COLUMBIA POLITICAL REVIEW VOLUME XIX, NO. 4 WINTER 2020
INSIDE: AN INTERVIEW WITH UNITED NATIONS SECRETARY-GENERAL ANTÓNIO GUTERRES
EDITOR’S NOTE
COLUMBIA POLITICAL REVIEW The Columbia Political Review is a multi-partisan undergraduate-run publication at Columbia University. The magazine hosts writers and accepts pitches from all over the ideological spectrum; our mission is to provide an open forum for long-form political thought on campus. We cover both international and domestic issues.
EDITORIAL BOARD EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Alex Siegal PUBLISHER Maria Castillo MANAGING EDITORS Olivia Choi Rachel Barkin Ramsay Eyre Sophia Houdaigui CHIEF OF STAFF Sarah DeSouza GRAPHICS EDITOR Peyton Ayers LAYOUT EDITOR Helen Sayegh PUBLICITY EDITOR Eleanor Yeo
STAFF SENIOR EDITORS Henry Feldman Raya Tarawneh Janine Nassar Heather Loepere Katherine Malus Kaili Meier Aditya Sharma Aja Johnson Heather Loepere Annabel Kelly Hannah Wyatt Sarah Howard Oliver Niu Timothy Kinammon Daniel Kang John David Cobb Chloe Lowell Zachary Becker JUNIOR EDITORS Ellie Gaughan Emily Ringel Charles Wallace Adam Kluge Cameron Adkins Caroline Mullooly Carina Layfield Jasmin Butler
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Roshan Setlur Serena White Olivia Hussey Samuel Braun Ryan Safiry Eli Baucom-Hays Sarah Wang Jeffrey Xiong James Hu Jaime Gomez-Sotomayor Natalie Goldberg Tatiana Gnuva Haley Chung Renuka Balakrishnan Deepa Irakam Aili Hou Robert Gao Roopa Irakam Elina Arbo ARTISTS Julia Ulziisaikhan Brynn Hansen Margadbileg Bold Christina Su Sydney Lee LAYOUT Blake Jones Elijah Knodell COVER ART BY: Christina Su
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his is the conclusion of our semester, the conclusion of a year marked by unprecedented upheaval, and the conclusion of my term as Editor-in-Chief. I always tell people that this magazine is a special place on campus; our students represent a rich array of experiences and disciplines, and our collaborative process is uniquely effective at bringing them together. There was no exception to that rule despite the challenges posed by this pandemic, and I am very proud of their resilience—not to mention its results. CPR’s article output has doubled, our traffic has more than doubled, and we now regularly average around one thousand weekly views for the first time in our history. We have launched a podcast, interviewed world leaders, and renovated our branding and print magazine. Our writers have put together similarly exceptional work for this print issue, as well. Jake Tibbetts explores the dissonance between 2020’s ballot initiatives and its partisan contests; Olivia Deming tackles the failure of GDP as a metric; Colby King deconstructs and disproves oversimplified narratives about the South; Katerina Kaganovich, Virginia Lo, and Brian Perlstein discuss the future of our judiciary; Leena Yumeen indicts neo-colonial exploitation in Sierra Leone; Bernadette Gostelow and Kaitlyn Saldanha break down unrest in Thailand and Indonesia; and Aditya Sharma shares an exclusive CPR interview with UN Secretary-General António Guterres, a huge coup for us. I regularly reference the promising futures I’m sure the members of our staff will have. This time, in the spirit of the season, I thought I would be more direct and write up a Christmas list for you future policymakers. Implement independent districting and ranked-choice voting, starting with localities and party primaries. Reauthorize the Voting Rights Act. Use the EAC to expand the voter registration cross-checker ERIC. Escalate pattern-or-practice investigations, and pass both HR 40 and the Justice In Policing Act. Abolish the filibuster. Follow Professor Stiglitz’s advice to popularize a National Well-Being Dashboard; these actions will enable immigration reform, reparations, and a strong climate response. Finally, with the end of the nineteenth Editorial Board, CPR enters its twentieth year. I am pleased to report that Olivia Choi will be succeeding me as Editor-in-Chief. This magazine has evolved a great deal over the past twenty years; I’m glad to have had its community shape me as well. My successor, in this vicennial year, bears a dual responsibility: she must both rebuild our bridge to the past two decades, while shaping what the future two decades may look like. All my best wishes, and good luck to you.
DISCLAIMER: The views and opinions expressed in this magazine belong to the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the Columbia Political Review, of CIRCA, or of Columbia University.
— ALEX SIEGAL, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
CONTENT The Columbia Political Review publishes both print and online content. Writers may contribute as staff writers or by submitting a freelance pitch. To find more information, visit cpreview.org.
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HOW BALLOT MEASURE RESULTS COMPLICATE RED/ BLUE NARRATIVES
BLOOD DIAMONDS IN SIERRA LEONE: HOW COLONIALISM FUNCTIONS TODAY
Jake Tibbetts CC '21
WEAPONIZING GDP Olivia Deming CC '24
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THE SOUTH IS NOT THE MONOLITH YOU WANT IT TO BE Colby King CC '22
COVID-19'S LINGERING EFFECT ON JUSTICE
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Katerina Kaganovich CC '24
FEATURE: THE CASES FOR AND AGAINST COURT-PACKING
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Leena Yumeen CC '23
THE POP CULTURE POLITICS OF THE 2020 THAI PROTESTS Bernadette Gostelow GS '21
MODI AND THE HINDU NATIONALIST AGENDA: THE BABRI MASJID CONTROVERSY IN 2020 Kaitlyn Saldanha BC '24
INTERVIEW, ANTรณNIO GUTERRES: "FAILURE WILL BE DEVASTATING" Aditya Sharma GS '21
Brian Perlstein CC '23 Virginia Lo CC '23 32
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FLORIDA IS FOR WORKERS... BUT WHAT ABOUT CALIFORNIA? HOW BALLOT MEASURE RESULTS COMPLICATE RED/BLUE NARRATIVES Jake Tibbetts // Columbia College '21 December 4, 2020
The battle over Proposition 22 in California was one between gig economy companies (like Uber and Lyft) and labor unions, and is indicative of similar fights in which the Democratic Party will be forced to take sides in the future. Photo via Pikrepo.
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ost coverage of the 2020 elections has focused on the headliner event: the presidential race between incumbent Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden, warranted by the stakes and abnormal nature of the election. It took nearly four days for enough votes to be counted to allow the majority of media outlets to confidently project that Biden would defeat Trump after flipping five states, making him the first candidate to successfully oust an incumbent president in twenty-eight years. Moreover, President Trump has yet to concede the election, choosing instead to spread unsubstantiated claims of voter fraud and to impede the transition of power. But these post-mortems have drowned out important discussions about the results of some of the most captivating races: statewide ballot measures. The results of some measures were semi-predictable: a majority of New Jersey voters, for example, approved a referendum to legalize recreational marijuana. Some results were more surprising: South Dakota, a much more conservative state, voted to do the same. However, ballot questions in two states in particular really stand out: Florida and California. In Florida, by a margin of nearly 22 percent, voters passed Amendment 2, raising the minimum wage in the state to $15 an hour by 2026. Meanwhile, in California, voters overwhelmingly passed Proposition 22 which reclassifies gig workers, those who “enter into formal agreements with on-demand companies (e.g. Uber, TaskRabbit) to provide services to the company’s clients,” as contractors, thereby exempt-
ing them from protections to which they were previously entitled. The results are not only interesting in themselves, but when juxtaposed against the results of the presidential race in the two respective states, they become fascinating. How could Florida, a state that went for Trump (by a bigger margin than in 2016), vote so overwhelmingly to raise the state
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coalition? For whom will the party advocate most strongly for in the coming years? SOMETHING STRANGE IN THE SUNSHINE STATE Florida has long been a prized catch for both political parties, especially when it comes to presidential politics. Most candidates who win,
“How can we account for these seeming contradictions between who voters preferred in the presidential race and how they voted on these ballot measures?” minimum wage? And how could California, a state that came out for Biden by a roughly 2-to-1 margin, side with the California Republican Party and pass a proposition meant to strip a subset of workers of various protections? These results force us to ask pressing questions about the future of both parties. In particular, they compel us to dig deeper into a major ideological battle playing out within the Democratic Party. How can we account for these seeming contradictions between who voters preferred in the presidential race and how they voted on these ballot measures? Is the path forward to adopt populist slogans and to focus on how the party can improve the quality of life of working people? Or does its future lie in the suburbs, and is working hard to appeal to more moderate middle/upper-middle class voters the way to assemble a winning
whether Republican or Democrat, only do so by the narrowest of margins: Trump won Florida by just 1.2 points in 2016. Obama won by less than a point in 2012 and less than three in 2008. Bush won by five points in 2004, and infamously, in 2000, Bush defeated Gore by just 537 votes out of nearly six million cast amid a dispute that was drawn out for weeks in court. 2020 was no different. Heading into Election Day, the race in Florida was a toss-up, though many thought that Biden was slightly favored to win: The RealClearPolitics final polling average had Biden up by 0.9 points, and FiveThirtyEight’s algorithm claimed that Biden had a 69in-100 chance of coming out ahead. But the underdog came out on top: Trump won fairly decisively—by a margin of more than three percent, far exceeding his margin of victory 4
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over Hillary Clinton in 2016. The Republican victory in Florida might suggest similar success for conservative causes down the ballot. That is certainly true in part, with two Democratic congresswomen from Miami-Dade, both of whom flipped their seats in 2018, losing re-election. But the results of one high-profile statewide ballot measure complicate the notion that conservatives were the only won who achieved great success this election cycle. By a 61–39 vote, Floridians voted in favor of Amendment 2, a measure that would raise the state’s minimum wage from its current $8.56 to $15 by 2026. Raising the federal minimum wage was one issue among many that divided Biden and Trump during the presidential race; Biden supported increasing the federal minimum wage to $15, while Trump did not. In a state that Trump carried by a wider margin than any Republican presidential candidate since 2004, voters overwhelmingly voted in favor of an amendment that contradicts his platform. Even though Trump’s margin of victory in the state was comparatively narrow, it can be deduced that a sizable percentage of Republican voters in the state, certainly somewhere in the double-digits, must have supported this measure. Yet polling has often found that raising the minimum wage is a popular cause, transcending party lines. In 2019, the Pew Research Center found that 67 percent of Americans supported raising the federal minimum wage to $15. When broken down along party lines, 86 percent of Democrats support the position, while 43 percent of Republicans feel the same way. When you look at the crosstabs of both party and income, 5
the results become even more striking: 56% of working-class Republicans (i.e., Republicans with family incomes of <$40,000/year) support such an increase. These results might shock those who see the Fight for $15 movement as a radical left-wing crusade. Speaking to the material needs of working people appeals to those people regardless of their stances on other issues. We are still faced with the question of how this amendment could pass the 60% threshold required for passage while, at the same time, Biden was soundly defeated. How can popular support for a particular position on a minimum wage question be so high, while popular support for the candidate who took that position was much lower? One possible explanation is that the minimum wage issue is not one that many voters prioritize. Voters may prefer to vote for a candidate who agrees with them on some issues but takes a different stance on the minimum wage than for a candidate who disagrees with them on more important issues but shares their view on the minimum wage. But maybe the real issue lies not
than the Trump campaign, didn’t focus enough on how a Biden presidency would help those with lower incomes. Instead the Biden campaign focused more on drawing attention to Trump’s negative attributes than to Biden’s positive ones. By not doing the work required to tie itself to the fight to raise the minimum wage, and by not fighting enough to push back against Trump’s arguments that he was the better candidate for working people, the Biden campaign lost out on a major opportunity. Given the apparent popularity of a position like raising the minimum wage, it seems likely that had Biden done that sort of work, he would have carried the state, or, at the very least, significantly reduced Trump’s margin of victory. After several House Democrats in swing seats lost re-election in 2020, including two in Miami-Dade County, it has become a common refrain that Democrats’ best chances for success in the future lie in abandoning left-wing sloganeering for moderate, “pragmatic” solutions that appeal to centrist voters. The success of the movement to raise the minimum wage in Florida, a state that Trump
“Calling the fight to raise the minimum wage a 'left-wing' cause is, as the polling cited earlier indicates, a gross oversimplification.” in any sort of policy issue but in messaging—or, more specifically, how the Biden campaign portrayed itself. A recent In These Times article quotes activist Kofi Hunt, who argues that the ballot measure succeeded because it spoke directly to the struggles of lower-income people, while the Biden campaign, though equipped with a more worker-friendly platform
won, complicates that narrative. Calling the fight to raise the minimum wage a “left-wing” cause is, as the polling cited earlier indicates, a gross oversimplification. Had the Biden campaign made a bigger effort to tie itself to this cause, there is a great chance that it could have secured more votes from the left, the center, and maybe even, to a less-
WINTER 2020 // COLUMBIA POLITICAL REVIEW er extent, the right. The blame here does not lie entirely with the Biden campaign; many members of the general public learn most about the policy positions held by presidential candidatesby watching the televised debates, and this issue was one that was not brought up in more than the most fleeting manner. But leaning into this cause appears to have been a possible pathway to victory in the state for the Biden campaign, and it is one that they seemingly did not fully recognize. GIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CALIFORNIA It was never a matter of if Joe Biden would win California—it was always by how much? The answer: quite a bit. Though not all votes have been counted at the time of publication, Biden appears poised to defeat Trump by roughly thirty points. Democrats may have won the biggest prize, but conservatives saw some down-ballot success, flipping multiple House seats that Democrats won in 2018. Congressional races aside, there was one (landslide) victory by conservatives that deserves special attention: the passage of Proposition 22. Proposition 22, which was endorsed by the California Republican Party and opposed by the California Democratic Party, was drafted in response to the passage of Assembly Bill 5 (2019), a bill pertaining to gig workers. Assembly Bill 5 explicitly classified gig workers as employees, thereby entitling them to benefits like “minimum wage, overtime considerations, and paid sick time.” Proposition 22 exempts appbased delivery services from those provisions by reclassifying drivers as independent contractors and not employees, therefore not entitling them
to those benefits. The gig industry shattered campaign contribution records, donating $181.4 million to the campaign to pass the proposition. (In California, as is the case in Florida, there are no limits to how much corporations can spend on campaigning for ballot measures.) Their spending paid off. In a state that Biden won by nearly 2-to-1, this GOP-backed ballot question passed with close to 60% of the vote. For it to have passed, a fairly significant number of Biden voters must have gone against the California Democratic Party’s recommendation and voted how Silicon Valley wanted them to. California, in some respects, was the mirror image of Florida; the latter supported the Republican candidate for president while voting to pass a “progressive” amendment, while the former backed the Democratic candidate while passing a GOP-endorsed proposition. How could so many Democratic voters have sided with the gig industry over labor unions, activists, and the California Democratic Party? To attempt to understand this, perhaps we should first look to the party elite. Though many of the most left-wing figures in the Democratic Party look at Silicon Valley with skepticism or even scorn, many higher-ups see Big Tech as a potential ally—and some have worked in Silicon Valley themselves. Valerie Jarrett, an adviser to the Obama Foundation, serves on Lyft’s board of directors; Tony West, Vice President-elect Kamala Harris’s brother-in-law, is Uber’s chief legal officer; and Anthony Foxx, who served as Transportation secretary under Obama, is Lyft’s policy chief. Ever since the rise of the gig industry, some Democratic Party elites
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have tried to pull off a somewhat awkward balancing act, seeking to satisfy both labor unions as well as the companies those unions view as adversaries. Just as some members of the party elite remain receptive to Silicon Valley’s demands, so too, do a significant portion of the Democratic base—at least when targeted directly by the advertising campaigns devised by Silicon Valley. Given the influence of the tech industry in California politics, exacerbated in this instance by campaign finance regulations that allow corporations to dump as much money as they please into ballot measure campaigns, it is unsurprising that so many Californians across class lines would come out and vote for this measure. This was not just a matter of upper-class tech executives and moderate suburbanites coming out to support this measure. The aggressive campaign by Silicon Valley to convince working-class voters that the passage of Proposition 22 would be in their best interest played a major role. It can not be ignored, for example, that Uber came under fire for advertising for the passage of the proposition on the scheduling app that drivers are required to use in order to do their jobs. Herein lies the gaping schism between two major forces in the Democratic Party. On the one hand, the formal party apparatus (made up of activists, legislators, and the like) as well as labor unions, came out swinging in opposition to this proposition. On the other, the gig industry, which has direct ties to a number of prominent Democrats and has donated extensively to Democratic candidates as recently as this cycle, was successfully able to use its resources in order to convince voters across class lines to 6
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support a cause championed by the right. So long as this tension remains, Democrats will struggle to form a coherent approach to issues that affect the working class, which, as Florida demonstrates, could very realistically end up harming them electorally.
ty debates are yet to take center stage. The Democratic Party, as the California results demonstrate, is faced with a much more urgent crisis. A recent Brookings Institution report argues that Biden was victorious due to a performance in large suburbs and small metropolitan areas that was far POSSIBLE PATHS FORWARD FOR THE superior to Clinton’s in 2016. PerRIGHT AND THE LEFT haps moving away from progressive These seemingly shocking inci- rhetoric, like that surrounding the dents fit into a larger identity crisis fight to raise the minimum wage, and that both major parties are facing at shifting towards more neoliberal ecothe end of the Trump era. The Florida results call to mind the question facing Republican Party leadership: should the party return to the form of conservatism that was dominant prior to the rise of Trump, a form which celebrated free markets and frowned upon government intervention in economic matters? Or should it go further down the road of eco- nomic policy would help the party nomic semi-populism that Trump capture voters similar to some voters has paved? It is not yet clear which in California who were receptive to way the party winds are blowing. the desires of Silicon Valley—espeHowever, the fact that Marco Rubio, cially those who are generally liberal who was considered a more tradition- but hold more moderate positions on ally conservative alternative to Trump fiscal issues—giving them a path to in the 2016 Republican primaries, victory in swing districts and states in recently said in an interview that the cycles to come. GOP should transform itself into a But shifting all attention to the “working-class coalition” and that big suburbs could do serious harm to the businesses “only care about how their party. Though Democrats made gains shares are performing” over the inter- in the suburbs this year, they perests of their employees lends credence formed worse in the urban areas that to the idea that some party factions have provided them with steady supare at least open to moving in a direc- port for decades. Shifting away from tion that might consider supporting working-class demands risks further provisions like raising the minimum alienating those voters, the cost of wage. With that said, these intra-par- which could potentially outweigh the
benefits in suburbs. The results in Florida challenge the assumptions of those who argue that abandoning progressive rhetoric and adopting more centrist policies is the only way to secure more power. A considerable bloc of Trump voters backed an increased minimum wage, and one could certainly argue that leaning into economic populism more, rather than less, could be the way to both win support from Republicans and hold onto blocs that have traditionally supported Democrats— benefits that may or may not exceed those that the party would see in the suburbs if it did the opposite. Perhaps Biden could have won Florida if he had been more vocal in his support for increasing the federal minimum wage and made a bigger attachment of the issue to his campaign platform. There are no easy answers, of course. Republicans will continue to debate whether economic populism should be pursued. Democrats will continue to play the blame game, with moderates accusing progressives of alienating swing voters with “extreme” rhetoric and progressives accusing moderates of failing to see the mass appeal of progressive policies. There is no way, in this moment, to empirically prove that either side in either argument is more correct than the other. But 2022 is just around the corner, and before either party can generate a plan of attack, they will need to ponder the questions that these results raise.
“2022 IS JUST AROUND THE CORNER, AND BEFORE EITHER PARTY CAN GENERATE A PLAN OF ATTACK, THEY WILL NEED TO PONDER THE QUESTIONS THAT THESE RESULTS RAISE.”
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Heads of state meet for the 2018 G7 summit. Photo by Flickr User.
WEAPONIZING GDP: WHY HUMAN WELL-BEING SUFFERS FOR THE SAKE OF ECONOMY
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s we head into a postTrump reconstruction of our country, it is imperative to consider how fundamental values of a country such as freedom, equal opportunity, and success will translate through the measurements we are using to track progress. How do we incorporate more accurate measures of success in a reevaluation of our priorities as a nation? GDP,
Olivia Deming // Columbia College '24 November 20, 2020 for instance, will be an integral part of the equation after seeing a 34.3% decrease in the second quarter due to the coronavirus. GDP, the measure of the total market value of goods and services produced by a countryâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s economy during a specified period of time, is calculated by adding together consumption, investment, government spending, and net exports. Noticeably missing from these factors are the pressing concerns of
Americans: income inequality, racial inequality, and impacts of climate change. It is for this reason that it is necessary to look at far more than just the economy in the coming months and years. The standing of a country and its citizens are worth more than inputs and outputs. Inventions are often born in times of absolute necessity, when we are forced to overcome threats to American well-being. The measure8
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ment of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) was introduced to the U.S. Congress in 1937 by Simon Kuznets, an economist at the National Bureau of Economic Research, in the midst of The Great Depression. On the brink of another world war, there was a need to demonstrate that we could recover as a country. For that purpose, GDP was incredibly useful, as we could track and report the
measurements playing second fiddle. The value placed on GDP inhibits countries from advancing sustainable development goals and other progressive measures. Since we live in a democracy where most elected officials are running every two, four, or six years, there is great pressure to be able to point to statistics and claim credit for improvements. Many turn to numbers that provide constituents
“America has found itself at a crossroads: we voted out the man that held up a mirror to the ugliest parts of our country, we danced in the streets to celebrate, and now, it is time to get to work replacing promises with action.” value of goods and services within a given time frame. However, GDP is a limited measure, and the extent to which it is extrapolated is concerning. The United States is in desperate need of an effective measure of human well-being that prioritizes improvement beyond fiscal growth. Kuznets himself warned of the limitations of a measure such as GDP, stating “the welfare of a nation can scarcely be inferred from a measurement of national income.” However, that is precisely what has happened: GDP has become the goto figure to point to the standing of a country, with other, more holistic 9
with an incredibly incomplete picture and campaign for reelection on a manufactured version of success. Not only does this explain why the U.S. is more reactive than proactive, but it also explains our inability to make strides in environmental goals and health care (including mental health support). It starts to make sense that inequality, in its many forms, persists blatantly in America because inequality is not accounted for in GDP. If it isn’t calculated in GDP, it is not a priority for politicians that are only focused on planning their reelection. The fact that GDP focuses on
economic prosperity is not inherently the issue. The issue rises out of GDP being politicized as a means of re-election and nationalism without including the calculation of well-being in GDP or the budget. This makes it easy for politicians to obscure various social and environmental measures by pointing only to GDP, as Trump has done repeatedly to claim recovery from the economic hit of the coronavirus (and to take jabs at Democrats). There have been 84 completed rollbacks of environmental protection rules under the Trump administration, 2.3 million people became uninsured before the COVID-19 pandemic, and 700,000 people almost lost food stamp benefits before a federal judge struck down the action. For an administration that touts “all lives matter,” these actions have illustrated that they believe millions of lives are, in fact, expendable. It’s easy to tell what a country values by what is measured, studied, and improved upon. In New Zealand, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern became the first to implement a well-being budget. Money in the budget is allocated for mental health, child well-being, supporting indigenous populations, lowering carbon emissions, and thriving in a digital age. In five measurable categories, New Zealand has accomplished what feels impossible in the United States: valuing people over profit. By putting money into policies that meet the evolving needs of the country, New Zealand invested in a better future instead of just talking about it. If the United States followed the example that New Zealand has set and went even further by integrating human well-being into GDP, we could
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Jacinda Ardern is sworn in as New Zealand’s Prime Minister in 2017. Photo by Appointment of the New Ministry.
be on the frontier of measuring how the welfare of our citizens is changing, and hopefully improving—the frontier of evolving our metrics. This would force administrations to prioritize everything measured into GDP, not just what is attractive to the base of their supporters. There’s a reason Biden has been emphatically urging unity: making decisions to benefit only half of the country deepens the toxic divide that is our greatest hindrance to progress. America has found itself at a crossroads: we voted out the man that held up a mirror to the ugliest parts of our country, we danced in the streets to celebrate, and now, it is time to get to work replacing promises with action. The economy and GDP have been weaponized and used as a political tool to manipulate people into believing that our country is not at the reckoning that it is.
By incorporating different measures of well-being (racial and income equality, mental health care, reliable and affordable health care, etc) into GDP, a greater portion of our population would have a more cumulative sense of growth. We need to take advantage of the fact that GDP is a relatively familiar measure and expand it to encompass, rather than obscure, American well-being. By adapting the national measure of GDP, caring about social, climate, and racial justice becomes a non-partisan priority. We have lost a lot these past four years. Now, we dig our heels in and fight, not for a return to politics as normal, but for progressive policies and measures. We should not only be looking at the very blueprint that led us to an America that elected Donald Trump—we need to be listening to and investing in the pleas and demands of Americans suffering in a
system that is not protecting them. What we don’t measure we cannot improve; we need to begin by confronting the extensiveness of the inequality in America and placing that in the same measure that we turn to observe growth, so growth translates into meaningful change beyond the economy. It’s not that the U.S. doesn’t have the money or infrastructure to do so, it’s that we lack uniting values and political will across partisan lines to catalyze action. By forcing politicians to confront the well-being of their constituents and their country, we personalize politics. If Americans saw their needs objectively reflected in the national GDP, it could transform how Americans related to their government. It could restore faith that our elected officials serve us, and it could generate enormous investment in policies that we categorically need. 10
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THE SOUTH IS NOT THE MONOLITH YOU WANT IT TO BE Colby King // Columbia College '22 December 7, 2020
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very presidential election season, it becomes clear that people don’t understand either geography or history. As states begin to be called, people—typically Democrats, leftists, and/or liberals— quickly begin to make jokes about the red-block that is the South and to some degree the Midwest. However, when the map is changed to look at votes by precinct, county, or even the US House of Representatives, we see maps that appear much redder across the country than specifically concentrated in the South and Midwest. Looking at these maps, California and New York start to look a lot more like South Carolina and Texas with a divide that is more between urban and rural areas than between large geographic regions. This presidential election was nearly 50/50 in many states, and in nearly every state, the losing candidate received at least a third of the total vote count. By percentage, Georgia, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin are all much more alike than they are different. 11
What liberals don’t seem to understand every election cycle is that it is in the South, more than any region in the country, where 58 percent of the nation’s Black people live—and have always lived. Additionally, Southern states like Texas and Florida boast some of the largest Latinx populations in the country. It is between Houston and Dallas, Texas where I grew up surrounded largely by these two groups of people. Because the nation, including those
in its liberal states and cities, is still severely segregated along the lines of race and class, this is a reality that the vast majority of white people cannot say they live. It is in the South that many of the country’s greatest organizers and liberators —Ella Baker, A. Phillip Randolph, Angela Davis, John Lewis, Pauli Murray, and Martin Luther King, Jr., just to name some of the most well-known ones—were born and organized. The South is home
Stacey Abrams and Representative John Lewis pictured at a 2017 protest in Atlanta, Georgia. Photo by Tani P.
WINTER 2020 // COLUMBIA POLITICAL REVIEW to some of the most innovative civil rights organizations from the older Southern Christian Leadership Conference and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee to more modern ones like the Equal Justice Initiative and Fair Fight Action. These people and groups show the power of Black Southern organizers and are examples of what can change when we invest in the South. Significant credit has gone to Stacey Abrams for her work against voter suppression in the South and specifically Georgia, a state that is being called the “center of the political universe.” Though Abrams shouldn’t receive all the credit as, for years, Black organizers in Georgia and throughout the South have worked to change the political landscape of the state and the South. For the first time in decades its electoral votes have gone to a candidate of the Democratic party, and, now, its two senate runoff elections will decide which party controls the Senate. It is a Southern state, largely due to the organizing of Black people and especially Black women and Black LGBTQ+ people, that can push this country towards the future liberals want. Still, people make statements about the “backwards South.” People, often white liberals, argue that it can’t be won. Some even say, albeit somewhat jokingly, that the South may just need to secede (as if the first time the South seceded it wasn’t to keep Black people enslaved). These statements rage even as historically “red” states like Georgia and Texas have become battleground states in spite of the widespread voter suppression of communities of color and Black communities that have especially pervaded the states since the
passage of the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to the Constitution. This is unsurprising. There has never been a true investment in Black people and their communities in this country and certainly not those in the South, as often noted as the failures of post-enslavement Reconstruction.
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tive, racist and non-racist, or red and blue states both ignores history and silences Black people and people of color in all of them. Nevertheless, cities and states in the North and West are frequently championed for their social reforms especially in racial and criminal jus-
“White Americans, and especially those considered liberals or radicals of their time, have often only viewed Black people as a means to an end.” However, Reconstruction’s failure, like much of Black oppression in the country, required the complicity and often active participation of white (Northern) moderates and liberals with white (Southern) conservatives in the country. This pattern tracks with the development of Jim Crow, segregation, policing, and mass incarceration throughout the country. Often, states considered to be liberal havens, like New York and California, were and are the states that have the most school segregation, class inequality, healthcare, and incarceration disparities by race. These havens often have vehemently racist origins as well. For example, Oregon —another beacon of American liberalism —“forbade Black people from living, working, or owning property” when it was granted statehood in 1859. Racism is deeply ingrained in our systems in all geographic regions of the United States; believing a false dichotomy of liberal and conserva-
tice, with many national non-profit organizations like the ACLU, Vera Institute of Justice, and Innocence Project often centered and headquartered in them. Ironically, though, these reforms often increase racial disparities in policing and incarceration rather than decrease them as the policies implemented disproportionately benefit white people and may even further harm communities of color. However, the South and especially its rural areas (as well as rural areas throughout the country generally), has rarely seen this much investment towards it for reform movements, despite some of the most obvious and egregious racial disparities existing and even growing in Southern and rural America and the South being the region, again, with the highest concentration of Black people. White Americans, and especiall y those considered liberals or radicals of their time, have often only viewed 12
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The 2020 presidential election results broken down by county. Map from Wikimedia Commons.
Black people as a means to an end. It’s why George Washington banned Black people from fighting in the Continental Army until he needed more soldiers. It’s why Abraham Lincoln viewed emancipation more as a political tool to win the Civil War than a genuine cause in itself. It’s why New Deal policies were full of exclusions aimed to prevent Black people from accessing them and why FDR stayed away from overt support of Black Americans until World War II saw other countries discussing the abhorrent treatment of Black people in the United States. It’s why Bill Clinton fought for the Black vote, even playing the saxophone on the Arsenio Hall Show, only to pass leg13
islation that helped push mass incarceration and the War on Drugs to new peaks. Due to centuries of systemic oppression and segregation, Black people have been relegated to particular geographic locations, and it is this intentional disinvestment that is ironically the root of much of our political power. Black people’s concentration in the South in particular has been used to win elections and even wars for the people that are active in their oppression but considered the lesser of evils in a two-party system that together created their oppression to begin with. White supremacy has lasted because white people en masse both conservative and liberal, Republican and Demo-
crat, left and right, have always chosen their whiteness over everyone and everything else. Black people in the United States, the majority of whom live in the South, have always resisted their oppression in this country. We can’t afford to underestimate or leave them behind. Maybe it’s time for white liberals all over the country to instead start having difficult conversations with their white neighbors, friends, and family members that voted for Donald Trump rather than focus on the South where Black people and other people of color continue to save themselves while saving white people from their own demise.
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COVID-19’S LINGERING EFFECT ON JUSTICE: STATES STRUGGLE TO FIND A WAY FORWARD
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s states implemented social distancing guidelines due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the criminal justice system transitioned to an online format. Hybrid trials, conducted with both Zoom and limited in-person elements, cannot replace the fundamental practice of being heard by a judge and jury in a physical courtroom. Recognizing the importance of face-to-face interaction for a fair trial, some state courts are pushing to return to regular operations despite COVID-19 restrictions. The U.S. correctional system, overseeing incarceration and probation, is experiencing a different reality, as people who are incarcerated fight for more, rather than less, COVID-19 protections. Court cases in New Jersey and Texas highlight this disparate parallel. In New Jersey, local courts are fighting to return to in-person jury trials while in Texas, people who are incarcerated are advocating for prisons to take more precautions against the virus. In New Jersey, the court system has begun resuming in-person trials. On September 16th, New Jersey Supreme Court Justice Stuart Rabner lifted the suspension that prevented
Katerina Kaganovich // Columbia College '24 November 20, 2020 jury trials from proceeding to alleviate the backlog of criminal and civil cases. Despite a detailed hybrid plan released by the New Jersey Judiciary, including the use of plexiglass and jurors spaced six feet apart, many attorneys still fear that a courtroom in a hybrid format cannot administer equal justice. Although in-person operations are important for due process, hybrid courts cannot maintain the same levels of constitutional protections as before. If courts are to safely return in person, there will be an inevitable compromise of rights. As municipal New Jersey courts
with a potential sentence up to life in prison, this case was not appropriate to be a pilot for the new hybrid format. Kevin Roe, Lawson’s defense attorney, also expressed hesitancy about reopening the courts when he argued, “I do not want to have a man potentially spend life in prison in the face of a failed experiment.” So far, courts have approached these new hybrid trials with caution, allowing only “simple” trials to proceed. The first hybrid in-person trial in New Jersey is that of Wildemar Dangcil, who is accused of attempting to set his ex-wife’s car and house on fire.
“If courts are to safely return in person, there will be an inevitable compromise of rights.” start their first round of jury trials, attorneys are challenging the constitutionality of the hybrid voir dire— the selection of a fair and impartial jury. The first case, that of Talek Lawson, who was charged with murder after a 2018 bar shooting, was temporarily put on hold due to the serious nature of the trial. Both parties agreed that
Dangcil’s defense attorneys requested Superior Court Judge Robert M. Vinci to suspend voir dire and postpone the trial until certain constitutional deficiencies in the hybrid system could be amended or until regular trials could resume. James Lisa and Peter Michael, attorneys for the defendant, argue on constitutional grounds that 14
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the trial should not continue because, under the hybrid method of voir dire, the jury could not represent a fair “cross section” of the population. The current process for voir dire includes electronic notices to potential jurors, pre-selection done by a court official, and the possible exclusion of potential jurors over 65 and those with underlying health conditions. The defense claimed that 800 electronic notices were sent out and 75% of recipients failed to fill out the jury questionnaire, leaving only a slim pool of 200 people, failing to represent the population. The Supreme Court created the standard that a jury must represent an accurate cross-section of a community in Taylor v. Louisiana when the Court struck down a Louisiana law that prevented the selection of women who had not previously sent in a notice indicating a wish to serve on a jury. Dangcil’s defense team argue that electronically processing notifications, jury questionnaires, and the online voir dire process limits a jury pool by excluding people who do not have computers, Wi-Fi, or the skills to navigate the technology. In addition, according to state reopening guidelines, individuals who are at higher risk of contracting COVID-19, such as people over 65-years-old or with underlying medical conditions such as Type 2 Diabetes, can excuse themselves. These limitations could lead to a jury primarily composed of people who are younger and in a position to access technology. There are unique barriers posed by technology and would otherwise not exist in an in-person jury. Potential jurors without access to technology frequently represent lower socioeconomic demographics and could be excluded. In 15
addition, while COVID-19 has proven to be more detrimental to people with underlying medical conditions, a legitimate reason for their exclusion, restricting those members of the population from the jury further creates an inaccurate cross-section of the population. A jury pool completely exempt of those over 65 or with health restrictions would be a violation of Taylor v. Louisiana. Groups that are more susceptible to serious medical complications from the virus should not have to be exposed; however, not having those groups participate in the jury process would create an unconstitutional scenario. Judge Vinci ruled against the defense’s objection, countering that 500 not 200 jury notices were received and that, in terms of accessibility, the court delivered a laptop to the home of a potential juror who did not own one. In his response, Vinci claimed that the information presented by the defense was conjecture and based on inaccurate information. Vinci also affirmed that technical assistance was available to people who needed it, facilitating an accurate representation of the population. However, while this ruling addresses access to technology, the issue of older jurors still stands.While Judge Vinci claimed that the hybrid method of jury selection created an accurate cross-section of the population, the exclusion of older potential jurors prove contrary to his argument. The defense appealed the case to the Appellate Division of the Superior Court, which ruled in favor of the hybrid trials, claiming that they “replicated— to the greatest extent possible—standard pre-COVID-19 processes.” While hybrid trials are a fair attempt to replicate pre-COVID-19
conditions, people impacted by the justice system deserve to have the full extent of justice applied, not just the “as best as they could.” After this ruling, Dangcil’s attorneys filed an emergency appeal to the New Jersey Supreme Court. The State Supreme Court agreed with the lower courts that there was no “evidence to suggest that the selection was non-random or that any constitutionally cognizable group was excluded from the array.” Thus, Dangcil’s case will likely continue as soon as possible. The potential repercussions— a jury pool nonrepresentative of the population that leads to an inadequate assessment of the defendant and his case— will only become clearer with time and the constitutionality of hybrid trials remains unsolved. The defense team could still appeal based on the concerns raised about the ability of the jury to judge witnesses and credibility through COVID-19 protections such as masks and plexi-glass. When someone’s liberty is at stake, the execution of justice should be “beyond a reasonable doubt”—just like the burden of proof. Bench trials, those conducted solely between a judge and the defendant, could continue with necessary precautions like masks, testing, and plexiglass, or even virtually, but when a defendant appears in front of a jury, those cases should be postponed until there is no doubt of their fairness. Courts are also considering constitutional challenges under the Fifth, Sixth, and Eighth Amendments, involving due process and the justice system during the pandemic. According to the New York Law Journal, COVID-19 has led prisoners to seek remedy under the Eighth Amendment’s “cruel and unusual punishment” clause, and twice the U.S. Fifth
WINTER 2020 // COLUMBIA POLITICAL REVIEW Circuit Court of Appeals has found merit in their arguments. This issue emerged in Valentine v. Collier in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas, where people who are incarcerated in the Wallace Pack Unit, a Texas prison for the elderly and immunocompromised, have argued that the measures taken by the correctional facility to prevent coronavirus infection do not go far enough to protect them. The suit highlighted that 40% of the prison population has tested positive for COVID-19 and 20 inmates have died to demonstrate the extent to which the correctional facility has disregarded the safety of its inhabitants and failed to take steps to prevent the spread of the virus. The district court granted an in junction and set out requirements that the facility would need to meet to protect people who are incarcerated, including wearing masks, using hand sanitizer, and providing sufficient cleaning throughout the facility. The Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit stayed that injunction, however, arguing that the people who are incarcerated failed to prove a “substantial risk of harm.” While the Wallace Pack Unit’s processes may not have been successful in curtailing the spread and effect of the virus, they were not unconstitutional. The court felt that the people who are incarcerated did not prove that the Texas Department of Criminal Justice purposefully ignored their health. The plaintiffs filed an emergency appeal for relief to the United States Supreme Court but they were denied, albeit on a procedural issue involving the chain of command for seeking relief. Justice Sotomayor issued a statement expressing her views on the plight of the people who are in-
carcerated rather than on the constitutional merits of the case. She contended that people who are incarcerated across the country are in a powerless position against the virus and that the prison failed to balance administrative convenience and the dangers of emergency situations, despite the resources at its disposal. Since the Supreme Court based
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biggest threat to people who are older or face underlying health problems, the very population of the Wallace Pack Unit, so the prison violated the Eighth Amendment in not imposing the appropriate protections against COVID-19. Testimony from the prison demonstrates clear misconduct that put the lives of the high-risk prisoners in jeopardy.
“The COVID-19 pandemic has led to a balancing act between facilitating a fair criminal justice system and protecting people against the virus.” its decision on the fact that the people who are incarcerated did not follow specific procedural requirements and not on the Eighth Amendment concern, they provided little requirements for prisons to protect people against the virus. As the Fifth Circuit explained, the prison was not at fault for an Eighth Amendment violation just because the virus breached the facility. The U.S. Supreme Court developed this standard in Farmer v. Brennan, finding that a prison would violate the Eighth Amendment if it showed “deliberate indifference” to the serious harm occurring and took no steps to remedy the situation. In this case, the plaintiffs argued that prison officials knew that they were at increased risk due to a medical condition and willfully ignored that fact. The Wallace Pack Unit had no contact tracing plan, no widespread mask mandate, and a shortage of cleaning supplies, despite the threat of COVID-19. The virus poses the
The COVID-19 pandemic has led to a balancing act between facilitating a fair criminal justice system and protecting people against the virus. The two cases from New Jersey and Texas present a sample of the many legal questions arising in this new era. The New Jersey case demonstrates the challenges of ensuring both safety and equal justice. As courts strive towards normalcy, different circumstances in Texas show that prisons are far from normal. The protections that many Americans take for granted—masks, hand sanitizer, the ability to social distance— are not guaranteed to be available to people who are incarcerated. Adapting the criminal justice system to the new circumstances of the COVID-19 pandemic is a constant battle. As court systems attempt to move forward, we must consider what we are willing to sacrifice in the name of justice.
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SHOULD DEMOCRATS PACK THE COURT? THE CASES FOR AND AGAINST
The 17 United States Supreme Court. Photo by Kjetil Ree.
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FEATURE: THE JUDICIARY Following the September passing of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, President Donald J. Trump nominated Amy Coney Barrett, then a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, to fill the vacancy on the Supreme Court. Merely eight days before the 2020 presidential election, the Republican Senate majority confirmed Barrett, solidifying the conservative leaning of the Court in a 6-3 supermajority. Throughout Trump’s four-year presidency, he nominated a total of three new justices to the Supreme Court. When Justice Scalia passed away on February 13, 2016, nine months before the November 2016 elections, a Republican-controlled Senate led by Mitch McConnell refused to hold confirmation hearings of Obama nominee Merrick Garland, delaying the process for nearly 11 months until Trump nominated Neil Gorsuch in January 2017 to fill his seat. In 2018, Brett Kavanaugh’s ascent to the Supreme Court after Justice Kennedy’s retirement further tilted the Court toward a conservative majority. Democrats are now faced with two options: pack the court or accept an unshakeable conservative stronghold for what may amount to decades.
PACKING NEED NOT BE PARTISAN WHY TWO NEW JUSTICES CAN RESTORE JUDICIAL LEGITIMACY Brian Perlstein // Columbia College '23 November 17, 2020
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n Federalist No. 78, Alexander Hamilton wrote that the judiciary would be the “least dangerous” of our three branches, as it had “neither force nor will, but merely judgment.” In other words, the authority of the Court depends not on any specific power, but on the other branches choosing to respect its legitimacy and heed its judgements. Fortunately, because of the apolitical nature of the judiciary, opposing parties have been willing to recognize its authority and follow its opinions, even when the gavel came down on the opposite side they had hoped for. But today, with each partisan
battle chipping away at the legitimacy of the Court, we must remember that our system only works when all sides agree that our process of adjudication is fair. If a future president or Congress considered our Court illegitimate, they could choose to disregard its opinions, defining constitutionality for themselves and throwing our whole system of government into chaos. As such, politicians must be careful in their treatment of the Court, as any politically-motivated move with the judiciary will weaken the body’s legitimacy, stripping it of its lifeblood and rendering its opinions, rather than binding law, as mere judgement. For some, this means that
if Democrats choose to restructure our highest bench, they must, for the sake of our nation, choose not to “pack the Court.” However, Republican Court politics have put Democrats in the situation where adding new justices would, rather than serve any political motivations, not only ensure the sanctity of our highest Court, but also protect it from future partisan assaults. Of course, any claim that court packing could restore judicial legitimacy rather than weaken it may initially seem outlandish. Indeed, any court packing plan motivated by politics and not the preservation of norms and procedure should right18
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fully be condemned as antithetical to our nation’s values. However, the Republican’s flouting of norms and brazen hypocrisy have all but forced the Democrats to firmly condemn and counter these partisan attacks on the Court. When Senate Republicans argued under President Obama that a Supreme Court vacancy should not be filled in an election year, most Democrats understood that such a rule lacked historical precedent and looked to be a thinly-veiled excuse for political Court tampering. Republican leadership, however, vehemently denied such claims, and Senator
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form should be pursued if they take both the presidency and Congress, although few have expressly advocated for court packing. While some of their suggested reforms, such as judicial term limits, may hold merit, they do not directly address the Republican hypocrisy that gave us our 6-3 conservative supermajority on the Court. If Democrats truly seek to confront this ill-gotten imbalance, they must tackle it head-on. The math is quite simple: Democrats should add two new seats to the Court, one to counteract the 2016 Democrat loss—namely, Scalia’s
remember that the goal is to eliminate the effects of Republican hypocrisy that took a seat from Democrats and gave it to Republicans. The reestablishment of norms, and not the desires of politics, dictates why court packing should be a key tenet of the Democratic agenda. But how can it be that Democratic court packing would not weaken the legitimacy of the Supreme Court? After all, did Democrats not vote down FDR’s 1937 court packing proposal because it sought to disregard the importance of an independent judiciary? However, not all propos-
The Key for democrats, however, is to disentagle the association in people's heads between court packing and dirty politics.
Lindsey Graham—now infamously—said that “If there’s a Republican president in 2016 and a vacancy occurs in the last year of the first term, you can say Lindsey Graham said let’s let the next president, whoever it might be, make that nomination." Unfortunately for Republicans, their bluff was called with liberal leader Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death coming just 42 days before Election Day. Instead of waiting for its results and adhering to their words from four years earlier, Republicans happily voted to confirm Justice Amy Coney Barrett just eight days before the election. With such a blatant display of hypocrisy, Democrats are near universal in believing that Court re19
pivotal conservative seat—and the other to counteract the 2020 Republican gain of Ginsburg’s liberal seat. Recently, however, Democrats have been throwing around all sorts of numbers for Supreme Court justices, with Pete Buttigieg advocating for six new seats, and Congressman-elect Mondaire Jones advocating for four. But all these reform suggestions go beyond the wrong Democrats should work to rectify. The problem is not that there is a conservative Supreme Court, but rather that this conservative Supreme Court was created unscrupulously. Although it may be tempting, Democrats must not use Court reform as a tool to bolster their political might. Instead, they must
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als to alter the number of Supreme Court justices should be viewed the same way. FDR’s motivations were blatantly political, as he tried to add liberal justices who would rule favorably on New Deal legislation. In contrast, adding two new justices today would not be about safeguarding any particular legislative agenda, but correcting past Republican malfeasance. Even with this court packing plan, conservatives would still hold a 6-5 majority on the Court. But again, the goal for Democrats is not political, so the resulting makeup of the Court should not be a factor in their decision making. Certainly, it won’t be easy for Democrats to fend off claims of po-
WINTER 2020 // COLUMBIA POLITICAL REVIEW litical chicanery that Republicans will inevitably allege. The key for Democrats, however, is to disentangle the association in people’s heads between court packing and dirty politics. If the problem most people see with court packing is undeservedly giving one side undue judicial influence, then should not the Republican Court maneuverings of 2016 and 2020 be viewed in just the same light? After all, if the effect of Republican action was taking a seat to be filled by an Obama appointee and giving it to a Trump appointee, then there is no functional difference between that and court packing. Joe Biden summarized this best when he explained that the only court packing currently happening is that “with the Republicans.” But if Democrats acknowledge that Republicans have weakened the Court’s legitimacy by using our judiciary as a political tool, is it not incumbent upon Democrats to restore that legitimacy? If they choose to do nothing in response to Republican misbehavior, then they legitimize the idea that one side should be able to politically manipulate the Court without consequence, which would embolden future efforts to influence the judiciary in whatever way possible. In order to make clear that playing political games with the Court cannot be tolerated, Democrats must squash the poisoned fruits that Republicans have reaped from such an unfair game. While at the ground level this could be called “court packing,” its broader function would be to wipe out the politics which has tilted our Court, bringing it back to its critical role as an independent, legitimate, and impartial body. However, this plan can only
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“Two new, Democratic-appointed justices would show our nation's willingness to fight off political attacks on the Court." work if it is not hijacked by Democrats who support court packing for explicitly political purposes. These Democrats contend that adding new justices is necessary to keep the new Court from upending liberal progress with opinions that could strike down the Affordable Care Act and overturn Roe v. Wade. But while the concerns that these Democrats have about the current conservative Court are no doubt warranted, altering the Court to safeguard these protections would only be counterproductive. Doing so only endorses the idea that politics is not off-limits when it comes to shaping the Court, which will compel Republicans to either play political catch-up with the Democrats, or, in the most extreme case, simply ignore Court decisions altogether. While it may sound far-fetched, some Democrats have already advocated for ignoring future rulings from the current Court. Likewise, if Republicans considered a future Democrat-packed Court illegitimate, then they wouldn’t feel compelled to adhere to its words. As such, an expressly political Democratic court packing would, far from protecting our constitutional freedoms, instead throw all of them into jeopardy. The sanctity of our Court is paramount, and to ensure that it is not in any way weakened, it might seem
best to simply play hands-off with the Court. But the legitimacy of our Court has already been weakened, and Democratic inaction would only worsen it. Democrats cannot let the Republicans keep a conservative supermajority that was obtained through unethical and overtly political means. Moreover, they cannot accept that any court packing plan is inherently dangerous and political, but instead explain why adding two new justices would help maintain the Court’s apolitical function. Some Democrats will seek to more extensively restructure our nation’s highest court, but leading voices need to argue against such political manipulation as a solution. If Democrats wish to strengthen liberal policies and protections, let it be done through the ballot box, and not by judicial decree. The Court has often been the source of great progressive change, but its ability to effect such change rests on both sides agreeing that our Court is fair. Two new, Democratic-appointed justices, far from making our highest bench less fair, would show our nation’s willingness to fight off political attacks on the Court, and would enshrine the doctrine of judicial legitimacy at a time when it is severely under threat.
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PRESERVATION OF JUDICIAL LEGITIMACY THE PERILS OF COURT PACKING CALL FOR ALTERNATIVE REFORM PLANS Virginia Lo // Columbia College '23 November 17, 2020
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f anything would make the court look partisan, it would be that—one side saying, ‘When we’re in power, we’re going to enlarge the number of judges, so we would have more people who would vote the way we want them to,” Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg expressed in a July 2019 interview with NPR. With the recent confirmation of Judge Barrett just eight days before the 2020 presidential election and vivid memory of the failed nomination of Judge Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court in 2016, many Democrats have revived the idea of court packing. However, packing the Supreme Court is an extremely dangerous, short-sighted step forward. Justice Ginsburg’s unequivocal opposition and Biden’s plan to appoint a bipartisan commission to explore other judicial reforms should serve as warnings. More long-term, stabilizing solutions to curb the fallout of a 6-3 supermajority court include supporting rights-protective legislation, removing lifetime appointments and allowing Supreme Court justices to return to their previous posts after 21
their terms, and adopting a Code of Conduct that enforces recusals for conflicts of interests. The historic confirmation revealed the Republicans’ hypocrisy, partisanship, and lack of respect for the Court’s legitimacy. The repeated political theatrical acts from the right, however, should not serve as a green light to pack the Court. By increasing the number of justices on the Court, Democrats risk setting a vicious precedent that would mark the beginning of a never-ending spiral of partisan court packing by the majority party and the end of Americans’ trust and respect for the highest court of the land. Expanding the number of seats would quickly escalate a tense situation and further delegitimize the Supreme Court—a supposedly nonpolitical instrument of democracy independent of policy concerns; this risks resulting in a continuous cycle of partisan struggles further heightened by the breakdown of a key government branch to ensure checks and balances. More broadly, to redirect the country’s trajectory away from democratic backsliding evident in the past four years and to restore dip-
lomatic relations with major allies, Democrats should be extremely cautious against undertaking any retaliatory measures that would undermine public confidence in the federal government and the country’s standing as a liberal hegemony. Indeed, Americans do not need to look too far back in history to see the ill-fated failure of and bipartisan opposition to court packing. When President Franklin D. Roosevelt sought to add new justices to the Court through the Judicial Procedures Reform Bill of 1937, as a political ploy to gain approval for his New Deal programs, a disaster ensued. Both Democrats, including then Vice President John Garner, and Republicans alike opposed FDR’s attempt, which they viewed as a way to dismantle an independent judiciary and render party preferences, rather than the rule of law, the central force steering government operations. The Judiciary Committee sent a report to the Senate, noting that “it is essential to the continuance of our constitutional democracy that the judiciary be completely independent of both the executive and legislative
WINTER 2020 // COLUMBIA POLITICAL REVIEW branches of the government.” While Article 3 of the Constitution does not set a fixed number of Supreme Court justices, following the misstep of FDR will significantly compromise the Court’s power of judicial oversight and legitimacy in making legally binding decisions. It is clear that the goal of adding new seats is to preserve Democratic legislation like Roe v. Wade and the Affordable Care Act—a noble undertaking to preserve civil rights but embedded is an inherently political motivation. While court packing plans, such as this one
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proposed by some current Democrats seem benign, they imperil the Court’s independence and legitimacy and would lead Republicans mount a retaliation, bringing accelerating political divisions to the judicial branch. Instead of increasing the number of justices, Democrats could turn to the legislature to restore relative stability and minimize social repercussions. The solidification of our new conservative Court prompted widespread panic from abortion right activists, among other issues. While Justice Barrett seeked to distinguish
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herself from her textualist mentor, Justice Scalia, who favored overturning Roe v. Wade in his concurrence in Webster v. Reproductive Health Services (1989), her membership at Notre Dame’s University Faculty for Life, an anti-choice group, seems to suggest otherwise. Realizing the potential consequences of Barrett’s conservative Court opinions, organizations like Planned Parenthood began exploring legislative avenues to counter erosion of women’s reproductive rights. In a podcast episode with the New York Times, Planned
Packing the supreme court is an extremely dangerous, short-sighted step forward.
Parenthood President Alexis McGill Johnson advocated for the Women’s Health Protection Act (WHPA), which would offer federal protection to reduce bans and restrictions, and heightened efforts to repeal the Hyde Amendment, a legislative provision barring federal funding for abortion, through mobilizing efforts to elect Democrats to state legislatures. With varying statutes regulating abortion in different states, however, safeguarding essential rights in the face of a potential overturn of Roe requires Democrats secure a Senate majority to create favorable grounds for implementing such sweeping policies.
Removing lifetime appointments and setting judicial term limits would offer Democrats another route to counter the right’s reversal of important legislation such as the Affordable Care Act (which the Supreme Court will hear in California v. Texas, scheduled for this month). The current term limits proposal, which has received support from judges and constitutional experts, is incorporated into a recent bill sponsored by Representative Khanna Ro (D-CA17). It sets justices’ terms to eighteen years and staggers these terms so that a new justice would retire every two years, meaning that each president
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would nominate two new justices per presidential term. Supreme Court justices would then be allowed to return to their old court posts upon completion of their terms. Unlike court packing, setting term limits directly addresses the dysfunctional issues that exacerbate the current crisis, namely, the degree of influence given to new justices and the direct link between presidents’ political goals and their nominees’ ability to shape decisions for decades. By targeting the source of the current politicization of the Court, term limits would limit future partisan maneuvers without engendering a bitter political fight 22
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"Rather than expanding the court, which would only ensure potential stability for the next few years, Democrats should look at the Republican playbook, rule out all escalating options, and consider executing the aforementioned alternatives." between the two parties. Across federal courts, The Code of Conduct for United States Judges provides guidance to federal judges on their performance of official duties. Canon 3 of the Code specifically governs the manner in which judges should discharge their responsibilities impartially. While the Code of Conduct includes ethical canons applicable to federal judges, no existing set of rules pertain to Supreme Court justices. Although Chief Justice Roberts stated in his 2011 yearend report that justices do consult the Code, he also implied that their decisions as to whether they recuse themselves in cases where there are conflicts of interests are not subject to review. The current 6-3 makeup of the Court amid intensified political tensions raises serious questions of whether the Supreme Court justices would be able to fairly adjudicate cases concerning potential election fraud, corruption of government officials, severability of the individual mandate provision in the Affordable Care Act. Right now, Congress needs to first ensure that Justice Barrett, who worked for the Republicans on Bush v. Gore, would not listen in on cases related to any post-election disputes. In response to Senator Coons’ (D-DE) question regarding recusals, Barrett explained that she “would very seriously undertake that process” and “would consider every relevant factor,” but did not explicitly 23
express that she would recuse herself in post-election dispute cases. Adherence to the Code would ensure that justices strictly follow proper recusal rules and thereby uphold the nonpartisan legitimacy of the Court. Proponents of court packing usually focus on the difficulty of implementing less extreme solutions, which may require more protracted legislative procedures such as a constitutional amendment. Of course, options such as legislative remedies, term limits, and Code of Conduct cannot reverse the damage created in the Trump era overnight. Making effective, long-lasting changes in a democracy has never been easy—just look at the struggles prior to landmark Supreme Court cases like Brown v. Board and Roe v. Wade. While Democrats rightfully fret about the daunting consequences of a 6-3 supermajority on the Supreme Court, it is also important to examine how the Republicans successfully built a conservative legal movement that cultivated a formidable generation of originalists. Conservative think tanks such as the Heritage Foundation and the Cato Institute, founded in 1973 and 1977 respectively, served as some of the key mechanisms through which conservative policy points and debates influence political discourse and public attitudes. Notably, the 4258 failed confirmation of the Reagan nominee, Robert Bork, to the Supreme Court in 1987 further fueled
the conservative movement to build an insurmountable momentum in re-dominating the judiciary through sustained efforts. Rather than expanding the Court, which would only ensure potential stability for the next few years, Democrats should look at the Republican playbook, rule out all escalating options, and consider executing the aforementioned alternatives to safeguard the sanctity of our independent judiciary for generations. Altering the rules with a political motivation in response to the other side’s affronts would be antithetical to our nation’s rules-based order, and risks sending a signal to the Republican party that the Democrats intend to participate in the tit-for-tat political game they themselves condemned. The best way for Democrats to signal to the Republicans and countries around the world that the United States does not condone political tamperings on our highest court is to simply be the example: respond to assaults through non-escalating strategies that align with our country’s democratic values. It is clear that Democrats need to reform the Supreme Court. However, the Biden administration must not consider undertaking an option like court packing, which would escalate the current situation and offer an invitation to further partisan manipulation of the judiciary.
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BLOOD DIAMONDS IN SIERRA LEONE HOW COLONIALISM FUNCTIONS TODAY Leena Yumeen // Columbia College '23 November 29, 2020
The IMF gathers for their World Economic Forum. Photo by Michael Wuertenberg.
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he Human Development Index lists Sierra Leone, a nation on the coast of West Africa, as one of the poorest countries in the world. By contrast, Sierra Leone’s land is laden with diamonds, minerals, and oil that could enrich the government and its citizenry. Yet, wealthier nations block Sierra Leone from its own profit or power by extracting these resources. While the United Nations champions decolonization initiatives, it fails to effectively intervene in neoliberal
systems of economic exploitation that can devastate places like Sierra Leone. Indeed, international diplomats often blame the government and Sierra Leoneans for the state of their country rather than acknowledging the corrupt international structures that feed Sierra Leone’s economic crisis. Despite the disappearance of visible European colonial rule in African countries in the 1960s, the same systems of economic extraction remain. The term “neocolonialism” refers to the continuing covert economic ex-
ploitation of post-colonial nations. Modern statesmen in the International Monetary Fund may wear suits instead of the performative robes of 19th-century European emperors, but make no mistake— their policies and self-interests influence millions across their former colonies. The consequences of this exploitation are blatant in Sierra Leone. The region has the highest maternal mortality rate in the world, severe segregation by wealth, and the average adult only receives 3.6 years of schooling. 24
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How States exploit Sierra Leone's economy The name of Sierra Leone’s first city and current capital, Freetown, is ironic considering Britain’s imperialist involvement in Sierra Leone since the nation’s establishment. The Sierra Leone Company, a group of British abolitionists, founded Freetown in 1787 to resettle formerly enslaved people in England. When the British Parliament outlawed slavery in 1807, it acquired Sierra Leone from the company to settle people freed from the Atlantic Slave Trade. Henceforth, Britain controlled the Sierra Leone administration, and British colonists in the area informally enslaved settlers despite the illegality of slavery. Despite their freedom, the people of Sierra Leone became subject to a new form of oppression. In 1930, a British geologist discovered diamonds in the region. The gems became one of the greatest sources of Sierra Leone’s future conflict, earning them the name “Blood Diamonds.” British companies and other foreign merchants quickly seized control of diamond mines to profit from the newfound market. By 1937, British companies unearthed one million carats annually — an amount currently worth $2 billion to $25 billion USD. As Britain and its companies grew rich, the Sierra Leonean people earned almost none of this profit. After Sierra Leone gained independence from Britain in 1961, this brutal and overt colonialism was replaced by covert economic exploitation. The people of Sierra Leone had lost billions of potential revenue to foreign miners and British companies during the prior three decades. Because of this, the country needed substantial income to develop: colonialism left Sierra Leone 25
with a poor economy, minimal social services, and few educational institutions. To develop infrastructure, the newly-independent nation began loan arrangements with the International Monetary Fund (I.M.F.) in 1967. The nations leading the I.M.F.—namely the United States, Japan, and other wealthy countries—subsequently took control of Sierra Leone’s economy and wrangled away the nation’s freedom, profit, and power once again. Since its formation in 1945, the I.M.F. has stated its purpose has been to “ensure the stability of the international monetary system” and help regions structurally develop. To achieve this, the I.M.F. has given loans to nations and asked that they follow I.M.F. conditions in return. Over the past decades, these conditions have come under increasing scrutiny for inflicting damage on poorer nations. Many critics deem the I.M.F. a neocolonial institution for using its economic influence to keep certain nations impoverished and others enriched. Indeed, the I.M.F.’s control over Sierra Leone after its “independence” furthered the country’s spiral into an economic crisis. The I.M.F. required that Sierra Leone devalue its currency, claiming that this would promote domestic business by increasing the cost of national imports. Yet, this currency devaluation also lowered the cost of Sierra Leone’s minerals for other countries, incentivizing diamond extraction and decreasing the amount of revenue the government could generate by selling the gems. In the 1980s, the conditions of I.M.F. loans further deteriorated the economy and set the stage for civil unrest. To decrease the government’s debt, the international body suggested that Sierra Leone’s authorities lower
public sector spending. However, this diminished the nation’s ability to fund basic social infrastructures for healthcare, education, and more. While illicit diamond traders gained wealth from Sierra Leone’s mines, the general populace remained in situations of dire poverty. In the mid-1980s, around 80 percent of the population lived below $1 USD per day. Dissatisfied with the economy, citizenry and ex-soldiers violently grappled for control over diamond mines and sparked a civil war in 1991. A decade later, U.N. intervention disarmed the rebels and created the Special Court for Sierra Leone, a war crimes court to prosecute leaders that had terrorized civilians. The international community has commonly blamed the civil war on failures of the Sierra Leonean government and the Prime Minister. Yet, this type of judgment is paternalistic at best: it implies that Sierra Leone needs the involvement of entities like the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, or the United Nations to keep it from causing its own crises. This perspective fundamentally ignores decades of imperial and neocolonial activities that culminated in the outbreak of such violent conflict. Neocolonialism's Devastating Effects today Despite the settlement of the war, the nation faced a long road to recovery. Around 2 million Sierra Leoneans—almost half the population at the time—were displaced and thousands were killed. The conflict sprouted disease, destroyed the economy, dwindled food supplies, and demolished national infrastructures. It positioned Sierra Leone for greater economic dependency on institutions like the I.M.F. and the World Bank for
WINTER 2020 // COLUMBIA POLITICAL REVIEW development loans. Indeed, over the next decade, Sierra Leone made five more arrangements with the I.M.F. for emergency assistance or Poverty Reduction and Growth Facility loans (P.R.G.F.s). While the national GDP initially grew between 2000 and 2007, the dependency of Sierra Leone’s economy on its wealthy I.M.F. donors led to a domestic crisis in the 2008 recession. As a native Sierra Leonean explained in an anonymous group study, “You know whenever there is a crisis in [the] Middle East, and, or Europe/America, Africa will suffer, especially Sierra Leone and [Sub-Saharan] Africa. The credit crunch [reduces] remittances to
own mines across the region and trap informal diamond diggers using debt bondage. Even where debt bondage is uncommon, children regularly mine for long hours each day to sustain their families. As Sierra Leone’s resources enrich global corporations, the government struggles to establish public services or infrastructure. In an interview with the Columbia Political Review, Dr. Yusuf Dibba—a physician and native Gambian—described his experience working throughout Sierra Leone. Across the country, railroad lines center around mining sites and fail to connect rural areas to cities with more resources. Coupled with the
“The I.M.F. has bred an economic dependency Paralleling THAT of a colonial nation on its metropole.” households and [export value] and our country depends on donor funds.” By tethering Sierra Leone’s economy to others through loans, the I.M.F. has bred an economic dependency that parallels the dependency of a colonial nation on its metropole. Legacies of colonialism also pervade the diamond industry. Sierra Leone’s government attempts to reduce illicit diamond trading by holding export taxes low and promoting international trade through legitimate channels. However, low export taxes allow foreign corporations to exploit Sierra Leone’s wealth of resources using tactics similar to those from the 20th century. Large-scale, foreign buyers
government’s inability to fund social services, this limited rail system fuels health inequity: in the rural district of Kono, Dr. Dibba recalled only two doctors present for a population of 500,000. City populations, however, also suffered before the intervention of N.G.O.s. When asked about his time working in the public healthcare system from 2010 to 2013, he stated that, “During the time that I went [to the public hospital], it was like a death trap. People didn’t even want to [go]…. you [ended] up either dying or discharging yourself.” Since there are relatively few institutes of higher education in the nation, the government has relied on foreign experts and
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N.G.O.s to improve such facilities. While the diplomats heading the World Bank and I.M.F. are clearly culpable for the crisis in Sierra Leone, the populaces of wealthy nations also influence this system. When citizens buy goods, like diamonds, that are extracted from countries like Sierra Leone, they contribute to international structures of dominance and inequality. Although diamond miners earn next to nothing for hours of grueling work, diamond corporations sell gems for approximately $3,200 per carat. Diamond buyers unjustly enrich these companies and bolster demand for a product that produces misery for Sierra Leoneans. Ever since the horrors of the trade were exposed in the early 2000s, there has been an international movement to ban blood diamonds. Yet, the industry still generates billions in revenue annually. Sierra Leoneans protest to improve their conditions, but such movements may end violently. Constituents of nations that lead the I.M.F. can alleviate the plight of miners by opposing the I.M.F.’s neocolonial activity. The top ten nations in the I.M.F.—which include the U.S., Japan, China, and the U.K.—hold over 50 percent of the voting power, inevitably making their interests prevail in the international body. Citizens can avoid products of diamond moguls to challenge the industry or lobby elected officials to prevent increases in these nations’ voting power. As people like Dr. Dibba attempt to improve conditions, NGOs can boycott the I.M.F. when unjust policies arise or strengthen the capacity of the Sierra Leonean government. Dismantling this global system of economic dominance requires the intentional action of all individuals. 26
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THE POP CULTURE POLITICS OF THE 2020 THAI PROTESTS
Protesters occupy the Lat Phrao Intersection in Bangkok. Photo by Khaosod English.
Bernadette Gostelow // General Studies '21 November 5, 2020
G
rowing up in Singapore in the 2000s, I vividly remember watching Hamtaro after school. The Japanese cartoon franchise features the lives and adventures of a hamster, Hamtaro, and his friends who escape from their cages when their owners are away. The 27
theme song is an adorable swing-like tune that starts with fast drumming and call-and-response lyrics in which a singer sings “It’s Hamtaro time!” and the chorus responds, “when we work together it’s much better.” Fast forward to July 2020 and watching the protest in Thailand on the news, I find myself feeling a be-
wildering mix of déjà vu and curiosity as I encounter the same tune with a slight difference. The song sounds as lively as the original—arguably livelier with the interjection of electronic flourishes and ornamentation. However, beneath the agreeable nature of the tune, the remixed lyrics betray a sinister intention. When set against
WINTER 2020 // COLUMBIA POLITICAL REVIEW the backdrop of the protest, the lyrics become a call to arms: “Come out, run, run, run Hamtaro… The most attractive thing is people’s tax.” People are likened to these oppressed hamsters and encouraged to air their grievances and reclaim their liberty. Watching the video, I became intrigued by the effectiveness and rationale behind the use of popular culture icons to mobilize a political movement. Besides an adorable hamster and “#LetsRunHamtaro,” the Thai protest also features other beloved icons, including characters from Harry Potter and The Hunger Games, and other assorted items like milk tea and umbrellas through the paraphernalia used at protests and on their social media platforms. Disparate meanings and implications become repackaged, repurposed, and refracted through the prism of the issue at hand. What then, could possibly motivate protesters to use these diverse cultural fragments? First, we need to consider what this prism looks like. The timeline is roughly as follows: the Thai army orchestrated a coup in 2014 and established the National Council for Peace and Order (N.C.P.O.), a military government headed by General Prayut Chan-o-cha. Chan-o-cha suspended the constitution and granted the N.C.P.O. unchecked and unlimited power over Thailand. In the March 2019 election, Chan-o-cha was elected but faced many charges of fraud from political opponents. Despite this de jure democratic transition, Thailand de facto maintained a military dictatorship with one junta senator allegedly calling Thailand a “democratic dictatorship.” Following the election, the government increasingly encroached on
democratic spaces. These infringements included an orchestrated constitutional disbandment of the pro-democracy Future Forward party in February 2020 on trumped-up financial violation charges, as well as the censorship of Voice TV, a media outlet publicizing the democratic protests. The Thai establishment has attempted to stamp out individuality with the implementation of the compulsory song nak rien student haircut that is reminiscent of ultra-authoritarianism in states like North Korea. Additionally, Chan-o-cha himself introduced the Twelve Values into the school curriculum, ordering pupils to respect Thai tradition and the monarchy. These specific policies targeting youth attitudes explains why students have been at the heart of the 2020 protest. While the disbandment of the Future Forward party did trigger some demonstrations, the subsequent COVID-19 lockdown on March 26th stifled the fledgling protest movement. Instead, dissatisfaction continued to stew for months until the protest resumed in mid-July, without any specific proximate cause. As the student activist Free Youth Movement organized themselves into a coherent group using popular icons, calls for reform grew louder with the movement reaching twenty provinces by July 18th. The Free Youth have a tripartite objective as delineated in their 10-point manifesto:
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to repeal the lèse-majesté law that punishes criticism of the monarchy with up to 15 years in prison, and the Cybersecurity Law that affords the government a blank cheque to collect digital data; and 3. An end to the harassment of critics more broadly.
While the government’s policies may explain the accretion of discontent, they do not explain the specific timing of the outbreak of the 2020 protest. In other words, the outbreak of the protest in July 2020 was not precipitated by a particular oppressive law or policy. Alternatively, dissatisfaction was harbored but not expressed because of a collective action problem and the lack of an active protest movement at the time. People may have felt an immense amount of resentment towards the Thai establishment but were unable to identify their specific grievances with the skeleton of a movement during lockdown. In this light, protest leaders are first and foremost social entrepreneurs. They attempt to overcome this collective action problem by initiating a movement that spins together a rich narrative that encompasses as many peoples’ grievances as possible. They have a keen understanding of the range of people’s negative sentiments and can channel these sentiments into a coherent movement by using icons and symbols as a means to recruit and achieve group solidarity. The government’s policies are like timber, with each new injustice incre1. A dissolution of the current mentally adding fuel. Protest leaders government; are the matches that transform pas2. An amendment to the consti- sive sentiment into an active burning tution, with the specific demand feeling, with symbols and iconogra28
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phy acting as additional oxygen that sustain the movement. Iconography is a form of social capital that represents ideas. On a basic level, the protesters dress up in Hogwarts robes because they are trying to evoke the sentimental value of the franchise. Similar to how the Hogwarts faculty and students protected the wizarding world from the Death Eaters at the Battle of Hogwarts, the Thai students see themselves as defenders of Thai democracy, using their chopstick wands to cast fake spells against authoritarian rule. As a beloved icon worldwide, Harry Potter has ubiquitous clout, allowing the protesters to swiftly gain the world’s attention. By dressing up as Hogwarts students, the protesters are also sending a political message. The protesters can be interpreted as trying to mimic the bravery of Dumbledore’s Army and liken Chan-o-cha and his administration to the vileness of Voldemort and the Death Eaters—both of whom desire to establish an exclusive and rigid autocracy in Thailand and the Harry Potter universe. The ambiguity of this allusion is the symbol’s strength; all onlookers are affected by the symbol’s deployment despite their differing interpretations. Hence, regardless of one’s specific gripe about the Thai establishment, one could equally be mobilized and marshaled by the use of the symbol. Symbols also allow for group formation, coherence, and solidarity. Emile Durkheim theorized that crowds are creative generative centers for symbolic connections that keep protesters invigorated. In contrast, lone individuals quickly become depleted and lose motivation due to their sense of alienation from their 29
communities. Symbols, therefore, have the crucial effect of siphoning and directing feelings of discontent into a coherent enterprise. Besides using new symbols like the Harry Potter frocks, the protesters also evoke past symbols like the three-fingered Hunger Games salute, which first emerged at the 2014 anti-coup protests. In the Hunger Games franchise, the salute is used by the “tributes,” who would march through the streets towards their almost certain death in the games. The salute is a symbol of teary appreciation, farewell, and pride: the tributes’ last chance to see and thank their loved ones. In the context of the 2014 protests, the salute was a powerful collective representation of the struggle for recognition and democracy that distilled and condensed multiple threads of feelings of discontent amongst members who might otherwise lack cohesion and focus. Collective identity is therefore both a signifier of and is signified by symbols. This mutual signification process iteratively strengthens the connection between identity and symbol. Since 2014, the salute has come to symbolize a diverse number of grievances: the growing wealth and privilege disparity between the military, political elite, and the Thai masses, the gross abuse of power and circumvention of any form of democratic checks and balances by the villainous incumbent, and the reduction of the Thai masses’ suffering to sadistic forms of entertainment for the elite. These iterations built up the salute as a robust symbol of Thai anger that both constructs the enemy (the Thai establishment), and is a form of communication and signal for social exchange amongst the Thai mass-
es. The invocation of the symbol in 2020 thus has the dual effect of inciting similar unresolved feelings of discontent from the 2014 protests and furnishing the 2020 protest with a sense of continuity that was useful in expanding the protest core from students to the general Thai public. These symbols also fuel fear and anxiety into productive emotions like anger and outrage. Protests are distinct sites for the creation and reinforcement of emotions in contrast to those borne from existing moral frameworks. For example, the disappearance of activist-in-exile Wanchalearm Satsaksit, who was last seen in Phnom Penh in early June, may not have immediately triggered the protest. However, once the protest reached a critical mass, the disappearance of Wanchalearm was recast through the specific moral and emotional framework of the protest. While rallying the crowd in early August, Thatchapong Kaedam, a prominent protest leader, reminded “everyone to think of Wanchalearm’s smile,” before beckoning at the masses to “cast” the Patronus charm that would protect themselves and the realm. Thatchapong also encouraged the protesters to link the disappearance of Wachalearm to “the smiles of our friends who have been forced into exile overseas,” and to “think of the smiles of our friends who think differently and are forced into becoming people to overthrow Lord Voldemort. Think of our friends’ different ideas, the smiles of our friends who were abducted and disappeared because they think differently, and point your wand into the sky.” Kaedam’s tribute to Wanchalearm had a strong mobilizing effect for the movement. First, his speech
WINTER 2020 // COLUMBIA POLITICAL REVIEW focused peripheral and latent emotions into active ones. Second, the words amplified these emotions by coaxing the listener to attach their personal experiences of unfairness to the mistreatment of a public figure. Third, the connection to Harry Potter transformed negative feelings of fear or sadness into feelings of righteous vengeance and anger by attaching the emotions to the pop culture reference of Voldemort. This total metamorphosis would not have been possible without the emotional framework of the protest. Other cultural icons, such as milk tea and umbrellas, hint at the internationalization of the protest. The “Milk Tea Alliance” started off as a memetic, predominantly Twitter-based phenomenon that was a symbol of the metaphorical brotherhood between Hong Kong, Thailand, and Taiwan. All cultures have some kind of milk tea drink; the Hong Kongers have góngsīk náaihchà, the Thais have cha yen, and the Taiwanese, of course, have bubble tea (the famous Gong Cha chain around Columbia’s campus and New York in general is Taiwanese). Just as how the Harry Potter and Hunger Games symbols were crucial in reigniting the protests, the deployment of cross-cultural ones, such as milk tea, were key in the internationalization of them. Overseas, foreign allies are reminded of the similarities between the Thais’ plight and their own, triggering outrage over perceived domination and mobilizing action. While these symbols have a generalizing effect by underscoring the similarities of oppression between polities, they also have a particularizing one. Just like myself, international onlookers find the deployment
of Harry Potter, Hamtaro, and the Hunger Games symbols intriguing; these references subsequently prompt a global interest into the circumstances of the Thai protest. More specifically, the “Milk Tea Alliance” was created in April 2020 after Thai model Weeraya Sukaram (@nnevvy) and her partner were attacked on social media for suggesting that Hong Kong and Taiwan are not a part of China. Ironically, Chinese nationalists would circumvent the Great Firewall to voice support for the Chinese Communist Party’s narratives on Facebook and Twitter. The media war with the #MilkTeaAlliance gradually expanded into an anti-domination movement, incorporating other countries; India, for example, was added following the May 2020 skirmishes along the Sino-Indian border, bringing masala chai to the alliance. By deploying the alliance in the 2020 protest, the Thai protesters evoke both international support for their self-governance and also a sense of reciprocity after key Thai figures supported other democratic causes. Other icons, such as umbrella formations and the Bruce Lee-inspired #BeWater philosophy flash mobs, also hint at both practical lessons learned from the Hong Kong protests and a sense of symbolic unity against ruthless authoritarian leaders. This move was very effective. Prominent foreign protest leaders, such as Joshua Wong, have advocated for the Thais’ cause over social media and in-person demonstrations using the #MilkTeaAlliance. Joshua rallied for the Thais as early as July 19th, when he urgently tweeted for Hongkies to “never forget how our Thai fellows stood with us against China’s
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nationalist trolls,” perhaps referring to nnevvy’s tweet and the social media feud that ensued in which the Thais, Taiwanese, and Hongkies jointly stood up to the mainland Chinese. The opposition to the protests have also adopted their own political symbols. Since August 2020, Royalists who have their own infamous symbol of the yellow shirt have launched a counter-protest, defending Chano-cha’s government and characterizing the protesters as rabble-rousing, intransigent youths. Chan-o-cha’s government also reacted to the Free Youth in a textbook authoritarian fashion: enacting an emergency decree banning large-scale gatherings in Bangkok. Chan-o-cha attempted to cool tensions by promising to repeal emergency laws on October 21, 2020 “if rallies stay peaceful.” It is unclear, however, if this is a political ploy. After all, the standard of what is considered “peaceful” is highly arbitrary. Chan-o-cha’s conciliation attempt may be too little too late. The Free Youth have stepped up their demands in reaction to his emergency decree, rejecting his olive branch and vociferating now for his immediate resignation after he failed to meet the three-day deadline. From Venezuela to Hong Kong, authoritarian governments have repeatedly jettisoned considerations of social movements’ highly emotional roots. Steeped in a rich tapestry of cultural icons, these movements invoke tsunamis of context-specific emotions that build insurmountable camaraderie between protesters and onlookers. By attempting to bulldoze these movements using brute force, authoritarian governments shoot themselves in the foot by reinforcing the means of collective action. 30
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MODI AND THE HINDU NATIONALIST AGENDA THE BABRI MASJID CONTROVERSY IN 2020 Kaitlyn Saldanha // Barnard College '24 December 7, 2020
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n the 2019 general election, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s landslide victory affirmed the robust dominance of his party in Indian electoral and legislative politics for the next five years. This October, Modi’s administration resurfaced an ancient religious conflict known as the Ayodhya dispute, or the Babri Masjid case, and the century-old controversy instantly reentered headlines. By attacking the ideals of India’s constitution, the Babri Masjid case and Modi’s recent development present a prime case study for the erosion of secularism in India. Modi’s recent actions, however, are far from unanticipated: in fact, the evolution of the Babri Masjid controversy in 2020 can be explained by centuries of history surrounding religious divisiveness, communalism, and the rise of the political far-right in India. That India is a religiously divided nation is no secret; the history of religious difference dates all the way back to the Indus Valley Civilization. Consisting of Hindus, Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, Buddhists, and Jains, the schisms between modern religious groups date back to a 32 31
decentralized India, one ruled by a collection of empires and dynasties, each with a different take on worship. India’s rich history—from the Vedic period to the dissolution of the British Raj to the headlines of 2020—is soiled with religiously-motivated hate crimes, massacres, and political assassinations. Some attribute the origin of this religious divide in India to the caste system, which is an ethnographic hierarchy of social classes. While the caste system itself can be located in several foundational texts of Hinduism—from Vedas to the Bhagavad Gita—caste violence is a matter of religious interpretation. The controversy and violence surrounding caste constitutes a largely intra-Hindu debate, whereas India’s national religious divide is a matter of violent relations between different religious communities. In other words, the notion of caste is tangential to what is otherwise a distinctly interfaith conflict, one which manifests between Hindu and Muslim communities in particular. India’s national identity and self-image cannot be discussed without the inclusion of religious divi-
siveness. Hence, the story of Indian independence—arguably the most critical event of modern Indian history—is inextricably intertwined with religious conflict. Some historians believe that India’s religious divide and violence are legacies of the country’s colonial past. Citing Britain’s strategy in conquering India using a tactic known as “divide and rule,” British leaders pitted Muslims and Hindus against each other. The ensuing chaos facilitated an easier transition to colonial rule, and diminished the possibility of a unified uprising against the British Raj administration. Ultimately, this strategy backfired massively for Britain. What began as a series of isolated terrorist incidents devolved over the course of the colonial occupation into full-blown communal rioting. Throughout the mid-twentieth century (notably including protests from 1930-1947), religious conflicts escalated and sowed the seeds for India’s independence and the Partition of India and Pakistan. While India’s independence marked a triumph over a shared colonial oppressor, many saw the ensuing Partition as a failure. Most famously,
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The Babri Masjid Mosque in the alte 19th century, before its destruction. Photo by Samuel Bourne.
Mahatma Gandhi, a vehement opponent of the Partition, wrote the following in 1947: “Probably no one is more distressed than I am over the impending division of India.” British leaders oversaw the division of territory, which is to say the new border was drawn without much knowledge of the demographic distribution along it. As a result, the Partition displaced between 10 to 15 million people, creating a devastating refugee crisis almost overnight. The death toll is widely disputed amongst historians, but is estimated somewhere between several hundred thousand and two million. Religious divisiveness is woven delicately throughout the fabric of India’s past in such a way that it simply cannot be separated while preserving historical accuracy. This dark but unavoidable emblem of India’s
past manifests itself in a plethora of modern examples including Bollywood, electoral politics, celebrity scandals, economics, literature, and foreign affairs. Above all, however, there is one controversy that stands out from the rest. Known as the Ayodhya dispute or the Babri Masjid demolition case, this centuries-old controversy dates all the way back to sixteenth century India, and it has recently reentered international news headlines as Prime Minister Narendra Modi takes a stand on the issue. Babri Masjid, translated from Sanskrit and meaning “Mosque of Babur,” is located in the city of Ayodhya, Uttar Pradesh, India. This site was originally occupied by a mosque, constructed by commander Mir Baqi of the Mughal Empire. Many Hindus believe the site of the Babri Masjid to be the birthplace of Ram, a Hindu
deity. Hindu extremists demolished the mosque in 1992, and now, in 2020, Modi is leading a movement to construct a Hindu mandir (temple), on the same land. The highly-polarized territorial dispute over this land plays into decades of religious communalism and divisiveness. In order to properly understand the significant role of the Ayodhya dispute in Indian culture and politics, one must start from the origin of the mosque. Though the specific date of construction is unknown, inscriptions discovered on the structure in the 20th century estimate a time around 935 A.H., sometime between 1528 and 1529. The sacred mosque remained vacant for several decades ever since its 1992 demolition. Apart from the fact that both Muslims and Hindus claim entitlement to the land, any construction on top of 32 33
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what was once a place of worship is subject to widespread accusations of insensitivity and outright sacrilege. The core source of controversy lies with the geographic placement of the temple, which is upon a hill known as Ramkot where Babri Masjid once sat. Muslims claim the land on the grounds of the sheer duration of the mosque’s existence. For Muslims, the Babri Masjid was a relict of the great Islamic Mughal Empire. On the other hand, certain factions of the Hindu community claim that Ramkot marks the birthplace of Rama, incarnation of the god Vishnu. More radical proponents even claim that a structure marking Rama’s birthplace existed before the mosque was constructed. Those who subscribe to this school of thought claim that the Mughals destroyed the Hindu temple which occupied the Ramkot hill prior to the construction of the mosque. There is minimal archaeological or epigraphic evidence to support this claim; the first documented mandir of Rama in Uttar Pradesh was of the late sixteenth century, which would place the mosque’s construction at least some nineteen years prior. Hence, this dispute between Hindus and Muslims is distinctly territorial: Who is entitled to a holy site on the Ramkot land? Much like any religiously disputed territory in the world, conflict escalated slowly at first, but rapidly intensified. 1859: The British Raj erected a fence along the perimeter of the land, so Hindus could worship at the outer court whilst mosque proceedings occurred inside. 1885: Mahant Raghubir Das, a 33 34
Hindu seer, filed a plea in a local court seeking permission to build a canopy for Hindu worship outside the fence, which was promptly rejected. From the mid-twentieth century onward, Hindu antagonism gained footing in popular culture, and the movement gradually became more hostile. 1949: An unknown group of individuals installed idols of Ram Lalla (the infant form of Lord Rama) along the outside of the fence while the area was locked off. 1959: Nirmohi Akhara, a wealthy Hindu sect, filed for ownership of the land. 1961: Uttar Pradesh Sunni Central Waqf Board filed for ownership of the land. 1986: A local court ordered the land be opened to Hindu worshippers. 1989: The Allahabad High Court declared status quo must be upheld for the Babri Masjid site. Four centuries of tensions finally climaxed on Dec. 6, 1992 when a Hindu nationalist rally gathered some 150,000 protesters, overwhelmed security forces, and tore the ancient mosque to the ground. Of course, the demolition of the mosque was only the beginning of the violence. Immediately following the mosque’s destruction, riots broke out with a force and intensity that spanned three countries. In India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, several months of violent protest and hate crimes ensued. More than two thousand civilians were ultimately killed as a result of the communal violence. Though the majority of deaths were Muslim, rioters on both sides of the
conflict inflicted deadly force. The rioting also incurred extensive property damage: Mumbai alone paid approximately ₹ 9,000 crore, or $3.6 billion USD, in damages. The extremists who demolished Babri Masjid were later identified to be members of Vishva Hindu Parishad, a right-wing Hindu nationalist organization with an established goal to “organise [and] consolidate the Hindu society and to serve and protect the Hindu Dharma.” V.H.P.’s Hindutva objective, however, is far from outdated in India. In fact, the mission statement of Modi’s party— the Bharatiya Janata Party—is nearly identical. Hindu nationalism is the belief that India exists as a homeland for Hindus, rather than the secular state that India’s constitution describes. Historians and political scientists alike reference Hindu nationalism as a variant of right-wing extremism and ethnic absolutism. The origin of Hindutva long precedes the unification of India into one nation-state. The existence of Hindu nationalism is as old as religious division across the Indian subcontinent itself, but did not become fully integrated into electoral politics until the collapse of the British Raj. One moment which made official the threat of Hindu nationalism was the assassination of Gandhi by Hindu extremist Nathuram Godse. Gandhi is widely deified in Indian and Western culture alike, so when Godse assassinated him due to his perceived tolerance towards Muslims, the response was passionate. From Gandhi's death onwards, Hindu nationalism became widely recognized as a tangible encroachment on peace, pluralism, and secu-
WINTER 2020 // COLUMBIA POLITICAL REVIEW larism in India. Hindu nationalism’s threat to India is far from theoretical. Modi entered office after a landslide election in 2014, with promises to counteract corruption and modernize the economy. During his time in office, Modi’s administration has pursued legislation that has been met with widespread accusations of sectarianism and Islamophobia. Most notable in this category is the recent Citizenship Amendment Act of 2019 (C.A.A.), an amendment to India’s sixty-four-year-old citizenship law that effectively makes the naturalization process more difficult for Muslim applicants. An official from the Indian Ministry of Foreign Af-
rests. Another key example of Modi’s legislative efforts to attack civil liberties is his National Register of Citizens (N.R.C), a program which registers all those whose citizenship aligns with the Citizenship Act of 1955 and the Citizenship Act of 2003. Modi first implemented the N.R.C. in Assam, a border state with large immigration issues, and plans on expanding to other states in 2021. The program also includes the distribution of national identity cards, the main goal of which is to identify and deport undocumented Bengali immigrants. However, what actually occurred as a result was nearly two million people rendered
"During his time in office, Modi's administration has pursued legislation that has been met with widespread accusations of sectarianism and Islamophobia." fairs claimed that “the bill provides expedited consideration for Indian citizenship to persecuted religious minorities already in India from certain contiguous countries.” Specifically, the amendment allows Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis, and Christians fleeing religious persecution in Bangladesh, Pakistan, or Afghanistan to fast-track their citizenship process. Quite noticeably, the bill includes every major religion from across Southeast Asia with the blatant exception of Islam. The passage of Modi’s C.A.A. ignited massive, nationwide protests. Beginning in Assam, protestors clashed with law enforcement officials, ultimately resulting in over 65 citizen casualties, over 175 injuries, and over 3,000 ar-
stateless practically overnight, the vast majority being Muslim. Proving one’s citizenship to meet the standards of the N.R.C. can be excruciatingly difficult given the specific document requirements, many of which are unattainable for residents of rural areas. Unfortunately, the C.A.A. and N.R.C., along with the rest of Modi’s contentious legislative record in office, were hardly a surprise given his platform and political origin story. Modi’s party, the B.J.P., is highly conservative and right-wing, as well as an opponent of the Indian National Congress political party. The ideological backbone of the B.J.P. is the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (R.S.S.), a right-wing paramilitary volunteer organization that facili-
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tated the beginning of Modi’s political career. The R.S.S.’s platform hinges largely on a book written by ideologue M. S. Golwalkar, where he promotes the Hindu nationalist cause, citing Muslims and Christians as “major internal threats” to India. Modi joined the R.S.S. as a student in 1950, and remained an engaged member for over a decade as he entered the sphere of Hindutva politics. Modi’s roots with this organization cannot be overlooked; the R.S.S. and its vast membership characterize Modi’s voter base as he aligns himself with an organization that not only promotes violent Hindu uprising, but overtly opposes the Indian Constitution. The founders of the Indian constitution had a vision for the nation which prominently featured secularism, a major premise of Indian independence. Contrary to popular belief, the Partition of India did not create two religious homelands with Pakistan for Muslims and India for Hindus. Rather, the key negotiators of India’s independence—men like Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru—fought valiantly for a secular, united India with a future of religious coexistence and integration. The intention was for religious pluralism to continue existing in both nations, particularly in states and provinces with divided religious demographics, such as Kashmir or Punjab. The 42nd Amendment to the Indian constitution, enacted in 1976, codified the notion of secularism in the preamble. Thus, any attempt to claim that India’s founders or founding documents present a vision for a decidedly Hindu nation would be factually mistaken. Despite 35 34
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this, Modi continues pushing for a Hindu homeland: his supporters uphold the notion that he is fighting to correct the mistakes of India’s founders. That Modi and his party stand for the degradation of Indian secularism is hardly a partisan assertion. Further, considering the prominent feature of secularism in India’s Constitution, an attack on secularism can only be equated with an attack on democracy. In 1997, infamous journalist Fareed Zakaria wrote a shockingly prophetic article for Foreign Affairs magazine about the rise of illiberal democracy. In it, he writes that concepts of democracy and liberalism are often conflated. Zakaria cites constraints on speech and assembly, suppression of the press, and widespread attack on civil liberties as major indicators of governments which are technically democratic, but far from liberal or progressive. Modi and his administration have followed Zakaria’s projected downward spiral with near perfect accuracy. Modi continuously maneuvers around the press in an attempt to downplay the repercussions of his legislative moves while in office. The Indian Express found in 2017 that “…Modi is the first Prime Minister in the country’s history who [has] never held a press conference.” Further, the aforementioned C.A.A. is an overt attack on the freedom of religion, which is supposedly guaranteed by Articles 25 through 28 of the Constitution. In other words, Modi’s work to institutionalize Hindu nationalism is part of a larger trend observed in the field of international relations. What follows is censorship, an uptick in corruption and 35
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populist electoral politics, and a blitz on civil liberties. In short, Modi and the B.J.P. have already begun taking steps to lead India towards a path of illiberalism and non-secular governance, and there is much at stake for the Indian populace. After exploring the Vedic origins of Indian casteism and the colonial strategies of the British Empire, we return to 2020. On October 17th, Modi presided over the bhoomi poojan ceremony, officially marking the commencement of construction for a Hindu temple on the Babri Masjid land, and resurfacing an age-old dispute between Hindus and Muslims. For those who believe there is a Hindu claim to the land, this announcement represented a momentous victory. For many Muslims, however, the construction of a temple on the graveyard of one of India’s oldest mosques is not only insensitive, but sacrilegious. Despite this, the Ram Mandir of Ayodhya is in its early stages of construction. This development remains highly controversial and the reactions of Indians across the globe are incredibly polarized. The night of Modi’s announcement, some 1,000 people gathered in Times Square, New York City, to celebrate with bhajans and chant “Jai Shri Ram,” meaning “Glory to Lord Ram.” Similar celebrations occurred in Washington, D.C., and in organized events across temples in Florida, California, Texas, and other states with large Hindu-American populations. For many Muslims, the demolition of the Babri Masjid by Hindu extremists was a devastating tragedy, so Modi’s announcement was far from rousing. Kaleem Kawaja, Executive Director of the Associ-
ation of Indian Muslims of America in Washington, D.C., condemned Modi’s push forward with the construction of the Ayodhyah temple, claiming the prime minister’s actions “created an anti-Muslim hate frenzy.” Human rights organizations spoke out, including Sunita Viswanath of Hindus for Human Rights of New York, who vehemently “condemned the fact that the holy name of Lord Ram is being exploited and sullied by the B.J.P. party and Prime Minister Modi for political gains.” Evidently, the fight is far from over: Modi’s movement in favor of Hindu claim to the Babri Masjid land will continue to face stark opposition, even as the construction of the Ram Temple plays out. Though this controversy is an ancient religious conflict, it is hardly an isolated occurrence. The demolition of Babri Masjid is emblematic of India’s entrenched religious divide, and the governmental response speaks to the urgent dangers of a future of illiberalism. Modi’s actions are part of a larger erosion of secularism and an explicit disregard for India’s constitution, putting the validity of India’s democracy on the line. Of course, Modi and his platform are merely one component of a worldwide trend of democratic decay: but India is the world’s largest democracy. It is central to the globalized trade market, and it has the second largest population on the planet. The risks are far from ideological, nor are they confined within India’s borders. So long as the B.J.P. remains in power, the crusade will only progress; Modi and his party will continue to pull at the threads of Indian democracy until there is nothing left.
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"FAILURE WILL BE DEVASTATING" AN INTERVIEW WITH SECRETARY-GENERAL ANTóNIO GUTERRES Aditya Sharma // General Studies '21 December 3, 2020
António Guterres is the Secretary-General of the United Nations. Elected to succeed Ban Ki-moon in 2017, his tenure has been marked by the COVID-19 pandemic, the war in Syria, and the battle against climate change, among other major international crises. Before taking the top job at the U.N., he served as the organization’s High Commissioner for Refugees and spent seven years as the Prime Minister of Portugal. On December 2, hours after his speech at Columbia’s World Leaders Forum, I spoke to Mr. Guterres in an exclusive interview for the Columbia Political Review. We discussed the international response to COVID-19, the global battle against climate change, and how to shore up multilateralism, among other pressing topics.
U.N. Secretary-General AntÓnio Guterres at the Columbia World Leaders Forum on Wednesday, December 2, 2020. United Nations photo.
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Your speech this morning mostly focused on the dangers of climate change. Columbia has recently announced the launch of a new climate school, and climate issues are very important to our students here. What role do you see for universities and university students in the climate battle? One of the key aspects of successfully fighting climate change is to make sure that science is respected, and a lot of universities have been essential in providing the adequate science that has allowed those who are committed to fighting to do it the right way. I do believe that universities have a double role: on one hand, to provide the science that is needed for us to be able to adopt the right strategies and the right measures and policies related to climate change; and secondly, to put pressure on governments, local authorities, and business to decarbonize for us to be able to reach the end of this century with not more than 1.5 degrees Celsius of temperature growth. COP26, the next U.N. climate summit, will meet in Glasgow in less than a year. What are your hopes for the summit? Are there concrete measures you hope will come out of it? I hope that even before the summit presents a so-called Nationally-Determined Contribution, in relation to climate action, that are in line with what the scientific community tells us, which means a reduction of emissions in the next decade corresponding to 45% of the levels that existed in 2010, and pointing to zero greenhouse gas emissions 37
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by 2050. As the flip-side, we hope that the C.O.P. will finally be able to come to an agreement on the implementation of Article 6 of the Paris Agreement (on carbon markets), and at the same time that there will be a strong impulse in relation to more ambition in finance, for the commitments made in Paris to be respected, and for a massive mobilization in both public and private funding. You have praised the European Union for being a model for climate measures, particularly its European Green Deal and Next Generation E.U. initiatives. Its member states, however, are among the world’s wealthiest countries, and the cost of the entire package comes to some €1.85 trillion. As you said in your speech earlier today, the world’s poorer countries are also the most vulnerable to the effects of climate change. What can developing countries do to sustainably pursue a similar path?
creation, on energy being accessible to everybody, on [the] eradication of poverty. But today, it is proven that the most efficient and cheapest way is with a green strategy, is renewable energies, is not going on investing in what will be, in the near future, stranded assets in which a lot of money could be wasted today. So, developing countries must learn from the mistakes made in the past by developed countries and adopt a development strategy that is green and in line with the objectives of climate action.
You began a recent article by declaring: “COVID-19 is a test of international cooperation—and it is a test the world is failing.” Despite some of the successes of the W.H.O.’s COVAX initiative, multiple countries have turned inwards, practicing a sort of “vaccine nationalism.” Is there a solution to this isolationism? In what way can the international community continue to encourage a joint hanFirst of all, it’s very important what dling of COVID-19 and future pandemics? the European Union is doing in re- If COVID-19 has taught us a leslation to its own efforts in mitiga- son, it is that a world in disunity and tion, and its commitment to net-ze- largely in disarray, with each counro [emissions] and its measures to try having its own strategy without get there. But it’s also very import- any effective coordination of the ant that all countries, including the different actions to contain the panEuropean ones, are able to meet the demic, makes the virus move from commitments made in Paris, name- east to west, from north to south, ly to mobilize $100 billion from in a first wave, second wave, probpublic and private sources to sup- ably third wave. [This] means that port developing countries in both approaches based on inward-lookmitigation and adaptation. Devel- ing visions by governments, or on oping countries must do as much populism, have largely failed. What as possible not to repeat the mis- we need is effective international takes that developed countries have cooperation, what we need is for [made] in the past. It is necessary the recommendations of the World to bet on economic growth, on job Health Organization to be followed,
WINTER 2020 // COLUMBIA POLITICAL REVIEW and what we need is the capacity to mobilize now the resources to make sure that the vaccines that start becoming available will be treated as global public goods, for the globe, and accessible everywhere, because that is the only way to eradicate the disease. If, as you say, countries are failing to engage with one another properly on pandemic response, it does not augur well for the fight against climate change. How would you characterize the current level of climate cooperation among the international community? Well, we are still far from where we need to be, but I hope that we learn lessons from the failures of global disunity. The negative consequences that disunity caused, in relation to the containment of the pandemic, will force states to understand that it’s time to come together and to adopt a multilateral approach to climate action. If we do not learn our lesson from what has happened with Covid, [we] would be doing something very stupid. Technology and data have risen to prominence as the major national-security worry for many countries. A number of Western countries have banned Chinese telecoms firms from their networks, and the flow of data and technology between countries is increasingly constrained. The U.N. has recently launched a Cybersecurity and New Technologies programme: what effect do you hope this will have on the international cybersecurity landscape? This is something that, I believe, needs a very strong spirit of negotiation and compromise. There are
conflicting interests, there are natural concerns in many countries about what other countries are doing. But my belief is that we cannot move to a world divided into two, with two economies, two dominant currencies, two internets, two competing strategies on artificial intelligence. I think we need to create conditions for compromise, for trust to be re-established, and for good practices to be followed, in order to be able to have a common commitment for the world to guarantee that [such] technologies become a force for good, and that their negative impacts can be avoided. COVID-19 was only the latest salvo to batter international institutions, following the rise of a number of isolationist national leaders in recent years. This is coupled with structural problems: you recently said that the U.N.’s “present architecture is in many aspects outdated.” What reforms are needed to ensure that the organization remains effective and relevant despite the threats it faces? Well, we have done a lot in order to increase the efficiency of the secretariat, in order to improve coordination between the different agencies, but there is a basic question of rigidly pushing up power within the international system. The institutions that we have, the U.N., the Bretton-Woods system, and others were made after the Second World War, and they correspond to the world at that time. If you look at the Security Council or the I.M.F. or the World Bank, if you look at the composition, the voting power, they correspond to a world that
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no longer exists. And so, it would be important for the international institutions to adapt, and to do the reforms necessary to reflect what the world is [like] today. More generally, in your view, how vulnerable are multilateral institutions at a time when globalization seems to be in reverse? For our part, what can students do to help strengthen multilateralism? Multilateral institutions are obviously vulnerable, in the sense that we do not have a global government system, and much less a democratic global government system. A lot of multilateral institutions have no real powers; they have the capacity to raise their voices, they have some convening capacity, but they have no real power. If you look at COVID-19, the World Health Organization could make recommendations to member states, but member states went on doing whatever they wanted. So, we need a multilateral vision that is more networked, more inclusive, to reflect the voices of society and the youth, [and] of the business community. We need a multilateral system that has teeth, and an appetite to bite whenever necessary in order to guarantee that we have a global governance that the challenges we face in today’s world require. I believe that the youth will have the capacity to avoid the mistakes of my generation, and will understand that either we are together, or—in a world in which the challenges are global—we will fail. Failure will be devastating for the planet. 3839
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