing to negotiate with the city at all over pension cuts. Unsurprisingly, political actors don’t

simply surrender their interests when financial insolvency looms. Instead, they double down. They butt heads with each other. They stalemate. Meanwhile, the city is seeking protection from its creditors in federal court — much to the creditors’ chagrin — after being unable to convince them to accept pennies on the dollar for the debts it incurred over the years. Detroit residents are frustrated with everyone involved in the situation; municipal bankruptcy is an exercise in bitter disagreement between parties with seemingly irreconcilable differences.

The dirty politics of bankruptcy sets the tone for the entire ordeal, reaffirming the idea that bankruptcy seems inescapable. In some ways, the sheer divisiveness of politics is more discouraging to residents than the financial situation itself.

In both Vallejo and Detroit, financial hardship contributed to more difficult politics, and more difficult politics contributed to more financial hardship. In Vallejo’s case, diminished revenues from the closure of Mare Island and declining property values meant more competitive budget fights, and a harder time providing city services to residents and fighting crime. The same trends apply in Detroit. When there is less money to go around, people and interest groups fight viciously over who has the best claim to it. Politics and policy don’t occur in a vacuum; they influence each other. In bankruptcy cases like Vallejo and Detroit, this positive feedback loop only made financial troubles worse.

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either Detroit nor Vallejo is a lost cause. Traumatizing to a city as bankruptcy is, life goes on. While Detroit’s path forward will be difficult, the

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ORE THAN OUTLETS FOR GHT A FRESHLY BUTCHERED HAT THE CITY WAS ‘HOGTIED’ subjects a small part of the budget to the democratic process and brings citizens more actively into community planning.

Vallejo’s example demonstrates how community empowerment is an important part of battling through municipal bankruptcy.

Detroit could similarly benefit from bottom-up solutions that would mobilize and spur its residents into communal action, instilling in them the idea that their city is worth fighting for. Community empowerment may sound corny, but it’s exactly what Vallejo did — by spurring citizens to take on responsibility for tasks that used to be government-run. If Detroit can find similar opportunities to mobilize its residents into action, such programs can be used to mitigate the effects of the austerity budgets that inevitably come with bankruptcy.

Of course, community empowerment is no cure for the kinds of challenges faced by bankrupt cities. Solutions also need to come from the top, and it’s the responsibility of the city government to figure out ways to stabilize its budget in the long run. This is a responsibility which residents have little say in, even in communities with active citizens. It also means the city might need to alienate political actors, such as unions, who would rather not accept cuts to their employees’ pay or benefits in order to create sustainable long-term solutions. The brutal truth is that cities cannot be shy about the measures they need to reach solvency again. They cannot afford to emerge from bankruptcy on such tenuous financial footing that they risk relapsing.

Vallejo serves as a cautionary tale about relapse: just two years after emerging from bankruptcy, it is once again fac-

ing unsustainable budgeting because it did not sufficiently reform its pension plans.

A municipal bankruptcy attorney in San Francisco, Karol Denniston, summarized the problem: “Any municipal bankruptcy that doesn’t restructure pension obligations is going to be a failure because pension obligations are the largest debt a city has.

Outgoing Councilmember Marti Brown penned an editorial in the Sacramento Bee claiming that Vallejo is “poised to make [the] same financial decisions that led to bankruptcy” in the first place.

This is a lesson for Detroit. Like Vallejo, the Detroit city government must leverage the political moment to stabilize its budget for the long haul — whether political actors in the city like it or not. If the Motor City decides it needs to restructure its pension plan, it must do so comprehensively or risk the same post-bankruptcy dilemma facing Vallejo today.

Bankruptcy has been a painful burden for Vallejo. I have seen my city leaders mount vicious smear campaigns against each other, watched the infrastructure of my hometown deteriorate from neglect and looked on as my hometown paid in bloodshed and broken windows for what it could not afford to pay in dollars. A city battling through bankruptcy is a city fighting to hold together the pieces of its own shattered soul. Detroit needs us now, and maybe it can learn from Vallejo’s mistakes as well as its triumphs. With a lot of effort and luck, perhaps someday we will say that Detroit found a way to rise again from the ashes. u MICHAEL TAMAYO ‘14 IS A POLITICAL SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY CONCENTRATOR.

FEATURE BROWN POLITICAL REVIEW

Motor City can take away some lessons from Vallejo’s bankruptcy. Vallejo battled its way through financial collapse and emerged from bankruptcy in 2011 into an uneasy state of solvency, providing along the way a roadmap of do’s and don’ts for other bankrupt cities.

Community involvement has been a key part of Vallejo’s recovery. The city needed to make sure its residents felt invested in their city and would be willing to fill the holes left behind by steep cuts in city services. When the city slashed its police force down to just over 80 officers, it encouraged residents to make do without police by forming neighborhood watch groups and other civic organizations. Before bankruptcy, there were only 10 such groups in the city. Today, there are over 350, which dedicate themselves not only to watch groups but to many different local work projects.

Some patrol neighborhoods and report city code violations, others root out drug dealers, and still others deter prostitutes from soliciting in their neighborhoods (locally known as “ho patrols”).

These groups have found some success in reducing prostitution, drug dealing and vandalism in their neighborhoods. Other groups specialize in cleaning trash off the streets and keeping city parks clean. The city broadly encourages all of these activities — Vallejo even launched a private social networking platform for neighborhood watch groups to coordinate with each other. It also became the first U.S. city to adopt citywide participatory budgeting. In this process, city leaders struck a deal with residents to raise the local sales tax in exchange for allowing residents to vote on how they would like the revenue to be spent. This

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THE POPE WHO TAKES SELFIES Pope Francis is shaking up the Vatican, from administrative reforms to a new papal image.

STORY BY DYLAN C. PLATT / ART BY JULIA LADICS

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hen white smoke plumed from the chimney of the Sistine Chapel last March, it was the unwitting signal of an international blaze of change across the Roman Catholic Church. No one could deny the recent decline of Catholicism; attendance to mass was shrinking to critical levels in many parishes. The Catholic world needed a spark, but few expected it to come from a Jesuit bishop with conservative doctrines and an ambivalent track record in contesting authority. Considering the changes he has incited and their implications for Catholics and non-Catholics alike, Pope Francis has reignited the Church in ways no one could have expected. Pope Francis has defied critics’ expectations one liturgical twist at a time, with a refreshing strategy: instead of cranking out edicts, Francis has become the edict himself.

In the beginning, there was fear, and it was decidedly not good. Observers were anxious about the newly elected, 266th pope. Besides his Argentinian upbringing — earning him the title of the “first Latin American Pope” — Francis appeared to have a papacy-as-usual background. He was doctrinally conservative, and he opposed female priests. He had a history of remaining silent in the face of oppression; he was considered by many to be complicit in Argentina’s Dirty War (1976 - 1983), a period of state-sanctioned violence against political dissidents under the Argentinian military dictatorship that claimed the lives of as many as 30,000 citizens. Francis also had a very public spat with Argentine President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner over the country’s decision to legalize abortion in instances of rape and mental incapacity.

And he disappointed social advocates with his charity-giving emphasis on poverty instead of pushing for long-lasting social reforms.

Despite these legitimate concerns, Pope Francis surprised critics by flatly avoiding the topic of doctrine. Instead, he’s insisted on separation of church and state, vowed to fight corruption within the Vatican and beyond, demanded social context

for the hot-button issues of the Church and has placed the Church’s rhetorical emphasis on the impoverished in a significant way.

In short, the Pope has been on fire with reforms, and the first item on the burn pile was the Vatican bureaucracy.

Under Pope Francis, the Church’s very structure has already begun to shift, starting with the Roman Curia – the Vatican administration and central governing body of the Catholic Church. Pope Francis does not mince words when it comes to the topic of bureaucracy: he called the Curia, “the leprosy of the Church” in an October interview with La Repubblica. These weren’t empty words: in March, Pope Francis asked the Curia to “provisionally continue” until other “provisions” could be established.

In April, he proceeded to form an ad hoc council of eight cardinals, representing five continents, whose purpose was to revise Pope John Paul II’s Pastor Bonus, otherwise known as the Apostolic Constitution on the Roman Curia. The party met for the first time in October. It is interesting to note that only one of the eight is a member of the Curia, and that none are canon law experts. Many have been vocal critics of the Church’s operations.

Pope Francis also took aim at the Vatican administration when he cut the bonuses of Curia members by millions of euros, redirecting the savings to charity. This type of maneuver increasingly resembles His Holiness’ style: beginning with his rejection of the papal apartments for an austere chamber on the Vatican grounds, Pope Francis has been leading the way for a new, more socially responsive Church. His sacking of the “Bishop of Bling,” Franz-Peter Tebartz-van Elst, has signaled that Francis is unwilling to entertain the public perception of corruption. The removal of a bishop for overspending is a striking precedent to set this early in Francis’ papacy, and a swift departure from what many observers characterized as chronic inaction on the part of Benedict XVI, particularly regarding his predecessor’s response to the sexual abuse scandals within the Church. The current pope has been decisively outspoken. “Cor-

ruption,” Francis said in a recent homily, is “not earning our daily bread with dignity.”

Further, Francis is directing the Church away from Vatican-centric practices. He’s made it a special point to emphasize the fraternity between Jewish and Christian communities. His brand of faith emphasizes the following of conscience and the grave importance of private prayer. Pope Francis paints a far less doctrine-steeped image of a “good” life: “Everyone has his own idea of good and evil and must choose to follow the good and fight evil as he conceives them,” Francis said recently, in one of his many moments of candor. “That would be enough to make the world a better place.”

Pope Francis’ effort to stress ideals over policies is a marked departure from past Vatican emphases on topics including contraceptives, abortion and gay marriage. His big-picture approach — one that admittedly tends to avoid explicit details on those same issue — has still been enough to shake up the Church, given that his approval ratings are staying well on the positive side among Catholics and non-Catholics alike in the United States. A Vatican spokesperson, Rev. Tom Rosica, offered a possible reason for the trend in public opinion. “The most vivid example of the new evangelization is not a book, not an apostolic exhortation, it’s Pope Francis,” Rosica said. “The pope is becoming the message.” Indeed, if His Holiness continues at this pace, the first year of his papacy could prove to be more reformist than the duration of the entire Second Vatican Council, one of the most reformist entries into canon law in the history of the Catholic Church.

Some Catholics are becoming uncomfortable, a predictable reaction in the face of such momentous change. The security blanket of the far right has been papal policy; there is an attachment to the constancy of former popes’ language, which was steadfastly opposed to abortion, homosexuality and contraceptives. But Pope Francis has not made it his mission to tackle the damnability of these topics, instead opting for a more reformist approach. As Francis barrels forward with poetic humanity,

that we might be used to. When President Obama delivers a speech, goes to a town hall debate or has an interview, his words concerning policy are often suggestions, hopes or suppositions. He is at the mercy of Congress for most policy changes. In the Catholic canon, Pope Francis is only at the mercy of God. The Church believes that Francis sits on the Cathedral of St. Peter by divine providence. As the Vicar of Christ, what he says is law.

Style matters as much as substance.

Even his style of speech is said to be more common than that of previous popes, translating far more easily to a young generation of Catholics. Consider, for example, his tweetable remark from a speech in April: “The Church is a love story, not an institution.” The people’s pontiff has also taken on impromptu interviews and boasts a Twitter feed with more than 10 million followers; he is even game for the occasional selfie with teenage fans.

And it doesn’t hurt that Francis is gaining a reputation as “the cold-call pope.”

Among other recently placed calls, Pope Francis directly phoned his cobbler to no-

DYLAN C. PLATT ‘15 IS A CLASSICS AND ANTHROPOLOGY CONCENTRATOR AND A COPY EDITOR AT BPR.

GLOBAL BROWN POLITICAL REVIEW

pockets of the Church’s far right murmur with anxious chagrin. Unnamed voices from within the Vatican continue to relay discontent.

Although conservatives have made it known that they do not appreciate the downplaying of doctrinal issues, the Catholic community appears to have had a generally positive reaction to the pope’s approach. Following Francis’ assumption to the papacy, 51 percent of priests surveyed by the Center for the Study of New Religions in Italy reported a significant increase in attendance. Researcher Massimo Introvigne, head of Italy’s Center for the Study of New Religions, said that while the increase “might have been attributable to the novelty of having a new pope and the emotions stirred by the resignation of Pope Benedict,” even after six months, Introvigne said he “got more or less the same result.”

Introvigne’s insight should serve as a staunch counterpoint to those who would say that Francis’ so-called reforms are “just words.” Pope Francis may be an executive leader, but not anything like the executive branch of the United States government

tify him that someone else would be picking up his shoes and personally dialed in to cancel a newspaper subscription in his Argentinian hometown. The Pope has also responded by personal phone call to people’s letters; in August, he spoke with a woman who had been raped by a police officer and had written to Francis with her story. It demonstrates Francis’ surprisingly nuanced appreciation for the rules of modern media, who continue to delight in heartwarming reports of the people’s pontiff; his transparency and authenticity have made him an easily likable public personality, a striking departure from that of his often clandestine predecessor, Benedict XVI. Pope Francis has been so widely accepted that the non-Catholic news source, Christian Today, proclaimed that the pope is “Our Francis, Too.” Protestant pastor and writer Chris Nye remarked, “Pope Francis knows … what I so often forget: True power comes from true humility, and true leadership comes out of true service. Let’s not just celebrate this pope; let’s imitate him.” The Catholic community respects Pope Francis because he is the shepherd that guides their faith, and the non-Catholic community respects him because, perhaps for the first time, they see a man, not a ruler, in the white papal garments. In a May homily, Francis even called out to “atheist allies” to “do good,” saying, “we will meet one another there.”

Sometimes, Pope Francis’ honesty almost seems to test the parameters of religion itself. He once commented, “In this quest to seek and find God in all things, there is still an area of uncertainty. There must be. If a person says that he met God with total certainty and is not touched by a margin of uncertainty, then this is not good…If one has the answers to all the questions — that is proof that God is not with him.” This is hardly the usual “Let us pray for the godless” theme we often hear.

In Francis we see a new, reformed papacy. He may not issue edicts, but he does his predecessors one better: he lives his creed. He shows that the papacy is not just a cushy and distant entity, but a job. In so doing, Francis represents the potential to permanently alter the very language of the papacy, as well as the dialogue within the Church. In the words of Rev. Rosica, “The pope is teaching us the art of communicating.” u

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WHEN BUDDHISTS GO TO WAR The Muslims of Burma’s fledgling democracy are facing a surprising threat.

STORY BY EDWARD CLIFFORD / ART BY ANISA HOLMES

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n October 1, Muslims in the coastal village of Thabyuchaing in the northwest of Burma fled into the surrounding forests as their homes were torched and left to burn by a sword-wielding Buddhist mob. Not everyone was lucky enough to escape: five Muslims, including a 94-year-old woman, were killed in the attack. The incident was an all too familiar reminder of the ethno-religious tensions and sectarian violence that continue to plague Burma’s nascent democracy. While Nobel Peace Prize winner and Burmese MP Aung Sung Suu Kyi has become the face of a liberalized Burma in the West, her domestic dominance is being increasingly challenged

by Ashin Wirathu, a monk Time magazine described as the “face of Buddhist terror. ” Wirathu and his followers have been at the forefront of a campaign of ethnic and religious violence that has threatened to derail the country’s already fragile democratic transition.

Burma’s progress is vulnerable due to the lingering legacy of decades of military rule. The country’s first foray into democracy began in 1948, when it gained independence, bringing an end to over a century of British imperial rule. However, in 1962 a military led coup succeeded in overthrowing the civilian government, beginning a period of socialist military rule that ended in 1988. That year there was another coup establishing the State Peace and Development Council (or the military junta, as it is more commonly known) as the ruling body of Burma. The Buddhist establishment remained a bastion of Burmese national identity and security throughout this turbulent half-century. During this time, religious leaders were only occasionally critical of these successive regimes. It wasn’t until the last decade that religious leaders within various communities began to take a significant role in the country’s political development.

The 2007 Saffron Revolution demonstrated the capacity for change that these Burmese Buddhists wield. In what began as

a student led protest against rising costs of living, monks across Burma began a campaign of civil resistance that brought the government to a standstill. Throughout the summer and early fall, monks marched through the cities and sat en masse in public squares and historic sites in defiance of the junta. In September, monks across the country suspended spiritual services to the military, a powerful symbolic move for a devoutly Buddhist country. When the government responded with force and brought the short-lived revolution to a bloody end, the crackdown was met with both domestic and international outcry as well as an outpouring of support — particularly for the monks who had dared to stand up to the military regime.

AN ENTHUSIASTIC USER OF YOUTUBE, WIRATHU’S FOLLOWERS POST HIS FIERY, ANTI- “ISLAMIFICATION” SERMONS, WHICH ATLANTIC COLUMNIST ALEX BOOKBINDER HAS NOTED “WOULD NOT BE OUT OF PLACE AT NUREMBERG.” Burma’s history of ethnic and religious struggle extends beyond Buddhist political protest. Even before the 1962 coup, the central government had been in a near perpetual state of conflict with a variety of secessionist groups, perhaps most notably the Kachin people of northern Burma, who have been sporadically fighting a war of independence from the country since 1948.

Within the last decade in particular, these conflicts have taken on a decidedly more internal character. The state of Rakhine, an epicenter of ethno-religious violence on the Bangladeshi border, has a history of Mujahedeen-inspired Muslim separatist movements. Recently, however, the violence has been predominantly Buddhist-on-Muslim.

Oppression of the Rohingya, an ethnically Bangladeshi Muslim group who primarily reside in the state of Rakhine, has reached largely unprecedented levels, as Buddhist

extremists have started burning Muslim holdings to the ground and forcing the Rohingya from their land.

The conflict between the Buddhist majority and Muslim minority in Burma appears to be ethnic cleansing in the making. Muslims make up only 4 percent of Burma’s population of approximately 55 million people. However, they are heavily concentrated in the country’s western half — comprising 40.75 percent of the total population of Rakhine and 96 percent of the population along the border with Bangladesh. As of June this year, an estimated 200 Muslims have been killed and 150,000 have been displaced. Even more worrisome is the fact that Buddhist extremism in Burma is widespread. Other extremist Buddhist movements, such as the GAM in Aceh and the Buddhist radicals in Sri Lanka are relatively minor. In Burma, however, this manifestation of radical prejudice is just the latest chapter in a history of abuses.

Muslims have long been perceived as culturally and socially separate from the rest of Burma. While the country has never been culturally or ethnically homogeneous, the Rohingya have attracted an unusually fierce vitriol due to their practice of Islam, leading to historical and systematic discrimination. The laws in place restrict the number of children they are permitted to two per couple. Even more disheartening, many Burmese see the current anti-Muslim violence as an inevitable and justified backlash against Bengali land-grabbers.

Prominent members of the Buddhist institution, especially Ashin Wirathu, have only encouraged this attitude.

Always traveling in a motorcade with 60 of his closest followers, Wirathu — the self described “Burmese bin Laden” — is at the heart of the growing tide of anti-Islamic rhetoric. While his self-assigned title may seem something of a paradox given his mission to drive Muslims out of Burma, the charismatic 45-year-old has proven himself as masterful and adept as his namesake at inciting religious hatred. A fierce polemicist

the protection of Buddhist values and national identity in Burma. But their actions reveal that their mission is in fact a narrowly defined racial and religious jingoism. The movement has its origins in a book written in the late 1990s by U Kyaw Lwin, a religious official in the military junta. Throughout Southeast Asia, the number 786 has special significance for many Muslims as a numerical representation of the phrase “In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate and Merciful.” In his numerological treatise, Lwin makes the argument that Muslims are in fact conspiring to take over Burma in the 21st century — premised on the absurdly conspiratorial fact that 7 plus 8 plus 6 equals 21. The number 969 has a similar significance. It was chosen as a cosmological defense because of its allusions to the “three jewels” of Buddhism: Buddha’s nine attributes, the six principles of his teachings, and the nine attributes of monastic order. Emblems of the 969 Movement are increasingly popular throughout Burma, with supporters proudly displaying the iconography in their homes, businesses and on their vehicles. Some stores juxtapose their emblems with signs proudly claiming that they do not stock Muslim goods.

As is often the case in states with uncertain futures, minority groups are scapegoats for the nation’s economic woes. Comparisons of modern day Burma to Nazi Germany are not entirely unwarranted.

Wirathu has pointed to the affluence of a few Muslims as proof that the Burmese economy is at the whim of Islam, conveniently overlooking the legacy of crony capitalism that has enriched the military administration, none of whom are Muslim.

The Burmese population at large, however, has seized upon these claims, and there is swelling support for Wirathu’s call to boycott Muslim businesses. His goal is to cut off the ability of Muslims to engage in commerce. By depriving them of their means of subsistence, Wirathu and other members of the 969 movement ultimately seek to drive Muslims from the country.

As is common among ethno-nationalist movements, Wirathu’s proclaimed goal is simply to protect the purity and integrity of the Burmese state. In a February speech he warned that if Muslims are allowed to become too wealthy their “money will eventually be used against you to destroy your race and religion.” At the same rally, Wirathu also invoked the need to protect

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who described coexistence with Muslims as “sleep[ing] next to a mad dog,” he describes the threat posed by Muslim communities in apocalyptic terms. “They will overwhelm [Burma] and take over our country,” said Wirathu, adding that they will “make it into an evil Islamic nation.” And like bin Laden, he has a keen eye for his media presence.

DVDs of his speeches are sold on street corners. An enthusiastic user of YouTube, his followers post his fiery, anti-“Islamification” sermons, which Atlantic columnist Alex Bookbinder has noted “would not be out of place at Nuremberg.”

Born in the small town of Kyaukse in central Burma, Wirathu is no stranger to controversy. In 2001, he became involved with the 969 movement, a Buddhist nationalist organization. Two years later, he was found guilty by the military junta government for giving critical speeches that allegedly incited religious conflict. In 2010, he was released from prison as part of a conciliatory gesture by the military junta, and ever since, Wirathu has come to be seen as the 969 movement’s spiritual protector and leader.

The 969 movement purports to be a non-violent organization that stands for

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the innocence of Burmese women who would be “coerced or even forced to convert to Islam.” It hardly needs restating that the protection of women is compelling rhetoric that has been used by movements from the KKK to the National Socialist party. Its efficacy in Burma, unfortunately, has been readily apparent.

This insular notion of purity is common among many Asian states due to their shared religion. Buddhism has played an influential role in many countries throughout the region, and it has particularly helped unify Burma, a country cut off from much of the world by geography and political cir-

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ALWAYS TRAVELING IN A MOTORCADE WITH 60 OF THIS CLOSEST FOLLOWERS, WIRATHU — THE SELF DESCRIBED “BURMESE BIN LADEN” — IS AT THE HEART OF THE GROWING TIDE OF ANTIISLAMIC RHETORIC.

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cumstance. Despite the fairly diverse ethnic makeup of Burma, Buddhism has proven to be the country’s most significant integrating factor. Its near-complete dominance and perceived cultural integrity explain in large part the hostility displayed toward Muslims who are branded perennial outsiders. The significance of monasticism to Burmese society cannot be overstated. There are over 500,000 monks in Burma and an additional 75,000 nuns, meaning that roughly one percent of the population is part of the Buddhist institution. Furthermore, since monastic education in Burma is free, many of the poorest families will opt to send their children to study in monasteries. Buddhist religious education is commonplace amongst all strata of society, as almost all Burmese children receive a supplementary Buddhist education akin to Sunday school.

This overwhelming preponderance of not merely Buddhist observance, but also Buddhist veneration, helps to explain the religion’s central role in Burmese identity and the enormous impact that it has on average citizens.

In June 2012, Burma experienced a paroxysm of ethnic riots in Rakhine, and it’s not hard to link the corrosive influence of Buddhist institutions to the widespread violence. While the proximate cause of the 2012 June riots was the rape and murder of a Rakhine woman by a group of Rohingya Muslim men, the ensuing attacks and counterattacks by Rakhine and Rohingya

communities were the inevitable product of pent-up frustration in an unequal system. Buddhist mobs in Rakhine, whipped into a frenzy by extremists like Wirathu, began indiscriminately attacking Rohingya men in a search for the perpetrators. The Rohingya responded with violence fueled by years of discrimination and neglect of their own.

In October of the same year, riots broke out again, but the cause was unclear.

By the end of 2012, an estimated 168 people had been killed in the riots with a further 150,000, mostly Rohingya, displaced.

While camps have been set up to aid in the resettlement process, they present only a stopgap solution, a temporary bandage for the scars of ethnic conflict. To many observers, the question is, “Why now?”

Burma stands at a precarious moment in its history. For the first time in over 50 years, democracy seems like a real possibility. However, internal and external forces have proven a stumbling block for suffrage.

The discovery of vast natural resources in Burma, ranging from precious stones to fossil fuels, has elevated the democratic movement to one of global concern. Foreign actors have not undervalued Burma’s resource wealth. While the United States has approached Burma with a soft touch, China has taken a far more aggressive track, particularly in regards to securing resource extraction contracts.

Burma’s newfound riches will only stoke the flames. Militant ethno-nationalism often has arisen as a symptom of sudden resource wealth in emerging states around the world. Developing states with plentiful natural resources are often heavily exploited by foreign powers. Coupled with the possibility of enormous wealth, foreign exploitation might only produce an even more aggressive nationalism that endangers Burma’s ethnic and religious minorities.

Mongolia today is one of the fastest growing economies in the world, in large part due to its massive copper and coal reserves; it’s also home to a fledgling neo-Nazi movement. As paradoxical as a Mongolian neo-Nazi movement may sound, it is no more contradictory than militant Buddhists. The Tsagaan Khass, or White Swastika, as the group is known, has tried in recent years to rebrand itself as an environmental movement looking to protect Mongolia’s resource sovereignty, and ensure that the nation’s blood is “pure.” The group’s leaders are concerned that if Mongolian society starts “mixing with the Chinese,

they will swallow us up.” The situation in Mongolia bears more than a passing resemblance to that in Burma. While the White Swastika does not have the same widespread appeal as the 969 movement, they are both indicative of how these ethno-nationalist movements develop in response to perceived threats by historical rivals, particularly during periods of uncertain economic growth. While both Mongolia and Burma have vast resource wealth, they lack domestic extractive capabilities, forcing them to rely on foreign investment. This loss of resource sovereignty produces anger and resentment, particularly in economically marginalized groups who are susceptible to the scapegoats proffered by the likes of Ashin Wirathu and the White Swastika.

While transitional instability and resource nationalism may have played a role in Wirathu’s growing support, his success is still contingent on deeply held racial and religious prejudice. The Christian minority in Burma has not been the target of hate crimes, despite being the religion of the Kachin, who have waged a decades-long war of independence. The persecution of Muslims, then, can be seen as the cumulative product of systemic and ingrained bigotry, which has been violently catalyzed by economic and political instability. In other words, there’s a reason that Buddhist attacks have focused on one ethnic minority, rather than all vulnerable groups.

Last July, a bomb exploded a few yards away from Ashin Wirathu as he delivered another sermon on the Muslim threat. Unharmed and undaunted, Wirathu has continued to deliver sermons around the country. In the last year, the 969 movement has gone from fringe extremists to a national movement with growing support. There are even fears that the current administration has intentionally allowed Wirathu’s campaign of violence to proceed unabated in order to justify continued draconian national security measures. As he capitalizes on the underlying racial and religious prejudices that have swirled to the surface of Burmese society, over 150,000 Muslims find themselves without a home. While moderate monks and more liberal citizens have begun to push back against this metastasizing violence, recent events have shown that political circumstances can lead even Buddhists astray from the path to enlightenment, and into the foreboding brambles of racial violence. u EDWARD CLIFFORD ‘16 IS A HISTORY CONCENTRATOR.

BREAKING BADGER Britain tries to save its bovines.

STORY BY ADAM SAVAT / ART BY OLIVIA WATSON

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herds have increased since 1996, to the point where 5,935 herds reported TB infection while only 3,743 remained clean.

The leading cause of this epidemic is the badger population, primarily in Gloucestershire and Somerset counties, in the west of England. These badgers are known to carry TB and many experts believe that a short, sharp reduction, or “cull,” of the badger population would greatly benefit the cattle that are bitten and infected by them — as are the British citizens who consume cattle. A six-week window was opened in late August for the hunting of badgers, with the hope of reducing the badger population by 70 percent. But as of early November, about 65 percent of the badgers in Somerset and only 30 percent in Gloucestershire have been removed, even after a widely debated extension of the newly-minted badger hunting season.

The cull’s main proponents have cited precedent, like the 100 million pound (161 million dollars) initiative in 2012 to slaughter 28,000 TB-infected cattle. Arguing for a rapid, massive cull, they point to evidence that a prolonged cull can actually increase rates of bovine TB, due to the increased movement of surviving badger populations as their competitors die off.

The opposition has attacked the cull from both a financial and an animal rights stance, claiming that the mass killing of badgers is unnecessarily harmful and ecologically disruptive — and could potentially cause even more bovine tuberculosis. While the government acknowledges the danger inherent in prolonged culls, it nevertheless

extended the hunting season by an additional three-week period — still, it failed to net even half the recommended number of badgers. A spokesman for The Wildlife Trusts pointed to the underwhelming cull rates as evidence of a failed policy. “Culling badgers over such a prolonged period and failing to meet the required targets is likely to have worsened the Bovine TB situation at a cost of millions of pounds,” the spokesman said — that is, having tried and failed is actually worse than having never tried at all.

The real issue, however, is uncertainty. British citizens understand the utter harm that bovine tuberculosis can wreak on both cattle and human populations — few disagree that it must be curbed in some fashion. But the effects of a cull of such magnitude are unknown. Regardless of the intended goal, widespread badger hunting could have a negative impact on the environment. It’s equally possible that the extension of this cull would simply increase the TB present among cattle next year as smaller badger populations become more mobile. This would arrest progress even further. According to the government, the benefits of an ideal cull would glean no more than a 16 percent reduction in TB. The risks, therefore, are substantial, especially when considering the meager rewards.

Luckily there are other options, such as badger vaccination. In Wales, the government has begun vaccinating badgers in the hopes of finding a non-lethal way around TB. The approach is incredibly costly, with an annual price tag averaging around 620 pounds (1,000 U.S. dollars) per badger.

The ideal situation for all populations, then, would be a combination of the two: a cull to deal with the most heavily infested areas and a vaccination to focus on prevention elsewhere. The best strategy will only become clear after gathering extensive data on bovine TB. Hopefully it will point the way to a definitive path forward for Britain and its beleaguered badgers. u ADAM SAVAT ‘16 IS AN ARCHAELOGY AND ART HISTORY CONCENTRATOR.

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hey may have a stiff upper lip, but the British are having a tough time coping with cattle panic. Almost all major cattle raising countries are plagued by livestock issues, such as excessive weight gain in the United States or the contention over deforestation for more grazing lands in Brazil. However, the United Kingdom’s cows have led the country through especially difficult crises, crowning in the most recent battle with a seemingly unrelated animal: the badger.

Britain’s woes began in 1986 with the outbreak of bovine spongiform encephalopathy, commonly referred to as “mad cow disease,” due to the wild behavior of infected cattle. These cows were fed a mixture of meat and bones that came from sheep with a similar disease, unknowingly infecting a large portion of the cow population. As a result of the widespread use of this cheap fodder, “mad cow disease” grew at a phenomenal rate, culminating in some 1,000 new cases per week in 1993. The negligent feeding practices that infected the cattle were eventually stopped, but not before the sickness had spread to the public in the form of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, a fatal neurodegenerative condition that caused nearly 175 deaths in Britain between 1996 and 2011.

Because of the impact of diseased cattle on human health, the UK has been increasingly careful and vigilant with its cattle herds. Today, the most dangerous threat to Britain’s cow industry is the spread of bovine tuberculosis. Government-collected data indicates that cases of TB in cow

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Smart intelligence responding to nsa outcries abroad, reforming espionage at home.

STORY BY ARIADNE ELLSWORTH / ART BY LIZ STUDLICK

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tanding before a packed audience in the Taubman Center for Public Policy, Timothy Edgar called this past summer a “crisis of confidence” for the National Security Administration (NSA). Edgar, a civil liberties and privacy lawyer who has worked in the past two U.S. presidential administrations, claimed that Edward Snowden’s betrayal of the U.S. intelligence community and his subsequent escape to Russia — the United States’ principal intelligence adversary — was not the biggest blow to the NSA’s confidence. Instead, the agency’s internal shock stems from the wide discrepancy between how the American public received Snowden’s actions and how the intelligence community perceived the same set of events. To the public, Snowden is certainly not the traitor that those within the system believe him to be. In some circles he has even been heralded as a national hero.

The traitor–hero divide is only further evidence that Snowden has ignited one of

the most poignant aspects of Americans’ historical distrust of big government: the invasion of privacy. The recent revelation that the United States has spied on foreign heads of state and conducted industrial espionage in Mexico, Brazil, France, Germany and Spain has invited international fury, just as Snowden was exiting the world stage. As the Obama administration and the NSA scramble to fend off both domestic and international criticism, there has been surprisingly little discourse — even from Republicans, content to watch Obama flail — justifying these modes of espionage.

Now seems the opportune time to question why the United States bears the brunt of the world’s criticism surrounding espionage tactics, even as many states, specifically those in Europe, spy on the United States to the best of their abilities. But even more essential, and absent, in this crisis of confidence is a public understanding of espionage’s crucial role in maintaining the stability that the international community has

enjoyed for the past 70 years.

The massive U.S. intelligence operations of today began during World War II, subsequently found a comfortable niche in the Cold War and finally reached a peak with the War on Terror. Since Snowden’s revelations this summer, the global community appears to have forgotten that the United States has been spying on most of the world — or more accurately, the world has been spying on itself — for the greater part of the last century. They also forget that the past 70 years arguably have been the most stable in world history. Despite fears of nuclear proliferation during the Cold War and the rise of terrorism in the 21st century, these decades have seen the decline of interstate war and the lowest civilian death toll ever. The United States has remained the dominant superpower in the world order throughout this turbulent period, and it has engaged in both international and domestic espionage at unprecedented levels, not by coincidence.

70 years, intelligence agencies have allowed states to keep tabs on potential changes in policies and alliances, and to take action in time to allow for swift diplomacy or limited, stabilizing military action. So what explains the international and domestic backlash against U.S. espionage efforts now?

The anti-NSA mentality is partially predicated on the false assumption that “victimized” countries do not gather intelligence themselves. Last month, European media outlets and diplomats discovered that the United States had collected data on heads of state, and they reported the story with an air of surprise and utter disgust. The German weekly news magazine Der Spiegel reported that “the espionage attack on the EU is … a surprise for most European diplomats, who until now assumed that they

IN AN ANARCHICAL INTERNATIONAL SYSTEM, GOVERNMENTS CAN NEVER TRULY KNOW HOW LONG THEIR ALLIES WILL REMAIN LOYAL. ESPIONAGE FORCES A DEGREE OF TRANSPARENCY THAT MAKES STATES LESS LIKELY TO GO TO WAR. maintained friendly ties to the U.S. government.” Intelligence officers tell a different story. As Bernard Squarcini, former head of France’s Directorate of Territorial Surveillance, explained bluntly, “I am amazed by such disconcerting naïveté. You’d almost think our politicians don’t bother to read the reports they get from the intelligence services. The French intelligence services know full well that all countries, whether or not they are allies in the fight against terrorism, spy on each other all the time.” France “is the evil empire in stealing technology,” said a German businessman quoted in documents posted by Wikileaks. “The total damage [it does] to the German economy is greater than that inflicted by China or Russia. And Germany… is France’s closest and most trusted friend.”

Europe’s indignant response could reflect the disparity between relatively insignificant European espionage and the United States’ enormous information-gathering

capabilities. Germany’s post-WWII pacifist stance has resulted in “an underdeveloped geo-political mindset,” says Jen Techau, director for the European policy forum Carnegie Europe. The result leaves much to be desired in Germany’s intelligence operations. While Techau’s claims may be true, it seems unrealistic, given Germany’s decades-long aversion to domestic surveillance, that intelligence services could be ramped up significantly, at least in public.

By conveying outrage over U.S. espionage, Germany is echoing the sentiments of its people. Meanwhile, the government is attempting to strategically pressure the U.S. government into an espionage agreement that would benefit Germany, providing them with the intelligence they themselves lack the political latitude to collect. While Germany likely does not hold enough leverage over the United States to enact the strict espionage treaty it desires, the country utilized media hype in order to get to the negotiating table with American senior intelligence officials this month, which is more than they have been able to achieve in the past. Whether countries like Germany and France succeed in pressuring the United States into treaties that ban spying between allies and encourage intelligence sharing is beyond the point. Their vain attempts at exploiting espionage scandals illustrate their desire to capitalize on the high volume of U.S. intelligence, which they cannot come close to matching. In effect, the German government is using the United States as a scapegoat in order to manipulate domestic sentiment — purporting to protect the interests of the people while pressing for a favorable data gathering agreement.

Germany could be forgiven for its tenacity. Pressuring the United States into an agreement would help Western allies identify common problems and build trust.

France and Germany are both eager to join the elite “Five Eyes,” a spying alliance consisting of Australia, Canada, Great Britain, New Zealand and the United States. This inner circle of allies has historically remained transparent with one another without the need for mutual espionage. By joining this club, France and Germany would simultaneously ensure access to the largest intelligence bank in the world while keeping their leaders and industry safe from surveillance.

In order to enter into such an agreement, the United States, Germany and France would have to establish an extensive culture of transparency with one another, just as the Five Eyes countries have already done.

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Certainly, increased spying isn’t the only, or even the most important, contributing factor to a stable world order. Other postWorld War II institutions — the United Nations, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund — are often rightly credited with facilitating world peace and prosperity. We have also experienced a proliferation of democratic governments.

While these factors are certainly pivotal to international cooperation, espionage’s role in promoting international stability is often overlooked. When it is referenced, it’s either underemphasized or excessively vilified.

In order to produce any kind of lasting change, the negotiations that occur within institutions such as the UN must maintain a considerable degree of transparency. This openness helps to eliminate misperceptions and avoid misguided policies like isolationism or appeasement. In the absence of transparency, as international relations theorist Robert Keohane explains, “States are uncertain about what their partners and rivals value at a given time. They naturally respond to uncertainty by being less willing to enter into agreements.” Simply put, without transparent dialogue, states are less likely to compromise and more likely to go to war. In an anarchical international system, governments can never truly know their allies’ interests or intentions, and most importantly, how long they will remain loyal. Espionage, then, forces a degree of transparency that allows leaders to anticipate the actions of allies and foes alike. As former Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security Stewart Baker noted, the United States “can’t stop gathering intelligence without running the risk of terrible surprises.” Historically unpredictable developments — the invasion of the Sudetenland, Austria and Poland by Nazi Germany, for instance — have resulted in total war. In retrospect, if states had been more aware of each other’s intentions, they may have been able to take the necessary precautions in order to stabilize the situation.

There is little evidence to suggest that this transparency must be voluntary to be effective; gathering information on Germany’s intentions through espionage would have been no different from the country blatantly stating its intentions. Admittedly, the intelligence community’s perceptions of another nation’s foreign policy certainly aren’t foolproof. But even if spy agencies are not able to provide absolute assurances, the information they collect can shed light on a state’s intentions. Throughout the past

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According to NSA Director Keith Alexander, 54 terrorist attacks have been stopped thanks to the mass data collection allowed by the amendments to FISA and the larger scope of electronic surveillance, a dozen of which would have struck on the U.S. mainland. Technology, in other words, is serving a valuable purpose: it’s the law that must now play quick catch up with technology to ensure not only the protection of privacy, but also the protection of sensitive, classi-

of the intelligence complex’s intrusion into every day life. Whistleblowers such as Snowden may be the ultimate embodiment of public discomfort with the fact that woefully under-equipped oversight laws are cyclically outpaced by surveillance technology. By virtue of the countless threats it faces, the United States has good reason to continue collecting intelligence, and mass data analysis­— though not necessarily collection — is an effective way to do this.

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But such a relationship has a long way to go before coming to fruition, and the United States is hesitant to forego the ability to continue spying on these two allies.

Nevertheless, the U.S. government continues to get the short end of the stick: not only the international community, but also the American people, have met the news of surveiling foreign dignitaries with shock. The public discord sparked by the Snowden affair has resulted in the greatest “crisis of confidence” that the American security complex has possibly ever had to deal with.

At the heart of the outrage is the inability of the law to keep up with the rapid advances in intelligence gathering technologies. The 1960s witnessed grave abuses by intelligence agencies — the Martin Luther King Jr. wiretaps, J. Edgar Hoover’s virtual dictatorship of the FBI — because legal norms had yet to address the technology of the time, and relatively little oversight existed over the intelligence community. This changed during the 1970s, the sole effective period of reform in the history of U.S. intelligence practices. During this period, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) was passed, which established the FISA court — effectively a Congressional oversight committee with the purpose of approving all domestic wiretaps. This period also birthed a new branch of law surrounding civil liberties and privacy. As law caught up with surveillance technologies, abuses waned and accountability became the norm.

This legacy changed with the terrorist attacks of September 11, aggressively warping the previously delicate balance between security and liberty. In the name of national security, the George W. Bush administration harnessed never-before-seen technological capabilities (the mass collection of data, the stockpiling of information from social media sites) to conduct warrantless wiretapping on an unprecedented scale. Eventually these practices were institutionalized with the Bush-era FISA amendments that, as Timothy Edgar sees it, transformed FISA “from a shield to protect our liberties into a sword for the protection of programs.” The government’s enormous gathering of information went largely unchallenged, continuing into the Obama administration up until this year’s NSA debacle.

It’s clear the American public has become increasingly wary about the effects

BRAZILIAN PRESIDENT DILMA ROUSSEFF RECENTLY CALLED THE NSA'S ACTIVITIES A

“BREACH OF INTERNATIONAL LAW”

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terrorist attacks allegedly stopped du to F.I.S.A. warrants

fied information.

Back in Taubman, Edgar laid out a three-pronged plan for ensuring that our system of checks and balances is reinvigorated. The first step is to increase the transparency of the intelligence system. Spying is inherently secretive, but subjecting information about FISA’s decision-making process to public review would increase accountability and reduce incentives for people like Snowden to leak classified in-

formation. Such measures could include the release of FISA opinions, which would give citizens access to the justifications for widespread data collection. A better-informed public is less likely to be surprised by government actions, and is more likely to channel its objections through democratic pathways to instigate reform, hopefully reducing the need for whistleblowers.

The second step would involve strengthening checks and balances, primarily by

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ARIADNE ELLSWORTH ‘17 IS A POTENTIAL INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS CONCENTRATOR.

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changing the system through which judges are appointed. Today, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court selects all FISA judges, which limits candidates’ political diversity.

The third step involves scrutinizing the type and scope of technology used to collect intelligence. No matter what intelligence spokespersons say, bulk data collection is not necessary to achieve the same results that the NSA currently attains, and analysis of large volumes of data is possible without storing it long-term. The use of cryptographic techniques, for example, would achieve the same ends without the violation of privacy incurred through the storage of data. U.S. intelligence agencies could analyze data by searching for key words and other specifics without revealing content or storing the datum unless it were flagged.

Moving toward cryptographic methods of analysis and eliminating data stockpiling would also lessen the need for security subcontractors, like Snowden, who perhaps pose the largest threat to intelligence security in their positions as for-profit handlers of valuable government information. Most importantly, lawyers and technologists must stop talking past each other, so that surveillance methods and policy can meet.

Until the public is informed to the fullest extent possible about the intelligence community’s procedures, the United States will face international and domestic criticism.

The U.S. intelligence complex has undergone cycles of abuse and reform before.

With that historical progression in mind, it seems clear that the post-9/11 intelligence era is coming to an end. This year has proven a fatal blow to U.S. intelligence organizations, first with domestic backlash and now international pressure and disdain, resulting in a crisis of confidence between the American people and the national security complex. The crisis, however, provides us with an unmistakable opportunity to analyze the role of espionage in the international system, and the motivations behind international actors who too often get away with unvarnished hypocrisy in condemning American intelligence practices. Just as it’s time to reform the system of checks and balances on domestic espionage, it is also time to accept that espionage might have a lawful place in our world. Global transparency and stability may depend on it. u

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A STRONGER BREW The Starbucks mermaid might just save Colombia’s coffee industry.

STORY BY MATTEO CAVELIER RICCARDI / ART BY EMILY REIF

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rouble is brewing in the Colombian coffee industry. Production collapsed in 2012, after blights and adverse weather killed a large percentage of the nation’s coffee plants, and a strong peso has made the exportation of coffee increasingly unprofitable. These conditions are disastrous in a nation with little domestic coffee consumption and a large domestic coffee industry. Meanwhile, global competition is growing. Innovative mass farming has made planting coffee increasingly easy in nations such as Vietnam and Brazil, allowing these industries to slash prices and reduce manual labor. Honduras, Indonesia and India all logged larger coffee crops than Colombia in 2012, leaving the once-dominant nation in a meager sixth place. In Manizales, Colombia’s coffee hub, and Bogotá, its capital, the prevailing attitude is that only a miracle can save the fleeting industry. The miracle might just be Starbucks, whose announcement that it will open shop in Colombia this year has been met with excitement from many Colombians.

As other coffee-growing countries improve their practices and quality, mismanagement and antiquated practices still characterize the industry’s business model in Colombia. Old, low-yield crops dominate the country’s coffee-growing regions, and the effort to engineer new seeds has lagged in comparison to developments in countries like Brazil. Perhaps more significantly, local efforts have failed to increase domestic consumption, even as Colombian-harvested coffee is among the best quality in the world. Starbucks is about to step in and do what others could not: get Colombians to drink their own coffee. This seemingly simple change would effectively shield Colombian farmers from the plummeting international price of coffee by establishing a stable domestic market.

Starbucks plans to work toward this goal by setting up shops across the country and replacing its current international collection with an exclusively Colombian product, making Colombia’s the coffee to beat. The company will also pump cash into the struggling coffee sector by paying growers above-average prices — a compromise they made with the National Federation of

Coffee Growers of Colombia (FNC) in exchange for lobbying assistance. Starbucks is unlikely to single-handedly turn this troubled industry around, but the company has been lauded as an ally in improving the brand appeal of Colombian coffee. Meanwhile, growers hope that Starbucks’ introduction will help revitalize an industry that faces numerous structural problems, many created by the growers themselves.

The FNC originated in 1927 with the aim of “strengthening and developing the coffee industry, while securing the wellbeing of its producers through a democratic and collaborative organization.” In its earlier years, it unified the hordes of small coffee producers scattered around Southeastern Colombia. The federation’s landmark achievements included not only regulation and policy efforts, but also a major branding initiative, giving the unique flavor and quality of Colombian coffee a name internationally. In 1960, the federation

created the marketing icon “Juan Valdez,” a paunchy persona who provided Colombian-produced coffee with a likeable face.

Valdez marked one of the industry’s last efforts to raise the price and consumption of coffee beans without seeking massive state subsidies and assistance.

The industry’s history since their lovable rebranding has been one of slow stagnation, owing more to an industry-wide aversion to innovation rather than actual malignant policies. An initiative to make coffee plants resistant to the roya (rust-colored) blight — a goal of the FNC up to the 1980s — fell by the wayside when the organization began to focus its efforts instead on increasing the Colombian government’s responsibility for coffee growers’ well-being.

Extensive lobbying by the FNC even pressured Colombia’s Ministry of Agriculture and Development to guarantee a set income for growers when sales fell short. Similarly, the FNC introduced measures that required

the state to buy a portion of the nation’s coffee at a price dictated by the federation itself. This provides a stable income for growers, but for the most part, forces the government to resell the product at a loss.

Such measures were originally invoked as an emergency response to reduce hardship among farmers, but the federation did not scale down its arrangement during better times. Industry losses were cushioned with government coffers, creating a false sense of sustainability that has further hampered innovation. Only when farm workers staged a nationwide protest in March and blocked major highways for 12 days did the reality of these problematic policies gain national attention. Pointing to record-low prices for coffee internationally, the protestors demanded even more government support for struggling agricultural industries. The administration of President Juan Manuel Santos subsequently pledged an additional $470 million in relief aid, pushing coffee subsidies up to 30 percent of the

LOCAL EFFORTS HAVE FAILED TO INCREASE DOMESTIC CONSUMPTION, EVEN AS COLOMBIAN COFFEE IS AMONG THE BEST QUALITY IN THE WORLD. STARBUCKS IS ABOUT TO ATTEMPT TO DO WHAT OTHERS COULD NOT: GET THE COLOMBIAN PEOPLE TO DRINK THEIR OWN COFFEE.

with close to no tradition of coffee drinking, the feel-good atmosphere pioneered by the Seattle-based chain, accompanied by some local flavor (like the expanded line of Hindustani blends in Starbucks’ Indian division), achieved startling success. Its proven ability to effortlessly raise a nation of coffee-drinkers stands in stark contrast with the historically chaotic efforts of the Colombian government and the FNC. As journalists and business leaders celebrate Starbucks’ promise to independently promote coffee consumption, they should look back at what went wrong in the FNC’s similar efforts. If the integrity of the FNC’s mission is not in question, it should at least face some accountability for its lack of strategic success despite ample state funding.

How much can coffee help Columbia?

It’s possible that reviving its coffee industry would help Colombia and growers wield a greater degree of soft power abroad. For the FNC and its partners, it would mean having a stronger ability to define global coffee trends, allowing it to replace the current burnt-beans coffee standard that is pejoratively referred to as “charbucks.” In a time when Colombia is trying to prove to the world that it’s a place of “solutions for the world’s needs,” the nation faces an indispensable opportunity to demonstrate that local industries make excellent partners to outside investors. A success story with Starbucks would be high-profile proof that Colombia’s ambitions match its capacities.

There is little debate over whether Starbucks could potentially turn around the failing business model of Colombian coffee growers. The current administration and the FNC both seem to recognize that nothing less than national pride is at stake.

While plagued by problems, the labor-intensive coffee industry is still a centerpiece of Colombian trade, one that has provided a livelihood for hundreds of thousands of families in historically impoverished areas.

Although traditional government-syndicate structures have failed to modernize coffee growing in Colombia, they do, at least, provide a viable alternative to the methods of nearby Ecuador and Peru — countries which sell significantly cheaper products, but often do so to the detriment of their farmers. With Starbucks entering the equation, Colombian coffee may finally get the jolt that it needs. u MATTEO CAVELIER RICCARDI ‘17 IS A POTENTIAL EAST ASIAN STUDIES CONCENTRATOR AND EDITOR-AT-LARGE AT BPR.

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product’s domestic price.

While the comparatively high cost of growing coffee in the country is a roadblock for the industry, a Colombian coffee renaissance will hinge on more than just reducing costs. Most of the terrain where coffee is grown in Colombia is hilly and uneven, meaning that the mass production techniques favored in nations like Brazil are impossible. Instead, coffee cherries have to be picked by hand, a laborious method that comes with a large price tag. But this procedure also means that only ripe cherries are picked, giving the coffee Colombia’s signature sweet, uniform blend. As a result, premium-grade Colombian coffee can cost 10 cents more per pound than mass-produced varieties grown in countries such as Vietnam. This distinction means that the target market for Colombian coffee is not in low-grade or powdered coffee, but the more lucrative value-added sector. The coffee’s niche includes everything from single-origin and heirloom blends to special espressos and other high-end beverages.

The cornerstone of this approach is marketing. Colombia must convince consumers that its premium, local coffee really does beat similar products from growers in Guatemala or Ethiopia. The FNC’s initial foray into this type of branding was Juan Valdez, which has had some success in the small domestic market, but suffers from insignificant international recognition compared to all-around premium purveyors such as Starbucks and high-end producers like the company Illy.

In short, Colombia needs to fill the niche with its own Starbucks to sell the country’s premium coffee. The FNC tried its hand at this model in 2003, utilizing the Juan Valdez brand to start a brick-and-mortar business. The initiative’s early domestic success was not reflected abroad, however, and the company’s U.S. and Spanish branches failed to justify the vast sums that were invested in them. The only international stores to survive the 2011 restructuring of the brand were in Ecuador and Chile.

The brand’s failure should not have come as a surprise — even a corporate mammoth like Starbucks is reliant on partnerships to stay viable in certain markets. For example, the Spanish company Grupo Vips manages Starbucks’ Iberian operations.

The FNC’s lone-wolf approach demonstrated endemic shortsightedness — both the fault of FNC bumbling and also a failure of Colombia’s diplomatic network to lend a hand. While the nation’s embassies and consulates usually will bend over backwards to promote Colombian brands, their inability to establish strong local partnerships for the Juan Valdez beverage business demonstrated a lack of focus and little communication between Colombia’s Foreign Ministry and the FNC. Some blame has also been placed on the rigid management structure at the FNC, where the last president has held his post for more than 40 years — a reflection of the organization’s larger inability to follow new trends, innovations and opportunities.

And yet the greatest change in perception needed is one from the Colombian people themselves. Starbucks’ Colombian venture has the potential to change the attitude toward coffee in a nation where 80 percent of the coffee is imported from lowend producers in Ecuador and Peru. The average Colombian also drinks 2.5 to 4.5 kg less than their compatriots do in the United States and Brazil. Starbucks has made similar miracles happen in other developing nations like China and India. In these nations

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MARRIAGES OF GENOCIDE Stories of intermarriage in post-genocide Rwanda.

STORY AND PHOTOGRAPHY BY EMILY KASSIE

Purudenci holds a picture of his wedding with Beatrice. Right: Beatrice, Purudenci, Sandrine, Didas.

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o a western audience, the idea of intermarriage between a perpetrator and a victim of genocide is unfathomable. This is especially true in the case of Rwanda, where approximately one million people were slaughtered in one of the worst genocides of the 20th century. But according to many Rwandans, marrying one’s attacker, or a relative of that attacker, is common. The only problem is that nobody seems to know any intermarried couples, including the organization tasked with reunifying a post-genocide Rwanda, the National Unity and Reconciliation Commission (NURC).

For 10 years, the NURC has lacked the resources to conduct a study to gather statistics on intermarriage. After researching in Rwanda, I discovered 20. Over the course of this summer, I was able to spend time with three such couples in the country’s Eastern Province. In many of these cases the victims were not marrying into just any perpetrator family; they were mar-

rying into the family that killed their own.

Many Rwandans, along with their government, claim that ethnic divisions are no longer present in the post-genocide era — no Hutu, no Tutsi, just the sole national identity of “Rwandaness.” However, strong ethnic identities persist, transformed after the genocide, as Hutu became an interchangeable term for perpetrator and Tutsi for victim. Because of this division, the vast majority of Hutus and Tutsis exclusively marry members of their own group. Although many Rwandans allude to the existence of intermarriage, claims of its commonality are generally unfounded. The executive secretary of the NURC, Jean-Baptiste Habyarimana, believes intermarriage “is a good sign… of individual healing and individual reconciliation.”

But he later admitted that the reason intermarriage is still uncommon is because “post-genocide trauma is still there.”

The rarity of intermarriages betrays a more underdeveloped state of reconcil-

iation and ethnic integration than Rwanda would like to admit — and the consequences may ultimately be dangerous for its citizenry. Intermarriage could breed a more stable society and promote the kind of cross-ethnic understanding that would prevent future conflict. For the intermarriages that do occur, the reasoning behind them varies widely. A marriage could be the product of economic reimbursement, psychological reaction to trauma, reconciliation efforts or even the pan-African shift from community-approved arranged marriages to individual choice and marriage for love.

The first case I discovered was a marriage between John and Marie, a genocide victim and the daughter of his attacker.

Marie witnessed the genocide when she was nine; her father murdered many of John’s family members, shot John in the head and beat in his legs. After surviving the attack, fleeing his village and outlasting the genocide, John eventually returned.

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He was encouraged by a local reverend to forgive his aggressors and follow the reconciliation programs implemented by NURC in his village. There he began attending the same church as Marie. When he proposed to her one day after a service, she accepted.

John had waited until his “heart was relieved” by reconciliation programs before he proposed to Marie. This might indicate that NURC’s efforts are working, and that the social cohesion they promote is becoming a foundation for intermarriage. “The genocide played a large part in our marriage,” John told me. “It inspired us to bring back the old tradition of coexisting peacefully… so the children we make today will be happy Rwandans in the future.”

Both of their families were outraged by the news. John’s family believed it was a betrayal to marry into the family that killed his own kin, that Marie could not be trusted.

The worries plaguing Marie’s family ranged from the anti-Tutsi genocide ideology of her mother, to her sister’s belief that John’s suffering made Marie — as a member of the family that caused his pain — unworthy of him. Many in her family suspected that John would torture or kill her to avenge the deaths of his own. Instead, John paid off the fines Marie’s father incurred from Gacaca, a system of community-based courts used to punish genocide perpetrators, for penalties he received for the looting and killing he committed during the genocide. John and Marie’s defiance of their parents’ wishes demonstrates that individual choice, and love, are becoming more widely accepted as legitimate reasons to marry. But having to decide where one’s loyalties lie can invite intense grief. “Sometimes I hate my family, because I love him,” Marie told me.

The marriage of the second couple I spent time with, Purudenci and Beatrice, offers another fascinating case. As childhood sweethearts before the genocide, Purudenci, a Hutu, and Beatrice, a Tutsi, embodied the parable of star-crossed lovers.

Beatrice hid in a sympathetic Hutu’s home while Purudenci’s family participated in the killings. His brothers and nephews found Beatrice in her hiding place and dragged her outside, intending to beat her to death.

Purudenci was just able to stop them and successfully hid Beatrice for the remainder of the genocide. His relatives murdered the rest of Beatrice’s family.

The couple married shortly after the genocide ended. Purudenci and Beatrice, like John and Marie, also faced a stigma from both of their families and respective

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Above, a traditional wedding ceremony.

Middle, John and Marie next to the tree where he proposed. Below, a sun sets in Bugesera, Rwanda.

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communities. When I asked about his role, Purudenci’s brother denied and lied about the genocide, claiming that Beatrice’s family and his own always had an amiable relationship. Purudenci took me aside and explained afterwards in private. His brother “might be afraid or scared,” Purudenci said, “because he’s scared if he tells the truth he’ll be jailed. Because his son [was] the one who went to kill Beatrice.”

The Rwandan government tried to address this fear and lack of open discourse back in 2003, when it established the NURC to create reconciliation programs, dialogue and community re-integration. In 2010, the organization published a report, “The Reconciliation Barometer,” to chart the progress of reconciliation in Rwanda.

Yet the report only briefly mentions the approval of intermarriage in Rwanda as an indicator of progress. When it does discuss the issue, the Barometer claims that

93.4 percent of females and 94.6 percent of males support marrying or having a close relative marry someone from another ethnic group, including 88 percent of survivor respondents. But the NURC has not examined the actual occurrence or frequency of intermarriage itself. Although the commission is using intermarriage as a marker of reconciliation, Marie, John, Purudenci and Beatrice show that those promising response rates fail to reflect the complexity of post-genocide life.

Didas and Sandrine are the couple whose story most conflicts with the findings of the NURC. Didas is of mixed ethnicity — his father was Hutu and his mother was Tutsi — but his parents never spoke to him about their ethnic origins. During the genocide, Didas decided to identify as Hutu and was forced to kill Tutsis. Upon his return home, and after serving his sixyear sentence as a convicted genocide per-

petrator, Didas found himself ostracized.

He didn’t kill enough to be accepted by the perpetrators, but because he killed, the victim community would not accept him. At the age of 36, he married Sandrine, a Tutsi girl 20 years his junior. Sandrine lived in Burundi while her father was killed fighting for the Rwandan Patriotic Front, and she returned to Rwanda after the genocide.

Didas did not kill anyone in Sandrine’s family, but their relationship remained stigmatized.

The issues that surround the couple are particularly interesting; they cope with both the stigma of marrying a convicted perpetrator and the problems of having mixed heritage. When we spoke, it became clear that their marriage dynamic was drastically different from the other couples I had met. Didas speaks for both of them, and they rarely touch or make eye contact.

The explanation for their marriage is unclear.

Rwandan psychologist Françoise Murekatete suggests that perpetrator-victim marriages can sometimes result from a kind of Stockholm syndrome, in which a victim develops an attachment to the attacker. She explained one case of a woman who was repeatedly raped by a Hutu man while he was hiding her during the genocide. Now she refuses to leave him. But Murekatete added that “for other cases, there’s a love that develops with forgiveness that can be positive.”

We need more extensive research in order to gain a holistic understanding of intermarriage in Rwanda. Yet it’s clear that there is still tension between Rwandans that has not dissipated since the genocide.

Intermarriage could cut at this tension, while mitigating the possibility of future genocides through greater inter-ethnic understanding. The existence of these mixed couples could break down the genocide’s bloodstained barriers and point to the transformation of identity in modern Rwanda. The rarity of these couples points to the failures of the government reconciliation model. But in overcoming existing divisions, these couples could be beginning to forge a path toward open dialogue for post-genocide Rwandans, and perhaps even show how they might surmount the obstacles they face in achieving a cohesive society. The couples’ obstacles, ultimately, echo Rwanda’s. u EMILY KASSIE ‘14 IS A POLITICS, FILM AND JOURNALISM CONCENTRATOR AND MEDIA DIRECTOR AT BPR.

ARIANNA HUFFINGTON Arianna Huffington is the president and editor-in-chief of The Huffington Post Media Group. The Huffington Post is the most visited political website on the web, and last year became the first digital news publication to win the Pulitzer Prize. A frequent commentator on American politics, Huffington has been named one of the world’s most influential people by Time, Forbes and The Guardian.

Will President Obama’s first term be viewed as a failure? Did it diminish your view of him as a leader?

His first term certainly had its disappointments. In his first four years, President Obama deported as many undocumented workers as President Bush did in two terms — one of several ways

INTERVIEW BY BEN WOFFORD Obama’s administration has continued and even doubled down on some Bush policies. The only major thing Obama did regarding access to guns in his first term was to actually increase it, signing a bill to allow people to bring loaded firearms into national parks and on Amtrak trains. President Obama still has the opportunity to be a transformational president, but I think only if he spends the rest of his second term finally unleashing the audacity that propelled his presidency in the beginning.

There’s heightening speculation of a presidential primary run

by Sen. Elizabeth Warren. Do you see 2016 as a fight for the soul of the Democratic Party?

It’s way too early for me to engage in 2016 speculation. I love what David McCullough, Truman’s biographer, said: “Every presidential election is a renewal. Like spring, it brings up all the juices. The people are so tired of contrivance and fabrication and hokum. They really want to be stirred in their spirit.”

Would you be concerned if the left’s search for a “true liberal” began to mimic the right’s emphasis on “authentic” conservatism?

Whether a candidate is “true” or “pure” in an ideological sense, to me is far less meaningful than his or her willingness to go beyond the outmoded dichotomy of left and right, if it’s in order to bring about the solutions our country desperately needs.

What is Hillary Clinton’s greatest weakness?

She’s that rare (and presumed) candidate whose distinguishing qualities — her name recognition, her leadership experience, her prominence in the Democratic Party — might prove to be strengths or weaknesses. It depends on where the country is in 2016 and who’s running against her.

You’re talking to one of the most under-slept campuses in America. With so many issues competing for your attention and endorsement, what motivated you to become an advocate for sleep?

I started on the path to sleep evangelism in 2007. I’d just returned home after a week of taking my daughter on a tour of colleges, and the rule was no BlackBerry during the day. So I stayed up very late to catch up on work. Next thing I knew, I was lying on the floor, bloodied. I had passed out from exhaustion and banged my head on the way down. The result was a broken cheekbone and five stitches under my eyebrow. I think when it comes to wakeup calls, few are as effective as spilling your own blood.

So I’ll tell you the same thing I told the graduates of Smith College at their commencement earlier this year. There will be plenty of signposts along your path directing you to make money and climb up the ladder, but there will be almost no signposts reminding you to stay connected to the essence of who you are, to take care of yourself along the way, to reach out to others, to pause to wonder. None of these things are possible if we deprive ourselves of sleep.

INTERVIEWS BROWN POLITICAL REVIEW

Le Huffington Post is going into its third year in France. What is it about HuffPo’s model that you think allows it to succeed internationally?

Our business model can be implemented anywhere in the world, because The Huffington Post is essentially an online conversation made up of voices and ideas, which exist in every country on earth. By 2020, nearly three billion people will be added to the Internet’s community, and by expanding internationally, we want to open up the conversation on a global scale. HuffPost now has editions in Canada, the UK, France, Spain, Italy, Japan, and Germany, with Korea, Brazil and India coming next. So far, our international editions have worked together on stories with worldwide resonance, including youth unemployment, the selection of Pope Francis and gay rights in different countries.

What do you make of new pay models adopted by online-only sites like Talking Points Memo or Andrew Sullivan’s The Dish — not quite a paywall, but more of a club membership for premium content? Where do you see that going?

I’m very interested in the ways news organizations and web sites are seeking new, creative and sustainable ways to do their work.

And I see the willingness to try out new business models as another indicator that we’re living in a golden age of journalism for news consumers. There’s no shortage of great journalism being done, and there’s no shortage of people hungering for it. And there are many different business models trying to connect the former with the latter. Our business model is free and advertising-supported, but with multiple advertising models. That includes native advertising and sponsorships.

Would that be something conducive to The Huffington Post?

Should we get ready for HuffPost Premium, perhaps?

No. From the beginning, part of the ethos of HuffPost was that it would always be free. Providing a free and open space for people to engage and interact with each other in a civil way, that’s central to our mission.

You’re a frequent commentator on Washington, but HuffPost also published an exclusive with Edward Snowden. Which does the HuffPost model need to lean toward — reading the Washington tea leaves or renegade reporting?

It’s not an either/or proposition for us. HuffPost’s goal has always been to embrace the hybrid future of journalism, combining the best practices of traditional journalism like fairness, accuracy, storytelling and deep investigations with the best tools available to the digital world — speed, transparency and above all, engagement.

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JIM YONG KIM Dr. Jim Yong Kim ’82 is the 12th president of the World Bank, a position he has held since 2012. Previously, he was the President of Dartmouth College from 2009-2012 and a senior advisor at the World Health Organization from 2004-2006, where he directed international HIV/AIDS initiatives. Kim is also the founder of Partners in Health, a program that prepares communities in developing nations to deliver low cost, basic healthcare.

BROWN POLITICAL REVIEW INTERVIEWS

INTERVIEW BY SAMUEL RUBINSTEIN

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You were born in Seoul, but raised in Iowa. Has your background been an asset to your career?

When I go to various countries and meet with leaders, they see me as both American and Korean. I think there is a very strong sense among the people who work with us at the World Bank Group that I am the first person to be President who was born in a developing country. I think it is even more important, though, that I’ve spent most of my adult life working in developing countries on development.

You first studied at the University of Iowa and then transferred to Brown. What was that change like for you?

The difference between the University of Iowa and Brown couldn’t have been more stark. I had always been interested in politics, how the world works, and what is happening in the rest of the world, and there frankly weren’t that many people at the University of Iowa who shared those interests. When I got to Brown I just felt like, wow! I’m in my real peer group for the first time in my life. All these people shared my interest in the rest of the world, in social justice, race, ethnicity, gender. It was an incredible revelation for me to walk onto the campus at Brown.

It also was the first time that I had spent any time at all with other Asian-Americans. There were very few Asian-Americans in all of Iowa. I became part of what was called the Asian-American Student Association, had a job at the Third World Center, and was chair of the Third World Caucus. It was a time of tremendous discovery for me, and there is no question that the discussions I had late into the evening at the TWC with African-American, Latino, Asian-American and white students — about what it means to have a just society, what’s the nature of our responsibility to each other and to poor people — deeply influenced what I ended up doing for the rest of my life.

It sounds like the TWC really shaped you while you were at Brown. Did it influence your work later on?

Let me add to that. In Iowa, if my family and I went out to the mall, we would be stared at. People would say to us, “Oh my goodness, you speak English so well.” Little kids would come and make fake karate moves in front of us; they would come up to us and say “yang ching ching chong.” That happened to us all the time. It wasn’t about the boot of racism on your neck, but it was humiliating. I never forgot that I was Asian in a country where we were not the majority.

Being in [the TWC], for the first time I was with people who all understood what it meant to be a minority. More than anything, it helped me move beyond that experience. If you nurse the wounds of humiliation all your life, you are not going to be able to get done what you need to get done. You need to be able

to face it, talk about it, deal with it and then turn around and say — my God, I’m at Brown University! Rather than spending my life nursing the wounds of humiliation, I’ve got to do something, because now, I have such a great opportunity. And it’s not about what anyone owes me — it’s what I owe the world. Brown is where I was able to make that transition.

What has been the most surprising, challenging and rewarding thing about working at the World Bank?

The most surprising thing is just how passionate these folks are at the World Bank about fighting poverty. Our organization has among the most Ph.D.s as any in the world, so we have an incredibly smart, distinguished group of people. And they are here because they share this passion for fighting poverty. That’s been the greatest part of this experience, to find so many people who want to do something about poverty in the world.

The most challenging thing is that in order for us to be as effective as we can be in fighting poverty, we have to make changes. Any bureaucracy of this size is going to resist change. The greatest challenge is taking us through this process of change and actually making it work in a way that will make us more fit for purpose, and make us an organization that is focused on working toward ending poverty and boosting shared prosperity — which is how we refer to economic growth that includes the poorest.

The most rewarding thing is that I just went to the Sahel and visited with Secretary-General of the United Nations [Ban-Ki Moon], and this is our second major visit. It is incredibly rewarding to bring the United Nations and the World Bank together in a way that they have never been before, and even more rewarding to put $1.5 billion on the table for regional projects, in addition to the $1.5 billion that we are already putting in. So over the next two to three years, we are going to put $3 billion into the Sahel to try to help end poverty. How much more rewarding can it get than that?

Where will that money be invested?

In the Sahel, the big issue is energy. We need to find a way to provide clean energy for growth. Burkina Faso has had an incredible track record over the last 15-20 years, but their energy cost is $0.75 per kilowatt hour, which is probably seven times what you are paying in Providence. It’s the highest cost of energy in the world. We need to bring the cost of energy down by bringing more of it to Africa. Another issue is irrigation; it’s the southern part of the Sahara desert, so the only way you will be able to grow food is by having irrigation. We are investing a lot of money in trying to increase the amount of irrigated land, and we are going to more than double it over the next two to three

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importance of any other inputs to growth and development, we are just trying to be really clear and focused on the goals we set for the whole institution.

Some have said that the World Bank should be reformed to make it less U.S.-centric. Do you believe that reforms are needed?

I was part of the first contested election for the presidency of the World Bank ever. I think that every subsequent election is going to get tougher and more contested. We have a board of 25 people representing countries from all over the world. The developed countries still have a majority of the voting shares, but the developing countries’ shares have grown.

We continue to have discussions among board members about relative voice in this organization. It certainly feels to me like I am an international civil servant, serving many countries at the same time. I am no longer an American citizen in the strictest sense of the term. I work for a global organization, and I am an international civil servant. My job is to balance the interests of our member countries.

You were seen by some as an unconventional choice to lead the World Bank due to your background in global health, rather than financial management. How have you been able to apply your global health knowledge?

For me, I think the most important part of my background is similar to so many people here at the World Bank. I have spent most of my adult life trying to solve problems in developing countries. What President Obama said was that it is time for development specialists to lead the world’s most important development institution. That has really helped a lot. The fact is that I have been on the ground, and I am very familiar around issues of health education and social protection, but less so around macroeconomics and road-building. Every president of the World Bank came in here with knowledge of certain areas of the Bank’s activities and not of others.

Your nomination to run the World Bank ended your time at Dartmouth. What do you feel are some key challenges and opportunities for universities in the years ahead?

I think that the Brown community is really fortunate to have Christina Paxson as president. Chris is very well known here inside the World Bank Group. She is a highly respected development economist. I think the way development economists see the world is great for universities.

It’s a really tough model to perpetuate. Every year, the president of an Ivy League institution faces a huge fundraising challenge. These institutions are maintained to the extent that the alumni contribute to their growth and development. My message to all Brown alums is to thank your lucky stars that you had an opportunity to go to such a great institution. And to support President Paxson and Brown, because the only way to compete in the global world of higher education is to constantly improve and give back. You have to do better in research, teaching and in the impact you have in the world. Everyone that I see in China, Singapore, Korea and Europe has their sights set on being better than the Ivies. It really is up to us to make sure that Brown has another great 250 years.

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years, from 400,000 hectares to over a million.

Your centerpiece initiative has been reorganizing the bank around 14 “global practices” to reduce fragmentation. How is that progressing?

Developing countries can get capital from many different sources: they can borrow from governments like China, or from banks, or float bonds, and from lots of different places. So why would they work with the World Bank? It’s almost always because we bring great knowledge to the table. We have thousands of Ph.D. holders who have not only done academic work, but have experience in making things actually work in developing countries.

People come to us and say, “We want to improve the way we build our cities, and we want to work with you. The money is good, but what we really want is for you to structure the project, and bring the best models from all over the world to our country, so we can take advantage of your global knowledge.” But soon we were looking more like six individual regional banks, as opposed to one World Bank that shared knowledge across all the regions.

So the focus of the change is really about ensuring that knowledge flows across the organization. For example, if you had a health project in Bangladesh, we were initially able to provide expertise from within Bangladesh, and maybe from India, but we weren’t easily able to provide you with experience from Turkey, Mexico, Brazil and everywhere else in the world, because all the people working on health were not organized into a single global practice. So that’s what we’ve tried to achieve and change.

Knowledge flow, and linking knowledge to capital is our most important advantage.

The World Bank is working toward two goals: reducing the population that earns less than $1.25 per day to 3 percent of the global population, and increasing the income of the bottom 40 percent of every nation. But do goals that focus on income actually improve quality of life?

It’s a critical question. We wanted something that would be simple, easy to measure, and would be linked to many other objectives. We could have added any number of other goals, and there was tremendous pressure inside the house for us to add more.

But my very strong view was that unless we kept it to two goals, it would start to sound like an unfocused laundry list. $1.25 per day seems really low, but there’s still more than a billion people in the world living on that amount.

With the second number, we wanted to do two things. We wanted to embrace the notion that in order for us to reduce poverty, economies would have to grow. But what we wanted to say was that even though growth is really important, you must ensure that the bottom 40 percent participate in growth. There is a pretty straightforward political justification for following that rule, and it is something that’s not lost on any world leader today — that if you have a growing GDP, but you are not including young people, or women or any other marginalized group, you will have problems. If there is anything we learned from the Arab Spring, it is that GDP growth without inclusion leads to fundamental instability within your society. I think with these two goals, we covered a lot of territory. We are not diminishing the

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JACK MARKELL Jack Markell ’82 is serving his second term as Governor of Delaware. A former chair of the Democratic Governors Association, Markell concentrated in economics and development studies as an undergraduate at Brown.

BROWN POLITICAL REVIEW INTERVIEWS

INTERVIEW BY HENRY KNIGHT

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Given the public’s disenchantment with national politics, is it now up to states to spearhead action?

Yes, I would say that’s true across virtually every subject area you can think of, with the exception of national defense, because the states don’t really have a role beyond the National Guard.

Whether it’s education, public safety or pretty much every issue given the level of gridlock and dysfunction in Washington, I think it is incumbent upon states and local governments to figure out how we can move the ball.

Do you see that trend specifically in your daily work as Governor?

I think we can put the citizen at the center of everything we do if we focus on the things that will make a difference in their lives.

As governors, the major issues we’re focusing on are jobs, schools and being good stewards of the taxpayer’s money. So many of the other issues we focus on are intertwined with jobs. When we’re asking how to put more people to work in our communities, in large part our efforts are guided by what we hear from businesses. When deciding where to locate, people care a lot about the quality of the schools and the quality of the workforce. We live in a world where there are 3 billion people looking for jobs, but only 1.2 billion jobs available. So quality of life issues are important because we’re clearly in this global war for jobs, which means we’re in a war for talent — because jobs will go where the talent is. Talented people want to work in places where they want to live. So all of these things involving quality of life, public safety and the like — all of these seem integral. If states focus on these issues, and a predictable regulatory environment, then we’re going to win more than we lose.

What are some initiatives you’ve led on those fronts? For instance, how have you encouraged business development and job creation?

We talk to businesses. The question I always ask is, “What can we do to facilitate your success?” We’re incredibly focused on continuing to improve our schools. We’re focused on regulatory reform. We completed a yearlong effort where we changed or got rid of more than 130 regulations across state government. You have to focus on those issues, the issues that will make a difference not only next week and next month, but also years from now. We’re opening 20 world language immersion schools in the state of Delaware. This year we have 850 kindergarteners and first graders who are learning science, social studies and math in either Chinese or Spanish. They spend half their school day learning in a different language. By the time they’re in the fourth grade, they’ll be proficient. By the time they’re in ninth grade, they’ll be taking the AP test.

On the subject of education reform, Delaware recently won a Phase 1 “Race to the Top” federal education grant. How does this fit into your strategy for improving education in your state?

It starts with early childhood education. We’ve not just thrown money at the problem, but we’ve really invested in quality. First, we’re seeing a significant increase in the number of kids who are enrolled in quality preschools, as opposed to just any early childhood education center. Second, as for the K–12 system, we’re making sure that wherever possible, teachers and administrators have access to good data about student achievement, which allows them to be more thoughtful and figure out how to work with different kids. We’re elevating the teaching profession by raising the bar for what it takes to get into a teacher preparation institution. Additionally, each of our teachers spends 90 minutes a week with five of their peers, drilling into what the data is telling them about student performance. We’ve also focused in a big way on college access. We just announced a partnership with the College Board to focus on particularly high-performing but low-income kids. These are kids who could absolutely be successful in college, but because they’re low income, they often don’t apply. We’re making sure that they know what the process is all about.

You also eliminated the Delaware Student Testing Program, a state assessment similar to Rhode Island’s controversial New England Common Assessment Program (NECAP) test. Why? When we got rid of that one test, we replaced it with one that we think is a better assessment. There’s nothing wrong with measures of student achievement, which help inform how teachers are doing, particularly if you focus on what sort of growth students are making. But there has to be enough flexibility so that the relationship between a principal and a teacher is more than just a set of numbers. Finding that balance is really challenging.

How did you balance Delaware’s budget and emerge from the $800 million deficit you inherited?

Painfully. Before we did anything, we established a few key principles. There was going to be shared sacrifice so that no one group would have to bear all of the burden. We wanted to protect the most vulnerable in our society. We wanted to continue to invest in things like education and economic development.

We really tried to find solutions within those principles and it was very, very painful. But we did it. The one thing we know is that over the long term, we’re not going to be able to tax and cut our way to a prosperous world. The only way to emerge from a deficit is to grow our way out of it.

How do you think your background in development studies and economics from Brown has prepared you to govern?

The most important thing you can get out of any college is the ability to ask good questions and to be thoughtful about approaching problems. I see myself more as a problem solver than as a politician. I think I learned a lot of that at Brown. I can’t remember a time when any university had four governors currently in office. It’s not a coincidence.

MOHAMMAD FADEL Mohammad Fadel is an Associate Professor of law at the University of Toronto and has published numerous articles about Islamic legal history and the relationship between Islam and liberalism. He practiced corporate finance and securities law with the firm Sullivan & Cromwell LLP. Fadel, who is Egyptian American, spoke with BPR about the ongoing events in Egypt.

INTERVIEW BY ANNIKA LICHTENBAUM How should the interim government deal with the Muslim Brotherhood going forward?

The dynamics of [any] revolution are such that you can’t kiss and make up afterwards. It’s quite a serious thing. This summer’s demonstrations reduced the options available to the country instead of expanding them. If the interim government allows the Muslim Brotherhood to re-emerge in the political process, then they risk being the subject of revenge in the future. It was very hard to come to a compromise on both sides, because if the Muslim Brotherhood just rolled everything up and went home, that would be an admission that it was legitimate to exclude them.

On the other hand, if the other side granted them any substantial concessions, that would have meant that the June 30 [demonstrations were] not legitimate. So I think that was the dilemma.

We’ve heard that Egypt is going to hold elections in the spring.

Do you think that will happen? And if so, will they be able to produce meaningful results?

I don’t doubt that they [the interim government] actually will have these elections. But what are the chances that these elections are going to be representative in any meaningful way? Very little, because they’re showing contempt for organized politics.

The earliest drafts of the new parliamentary elections law will have candidates run as individuals, not as members of parties.

And so the parliament is extremely weak, because if you can’t have cohesive parties involved, you can’t have meaningful coalitions develop that can challenge entrenched interests. What’s the point of it? This is a victory for the state.

What do you think will be the state of Egypt’s relationship with the United States going forward?

I think this goes again to the justifications of the coup. One of the reasons why I call it a coup, or not a legitimate or good revolution, is the rationality of much of its discourse. A lot of it was based on extremely xenophobic rhetoric, much of it obviously absurd. When you have many in the opposition calling Morsi a U.S. Zionist agent, when you have a justice of the Supreme Court accusing Obama of being part of the international Muslim Brotherhood, you know that things have gone off the edge of normalcy and rationality. It’s as though the Egyptian opposition has been taken over by the Tea Party.

This is going to create a problem, because the United States is a very important backer of Egypt. If anti-Americanism is such a central plank of the rhetoric of this new regime, why are they upset that they’re not getting the support they think Egypt needs and deserves from the United States? Egyptians have to understand that Egypt really needs the United States, not the other way around. And the sooner they’re disabused of this notion that they are central to the stability and functioning of the world, they might actually begin to focus on Egypt’s real problems, instead of demanding things that their position in the world doesn’t merit.

INTERVIEWS BROWN POLITICAL REVIEW

Your bio on Twitter claims you have “reluctantly concluded that the people don’t want a regime.” What exactly do you mean by that?

During the 2011 revolution, one of the chants was, “Ash-shab yureed isqat al-nizam,” or “the people wish to depose the regime.”

After [President Hosni] Mubarak resigned, I put on my Twitter feed that the new slogan was, “The people want to build the regime.” Mubarak survived by essentially destroying all institutions of public life and subverting them, effectively giving people free reign to do whatever they wished without any sense of legal accountability. So it was my belief that Egyptians needed to rebuild everything from the ground up, to restore a sense of institutional integrity to the state.

But what I saw instead, after Morsi became president, was essentially results-oriented politics. They really weren’t thinking about the kind of process that needs to be in place to achieve those results. So when Morsi failed to reform, he became illegitimate, a traitor.

I thought those questions were really second-order problems. There were lots of things that needed to be achieved in terms of institution-building and procedures before you could begin to see substantive improvements. But instead of trying to change things to reform the political process, Egyptians insisted on constantly going out into the streets, challenging whatever new institutions were coming up and depriving the only elected official in government of any legitimacy. So I decided reluctantly that people don’t want a new regime. They just want things.

There’s a difference. And ultimately, that led to [the demonstrations on] June 30. Because there was no way that any transitional government in Egypt could have delivered the things that Egyptians wanted.

Then where would you place most of the blame?

Part of the problem is that Morsi overpromised and under-delivered. But that’s usually what happens in a democracy: politicians overpromise and under-deliver; we punish them by voting them out of office. We don’t punish them by asking the military to throw them in jail. So the problem was that Egyptian political culture didn’t accept the idea that substantive results could only be obtained over a prolonged period of time.

So was it a revolution or a coup?

It’s a revolution in a legal sense, in that what happened was outside of the law. Whether it’s a good revolution or a bad revolution — that’s a different question. I think here, it was a bad revolution. It was a revolution that took Egypt backwards. It made the prospect of genuine, accountable government under the rules of democracy less likely than it was before. This is the real tragedy.

I find it very unlikely that the new government is going to be able to solve any of the problems that exist in the country. The problems were extremely deep and intractable to begin with. So how is restoring an authoritarian police state, where opposition is squelched, going to help anything? It’s going to make it worse.

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GREGORY MANKIW ROBERT CASEY Robert Casey is the senior Democratic U.S. Senator from Pennsylvania. He was previously the Treasurer of Pennsylvania.

BROWN POLITICAL REVIEW INTERVIEWS

INTERVIEW BY BEN WOFFORD

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President Obama and the Affordable Care Act (ACA) are in political hot water. Would you place responsibility for the problematic Obamacare rollout on the President’s communication, or is it a legislative failure — something Congress should have fixed?

I think most members of Congress have to be frustrated and even angry about how it has transpired over the last couple of weeks. We’ll know soon whether the website problem is resolved or not. That’s going to be a very important moment for the ACA. My sense is that you’re in one of two caucuses. There’s the “we’ve got to fix these problems and implement the ACA appropriately” caucus. The other caucus is the “root for failure” caucus. I think a lot of Republicans have to ask themselves: Are they just going to root for failure of the ACA? Or are they going to work with us to make sure the problem is — if not solved, then on the path to being resolved?

Do you think the president could be doing a better job as “Messenger-in-Chief ”?

If you went through the record, the president’s probably done more health care events than any president. I think if there were one strategic problem, it’s that we probably let Republican charges go without rebut — claims that are misleading or aren’t true. The Republican strategy has been pretty simple: they want to destroy the act. We probably underestimated their determination. I think that’s a larger strategic failure.

You supported the EPA’s rules to regulate coal in a state where coal is popular. What advice would you give to anyone making a similar decision?

This is a difficult issue. I represent a state where roughly half of our electricity base is dependent upon coal. We’ve got to take steps to do everything we can to have a very diverse set of energy options. And we have to continue to invest in clean coal technology and the research that undergirds that. When the EPA regulations are promulgated, we evaluate those on a case-by-case basis in terms of the impact on Pennsylvania. As much as there’s conflict and division on some of these issues, there’s a lot more consensus than some people realize.

You initially supported military intervention in Syria this past summer. Did the outcome teach you anything for the next time the U.S. is in a similar crisis?

It’s always difficult to analogize from one national security issue to another. If we can get the result we all hope for — the destruction of the chemical weapons — that’s a significant achievement.

We still have a long way to go when it comes to establishing a U.S. policy toward Syria that is clear, that makes sense in terms of our own national security interests and the horror of more than 100,000 people being slaughtered. People believe that once we get a good result on chemical weapons, that’s the end of our debates about this. I think people are going to be mistaken.

Gregory Mankiw is chair of Harvard’s Department of Economics. Previously he chaired the Council of Economic Advisers under President Bush and advised Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign.

INTERVIEW BY OMAR BEN HALIM Americans tend to think highly of entrepreneurs, but less of financiers whose income derives from predicting the market. Is there a mismatch between the value each brings to society and the compensation they receive?

The issue is to what extent someone’s compensation is not commensurate with their economic contribution. And the answer can be yes or no, for either a salaried employee or a person whose wealth is based on ownership of a business. So you have to look more at the details of the situation. I don’t think the key distinction is necessarily in the specific form of compensation.

Do you see any problem with the current income distribution in the U.S. compared to historic levels?

Inequality is very high when compared historically, particularly high compared to the 1970s, which was the low point in inequality. There is a large literature on what the main causes are. The main explanation I’ve seen is in a book by two of my Harvard colleagues, Claudia Golden and Larry Katz, called The Race Between Education and Technology. They point to the slowing of growth in educational attainment as key. So if we want to think about inequality, then what’s going on with the educational system is the most important thing.

Do you believe that the classic American Dream is still perceived as a realistic, attainable goal for most working-class Americans?

I’m not sure exactly how to quantify that. I think there’s still a fair amount of income mobility, though it’s a little less than a generation ago. But that’s not shocking to me given that when the economic ladder becomes longer and the rungs become further apart, it’s harder for people to climb up. But I think there is still a fair amount of income mobility. If you look at the list of the richest people in the country, or read a book like The Millionaire Next Door, you realize there are lots of people who end up successful who didn’t start off from wealthy families. So yes, I think there is a fair amount of income mobility, but it’s really not perfect from generation to generation.

What is the intellectual standing of austerity at the moment?

After the Reinhart-Rogoff incident, what would you say to those such as Paul Krugman who use it as a pro-Keynesian, antiausterity counterpoint?

What we need is a long-run plan, and I don’t think short-term austerity is necessary in the United States. We need a plan that moves us toward a sustainable budget, one that will be gradually phased in. Some countries don’t have the luxury of waiting, because it’s hard for them to establish credibility without doing something in the short-run. But the United States is not in that camp. If we did something credible like slowly raising the retirement age or phasing in a better tax system, one with a broader base and lower rates, that would move us toward fiscal balance in the long run without having big, adverse short run effects.

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