Over the spring 2024 semester, our campus watched as heated disagreement devolved into a full withdrawal from public discourse. Between growing tensions on campus, the imminent threat of doxxing, and the institution of widely unpopular administrative policies, the threat of retaliation discouraged entry into our most sacred forums for dialogue.
In these uncertain times, the project of the collegiate political publication was called into question: its mandate had neither been to protest nor to sanction, and now its capacity to host conversation had come under new constraints. But through trial and error, these same publications found new ways to strengthen their commitment to free speech and to reenergize calls for mutually critical conversation. It is our strongest belief, then, that productive dialogue demands speech against the grain—and we will remain faithful to this conviction for as long as we can.
In the pages that follow, you will encounter 11 articles that keep this very promise—each piece the result of constant, good-faith conversation and collaboration. At such a fragile moment, we could not be prouder of the final product and of the people that made its production possible.
Therefore, it is with the deepest honor that I present for your reading the Columbia Political Review’s Spring 2024 Magazine. May discourse never die.
Yours,
Self-Censorship Leads to Extremism on American College Campuses
Jacob Gold
Israel Loving, Jew Hating: How the Zionist Far Right is Redefining Antisemitism
Casey Epstein-Gross
An Oligarch’s Guide to Influencing the West
Amy Watkins
No Space for Mistakes: Navigating the Gray Areas of Space Politics
Elena Muglia
Tunisia’s Forgotten Court: A Constitutional Oversight and the Rise of Authoritarianism
Luca Utterwulghe For Reproductive Clarity, We
Henry Michaelson
Henry Michaelson
SELF-CENSORSHIP LEADS TO EXTREMISM ON AMERICAN COLLEGE CAMPUSES
By Jacob Gold
Illustrated by Beatrix Holstine and Emily Gao
It may seem easy to dismiss claims that America is in a campus dialogue crisis. Alarmist sources have alleged that the American education system spreads a political orthodoxy brainwashing young people with left-wing ideology. Far-right politicians like former President Donald Trump have claimed that students are being indoctrinated into “radical left” ideologies in their classes, and conservative media has charged universities with policing right-wing students’ beliefs. In 2022, the New York Post compiled stories from conservative students claiming they’ve faced severe grade penalties and public shaming over expressing perfectly reasonable opinions in class. But these alarmist sources only provide a handful of anecdotes as evidence for a supposed censorship crisis against the right. A look at the data suggests the opposite problem, in fact: in the relatively few cases where censorship happens, left-wing perspectives are actually censored
more. One analysis, focusing specifically on speech-related faculty firings, found just 45 instances of censorship across thousands of colleges in the United States over a three-year period. Of these cases, only 13 specifically targeted right-wing speech, while 27 targeted left-wing speech. This data simply doesn’t fit with the narrative that overwhelming liberal viewpoints are allowed to dominate campus discourse. Consequently, some have gone so far as to call the crisis a complete myth.
But while institutionally-imposed censorship may be exaggerated by politicians and pundits, the right wing’s complaint of ideological purity on college campuses is not entirely contrived. Even without the risk of formal penalties, social forces have an impact on students’ ability to express their viewpoints fully. Data collected in 2023 by the Foundation of Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) showed that 42% of students felt uncomfortable expressing their
opinion on a controversial topic during an in-class discussion. In more casual social areas, like lounges or dining halls, the rate of discomfort actually increased to 48%. FIRE’s survey also found that a quarter of students admit to censoring their own thoughts in discussions with other students on campus multiple times a week. The inclination to self-censor is partisan, too. “Somewhat conservative” students lead the group, with 40% reporting that they self-censored weekly or more. “Very liberal” students reported the least self-censorship at just 16%.
Such a partisan split in the tendency to self-censor suggests a very real hostility to dissent on college campuses—enforced not through formal censorship by university officials, but through self-censorship due to social forces. While social hostility may not be as overt as the actual censorship that alarmists allege, the self-censorship it causes still reduces the ability to express opposing viewpoints and
closes dialogue with dissenters on campus. This not only fails to provide a chance to challenge their beliefs, but also sends those who dissent down a path of radicalization. It is only through open dialogue that college students will change minds and combat extremism.
Those who self-censor, by definition, do not widely publicize their views, which makes it difficult to directly measure the effects of social forces on them. Because they are so difficult to characterize, one must turn to their more outspoken peers to provide insight into how conservatives react to left-wing social environments on college campuses.
In an article for the New York Times, Adam Hoffman, a Princeton student, argued that the charged leftwing atmosphere on college campuses doesn’t just fail to convince people to become less prejudiced; it pushes them further to the right. “For those on the right,” he said, “the experience is alienating.” Hoffman followed the journey of a initially-moderate conservative Princeton student who “embraced a conservative political identity,” “‘lost faith’ in Princeton” and succumbed to extremism after backlash she faced over some of her more conservative views. Eventually, she denied the importance of policies aimed to slow the spread of COVID-19 and publicly supported Donald Trump. Hoffman’s story doesn’t stand alone, either. One college graduate wrote that she became a conservative activist only after seeing a conservative friend “ha-
rassed by [her] peers.” As she herself became the target of harassment, she also morphed into a Trump supporter. Another former student told a similar story: his school “wasn’t just liberal, it was anti-conservative.” The “aggressive leftist culture on campus,” didn’t change his mind, he said. Rather, he directly told readers, he became “a more radical conservative.”
Conservatives aren’t the only ones radicalized by a hostile atmosphere on college campuses; it can also push left-wingers who dissent on certain issues toward the right. In 2017, Professor Bret Weinstein at Evergreen State College publicly disagreed with the institution’s decision to have a so-called “Day of Absence” during which white students would be expected to leave campus. In a letter to an administrator, he voiced reasonable concerns that the event had problematic racial implications because it involved “encouraging an other group to go away.” In response, students confronted him with pro tests and accusations of racism. Eventually, the professor quit his job. Previously describing himself as a leftist, Weinstein became a rightwing reactionary and be gan embracing extremist beliefs. On September 13, 2023, he tweeted that of ficials who recommended the COVID-19 vaccine for children should face pros ecution.
The radicalization of affiliates is a disastrous outcome for institutions whose mission is, in part, to promote informed, nuanced, and reason
“Even without the risk of formal penalties, social forces have an impact on students’ ability to express their viewpoints fully.”
able thought. In an ideal world, the problem would be easily solved by more strongly promoting the ideals of free speech and toleration of opposing beliefs, especially conservative ones. But some conservatives misuse the concept of “free speech” to criticize liberal students for condemning bigoted rhetoric. Take, for example, conservative commentator Ben Shapiro, who frequently hosts lectures on college campuses. After students protested a Shapiro lecture at the University of Utah, Shapiro claimed their actions were evidence of a left-wing insistence upon “political correctness” in American universities. Instead of recognizing that he was “disagreeing with [them],” he said they were falsely equating his rhetoric with “violence.” Shapiro ignores the bigoted nature of his “disagreements.” At his lectures, Shapiro frequently describes transgenderism as a “mental illness,” undermines the existence of systemic racism, and denies the impact of slavery on the modern-day African American community.
While the content of Shapiro’s
rhetoric is obviously problematic, what really discredits his claim to “free speech” is the power imbalance inherent to the structure of his talks. Due to the position of power he holds in his lectures, Shapiro cannot be meaningfully challenged. Rather than placing himself in a position where his ideas can be challenged by equally-distinguished peers, the only opportunity to respond to his bigotry is during audience cross-examinations. During these cross examinations, he places himself—a Harvard-educated lawyer who has rehearsed each of his arguments and practiced public speaking ahead of time—against likely nervous college students who have shown up informally to reply to him. This lack of scrutiny inherent to Shapiro’s lecture format lends undue credibility to his talking points. Protests are not a challenge to his free speech, but rather the only real way for those who disagree with his bigoted views to challenge them.
Reducing self-censorship does not mean platforming people like Ben Shapiro whose lectures only encourage bigotry. Instead, American college communities must create more forums for dialogue between students that explicitly encourage
dissenting opinions rather than socially penalizing them. These forums could include organized debates between political clubs on campus, socratic seminars on controversial topics, or even informal social mixers for students to discuss controversial topics. Forums that level the playing field between different viewpoints not only reduce self censorship by normalizing voicing dissenting views, but also encourage dialogue between those that hold them.
Unlike Shapiro’s lectures, open forums create an equal playing field between ideas such that potentially bigoted ideas can be adequately held up to scrutiny and refuted by peers. This scrutiny provides the kind of critical analysis that bigotry can’t hold up against. For the average person, bigotry comes from a place of ignorance, and open forums allow students to challenge and dispel that ignorance in a way lectures don’t. This is a more effective way to confront bigotry because it productively challenges ignorant beliefs, instead of outcasting those who subscribe to them and entrenching extremism.
In order to create the kind of campus culture that promotes informed, reasonable perspectives, college communities must remove the hostility to dissent that dominates campuses across the nation. It is only through creating platforms to engage in political dialogue that universities can move past self-censorship and address extremism while challenging bigotry.
Edited by Alan Chen , Max Edelstein , and Francine Diaz
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Jacob Gold (CC ’27) is a staff writer at CPR from Castle Rock, Colorado. He plans to study political science and has particular interests in civil rights, free speech, and misinformation. Outside of CPR, you can find him substituting walks in Riverside Park for hikes in the Rockies.
ISRAEL-LOVING, JEW-HATING:
How the Zionist Far Right is Redefining Antisemitism
By Casey Epstein-Gross
by
Illustrated by Emily Gao
Photo
Ted Eytan
In 1999, Pastor John Hagee declared that “God sent Adolf Hitler to help Jews reach the promised land.” In 2007, he wrote a book claiming the Holocaust was committed by “accursed, genocidally murderous half-breed Jews,” and that Hitler was a divine “hunter” persecuting Jews for their disobedience, sacrilege, and worship of false idols. In 2023, he was a keynote speaker at the “largest rally of Jewish people in modern history,” the mid-November D.C. March for Israel, to help “condemn the rising trend of antisemitic violence.” Inviting a notorious antisemite to wax political about the state of Judaism at a Jewish-led rally might sound counterintuitive—and in a timeline far better than this one, perhaps it would be. But given that the very definition of antisemitism is one of the major points of contention in the post-October 7 American political sphere, is it any wonder the lines have gotten a bit blurred?
Despite Hagee’s and the pro-Israel right’s reliance on the conceptual conflation of anti-Zionism and antisemitism to justify their attacks on Palestinian activists, the Republican Zionist existence is predicated upon a fundamental separation between Israel and the Jewish people. That is, the only way to explain their simultaneous love for Israel and hatred of Jews is that, deep down, they don’t view them as the same entity. It isn’t Jews they love, it’s Israel—and it isn’t antisemitism they’re against, it’s anti-Israel sentiment. This is precisely why Republicans are so intent on conflating the two: support of Israel would absolve antisemitic conservatives of their antisemitism in the eyes of Jewish voters and donors—and, in many cases, it seems it already has.
A New York Times article from early November 2023 reported that large swaths of liberal Jews have found themselves turning to Fox News as a cultural safe space from hostility despite the network’s well-documented antisemitic history—a history the channel hopes their viewers will forget while watching their newest vertical “Antisemitism Exposed.” Respected Jewish philanthro-
pists who have long donated sizably to the Democratic Party are shifting rightward. Perhaps most bafflingly, the CEO of the Anti-Defamation League praised Elon Musk’s “leadership in fighting hate” less than 24 hours after the X CEO publicly advocated for the antisemitic “Great Replacement” theory.
It’s only human to seek support and companionship after experiencing a perceived betrayal—and that is exactly how many Jewish Democrats responded to the attacks of October 7. It should come as no surprise that the GOP was already waiting with open arms, considering their decades-long attempts to woo Jewish voters, as a new push to win over Jews has practically taken place every decade since 1972: in 1983, 1992, 2012, and now, 2023. But the enemy of one’s enemy is not necessarily one’s
Trump’s “America First” ideology— feel so strongly about Israel in the first place? There is, of course, the obvious desire to pull Jewish votes rightward, but to frame that as the only—or even primary—reason would be misleading. Rather, many politicians firmly placed themselves in Israel’s camp not to appease Jewish voters, but Christian ones: most notably, the evangelical Zionists of Christians United for Israel (CUFI), led by Pastor John Hagee himself. If this is meant to be a secret, it’s incredibly poorly kept; in a 2020 campaign speech, Donald Trump boasted of his decision to move “the capital of Israel to Jerusalem,” then added, to much applause, “That’s for the evangelicals.” Evangelicals such as Hagee and his organization are fervent in their support of Israel and have been some of the very
“Evangelicals such as Hagee and his organization are fervent in their support of Israel and have been some of the very loudest voices the past few months, but make no mistake: they are not allies of the Jewish people.”
friend, and support for Israel does not an anti-anti-semite make.
The wife of 2022 GOP gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano unwittingly made this distinction very clear in 2022. In response to accusations levied against her husband due to his blatantly antisemitic remarks, Rebbie Mastriano shot back, “I’m gonna say as a family we so much love Israel, in fact I’m gonna say we probably love Israel more than a lot of Jews do … we’ve given for, I would say at least ten years, outreach to Israel and Jerusalem.” And that was it: not even a cursory disavowal of antisemitism or a single word spoken about Judaism; only an affirmation of the love that the couple had for Israel.
But why, exactly, do these Republicans—many of whom identify with
loudest voices the past few months, but make no mistake: they are not allies of the Jewish people. Put simply, evangelical Zionists need Jews to remain alive and in Israel solely to provide cannon fodder for the Rapture. The strain of Christian theology to which these evangelical Zionists subscribe is eschatological, prioritizing a fulfillment of the Biblical “end times” above all else. This group has long held that the return of Christ will only occur after a final great war in Jewish-occupied Israel, in which the Jews “either convert to Christianity or perish in flames,” and Jesus Christ is reinstated as king and leader of all. As such, their issue is not with the elimination of Jews nor of Israel, but rather, with the elimination of Jews and Israel right now, in this way, at the hands of these people.
This fundamentally antisemitic branch of Zionism plays an unexpectedly large role in the American Zionist movement, with its reach expanding far beyond Hagee’s invitation to speak at the March for Israel. Contrary to popular belief that the Venn Diagram of Zionists and Jews is nearly a circle, white evangelicals are far more likely to profess zealous Zionist views than Jews. While 70% of white evangelicals believe that Israel is Jewish land by religious doctrine, merely 32% of American Jews share this conviction. There are over 10 million members of CUFI right now, making it “the largest pro-Israel organization in the United States.” To put things into perspective: there are 7.6 million Jews in America. So even if every Jew in the nation was a Zionist— and they’re not—Jews would still only be a minority of the American Zionist movement. And yet, the conflation of anti-Zionism with antisemitism proves that Zionism remains strictly associated with Judaism by the vast majority of people.
Republicans may also extend friendship toward Israel due to more personal, financial motives—Zionism inspired less by any sort of fellowship with Jewish individuals than by the deep pockets of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the
American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), and other monied conservative lobbies. A right-wing Zionist lobbying organization with a history of suspiciously antisemitic behavior, AIPAC’s record boasts defenses of Steve Bannon and millions spent funding the opponents of Jewish candidates. And despite not professing its allegiance to Israel in its name, ALEC is yet another corporate-funded right-wing lobbyist group whose strong ties to evangelical Zionists must not be overlooked. There are also those politicians with no particular affinity for Israel itself who simply
admire its current far-right government and see Israel as a hypothetical model for their fantasies of an American ethnostate with a strong nationalist bent to boot. And, of course, there are the bigots who simply hate Palestinians even more than they hate Jews, only invoking Israel to justify their own racism.
But even more than the desire to siphon Democratic votes, the pro-Israel right’s disavowal of antisemitism is motivated by their unifying ideology of the modern era: anti-wokeness. They are explicitly exploiting the increase in antisemitism in order to make an
Now-deleted tweet. Screenshot taken on November 30, 2023 by author available at cpreview.org.
Screenshot taken on February 20, 2024 by author available at cpreview.org
argument about the detrimental nature of “wokeism,” DEI, and diversity at large. Christopher Rufo, the “mastermind” behind the culture-wars-inspired turn on DEI and wokeness, laid out the playbook on his Twitter for all to see on October 13, 2023: “Conservatives need to create a strong association between Hamas, BLM, DSA, and academic ‘decolonization’ in the public mind. Connect the dots, then attack, delegitimize, and discredit.” A month later, he officially declared the operation a success: “Narrative established. Now to the next step … We will be accelerating our campaign to abolish the DEI bureaucracies in state universities, using the recent pro-Hamas insanities to drive the momentum.” The pro-Israel right frequently refers to the “silver lining” of the 29,000+ deaths in the Middle East: to quote a viral Elon Musk tweet from October 30, 2023, “The great wakening from woke has happened. This is good for civilization.” It isn’t just subtext; it’s text. Many on the right do not care about antisemitism or, in many cases, even Israel. They are actively capitalizing on and exploiting the painful divisions of the past few months for their own benefit—and their efforts have been paying off in dividends. As a bonus, conservatives even get to bash “the Squad” and doxx left-wing activ-
ists (or, in many cases, Muslim students who simply joined an identity group on campus) and receive bipartisan support for it.
The obfuscation and conflation of the definition of antisemitism with anti-Zionism is dangerous to the Jewish community, and it’s only going to get worse. Antisemites will be absolved of their antisemitism by vowing destruction on Gaza—and on the flip side, those who denounce said destruction of Gaza will not only be called antisemitic, but may begin to identify as it and view the term as a badge of honor, as proof of their resistance. Everyday political discourse inches closer to a future where 17-yearolds will list “antisemite” in their Twitter bios in between “BLM” and “ACAB.” In November, in response to the House resolution defining anti-Zionism as antisemitism, card-carrying neo-Nazi Lucas Gage tweeted, “Then I’m the most ‘anti-Semitic’ motherf*cker alive.” And on February 18, 2024, popular pro-Palestine X user Jory Micah (who is actually a Christian right-wing anti-vaxxer) asked: “Does anyone actually care if they are called ‘antisemitic’ anymore?” The top comment? A man with “disaffected Bernie Sanders voter” in his bio saying “I prefer it.”
These frequent Third Reich-inspired calls to action on social media—and the degree to which people appear susceptible to them—are precisely why the Jewish community desperately
needs the definition of antisemitism to retain its original meaning. Given the immense danger that the conflation of anti-Zionism and antisemitism poses to pro-Palestinian activists, the progressive movement at times seems to forget that while anti-Zionism should not be seen as inherently antisemitic, that does not mean all instances of apparent anti-Zionism are necessarily free of antisemitism. Very legitimate antisemites such as Keith Woods—whose supporters seem to increase in frequency and fervor every day—are going entirely unaddressed, as are the sentiments they spread. No one even realizes it’s there: anti-Zionists view antisemitism as an imaginary wolf that Zionists keep crying, and Zionists are too busy fighting the “wolf” they think they see to notice the entire pack creeping up from behind. When compared to the existential threat antisemitism poses, demonizing organizations justifiably calling for Palestinian freedom (let alone Jewish organizations like Jewish Voice for Peace) is nothing but a red herring. Groups fighting for Palestinian liberation must do their part in resisting the infiltration of alt-right operatives, but Jewish Zionists must do theirs as well: so long as “liberal” Jewish Zionists seek comfort in the arms of the Republicans and Evangelicals who resent them, genuine antisemites will be allowed to redefine antisemitism to suit their political agenda. In effect, this will open the door to an all-consuming hatred of Jews that will cement itself in modern parlance— and at this rate, there will no longer be a word to describe it.
Casey Epstein-Gross (BC ’25) is a columnist at CPR majoring in English and political science. She is particularly interested in political theory, public opinion, extremism and partisanship, and social issues. Her hobbies consist of doom-scrolling on Twitter and writing impassioned, frantic rants on the current political zeitgeist in her Notes app.
Edited by Alan Chen , Max Edelstein , and Francine Diaz
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An Oligarch’s GUIDE to Influencing
What does it take to be a philanthropist? Besides seemingly endless pockets, are there other qualities that make a donor appealing to an institution? Western institutions, including think tanks and universities, champion themselves as leaders in innovation and global thought, but at what point do donors with suspect backgrounds become a conflict of interest? Donations from corrupt individuals with a history of criminal business dealings or Kremlin ties are seemingly not a cause for concern.
Many universities, publications, and think tanks accept funding from oligarchs and kleptocrats, allowing corrupt politicians and military elites leeway to expand their realm of influence. This practice, known as reputation laundering, allows wealthy individuals to leverage donations and in return further the distance from their oligarchal past to solidify their images as philanthropic visionaries. The frequency with which Western organizations accept donations from corrupt actors reveals a disparity between the mission of these institutions and their true practices. Accepting these types of donations presents institutions with an explicit conflict of interest in which the “nonpartisan” lens that organizations pride themselves on is inarguably tainted.
One striking example of the institutional acceptance of oligarchal funding is the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), a prestigious think tank renowned for its exclusive membership and publications contributing to
greater dialogue on foreign affairs. The Council on Foreign Relations’s internship program is highly sought after by undergraduate students given its name recognition and networking opportunities. This expansive program, named the Blavatnik Internship Program, accepts its funding from the infamous Russian oligarch Len Blavatnik.
Raised in Russia and the United States, Blavatnik studied at Columbia University and Harvard Business School before making a fortune on the Russian oil company TNK-BP. The transition from Soviet Union-era communism to current Russian capitalism cultivated an environment where a select group of men amassed great wealth from the privatization of what were previously state-run companies—like TNK-BP—in sectors such as manufacturing, mining, and food production. The unethical circumstances that allowed for Blavatnik’s accumulation of wealth were essential in Putin’s ascension to absolute power in Russia, as wealthy elites were guaranteed that their money would not be touched in exchange for staying out of politics.
For many years, attitudes toward purchases made by oligarchs remained neutral, but with heightened scrutiny around Russia, the international community has taken further notice. In the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the West has placed numerous sanctions on Kremlin elites for their role in enabling Putin’s war. Oligarchs like Blavatnik have taken many
measures to separate themselves from the Kremlin, including only maintaining citizenships in the U.S. and U.K. Strategies such as these are employed by oligarchs to signal to the West their dissociation from Putin and his autocratic policies, intending to solidify their reputation as promoters of democratic values.
Russian oligarchs, in particular, are some of the most influential patrons of the arts and cultural institutions in the West. In a broader context, corrupt actors engage in three main types of reputation laundering: philanthropy, reputation management, and image crafting, often simultaneously. Len Blavatnik is no stranger to such practices and, through his foundation, has participated in philanthropic efforts across countless sectors, including higher education, the arts, and institutions ranging from political campaigns to publications and think tanks. The inclination of elite organizations to accept donations from corrupt actors like Blavatnik highlights the discrepancy between the supposed “democratic values” of these institutions and their true practices.
In notable academic settings,
the West
By Amy Watkins
reputation laundering through philanthropic efforts occurs in four ways: donations for academic programs and schools, naming rights, honorary degrees and board seats, and the offer of favorable admissions, fueling the realm of authoritarian influence in the West. Through his donations to Colum-
bia University, prospective graduate schools, and internship opportunities, Len Blavatnik remains an inescapable presence in academic and pre-professional life, further highlighting the hypocrisy of Western institutions in combating corruption worldwide. A
critical example is the Blavatnik School of Government at Oxford University, which prides itself on developing a world “better led, better served, and better governed.” The irony is palpable given that this school would not exist without the corrupt conditions of government that allowed for Len Blavatnik’s wealth acquisition
Photo courtesy of Martin Cooper
in post-Soviet Russia to begin with. Blavatnik has also donated millions to his alma mater, funding Columbia’s “Engineering Innovations in Health” grant. Such a low threshold for donations further signals to external actors that the West’s sphere of influence can be easily manipulated if your pocket is deep enough. This phenomenon presents Western institutions with a double-edged sword: accept the donations in order to support a future generation of leaders, but in doing so, further fuel
corruption and autocracies by expanding their soft power and normalization.
The concentration of wealth and power in an elite minority laid the foundation for Putin’s authoritarian regime, which continues to threaten democracy worldwide. Russian oligarchs represent corruption to the fullest extent, exploiting international loopholes to diversify their portfolios and expand their reach. The expansive grasp that oligarchs like Blavatnik have on various fields of study across the board further demonstrates their influence in every aspect of life, beginning with the education of the next generation of leaders. By providing substantial
resources for future innovators, Blavatnik’s reputation laundering ensures the longevity of his name.
As students, this presents a complicated moral dilemma: how does one reap the benefits of these prestigious programs without further reinforcing the corrupt influence that is funding them? A necessary step is to call attention to the implications of the funding and further scrutinize the frequency with which it occurs. These donations are a threat to democratic values, such as free speech and political participation, integral to the missions many prominent institutions are committed to upholding. The danger posed by this lack of institutional moral clarity interferes with the capacity for universities, cultural hubs, and think tanks to operate with their intended function. Ultimately, continued acceptance of corrupt reputation-enhancing practices weakens the credibility of democratic states in fighting corruption, highlighting the need for increased transparency and moral clarity in institutional donation practices.
Amy Watkins (BC ’25) is a staff writer for CPR studying political science with a concentration in international relations. She is interested in American foreign policy, corrupt global financial flows, and intelligence. In her free time, she enjoys spending time outdoors—whether it be skiing, hiking, or walking in Riverside Park.
Edited by Amelie De Leon , Caroline Mendoza , and Lukas Roybal
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NO SPACE FOR MISTAKES
Navigating the Gray Areas of Space Politics
By Elena Muglia
Rocket science is difficult, but astropolitics might be even harder. Since the end of the Cold War, the political landscape has become exponentially more complex, both on and off the ground; gone are the days of two actors setting the agenda for the rest of the world. From India’s recent unmanned moon landing just in 2023 to China’s lunar ambitions for 2030, it is clear that outer space will be the new arena for global powers to expand their spheres of influence in the coming decade. While exciting for some, this surge in space interest—dubbed the “Space Race 2.0”—has outpaced the international community’s efforts to establish comprehensive regulations for states and other actors. What, then, is causing this failure to launch, and is there anything that can be done to fill the veritable vacuum of regulatory power in our skies?
Since its adoption by the United Na-
tions in 1967, the Outer Space Treaty (OST) remains the only comprehensive treaty for regulation of space. A product of its time, the OST no longer reflects the regulatory demands of outer space in the modern age. Today, over 4,000 space objects are currently in near Earth orbit, tens of thousands more than at the time of the Treaty’s signing. On top of that, the private sector has finally made its debut in the stars. Private companies like Starlink and Virgin Galactic are crucial providers of commercial services in space. Starlink has 4,500 satellites in the sky, accounting for more than 50% of all active satellites. Along with the satellites, 25,000 fragments of space debris orbit Earth, threatening to clash, collide, or destroy satellites and other facilities.
In addition to the proliferation of satellites and space debris, the skies have become increasingly militarized. In 2019, the U.S. established a Space
Force responsible for protecting American interests in space. In the same year, NATO added space as a new operational domain (other than air, land, and sea) to support the alliance in communications, navigation, and intelligence. The militarization of space has also been embodied in superpowers’ use of Anti-Satellite weapons (ASATs) that can crash satellites and destroy them. In 2021, Russia conducted an anti-satellite test to preemptively resist the U.S.’s attempt to gain a “comprehensive military advantage” in space. As tensions rise between the West and Russia, as well as China, there is every reason to believe that conflicts may reach the stars.
Faced with new threats both in scale and scope, many states have turned away from international regulation and have instead used industry-friendly contracts to outsource the logistical burden of development in outer space. In 2015, Obama signed the U.S.
Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act which allows American companies to mine celestial bodies, as well as to own and sell the materials harvested therein. This, of course, places disproportionate power in the hands of actors whose actions are least susceptible to regulation and whose allegiances are defined by profit. In order to avoid the dire consequences of miscalculation in such increasingly chaotic skies, states need to reverse this trend and instead focus on both disarming states and creating a rule-based order in the sky.
The imperative for a space disarmament treaty arises from the distinct challenges posed by a potential space war, which are amplified by the ageold military problem of signaling—essentially, the ability of one actor to convey its interests and intentions to other actors. In the absence of comprehensive and multilateral regulation, outer space turns into a domain ripe for misperception, miscalculation, and inadvertent conflict. The crux of this problem lies in that many objects in space have dual purposes that blur the line between civil and military use. Satellites famously traverse this gray area, with many serving a broad spectrum of commercial, civil, governmental, and military applications. These distinctions are not clear-cut, and if given the right circumstances, a commercial or scientific satellite could easily serve military objectives.
Elon Musk’s Starlink, for example, provides Wi-Fi services in war zones, communities suffering from natural disasters, and other areas where internet connection is not easily accessible. Although Starlink’s primary role is commercial and often humanitarian, its satellites have crucial geopolitical implications. In resisting Russian aggression, Ukraine has relied on Starlink for military communication. As seen in the war, this leaves Ukraine at the mercy of the infamously erratic Musk, who has previously restricted Ukraine’s access to Starlink’s satellites and significantly affected battlefield strategy as a result. Private companies like Starlink render
“In order to avoid the dire consequences of miscalculation in such increasingly chaotic skies, states need to reverse this trend and instead focus on both disarming states and creating a rule-based order in the sky.”
Photo courtesy of SpaceX
space politics even more opaque and raise questions about tracing responsibility for (and indeed signaling the purpose of) actions in space.
Amid this confusion, one thing is clear: ASAT technology is the most explicit signal that a terrestrial conflict could spread to the sky. The U.S., Russia, China, India, and Israel have all developed ASAT systems which can drastically impact states’ defensive capabilities, GPS systems, internet connectivity, economic health, and almost every other facet of domestic life. ASATs also open the potential for self-perpetuating destruction, as using the technology would necessarily
create orbital debris which, in turn, would mar other satellites and further raise tensions without a clear means to identify the source of the damage.
Faced with these problems, the United Nations High Representative for Disarmament Affairs, Izumi Nakamitsu, remarked in November 2023 that in the “absence of agreed norms, rules, and effective measures, a number of these technological developments can be sources of mistrust and misperception, leading to an arms race in outer space.” The OST banned the use of weapons of mass destruction but left an array of other military activities unregulated. Despite the Treaty advocating for the “peaceful use of space,” there remains no guidance on how this can be achieved, much less maintained, in today’s multipolar world.
Despite calls for regulatory clarity, international cooperation in space has only continued to dwindle. The U.S. is heading the Artemis Program with the European, German, Japanese, Canadian, Israeli, and Italian space agencies to establish a human presence on the Moon. This collaboration features the usual Western suspects and their allies, naturally excluding non-Westernaligned powers for the sake of getting a head start on their international competitors. The initiative comes nowhere
close to the cooperative spirit of the joint Soviet-American venture to build the International Space Station (ISS) in 1993, which was explicitly aimed to establish space as a shared domain for exploration and development. But, following the apparent trajectory of astropolitics in the new century, the ISS will retire in 2031 and be deposed in the Pacific Ocean to be replaced by commercially-run space stations.
Unfortunately, hopes for a peacefully regulated space will sink with the ISS unless states can come together to draft a new outer space treaty that addresses all of the above mentioned catalysts for conflict. Instead of focusing on servicing the bottom lines of private enterprises, a new treaty should direct its efforts toward enforcing a zero-tolerance policy toward celestial aggression and mitigating the informational asymmetries that we know can lead to war. This not only means outlawing the use of ASAT systems and similarly dangerous technologies, but clearly and comprehensively defining the principles that new private actors will need to abide by without giving them expanded powers that would threaten states’ sovereignty, effective international cooperation, and, by extension, global peace. The stakes of inaction, like the altitude of potential conflict, are astronomically high.
Elena Muglia (GS ’25) is a senior editor at CPR. She is in the dual degree program with SciencesPo, studying political science and human rights.
Edited by Adam Kinder, Tim Vanable, and Malvika Reddy
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Tunisia’s Forgotten Court
A Constitutional Oversight and the Rise of Authoritarianism
By Luca Utterwulghe
Illustrated by Emily Gao
Tunisia: An “anomaly”?
The self-immolation of street vendor Mohamed Bouazizi in January of 2011 acted as a catalyst for the Tunisian Revolution, which would eventually topple long-time despot Zine El Abidine Ben Ali and spark a wave of regional uprisings known as the Arab Spring. Since its post-Revolution democratization, Tunisia has been lauded by political analysts as an “Arab anomaly,” to echo Safwan Masri’s words, given its relatively peaceful democratic transition supported by a tradition of healthy civil society engagement.
However, Tunisia has recently experienced considerable democratic backsliding. In July 2021, current President Kais Saied removed then Prime Minister Hichem Mechichi and suspended parliament amid an economic crisis worsened by COVID-19 and a politically incompetent legislature. Further, in 2022, Saied dissolved Parliament and drafted a new constitution with a small cohort of “handpicked” experts and a public questionnaire on constitutional topics. Only 10% of citizens were eligible to respond to the latter. The document that ensued, replacing the 2014 Constitution in 2022, dangerously authorizes the president to unilaterally dissolve parliament and grants the president immunity during his or her mandate.
How did the region’s sole democracy tumble so swiftly under Saied’s presidency? One of the key, often overlooked, explanations lies within the 2014 Constitution. Article 118’s provision for an independent Constitutional Court was never realized. Without a Court, there would be no body to keep the branches of government in check and promote the enforcement of the Constitution in the spirit in which it was written. By incorporating this supra-constitutional body, the authors were continuing a long tradition of Tunisian constitutionalism; as per Francesco Tamburini, Tunisia was the first state in the Arab world “that had a constitutional chart [...] envisaging a form of con-
stitutional control of laws.” Still, the democratic safeguards embedded in the constitution require implementation to be effective. But power’s “encroaching nature,” as James Madison wrote in Federalist No. 48, is not inhibited by textual commitments.
What stood in Article 118’s way?
Article 118’s firm grounding in Tunisian constitutional history was gradually buried under the soil of political gridlock. In 2021, Rafaa Ben Achour, a judge of the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights, wrote that the Supreme Judicial Council (CSM)—an entity with the constitutional authority to select a third of the Court’s justices, aside from the president and the Assembly of the Representatives (ARP)—had not been formed. Even if the CSM were brought to life, Ben Achour warned that the partisanship which prevented the ARP from selecting potential Court justices from its shortlist would also exist in the
Council. Granting the ARP the constitutional power to appoint four members of the Constitutional Court likely stemmed from an intention to democratize the judiciary. Unfortunately, the result was that political gridlock prevented the appointment of at least one-third of the nominees.
As a former constitutional law professor, President Saied’s approach was anything but passive—it was insidious. In April 2021, Saied wrote a letter to the ARP remanding Law 2018-39, which established mechanisms for decreasing the number of votes in the ARP required to confirm a Court justice if the initial vote were to fail. Saied believed that legislation working to lower some of the political barriers to building the Court violated the 2014 Constitution, for Article 148 stipulates that the Constitutional Court had to be formed no later than one year after the first elections. Evidently, Saied believed that the Court’s formation became “caduque à partir du moment
où les délais constitutionnels de sa mise en place n’ont pas été respectés” (obsolete from the moment when the constitutional deadlines for its establishment were not respected). There is ingenuity in Saied’s deliberate invocation of the very Constitution whose institutional buds he sought to undermine. The professor-turned-president understood exactly what he wanted and had given himself “Le droit exclusif d’interpréter la Constitution” (the exclusive right to interpret the Constitution).
How did Saied consolidate power?
When Saied suspended parliament in mid-July of 2021, he invoked Article 80 of the 2014 Constitution, which allows the president to act exceptionally in the case of “imminent danger threatening the institutions of the nation.” This decree, however, violated Article 80, which states that during the time of exceptionality the president “cannot dissolve the ARP”
Photo courtesy of Dodos Photography
as it needs to be in a “state of contin uous session.” There is a subtlety in the language: Saied did not “dissolve” the ARP—only officially suspended it. In practice, the fact that Saied had ordered the army to block the Parlia ment’s entrance from its members is, for any reasonable observer, a viola tion of the “continuous session” prin ciple.
Saied’s initial move to disrupt the lawmaking function of the ARP was expanded when he promulgated Presidential Decree 2021-117. Decree Article 20 protects the Constitu tion’s Preamble and subsequent two sections but makes it so that “other chapters will be respected they do not contravene the measures contained in the presidential decree Moreover, through Decree 2021-117, Saied essentially granted himself the authority to make laws in nearly every area of Tunisian electoral, economic, and political life. Decree Article 7 fur ther consolidates presidential pow er—Saied’s, rather—in establishing that “decree laws are not subject to appeal for annulment.” In a couple of months, Saied contravened the 2014 Constitution to freeze the ARP and established a new law of the land— Decree 2021-117—through which he could control a myriad of political, judicial, and economic areas. James Madison was right in suggesting, almost two and a half centuries before, that “tyranny may well be apprehended, on some favorable emergency.”
of Government,” the prime minister. At one point in April of 2021, Saied claimed that he had control of Interior Ministry Forces, while PM Mechichi responded by selecting a party member to lead intelligence. As such, the Court could have acted as a neutral arbiter for such conflicts and weakened Saied’s legitimacy in eventually removing Mechichi.
The question thus becomes whether Saied foresaw how his efforts to undermine the Constitutional Court’s defenses would later facilitate his rise to power.
What could the Constitutional Court have done, had it been formed?
Saied suspended Parliament in the midst of Tunisia’s political, economic, and COVID-19 crises, partly as a response to political tension between the president and Tunisia’s Ennahda Islamist party, which many Tunisians blamed for the dire political and economic situation. Article 101 of the
Saied sacked his opponent, Prime Minister Mechichi, and proceeded to declare a state of emergency and suspend the ARP. However, the same constitutional provision (Article 80) the president invoked to do so states that he must inform the President of the Constitutional Court of this decision; of course, by then, he had ensured that there was no Court to inform. Moreover, Article 80 allows the ARP President or 30 of its members to call the Court to “rule on the maintenance of the state of emergency” after it has been in place for 30 days to prevent the abuse of emergency powers. Indeed, Saied extended the suspension of Parliament (an exceptional measure) beyond the 30 day
al Court could have slowed down Saied’s constitutional hijacking in two other instances. Presidential Decree 2021-117, subjecting the Constitution to presidential whims and undercutting Parliament’s authority, ignored Article 144 of the 2014 Constitution. This provision requires proposals for constitutional amendments to be sent to the Speaker of the ARP and, from there, to the Constitutional Court “to ensure that such propositions do not affect any [constitutional] provision that cannot be amended.” Without a Constitutional Court, there is no institutional body that can enforce explicit or implicit limitations on protected constitutional sections, allowing Saied’s Decree to curtail the provisions of Article 144.
Finally, Article 88 of the 2014 Constitution authorizes the ARP (through majority vote) to pass a motion to “bring to an end the president of the Republic’s term for a grave violation of the Constitution.” If passed, the Constitutional Court would then vote on the ARP’s motion, with a twothirds majority required for the pres-
ident’s removal. This procedure was likely not considered as a remedy to Saied’s abuses because of the lack of a Constitutional Court to make the final verdict and the suspension of Parliament that prevented the motion from being tabled.
From separation of powers to Saiedization…
The Constitutional Court enshrined in Article 118 does not exist in a vacuum; it is a part of the intricate fabric of Tunisia’s system of checks and balances. The absence of the Constitutional Court creates a regime in which necessary linkages between government organs are rendered void, nullifying remedies to constitutional violations
and creating exploitable loopholes for power-driven individuals or entities.
Unrestrained by the state’s political infrastructure, Saied’s power grab threatens the long-term health of Tunisian democracy and open society. As of 2021, Freedom House no longer places Tunisia in the rank of “free” states. Saied has cracked down on political opposition—sentencing former President Moncef Marzouki to several years in prison for “incitement”—and restricted the freedom of the press. Among other worrying trends, he has also made violent comments targeting sub-Saharan African migrants. Without the 2014 Constitution as a doctrinal reminder of the anti-authoritarian revolution of 2011, Tunisia faces grave threats to its democratic safeguards.
The prologue of Decree 2021-117 states that “sovereignty prevails over
the provisions related to the exercise of sovereignty.” This message effectively summarizes Saied’s decoupling of the body politic from Tunisian constitutionalism—a feat accomplished through a carefully-crafted suffocation of the provision for a Constitutional Court. While a preoccupation with a Court that could have been can distract from Tunisia’s troubled reality, it nevertheless serves as a reminder that attacks on the seemingly mundane or procedural often go unnoticed. The Saiedization of power—a unilateral appropriation of sovereignty from the arms of constitutionalism and the people—must be closely scrutinized by vigilant political analysts and students of the region. Looking forward, what channels exist for distributing the sovereign power to the Tunisian people, and how robust are the newly formed barriers to democratization?
Luca Utterwulghe (GS ’25) is a student in the Dual BA Program with Sciences Po Paris, majoring in politics & government and sustainable development. He is interested in the intersection of energy politics and conflict resolution in the Middle East and North Africa. In his free time, he enjoys playing soccer (football!) and searching for the best espresso.
Edited by Joseph Karaganis, Eva Atkins, and Sofía Prado Arenzana
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FOR REPRODUCTIVE PARITY, WE NEED
By Henry Michaelson
Illustrated by Emily Gao
The overturning of Roe v. Wade in June 2022 sent shockwaves throughout the country. Legislators and laypeople alike have struggled to determine how to define life before birth as well as the implications of such definitions in the absence of constitutional protections for abortion. However, one unexpected industry finds itself particularly affected by the aftershocks of this ruling: the fertility industry.
When I started writing about this topic, almost all of my peers wanted to contribute their stories to the column. Practically every person I spoke to gave me the same response: “You should write about my family,” or “I would be the perfect example!” Even within my own family, there are many whose stories would make for the perfect personal anecdote. I struggled to find a single person whose family or friends had not interacted with the fertility industry in some way. And this is no coincidence. Nearly half of all adults in the United States have either personally utilized or know someone who has relied on fertility treatments. This seemingly ubiquitous connection only under-
REGULATORY CLARITY
scores the fact that a robust fertility industry is increasingly becoming a human need. Threats to the industry go beyond politics; attacks against fertility are attacks against humanity. While abortion bans most directly impact access to reproductive care, the end of constitutional protection for abortions also opened the door for restrictions on in vitro fertilization (IVF), surrogacy, and other assistive reproductive technologies (ART). Many states have already proposed or enacted abortion restrictions that include language that could realistically limit access to reproductive care. Alabama has already done just that, with its supreme court deciding that the Wrongful Death Act of 1872 applied just as much to “extrauterine children” as the average “minor child,” effectively rendering the disposal of frozen embryos an act constituting the wrongful death of a minor. This sudden threat leaves fertility clinics and their patients moored in uncertain waters at a point in life where already so much is unsure. How did an industry dedicated to creating life get caught up in anti-abortion crossfire? What do looming legal changes mean for people struggling
with infertility? As reproductive freedom evaporates, the liberty to build a family also hangs in the balance. Since the first IVF baby was born in the United States in 1981, the use of assisted reproductive technology has steadily risen to help people
“How did an industry dedicated to creating life get caught up in anti-abortion crossfire?”
with fertility problems conceive. ART cycles have nearly doubled over the last decade, with over 97,000 liveborn infants per year. As infertility diagnoses increase and social stigma around treatment fades, demand continues to surge. America’s fertility industry was valued at nearly $7 billion in 2022, with projections it could exceed $11 billion by 2025. IVF has
CLARITY
shifted from an experimental procedure into a vital reproductive treatment, relied upon by hundreds of thousands striving to complete their families each year.
The relationship between abortion and IVF in the post-Roe United States boils down to the ambiguous legal status of embryos. An abortion ban that defines life as beginning at fertilization could also classify embryos created through IVF as legal persons with rights. According to Arkansas Code § 5-61-303, an abortion is defined as an act that will “with reasonable likelihood cause the death of the unborn child.” An unborn child, in this context, is “an individual organism of the species Homo sapiens from fertilization until live birth.” Similarly, Tennessee’s Human Life Protection Act classifies an unborn child as a “living member of the species [...] throughout the entire embryonic and fetal stages of the unborn child from fertilization until birth.” A number of fertility clinics have already warned patients that accessible treatment is unlikely to continue for much longer. Many laws and regulations attempt to ascribe this standard of “personhood” to embryos, which
would include the hundreds of thousands of them that are cryopreserved in fertility clinics across the country. If granted the appropriate legal status, as in the Alabama case cited before, these frozen embryos could not be discarded or used in research without potentially opening the door to lawsuits or even murder charges. The unavoidable charges of storing frozen eggs, which can reach over $500 per year, is a cost that would only create even more barriers. The ambiguous personhood of embryos also implicates IVF practices, such as selective reduction, which are used to prevent multiple pregnancies. Moreover, issues like surrogate con-
tracts and custody of unused embryos would be thrown into legal limbo. Essentially, granting an embryo the full rights of a person could make IVF clinically and legally unfeasible. Once a last hope for aspiring parents, IVF could soon pose legal risks for both doctors and the patients who rely on them.
The path forward for reproductive medicine remains alarmingly unclear even in states seeking to protect abortion rights. Although some states such as Connecticut and New York have laws shielding reproductive health providers, the majority of states lack robust safeguards for fertility treatments. Without unambig-
uous definitions of personhood, the legality of common IVF procedures— including embryo freezing, storage, donation, and disposal—remains unclear. Some states with unclear restrictions have explicitly protected individuals attempting to dispose of frozen embryos, but their efforts result in piecemeal laws that create only pockets of certainty—as opposed to comprehensive protection for all parties involved. Until legislatures codify unambiguous rights for patients and clinics to ethically provide reproductive care, the industry’s future will remain at best perilously unstable and at worst outright illegal by technicality.
On January 18, 2024, the first real step toward enshrining access to vital procedures in the fertility industry on a national level was taken. Democratic Senators Tammy Duckworth of Illinois, Patty Murray of Washington, and Representative Susan Wild of Pennsylvania introduced the Access to Family Building Act to the House of Representatives. Following the Right to Build Families Act of 2022, this legislation aims to affirm the right to ART, permit the disposal of genetic
material, and protect healthcare providers involved in fertility treatments.
The introduction of the Access to Family Building Act marked a potential inflection point in preserving reproductive rights post-Roe. Amidst mounting abortion restrictions, advocates argued the act could become a bulwark for individuals’ paths to parenthood. However, the act was blocked by Republican Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith of Mississippi on February 28, 2024. Evidently, it is clear that Republicans will continue to alienate voters in an out-of-touch attempt to bolster their campaigns.
While abortion opponents believe banning procedures protects life, poorly crafted policies threaten lives waiting to begin. To prevent this collateral damage, state legislatures must enact laws unambiguously upholding reproductive rights—including fertility care. Defining embryos as legal property, not persons, preserves access to ethical IVF. Shielding doctors from liability for standard treatment enables clinics to operate freely. Rules allowing the transport of cryopreserved embryos across state lines enable accessibility for families in restrictive states. Requirements to cover IVF under insurance plans ensure affordable access. Thoughtful regulation can balance ethical con-
cerns while protecting reproductive liberty––the problem appears to be in getting regulators to think in the first place.
Without intervention, the unclear legal status of embryos and fertility treatments could grant lawmakers increasing power to restrict access to vital reproductive medicine in other ways, from banning genetic testing to prohibiting IVF altogether. Clinics will close if skilled staff opt to work in states with more protective regulations. Inequality will worsen, with only the wealthy able to retain access to care. And worst of all, budding families that are relying on IVF will no longer be able to grow. But this future is only inevitable to the degree that citizens accept it.
As conservative states move to curtail reproductive rights following Roe’s demise, the Access to Family Building Act signals a divergence between state and federal policy trajectories until now. This bill aimed to uphold critical fertility services even as abortion opponents advance their agenda through state-level abortion bans. Perhaps most consequentially, the protection of IVF could serve as an unusual point of common ground for family-first conservatives and liberals interested in reproductive rights issues. At this crossroads, the future of family building will hinge in part on how far America will go to comprehensively defend reproductive healthcare and, in doing so, secure its future for generations to come.
DEMYSTIFYING THE DONOR:
A Call for Transparency in Reproductive Technology
By Henry Michaelson
Illustrated by Emily Gao
Beginning in 2018, my family grew by one to four siblings roughly every year until I had a total of seven sisters and one brother in 2023. We are all the same age and we all attend universities on the East Coast. We did not grow up together, nor do many of us have a relationship beyond a connection through blood. We are the offspring of a sperm donor. For my bizarre, rather large family, the option to meet our father was determined before we existed: from conception to the day we die, we are not allowed to reach out to our father. At least, these are the terms that our father agreed upon when donating his sperm. For the nine of us, there is an unfillable void that, despite the similarities we look for among ourselves and our mothers, we cannot fill. This is reality for the majority of people conceived via gamete donation. In a 2020 survey conducted by We Are Donor Conceived (WADC), a resource center for donor-conceived people to share their lived experiences, 89% of respondents reported that their donor parent had opted to remain anonymous instead of allowing
their adult offspring to contact them. This is largely unsurprising, as donors have a tangible interest in avoiding future monetary demands, maintaining their known family’s privacy, and preventing themselves from becoming a parent to a child that they had no intention of raising. Nevertheless, in 2019, 74% of respondents to WADC’s survey reported opposing the practice of anonymous donor conception, with the proliferation of direct-to-consumer DNA testing having rendered truly anonymous donation infeasible at best. This presents a problem to families like mine and to the representatives that are supposed to serve them. Given the complications that rapidly advancing technology poses to gamete donation, lawmakers can and must sponsor new regulation to account for a reality in which privacy and anonymity are no longer secure. The only effective way to achieve such regulatory clarity is to mandate the release of gamete donors’ identifying information to their donor-conceived offspring upon request from their adult offspring.
For the majority of donor-con-
ceived people, the absence of their biological parent figures massively into their overall identity. That’s why, as DNA testing has become more widely accessible, an increasing number of donor-conceived people have used it as a method of uncovering the mysteries within their families. Over 90% of participants in both the 2019 and 2020 WADC surveys had conducted DNA tests. Many others have turned to massive online communities whose sole purpose is to use genetic ancestry to find matches between unknown relatives. One such Facebook group, called “DNA Detectives,” boasts over 210,000 members dedicated to “using DNA to find biological family for adoptees, foundlings, donor-conceived individuals, unknown paternity and all other types of unknown parentage cases.” These communities exemplify the fact that, for most children of donors, finding their parents is not just some distant dream to be thwarted by their wishes for anonymity; it is a necessary step in finding themselves.
Donors don’t share the same concerns, to say the least. Though an overwhelming majority of them dis-
close their donations to partners, only slightly over half inform their extended families. An even lower 30% disclose such information to their known children. By seeking out their biological parents without consent, donor-conceived people embark upon their journeys of self-discovery without fully understanding or caring about the ramifications their efforts may have on their donor’s life and relationships. Finding and contacting ostensibly anonymous donors certainly
“In recent years, over 50 cases of fertility doctors deceiving their patients by inseminating them with their own sperm have surfaced, resulting in at least 20 lawsuits.”
stantial efforts toward regulatory clarity, they have historically missed the mark. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulates human cell and
complex terrain of gamete donation is being navigated by a disjointed array of guidelines and statewide half-measures rather than a cohesive body of
tory and some potentially traumatic revelations later in life. An industry tasked with bringing new lives into the world through carefully selected donors should not be tarnished by doctors taking things into their own hands, so to speak.
Fertility doctors fraudulently using their own sperm instead of the chosen donor is also self-evidently a deplorable breach of trust and a violation of the patient’s reproductive rights. It robs families of their autonomy in choosing a donor based on desired characteristics, deprives children of accurate knowledge about their genetic origins, and has invariably profound psychological impacts on everyone involved. Disrupting the legislative status quo and codifying the end of anonymous donations would
a Grand Junction jury awarded $9 million to families victimized by one Dr. Paul Jones, Colorado became the first American state to codify protections for donor-conceived offspring and families in the Donor-conceived Persons and Families of Donor-conceived Persons Protection Act. This law mandates that “[u]pon request of a [donor-conceived person] who is 18 years of age or older,” clinics must provide “identifying and medical information to the [donor-conceived person] or the [donor-conceived person’s] legal parent or guardian.” Although spurred by the case of Dr. Jones, Colorado State Senate President Stephen Fenberg stated “[t]his bill recognizes” the reality that at-home DNA testing compromises anonymity “and affirms that while shared DNA does not always make a family, the identity of the donor is important to the health and identity of many donor-conceived
Other states have also begun to make headway in the push for more expansive regulations regarding gamete donation. Though not nearly as progressive, California, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and New York all have laws mandating the collection of donor information—such as name, date of birth, and address—by clinics. In all
of these states aside from New York, fertility clinics must make an attempt to notify anonymous donors if the offspring wishes to make contact and allow the donor to rescind their anonymity declaration. While Colorado took a pioneering step, much more comprehensive federal regulation is needed to bring the kind of consistency that would protect the rights of donor-conceived people across the United States.
The stories of those like myself and my eight siblings illustrate the human impact of the policy vacuum around this increasingly prevalent method of family building. While abstract legal and ethical debates play out, we grapple with profound issues of identity, connection, and access to information that are essential to understanding ourselves. Policymakers can no longer rely on a patchwork of professional guidelines to address the complexities of this issue. Comprehensive federal legislation is urgently needed to get ahead of rapidly advancing consumer technologies and fundamental violations of reproductive rights. Both donor-conceived people and donors deserve to have their interests properly balanced by the full scrutiny of the democratic process—not mere guidelines. It’s time to replace the ad hoc non-system with binding rules that protect all stakeholders, parent and child alike.
(CC ’25) is a columnist at CPR and a philosophy major with a statistics concentration. He can frequently be found playing chess in the libraries instead of doing his homework.
Charlotte Guy, and Danielle Elzweig
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Walking the Line: Negotiating the Sino-Indian Border
The dispute over the Sino-Indian Border, an ill-defined, 2100 mile border running along the Himalayas between China and India, has led to simmering tensions in the region. Also referred to as the Line of Actual Control (LAC), the rivalry first escalated into war in 1962—resulting in defeat for India—and has continued variably into the 21st century through numerous skirmishes, economic competition, and nationalist pride over fear of losing territory and status.
The biggest clash in recent years was in 2020 when 20 Indian and at least four Chinese soldiers were killed in the Galwan Valley after thousands of Chinese troops advanced west of the border, striking another blow to an already contentious relationship.
As Chinese President Xi Jinping and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, leader of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), increasingly militarize their border and ramp up their economic bargaining with allies, a resolution to the dispute seems implausible.
This roundtable looks at six countries that are directly and indirectly implicated in this issue: China, India, Nepal, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and the United States. The articles analyze the issue’s regional impacts, discuss what the future of the border dispute looks like, and sketch potential solutions.
India’s Historical Context, Current Challenges, and Future Prospects
ABy Zareen Brown
s the world’s two most populous countries, China and India both have strong incentives to establish a peaceful alliance, yet their changing military and economic relationship may force them to reassess the possibility of a bilateral relationship. Their long-disputed border has resulted in unresolved tension, leading recently to the 2020 Border Clash—the first fatal confrontation since 1975. Both countries compete fiercely to build infrastructure along their border. Particularly, India’s new road to a high-altitude air base motivated, in part, the 2020 clash. India’s government maintains that keeping peace and respecting the LAC are key to a peaceful Sino-Indian relationship. With increasing tensions between the two nuclear-weapon states, India’s foreign policy toward China is a pivotal factor in its international reputation because escalation between the two powers could cause drastic economic fallout for India. India’s increasingly nationalist foreign policy agenda has the potential of seriously disconnecting them from other foreign powers such as China. Therefore, increased economic cooperation and confidence-building measures are necessary to diminish tensions ensuing from the border dispute.
The LAC’s inconsistent definition means the line changes quickly, leading to confrontation. The variable definition of the LAC has the potential to cause “transgressions” between India and China because both states disagree on where the line should be. The inflamed tensions caused by the ill-defined LAC have increased India’s desire to stop pulling punches when it comes to China. India’s Ministries of External Affairs and Defense are interested in pushing back against Beijing, with External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar stating that the “overall relationship cannot be normalized until there is peace and normalcy in the border areas.” Indian relations with China have also been affected by China’s relationship with Pakistan, India’s primary adversary. China’s role is particularly important following the 2019 court decision to abrogate Article 370 of the Indian Constitution, which exempts the Jammu and Kashmir states from the Constitution. This abrogation creates the opportunity for Indians to purchase and settle on land in the Jammu and Kashmir region, whereas previously, property rights in the region were
denied to outsiders. Chinese Foreign Minister Mao Ning’s statement on the matter notably did not recognize the validity of the court decision, stating that the issue “needs to be resolved peacefully and appropriately” to “settle the dispute … [and] to maintain regional peace and stability.”
Modi’s approach to Sino-Indian relations may also translate into the BJP opposition’s platform in the upcoming 2024 elections. India’s contentious relationship with China raises significant questions about Modi’s foreign policy. The BJP’s hardline Hindu nationalism isolates millions of India’s religious minorities. Additionally, Modi’s strongman persona permeates his foreign policy, such as in his counterterrorism strategy, increasing his popularity. India’s military capabilities have also grown due to increased defense partnerships with the United States and Israel. These strong ties indicate India is making significant geopolitical maneuvers to become an indispensable member of the international community. However, the Indian National Congress (INC), the BJP’s political rival, has criticized Modi’s approach toward China for being too lenient, especially after the deaths of 20 Indian soldiers in the Galwan Valley Clash. Despite the ongoing debate between India’s two dominant parties over Sino-Indian policies, it is unlikely that the 2020 Border Skirmishes will drastically influence the upcoming election, in light of Modi’s immense popularity. However, the BJP’s nationalist “India First” platform may not be beneficial to the future of Indian foreign policy, as it further isolates India from states like China that could serve as strong allies.
In a multipolar international system, the relationship between the two most populous countries in the world is steadily becoming more relevant to global politics. To preserve the possibility of a bilateral relationship between India and China, expanding confidence-building measures—such as military transparency, communication channels between military commanders, and joint patrols—could prevent further escalation and unilateral actions. Additionally, increasing economic cooperation, including research and development for both countries’ burgeoning tech industries, and trade relations could create incentives for both countries to prioritize a peaceful resolution to the conflict.
China at the Border: Why Tensions With India Are on the Rise
By Sofia Ferrari Bravo
China’s rising global influence has been pronounced by its growth in investments. From infrastructure and technology to international trade, China’s policies aim to place it at the top of the world’s economy. In its efforts to consolidate regional power, China has historically put its own security and status first, inevitably allowing for tensions to develop with its neighbors—namely, India.
A closer look into China’s relationship with India reflects a historical struggle between two growing powers, marked primarily by their disputed border. Though it has evolved, several political scientists argue that China’s main concern goes further than India. China’s ambitions to match the United States and Russia as a global superpower shape its policies with its neighbor. From before the Soviet Union’s collapse and well into today, China’s strategy regarded keeping India nonaligned internationally to reduce its threat to its security and status.
Nonetheless, in recent years, the border dispute has been brought to the foreground of Sino-Indian relations. Since 2013, border relations have escalated with tensions and aggression reaching historically unmatched heights. China’s main strategy regarding the border has been military co -
ercion. It warns India by establishing a physical presence along the border while keeping the risk of international geopolitical backlash at bay. Although the economic and political asymmetry between the two countries has allowed this strategy to advance until now, the past years have revealed India’s ability and willingness to balance China’s coercive behavior.
India’s Prime Minister Narenda Modi has consolidated power in recent elections. Although the leader has expressed an urgency in de-escalating tensions with China, his party’s nationalist rhetoric stymies any opportunity for negotiations, let alone a resolution— particularly in regard to loss of territory and national security concerns. When evaluating this strategy, it is relevant to address India’s relations with the United States and what role they play in determining Chinese policy. India’s cooperation with the United States is nonthreatening to China for now, but this only remains true while the US refrains from direct intervention at the border in support of Delhi.
The border has never been historically delineated, and the lack of consensus on where the boundary itself lies worsens the crisis. The stakes are high for both sides. The two countries are wrestling to see who will succeed
in exerting superiority (and eventual control) over the border. This struggle is manifested by the physical military balance of power on the ground and how this influences threat perception from a strategic standpoint. The most recent clashes occurred in May 2020, resulting in 20 dead Indian and four dead Chinese soldiers, despite the no-firearm rule established in 1966. China’s ambition to become a global power drives its strategy at the border. Territorial claims reflect greater ambitions for economic dominance, in which territorial expansion can be correlated with new manufacturing facilities and a tighter grip on the world economy. Military and infrastructure presence serve to stabilize this position and coerce India while simultaneously deterring US involvement.
In terms of policy recommendations, the importance of credibly conveying signals through collective foreign strategy is key. Transparency is particularly urgent at the border to avoid a security dilemma. Given recent developments, and taking into account the ongoing Indian elections, it has become even more important for both nations to address the border issue by keeping nationalist tendencies and power ambitions at bay and instead focusing on crisis management and consistency.
Blueprint to Secure U.S.-Indian Relations
By Josh Groysberg
The United States has a strong interest in maintaining its economic ties with India. Recently, US firms have withdrawn their manufacturing capabilities from China and have instead invested in India, increasing their manufacturing capacities there. For example, Apple Inc. plans for India to manufacture 25% of its iPhones within two to three years. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government has encouraged such investment via the “Make in India” initiative. Currently, the Indian manufacturing sector is projected to grow 21% in the next six to seven years. Specifically, beyond cheaper labor costs and a younger working population compared to China, India is more closely aligned with US political interests. However, the US wants comfort in its investments in India by ensuring that the upcoming 2024 parliamentary elections position Modi to turn away from opposing political and economic interests.
Modi has worked effectively with President Joe Biden on collaborations across defense, technology, and trade. Both India and the US have benefited from this arrangement. Additional foreign investment from the US and its allies enables India to improve its infrastructure and raise its citizens’ living standards by providing them with a larger job market. In essence, the US gets a manufacturing center with less geopolitical risk than China.
However, the US government worries about India’s growing involvement in BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa), an economic alliance similar to the G7. BRICS contains multiple US geopolitical adversaries, such as China, Iran, and Russia. Recently, in 2020, the Modi government organized a meeting of RIC (Russia-India-China) defense ministers in New Delhi, despite heightened LAC tensions with China. The US fears India’s alignment with the national security interests of American adversaries creates a conflict of interests, especially considering the military technology and strategy sharing which requires reliable discretion from India.
This principle matters more in the context of recent developments. For instance, the US approved a manufacturing license to produce the General Electric F414 engine in India in early 2023. The US and India also established a joint program preparing entrepreneurs to contribute to both countries’ defense industries. Such collaborations rely on trust, as a degree of secrets from military technological capabilities is likely to be disclosed to both parties. India’s continued involvement in BRICS undermines that confidence. Modi’s popularity has remained high, but it is in the US’s interest for India’s parliament to divide even more in order to narrow Modi’s majority. By doing so, the US hopes that additional pressure will force Modi to reduce his involvement in BRICS or even cut it off altogether in favor of more transparent trade with the US. This is, however, unlikely, as Modi’s Hindu nationalist agenda remains popular, widening his majority in the upcoming 2024 elections. A disintegrating parliamentary opposition has only consolidated support for Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJT). Previously, Indian governments from the flagship opposition party, the Indian National Congress, have worked more closely with the US, such as former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who emphasized a united US-Indian security apparatus based on their shared democratic statuses. With a wider majority, Modi would be less likely to make India’s growing manufacturing sector more geopolitically hospitable to US investment.
The US has already spent substantial policymaking to regulate trade with China out of geopolitical risk. The investment opportunity for India is too great, and the US does not want to be trapped into a position where cutting off that potential would be necessary for American national security.
Maintaining Power: India’s Growth and its Implications for Pakistan
Pakistan and India have had long-standing tense relations since the partition of British India in 1947. Unsettled border disputes in the regions of Jammu and Kashmir led to several skirmishes and wars until a tentative settlement was reached through the 1972 Simla Agreement, establishing the Line of Actual Control (LAC) that separated the Jammu-Kashmir region into separate India-controlled and Pakistan-controlled territories. However, violations of the LAC by the Indian army, Pakistani army, and Kashmiri militants between 2017 and 2018 reignited tensions between the two nations. With India serving as Pakistan’s most significant rival in the region, Pakistan needs to maintain and strengthen an allyship with China to compete with India’s increasing power.
Like Pakistan, China engaged in similar border disputes with India in 1962 in a region referred to as Aksai Chin and Ladakh by China and India, respectively, and the North-East Frontier Agency (now Arunachal Pradesh and Assam). The cessation of Pakistani control of Shaksgam Valley—an area now claimed by India—to China established Chinese dominance in the Aksai Chin/Ladakh area, denoting Pakistan as a strategic Chinese ally in South Asia.
By Roma Tivare
Broadly, China is an incredibly important ally to Pakistan. The $62 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC)—an infrastructure project through Pakistan established as part of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI)—was designed to attract investment, create jobs, and develop critical infrastructure throughout Pakistan. Pakistani and Chinese government officials agree that a shared economic relationship between the countries will be mutually beneficial.
China’s support of Pakistan is also important in maintaining Pakistan’s presence as a controlling power in the Jammu and Kashmir regions, due to China’s role as a regional hegemon. Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Mao Ning reaffirmed the necessity of the Kashmir issue being resolved “in accordance with the U.N. Charter, Security Council resolutions, and relevant bilateral agreement.” This statement, coupled with the fact that Chinese maps still display Jammu and Kashmir as disputed territory, makes it clear that China does not recognize the validity of the Supreme Court of India’s decision to abrogate Article 370 of the Indian Constitution, which effectively established Jammu and Kashmir as Indian Union territories. China’s repeated denial of India’s claim of sole control over Jammu and Kashmir is not only necessary to maintain Chinese control of Aksai Chin/Ladakh but also lays the foundation for Pakistan to assert authority over areas of Jammu and Kashmir as well. The strong relationship between Pakistan and China will become even more important in light of new changes in the balance of power in South Asia.
As the United States and India form a partnership, which is projected to become even stronger as time passes, it is of utmost importance to Pakistan to ally with China to compete with India’s growth in South Asia. Additionally, with a GDP growth rate of 7.2%, India was the fastest-growing G20 economy of 2023 and is projected to become the world’s second-largest economy by 2075. Thus, Pakistan needs to maintain economic growth and regional control if it does not want to be dominated by India’s growth. By forging a deeper relationship with China, Pakistan gains both the monetary support and international recognition necessary to assert its role as a dominant state actor in South Asia. Pakistan should strengthen its economic and military ties with China by increasing bilateral trade and engaging with cooperative defense efforts, particularly at borders with India. Converging interests between India and the US mark a transition away from an economic relationship between India and China, giving Pakistan the ability to cement itself as China’s best South Asian ally.
Afghanistan: A Site for Sino-Indian Regional Competition
By Sarah Lerner
As the border dispute between China and India over the Line of Actual Control (LAC) intensifies, the longstanding three-way conflict between India, China, and Pakistan grows in complexity. India’s increasing militarization to combat Chinese territorial encroachment in the Himalayas along the LAC may indicate the possibility of future competition for influence in the region, including in Afghanistan. The Taliban in Afghanistan has been seeking assistance from nearby states due to domestic instability concerns, providing India and China with the perfect opportunity to compete for regional influence. Given its lack of options regarding alliances and assistance, the Taliban must, at least temporarily, entertain both a Chinese and Indian alliance.
Following the Taliban’s renewed control of Afghanistan in 2021, the situation in Afghanistan has deteriorated rapidly partially due to COVID-19 and rising inflation. Though these issues have lessened in urgency, household poverty levels have been skyrocketing. The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs estimates that around 23.7 million people in Afghanistan, over half of the Afghan population, will require humanitarian aid in 2024. Nearly half of the Afghan population lives in poverty, which women disproportionately experience.
No state or international organiza-
tion officially recognizes the Taliban as the legitimate Afghan government, but states like China, Russia, Turkey, Pakistan, and India have engaged with the Taliban anyway. Regarding China and India, Beijing has more actively attempted to normalize connections with the Taliban than New Delhi has. In January 2023, a Chinese company signed a contract with the Taliban granting the company oil extraction privileges in the Amu Darya basin and oil reserve development rights in the Sar-e Pul province in northern Afghanistan. Furthermore, Afghanistan joined China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in May 2023 via an extension from Pakistan. The Taliban’s dire need for infrastructure and investment assistance has driven it toward Beijing’s BRI and associated business proposals.
India has taken a more passive, but equally effective, approach to forging ties with the Taliban. Out of concern about encirclement via regional influence by Beijing, New Delhi sent a technical team to its Kabul embassy in 2022 to ensure continuity of operations. New Delhi has been sending humanitarian aid to Afghanistan, and India’s union budget for 2023-2034 contains a $25 million development aid package for Afghanistan. The Taliban has welcomed these initiatives. Tensions between Pakistan and Afghanistan because of controversy over the Durand Line—the Afghanistan-Pakistan border—and attacks in Pakistan by the
Taliban’s sister group, Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, have provided India with an opportunity to replace Pakistan as the Taliban’s patron given the longstanding conflict between India and Pakistan in Kashmir. Furthermore, New Delhi has been building its soft power in Afghanistan for decades, having been second only to the United States as a development assistance provider to Afghanistan after the 2001 fall of the Taliban. As a result, the Afghan people, overall, view India positively.
Recognition of the Taliban as a legitimate government by the international community and, thus, the Taliban’s acquisition of significant development aid will likely be impossible unless the Taliban loosens its hardline Islamist decrees, especially those concerning women. The Taliban’s unrecognized position is a geopolitically tenuous one, and recognition is an important prerequisite to joining the United Nations and establishing trade ties. In the short term, the Taliban should extract as much aid as possible from China and India for the sake of its citizens, although this may exacerbate regional competition between China and India. In the long term, the Taliban will have to relax its hardline rule to gain international recognition and, in turn, the potential for national stability and economic success.
Nepal: A Yam Between Two Boulders
By Elizabeth Yee
Flanking both India and China, Nepal has often been imagined as a “yam between two boulders.”
Tense Sino-Indian border disputes have made Nepal a central arena for great power rivalry, as each vies for strategic gains in the region. While Nepal enjoys stronger cultural, religious, and political ties with its northern neighbor, China has endeavored to challenge India’s influence through trade and development programs in recent years. As its neighbors battle for dominance in Asia, Nepal faces the challenge of balancing its relations in an increasingly volatile political climate. Although it stands to benefit from growing foreign investment, competition between India and China also leaves the nation vulnerable to foreign interference. Over the last decade, China has attempted to shore up economic ties with Nepal. These efforts have included the signing of a Trade and Transit protocol—granting Nepal expanded access to Chinese sea and land ports—as well as the 2017 expansion of China’s global infrastructure project, the Belt and Road initiative (BRI), into the Himalayan country. Beijing’s growing interest in the region has been driven both by Great Power rivalry and national security concerns. Historically a safe haven for Tibetan dissidents, Nepal also holds symbolic significance to China. By gaining greater influence, Beijing seeks to secure its northern border and ensure the stability of its contested rule over Tibet. These projects were initially welcomed by Kathmandu, Nepal’s capital, which sought to reduce its sole dependence on India after an unofficial blockade in 2015 left the country with critical shortages of fuel, food, and medicine. However, China’s attempted power projection has met several obstacles. Many of its promises, such as its trade protocol and BRI projects, have stagnated due to funding modalities and a lack of political will. This declining momentum has also been met with challenges from a unified Indian and American front. The United States facilitated the signing of Washington’s Millennium Challenge Corporation Compact in 2017—a direct counter to China’s BRI—while simi-
larly ramping up defense cooperation and investments in both the Nepalese government and the national private sector. Likewise, India has intensified its presence in Nepalese energy, escalating its import of Nepalese hydropower and securing new plant contracts, a sector in which China has also heavily invested in.
Hoping to steer Nepal away from its rivals, China has warned Nepal of the US and India exploiting Nepal for their own gain, positioning itself as a more sincere security and trade partner. Seeking to drive a wedge in relations between Kathmandu and New Delhi, China has also backed Nepal in its long-standing Kapalani dispute, accusing India of encroaching on sovereign Nepalese territory.
This environment of heightened Great Power competition has exposed Nepal’s fragile electoral system to foreign interference. Both China and India have been accused of allegedly meddling in the country’s democracy to serve their respective alliances: China for purportedly attempting to save pro-Beijing KP Sharma Oli’s former government, and India for allegedly fueling ethnic tensions.
While leveraging important gains from Sino-Indian competition, Nepal should pursue a basic strategy of neutrality and non-alignment. Certainly, managing relations with its maritime counterparts is not only an economic but humanitarian concern, as India and China primarily control imports of essential goods and services into the country.
Although it stands to gain short-term benefits from China, India, and the US’s increased economic attention, it also faces the risk of becoming a “proxy battlefield” and jeopardizing the integrity of its domestic political system. Instead, Nepal should assume the role of a facilitator and bridge the gap between its two neighbors. This tripartite approach will not only ensure greater peace and stability in the region but also serves to raise Nepal’s global standing.
Conclusion
As geopolitical tensions between established and emerging global powers become increasingly volatile within the international system, the long-standing dispute at the Sino-Indian border has taken on a new face. Not only has the conflict come to radically shape relations between China and India in recent years, but it has also implicated less powerful border states and captured the attention of the United States.
As the two most populous countries in the world, China and India’s competing military and economic interests are visible in their actions at the border and have caused the issue to reverberate across the region, implicating less powerful neighboring states and global powers alike. China’s assertive stance and growing need for strategic alliances, especially with Pakistan, underlie its ambitions for regional dominance centered on controlling the border. Simultaneously, India’s efforts to maintain its territorial integrity and navigate larger geopolitical interests as a rising power in South Asia guide its more careful, passive approach. More broadly, other states in the immediate region, such as Nepal, Pakistan, and Afghanistan, have their own roles within the conflict, as each has a stake in remaining allied with either China or India. The United States also has an individual interest, especially as it looks to shift its economic involvement abroad from China to India while balancing the potential conflict of interests as India becomes a key player in BRICS.
This roundtable serves as a pertinent evaluation of the complexity of the Sino-Indian border debate, illustrating the key players, their past and current interests, and the global interconnections essential to the border’s future enmeshed in a rapidly evolving, multipolar international system.
Policy 360 is the Columbia Political Review’s foreign policy roundtable. In each edition, writers assess a single contemporary issue from the perspective of a different country. Their objective is to analyze the policy positions of key stakeholders and to discuss broader sociopolitical implications.
This article was edited by
Ariana Eftimiu, Claire Schnatterbeck, and Sydni Faragalli.
To Strengthen the Palestinian Authority, Bring Back the Gaza-West Bank “Bridge” Plan
By Fenner Stevens
As peacemakers begin to discuss a post-war future for Gaza, reconstruction efforts must aim towards ushering in sustainable peace, not merely the absence of war. If Gaza returns to its previous status quo—a terrorist-run enclave under Israeli blockade—the cycle of bloodshed will only continue. To build a prosperous and secure region, policymakers should dust off a 1999 proposal to construct a bridge between the West Bank and Gaza. In addition to being necessary for a viable Palestinian state, the bridge would bring about a shift in regional dynamics and serve as an inspiring symbol of peace and unity for the region.
The devastating war between Israel and Hamas has prompted activists and policymakers alike to seek transformative change in the region. As a result, the “two-state solution,” long dismissed as politically infeasible, has experienced a surprising comeback. A coalition of U.S. and Arab countries have proposed a “revitalized” Palestinian Authority (P.A.) to assume governing responsibility in Gaza, effectively paving the way towards a unified Palestinian state. In response to U.S. pressure, the P.A. is working to reform its controversial welfare policy and reshuffle its leadership. Though these are important steps, the P.A., headquartered in the West Bank,
will face an acute challenge given the restrictions on movement between the West Bank and Gaza. Without easy coordination between the territories, the P.A. could easily lose power to a more extreme local party.
In a 2014 interview with Israeli humanitarian non-profit B’Tselem, Gaza resident Maha Hijawi described the West Bank and Gaza as “two separate and distant planets, with no way of getting from one to the other.” For Palestinians to travel between the territories, they must pass through Israel, which largely prohibits entry outside of cases
of extreme medical emergency. Even if a Gazan marries a resident of the West Bank, travel can require a years-long “family unification” process that is not always successful. Israel could potentially speed up its permit and checkpoint system, but the process will inevitably remain tedious and humiliating for the Palestinians, especially in the aftermath of this war. But for as much as movement restrictions affect the lives of individual Palestinians, they’re even more punishing for the collective. According to a 2020 United Nations report, an estimated $16.7 billion in GDP
Photo courtesy of Zeev Barkan
was lost as a result of Gaza’s isolation between 2007 and 2018. The separation of the territories has also effectively landlocked the West Bank, weakening its economy by inhibiting crucial trade from the Mediterranean. The result is two territories that are economically, administratively, and physically severed.
Fortunately, the narrowest point between the West Bank and Gaza is a mere 20 miles, considerably shorter than the world’s longest bridges. Bridging this gap and connecting the territories would effectively unify their populations, enabling the P.A. to extend its governance to Gaza and increasing its chance of long-term success. Given the high volume of traffic it would support, the bridge could be expanded to include a multi-lane freeway with an added rail line. Some proposals have even included schemes for a multi-use bridge with an added water pipeline to address the West Bank’s frequent droughts. If realized, this would be a natural boon for the region’s development, in part by providing easier access between Gaza and the Gulf states through Jordan. For this plan to experience any success, Israel’s security must be guaranteed. In 2017, I worked on a farm in Bil’in, a small village outside of Ramallah in the West Bank. Israeli soldiers would repeatedly burst onto the property, in-
specting the farm’s structures and occasionally ordering their destruction. These episodes would anger the local Palestinian villagers, sparking protests and violent skirmishes at the border. From the hilltop farm, I could peer into a nearby Israeli settlement, close enough to see Israeli children playing on their front balconies. Given the region’s history of extremist violence, it is not difficult to understand why the parents of these children—living within the visible range of a potential threat—might opt for aggressive security measures. But those very precautions often inflame the threat they are meant to mitigate, and provide the resentment necessary to drive some to militancy. Witnessing this tit-for-tat dynamic play out on the hills of the West Bank helped me appreciate both the precariousness of peace-building and the human element of this conflict. As the failure of the Oslo Accords has shown, when efforts to improve Palestinian freedom are exploited by extremists, the peace process will quickly unravel. As we know, such failures carry a steep cost.
Notably, the Gaza-West Bank bridge plan was first put forward by former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, a testament to its compatibility with Israel’s security needs. Under Barak’s plan, the bridge could be turned into a fully secured corridor, not unlike Israel’s highly reinforced roads throughout the West Bank. Without a bridge, peacetime
would require Israel to further expand its costly security apparatus to accommodate increased travel over land crossings, creating a logistical nightmare and, in light of October 7, a critical security vulnerability. Alternatively, a bridge would be less disruptive to Israeli travel and avert the need for pesky checkpoints. Unfortunately, the 1999 plan was dismissed as “outlandish” and “costly,” and, as so many hopeful political solutions do, it fell victim to partisan pressure. Barak was voted out of office just a year later.
While the plan is indeed ambitious, comparable projects have been built for a quarter of the Biden administration’s proposed $14 billion military aid package to Israel, a cost that could undoubtedly be covered by coordinated international effort or even a coalition of Western and Arab states alone. If there ever was a time for such an effort, it is now. Following the shocking and brutal events of this war, it has become all the more urgent to ensure that the previous status quo never returns. Meeting the demands of this crisis will require international cooperation, serious concessions from all parties, and major changes in political leadership, but all of those must come in concert with tangible measures to provide relief to the central problem of Palestinian movement. A bridge between Gaza and the West Bank is not only economically and socially beneficial—it is a crucial step toward creating sustainable peace in the region.
Fenner Stevens (GS ’25) is a columnist for CPR and a junior studying political science. Before transferring to Columbia, he studied in the Czech Republic and Israel.
Edited
by
Alan Chen , Max Hermosillo, and Adam Kinder
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A WIN FOR RELIGIOUS LIBERTY?
Child Removal, Religious Conversion, and the 2023 Supreme Court
Decision
Upholding the Indian Child Welfare Act in Brackeen v. Haaland
By Ana Eveleigh
Celebrated as a victory for tribal sovereignty in the United States, the Supreme Court’s June 2023 ruling in Brackeen v. Haaland upheld the Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978 (ICWA). Brackeen’s plaintiffs unsuccessfully sought to undermine the constitutionality of ICWA, an important law created to protect Native American children and families in response to U.S. assimilation policies that forced Native children into boarding schools and later foster care. ICWA legislation prioritizes extended family and fellow tribe members as prospective guardians in the adoption proceedings of Indigenous children, thus safeguarding against historic family separation.
Beyond the clear benefits of ICWA for governing adoption courts, the act’s preservation is also relevant in the context of the close relationship between Indigenous cultural and religious traditions and tribal sover-
eignty. The dark history of boarding schools and adoption projects in the U.S. is often overlooked, and the fact that many of these policies were rooted in questions of religion is seldom discussed. Indigenous child removal was historically tied to conversion to Christianity, as a means to “civilize” Native Americans. In this context, ICWA’s preservation in Brackeen can also be viewed as a victory for the rights of Indigenous children—giving them the capability to heal from the trauma of acculturation through enculturation, and the freedom to participate in the religious and cultural lives of their respective tribal nations.
Child Removal and Religious Conversion: The Boarding School Era
Congress passed ICWA in 1978 after discovering that, as late as the 1970s, 25 to 35% of Native children were still living apart from their birth
families—either in institutions or foster care programs, or as the adopted children of non-Native families. How did this happen?
Historically, the U.S. government collaborated with Christian missionaries to assimilate Native children into “civilized” American culture. The government institutionalized this policy in the form of federally funded, off-reservation boarding schools targeting Native children, who were presumed more malleable than adults to embrace “civilized” ways. The founder of the first off-reservation boarding school, the Carlisle Indian School, was Richard Henry Pratt. Pratt famously described the school’s project to “kill the Indian in him and save the man.” Boarding schools separated children from their families based on the principle that to “save” the human, one had to eradicate all
that is culturally, religiously, and racially Native. For the American public and for teachers at boarding schools, to civilize Native Americans meant fulfilling Western religious ideals of personal progress. At the time, civilization was the “divine mission” of the U.S. defined broadly and implemented by boarding school staff as the movement toward Christian notions of morality and family values.
Boarding schools systematically erased Native American religious practices and actively converted Native children to Christianity, in large part by keeping Native children separated from their families for years. Attendance at boarding schools was compulsory and children were large-
ly prohibited from engaging in Native religious practices or from keeping traditional religious or ceremonial items with them in the dorms. Native children living in boarding schools could not access annual tribal ceremonies and were thereby separated from the religious and cultural experiences important to their Native nations, forcibly creating a cultural divide between Native children and their families. Boarding schools taught English using Christian hymns and Bible stories, and students at many schools were expected to attend daily worship services and religious instruction. Schools celebrated students who formally converted to Christianity, asserting a powerful narrative about whose culture mattered.
Native Religious and Cultural Erasure: Foster and Adoptive Care Conversion and the removal of Native children from their families did not end with boarding schools. The schools were followed by a new era of Native family separation which has continued through to the present: foster care and adoption. The transition from boarding schools to the “adoption era” can best be understood through the ethos of Pratt’s “outing” system, a program initially implemented at Carlisle to further the boarding school experience. Rather than send students home between school years and risk “cultural backsliding,” Pratt mandated that many students live with white, Christian families during the summers. Students would work domestically and on family farms in exchange for minimal wages, and most valuable to Pratt, gain exposure to “civilized” family values. Pratt soon expanded
Photos by House Divided Project Courtesy of the Smithsonian Institution
the outing system, assigning students to live with non-Native families for a school year at a time and thereafter enrolling students in the families’ local public schools. Pratt aspired to disperse the entire population of Native children nationwide by placing children into white homes in a oneto-one ratio. The permanent separation of Native children from their families, he believed, would fix the problem of assimilation once and for all.
When reports in the late 1920s exposed the terrible living conditions at off-reservation boarding schools to the public, the schools lost government funding and most closed by the 1930s. Yet social services at the state level took over Pratt’s ideology—local governments did not return many Native students to their parents when boarding schools closed, but rather placed them in adoptive or foster care with non-Native parents and enrolled them directly into public schools. This made the outing system model permanent and created, in effect, a boarding school to “ward of the state” pipeline. However, the adoption industry’s racial matching practices at that time stalled interracial adoptions; racial roadblocks rendered Native children initially ineligible for adoption by white families. To overcome these administrative and legal barriers, the Bureau of Indian Affairs collaborated with the U.S. Children’s Bureau in 1958 to create the Indian Adoption Project (IAP) managed by a private nonprofit, the Child Welfare League of America.
The IAP removed transracial adoption obstacles in order to allow white families to adopt Native children. Like the outing system, the IAP assimilated Native children into the dominant white, Christian society, severing connections between children and their tribal customs and religions. The government justified this with the racist idea that Native parents were unfit to raise their children because of high poverty rates on reservations. This also reflected a
devaluation of Native cultural traditions and family life; the government considered losing one’s tribal culture a small price to pay in exchange for life in an affluent household with a “civilized” family. Until Congress passed ICWA in 1978, foster care and adoptions had displaced 25 to 30% of all Native children, 90% of whom were placed into non-Native homes.
Tracing a throughline from boarding schools to the outing system to the IAP reveals that a civilizing mission motivated Native child removal for at least a century, rooted in the belief that Native parents were incapable of rearing Native children according to the standards of “civilized” society. The civilizing mission entrusted to boarding schools would thereafter be the responsibility of individual foster and adoptive families, not unlike the lead plaintiffs in Brackeen
While the outing system and subsequent adoption projects did not target and ban Native religious practices and encourage active conversion to Christianity with the same systematic energy as boarding schools, the impact was similar: Native children were adopted out of their families and thereby lost the freedom to participate in Native cultural and religious traditions.
The Significance of Native American Religious Traditions
In the context of ICWA, why does it matter whether or not Native children can choose to access their tribe’s religious traditions? ICWA seeks to place Native children in “foster or adoptive homes which will reflect the unique values of Indian culture.” For many Indigenous communities, religious and cultural practices are intertwined. Renowned Standing Rock Sioux scholar Vine Deloria Jr. emphasizes that religion structures all aspects of tribal life and community and that religious practice is deeply tied to tribal sovereignty. Deloria writes, “[religion is] a covenant between a particular god
and a particular community … There is no salvation in tribal religions apart from the continuance of the tribe itself.” In other words, to invoke Native American religions is to invoke what it means to be part of a specific tribal community. Religious autonomy is thus crucially important for the autonomy of Native American nations. ICWA’s placement preferences preserve Native American familial relationships, maintaining children’s ability to access religious practices of their Indigenous nation if they so choose.
“Native children were adopted out of their families and thereby lost the freedom to participate in Native cultural and religious traditions.”
ICWA supports the enculturation of Native American children by sustaining ties with Native religions. According to the National Indian Child Welfare Association, familiarity with tribal cultural practices benefits the mental health and psychological well-being of Native children throughout their lives. Indigenous peoples in the U.S. have endured colonization and cultural genocide, both traumatic experiences with vastly negative health impacts. According to analysis by scholar Mary Annette Pember, member of the Red Cliff Band of Wisconsin Ojibwe, “intergenerational trauma” occurs when trauma-affected genes are inherited by offspring, perpetuating negative outcomes including mental illness. Overcoming trauma rooted in acculturation requires participation in enculturation, that is, “helping Native youth to identify with
their cultural background and feel pride in it.” Enculturation is linked with increased self-esteem and decreased mental illness. When Native children are adopted by non-Native parents, acculturation often continues because non-Native parents are less likely able to effectively transfer Native cultural knowledge or identity to Native children. For many Native peoples, participation in the cultural and religious practices of their tribe supports the process of healing from the trauma of acculturation.
Looking Forward:
Brackeen in the
Context of Legal Protections for Native Religious Practices
ICWA protects the ability of Native children to choose religious participation and connection with their tribal culture. This is significant in a U.S. legal context since the religious freedoms of Indigenous peoples have often been inadequately protected. Vine Deloria Jr. suggested that for Native communities, the survivance of tribal nations themselves
is a collective religious matter—the religious rights of Indigenous peoples are therefore paramount.
Brackeen was heard by a conservative-majority U.S. Supreme Court, which has expanded the right to free exercise of religion—at least for certain beliefs and communities—and prioritized religious rights over other fundamental rights in recent years. Yet, the laws which govern the relationship between church and state were formulated with the protection of and from Protestant Christianity in mind, and thus have historically failed to address the religious needs of groups outside this paradigm, including Native Americans.
Largely ignorant of the principal role sacred lands and waters play in the diverse religious practices of Native nations, U.S. courts have repeatedly denied religious liberty claims seeking to protect sacred sites. Notably, in Lyng v. Northwest Indian Cemetery Protective Association in 1988, Navajo Nation v. U.S. Forest Service in 2008, and Standing Rock Sioux Tribe v. U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in 2017, courts ruled that “diminished spiritual fulfillment” resulting from restricted access to or defilement of sacred lands did not constitute a “substantial burden
on religious exercise.” This demonstrates how Western conceptions of religion can undermine legal protections for non-Western religions, in these cases by delegitimizing Native “nature piety” as a form of “spiritual fulfillment” rather than a true religion. Among those directly impacted by these cases are the Yurok, Karuk, and Tolowa tribes who use Chimney Rock—land addressed in the Lyng case—for sacred ritual practices.
Nevertheless, despite the challenges faced when trying to claim religious violations in court under the Free Exercise Clause, Native American activists have found creative ways to seek legal protection for their ongoing religious traditions. These efforts have contributed to legislation including the American Indian Religious Freedom Act of 1978 (AIRFA) and its 1994 Peyote Amendment. This activism enables the consideration of ICWA through a wider lens in the context of religious freedom.
The Court’s ruling in Brackeen is a victory for tribal sovereignty. It is also a victory for Indigenous children, providing renewed access to choose participation in the cultural and religious traditions of their respective nations. In the unequal landscape of religious rights protections in the U.S., the upholding of ICWA is a small triumph for Indigenous traditions on the long road to creating substantive legal protections for Native religions and cultural practices.
Edited by Aishlinn Kivlighn and Joseph Karaganis
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Ana Eveleigh (BC ’24) is a staff writer for CPR majoring in religion and human rights. The research for this article was originally conducted with support from the Laidlaw Fellowship at Barnard College.
FRIENDSHIP PARK
The Eroding Promise of Binational Commmunity at the U.S.-Mexico Border
By Hattie Bilson
Illustration by Beatrix Holstine
Situated on the border between San Diego, California, and Tijuana, Mexico is Friendship Park, also known as El Parque de la Amistad. The park, inaugurated in 1971 by First Lady Pat Nixon, promised a swpace of binational unity and collaboration. However, over the past five decades, the park has come to increasingly reflect the division between the two nations. Persistent militarization and border wall construction threaten the park’s raison d’être. While the Mexican side of the park remains a vibrant space of recreation and communal activism, Friendship Park’s U.S. side has been closed entirely since late 2019.
At Friendship Park’s inauguration, First Lady Nixon established its recreational and diplomatic purposes, declaring: “I hope there won’t be a fence too long here … May there never be a wall between these two great nations, only friendship.” Immediately, Friendship Park became a symbol of U.S.-Mexico border relations, envisioned by government planners to be enjoyed by visitors from the U.S. and Mexico alike.
In its early decades, the spirit of community was omnipresent. Families from both sides of the border filled Friendship Park, picnicking, surfing, and enjoying the park’s ocean views. Visitors from Mexico would venture to Imperial Beach, San Diego, for soccer matches, and beachgoers would wander from San Diego to Playas de Tijuana for tacos.
Friendship Park’s status as the sole federally established binational meeting place along the 2,000-mile U.S.–Mexico border
heightens its unique value. For individuals awaiting passport renewal, rulings on hearings, or on parole or probation, Friendship Park was the one location where they could meet loved ones across the border. For decades, visitors would travel hundreds of miles for the unique opportunity of a face-to-face reunion.
Border securitization has increasingly limited such interactions. The 2011 addition of a dense mesh grid rendered cross-border embraces impossible, making “pinky kisses” the only possible physical contact for those separated by immigration status. Now, the
closure of the park’s U.S. side forestalls even limited cross-border interaction.
How has Friendship Park traveled so far from its intended purpose? The answer: U.S. nativism, border militarization, and a securitization strategy that began with the park’s first solid fence built in 1979.
Friendship Park’s first decade coincided with a rise in U.S. nativism. From 1970 to 1980, California’s Latin American population nearly doubled, provoking fears of an “out of control” border in the media and government. Journalists described migrants as an “alien in -
“‘I hope there won’t be a fence too long here... May there never be a wall between these two great nations, only friendship.’”
Photo taken by Hattie Bilson.
vasion” threatening Califor nia with a “state of siege.” As anti-immigrant sentiment prolifer ated, rhetoric began to increasing ly target Friendship Park, referred to as “a smuggler’s paradise” by lo cal news sources.
The construction of fences in the late 1970s—a culmination of increased migration, nativist sen timent, and evolving immigration policy—marked the beginning of a physical and ideological shift. By the 1990s, concerns over illegal immigration and crime led the U.S. government to initiate a militariza tion of the border. The U.S. Border Patrol used materials from mili tary airstrips to reinforce Friend ship Park’s fence, and in 1994, Operation Gatekeeper instituted layered surveillance, increased officer presence, and expanded wall construction to prevent bor der crossings. Friendship Park be came a center for military exercis es and drills, described by activist Jill Holslin as “the initial test site of late twentieth-century border militarization.”
Since 9/11, officials have sought to legitimize border militarization under the guise of national security. The 2009 construction of a secondary wall solidified Friendship Park’s transformation into a prison-like environment, where visitors on the U.S. side were required to enter a space between fences
spaces, street food vendors, and a border wall mural that conveys messages of strength and hope against an increasingly fortified divide. Traditions that were once binational, such as art festivals, beach cleanups, the binational garden of native plants, and the cross-border church, are preserved on the park’s Tijuana side, reflecting the U.S. and Mexico’s disparate attitudes toward their shared border.
as a physical manifestation of the degree of separation between the two sides of the border. Against this backdrop, activists and community groups have embarked on a decades-long struggle to reclaim the space for its original purpose of connection. Organizations like Border Angels and Friends of Friendship Park advocate for its accessibility, organizing cross-border petitions, protests, and negotiations. Such efforts have brought
ideals of binational unity and humane border management.
Amid the construction of increased division, San Diego and Tijuana have been named the first-ever joint World Design Capital for 2024. With this title comes a series of conferences, events, and workshops to reimagine the cross-border community through innovative design, an effort San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria hopes will allow Friendship Park to become “the destination it was created to be.” This initiative holds the potential to restore Friendship Park to an open space of binational friendship. However, reimagining Friendship Park requires more than just ambition; it demands a collective commitment to demilitarization, confronting both the park’s physical barriers and the layers of ideology legitimizing their imposition. If successful, this effort would not only revive Friendship Park’s original vision of unity but also mark a significant step toward a more inclusive and compassionate approach to U.S.–Mexico border
Edited by Lochlan Zhang, Monica Vasquez , and Faiza Chowdhury
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Hattie Bilson (GS ’25) is a senior editor at the Columbia Political Review. She is a junior studying political science and Middle Eastern and European Languages and Cultures as part of the Dual BA between Columbia and Trinity College Dublin.
The Columbia Political Review maintains close ties with the Columbia University Political Science Department and is additionally affiliated with the Columbia International Relations Council and Association (CIRCA), an umbrella association of seven policy-related student groups on campus. For more information, visit cpreview.org.
