BPR Fall 2023 Issue 2

FALL 2023 ISSUE 02

SPECIAL FEATURE SHADOWS

Editors’ Note

Writing about shadows, poet Antonio Porchia observed that while “some hide, others reveal.” How can we determine the difference? And how are we to understand shadows that both expose and obscure? These important questions, among many others, are addressed by the authors in this special feature.

As David Pinto notes, some shadows loom large. Over 1,500 years after its fall, the Roman Empire continues to influence discussions of foreign policy. Pinto joins the conversation in “Remember Rome?” He contends that if the United States aims to maintain its hegemony, it should acquaint itself with the failures of ancient Rome and seek to avoid making the same mistakes.

While videos about the Roman Empire have accumulated billions of views on social media, Constitution free-zones (CFZs) receive little coverage. But as Neve DiazCarr explains in “Blank Check(point),” the lack of attention paid to CFZs is not evidence of their lack of importance. On the contrary, Diaz-Carr compellingly argues that the ability of Customs and Border Protection officers to circumvent traditional constitutional protections threatens the rule of the law in the

CFZs are far from the only issue casting a shadow over the ideals of American liberal democracy and equal citizenship.

In “A Smoking Gun,” Jodi Robinson explains that fatal fires in Black communities are often characterized as accidents, with individual tenants blamed for using unsafe

heating options. This discourse hides systemic neglect—in Black neighborhoods, fire safety codes are more likely to lack enforcement, and heating complaints often go unaddressed. While we can not and should not erase the shadows of historical fire deaths, Robinson importantly points out that regulations can help prevent future ones.

Ashton Higgins also considers questions of repair, reform, and justice. In “Clouds of Colonialism,” he tells us about the failed Australian referendum to acknowledge Indigenous Australians’ power and give them a voice in Parliament. Drawing lessons from Wellington’s relationship with the Maori people, Higgins makes the case for comprehensive Indigenous history classes in Australian schools.

At moments when reform is infeasible, it may not be possible to escape from the shadows. Since Putin’s rise to power in Russia, the state has violently suppressed LGBTQ+ individuals, making it unsafe for people to come out publicly. Even still, queer communities have found ways to thrive underground. Daphne Dluzniewski’s “Love in the Time of Putin” tells the story of how underground events have enabled “individuals to shine even in the shadows.” When individuals cannot exit the shadows, they can exercise their agency to change the way in which they move through them.

It is often our own shadows that are the most difficult to dissect. They follow us everywhere, easily overlooked as they blend into the background. As you read this issue, it is thus our hope that you will reflect not only on the shadows addressed by our authors, but also on the shadows—large and small, old and new—that trail behind you, hidden in plain sight.

— Alex and Mathilda

EXECUTIVE BOARD

EDITORS IN CHIEF

Alexandra Mork

Mathilda Silbiger

CHIEFS OF STAFF

Cole Powell

William Lake

CHIEF OPERATING OFFICERS

Andrew Berzolla

Ayla Kim

MANAGING EDITORS

Alexander Lee

Bianca Rosen

Henry Ding

Joseph Safer-Bakal

CHIEF COPY EDITORS

Isabel Greider

Jonathan Zhang

INTERVIEWS DIRECTORS

James Hardy

Samuel Trachtenberg

DATA DIRECTORS

Asher Labovich

Javier Niño-Sears

CREATIVE DIRECTOR

Christine Wang

MULTIMEDIA DIRECTOR

Elijah Dahunsi

WEB DIRECTOR

Kevin Kim

DIVERSITY OFFICER

Jordan Lac

BOARD OF ADVISORS

Alexander Samaha

Alexandros Diplas

Allison Meakem

Hannah Severyns

Isabel Tejera

Tiffany Pai

Zander Blitzer

INTERVIEWS BOARD

INTERVIEWS DIRECTORS

James Hardy

Samuel Trachtenberg

DEPUTY INTERVIEWS

DIRECTORS

Alexandra Lehman

Alexandra Vitkin

John Fullerton

Mira Mehta

Yuliya Velhan

INTERVIEWS ASSOCIATES

Alexander Delaney

Anik Willig

Anushka Srivastava

Ariella Reynolds

Aubrie Miller

Avital Strauss

Benjamin Greenberg

Benjamin Ringel

Charlie Adams

Cindy Li

Connor Yew

Declan Allio

Elijah Dahunsi

Ellia Sweeney

Emma Blankstein

Emma Stroupe

Hayden Deffarges

Hayley Joyce

Henry Robbins

Hiram Valladares Castro-Lopez

Jason Hwang

John Kelley

Karina Gostian

Kate Javerbaum

Lauren Muhs

Lina Legesse

Matteo Papadopoulos

Matthew Kotcher

Maya Rackoff

Michael Citarella

Michele Togbe

Miles Munkacy

Mira Echambadi

Nash Riebe

Sam Kolitch

Sophie Jaeger

Taleen Sample

William Forys

William Vogel

DATA BOARD

DATA DIRECTORS

Asher Labovich

Javier Niño-Sears

DATA DESIGN DIRECTOR

Lucia Li

DATA ASSOCIATES

Aimee Zheng

Alex Wick

Amanda Sun

Amy Qiao

Angela Um

Angelina Rios-Galindo

Ariel Shifrin

Arthi Ranganathan

Ashley Kim

Carson Bauer

Cindy Li

Dhruv Raghavan

Esther Krupp

Irene Zhao

Jed Morgan

Jo Gasior-Kavishe

Logan Rabe

Ryan Doherty

Shafiul Haque

Titi Zhang

Zoey Katzive

COPY EDIT BOARD

CHIEF COPY EDITORS

Isabel Greider

Jonathan Zhang

MANAGING COPY EDITORS

Grace Leclerc

Miguel Valdovinos

COPY EDITORS

Antara Singh-Ghai

Anum Azhar

Benjamin Levy

Darisel Velez

Ellie Brault

Emily Colon

Harshil Garg

Jason Hwang

Juan Fernandez

Julia O’Neill

Lilly Roth-Shapiro

Logan Wojcik

Sabina Topol

Sara Santacruz

Sofie Zeruto

Tiffany Eddy

Yael Wellish

Yu-ning (Renee) Kuo

MULTIMEDIA BOARD

MULTIMEDIA DIRECTOR

Elijah Dahunsi

MULTIMEDIA ASSOCIATES

Alex Lim

Catharine Paik

Daniel Ma

Eden Lewis

Fatima Rezaie

Julia Kostin

Leyad Zavriyev

Maddelynn Brooks

Mitsuki Jiang

BUSINESS BOARD

BUSINESS DIRECTORS

Andrew Berzolla

Ayla Kim

BUSINESS ASSOCIATES

Benjamin Greenberg

Bisola Folarin

Chubbi Udemba

Coraline Novatney

Edward Park

Ellyse Givens

Eloise Robertson

Gabrielle Yuan

Hpone Thit Htoo

John Lee

Manav Musunuru

Mariana Melzer

Marilyn Abney

Mehari Milton

Serafyn Rybachkivsky

Sofia Benedetti

Stella Kleinman

Tianran Cheng

Yvonne Jia

EDITORIAL BOARD

MANAGING EDITORS

Alexander Lee

Bianca Rosen

Henry Ding

Joseph Safer-Bakal

SENIOR EDITORS

Bryce Vist

Francisca Saldivar

Isabel Greider

Natalia Ibarra

Sarah McGrath

EDITORS

Antara Singh-Ghai

Archer Zureich

Ashton Higgins

Ben Ackerman

Elliot Smith

Elsa Lehrer

Grace Chaikin

Harry Flores

Hayden Deffarges

Jack Tajmajer

Kara McAndrew

Lauren Griffiths

Michael Farrell-Rosen

Mira Rudensky

Suzie Zhang

SENIOR STAFF WRITERS

Amina Fayaz

Annabel Williams

Ellie Silverman

Ian Stettner

Jodi Robinson

Justin Meszler

Kayla Morrison

Morgan Dethlefsen

Neve Diaz-Carr

Rohan Leveille Rohan Pankaj

William Loughridge

CREATIVE BOARD

CREATIVE DIRECTOR

Christine Wang

DESIGN DIRECTORS

Andrew Liu

Muhaddisa Ali

Patrick Farrell

GRAPHIC DESIGNERS

Hannah Jeong

Lindsay Ju

Nadine Macapagal

ART DIRECTORS

Anahis Luna

Haimeng Ge

Jacob Gong

Jason Aragon

Lana Wang

Lucia Li

Maria Hahne

Rosie Dinsmore

Thomas Dimayuga

WEB BOARD

WEB DIRECTOR

Akshay Mehta

Alexander Wick

STAFF WRITERS

Aman Vora

Ananya Narayanan

Andreas Rivera Young

Annika Reff

Ariella Reynolds

Bruna Melo

Chiupong Huang

Daphne Dluzniewski

Daria Dmitrieva

Ela Snyder

Evan Tao

Gus LaFave

Haotian Luo

Hpone Thit Htoo (Ren)

Ilektra Bampicha-Ninou

Jeremy Gold

Jimena Rascon

Jordan Lac

Kenneth Kalu

Keyes Sumner

Kritika Shrivastava

McConnell Bristol

Mitsuki Jiang

Nathan Haronian

Navya Sahay

Nicolaas Schmid

Noah Kim Oamiya Haque

Ophir Berrin

Phil Avilov

Ross Rutherford

Sonya Rashkovan

Sophia Cheng

Sophie Forstner

Steve Robinson

Tianran (Alice) Cheng

COVER ARTIST

Jacob Gong

ILLUSTRATORS

Alexandra (Lexi) Zeigler

Ashley Nguyen

Ayca Tuzer

Cara Wang

Daniel May

Elizabeth Long

Emmie Wu

Hannah Rice

Hye Won (Hayley) Kim

Kaitlyn Stanton

Kyla Dang

Peishan Yu

Rafael Mediodia

Samantha Takeda

Sophia Spagna

Su Yun Song

Xuan Chen

Yan (Jessica) Jiang

Yuan Jiang

Yushan (Sabrina) Jiang

Ziwei Chen

Jordan Lac

Flip the Switch

The

case for consumerowned utilities

by Riley Stevenson ’26, an Environmental Science concentrator

illustrations by Samantha Takeda ’27, a prospective Painting major at RISD and Illustrator for BPR

As the clock struck 8:00 PM on March 31, 1880 in Wabash, Indiana, “thousands of eyes that were turned upward toward the inky darkness…saw a shower of sparks emitted from a point above them, small steady spots of light, growing more brilliant…it was absolutely dazzling.” With a flip of the town’s first publicly powered light switch, Wabash became the first city in the world to be lit entirely by electric light, and thus the illustrious history of public electric utilities began.

Electric utilities are companies that engage in electricity generation and distribution. Public power refers to a utility managed by a municipality or state government. It has been part of the electrical grid in the United States for nearly as long as we’ve had one. However, as other actors, namely privately owned utilities, took advantage

of this monopolized resource, how Americans got their power was reshaped to prioritize shareholders’ returns above public needs.

The shadow of utilities’ early history still looms large, obstructing progress on renewable energy. To meet the crucial demands of the climate crisis, we must provide consumers with more agency and power, whether by reforming our current system or considering entirely different ways of providing people with power, such as consumer-owned utilities.

Although the first utilities were publicly owned, growing electricity demand and advancing technological capabilities spurred the introduction of private alternatives. Private utilities—commonly referred to as investor-owned— are for-profit companies that own parts of or the entire process of electricity production and distribution. Early market entrants argued that utilities constituted natural monopolies—and so, large, private utilities systemically acquired smaller ones, growing their holdings until just 10 private companies delivered 75 percent of electricity in the United States at the close of the 1920s.

Simultaneously, smaller, publicly owned utilities like the one in Wabash continued to grow, though rarely at the same rate as private companies. Cooperative utilities, which return profits to customers, also proliferated during the 20th century. While public, cooperative, and private

“The shadow of utilities’ early history still looms large, obstructing progress on renewable energy.”

utilities still coexist today, privately owned utilities, which made up a notable two-thirds of the US electricity industry in 2021, have dominated the modern electrical grid—and the political conversation.

To legally maintain their near-monopoly status, privately owned utilities must be overseen by public utilities commissions (PUCs), which are state-by-state, quasi-governmental bodies. These PUCs, made up of three to five regulators, take on critical questions about everything from rates to renewable energy mandates. Between 2000 and 2020, 25 percent of PUC regulators had previously been employed in the private utility or fossil fuel industries, leading regulatory decisions to tilt away from climate change mitigation. In recent years, more regulators with environmental expertise have been appointed. As a result, some researchers see significant potential for PUCs to become important actors in the decarbonization of the electrical grid. However, this would require reforming the fundamentally profit-motivated model of investor-owned utilities.

While utility monopolies made sense 100 years ago, this model is no longer feasible today. It is nearly impossible for these companies to take into account their consumers’ climate priorities without jeopardizing their bottom line. They are incentivized to do two things: supply reliable, low-cost energy to consumers and provide a solid return on stakeholders’ investments.

Private utilities have historically been staunch opponents of measures like net metering, an incredibly popular program across the political spectrum that allows customers with solar to sell their energy back to the grid. The profit motive of investor-owned utilities relies on consumers being fully dependent on their services and is inherently unfriendly to small-scale, locally generated power—the kind of power we need significantly more of to meet energy demands at scale. We need to vastly improve the reliability of the grid and double its capacity to meet our energy needs—and do it fast. The current structure of investor-owned utilities will not get us there.

Because of their history and the inherent importance of providing energy to a large number of people, utilities have outsized power in our political system. They enjoy significant access and sway in clean energy legislative processes. Research conducted by Brown’s very own Climate Development Lab has found that utilities have had great success in blocking clean energy legislation and that their preferred version of a bill is most often adopted. Some utilities have adopted lofty climate pledges, but a study by the Sierra Club found that they have routinely fallen short of these goals. Those without official climate pledges harm the clean energy movement even more greatly.

“Research conducted by Brown’s very own Climate Development Lab has found that utilities have had great success in blocking clean energy legislation and that their preferred version of a bill is most often adopted.”

This little-understood corner of the climate obstruction movement is one that advocates must focus on to actualize decarbonization efforts. Research has found a variety of reforms that would make investor-owned utilities more compatible with the clean energy fight, including separating revenues from the amount of energy supplied, legislating to force utilities to center climate considerations, and restructuring the electricity sector. To create buy-in for clean energy, it is crucial that we decouple power from profit.

States like New York and California have both introduced regulations that reform utility business models, while Minnesota and Massachusetts have taken a phased-in approach to this challenge. The state of Rhode Island has upped its renewable energy goals and made changes that it hopes will make renewable energy more palatable for utilities.

Another solution allows people—not corporate interests—to control their utilities. Consumer-owned utilities are run by an elected board and do not have any shareholders to appease. Instead, they can reinvest profits into the grid, making them more efficient and effective. Nationwide, consumer-owned utilities supply power that is 4 percent cheaper than investor-owned utility power and 16 percent cheaper than that of cooperative utilities. The state of Nebraska is powered entirely by publicly owned utilities, showing that it is possible to provide low-cost, reliable energy controlled by local decision-makers.

In Maine, many are dissatisfied with the state’s investor-owned utilities, Central Maine Power (CMP) and Versant. Mainers pay the nation’s seventh-highest electricity rates while simultaneously experiencing the most frequent and second-longest power outages in the country. Statewide public power was on the ballot this

fall with the proposed Pine Tree Power initiative. CMP and Versant collectively spent over $35 million during this political campaign, exhausting customers with constant ads and flexing their considerable economic might. Pine Tree Power, by contrast, raised only around $1 million for the same fight.

In an unfortunate coda to what could have been a story about collective action and the future of utilities, 69 percent of Mainers rejected Pine Tree Power. There are several possible reasons why: an unwillingness to shift away from the status quo, fear of change, and the wellfunded opposition campaign staged by the utilities themselves.

One can hope that the persistent efforts of advocates to reform this system might present a wake-up call for the utilities, who themselves could choose to value renewable energy more highly and shave down their profit margins to make energy more affordable for Americans.

At the very least, the case of Pine Tree Power teaches us that we must consider how our utilities function, how they are failing us, and how we can make them better. Whether we do this by creating entirely new systems or reforming existing ones, this climate obstacle must be revealed; we must push utilities out from the shadows and into a brighter, solar-powered future.

Interview by Charlie Adams ’25

Illustration by Lucia Li ’24

Charlie Adams: You’ve written about how Republican presidential candidates have discussed climate in their campaigns. What are some differences between the candidates and do any stand out?

Robinson Meyer: I think you could put them in three categories. There’s Trump, who’s pretty peerless and basically pledges to continue the anti-climate deregulatory activities of his first administration. There’s a second category of “standard” Republicans who also want to pursue a deregulatory, anti-climate agenda but acknowledge some of the harmful effects of climate change. Then there’s a last category of Republicans who are trying to do something, but not making a big fuss about it.

In the second group, the divides are in how much you care about the consequences of climate change. If you look at Ron DeSantis’ record, for instance, you’ll see that he’s attended throughout his governorship to the consequences of climate change and sea level rise primarily in terms of how it affects his state. When he took office, he was quite deliberate about repealing policies put in place by his predecessor that blocked any discussion of climate change whatsoever. That said, as climate mitigation efforts are pulled into the culture war, he becomes more antagonistic because that’s kind of his central claim as a candidate.

In your third group is Nikki Haley or Chris Christie. Haley is really interesting. When she was UN ambassador as Trump was pulling out of the Paris Agreement, she was like, “No, Donald Trump believes in climate change.” Even though at the same time he clearly did not. It seemed to

WHAT’S ON THE HORIZON FOR ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY?

WHAT’S ON THE HORIZON FOR ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY?

An Interview with Robinson Meyer

Robinson Meyer is an award-winning journalist who currently works as the executive editor of Heatmap, a media company focused on climate change. Prior to founding Heatmap, Robinson covered climate change, energy, and technology for The Atlantic and The New York Times.

be this dynamic where she was saying what she thought and projecting it on Trump so that he wouldn’t reject it.

Broadly, what’s interesting about the candidates is that opposition to climate mitigation —and a willingness to pursue a very fossil fuelfriendly policy—unites a lot of different parts of the Republican Party. I don’t think it’s why most politicians who are Republicans become Republicans, but I think it’s something that they basically agree on with some exceptions. If they want to do something about climate change, it’s not usually because they’re extremely personally motivated by climate change. It’s because they understand that it’s a political liability for Republicans to continue having no climate policy, especially with younger voters.

CA: On the flip side, what do you think is the winning message for Biden on climate coming into this campaign?

RM: Well, I would stipulate that the winning message might not be the winning policy, and it may also not be the same thing as what he should do. If we’re talking from a messaging standpoint, Biden is vulnerable because of inflation. We’re having what is on paper some of the highest economic growth in decades, an extremely healthy labor market, household finances look better than they have in a long time, and yet people don’t like the economy.

A key source of inflation that’s very salient to people is gas prices. Biden has really taken an all-of-the-above strategy to bring down gas prices because that’s a giant political vulnerability for him. At the same time, he’s been quite reluctant

to take political ownership of these efforts. That’s partially due to demands by climate activists. But there’s another side to that calculus, too. Climate activists really need Democrats in power in order to get anything they want done at the national level, and that may mean that Democrats and Biden should be more upfront about everything they’ve done to reduce gas prices. If you look at the administration, it is trying to walk a balance between maintaining popular support and energy security for the United States, while trying to bend the US in the medium and long term toward decarbonization and reducing emissions. Frankly, it’s managing that balance that is the biggest challenge for Biden.

I think there’s another angle to this; if you look at the Republican talking points that are anti-climate policy, they’re all about jobs. But there are a lot of policies in the IRA that are fairly protectionist and anti-China and that are going to create jobs. There’s this tension right now where a lot of policies implemented by the Biden administration have been job-creating without hurting the fossil fuel industry because American oil production is at an all-time high. By repealing those policies, Republicans will be killing jobs not only in New York but in Georgia and Arizona. These are the places getting big investments.

THE MSG MYTH

The story of MSG and anti-Asian racism

by Mitsuki Jiang ’27, an Economics concentrator and Staff Writer for BPR

illustrations by Ziwei Chen ’25, an Illustration major at RISD and Illustrator for BPR

Walking through any Chinatown in the United States, you will undoubtedly encounter many signs outside of restaurants that read “NO MSG.” If you have heard the term “MSG,” you are likely aware of the negative perceptions surrounding it. For decades, monosodium glutamate, commonly known as MSG, an ingredient often found in Chinese recipes, has been associated with harmful health implications—and, more broadly, anti-Asian attitudes in the United States. More recently, however, there has been a shift in the anti-MSG tide—a shift that is reflective of a larger acceptance of Asian culture in the United States.

MSG is a widely used seasoning that enhances flavors in food by bringing out the taste sensation of umami, which is commonly referred to as the fifth basic taste. The anti-MSG craze in the United States began in 1968, when the New England Journal of Medicine published a letter by pediatrician Dr. Ho Man Kwok titled “Chinese Restaurant Syndrome,” detailing possible reasons for his sense of “numbness” after eating at American Chinese restaurants. The letter only mentioned MSG once, and yet, journalists jumped at the opportunity to publish sensationalist articles warning against the

“The story of MSG in the United States is a twisted, ongoing example of xenophobia and racism that has largely been brushed under the rug.”

ingredient, particularly affecting Chinese restaurants. Hyperbolic journalism led to decades of flawed scientific research seemingly proving that MSG was harmful to human health, most of which has since been debunked.

Nowadays, despite its bad rap, MSG is commonly found in everyday American foods, including deli meats, frozen meals, and potato chips. This indicates that anti-MSG attitudes cannot be entirely health-related. Otherwise, MSG in all food types would be targeted. Given the prevalence of MSG in many foods, it does not make sense that Asian restaurants, particularly Chinese establishments, would find it necessary to announce that their food contains “NO MSG” unless we examine the history of the anti-MSG movement. The anti-MSG craze is not just about food; it is about race, too. The push toward not using MSG was prompted by anti-Asian rhetoric from the 1960s that also particularly affected Chinese communities.

In the post-Covid-19 era, however, the tide against MSG and Asians more broadly has been turning. New scientific research debunks long-established MSG myths, and some scientists have even begun studying how MSG could be good for human health, serving as a tool to

reduce sodium intake. In this era, American perceptions of MSG are generally transitioning from negative to neutral, or even positive. Much like the connection between anti-MSG sentiments and anti-Asian racism, the change can be linked to a shift in perceptions of Asian culture in the United States. Since the 1970s, Asian immigration to the United States has risen, and thus, American contact with Asian culture has increased. In the past few years, American interest in and consumption of Korean and Japanese popular culture has skyrocketed. Interestingly enough, Chinese pop culture has not seen the same surge. Instead, it is often either mislabeled or entirely absent from the picture. Yet, Asian American culture has become more accepted. The parallels between a reduction in anti-MSG messaging and increased American interest in Asian culture can be explained simply by a growing Asian presence in America. However, the tension surrounding Chinese people and culture shows that, while anti-MSG arguments have been reduced or debunked, the reversal of racist rhetoric is nowhere near complete, especially for American Chinese communities who have been particularly impacted by rhetoric surrounding MSG and Covid-19.

Anti-Asian discrimination has permeated well into the 21st century. The most obvious exhibition was seen at the height of the Covid-19

pandemic, when anti-Asian incidents ranging from taunts to violent assaults saw a noticeable increase. Politicians seeking office have weaponized anti-China rhetoric, which adversely equates Chinese Americans to the actions of the Chinese government. This conflation of Chinese Americans and the Chinese government has impacted how politicians and many Americans view China not only in relation to the Covid-19 pandemic but also as a whole. As China is seemingly seen more as a “threat,” the repercussions are widespread. Though acceptance of Asian culture has been affected by events like the Covid-19 pandemic and an increased mistrust in the Chinese government, there has been real progress that cannot be forgotten.

The story of MSG in the United States is a twisted, ongoing example of xenophobia and racism that has largely been brushed under the rug. Fortunately, recent trends show that attitudes are changing positively. Ultimately, the evolving narrative surrounding MSG is reflective of a broader socioeconomic shift from baseless xenophobia and economic concerns to a more accepting embrace of Asian culture, marking a hopeful step toward dismantling long-standing prejudice.

NEITHER HERE NOR THERE NEITHER HERE NOR THERE

An Interview with Caitlin Dickerson

Caitlin Dickerson is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter and feature writer for The Atlantic magazine Dickerson has covered immigration from three continents and dozens of American cities. Previously, she spent nearly five years as a reporter at The New York Times, writing front-page stories about the Trump administration’s immigration policies. Dickerson’s feature stories for the newspaper and The New York Times Magazine detailed the backstories behind those policies and brought to life their human impact. Dickerson is currently writing a book for Random House about the systemic impact of deportation on American society.

Interview by Matteo Papadopoulos ’26

Illustration by Lucia Li ’24

Matteo Papadopoulos: You recently gave a talk at Brown about the differences in treatment of refugees you noticed between traveling to the US -Mexico border and the Poland-Ukraine border. Could you expand on that talk and discuss your overarching observations in those two places?

Caitlin Dickerson: I’ve been covering migration and forced displacement for several years now, and I’ve had the opportunity to see what that looks like in different parts of the world—in doing so, I’ve noticed dramatic differences that can impact the entire trajectory of a person’s life once they’re displaced. There’s no question that forced displacement is traumatizing and disturbing, and these differences in treatment are no less harrowing. I’ve witnessed differences in whether people are given access to housing or whether they’re allowed to become documented immigrants, which gives them access to employment and healthcare and education; I’ve even seen differences in the language used to describe these people.

In Mexico, I saw up to thousands of people at a time living outside, exposed to the elements without any consistent resources to have their basic hygiene needs met; to allow children to go to school and parents to go to work; and even for basic safety. Most of the time I spent in Mexico was in the border city of Matamoros, which has been effectively controlled by cartels for many years; as a result, there were hundreds—if not thousands—of documented incidents of kidnappings, assaults, and extortions of those migrants because they lived outdoors with no security of shelter.

I saw the opposite in Poland: Hundreds of thousands of Poles took Ukrainians who had crossed the border into their homes without question. That generosity extended to the Polish government as well; emergency legislation was passed to give Ukrainians legal status for 18 months in Poland, giving them access to the formal supports that exist in Polish society as part of the European Union. In essence,

we’re talking about two different populations that have been forcibly displaced and have very different outlooks for the future based on the resources that are made available to them and whether or not the host country where they’re living is accepting of them.

MP: Do you think that the terms that are used to refer to these migrants can affect the way that they’re treated at borders?

CD: I do, and that’s not just my opinion. These differences can have generational consequences. There’s research indicating that the language that’s used by elected officials and the media to describe displaced people or people who are migrating has a substantial impact on public opinion. In Poland, for example, I heard the word “refugee” everywhere I went. It was used almost interchangeably with “Ukrainian” to describe anybody who was Ukrainian. And at the time, experts in international law pointed out that actually the term “refugee” is very legally specific and didn’t necessarily apply to people who were fleeing the war in Ukraine— which is not to suggest that they weren’t deserving of being embraced by Poland. But the term “refugee” is both a legal one and an emotional one that can connote sympathy and can label a population as deserving of help.

On the other hand, of course, during the Trump administration, the population that was marooned in Mexico trying to get access to the United States was described by the highest-ranking elected officials in the nation at the time— including our president—as murderers, rapists, and people trying to either take advantage of the system or exploit Americans. That has a huge impact on the way migrants are treated because the average American who skims the news and listens to what their elected officials are saying may not have time to dig into the details of international conflict and fully grasp the circumstances that displaced people are fleeing. This understanding really is necessary

for Americans to make a determination for themselves about how they feel about that conflict. What the average American can do, however, is consider and react to the words that they hear used to describe those people. Are they described as refugees, or are they described as migrants who are trying to exploit the system or take advantage?

MP: What do you see as the biggest misconceptions or misunderstandings that people have about immigration and border policy? How can we, not just as journalists, but as college students and political denizens of the world, go about addressing these gaps in understanding?

CD: First of all, there are plenty of gaps, but the one that I’ll mention is this: A lot of people are unaware of the president’s role in immigration. The extremely politicized nature of the general immigration debate often leads people to believe that what the president thinks or does about immigration on any given day is the primary driver of the number of people crossing the border; that is simply not true. There are critical factors worth understanding: economic factors, safety factors, and climate change factors, all of which combined are far and away the biggest drivers of border crossings in any given year, despite the feverish blame of whoever is in the White House that has become a fixture of American politics. This has been true both during the Trump administration and the Biden administration, and it distracts from the fact that there are forces much greater than our own White House that influence the trends that

“We’re talking about two different populations that have been forcibly displaced and have very different outlooks for the future.”

we see—without coming to terms with them, the public will continue to see president after president, Democrat or Republican, seem powerless in the face of them. The other thing that they distract from is Congress, which has not meaningfully updated our immigration laws in decades; what’s more, members of Congress have continued to score political points by criticizing the White House in this very way. Yet, they are in control of our country’s immigration policies, which as it stands have almost nothing to do with the current geopolitical reality of immigration. Congress has really been let off the hook for far too long.

Edited for length and clarity.

SUPPRESSION’S IN SESSION

The Supreme Court’s crusade against the Voting Rights Act

by Keyes Sumner ’27, an International and Public Affairs concentrator and a Staff Writer for BPR

illustrations by Haimeng Ge ’25, an Illustration major at RISD and Art Director for BPR

Ninety-five years after the passage of the Fifteenth Amendment, which gave African American men the right to vote, Congress finally sought to create a voting system reflective of the US Constitution’s emphasis on equal political representation. Civil Rights-era reforms ushered in the 1965 Voting Rights Act (VRA), which targeted oppressive Jim Crow voting laws such as poll taxes and literacy tests. The law prohibited states and jurisdictions from passing discriminatory or restrictive voting legislation without federal approval. To accomplish this, it instituted preclearance requirements, which mandated that states with historically discriminatory election policies seek federal approval before amending voting laws and appointed federal examiners to oversee voter registration in certain states. Starting in 1982, courts created a results test to determine whether a state or jurisdiction’s laws violated the VRA.

The VRA led to an increase in Black voter turnout rates in the South—eventually matching the rest of the country. Black turnout in the South increased from 44 percent in 1964 to a record high of 65 percent in 2008. Despite the VRA’s success, it has come under fire from conservatives. For decades, the VRA has faced cycles of litigation, which have enabled onslaughts of voting restrictions. Conservative legal strategist Edward Blum has advanced a Republican strategy that seeks to use the current conservative Supreme Court to decrease minority voter turnout and thus increase the party’s competitiveness in many important races.

In the 2013 Shelby County v. Holder Supreme Court decision, Blum succeeded. The case abolished the preclearance requirement contained in Section Five of the VRA, thus

allowing states with histories of discriminatory laws to pass restrictive voting legislation without first obtaining federal approval.

Almost a decade later, in the 2021 Alitopenned Brnovich v. DNC opinion, the Court dealt an even more significant blow to voting rights. Justice Alito argued that a state’s law enforcement interests should be prioritized over a voting law’s disparate impact. This opinion directly struck at the core of the VRA, laying the groundwork for states to restructure voting systems at the expense of minority voters. Sure enough, a wave of new laws immediately followed the ruling, overwhelmingly in GOP-controlled states.

Brnovich addressed House Bill (HB) 2023, passed in 2016 in Arizona—the tightly contested swing state where President Joe Biden eked out a 10,457-vote victory in 2020. The law banned the use of third-party ballot collection services and out-of-precinct voting. In the five years of legal battles that followed, the DNC asserted that the law violated Section Two of the VRA, which outlaws the “abridgment of the right of

“Purposefully and methodically, the Court has funneled power back into state legislatures, allowing them to justify racially discriminatory laws with the words of the country’s highest court.”

any citizen of the United States to vote on account of race or color.” Testimony included in the case emphasized that third-party ballot collection was utilized disproportionately in Arizona’s Native American and Hispanic communities, who were more likely to lack access to adequate transportation or mail. Nevertheless, in a 6–3 ruling, the Supreme Court determined that the law was not racially discriminatory in either results or intent.

Beyond the specific decision about Arizona’s law in Brnovich, the details of the opinion broadly invalidate the crux of Section Two. Prior to Brnovich, courts were told to weigh the tenuity of a state’s rationale against the potential disproportionate impacts of a bill—emphasizing the need for concrete evidence of threats to election integrity before restrictive laws can be passed—in order to avoid possible discrimination. In Arizona, there were no recorded cases of third-party ballot collection fraud when HB 2023 was passed, suggesting that the ban rested on tenuous justification. However, in Brnovich, Alito replaced the results test of 1982 with five new guideposts for determining a Section Two violation. While the third guidepost focuses on assessing disparate burdens of voting legislation on minority voters, the fifth guidepost effectively nullifies the concern, stating that the strength of state interest outweighs any potential disparate burden. Applying this rationale to Arizona’s law, Alito asserted that “even if the plaintiffs had shown a disparate burden caused by HB 2023, the State’s justifications would suffice to avoid [Section Two] liability,” with the state justification in question being the broad interest of preventing electoral fraud “without waiting for it to occur within its own borders.”

As a result of the five guideposts, states are free to pass laws irrespective of discriminatory

impact to prevent crimes that have not occurred. Alito has returned control to the very jurisdictions that participated in Jim Crow, as if voter suppression and systemic racism are issues confined only to the past. The result has been a proliferation of voting rights restrictions in the name of “election integrity.” For example, in 2019, following a close 2018 gubernatorial race in which Democratic candidate Stacey Abrams used third-party ballot collection to increase minority voter turnout in Atlanta suburbs, Georgia passed HB 316, a law that enacted restrictions on thirdparty collection.

In the wake of former President Donald Trump’s claims of election fraud in the 2020 US presidential election, the race to restrict voting has only accelerated. In 2023 alone, at least 14 states enacted 17 restrictive voting laws, often targeting mail-in voting and ballot drop boxes. All but one of these states are GOP-controlled, and all 17 laws will be in effect for the 2024 election.

Republicans conscious of the GOP’s subpar performance among minority voters may justify their opposition to the VRA as necessary to prevent electoral fraud. However, state governments previously subject to preclearance requirements have unsurprisingly been quick to betray their true motives: suppressing minority voters for political gain. Look no further than Alabama’s proposed 2022 congressional map. Despite Black Alabamians making up over a quarter of the state’s population, the gerrymandered map effectively allowed them adequate representation in only one of seven districts. Even the Supreme Court struck down this map as a violation of the VRA in the 5–4 Allen v. Milligan decision.

While this recent protection of minority representation is perhaps reassuring, it does not erase the series of cases before Milligan that have repeatedly chipped away at the VRA. Purposefully and methodically, the Court has funneled power back into state legislatures, allowing them to justify racially discriminatory laws with the words of the country’s highest court. As voters are finding it increasingly difficult to defend their interests over those of the same institutions that perpetuated Jim Crow in the not-so-distant past, the supposed egalitarianism of post-Civil Rights American democracy is under threat. While it remains to be seen whether new restrictions will dramatically affect the results of the 2024 elections, the impaired VRA represents the Court’s departure from its self-professed duty to scrutinize laws targeting minorities and signals a potentially insidious extension of state power.

HIGH TECH, HIGH MINDED

Silicon Valley wants to save the world by infiltrating DC

by Noah Kim ’27, a Math-CS concentrator and Staff Writer for BPR

illustrations by Christine Wang ’24, a Graphic Design major at RISD and Creative Director for BPR

When one thinks of Silicon Valley’s politics, tech billionaire Peter Thiel’s high-profile backing of Donald Trump, Elon Musk’s partisan tweets, or the sheer amount of tech money pouring into political campaigns might come to mind. What might not, however, are the unique beliefs held by some of the most powerful technologists, including Transhumanism, Extropianism, Singularitarianism, Cosmism, Rationalism, Effective Altruism, and Longtermism. Sometimes crudely grouped as TESCREAL, these ideologies often center around technological and quantitative solutions to societal advancement. Nuanced and sometimes conflicting, TESCREAL views are easily misunderstood or misrepresented. But while they may seem idiosyncratic, these ideologies have emerged as potentially powerful influences on public policy. In particular, Effective Altruism (EA) and Longtermism can provide crucial insights into priorities like AI safety, which has become increasingly relevant in an unprecedented age of technological advancement.

Before the EA movement was championed by the Silicon Valley powerful, it found its roots in academic circles. Coined in 2011 by Oxford philosophers Toby Ord and Will Macaskill, EA was inspired by famous Princeton ethicist Peter Singer. It started out with the simple utilitarian goal of “using evidence and reason to figure out how to benefit others as much as possible, and taking action on that basis.” Effective Altruists (EAs) propose a formula for doing the most good by combining Singer’s philosophy that a moral person has a strict duty to donate significant amounts to charity with quantitative observations that certain charities are more effective than others at saving lives with limited resources. However, since its inception, EA has been constantly evolving. EAs have branched out from their core principle of cost-effective philanthropy, becoming key sponsors of research in AI alignment, biosecurity, animal welfare, and nuclear risk.

The expansion of EA is in part a result of its fusion with other TESCREAL ideologies,

especially a controversial concept called Longtermism. The basic premise of Longtermism is that one has a moral responsibility to protect future lives and that human extinction must be avoided at all costs. Vocal critics of Longtermism argue that it is dangerous to put an outsized weight upon existential risk in light of past false alarms. For example, Paul Ehrlich’s claims of the existential threat of overpopulation were used to justify horrific measures like mass forced sterilization in developing countries. However, many EAs do not argue that people should sacrifice basic moral principles to prevent human extinction. Instead, EAs often hold a qualified view on Longtermism: that people should take the risk of human extinction more seriously. As with many environmentalists who criticize past generations for being short-sighted or selfish toward future generations, EAs and Longtermists argue that, without proper guardrails, the current trajectory of civilization may lead to catastrophic suffering or extinction. Longtermism pushes for the expansion of the existing climate change framework to encompass the long-term risks from other fields, such as AI and biosecurity.

EA has experienced rapid growth into a real force within and outside the Silicon Valley bubble since first being brought into the public eye by disgraced crypto billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder and CEO of cryptocurrency exchange FTX. Despite incurring significant reputational damages from FTX’s collapse, players behind the EA movement have continued to shape public policy. Over the past year, OpenPhilanthropy—funded primarily by Dustin Moskovitz, co-founder of Facebook and Asana, and his wife Cari Tuna—bankrolled $650 million in EA causes in various AI labs, think tanks, universities, and nonprofits. Georgetown

University’s new Center for Security and Emerging Technology and the Horizon Institute of Public Service, both funded by OpenPhilanthropy, support thinkers of varying political affiliations who incorporate Longtermism into their policy advisory. EA-aligned think tanks like The Future of Life Institute have published statements like the famous “AI Pause open letter,” in which signatories such as Elon Musk and Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak advocated for a six-month pause on frontier models. EA thinkers also populate research roles, especially on AI safety teams, at top AI labs like OpenAI, Anthropic, and DeepMind. Other significant AI labs like the Center for AI Safety (which hosted the “Statement on AI Risk”), Centre for the Governance of AI, Institute for AI Policy and Strategy, and the Machine Intelligence Research Institute harbor EA-aligned individuals and are significantly funded by OpenPhilanthropy.

Even though the prospect of vast tech money flowing into politics is bound to raise concerns, we should not simply dismiss EA-funded efforts

as attempts to maliciously secure corporate interests. OpenPhilanthropy itself only writes grants, not investments, and therefore has no financial upside. Moreover, EAs also often argue for a slowdown or significant regulation of AI development due to associated risks, despite the fact that such regulation may compromise profits. For example, when OpenPhilanthropy made a $30 million grant to OpenAI in 2017,

it was with the goal of increasing responsible oversight and funding safety and alignment. In a conversation with the Brown Political Review, Holly Elmore, a grassroots AI policy advocate who previously led Harvard’s student EA group as a PhD student, advocates for a full AI pause, claiming that it would be “a chance to figure out everything.” Other policy proposals being pushed by EA affiliates range from an

FDA-style regulatory body to windfall clauses, which would require AI firms to donate significant portions of their earnings. Strongly arguing that AI technologies might destroy the world and that AI labs should give away their money does not seem to be a coordinated effort to hoard profits.

AI safety threats are similar to negative environmental externalities, a cost that all of us will bear if irresponsible AI companies short-sightedly pursue development. The field of AI safety research is young but broad, with projects on all the ways AI could lead to ruin. Examples include power-seeking AI, AI-enabled totalitarian regimes, and AI-enhanced great power conflict. The resulting conclusions and proposals are predictably wide-ranging, and the field lacks a clear, united front on what exact policies should be passed. OpenPhilanthrophy hasn’t narrowed this field; instead, it funds a highly diverse set of labs and people with varying political affiliations. As the organization most financially capable of acting as a stopgap as the topic of AI safety

gathers public attention, OpenPhilanthrophy’s political play is thus being prompted by the need to get Washington thinking, not a grab for power.

Moreover, EAs are not the only people who think AI safety risks require a serious political response. Forty-two percent of top CEOs surveyed at the 2023 Yale CEO summit believe that AI-caused extinction in the next 10 years is possible. Repeated warnings about AI are signed by some of the most respected experts in the field. And 76 percent of the general public believes that AI risks could eventually pose an extinction-level threat to humanity. On top of existential risk, other AI issues like algorithmic bias, misinformation, and cyberattacks are credible threats.

In the policy world, the Overton window has also started moving. The EU has already passed its first “AI Act” to provide a legal framework to deal with high-risk societal impacts of AI, such as social scoring or real-time biometric surveillance, and plans to lead the way on AI existential risk mitigation. At the landmark Global AI Safety Summit, Vice President Kamala Harris acknowledged the grave risks associated with AI.

Of course, the public and government should be wary of an echo chamber of Longtermism at the expense of addressing current systemic issues. However, with a rapidly changing and potentially dangerous technology, Washington needs to work fast and be willing to explore the perspectives of TESCREALists. If one understands EA, Longtermism, and the other ideologies that have coalesced around them, one might also understand the real risks of emerging technologies. Policymakers should be willing to lend an ear to the intellectual communities most involved in studying the dangerous longterm consequences of era-defining technologies.

“However, with a rapidly changing and potentially dangerous technology, Washington needs to work fast and be willing to explore the perspectives of TESCREALists.”

UNDERSTANDING IRAQI DEMOCRACY UNDERSTANDING IRAQI DEMOCRACY

An Interview with Marsin Alshamary

Interview by Mira Mehta ’25

Illustration by Lucia Li ’24

Marsin Alshamary is an assistant professor of political science at Boston College, where she researches and teaches about Middle Eastern politics, focusing on democracy, religious institutions, civil society, and political movements in Iraq. She is also a non-resident fellow at the Brookings Institution and a research fellow with the Harvard Kennedy School’s Middle East Initiative. Her work has been published and referenced in both academic journals and mainstream media outlets like The Washington Post and Reuters. She has also used her expertise to consult for organizations like the United Nations, the United States Agency for International Development, and the World Bank.

Mira Mehta: Within the United States, the US intervention in Iraq is considered a policy failure by most people on both sides of the aisle. What do you think that the United States misunderstood about democratization in Iraq that contributed to this failure?

Marsin Alshamary: I do want to preface all this by saying, on the ground in Iraq, it’s a completely different perspective. There’s no real debate anymore about the legality of the war for Iraqis; it doesn’t matter anymore. We’ve moved on. We have a country that was built on an invasion and occupation, and now we have to live with the real-life repercussions of that. That’s on one hand.

On the other hand, I think the United States missed a lot in Iraq. I’ve said this in other venues before, but it’s quite

astounding to me how many smart people were involved in this who made really surprising and rookie mistakes. For one, it was incorrect to think that you could go in and change the regime—in a country that’s so ethnically and religiously diverse and that’s been under a strong centralized authoritarian dictatorship for so long—and expect that there wouldn’t be pockets of instability, there wouldn’t be surprising resistance, and that there wouldn’t be civil war or violence internally.

The other thing that I think Americans didn’t understand at the time, and I think they continue to fail to understand, is that the existence of a democracy in the Middle East, whether in Iraq or not, doesn’t mean that it’s going to be pro-America or pro-West. It just means that it’s going to represent the will of the people of that country.

MM: As you touched upon, over the past two decades, Iraq has worked to develop its own democratic institutions. What do you think is the biggest strength of Iraq’s democracy?

MA: In Iraq today, it’s still possible for someone who isn’t from the political elite to run for Parliament. You saw in the most recent elections in 2021 that there was a whole wave of new political parties that were formed after a protest movement. There were a lot of independents who ran for office. The possibility of reform from within is still something that exists in Iraq. Some elections in Iraq are better than others, but the most recent election has been one that was praised by the UN Assistance Mission for Iraq and by EU observers in Iraq.

Another strength is the relative freedom of speech compared to other countries in the Middle East. I always say this with a bit of a cautionary note in the end because there have been increasing red lines in recent years, but compared to other countries that I’m familiar with in the region, there is space to discuss politics, to criticize the government, and to hold events discussing policy. I think that’s something that’s very positive and also something that can be lost easily. So I try to emphasize it because I want people to feel proud of it and protective of it.

MM: What is the biggest challenge to Iraqi democracy?

MA: If we’re talking particularly about democracy, I think one of the biggest challenges facing Iraq is that there’s a lot of apathy from youth about it. This comes from different reasons. One of them is that the population of Iraq is very young. The average Iraqi is 21 years old. They don’t have memories of authoritarianism, and so they rightfully have very high standards of what democracy looks like and frequently tend to react to anything short of that by boycotting democratic mechanisms. That tends to empower status quo elite parties and really just perpetuate the cycle that these youth are angry about.

Then the youth say, “They’re illegitimate. We didn’t vote for them.” But they also have refused consistently to participate. And it’s not just participation as voters. It’s also participation in the many other things that really feed a democracy: participation in running for office, participation in civil society, participation in volunteerism, and a lot of these social capital things that we can think of. I saw that in the last protest movement, there was tension between

“We truly haven’t had a Middle Eastern version of democracy and understood how it works.”

people who thought the only way forward was to have a revolution and start from zero versus those who thought, “Look, we still have some mechanisms that we can work within.”

If the revolutionaries win over the reformists, I genuinely don’t see a revolution happening in Iraq that ends in democracy. So I myself have been cautioning against revolutions because I do think there are plenty of cautionary tales in the region. Particularly in the context of Iraq, where there are still existing institutions like elections, like freedom of speech, I think we don’t have to hit that point of despair quite yet.

MM: What role do you think civil society can play in helping to respond to some of the challenges you’ve described?

MA: We’re not quite sure whether civil society produces democracy or democracy produces civil society because we’ve seen both happen. In its ideal form, civil society fosters democracy by allowing citizens to engage in democratic practices like advocating, choosing leaders, expressing themselves, coordinating, and communicating. But a country has to have a certain level of economic prosperity to start thinking about some of the values of civil society that the West really prioritizes. When the United States goes into a country that’s reeling from civil conflict and wants a group to focus on women’s rights and human rights and democratization, that’s great in theory. In practice, these groups are not really organic grassroots organizations that arose from the needs of the community. And that’s because the community has more pressing needs. For civil society to truly be at its most effective, it must be organic from within the community itself.

MM: As a country that has transitioned to democracy fairly recently, what do you think is the most important thing that people who are looking to build democracy elsewhere can take away from Iraq?

MA: This is a bit of a counterintuitive one. As I look to see why Iraq managed to persist in its imperfect and extremely flawed experiment of democratization, but Tunisia, which had a lot more social capital, didn’t, I realize that there may be advantages to the oil curse that we never think of. By that, I mean oil has allowed Iraq to buy itself more time to figure out if it can push forward in democratization in a way that other countries can’t. Eventually, it’ll have to have a reckoning because oil isn’t going to be the solution to all of its problems. But I think the message I’d send with this isn’t a message about oil in particular, but a message that there really isn’t one path or one model that’s successful or that will work. Oftentimes things that you think might be obstacles are not the obstacles.

Democracy tends to be strongly associated with the West, but we truly haven’t had a Middle Eastern version of democracy and understood how it works quite yet. We need to give it the space to do that. There are versions of democracy that aren’t Western. In Iraq’s case, a lot of people associated the failure of democracy with the failure of American-style democracy, but there’s so much more space to reimagine what a Middle Eastern democracy will look like.

Edited for length and clarity.

POLITICAL POWERBALL

Why local governments—and Brown—should replace elections with lotteries

by Evan Tao ( 淘敬仁) ’27, an International and Public Affairs concentrator and Staff Writer for BPR

illustration by Maria Hahne ’24, an Illustration major at RISD and Art Director for BPR

Low-information voting is among the simplest reasons why elections suck. Low voter turnout, lack of demographic diversity among candidates, and voter bias make elections— especially local ones—ineffective at achieving democratic representation. Voter suppression, gerrymandering, lobbying, and campaign finance corruption only make matters worse. Fortunately, there is an innovative solution for local government: sortition. Replacing elected officials with randomly selected citizens may sound radical given the common assumption that elections are essential to the democratic process. However, contemporary experiments with sortition around the world suggest that it is both efficient and effective.

are disproportionately white and wealthy, and women remain underrepresented at all levels of politics. According to a 2012 American University study, this is not because they are less electable, but because they perceive themselves as less “competitive” and “entrepreneurial” than men do and choose not to run. Women also tend to react more negatively to certain aspects of campaigning, namely fundraising, dealing with the press, and loss of privacy.

In 2011, researchers at Vanderbilt University wanted to test the effect of name recognition on candidate support in the Nashville Metropolitan Council race. They put up yard signs in support of Ben Griffin near a local elementary school, then sent a survey to parents asking for their top three candidates out of the seven in the race. Significantly, nearly a quarter of respondents included Ben Griffin in their top three, compared to 14 percent of a control group that did not see the signs.

Even more significantly, Ben Griffin did not exist.

As demonstrated by the Ben Griffin experiment, voters are rationally ignorant. In most elections, they make decisions based on very limited information, like having seen a candidate’s name on a piece of cardboard. A swath of literature indicates that other superficial factors, like having your name listed first on the ballot and being physically taller and conventionally attractive, yield significant, measurable advantages. All elections are, on some level, glorified beauty pageants.

Additionally, in the United States, the nature of political campaigns filters out would-be leaders who find the process prohibitively expensive or draining. Local politicians

Elected officials who do not serve their constituents’ interests are rarely voted out. In fact, a study found that in the period 19742004, 95 percent of incumbents in the House of Representatives won re-election despite a trend of extremist and polarized voting records. The authors of this study explain that “the fact that voters only infrequently penalize [extremist] behavior reflects not approval, but rather the limited capacity of voters to discern extreme policy agendas for what they are.” Corrupt officials are regularly reelected, whether that be because of low information, ideological alignment, or simply the belief that all politicians are corrupt. Low voter turnout is also evidence of disengagement. Nationally, voter turnout for federal elections has never topped 67 percent, and average voter turnout for local elections lies at a paltry 27 percent.

Many voices, from Yale University professor of government Alexandra Cirone to the climate activist group Extinction Rebellion, believe the

solution lies in democracy’s own roots. Instead of electing career politicians, what if ordinary citizens were chosen by lottery to make policies, as they were in ancient Athens?

Today, sortition might resemble an intensive form of jury duty. Thirty or so registered voters would be selected randomly, perhaps stratified according to relevant demographic criteria such as race, gender, and socioeconomic status. They would then serve as government officials for a short term—perhaps six months. In this role, officials would be responsible for drafting and voting on government policies: They would receive public comments and consult with relevant experts before coming to decisions. Local elections would not necessarily be done away

“Low-information voting is among the simplest reasons why elections suck.”

with completely—for example, a city council might be selected randomly, but the mayor would remain an elected official. As with jury duty, employers would be required to give time off. Selected officials would also be paid and provided with childcare, housing, and other necessities.

Sortition has many advantages over elections. This system circumvents corruption and corporate capture because there is no campaign financing and no fear of losing re-election. In the absence of a lengthy campaign period, leaders would spend more time working and less time kissing babies. Because they would be selected randomly, local officials would no longer be disproportionately wealthy, white, and male but rather a diverse representation of their community. Citizens may find leaders who do not fit the traditional “Type A” career politician mold more approachable, trustworthy, and empathetic.

Without entrenched loyalties and partisan agendas, local assemblies would most likely come to a consensus faster—disagreements would be real instead of manufactured. Sortition does not directly address low-information voting or low voter turnout. Instead, it cultivates a sense of civic responsibility and patriotism by returning power to the people. A system of sortition understands that citizens are normally rationally ignorant, but trusts that when responsibility is handed to them, they will rise to the occasion.

Over the past decade, many countries have held citizens’ assemblies in which citizens are randomly selected to deliberate and make policy recommendations to legislators. Hundreds of these assemblies have been held around the world with great success. An Irish citizens’ assembly’s proposal to legalize abortion was sent to a national referendum; in France, an assembly submitted recommendations on combating climate change to the incumbent government. Citizens’ assemblies can be effective pilot programs, proving to the public that sortition works. Ideally, they will become regularized and eventually hold direct legislative power in local government.

If I’ve convinced you that lotteries are preferable to elections, and you’re wondering what to do about it, we can start right here at Brown. Our student government election process has room for improvement. I don’t know about you, but I only voted for the people who asked me to or who had cute posters, neither of which seem like a good indication of the best future leader. Voter turnout in the class of 2026 first-year elections was only 33.5 percent. And, as we saw with the recent Undergraduate Finance Board budget surplus fiasco, who our student government representatives are matters. Let’s make it an opt-in lottery at Brown—and then take it to the rest of the country.

Remember Rome?

LESSONS IN FOREIGN POLICY FROM THE ROMAN EMPIRE

by David Pinto ’24, a History and Modern Culture & Media concentrator

illustration by Su Yun Song ’24, an Illustration major at RISD and Illustrator for BPR

How often do you think about the Roman Empire? An online trend has unearthed an ancient obsession. In September 2023, Google data showed an all-time high in searches for the “Roman Empire,” while videos tagged #RomanEmpire amassed about three billion views on TikTok. Today, as doomsayers anxiously predict America’s decline, we return to the question of Rome. To most, the ‘Fall of Rome’ conjures apocalyptic images of violent hordes storming the gates of the Eternal City––an ancient, bloodier January 6. But Rome did not fall in a day. Over the centuries, a slow decay gnawed at the Empire’s fabric, weakening it to the point of ‘catastrophic’ collapse in the West. Is America doomed to the same fate? Confronted by a rising China and wars in Europe and the Middle East, the Pax Americana is facing its greatest test. What foreign policy lessons can America draw from the Roman Empire?

Thucydides’s Trap, a theory advanced by Graham Allison, argues that when a rising power threatens to displace a hegemon, the result is usually war. Rome’s ascension followed that script: The Punic Wars saw the burgeoning Roman Republic challenge its North African rival Carthage, culminating in the complete destruction of the latter in 146 BCE. Similarly, Imperial Japan challenged the United States in World War II. The result was Japan’s devastation and American hegemony in the Pacific and Atlantic. Great power contests were thus the crucibles of Roman and American power. Today, as China weighs an invasion of Taiwan, the United States may be lured into Thucydides’s Trap. As the incumbent superpower, does the United States stand to gain more from preserving the status quo or from preemptively confronting China while

it maintains a military advantage? Could conflict with China, as some hawks argue, actually reinvigorate the United States as in 1945—in this way avoiding the fate of Rome? In the nuclear age, these questions may be too costly to ponder.

During the Pax Romana (27 BCE–180 CE), Roman citizens enjoyed a period of relative stability and economic prosperity within the Empire’s borders. However, this “peace” did not extend to Rome’s frontiers. Unlike America, Rome did not have the luxury of oceans separating it from its enemies: From Scotland to Syria, the army was at constant blows with non-Roman, “barbarian” peoples. Similarly, Pax Americana is a peace for many but not all. Since 1945, the US Army has staged major interventions in Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq, as well as covert operations across the globe. Though not an empire in the Roman or British sense, the United States has an unprecedented military reach.

As Roman historians will testify, imperial hubris can cause superpowers to overstretch, uniting their enemies and creating costly distractions. The 3rd and 4th centuries saw Rome wage wars on two fronts: to the North with Germanic tribes and to the East with the Sassanid Persian Empire. Humiliating defeats at Edessa (260 CE) and Adrianople (378 CE) forced Rome to retreat in both directions. By the 5th century, Rome could no longer repel the successive waves of barbarian incursion. When the Visigoths sacked Rome in 410 CE, it dealt a psychological blow from which the Romans never recovered. A little like New York on 9/11, the city of Rome had not been attacked by a foreign power in centuries. There are, of course, limits to this comparison. But when Osama bin Laden shattered Americans’ sense of security in 2001, he dragged the United States into two ultimately humiliating foreign wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Hence, a pattern emerges: If big wars build empires, smaller military adventures weaken them.

The two-front expansion that forged the Pax Americana now presents myriad challenges. Like Rome, the United States has had a unifying effect on its enemies, with China heading a loose coalition of anti-American autocracies including Russia, Iran, Syria, and North Korea. With its vast network of alliances, the United States caters to a roster of military aid recipients. In October 2023, President Biden asked Congress for $106 billion in supplemental national security spending to aid Ukraine and Israel. America generally sends different weapons to Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan, but their needs sometimes overlap. According to The Economist, a conflict over Taiwan would quickly deplete America’s stock of long-range anti-ship missiles, the weapon “most useful in repelling an invasion.” As seen in Rome, military hegemony can sow the seeds of overstretch and eventual retreat.

To state the obvious: America is not Rome. Foundational concepts like human rights, the separation of church and state, and centralized banking would be completely alien to the Romans. American presidents worry about re-election, not death on the field of battle. Nonetheless, our comparison yields three connected lessons for American foreign policy: Great power conflict strengthens nations, and small wars weaken them; superpowers at their peak sow the seeds of their own decline; and military overstretch can have catastrophic effects on security. Can shrewd foreign policy see off threats and prolong the Pax Americana? Surely. Can it alter the course of a global tectonic shift towards multipolarity? That remains to be seen.

Clouds of Colonialism

AUSTRALIA’S FAILED ATTEMPT TO ESTABLISH THE FIRST NATION’S VOICE TO PARLIAMENT

Settler colonialism is an ever-evolving form of violence. In Australia, it began with the theft of Indigenous land, the enslavement and murder of Indigenous Australians, and the mass dispersal of deadly disease— forcing Indigenous populations deeper and deeper into the shadow of Australian colonial conquest. With time, this violence took a new shape with the continuous denial of Indigenous Australians’ equal status as citizens and the forced assimilation of their children into settler society. The impact of this brutal history is evident today in the community's disproportionately high rates of suicide, domestic violence, and incarceration, as well as the fact that its average life expectancy is eight years lower than the national average. While recently enacted statutory protections are a sign of progress, they are ultimately band-aids on bullet wounds—and by voting down a referendum to constitutionally recognize Indigenous Australians’ existence and agency, the Australian people have only shot another hole in the hope for Indigenous Australian liberation.

The proposed amendment, voted on in an October 2023 nationwide referendum, would have officially recognized the persistence and power of Indigenous Australians. It would have also created an Indigenous

advisory board, First Nation’s Voice to Parliament, that would work with the Australian Parliament on legislation related to Indigenous Australian issues. The failed proposal developed from the 2017 Uluru Statement from the Heart, a call to action drafted at a constitutional convention of Indigenous Australian representatives to discuss paths toward empowerment. While Australian Senator Lidia Thorpe and some Indigenous Australian leaders opposed the amendment for placating calls for more extensive reform, they remain a minority—according to the Uluru Statement from the Heart, 83 percent of Indigenous Australians support the Voice.

The major opposition to the proposal came from conservative parties that feared the Voice would become a “third wing of Parliament,” direct excessive funding toward Indigenous communities, and potentially embolden Indigenous Australians to declare independence. Essentially, their concerns boil down to a fear of Indigenous agency. Given that settler colonial societies like Australia obtained and continue to maintain power from the subjugation of Indigenous communities and the exploitation of their land, ending that violence threatens their power. The outcome of the referendum suggests that a majority of Australians sympathize with conservative fears, as the proposal was rejected by 60 percent of voters.

There is some evidence of Australians’ support for Indigenous empowerment. In 1993, after much deliberation, the Australian Parliament passed the Native Title Act, which recognized that Indigenous Australian land claims survived colonization and are legitimate. Although the act faced strong opposition, the High Court affirmed its validity in the years following its implementation, and in recent years has continued to rule in favor of Indigenous groups suing to protect their land. In 2016, a federal court granted local Indigenous groups $2.3 million in compensation for government infringement upon Native titles with highway development. When the case was appealed to the High Court, it maintained the groups’ right to collect damages, setting a multi-million dollar precedent. Just three weeks before the October referendum, the High Court ruled to stop an offshore drilling operation due to the risk it posed to nearby whale populations that hold an important role in Indigenous Australian cultures.

If these legislators and judges continue to recognize and uphold Indigenous rights statutorily, even at the potential expense of billions of dollars to the national economy, why do so many other Australians oppose constitutional recognition? The answer may lie in a lack of communal empathy and education on Indigenous Australian history.

On this front, Australia may have something to learn from New Zealand, whose Indigenous Maori community has fared better than Indigenous groups in Australia and the Americas. The Maori have always represented a much larger percentage of the national population compared to other settler nations. There is some power in numbers: Treaties dating back to 1840 protect Maori culture in New Zealand. Indigenous activists also worked with activist groups throughout the mid-20th century to codify certain legal protections for Maori people much earlier than in other nations. Recently, Maori groups called attention to a lack of “common understanding about New Zealand’s history” among citizens and the government. To remedy the issue, New Zealand created special Maori seats in Parliament, similar to the proposed Voice to Parliament in Australia.

The existence of settler colonial societies in and of themselves will always prevent true empowerment of Indigenous communities. But, there are degrees to this harm, as well as to the efficacy of solutions to it.

Centuries of settlers divided Australia into tracts of private property and banned Indigenous people from trespassing. As a result, Indigenous Australians are still more likely than their European-descended counterparts to live in rural areas, making them less visible to the vast majority of Australia’s population, who live in coastal cities. Even within urban areas, their presence is still minimal compared to the millions

of non-Indigenous residents; Indigenous people represent less than 4 percent of Australia’s population. These demographic hurdles have compounded upon the historic exclusion of Indigenous people from settler Australian society and restricted the ability to build community (and empathy).

In the absence of natural, community-formed empathy, Australia has also failed to instill learned empathy via a proper understanding of Indigenous Australian history and settler colonialism. Centuries of Indigenous exclusion from the historiography were known as the Great Australian Silence and only began to fade in the 1970s as people finally started to discuss Indigenous Australia. While secondary school history classes cover topics such as ancient history, colonization, and Indigenous resistance, these curricula often do not tell the full story. For example, textbooks finally describe how the Australian Gold Rush displaced Indigenous communities, but they still exclude Indigenous responses to that dispossession. And, in other areas like art history or 21st century Australia, Indigenous people are given cursory references in textbooks while white people dominate each and every chapter.

Since Indigenous resistance continues today, students should know about Indigenous life prior to colonization and amid persistent settler colonialism. A portrayal of Indigenous history as exclusively defined by violent subjugation is an injustice to the ways Indigenous people have survived—and thrived—before and during Australian settlement. The nuances of the sustained violence that continues in the present era and the long history of Indigenous Australians both need to be better taught to students.

There remain massive educational discrepancies between individual classrooms, as teachers without robust training end up with various degrees of knowledge and comfortability instructing, especially on Indigenous history. Australia’s education system is highly privatized, so hiring standards, curriculum content and rigor, and administrative oversight differ between institutions. In fact, UNICEF ranks Australia’s education system in the bottom third among highly developed nations.

So how can we better empower Indigenous communities in Australia? It begins with building empathy. The Indigenous Australian people,

“In the absence of natural, community-formed empathy, Australia has also failed to instill learned empathy via a proper understanding of Indigenous Australian history.”

cultures, and traditions that survive today need to be brought out of the shadows and celebrated in the settler society that is currently steeped in European cultures. An overhaul of the education system needs to transparently cover the precolonial history of Indigenous Australians, the true violence these communities have faced, and their resistance. Ending the Great Silence is an ongoing effort. Without a class dedicated to Indigenous history, some stories will be left out—and those that do get taught may only be partial accounts, poorly contextualized, and have their importance downplayed.

Proper understanding of Indigenous Australian struggles and agency should not be relegated to highly inaccessible legal spaces like the High Court; it should be a part of the Australian shared history. Only then will Indigenous Australians, and their past, truly be brought out of the shadows of settler colonialism and included within the notion of what it means to be Australian.

A Smoking

WHAT FIRE DEATHS REVEAL ABOUT ANTIBLACKNESS IN THE UNITED STATES

by Jodi Robinson ’26, a Public Health concentrator and Senior Staff Writer for BPR

illustration by Peishan Yu ’24, an Illustration major at RISD and Illustrator for BPR

On Sunday, January 9, 2022, a five-alarm fire in an apartment complex in the Fordham Heights neighborhood of the Bronx killed 17 people. Smoke rapidly filled the hallways and central stairwell of the Twin Parks North West tower in what was one of the deadliest fires in New York City history. A subsequent investigation revealed that the fire had been set off by a space heater in one of the building’s units—tenants had long complained to the building’s management about low temperatures, leading many to resort to unsafe heating options. On the day of the fire, numerous apartment and stairwell doors that were designed to automatically close had stayed open; the stairwells were narrow and lacked a ventilation system;

and the fire alarm system, although activated, was known to erroneously go off, causing some residents to “not take [it] seriously.” Both the New York City Council and New York State legislature ultimately passed new fire safety regulations following Twin Parks, but they came too late for the building’s residents.

The Twin Parks fire is not an isolated incident: Structural fires and heating complaints are disproportionately common in Black and Latino neighborhoods like Fordham Heights. Nearly all of the Twin Parks fire victims were Gambian immigrants, with the tower itself being an affordable housing complex. The connection between the fire and those it affected is not insignificant: Compared to the national average, Black people are twice as likely to die or become injured in residential fires. Even further, states where a large percentage of the population is Black— notably Mississippi, Louisiana, and the District of Columbia—record the largest differences between white and Black fire death rates.

Many large-scale fires are characterized as “accidental,” when in reality they are anything but. “Accidental” fire deaths are the downstream manifestation of the same systemic racism that has fueled direct acts of fire-related violence against Black communities. We must recognize that the destructive and fatal fires affecting Black Americans cannot be separated from the oppression, both social and governmental, that they have experienced for centuries.

Throughout history, fires have been used to target Black communities in violent demonstrations of white supremacy. Between May 31 and June 1, 1921, white mobs looted and burned Black businesses and residences in Greenwood, a wealthy, predominantly Black neighborhood in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in what has become known as the Tulsa Race Massacre. According to the Red Cross, around 1,256 houses were destroyed, along with churches, a hospital, a library, and other establishments. By the end of the riots, the white mobs had caused up to 300 deaths and razed 35 city blocks. News of the tragedy was intentionally suppressed in local media and police archives for decades.

During the civil rights movement, Black churches played a central role in the cultivation of cultural and political organizing and served as meeting places for Black activists. White supremacists often violently targeted these spaces, using fire bombs and arson to kill Black churchgoers and strip communities of valued safe havens. Infamously, the Ku Klux Klan bombed the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama in 1963, killing four Black girls. The government did not prosecute the first perpetrator until 1977, with two more prosecutions following in the 2000s. One survivor, Sarah Collins Rudolph, continues to demand compensation from the state of Alabama—to no avail.

In the decades since, fire has remained a highly visible display of power and social control. In 1985, the Philadelphia Police Department bombed a West Philadelphia rowhouse—killing 11 people and burning

Smoking Gun

“Black people are overrepresented in home fire deaths, making up 24 percent of deaths despite comprising 13 percent of the general population”

down 61 homes—in an effort to target MOVE, a radical Black separatist organization. In 2021, a Black firefighter sued the city of New York for wrongful suspension after he refused to use water hoses to “assist in controlling [Black Lives Matter] protesters.” The state’s role in these events, coupled with the simultaneous deprivation of other community resources (including slower 911 response times in low-income neighborhoods), is a direct reinforcement of Black people's positionality as second-class citizens.

In contrast, the Twin Parks fire deaths and other “accidental” fire-related fatalities more implicitly demonstrate the state’s continuing role in perpetuating Black oppression. As author Jesse Singer described in an interview with TIME, the term “accidental deaths” tends to focus on human error, thereby ignoring the larger systemic issues and racial disparities at play. Outdated building codes and fire safety rules are disproportionately found in Black neighborhoods and public housing. In discussions of fire-related tragedies, examining the broader circumstances—specifically questions of how the state and other regulatory bodies could have intervened—reveals how they often occur as a result of intentional neglect. For instance, in the case of the Twin Parks tower, experts have emphasized that routine building maintenance and enforcement of fire-safety codes could have prevented the deaths entirely.

Black people are overrepresented in home fire death statistics, making up 24 percent of deaths despite comprising 13 percent of the general population. This can be linked in part to more general issues of systemic poverty in Black neighborhoods. As one example, four days before the Twin Parks fire, 12 people were killed when a Philadelphia home burned down. Further investigations revealed that the city’s affordable housing crisis had confined 18 people to the overcrowded four-bedroom unit—a huge fire hazard.

Many fire-related deaths are preventable. Governmental and policy interventions must address more immediate problems like outdated building codes and lack of regulation—particularly pertaining to access to fire escapes and working sprinklers or fire alarms. However, fires need to be framed as more than just “accidental” in public discussion and perception. To label fires in the Black community as accidental without critically questioning the systemic factors at play absolves policymakers of any blame and shifts the burden of destruction to the actions of individuals.

Large-scale fires in Black communities—both of the past and present—should be framed in the context of Black oppression more broadly. Statistics show that Black neighborhoods disproportionately suffer from subpar sanitation services, poor water quality, and higher rates of noise pollution. It is not enough to simply acknowledge that tragedies like Twin Parks have occurred; the fact that access to and upkeep of public resources are generally worse in Black neighborhoods needs to be directly confronted. These fires have never been accidental.

Blank (Check)point

CONSTITUTION-FREE ZONES UNDERMINE DEMOCRACY

by Neve Diaz-Carr ’26, a Political Science concentrator and Senior Staff Writer for BPR

The Constitution is supposed to be the law of the land. But for tens of millions of people living within 100 miles of a border in areas dubbed “Constitution-free zones,” protection of the law comes with severe caveats. In these areas, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers are granted discretionary power to search cars, luggage, and personal property at all ports of entry, even if they do not reasonably suspect that a crime has been committed. If officers do have a reasonable suspicion, they also retain the right to seize and question individuals on their immigration status.

The legality of Constitution-free zones was codified by the Immigration and Nationality Act in 1953 and later upheld by the Supreme Court in 1973 under the reasoning of “national self-protection.” However, Constitution-free zones are an abject violation of Americans’ civil rights. The Supreme Court’s judgment to uphold these zones is an unjustified extension of the law enforcement powers granted to the executive branch. The establishment of Constitution-free zones and officers’ behaviors within them directly infringe upon some of our most basic liberties, and as a result, undermine the legitimacy of American democracy.

In the Supreme Court ruling Almeida-Sanchez v. United States, the Court ruled in favor of granting these discretionary powers to CBP cops for the “narrow purpose of enforcing immigration and customs laws, which entails ensuring that required duties are paid on imported goods and that harmful goods and people do not enter the country.” However, CBP’s authority is anything but narrow. In 2023, nearly two-thirds of Americans lived within Constitution-free zones. Any one of these individuals can be questioned at one of the CBP’s more than 110 highway checkpoints. A map by the libertarian Cato Institute attempts to record some of the checkpoints along the Southern border, but many checkpoints are hard to track because they are established temporarily and randomly to deftly “catch” people.

If CBP truly sought to protect national security, it would not focus its efforts on random checkpoints on roads and Greyhound buses. Only 2 percent of the CBP’s annual arrests of deportable noncitizens happen at these checkpoints, and since 2010, more legal residents have been detained by CBP officers at checkpoints than actual undocumented people. The widespread detainments of legal residents serve to undermine rather than reinforce national security.

The true threats to national security do not come from those who are detained. They arise when CBP officers directly target a specific population. Current Department of Justice and CBP guidelines allow agents to use race and ethnicity as a profiling method in the policing of immigrants. Studies show that Latino drivers are 26 times more likely to be stopped and questioned by CBP cops than their white counterparts. Latino drivers who are stopped are also 20 times more likely than white drivers to be subjected to a secondary inspection.

Numerous documented instances of police injustice in Constitutionfree zones characterize just how egregious these harms are. In 2017, a group of CBP officers boarded a Greyhound bus and only asked passengers of color for their identity documents. In another incident, CBP cops questioned a man’s immigration status because his shoes “looked suspicious, like those of someone who recently crossed the border.” In Florida, two videos of forceful removals of Black legal residents from Greyhound buses went viral, gaining a combined one billion views. One resident was an older Black woman born in Jamaica, who was en route to see her granddaughter in Orlando. The other was a Trinidadian man traveling to see his best friend. In addition to being documented Florida residents, neither individual was acting suspiciously, nor did they have any criminal history. Instead, the CBP’s cause for “reasonable suspicion” was that the two Floridians were people of color using an inexpensive

illustration by Elizabeth Long ’24, an Illustration major at RISD and Illustrator for BPR

“If we are to value actions that propel the ‘national self-interest’ of the United States, surely we must uphold the legal foundations of our democratic state”

mode of transportation in a country that has grown intensely hateful toward its immigrant population.

The Constitution enshrines a fundamental, inalienable right to equality. The Fourteenth Amendment explicitly states that the government must operate equally for all of its people, regardless of personal identity groups. Given that this amendment was passed out of the struggle to end slavery, it is important to recognize its unique intent to protect people of color from legal discrimination. Disproportionately targeting people of color and people with accents demonstrates a clear disregard for this tenet of democratic equality.

The Constitution also protects the values of privacy in addition to equality. The Fourth Amendment of the Constitution protects the rights of individuals against unreasonable searches and seizures. Likewise, the Fifth Amendment protects the rights of individuals from unreasonable persecution. Thus, the Constitution should be read to necessitate that all police officers–including CBP–acquire warrants to search one’s person and belongings. Moreover, it should also prohibit clearly unjustified detention without reasonable and voiced suspicion.

Under the protections of the Fourth, Fifth, and Fourteenth Amendments, it is unconstitutional for a CBP cop to search the cars of passersby, accuse people of being undocumented, or require verification of identification, especially when disproportionately targeting certain racial and ethnic groups while doing so. Yet, our Supreme Court does not see it that way. It permits breaches of the Constitution to occur under the guise of national security with frequency.

The Constitution and the protections it enshrines for the people are the most supreme and unimpeachable laws of the United States. CBP officers cannot rise above it. Fair and standard procedures were not outlined in the Constitution for entertainment or tradition, and they cannot meaningfully exist without continuous enforcement. If CBP abides by these measures, it can protect the sensitive relationship between the people and the state. However, when CBP officers denigrate the very laws they are charged with enforcing, they desecrate their position as law enforcement agents. If we are to value actions that propel the “national self-interest” of the United States, surely we must uphold the legal foundations of our democratic state—where everyone is treated equally and no one is unduly punished.

QUEER COUNTERCULTURES PERSEVERE IN THE FACE OF THE RUSSIAN SUPPRESSION

By Daphne Dluzniewski ’26, an International and Public Affairs concentrator and Staff Writer for BPR

illustrations by Hannah Rice ’24, an Illustration Major at RISD and Illustrator for BPR

Love in the Time of Putin

The period following the collapse of the Soviet Union charaded as an era of progress for LGBTQ+ individuals in Russia. In 1993, the government legalized homosexuality, and in 1997, it allowed people to change their gender on legal documents. As with many other facets of Russian society at this time, the country appeared to be moving in a liberal direction. Yet, Russia’s outward projection of a more open culture was only a political move intended to help it join the Council of Europe, which required “abolishing [its] anti-sodomy law.” Same-sex relations were still expected to remain unnoticeable and unspoken of, pushing queerness into the shadows of Russian society. However, the “don’t ask, don’t tell” sentiment of the post-Soviet era failed to stave off the formation of a unique queer Russian identity. In spite of persistent legal and political attacks, which have only worsened since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, community members have found ways to continue celebrating and expressing their queerness.

Putin’s rise in 2012 marked a new era of repression for the LGBTQ+ community. In 2013, the lower house of the Russian Federal Assembly, the State Duma, passed a bill that would impose fines on violators promoting “nontraditional” sexual relationships to those under the age of 18. The ban invited waves of homophobic attacks throughout the country, and the rates of violence against LGBTQ+ Russians doubled in the five years following its implementation. Additionally, since 2017, hundreds of gay men have been detained in the strictly conservative Muslim Republic of Chechnya in southeast Russia in what are described as “anti-gay purges.” Those held are reportedly “humiliated, starved, and tortured” in detention facilities before being returned to their families or, in some cases, forcibly disappeared.

The atmosphere of fear created by state repression has undeniably limited the LGBTQ+ community’s ability to thrive openly in society. But as the Kremlin’s restrictions on sexuality tightened throughout the 2010s, people living in more conservative, rural areas flocked to major cities where they could find acceptance. Putin’s attempts to suppress discussion about sexuality and gender expression thus facilitated a lively

underground culture by making Moscow and St. Petersburg crucial hubs for LGBTQ+ Russians to come together and embrace their identities.

The underground nightclubs and bars of the 2010s were especially important for a younger generation of LGBTQ+ Russians who grew up under the Kremlin’s anti-gay propaganda law. Each of these spaces contributed to a larger subculture that allowed queer youth to gain confidence in their identities. This culture was only able to survive because of the willingness of everyday Russians to push back against their government’s repressive hand. The simple act of expressing one’s identity became a means of preserving it: Gay nightclubs and bars existed as emblems of hope in the face of rising homophobic violence and unrelenting state oppression.

Partying in the shadows is anything but easy–nightclub and bar owners often struggle with the enormous responsibility of keeping community members safe. In 2012, a group of masked men broke into the 7FreeDays Club and physically assaulted guests and staff during a National Coming Out Day party. Then, in the months following the passing of the 2013 law, one of the most popular gay clubs in Moscow—Central Station—was the target of a barrage of violence including a shooting, a gas attack, and the dismantling of the club’s building.

Those who govern these spaces often take extreme precautions to protect partygoers: Nikita Egorov-Kirillov, for example, throws a club night called Popoff Kitchen but promotes the party under the guise of a culinary event. And Milo Chemodanov, a DJ who used to throw one of the most popular queer parties in Russia, “Cherti,” adapted his event to the post-2013 landscape by downsizing to a smaller venue, hiring security guards, and reverting to word-of-mouth rather than social media to spread information.

Since Russia invaded Ukraine, the landscape for LGBTQ+ people has become even more treacherous. In an article for The New York Times, reporters Valerie Hopkins and Valeriya Safronova explain that the Kremlin has used the LGBTQ+ community as a scapegoat during the ongoing conflict “to create an internal enemy to divert attention from battlefield setbacks and an unpopular draft of hundreds of thousands of soldiers.” In November 2022, nine months after the war’s outbreak, the State Duma expanded its prior “gay propaganda” bill to restrict any portrayal of homosexuality.

A month before the new prohibition was implemented, a Russian drag performer expressed to The New York Times the concern that a full ban on activities considered “gay propaganda” would force the queer community further underground until it became untraceable. To a certain extent, such fears have come to fruition. News coverage of queer spaces has been nearly nonexistent since 2022, and websites of bars and clubs

named in articles from the 2010s are no longer available. The Instagram of O-zine, a magazine founded in 2018 to amplify the voices and experiences of LGBTQ+ Russians, has been taken down, and the only relic left behind is a farewell letter that can no longer be accessed. Chemodanov decided to stop hosting “Cherti” and instead joined the ranks of LGBTQ+ Russians compelled to flee the country. A 2023 survey showed that “83 percent of LGBTQ+ respondents said Russian society has become more homophobic since the outbreak of the war.”

However, the LGBTQ+ community continues to persist in the face of intensifying government pressure. Popoff Kitchen’s doors are still open for LGBTQ+ youth looking for a place to freely express themselves. After all of the violence Central Station endured, it continues throwing events and openly promoting itself on social media. The resilience of the LGBTQ+ community in Russia defies the narrative presented by those abroad that queer people are singularly defined by the constant subjugation of the Kremlin. The Russian queer community, and dissenting Russians in general, must be recognized for their strength. Despite all the challenges they face, LGBTQ+ Russians have been able to create a thriving underground way of life, one that allows individuals to shine even in the shadows.

“The resilience of the LGBTQ+ community in Russia defies the narrative presented by those abroad that queer people are singularly defined by the constant subjugation of the Kremlin.”

Immaculate Citizenship School Kinshasa

Church-run schools threaten civic unity in the DRC

by Justin Meszler ’26, an International and Public Affairs concentrator and Senior Staff Writer for BPR

illustration by Yuan Jiang ’25, an Illustration and Printmaking major at RISD and Illustrator for BPR

Though Portuguese missionaries first established the Catholic Church in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) in 1491, it was only under Belgian colonial rule in the late 1880s that missionaries arrived en masse, founding schools and hospitals and converting Congolese citizens. Today, nearly 96 percent of the DRC’s population is Christian, and around half are Catholic. Unsurprisingly, the Catholic Church plays an enormous role in shaping the social and political conditions of the DRC. Particularly in the 21st century, following President Mobutu Sese Seko’s more than 30-year reign, the Congolese Catholic Church has accelerated its activism.

By monitoring elections, criticizing corruption, and mediating political conflicts, the Catholic Church provides invaluable support to the DRC as a third-party watchdog. For instance, in the DRC’s 2018 presidential election, the Church had over 40,000 observers monitoring polling places in an attempt to verify elections. In this case, the Church legitimated state authority and cultivated stability. However, in the education sphere, the Church is not merely a watchdog. Rather, by serving as an administrative body,

the Catholic Church functions as a quasi-government authority, impairing state strength in the process.

Strong, democratic states are imperative for long-term prosperity and stability. The Catholic Church’s noble administration of education has crowded out the state’s role in the space, weakening the country, deterring democratic maturation, and in some cases, actively harming citizens. The DRC would be stronger, more stable, and more unified had the Catholic Church prioritized supporting state-run public schools rather than extending its power and influence.

Today, the state is symbolically the central actor in public schooling. However, religious networks (predominantly Catholic ones) effectively manage 75 percent of public schools in the DRC. Consequently, unclear governance structures in the education sphere create a “negotiated nature of statehood” between the DRC government and religious institutions. For instance, in 2017, the DRC’s Ministry of Education relaunched the Provincial Committee of Education to deliver decisions on education strategy and governance. However, across provinces, the Committee has

proven unable to effectively exercise its power: Rather than submit to state authority, the Catholic Church leverages personal relationships with individual committee members to resolve issues around regulations and budgets. In doing so, the Church has blurred the lines of governance and decision-making.

Even more concerningly, the Catholic Church has demonstrated a willingness to openly defy state authority. In 2008, after the 2006 Congolese Constitution guaranteed free and compulsory education, the Urban Commission for Educational Services in Kinshasa declared a Catholic school fee illegal. Yet, this ruling was not effectively communicated or obeyed by anyone. Parents have continued financing around 80 percent of necessary educational costs.

Mobutu’s attempt to nationalize religious schools in 1974 also underscores the state’s weakness in the face of the Catholic Church. A totalitarian, kleptocratic ruler himself, Mobutu sought to nationalize Catholic schools in the DRC with an undeniably flawed plan: He attempted to replace religious symbols with himself as the Messiah, and he was partly motivated

to undertake this effort in order to quell student protests. While Mobutu’s motives were problematic, the failure of his attempt to increase state power over education is nonetheless telling. Facing an economic crisis, the DRC’s nationalized education system failed without religious networks’ financial and personnel support. In 1977, Mobutu reached an agreement with the Catholic Church for religious institutions to retake control of the country’s education system. While the state’s weakness and reliance on the Church were not the fault of religious networks, the DRC may have developed more responsibility over the education of its citizens had the Church worked to empower the government’s education system to operate independently.

One may argue that the inability of the state to implement a comprehensive education system necessitates the Catholic Church and other religious institutions to step in to fill in the gaps. In this view, Catholic schools educate youth who would otherwise be uneducated, so the present system is superior to nothing at all. But, schools governed by religious institutions are actively exploiting citizens through arbitrary and unregulated school fees. One survey found that in 2015, “20% of the fees raised at school level were transferred to a ‘solidarity fund’ in the general Church budget.” The misappropriation of funds for the enrichment of Church institutions rather than the betterment of schools directly harms families.

Even so, according to a 2021 UNESCO report, “Churches argue that if the State would properly fulfill its role, pay all teachers decently and increase the state allocation for [education offices] and schools, they would not have to raise school fees or escape state regulations.” However, religious schools impede the growth of state-run education by competing with public schools for students and teachers. While Catholic schools may provide valuable assistance historically and presently, their services are thus invariably flawed. Their consistent clash with state authority and misaligned interests with the government exhibit their damage to state legitimacy.

To build a stronger and more democratic state, a shift away from education administration by the Catholic Church is urgent and essential. In all sectors, but particularly in education, the Catholic Church should work toward a future where the state may govern independently of its assistance. For the nation to flourish, the Church must realign its priorities toward selfless support of the growth of public institutions rather than the maintenance of its own power.

“The DRC would be stronger, more stable, and more unified had the Catholic Church prioritized supporting state-run public schools rather than extending its power and influence.”

Interview by Maya Rackoff ’25

Illustration by Lucia Li ’24

Maya Rackoff: You speak and write extensively about the idea that we should advance beyond self-conceiving based on racial identity. On the one hand, it seems intuitively illogical to feel pride on the basis of attributes the individual has no control over. On the other hand, I think about my Jewish identity. I love being Jewish, and I do feel pride on the basis of my Jewishness. Is that a bad thing?

Kmele Foster: There is a very understandable inclination toward race pride amongst particular communities in the context of Blackness and Jewishness, for example. There is this history of suffering and narrative about a people collectively. But there is a really obvious reason why it doesn’t make a great deal of sense to invest the superficial characteristics with a sense of pride and esteem. The appropriate relationship to have to one’s racial identity is neutrality.

I prefer a framework for pride that has to do with things I’ve actually achieved and accomplished. It’s not a matter of heredity. It’s not a matter of biology. It’s a matter of actual, tangible action and active belief.

I think cultivating esteem on the sand of racial identity as an amelioration for past discrimination is a mistake. What they robbed you of was a sense of dignity that was actually rooted in your humanity. This notion of a racial identity was something that was contrived for the purposes of creating these delineations between humans and ascribing to them specific qualities and values. That’s erroneous. If we’re talking about what the world we want to live in ought to look like, is it one where we’re continuing to esteem the taxonomy of human races? Or is it one where we can

THE CASE FOR INDIVIDUALISM THE CASE FOR INDIVIDUALISM

An Interview with Kmele Foster

Kmele Foster is a media entrepreneur and political commentator. He co-founded TelcolQ and Freethink and currently co-hosts the Fifth Column Podcast . He also co-hosted a 2013–2015 Fox News Business Network Program, The Independents , which offered business and political commentary from a libertarian standpoint. Foster is a prominent critic of cancel culture and identity politics. He has written for various news outlets including The New York Times and Reason Magazine .

move beyond that and embrace a standard that says, “You have dignity, and you deserve respect on the basis of your being a fully human individual?” I just think the latter is obviously the place where we should want to go.

MR: What is the political significance of individual dignity?

KF: The sanitation workers who struck in Memphis in 1968 carried signs that said, “I am a man.” This is an assertion of dignity on the basis of their humanity. These signs harkened back to early abolitionist slogans. There was this seal that read, “Am I not a man and a brother?” This challenged anyone who believed in the slavocracy, who believed in the right to rob people of their dignity and their freedom, to answer, “Can’t you see that I am fully human in the same way that you are fully human, and I am entitled to all of the same things that you are?” The claim was, on that basis, we are the same.

This is a fundamentally different claim than “I deserve things because of my Blackness, and you are depriving me of them on account of my Blackness.” People can deprive you of things on the basis of your Blackness or your sexuality, but your assertion that you should have those things has merit only on the basis of the fact that you have human dignity.

MR: I want to hear your perspective on Black Lives Matter (BLM). Some people argue that you need to support the BLM organization in order to support the idea that black lives do matter. What do you think of that?

KF: I think that is circular nonsense. The idea

that my claims are so fundamentally true that if you disagree with them in any way and are unwilling to support them that you effectively are supporting the opposite of them is preposterous. This isn’t a binary position. More importantly, Black Lives Matter is not merely a slogan; it’s part of a political movement. There is an actual organization that has particular values, and one may object to any number of those values.

One of the organizers referred to themselves as a trained Marxist and said that they have issues with the nuclear family. If you object to Marxism or you think that the nuclear family is important—and I’m not even stating my opinions on these things—rejecting the movement and declining to endorse the slogan on that basis is certainly permissible. I think we have an obligation to think seriously about the philosophical and moral commitments that we’re making and to scrutinize the assertions of people who are publicly advocating for certain principles. To disagree forcefully and on principled grounds with some portion of a movement is the right of any person.

MR: Do you think the phrase “All Lives Matter” expresses the antithesis of “Black Lives Matter?”

KF: There is a narrow claim, Black Lives Matter, and there is a broader claim that subsumes the narrow claim rather than refuting it, which is All Lives Matter. If you reject the premise that all lives matter, you’re out of step with the norms of classical liberal, free society.

T(hird) P(arty) P(olitics)

Can Taiwan escape the shadow of Beijing?

by Elliot Smith ’26, an International and Public Affairs concentrator and Editor for BPR illustrations by Jessica Jiang ’25, an Illustration major at RISD and Illustrator for BPR

As Taiwan prepares to elect a new president in January 2024, former Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je has sent shockwaves through the Taiwanese political establishment by running as a thirdparty candidate under the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP). Since announcing his candidacy, Ko has emerged as a serious challenger to Lai Ching-te of the incumbent Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and Hou Yu-ih of the Kuomintang (KMT). In contrast to both the DPP, which supports Taiwanese independence, and the KMT, which maintains close ties with the government of mainland China, the TPP has promised a practical approach that focuses on domestic issues and seeks to maintain a “dynamic equilibrium” in foreign policy.

The TPP’s platform has resonated with younger voters and contributed to growing demands for alternatives to the two-party system. As the TPP argues, a new third party could “avert the one-party-domination and winnertakes-all style of democratic autocracy in order to further deepen democratization in Taiwan.” However, the TPP has struggled to escape the two-party binary and briefly attempted to create a joint ticket with the KMT. The TPP’s struggles illustrate how the looming risk of intervention from the mainland continues to impact Taiwanese politics, limiting the ability of a third party to bring about serious political reforms.

For Taiwan, democracy has been hardfought. After decades of Japanese colonial occupation, the KMT took power in 1945. On February 28, 1947, security forces killed an estimated 28,000 protesters for challenging the government’s legitimacy. Two years later, the island began a 38-year period of martial law under the nationalist government led by Chiang Kai-shek. This era—now commonly referred to as

the “White Terror”—was characterized by brutal repression of political activists and democracy advocates as the government used secret police to arrest, torture, and kill those suspected of being communists or opposing the nationalist government.

In the decades since the end of the White Terror, Taiwan has made remarkable progress to become one of the world’s youngest democracies. It elected its first democratically chosen president in 1996 and its first president from the opposition party—the DPP—in 2000, only four years later. With power regularly shifting between the DPP and the KMT, Taiwan now has an open and vibrant democracy. Politicians from both parties have acknowledged difficult events in the country’s history like February 28, and a new generation of activists has been able to influence the government through peaceful protest and lobbying.

The TPP believes this progress is under threat by political consolidation under the DPP. Plagued by allegations of sexual misconduct, modest levels of economic growth, and an unpopular decision to increase military conscription, the DPP, according to the TPP, has failed to enact needed reforms while maintaining electoral dominance. The TPP has promised to offer “pragmatic solutions,” focusing on “social security, economic prosperity, environmental sustainability, housing justice, and fiscal discipline.” Since many voters refuse to vote for the China-friendly KMT, a third party could inject competitiveness into debates about domestic politics, providing antiKMT voters with a genuine democratic choice.

Yet today, the TPP fails to realize that the primary threat to Taiwanese democracy is not the two-party system but the People’s Republic of China. Many in Taiwan rightly fear that

Taiwan’s democracy will falter in the face of either Chinese coercion or a full-scale invasion, particularly with the recent erosion of civil rights in Hong Kong. Chinese President Xi Jinping has said that “resolving the Taiwan question and realizing China’s complete reunification” is “an unshakable commitment of the Communist Party of China,” which will “take resolute action to utterly defeat any attempt toward Taiwan independence.”

The TPP has tried to stake out a middle ground in relations with China—sending representatives to both mainland China and the United States—but its (failed) attempt to work with the KMT to create an electoral coalition capable of defeating the DPP casts serious doubts on the TPP’s neutrality. Even as tensions with China have increased, voters in Taiwan have shown a consistent desire to resist becoming too close to Beijing. For example, during Taiwan’s Sunflower Movement in 2016, activists occupied the national legislature for three weeks to protest the KMT government’s attempt to increase trade with Beijing. The subsequent election of President Tsai Ing-wen and the DPP reflects growing opposition to reunification and increased support for cooperation with the United States.

“Since many voters refuse to vote for the China-friendly KMT, a third party could inject competitiveness into debates about domestic politics, providing anti-KMT voters with a genuine democratic choice.”

The DPP maintains strong levels of support by promising to preserve Taiwan’s ability to maintain an independent electoral political system in the first place. While the TPP has made a compelling case to reorient Taiwanese politics around domestic issues, it may fall flat as a party if it does not couple its platform with serious attempts to safeguard Taiwan’s political system from foreign interference. Voters may now have three serious parties to choose from, but the threat of Chinese intervention ensures that the presidential race will continue to focus heavily on foreign policy considerations.

Afghanistan Makes a Splash

When the Taliban regained control of Afghanistan in 2021, Central Asian governments continued with business as usual. After 20 years of an internationally backed government in Afghanistan, the five Central Asian nations (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, and Tajikistan) have become accustomed to shared trade and infrastructure and sought to maintain this regional security following the Taliban’s return to power. This approach has benefited both these states and the Taliban, with Central Asian nations meeting regional security and trade goals while Afghanistan receives electricity, food, and humanitarian aid. However, this stability is threatened by an issue that has plagued Central Asia for decades: water.

In March 2022, the Taliban-led government began digging the Qosh Tepa canal, a proposed 285-kilometer canal intended to irrigate 550,000 hectares of agricultural fields in northern Afghanistan. While this waterway would help alleviate Afghanistan’s chronic food insecurity, its construction could pose both internal issues for Afghanistan and external economic, political, and environmental issues for its northern neighbors, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan.

Central Asia has a long history of water disputes and concerns. Spurred on by dreams of collectivization and large-scale socialist industrial undertakings, the Soviet government set out on an ambitious project in 1959 to turn Central Asia into its primary cotton supplier. In order to grow this water-intensive crop in the arid Central Asian steppe, the Soviet government irrigated the region through canals and dams stemming from the Aral Sea and the two major rivers that

Water crises threaten Central Asian security—and there’s no simple fix

by Nathan Haronian ’25, an Applied Math and International and Public Affairs concentrator and Staff Writer for BPR

illustration by Ayca Tuzer ’24, an Illustration major at RISD and Illustrator for BPR

flowed into it. The project was unsustainable and inefficient: Significant amounts of water leaked or overflowed, with the large Karakum canal in Turkmenistan reportedly wasting 30 to 70 percent of its water. As a result, the Aral Sea, which was once the world’s fourth-largest lake, shrank by 60 percent from 1960 to 1998. By the 2010s, the sea had almost completely disappeared.

While the Soviet project ultimately did help create a wildly successful cotton industry, it set a precedent for irresponsible water usage practices in the region. Without the Aral Sea, the five Central Asian countries were left to rely on water from the Amu Darya and Syr Darya rivers.

When the Soviet Union collapsed, ownership over what was once shared water infrastructure became murky and necessitated collaborative decision-making, as each state’s water usage decisions affected the others.

The water situation today is dire. The governments of Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan have all publicly commented on their own water crises, attributing low water levels and mass water waste to regional mismanagement and climate change. These tensions have already caused security issues in the region. Disputes over a water supply station in Tajik-Kyrgyz resulted in border skirmishes

“Critically, the water from the Amu Darya supplies Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan with 80 percent of their water resources, the majority of which go toward irrigation.”

responsible for at least 100 deaths in 2021 and 2022. In May 2023, Iranian and Afghan border guards clashed over rights to the Helmand River, leaving three dead.

Now, with the return of the Taliban, Central Asia is facing yet another water-related conflict as Afghanistan digs the Qosh Tepa canal. The canal is intended to draw water from the Amu Darya River, which flows along Afghanistan’s northern border with Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan. The canal is projected to divert 10 billion cubic meters of water from the already waning Amu Darya each year. Critically, the water from the Amu Darya supplies Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan with 80 percent of their water resources, the majority of which go toward irrigation.

The economic effects of the diversion will be felt most strongly in Uzbekistan, where cotton production makes up 17 percent of national GDP and 40 percent of jobs. It would also disproportionately affect the southern regions of Bukhara, Khorzem, and Karakalpakstan, risking intensified conflict in an area that already experienced violent unrest in July of last year. In Turkmenistan, the population depends on the Karakum Canal (and therefore the Amu Darya River) for drinking water in its particularly arid environment. The Amu Darya, whose water levels have decreased by one-third in some areas of Turkmenistan, also feeds a water-intensive agricultural sector. Agriculture (mostly cotton) accounts for 11 percent of Turkmenistan’s GDP and uses a whopping 91 percent of the country’s water resources. Even experts in Kazakhstan (which does not border Afghanistan or the Amu Darya River) are concerned about the construction of Qosh Tepa, as it would result in more water being drawn from the Syr Darya, the other major river in Central Asia that supplies Kazakhstan with the majority of its water.

The proposed Qosh Tepa canal’s impact in Afghanistan has also been debated. While it is projected to help the 15 million Afghans facing chronic food insecurity and create an estimated 250,000 jobs, the canal’s construction will most likely have unintended environmental consequences. So far, Qosh Tepa’s first 108 kilometers lack reinforcement in their banks and bottom, meaning the canal will likely waste a large proportion of its water. Satellite imagery of a Qosh Tepa diversion dam has already shown signs of overflow and erosion. There is also the question of funding, as billions of dollars worth of funds in Afghanistan’s central bank were frozen after the Taliban returned to power. For a project that will cost somewhere around $700 million, a shortage of cash could seriously impact construction quality.

Under international law, Afghanistan does have the right to claim Amu Darya’s water.

“Afghanistan risks isolation from critical allies and trade partners if it oversteps with the construction of Qosh Tepa, but it also cannot sustainably continue relying on external aid to feed its starving populace.”

However, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, and Tajikistan allocated the canal’s water among themselves in the Almaty Agreement in 1992, taking up old Soviet quotas. They continue to operate accordingly. Due to the Afghan War and Afghanistan’s lack of Soviet-era ties to Central Asia, Afghanistan was excluded from the Almaty Agreement under the assumption that it would use little of the Amu Darya’s water.

As the construction of the Qosh Tepa Canal marches on, Afghanistan and Central Asia face a major diplomatic test. Although the Taliban is not exactly used to diplomatic solutions, both it and the governments of Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan have expressed a desire to solve this issue amicably. In March 2023, an Uzbek delegation visited Afghanistan to discuss improved cooperation across a variety of issues. No resolution was officially reached, with the Taliban simply claiming that “Uzbekistan is ready to cooperate with the Islamic Emirate in completing the Qosh Tepa Canal project.” The Uzbek Ministry of Foreign Affairs was even less

committal, releasing a statement on its website that did not even mention Qosh Tepa, only stating that “special attention” had been paid to “cooperation in the water and energy sectors.” While this lack of resolution is discouraging, another Uzbek delegation is expected to continue negotiations with the Taliban before the end of 2023. Even the President of Uzbekistan, Shavkat Mirziyoev, mentioned Qosh Tepa in a September 2023 presidential address, asserting that it is “necessary to conduct practical talks on the construction of a new canal in the Amu Darya basin.”

Still, it is not clear whether diplomatic efforts will be able to cool the tensions brewing in the region, with some Afghan leaders alluding to the possibility of a military confrontation. Afghan news outlet Tolonews quoted Defense Minister Mawlawi Mohammad Yaqoob Mujahid as saying, “All of us, especially the national and Islamic armies of the Defense Ministry, are behind the implementation of such projects, and they will support it with all their power.” Sirajuddin Haqqani, the current Minister of Interior Affairs,

was cited saying that Afghans are ready to “defend their rights.”

Both the Central Asian countries and Afghanistan are faced with a difficult choice. Afghanistan risks isolation from critical allies and trade partners if it oversteps with the construction of Qosh Tepa, but it also cannot sustainably continue relying on external aid to feed its starving populace. Central Asian countries, particularly Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, risk the loss of their lucrative cotton industries, which would cause high levels of unemployment and potentially country-wide destabilization. The alternative, however, is stopping the construction of Qosh Tepa through negotiation with a notoriously stubborn southern neighbor, or, if that fails, via military engagement, which could lead to even greater regional instability. As climate change looms large and a history of water mismanagement catches up with the region, the construction of the Qosh Tepa Canal will force governments to create new legal frameworks that bring Afghanistan into the fold or risk regional unrest.

Interview by Avital Strauss ’27

Illustration by Lucia Li ’24

Avital Strauss: Now that Roe v. Wade has been overturned, what are the resources being funneled into the protection of reproductive rights? What are the biggest priorities going forward?

Andrea Friedman: Increasing access to abortion and fighting for reproductive rights requires a multi-pronged approach. This starts with helping people from restricted states get to safe care, which often requires overcoming barriers to travel. Abortion funds exist to provide this support by financially assisting with travel.

Another priority is sharing information about self-managed care. Many people don’t realize that you can take pills to end your pregnancy. They are safe and effective, having a better safety profile than Tylenol or Aspirin. They are heavily restricted only because abortion has been politicized. Now, doctors are mailing these pills across state lines under a new type of protection called shield laws.

Shifting the political environment to win back our rights is hugely important. More threats to reproductive healthcare are coming, and we need people organizing and voting to prevent these laws from being enacted.

AS: What are the biggest dangers or traps being faced in this fight?

AF: Underestimating what the anti-abortion movement is all about is dangerous. Roe was built on a long line of cases around what privacy means in the Constitution. Now, there’s a whole series of rights that we’ve come to rely on that are at risk. The anti-choice movement is already coming for contraception and LGBTQ+ rights.

ENTROPY IN A POST ROE WORLD ENTROPY IN A POST ROE WORLD

An Interview with Andrea Friedman

Andrea Friedman is a nationally recognized leader in reproductive rights. She manages a high-level team working to change the narrative on abortion and is a leading thinker and strategist in the field. She previously served as Director of Reproductive Health at the National Partnership for Women & Families. She was also a Foreign Policy Advisor to the late Senator Frank R. Lautenberg (D-NJ). Additionally, she has worked internationally as a human rights lawyer, serving as Vice President of the Global Justice Center. She began her career at the Women and Public Policy Program at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. She has a JD from Harvard Law School and a BA summa cum laude from Tufts University. She is currently on the Board of Directors of Personal PAC, Project 50, and the Midwest Access Project.

Additionally, these anti-abortion advocates aren’t satisfied with restricting abortion on a state-by-state basis: They want a national ban. Even more, overturning Roe was only a step on the way to their goal. Their goal is for the Supreme Court to reinterpret the Constitution to find that the word “person” applies to fetuses so that the same rights we have as people are given to fetuses.

AS: What groups are adversely affected by the reproductive healthcare restrictions, and how can we reduce disparities in accessing care?

AF: The people who are most impacted by these bans are people living on low incomes, disproportionately people of color. Because of healthcare disparities, these communities are less likely to access comprehensive healthcare to begin with and have higher rates of needing abortion access.

We can start to advocate for equal access by getting rid of the Hyde Amendment, which blocks the use of federal funds to pay for an abortion. Even in those “safer” states, we must ensure everyone can access reproductive healthcare, regardless of their finances, what they look like, and where they live.

AS: How will laws restricting reproductive healthcare affect the training of OB/GYNs and accessibility of OB/GYN care?

AF: Abortion bans mean doctors cannot provide their patients with evidence-based care, and these bans are driving providers out of restricted states. Medical students now only want to work in states where they can practice abortion care,

which is required to learn to be an OB/GYN. OB/ GYNs also don’t want to work at Catholic hospitals that follow religious directives, which include not providing abortion care and other forms of reproductive care like sterilization. This is causing dangerous OB/GYN and maternity care deserts because nobody wants to practice care when they can’t provide the best possible care to their patients.

AS: What can we, as students, do? What should we be advocating for on campus?

AF: Students can have a tremendous impact by talking about reproductive healthcare issues, spreading information, sharing stories, and supporting and uplifting others. A lot of campus activism centers around access. Students need to ask if their campus healthcare centers currently offer medication abortions. Students can advocate for emergency contraception vending machines in campus centers. Likewise, students should consider healthcare coverage policies. Is abortion covered under university healthcare plans? Does the university support travel to access reproductive healthcare? Asking these questions helps promote a campus environment that supports reproductive healthcare needs. Students can also mobilize the campus to vote to ensure that the laws to which their campus is bound uphold everyone’s healthcare needs.

White Gold, Red Flags

Chinese ownership of Zimbabwe’s lithium and the dire need for community input

by Annabel Williams ’26, an International and Public Affairs concentrator and a Senior Staff Writer for BPR

illustrations by Jason Aragon ’24, an Illustration major at RISD and Art Director for BPR

Lithium, sometimes referred to as “white gold,” is a necessary component of electric vehicle batteries and solar panels. Over the past three years, the clean energy transition has caused global demand for lithium to skyrocket. The metal is abundant in a handful of African nations, but foreign-backed companies still dominate mining. To reap the benefits of the burgeoning energy transition, resource-rich countries must facilitate non-exploitative mining models and prioritize local input.

The case of Zimbabwe reveals the relationship between a state, foreign companies, and resource extraction. Zimbabwe has the potential to meet 20 percent of the global demand for lithium. As of 2021, the mining sector accounts

for 60 percent of Zimbabwe’s total exports and 11 percent of the nation’s GDP. Lithium mining offers immense opportunities to lift rural communities out of poverty. Yet, nearly all of the nation’s largest lithium mines are owned and operated by Chinese companies that, along with a small group of Zimbabwe’s political elite, retain most of the profits. This model of exploitation evokes a long history of resource extraction yielding devastation rather than economic advantages for communities on the African continent.

According to Tom Burgis, author of The Looting Machine, the key actors in mineral extraction may be different in postcolonial Africa, but the exploitative nature of foreign mine ownership persists. Gold mining was the impetus for the British colonization of Zimbabwe in 1898. China has now been involved in Zimbabwean mining operations for nearly 60 years. Between 2005 and 2020, Chinese companies generated an astonishing $10.45 billion in investments and contracts in Zimbabwe. More broadly, China controls half of the world’s lithium mining capacity, making it a prominent actor in transnational resource extraction.

China’s dominance is devastating local economies and denying the country economic opportunity. First, new mines displace surrounding communities. Chinese companies have offered to compensate locals by buying land from them directly. However, forcible removal and land-grabbing are prevalent in Zimbabwe. Compensated or not, relocation uproots communities, removes people from ancestral lands, and prevents individuals from mining surface-level minerals on their own land.

Second, Chinese mining companies, armed with substantial resources, crowd out local mining businesses and offer workers scant benefits and protections. These companies own the largest mines in the nation, exerting decisive control over lithium extraction and exportation. Director of the Centre for Natural Research Governance Farai Maguwu notes, “When we invest with [the] Chinese, and let them come in and do what Zimbabweans are capable of doing, we are building China, not Zimbabwe.” Further, Zimbabweans working in Chinese-owned mines have reported poor working conditions, low wages, and a lack of protective gear.

Third, Zimbabwe’s government openly displays a preference for “the Chinese over its own citizens,” according to Maguwu. Artisanal mining—small-scale, surface-level mining—directly supports the livelihoods of millions of people across Africa. Yet, the Zimbabwean government, after losing an estimated $1.8 billion in revenues from lithium smuggled by artisanal miners, imposed a ban on the export of raw lithium in 2020. Large mines that can process the metal on-site or have the capacity to build processing facilities were largely unharmed.

For Zimbabweans to gain from the country’s abundant valuable natural resources, local communities need to be consulted, and foreign companies should be held accountable.

A farmer in a small Zimbabwean town east of Harare, Sagacious Dangaranga, suggests manufacturing final products in Zimbabwe, which would create more local jobs. Zimbabwe “could have gained as a nation” if those with power had meaningfully consulted villagers like Dangaranga—companies might have realized value-add strategies, collective bargaining, and

better environmental agreements. But private multinational companies are not typically driven by a desire to do the right thing.

The potential loss of profits from community dissent is a larger concern. According to journalist Renard Sexton, China’s overseas mining endeavors alone have catalyzed social conflicts in over 50 developing countries. He calls it the “local resource curse” where exploitative mining can lead to social upheaval, undermining economic benefits gained from the sector.

In Zimbabwe, economic damages from outbursts of violence attributed to artisanal miners could motivate companies to work with host communities and consider local interests. Sexton identifies local resource governance— proactively amplifying community voices—as one of the few effective mechanisms to reduce conflict.

However, the risk of violence-related damages is simply not a strong enough motivator for transnational companies to suddenly switch course. In this effort, governments play a pivotal role in promoting citizen’s interests and requiring best practices. But in Zimbabwe, the government actively takes part in corrupt mining

“Third, Zimbabwe’s government openly displays a preference for “the Chinese over its own citizens,” according to Maguwu. Artisanal mining—small-scale, surface-level mining—directly supports the livelihoods of millions of people across Africa.”

models. The state police force helps suppress violence in the gold mining industry and has been accused of arresting artisanal miners. As Maguwu points out, Zimbabwe’s government, rife with corruption, has “militarize[d]” mining. On top of the criticism it has drawn for corrupt practices, Zimbabwe has been presented with several policy options to reform its mining sector and distribute profits more equitably. It has been advised to fully legalize artisanal mining,

introduce tariffs on metal exports, and construct more lithium-battery facilities in-country.

In response to the West’s tendency to lecture African rulers on addressing corruption and retaining wealth from extractive industries, Burgis says “put your own house in order.” Host nation governments alone are not responsible for corruption and harm caused by foreign-owned mining companies.

While there are ongoing efforts in the international community to crack down on transnational mining companies (the UN Human Rights Council will likely pass a binding treaty on business and human rights), the culture also needs to change. Reducing state corruption and strengthening international regulations are essential to holding foreign companies to a higher standard, but the underlying issue is a long-continued culture of exploitation. Industry leaders and politicians in affluent nations must move beyond the neocolonialist treatment of natural resource-abundant countries. As has been true in Zimbabwe, the continued colonial mindset leads to the devastation of livelihoods in host communities. The clean energy transition is an opportunity to account for the past hundred years of unequal benefits from natural resources. Yet, a just transition requires industries paramount in any level of the energy transition to stop replicating outdated, corrupt models. Reducing harm and increasing benefits for nations like Zimbabwe that are rich in transition minerals require effective local engagement. There must be better national and international accountability and enforcement systems to hold private companies accountable to listen to local needs. Above all, countries investing in foreign mining need to move beyond antiquated neo-colonial structures of resource extraction to facilitate an equitable energy transition.

EYES WIDE SHUT

LGBTQ+? Banned. Resembles a national leader? Banned. Endorses civil disobedience? Banned.

With the rising popularity of streaming services and the rapid growth of the film industry, Chinese censors are busy as bees. Thanks to their tireless service, Western movies are harshly edited, released with alternative endings, or forbidden from being screened altogether—all to preserve traditional values and cultural integrity as defined by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). With China on its way to becoming the largest viewership market for film companies, Hollywood has quickly succumbed to the tide of authoritarian power and become complicit in ethnic cleansing in the process. Desiring to have their cake and eat it too, Western companies are embracing self-censorship and even allowing China to take the wheel in movie production.

The CCP sees some values propagated by movies imported from the West as misaligned with its ideology, which supposedly guides the nation toward “Making China Great Again.”

As such, on September 8, 2023, the Central Propaganda Department, which manages the China Film Administration (CFA) and is tasked with reviewing and approving the suitability of content for Chinese citizens, released the following statement: “The study and implementation of Xi Jinping's Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era should be regarded as the primary political task, continue to consolidate the results of thematic education, strive to build a solid ideological foundation, and seize greater achievements.” In the modern age of globalization, the battle for land and resources has been replaced by one for the hearts and minds of citizens with the film industry becoming one of the greatest weapons of all.

How the Chinese Communist Party legitimizes its approach to the censorship of Western movies—and how the West doesn’t mind

by Dasha Dmitrieva ’27, a Political Science and Psychology concentrator and Staff Writer for BPR

illustration by Eliza Goodwin ’25, an Illustration major at RISD and Illustrator for BPR

Chinese censorship of Western-imported movies facilitates a policy of cultural isolation, preserving the traditional values and ideological views of the People’s Republic from the all-sweeping tide of Western liberal individualism. This strategy influences the collective subconscious of media consumers by enforcing narratives of status quo conformity—a defining characteristic of the collectivist sentiments of “Socialism with Chinese Characteristics.”

Plotlines are mercilessly twisted to fit the ideological framework of the CCP. Censorship shuts out difficult conversations related to mistreated minorities and taboo topics, as demonstrated by the state’s unambiguous anti-LGBTQ+ policy. The censors’ regulations have ranged from cutting out minor plotlines, like Ross’s lesbian ex-wife in the show Friends, to refusing to screen global hits like Call Me By Your Name in film festivals.

In addition to prohibiting minority representation, the CCP also censors depictions of resistance. Hence, a protagonist cannot be portrayed

as both a criminal and a person who has the moral upper hand—and God forbid someone on the screen resists a totalitarian regime and receives praise for it. “These stunts are performed by professionals,” Chinese authorities emphasize—don’t try this at home, and certainly don’t criticize the actions of your government or law enforcement. It should be emphasized that this article is not necessarily pointing any fingers. After all, it’s just discussing fiction and abstract ideas—who could those possibly harm? Certainly not an insecure authoritarian government.

Chinese big screens could not bear the image of Fight Club’s protagonist blowing up skyscrapers at the end of the movie, instead electing to cut the movie early and display a black screen explaining that police successfully foiled the plot and imprisoned the “terrorists.” Chinese censors also altered Minions: The Rise of Gru, eliminating the protagonist’s “ride off into the sunset” to lead a criminal life. Protestors criticizing the corrupt and oppressive fictional government of Gotham

in Joker were similarly too sensitive an image for Chinese censors to permit. Life imitates art, and China would very much not like the political life of Chinese citizens to imitate narratives enforced by the West. Ironically, the CCP’s attempts to vilify nonconformity and promote an obedient Confucian ideology of “knowing thy place” in the hierarchy of political power has led to outbursts of dissent. For example, after facing backlash from the public, the ending of Fight Club restored.

Despite international outcry in response to certain cases of censorship, the Western movie industry, at least on the global level, condones Chinese censorship and even engages in self-censorship to appeal to China’s market and maximize profit. James Tager, author of the report “Made in Hollywood, Censored by Beijing,” describes the growing Chinese influence in the global film industry and notes, “Our biggest concern is that Hollywood is increasingly normalizing pre-emptive self-censorship in anticipation of what the Beijing censor is looking for.”

While some may argue that whitewashing a Tibetan Marvel character or photoshopping Star Wars posters to remove Black characters are politically insignificant marketing strate gies, some changes actually reflect a deliberate blindness to atrocities. In the end credits of Disney’s live-action remake of Mulan ple, the corporation thanks several Chinese state institutions located in Xinjiang province, an area of China widely associated with what has been called the modern-day genocide of Uyghur Muslims. As noted by the Harvard International Review (HIR), “locations used for Mulan’s shooting are believed to host modern-day concentration camps.” In another example of Disney bowing to censors in Beijing, an episode of The Simpsons was removed from Disney+ in Hong Kong due to a mention of the Tiananmen Square massacre. Choosing profit over history, Disney willingly contributes to the CCP’s attempts to rewrite the past and reshape the present.

In its report, HIR asserts that in an attempt to make its products more “CCP-friendly,” the global film industry actively engages in “self-censoring plots, characters, and dialogues.” Unsurprisingly, this trend has already sparked dissatisfaction in other countries displeased with Chinese domination in film censorship.

For instance, Vietnam recently banned Barbie due to a childlike drawing of a world map—one depicting disputed territories in the South China Sea as belonging to China—in one of the scenes’ backgrounds. Vietnam claimed that the depiction was an affront to its sovereignty, echoing

“Choosing profit over history, Disney willingly contributes to the CCP’s attempts to rewrite the past and reshape the present.”

some of the language of Chinese censorship and symbolizing a new global movement to challenge China’s dominance over the international movie sector. Resistance has even sprouted within the United States, with legislators displaying a willingness to defend American cultural sovereignty at the expense of US corporations’ foreign profits. Following this movement, a law introduced in December 2022 forbids movies seeking federal defense funding from altering their narratives to appeal to Chinese authorities or even seeking “pre-approval of the content” from the CCP.

But with the success of such initiatives still in question, one can only watch as Hollywood becomes a puppet theater where the CCP pulls the strings for its political benefit. Worryingly, the big screen appears increasingly likely to depict the wonders of conformity, collectivism, and authoritarianism. While the plasticity and machinery of Hollywood have never been in question, an invisible “Made in China” stamp imprinted on every major blockbuster signifies an end to the fragile freedom of expression once present in the movie industry.