At Twilight's Last Gleaming (1.30.17)

Hanover Review Inc. P.O. Box 343 Hanover NH, 03755

Volu m e 3 6 , Is su e 13

Mond ay, Janu ar y 3 0 , 2 0 1 7

AT THE TWLIGHT’S LAST GLEAMING

AMERICAN FLAGS fly by the light of a Dartmouth sunset

Flag Burning Defeated Jack S. Hutensky Associate Editor

Just after midnight on Thursday January 19, The Dartmouth published an editorial written by Timothy Messen ’18 calling for action in response to the inauguration of President Donald J. Trump.

Messen suggested that “We need more than a dialogue in the pages of our newspapers and on our television screens,” calling for “so much more” to be done by those people who are dissatisfied with the outcome of November’s presidential election. Messen’s piece expressed fears about “regressive” policies, “sexual and racial violence,” and “politics [which] implicitly and explicitly threaten Americans and citizens of the world,” attrib-

uting these to Trump’s presidency.

In particular, Messen wrote about the perceived threat to the First Amendment and to civil liberties posed by President Trump’s November 29, 2016 tweet calling for jail time or worse for those who burn the American flag.

His op-ed then quoted Polish-German dissident Rosa Luxemburg on the importance of freedom for dissenters and belittled the flag, describing it as merely “a piece of striped cloth with 50 stars on it.”

To close his article, Messen invited the Dartmouth community to join him on the Green in the afternoon of January 20 to have a conversation about “What rights are threatened by the incoming administration, what steps we can take to en-

sure that they are not simply taken away and what burning an American flag might achieve.”

Messen finally hinted that those in attendance would exercise their First Amendment right to burn the flag.

Messen reached out to the administration of Dartmouth College, as well as the town of Hanover, for permission to burn an American flag on the Green. A joint meeting was held, with representatives of Dartmouth administration, safety and security, and the Hanover Police Department in attendance.

Since the Green is private property, the town was required to grant a fire permit for the flag burning. All relevant arms of the College’s administration also granted formal permission to the student to incinerate the Ameri-

can flag on the Green.

Just as Messen has the First Amendment right to burn the flag (with necessary fire permits) on the green, members of the community have the right to go and counter protest an action with such serious implications.

Those counter-protestors showed up in droves. By four o’clock, a diverse crowd of counter protesters had gathered in the center of the green, many of them sporting patriotic apparel. Members of Rolling Thunder New Hampshire Chapter 2, a veterans’ and prisoner of war advocacy group, arrived in force, circling the center of the green with a number of American flags and one United States Marine Corps flag.

> FEATURES PAGE 8

Rev. Sekou Speaks for MLK Day Devon M. Kurtz Associate Editor

Unfortunately, Moore Theater was not filled to capacity on the evening of Monday, January 16th when the College and the community alike gathered to pay tribute to American hero Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Sadder still, many of those in attendance were middle aged members of the Upper Valley community and not Dartmouth students, many of whom likely took their entire day off without stopping to honor the legacy of the day’s namesake.

While the Reverend Osagyefo Sekou served as the keynote speaker for the program, themed “The Fierce Urgency of Now,” those in

Keith Hanson

attendance also heard from a few other speakers who each put their own spin on the subject.

President Phil Hanlon ’77’s remarks centered on urging Dartmouth community members to take action and live Dr. King’s legacy, not just on Martin Luther King Day, but every day. He went on to take a very thinly veiled shot at President Donald Trump (as seems to be the fashion these days), asserting that “The Fierce Urgency of Now” comes from a widely-held belief that the recent administration change propelled us all into “a moment of particular risk.” A rousing speech from Hanlon, for sure.

> FEATURES PAGE 11

EDITORIAL: OUR FLAG

INTERVIEW: JAMES BARTHOLOMEW

GREAT PROFESSORS: MEIR KOHN

The Review considers the meaning of the American flag

The Review sits down with famous British journalist and author for his thoughts on world affairs

The Review speaks with legendary economics professor Meir Kohn

> EDITORIAL PAGE 3

> FEATURES PAGE 6

> FEATURES PAGE 14

2 Monday – January 30, 2017

The Dartmouth Review

TABLE OF CONTENTS

FRESHMEN WRITE

WORK

For thirty-five years, The Dartmouth Review has been the College’s only independent newspaper and the only student opinion journal that matters. It is the oldest and most renowned campus commentary publication in the nation and spawned a national movement at the likes of Stanford, Harvard, Princeton, and countless others. Our staff members and alumni have won many awards, including the Pulitzer Prize, and have been published in the Boston Globe, New York Times, National Review, American Spectator, Wall Street Journal, Weekly Standard, Village Voice, New Criterion, and many others.

The Review aims to provide a voice for any student who enjoys challenging brittle and orthodox thinking. We stand for free speech, student rights, and the liberating arts. Whatever your political leanings, we invite you to come steep yourself in campus culture and politics, Dartmouth lore, keen witticisms, and the fun that comes with writing for an audience of thousands. We’re looking for writers, photographers, cartoonists, aspiring business managers, graphic designers, web maestros, and anyone else who wants to learn from Dartmouth’s unofficial school of journalism.

PONTIFICATE

CONSERVATIVE

SAFE space

“Because every student deserves a safe space”

– Inge-Lise Ameer, Vice Provost for Student Affairs

Meetings held Mondays at 6:30 PM at our offices at 32 S. Main Street (next to Lou’s in the lower level office space)

INSIDE THE ISSUE Retrospective on the Flag Burning

The Review discusses the aatempted flag burning on Inauguration Day..................PAGE 1

The Flag Burning in Pictures

A visual look of the events of January 20...................................................................... PAGE 8

A Review of Martin Luther King Day

On Sanctuary Campuses

Editorial: A Flag for Our Nation

The Problems of DDS

Week in Review

Dartmouth’s Finances

An Interview with James Bartholomew

Great Professors: Meir Kohn

The Review takes a look at the College’s MLK day celebrations................................ PAGE 1

The Review contemplates the morality of flag burning............................................... PAGE 3

The Dartmouth Review offers a brief look at events of the past week....................... PAGE 4

The famous author and journalist offers his view on contemporary society........... PAGE 6

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We take a look at the up-and-coming issue of sanctuary campuses ...................... PAGE 10

Have a problem with DDS? You’re not alone............................................................. PAGE 12

We take a look at financial issues rampant at the College........................................ PAGE 13

The econ legend reflects on his time and scholarship at Dartmouth...................... PAGE 14

CHURCHILL READS THE REVIEW. DO YOU?

The Dartmouth Review

Monday – January 30, 2017

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MASTHEAD & EDITORIAL EST. 1980

“Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win great triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to takerank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat.”

—Theodore Roosevelt

EDITORIAL BOARD

EDITORIAL

Editor-in-Chief

A Flag for Our Nation

Sandor Farkas

Executive Editors Jack F. Mourouzis Joseph R. Torsella

Managing Editors Joshua L. Kauderer Max J. Frankel Marcus J. Thompson Rushil Shukla

Associate Editors Devon M. Kurtz Jack S. Hutensky B. Webb Harrington

BUSINESS STAFF President

Matthew R. Zubrow

Vice Presidents Robert Y. Sayegh Samuel W. Lawhon

ADVISORY Founders

Greg Fossedal, Gordon Haff, Benjamin Hart, Keeney Jones

Legal counsel

Mean-Spirited, Cruel, and Ugly

Board of trustees

Martin Anderson, Patrick Buchanan, Theodore Cooper-stein, Dinesh D’Souza, Michael Ellis, Robert Flanigan, John Fund, Kevin Robbins, Gordon Haff, Jeffrey Hart, Laura Ingraham, Mildred Fay Jefferson, William Lind, Steven Menashi, James Panero, Hugo Restall, Roland Reynolds, William Rusher, Weston Sager, Emily Esfahani-Smith, R. Emmett Tyrrell, Sidney Zion

NOTES Special thanks to William F. Buckley, Jr. “He had all of the good aesthetics but none of the terrible genocide.”

The Editors of The Dartmouth Review welcome correspondence from readers concerning any subject, but prefer to publish letters that comment directly on material published previously in The Review. We reserve the right to edit all letters for clarity and length. Please submit letters to the editor by mail or email: DartmouthReviewEditor@gmail.com Or by mail at:

The Dartmouth Review P.O. Box 343 Hanover, NH 03755 (603) 643-4370

Please direct all complaints to: editor@thedartmouth.com

When our land is illumined with Liberty’s smile, If a foe from within strike a blow at her glory, Down, down with the traitor that dares to defile The flag of her stars and the page of her story!

By the millions unchained who our birthright have gained, We will keep her bright blazon forever unstained!

And the Star-Spangled Banner in triumph shall wave While the land of the free is the home of the brave.

– Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., 1861

in its entirety: its people, virtuous and wicked; its actions, cruel and saintly; its ideas, good and evil. Because of this, burning it is a rejection of every piece of what it means to be an American. It does not symbolize a condemnation of America’s war against the Indians, it symbolizes shirking moral responsibility for that role. It does not symbolize rejection of those Americans who use the flag for evil, it symbolizes rejection of the pluralism that undergirds American society.

The verse at the beginning of this editorial, The Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s (unlike their written by Oliver Wendell Holmes in 1861, exReconstruction predecessors) carried Amer- tolls the sacred character of the American flag. ican flags on their annual march through the Holmes, writing at a time of immense strife streets of Washington, DC. Twenty years within the United States, defined later, skeletal children grasped the a traitor as someone who “dares American flag patches on the to defile the flag of her stars and uniforms of Patton’s Third Army the page of her story.” While the as it liberated Konzentraverse is intentionally nebulous, tionslager Buchenwald. it also has a concrete meaning.

The flag Dartmouth student Defiling the “flag of her stars” reTimothy Messen intended fers to the Confederates rending the to burn two weeks ago was Union apart, thereby tearing their the flag carried by the Klu portion of the flag’s stars from Klux Klan, but it was also its canton. The “page of her the flag that symbolized story” is none other than the hope for millions of people United States Constitution, Sándor Farkas living and dying in Nazi-ocwhich the Confederates also cupied Europe. Messen’s flag was the banner violated. that flew behind the marchers at Selma. It was In contemporary America, those ignorant of the colors to which General Motors workers history claim our country is more divided than clung during their 1936 to 1937 strike that end- it has ever been in history of the nation. While ed in a victory for American unions. It was the this is hyperbole, we can still benefit from lesstandard carried by the National Guard when, sons in our nation’s divided past. It is not the under orders from the President, it arrived in actual threat of California’s secession, anti-govFlint to protect those same GM workers from ernment violence, or President Trump’s assasstrike-breakers. To be sure, the American flag sination that scare us. We have experienced has been carried by many hateful groups, but secession, riots, and assassinations before. It is it has never been and will never be defined by the threat this rhetoric poses to our national them or any particular ideology or faction. character: the value we place on unity, pluralWhen many diverse groups of individuals ism, and the rule of law. When Holmes wrote turned out on the Green to protest Mr. Mes- that the “millions unchained” were the means sen’s flag burning, they each did so for their by which America’s “bright blazon” would own reasons. Some were veterans who iden- be “forever unstained,” he meant that freed tified the flag with their comrades’ sacrifices. slaves and free-born Americans, themselves Some were left-wing students, who saw it as a descended from those who escaped tyranny, symbol of liberty and justice. Others were con- would literally defend their own freedom. He servative students, who saw it as a patriotic icon used this current reality to illustrate the mechof America’s greatness. Burning the American anism by which free Americans preserved flag is not wrong because it symbolizes any one America’s freedom. For Holmes, the ability of of those concepts; it is wrong precisely because the American flag to fly in its full literal and it doesn’t symbolize any of them. figurative capacity was contingent upon real, It is easy to justify desecrating a symbol of brave Americans and their fight to make their any given ideology. If the American flag sym- land free. bolized any particular ideology, then an indiWe hold that principled dissent and the vidual who had reason to oppose that ideology courage to stand by one’s convictions are funcould theoretically justify desecrating its sym- damental American values, but we simultabol. For example, we generally approve of des- neously believe that attempts to undermine ecrating the Soviet flag, despite the heroism of our nation are by definition anti-American the Russian soldiers who liberated Auschwitz. and contrary to any and all American values.

This is because the Soviet flag was not a symbol America is not a perfect nation, and no one of the Russian nation; demonstrators against claims it cannot be improved. There is no the Soviet regime did not carry it. It was the doubt that the American flag, to Mr. Holmes’ symbol of a political party, and the despicable disappointment, has its fair share of stains. actions of Soviet leaders during the liberation Some of those stains come from innocents we of Europe betray the primacy of this allegiance. slew in cold blood, but far more come from The American flag contrasts with the Sovi- evildoers we banished to the depths of Hell. et flag not because one symbolizes capitalism When I ask myself whether it is justifiable to and the other Communism, but because one burn an American flag, my conscience dictates symbolizes a people and the other symbolizes that I remember everything it stands for. For a tyrannical ideology. that reason, and that reason alone, I cannot The American flag represents this country abide by the desecration of our flag.

4 Monday – January 30, 2017

The Dartmouth Review

WEEK IN REVIEW THE FUTURE OF CAMPUS FREE SPEECH UNDER TRUMP Over the past eight years, censorship on American college campuses has run rampant. While students at public universities are given legal speech protection, those who attend private institutions are not granted the same benefit. Conservatives across the country have accused their schools of bias, and although sometimes not technically unconstitutional, the issue has become a significant concern. Now that Donald Trump has replaced Barack Obama as president, it is important to consider whether or not the trend regarding campus speech restriction will change.

Attorney Michael Farris, as written in an article by Tom Ciccotta for Breitbart, thinks that it will, that universities will “tighten the reins” on students’ speech as a result of Trump’s presidency. Farris predicts more abuse of authority on the part of American colleges — an increased effort to minimize the flow of conservative ideas and viewpoints. Recently three students at the University of Michigan were arrested for distributing copies of the Constitution, and incidents like this one have not been uncommon. Here at Dartmouth, the College Republicans’ Blue Lives Matter display was vandalized by the campus Black Lives Matter group in 2016, and the college, in the end, did not defend the conservative students’ right to keep their display posted. Colleges across the country have demonstrated a blatant double standard against conservative students, and many expect them to become harsher, in an attempt to stifle the conservative views that may become more normalized by a Trump administration.

Others believe that the trend in campus speech restriction will begin to reverse direction due to Trump’s election as president. Although it is true that some people will become angrier and closedminded due to Trump’s election, it is also possible that those on the Left will undergo a self-reevaluation, and come to understand that debates are not won by silencing and labeling the opposition. College organizations, along with major media talk show hosts, have gone to great efforts to discredit conservatives with unjust accusations of racism, sexism, xenophobia, and other phobias, rather than address their arguments factually. This was essentially how the Left was winning — until Trump was elected.

Republicans gained not only the presidency, but

also a majority in both the Senate and the House of Representatives. Trump’s victory proves that unless Leftists want to continue to lose, they must abandon their old tactic consisting mainly of ad hominem attacks. If college pundits listen to the message sent by our country’s election of Trump, there is hope that they will be compelled to approach conservative students more fairly. A smart college administrator should recognize that maintaining bias against conservatives will only strengthen Donald Trump’s argument. Trump’s victory is a tangible sign of the unrest felt by so many conservatives being attack for the views.

The American people have spoken loud and clear, and Trump’s victory may be the wake-up call that colleges needed to dispel all of the double standards and finally allow a free flow of ide as.

HARVARD STUDENTS BECOME TIRED OF WINNING, HARVARD PRESIDENT ISSUES SAD RESPONSE As we begin to transition back from our winter break, it is time for the social justice warriors across campuses nationwide to make their opinions on President Trump heard, even if no one wants to hear them. Following Trump’s inauguration on Friday, a group of around 100 Harvard students gathered to take turns on their soapbox, discussing topics such as providing aid to illegal aliens and establishing an Ethnic Studies Department on campus.

Following their speeches, the amalgamation of activist groups walked to the office of president Drew Faust and presented her with a letter urging administrators to “actively resist” Trump’s presidency. This letter laid out several demands, all of which had already been made in by SJWs before them, and had almost nothing to do with the Trump administration.

This isn’t the first time that the clearly disenfranchised Harvard students have made a request of this nature to administration, previously calling for Faust to designate Harvard as a “sanctuary campus. “ Faust responded quickly to this appeal, refusing to capitulate due to the fact that the term has no legal significance and would in fact draw attention to illegal aliens on their campus.

Instead Faust met with members of Congress in an attempt to establish a legal solution and convinced the Harvard University Police Department to pledge not to inquire about Harvard students’ citizenship status or allow federal enforcement officials to enter campus without a warrant.

This most recent request was met with a similar response. Harvard spokesperson Melodie L. Jackson stated “we appreciate student groups bringing a focus to these important issues, Harvard shares many of the same objective.” While no action has been taken by administration, the fact that protests such as these have become commonplace speaks volumes about the direction of higher education in the United States and, quite possibly, the country itself.

THE NEW YORK TIMES DECRIES WEALTHY, EDUCATED ELITISTS The New York Times published an article exploring how the income of college students’ families correlates with the prestige of the college or university they attend. The study’s findings surprised experts as students at elite schools are richer than anticipated. “At 38 colleges in America, including five in the Ivy League--Dartmouth, Princeton, Yale, Penn, and Brown--more students came from the top 1 percent of the income scale than from the entire bottom 60 percent.” Too most, this should be pretty disturbing, as it questions the meritocracy reinforced by need-blind admission, universal in the Ivy League. Without much thought it is easy to conclude that the burden rests on elite universities to prioritize socioeconomic diversity. But first, there are two major causes of this issue that must be addressed.

First, colleges and universities should reconsider their affirmative action programs that solely target students of color without considering socioeconomic status. To too many schools diversity begins and ends at race. Indeed universities offer financial aid, and it is worth noting that the Ivy League is leading higher education because of need-blind admissions, but income is not taken into consideration as much as it should be during the application process. Schools need to realize that the background of a student of color from a well-established family is not going to differ much

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The Dartmouth Review

Monday – January 30, 2017

Sandor Farkas Eric R. Jones

from a white student from the same a similar socio-economic situation. If colleges strive for diversity of thought and experience, instead of skin tone, administrators must steer away from the affirmative action programs currently in place.

Second, access to higher education must be strengthened through our nation’s public schools.

Again, the opinion is commonly expressed that states need more funding from the government to put into education. Unfortunately, the answer is not that simple as state education programs receive plenty of money but do not know how to spend it efficiently. For example, the District of Columbia is the seventh highest taxed state in the United States and invests the most money on education, but is ranked fifth in the countr y with the worst schooling system. According to the 2014 Census D.C spends almost twice as much on instructor salaries per student as Iowa, but is in the top five for the highest dropout rates, while Iowa has lowest dropout rate in the nation. How can a state drowning in government funding perform so poorly? The answer is government inefficiency. We heard President Trump repeatedly complain about the underperformance of our nation due to incompetent elected officials who cannot spend the taxpayers’ money effectively. The performance of some of our public schools proves Mr. Trumps argument that money is not the problem, yet it is the inadequate officials who cannot spend the money correctly that are destroying the dreams of Americans across the nation. My home state of California has the highest income tax rate in the nation and has the highest pupil to student ratio, yet is in the top five for worst reading test scores. This is a perfect example of funding used to hire more and more teachers and administrators instead of better teachers. It is time our countr y realizes that money is not the problem when is comes to social inequality, but how that money is spent.

Jason Ceto William P. Bednarz

CARTOON

“Something something Trump something something racism something something.”

CARTOON

HANLON AND DEVER ISSUE STATEMENT ON PRESIDENT TRUMP’S IMMIGRATION EXECUTIVE ORDER On Sunday Januar y 29, Dartmouth President Phillip J. Hanlon and Provost Carolyn Dever sent an email to the Dartmouth community regarding President Trump’s recent immigration executive order. It began with a brief summar y of the executive order as understood by Hanlon and his associates. The next paragraph outlined how the administration is, “working closely with students and faculty who have been affected by this action,” and warned students from the relevant countries to avoid traveling abroad.

Hanlon and Dever then spelled out, in ninety-five words, the view that, “diversity is our strength.” They began by demonstrating the important role that international students and faculty play at Dartmouth. The email stated that the Dartmouth “community is home to more than 900 international students and more than 200 international faculty, scholars, and staff.” It emphasized that international students ought to be valued, recognized, and celebrated for the unique perspectives that they bring to the Dartmouth community.

They subsequently provided a link to the statement issued by the Association of American Universities calling for the repeal of the executive order. They then concluded by encouraging affected Dartmouth students to seek assistance at the College.

5

“Umm... okay then. Let’s just move along.”

CARTOON

“Did you hear about the new executive order?”

“Oh, that? I thought that was fake news...”

6 Monday – January 30, 2017

The Dartmouth Review

FEATURES

A Lesson from James Bartholomew

FAMOUS JOURNALIST AND AUTHOR James G. Bartholomew

B.H. Webb Harrington Elliott A. Lancry Associate Editor Contributor

James Bartholomew is a British journalist and author currently based in London.

His famous book The Welfare State We’re In deals with the welfare states of the globe and how they are changing human lifestyle and behavior. He details how world civilization is changing as a result of the rise of the welfare state. The Dartmouth Review sat down with Bartholomew to better understand his work, and to understand how it pertains to Dartmouth’s own age of toxic “viewpoint moralization” and harmful politically correct culture.

The Dartmouth Review (TDR): Why is the welfare state so destructive and how does it lead to bad results?

James Bartholomew (JB): How it’s destructive and why it gets to be destructive are slightly different questions.

How it’s destructive is usually because it doesn’t allow for various things such as people’s behaviors changing if you change the incentives.

For example, if you decided that you don’t like people being poor when they are unemployed and they should be paid more money, and you give them twice as much money as they’re being paid at the moment, there’s an assumption that people will not change their behavior.

People are (supposedly) unemployed because they can’t get a job. Everybody wants to be employed. They certainly say they do. The assumption is that nothing will change

except the money they get.

But actually you’re changing the incentives dramatically, and you will inevitably get more unemployment as has happened in country after country around the world since 1919. It’s been going on since then. People are very slow to recognize that if you change the incentives you will change the behavior. That is the most common thing that goes wrong. Why you get to that stage there is a democratic push continuously towards more free government provisions. People get elected by saying I’m going to give you free education, free healthcare, a generous pension when you’re old, everything you want for free.

That’s very tempting as a voter when there’s no cost mentioned, but then the government screws up and does it badly. All sorts of wrong incentives are created. In a nutshell, that’s what goes wrong.

TDR: Once we’re in a welfare state, what’s the best way in the short-run to dismantle it?

JB: I don’t know if it’s possible to dismantle it. I would love to dismantle it. If you can succeed in dismantling it in your career, I’d watch with admiration, but I think it’s almost impossible to dismantle it because of the democratic incentives. If you take all the 26 or 27 most advanced countries, every single one of them has a welfare state.

There is none that does not have a welfare state. The idea that you can escape it is, sadly, probably a fantasy. The deal is this: the right accepts that there has to be a welfare state. The left accepts that it

has to stop being so stupid and stop screwing things up so much. There are things you can do in that regard and things that have been done.

The reason I wrote the book (The Welfare State We’re In) was that there must be some things we can do to make it better. We can’t get rid of it, but we can make it better.

And so the idea was to travel around the world and look at different countries and what they’ve done and examples of how to do it better, which is what I did. There are many examples of things being done better. In Germany, for example, they were going on 5 million unemployed, and that was a major figure for Germany. Complete failure.

And so they appointed a commission called the Hartz Commission, which made recommendations and said, “Actually, if you allow people to have jobs where they aren’t taxed so much, where they don’t have so many big social contributions, where they actually make money, they’ve got a stronger incentive to work.” Lo and behold, they did. At the same time, they were told they ought to work.

This revolutionized their unemployment level from being one of the highest in Europe to one of the lowest in the world. Reform can work. It’s really not easy. Getting consent from the people is really not easy. It’s a hard labor that goes on here. I’ve known people involved in this. It’s difficult.

TDR: It doesn’t sound appealing to the people to say they’ll be prosperous in the long-run, but with some short-term sacrifices.

JB: There comes a point in most democracies where people say, “This is ridiculous.”

We’ve got too many people unemployed. A lot of them are cheating. We’re getting fed up with this. It happened in America in 1997 when Clinton signed the act allowing more reform of welfare, especially of single mothers.

This moment of national realization happens. When you’re in a democracy, you have to work with a democracy. You have to persuade people.

One of the best things that Charles Murray ever said was “You will get meaningful reform not when stingy people win, but when generous people stop killing themselves.”

That’s the key to it. You got to get generous people to stop

killing themselves, to be real about human nature, how things really work.

TDR: Many think of America being more individualist.

Do you think that’s true, and do you think that’s affected America’s welfare state?

JB: I think it did. I think it’s diminishing as time goes by.

I think America has a unique heritage of revolution and independence and striving out in a completely new place and that created a story for rugged individualism and self-reliance which was the hallmark of what it was to be an American. For many years, for many decades, but now it’s diminishing. The puppy story tells us that this is no longer such a place of rugged individualism, of such courage. This is a place for puppies. This is a kind of Europeanization of America where the spirit of rugged individualism is being diminished in my lifetime. I came over to America when I was quite young, in the 1970’s. The spirit of rugged individualism was still very strong then and I’ve gradually observed from afar a diminishing of this kind of attitude. It used to be taken for granted that free enterprise was a great thing and I feel that that assumption is now not accepted everywhere. It used to be accepted in America. I think America’s changing, and I think it’s the force of circumstances, the force of democracy tends to push all countries towards the same end. Just like every country ends up having Starbucks.

There’s something about it.

It’s cheap, it’s comfortable and it makes sense. Every country has pizza now. It’s an Italian dish from Naples, and now it’s everywhere. We all react to the same pressures. We all become more middle-class, richer. We all have ambitions that make the world a better place. We all have democracy and then we all press towards a welfare state and then we all end up with welfare states that start doing harm. We have to look at this in a large historical context.

We’ve only had modern welfare states since the mid-19th century, at the earliest. In the context of world history, that is tiny, so it’s natural that we make a lot of mistakes. I think we will learn. I’m not wholly optimistic because there’s a tendency to bump up against the feeling. You give people more benefits, you

make things more generous and them the costs begin to spiral, the cheating begins to spiral and you think, “This is terrible,” and then the debt begins to spiral, the taxes begin to spiral, all these things go wrong. Then you reach a level where you say something has to be done. Then a government gets elected that does cut back. It then goes down 5-10 percent. And then another guy comes along that makes things more generous.

People then have forgotten what’s happened before because they have a tendency to believe things can be better.

They think all it takes is a bit more money and a little more bumping against the top. The only chance of resisting that is by really recognizing that phenomenon. We’re going to stop that from happening at all. For example in Poland, it is unconstitutional for the national debt to rise above 60%, and in Singapore there must be no national deficit in spending. It’s against the constitution. If such a deficit happens there, lawmakers must write a letter apologizing to the president and detailing how it’s going to put things right. You can try and institutionalize the wisdom and try and make it more permanent. You cannot make people remember forever ,but you can make them remember a bit longer.

TDR: There’s this emphasis on the idea that Trump is inherently racist, or that he’s just something too racist to even talk about. It’s unbelievable how much the left hates him.

JB: I think a lot of all this comes down to the belief that they signal their own virtue, by having certain viewpoints.

They say to themselves, “Hi, I vote Democrat, therefore I am a good person.” I wrote an article about virtue signaling, about saying, “Everyone wants to be a good person, I showed I’m a good person because I vote Democrat and I want good things to happen to lots of people who are minorities, women, disabled anything else like that.

I demonstrate that to myself, to other people.” It’s all about virtue, I am virtuous, and therefore anyone who disagrees with me, by definition is not virtuous. And so it is almost the moralization of a viewpoint. There is the virtuous viewpoint and there is the evil viewpoint. It all in the end

The Dartmouth Review

Monday – January 30, 2017

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FEATURES comes down to human vanity.

TDR: Do you have any insight as to the pressures that made this phenomenon happen, when it’s never happened before, suddenly happening in the 21st century?

JB: Why? Probably a lot of factors. Maybe the welfare state even has something to do with this. I mean, I’ve got to be cautious I don’t want to be ascribing everything to the welfare state, but maybe it does have something to do with this. Maybe because the caring for each other has become more and more a matter of the state’s activity rather than individuals’ activity, or people grouping together. In Britain we had groups called Friendly Societies, where people would help each other, and I think there’s an American equivalent. When you do not have government providing stuff for everybody, then people have to help each other, and real virtue consists of helping each other. There’s a difference between people talking virtue, and being virtuous. In East End London for example, which I’ve read a lot about, there used to be a mutual system of help, and people would meet relatives in the street a number of times Mr. Harrington is a freshman at the College and an Associate Editor at The Dartmouth Review.

Mr. Lancry is a freshman at the College and a contributor to The Dartmouth Review.

a day. They would be living near their grandmother.

There would be mutual dependence. Their real personal wealth would be evaluated continuously every day, as it is in every small community where people are mutually dependent. Whereas, when you have an atomized society when everyone is dependent upon the state, how can people be virtuous? Where is the pressure on them to be virtuous? People want to be virtuous, but they only do it by views. I also think about staying together for the sake of the children. When I was young you used to hear “They stayed together for the sake of the children.” It was a common phrase, but you don’t hear that very much any more, because people think, “Do what you like.” Something has changed in our society. This phrase has been repeated several times, “moralization of viewpoint.” And I think it works. Maybe it has something to do with the loss of religion, too. Europe’s full of examples of when people had to believe the right thing or they would be killed. If people had the wrong beliefs, even silent beliefs, terrible things would happen. Maybe the loss of religion is part of this, but I’m struggling I’m not sure I totally understand why this is happening.

TDR: I’m nervous about the implications of this.

JB: What might happen is

that if you continue with this, you’ll reach a crisis. It seems to me that in America in particular, the polarization between people of different viewpoints is starting to become so strong that that’s a danger. I talk to a guy called Larry Reed, who writes about welfare. He’s on the right. He tells me that he used to be invited by left-wingers to conferences. They would invite him to conferences to give a talk, and they would listen politely. Then the stage was reached where he would be invited but not to talk, and then he wasn’t invited at all.

This withdrawing of people into their separate bunkers where people can keep convincing themselves that they’re right and the other people are wrong is terrible.

We should keep on talking to each other, even if we get really annoyed by what the other says.

TDR: Do you think we’re more polarized than we were 20-30 years ago? Or do you think that we’ve changed the way we treat the polarization?

JB: I’m not American so I hesitate to say anything about the history of American culture, but in Britain, certainly. There’s very few people in Britain who are genuinely farleft now. Corbyn is the leader of the Labor Party, but there’s very few people who believe in nationalization of everything, or in penal taxes, and

there used to be a lot in the 1970s who believed in those things. The difference is that we were in many ways more extreme in the 1970s, than we are now, but people were quite polite towards each other. Yeah, I think there’s a change there. In a way I feel, I mean that was after the war, and I think that people had a different perspective after the war. They had things in better perspective after the war. My mother was in London during the Blitz, there were bombs dropping all around. My father’s best friend was killed in France by the Germans. When you have that perspective, the idea that there might be more welfare or less, or taxes are a little bit higher or lower really doesn’t seem that important in comparison. They had a sense of perspective on what’s important in life. And a stoicism that seems almost absent today. Among younger people, the willingness to take pain is non-existent. We knew during the Communist years that there were really terrible things going on in the Communist states. I remember the exact moment when terrible things happened. When JFK was shot, I remember exactly where I was. Compared to the complaints of today, for instance, whether somebody’s disrespected me because of my views, it seems so petty, trivial, and self-indulgent in comparison.

TDR: Do you think that this

development of PC culture is because we have created so many resources, we have created to a large extent peace in our time?

JB: In a way, there’s the human nature, I think you’re right. There’s an element in human nature that wants to have something to worry about. Now that we’ve got it so easy we have to look for things to worry about. One of the things that I looked at in my research was the usage of the word poverty, if you look at how often people use the word poverty, I tracked how many times Chaucer used the word poverty, and how Shakespeare used poverty, and how it was used in Parliament towards the end of the 19th century, and how it was used more recently. And as real poverty, in terms of people starving to death and that poverty, has diminished, the use of the word poverty has skyrocketed.

TDR: Why is that?

JB: It’s for this reason, the better you have it, the more you feel that you can afford to bother about things that are not quite right, not quite ideal, it’s terrible. When you are struggling to survive, the fact that your coat is not quite the right color really doesn’t bother you, but when you are rich, you say “Oh, I can’t stand that color.” That self-indulgence comes from better circumstances.

VLADIMIR PUTIN READS THE REVIEW. YOU PROBABLY SHOULD AS WELL.

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Oh Say Can You See... > CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1 Other counter-protesters included members of The Dartmouth Review, other students of all ideological leanings, and members of the larger community.

Some counter-protesters had even driven from over an hour away to make their feelings known. The Dartmouth Review contacted Keith Hanson, a local radio host and self-described “America-loving Patriot who is not afraid to stand up and speak out for the causes of Liberty [and] Freedom.” Hanson, who also attended the counter protest, spoke about the planned flag burning on his radio show “Live and Local in the Morning” on WNTK-FM. Quite a few of the counter protesters on the Green that day had tuned into Hanson’s show and been inspired to come defend the stars and stripes. In the end, the number of counter-protestors dwarfed those who wanted to see the flag burn.

Also on the green at that time were throngs of uninvolved onlookers and the authorities. Safety and Security was there, as was a small detachment of the Hanover Police Department. One other notable attendee held a homemade sign proclaiming “free the napkins” and was protesting Dartmouth Dining Services’ recent decision to remove napkin dispensers from tables in the Hop, Collis, and FoCo. No word on the success of his protest, but The Dartmouth Review supports his endeavors.

A few minutes after four thirty, Messen and a handful of protestors arrived on the Green. Messen’s friends carried signs with slogans like “WELCOME REFUGEES,” “RESPECT LAWS,” “MUSLIM RIGHTS = HUMAN RIGHTS,” and “LIBERTY before UNITY.” Messen carried a megaphone and a speech he had prepared in advance.

Messen first assured those on the green that he had decided not to burn the flag. Allegedly, a conversation with the Chief of the Hanover Police and the Director of Safety and Security about the potential dangers of provoking the veterans and others in attendance prompted his decision.

A member of the crowd shouted “good move,” expressing the sentiments of many who were assembled there.

Messen then began to read his statement. For eight minutes, he spoke about his views and the importance of ConstiMr. Hutensky is a freshman at the College and an Associate Editor at The Dartmouth Review.

tutional rights. Messen first argued that burning the flag would be “an act of respect” because it protects “the values this flag represents.” Throughout the rest of his statement, he continued to discuss the importance of free speech and dissent, declaring that “rights, like muscles, need to be used or they will atrophy.”

The bulk of Mr. Messen’s remarks, however, were aimed at the recently-inaugurated President Donald J. Trump.

Messen began with an exhaustive list the failures of a president who had been in office for a total of four and a half hours. According to Messen, those failings included “the Mexican border wall, banning Muslims, denying climate change, nuclear disarmament, and defunding public education, Medicaid and Medicare.” Messen also denigrated Trump’s cabinet picks, and his failure to propose a “coherent plan to help Americans fighting racial inequality,” “economic inequality,” and “sexual inequality,” and alleged commitments to “racism, ableism, sexism, and classism.”

Throughout Messen’s remarks, he was interrupted by his supporters and detractors alike. When the college junior described Trump’s campaign as being fueled by “rich, white, American nationalism,” one crowd member responded “I’m not rich and I voted for him!” Counter-protestors also began to chant the pledge of allegiance and sing the national anthem at various points.

It was clear, as time went on, that those in attendance were getting tired of listening to Messen talk. One bystander exclaimed “Tim, let the dialogue begin. It’s not a dialogue if only you yell at people.” Members of Messen’s camp began to chant “Hey hey, ho ho, Donald Trump has got to go” in the middle of his speech, only to be shushed by his sign-holding faithful. At one point, another member of the crowd shouted “God bless America,” to which Messen replied, “God bless America” and continued speaking.

Over the course of Messen’s speech, the crowd condensed itself closer and closer around him. Part of this was due to the fact that he seemed to have trouble consistently speaking into his megaphone, and those at the edges had trouble hearing him. The Rolling Thunder flag bearers, also circled Messen in the middle of his speech, prompting Safety and Security officers to flank the protest leader for the rest of the time he was there.

Messen finally finished his remarks with the words “I

pledge allegiance to the flag and a better United States of America with liberty and justice for all,” and opened the event up to other voices. Keith Hanson, the radio host, then took the floor. He spoke about

bility to think about the lives and the sacrifices that have gone into that.” Hanson then reminded Messen that he is only “able to stand on this green and not get shot in the head or hauled off to pris-

ued. His commentary was met with resounding applause.

Finally, after almost an hour of tension on the Green, it was over. Messen wished everyone in attendance a safe and fun weekend and offered to

“Hanson then reminded Messen that he is only ‘able to stand on this green and not get shot in the head or hauled off to prison is because of the sacrifices Americans have made, the blood and the lives that have been shed.’” the difference between freedom and liberty, explaining that liberty is “the responsible exercise of freedom.” Speaking directly to Messen, Mr. Hanson reminded him that he has “the right to burn the flag,” but also “the responsi-

on is because of the sacrifices Americans have made, the blood and the lives that have been shed.” For many of the people who made those sacrifices and for their families, the flag is a sacred symbol of those efforts, Hanson contin-

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speak about burning the flag or Donald Trump with anyone who was interested, joking that “I think everyone has my email at this point.” With that, people began to leave the green. No protester burned a flag that day.

The Dartmouth Review

Monday – January 30, 2017

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...by the Dawn’s Early Light?

Photographs courtesy of Keith Hanson

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10 Monday – January 30, 2017

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Colleges Consider Sanctuary Policy

ANTI-TRUMP PROTESTS Protestors in Florida demonstrate in favor of “sanctuary” policies.

Jack F. Mourouzis Devon M. Kurtz Executive Editor Associate Editor Ten days after the election of Donald J. Trump, Portland State University and Reed College became the first declared “sanctuary campuses” in the United States. To date, seven additional colleges and universities have made similar moves to protect their undocumented students. Sanctuary campuses are based on the earlier idea of sanctuary cities: cities that have made public their intention to disregard federal immigration laws and to refrain from helping Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) track down undocumented residents. In essence, sanctuary cities, and now sanctuary campuses, do the bare minimum that is legally required of them when dealing with illegal immigration. In addition to refusing to help ICE, sanctuary campuses offer financial, legal, and emotional support to undocumented students. Some of these support services go even further, offering unique distance-learning opportunities for students who are deported. These measures to protect students are widely supported by liberal student bodies, indicated by the upMr. Mourouzis is a junior at the College and an Executive Editor at The Dartmouth Review. Mr. Kurtz is a freshman at the College and an Associate Editor at The Dartmouth Review.

tick in protests over the issue since the November election, as well as university faculty, with the American Association of University Professors announcing support for colleges and universities implementing sanctuary programs.

Over twenty campuses have seen student protests in favor of adopting sanctuary status, including Stanford, Yale, and Dartmouth.

Despite the large support within the academic community for policies that aim to protect undocumented students, alongside the Trump Administration’s stated “low priority” of deporting illegal immigrants who came to the United States as children, sanctuary campuses are being targeted by lawmakers. In response to the aforementioned announcements by nine colleges and universities, Representative Duncan Hunter (R-CA) introduced legislation to block federal financial aid funding from any schools that do not cooperate with ICE and help enforce federal immigration laws. The move could virtually stop the sanctuary campus movement in its tracks, forcing colleges and universities to decide between supporting their undocumented students or maintaining access to billions of dollars in financial aid funding for their other students. The plan, which Hunter described as, “not telling colleges who they can and can’t accept for enrollment, but [telling them] whatever decision they make will either mean they receive federal money or they don’t,”

would be administered by the Department of Homeland Security. The DHS would track the development of sanctuary campuses and share that information with the Department of Education. The Department of Education would then be required to cut off federal payments for student loans to students of those institutions.

On the state level, Texas, Georgia, and Arkansas are all moving to cut state funding to any sanctuary campuses within their borders. With over 80 campuses nationwide calling for sanctuary campus status, these states have taken a “not in my backyard” approach.

There is a great deal of support from both the lawmakers and their governors in these states.

While no concrete action has been taken yet, all three states have plans to introduce laws within the coming months.

Studies from the Pew Research center estimate that over 200,000 illegal immigrants currently attend university in the United States, representing roughly 1% of all college students in the United States. A significantly lower percentage of illegal immigrants of standard college age (18-24) attend college: only 49% vs 71% of US residents.

The population of illegal immigrants are disproportionately located in the states of New York, Florida, Texas, and California. Sanctuary campuses, however, are located nationwide, not necessarily in conjunction with illegal immigrant populations.

In early January, President Phil Hanlon responded to a

Courtesy of US News & World Report petition offered by CoFIRED (Coalition for Immigration Reform, Equality, and DREAMers), the organization which successfully petitioned the Library of Congress to change official government language from “illegal alien/immigrant” to “unauthorized immigrant.”

According to The Dartmouth, CoFIRED’s petition called for the College to “offer legal and mental health support to those affected by Trump’s election; create a pool of funds for undocumented students and their families to pay for legal counsel and DACA fees; and provide sensitivity training for staff and faculty on the rights of undocumented students and resources to protect those rights.” Hanlon’s response to the petition was mixed; he announced “commitment to all members of our community regardless of citizenship.” In addition, Hanlon’s school-wide email explained that the College “has for years been a strong supporter of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals policy (DACA), which protects from deportation some undocumented individuals.” Hanlon goes on to explain how Dartmouth “was one of the few universities to file a U.S. Supreme Court friend-of-the-court brief supporting DACA’s expansion” and how the College’s “admissions and financial aid policies do not consider domestic applicants’ immigration status.” In essence, Hanlon’s response affirms a commitment to the philosophical idea of the sanctuary campus, but still maintains the supremacy

of federal law as he states that the administration “will work within the bounds of the law to mitigate any effects on our students caused by possible revisions to DACA and other immigration policies.”

Fellow Ivy League schools Princeton and Brown have also adopted an anti-sanctuary position, refusing to flaunt federal law while affirming commitment to illegal immigrant students in other realms.

President Chris Eisgruber of Princeton was quoted by Campus Reform as stating that “Immigration lawyers with whom we have consulted have told us that this concept has no basis in law, and that colleges and universities have no authority to exempt any part of their campuses from the nation’s immigration laws.” President Christina Paxson of Brown echoed this sentiment, stating that “Private universities and colleges do not have such protection to offer legal sanctuary from members of law enforcement or Immigration and Customs Enforcement… While we wish we could offer absolute protection to members of our community who are threatened by possible changes in policy, it would be irresponsible to promise protections that we cannot legally deliver.”

Though both public and private universities lack any legal authority to ignore federal law and defy immigration officials, withheld federal funding poses a much more pressing issue for public institutions.

It seems, however, that the idea of sanctuary campuses and cities is already beginning to falter. Less than a week after President Trump’s inauguration, Mayor Carlos Gimenez ordered law enforcement officials and correctional facilities in Miami-Dade County to fully cooperate with federal actions regarding immigration.

The Trump Administration has also threatened to “strip federal grant money from the sanctuary states and cities that harbor illegal immigrants,” an unquestionably strong incentive for local government to cooperate. Gimenez, a Cuban-born immigrant himself, clarified his reasoning, stating that “It’s really not worth the risk of losing millions of dollars to the residents of Miami-Dade County in discretionary money from the feds.” Other cities, however, have stood firm; Los Angeles, Boston, San Francisco, and New York (among others) are all prepared to legally fight against any federal action.

There have been no comments from any colleges or universities on what their reaction would be if, like the sanctuary cities, their federal funding was cut.

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A Martin Luther King Jr. Day Celebration of Radicalism > CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1 into “a moment of particular risk.” A rousing speech from Hanlon, for sure.

Next up was Selome Ejigu ’17. She struck a very different tone on her speech. The senior was very critical of the administration, particularly an alleged racial bias in its hiring and tenure granting processes that leaves Dartmouth with fewer black professors than it should have. She also spoke out against alleged failures of the College to adequately support poor, black, brown, queer, and transgender students. In that vein, Ejigu dedicated her time behind the podium to those whose “now is always urgent.” She made several other assertions, describing Dr. King’s tragic assassination as an “execution,” calling out “racism, hyper-materialism, and militarism” as the current big three evils in the world.

She then suggested a marriage of anti-racist work with anti-queerphobic (which turns up no spelling suggestions in my word processor) and anti-capitalist work in order to battle said evils. While fighting racism is a noble and important cause, we here at The Review strongly believe in the importance of capitalism, the economic system that provides more opportunities for socioeconomic advancement and stronger incentives for progress of any economic system currently known to man.

Ms. Ejigu was also quite focused on the specific plight of black women, like herself, compared to other minority groups. She asked the audience why people “mobilize to mourn black males, such as Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown, but not black females.” The Review is not sure if there is any validity to that statement, but continues to believe that all lives matter and that the death of any law-abiding citizen is a tragic event.

Ms. Ejigu also made sure to remind those in attendance that we should all thank a black woman who “spoke against the lack of blacks on campus,” “helped fight for freedom without thanks,” and “voted against President Trump.” According to exit polls conducted by The Washington Post however, around six percent of black women with a college degree and three percent of black women without a college degree voted for our current president.

Also, The United States Election Project reported that forty one percent of the population (and, logic dictates, many black women) didn’t cast a vote any presidential candidate. It is imposMr. Kurtz is a freshman at the College and an Associate Editor at The Dartmouth Review.

sible that every black woman voted against President Trump.

Ms. Ejigu’s comments assuming the contrary, that a person would behave one way because of her race, are not only inaccurate, but also racist. The ridiculous double standard applied to profiling from the left and the sheer irony that a speaker at the Martin Luther King Jr. event was racially profiling blacks could warrant an entire separate article.

Ms. Ejigu’s remarks also included hopeful and empowering advice for black students (not just women) at Dartmouth.

She first reminded those in attendance to know their history, “because white supremacy only roots itself deeper when we [blacks] forget.” She also asked her fellow students of color to hold each other accountable and love their blackness. Unlike much of the rest of the speech, which only preached further division, these words truly honored Dr. King’s legacy.

There is a reason that Reverend Osagyefo Uhuru Sekou is a keynote speaker. Rev. Sekou really knows how to work a crowd.

His tone and speaking style are reminiscent of Dr. King himself, organic, energetic, soulful, and inspiring. Among many other things, the Reverend’s bio introduces him as a Professor of Preaching at the Seminary Consortium of Urban Pastoral Education in Chicago and the lead singer of Rev. Sekou & the Holy Ghost. Both positions show in his speaking style, which certainly incorporates elements of preaching and song. The combination held the audience in rapt attention.

Sekou’s speaking style was incredible, but some of his commentary left at least one audience member quite confused.

His address to a “Dartmouth University” focused on an American leader often known by his three-letter moniker.

However, those three letters were not MLK, the focus of the event, but rather DJT. Sekou railed against President Trump, declaring that “regardless of political views,” “our civilization is in a fundamental crisis,” under his leadership. He declared that the businessman was “against meritocracy” and that Secretary Hillary Clinton was “more qualified than George Washington to be President of the United States.” Referring to the growing resistance movement to the current administration, Sekou declared that history will remember that “when a potential demagogue came to power, a generation of gay, lesbian, bi, and trans people will have stood together against him.”

The Reverend also spoke extensively about at least six transgender people he knew of who committed suicide because of the way the election went; we

at The Review consider this a tragedy, but fail to see any anti-LGBT rhetoric from the new president.

Reverend Sekou’s remarks

white folk” before professing that he finds joy in his work and has “a good dose of I don’t give a f**k.” He later admitted that he didn’t remember the answer to a

“Sekou’s speaking style was incredible, but some of his commentary left at least one audience member quite confused.” were not wholly limited to the election, however. Sekou did address Dr. King’s legacy and implored those in the audience to help improve our society.

He reminded the audience that social movements often suffer from a schism between the number of talkers and the number of doers, joking that “If all the people who said they were on the bridge in Selma were, the thing would have collapsed.”

With that in mind, Sekou urged those in attendance to resist utilitarianism, market forces and commoditization, blaming, like Ejigu, the world’s problems on the evil of money. Citing his agreement with Dr. King’s beliefs (accurately), Sekou proposed a transition to socialism in the United States as a fix for many of our economic and social ills. In the end, Sekou used King, a more widely known and respected figure, to rally support for his own ideas of the way our country should work.

Reverend Sekou then spoke at length about the steps that members of the audience had to take in order to “take care of democracy” under Trump, such as “not integrating into the system” and perpetuating a “radical transformation” of our current government (If you had trouble making sense of that last sentence, you are not alone).

That was just one of the Reverend’s memorable quotes from the evening. The Reverend was also on point during the Q and A that followed the show. When asked how he deals with the constant pressures of civil rights work and being black in America, the Reverend admitted that he was constantly on edge, saying “at any moment you could read: little black preacher runs in and shoots up a bunch of

subsequent question because he “did a lot of drugs in the 60s.”

Q & A gems aside, Sekou did make some very interesting points. He described what he calls a latent curriculum, the things that schools teach but don’t explicitly include in the curriculum. Sekou hinted that, through either exclusion from curriculum, normative constructs, or the chosen professors, schools often teach biases against certain races and belief systems. One particularly powerful example he recounted occurred when he was speaking at a university, mistaken for a janitor, and asked for a chair. Sekou brought the student the chair and then walked to the front of the hall and delivered his lecture. This is an example, says Sekou, of the preconceived notions we all hold and that latent curriculums instill in us. That was the more valuable kind of insight offered by Sekou.

Perhaps the most memorable part of the evening was the performance Reverend Sekou gave with Jay-Marie Hill, a San Francisco-based activist and musician. What started as a sort of spoken word performance over Hill’s rhythmic bass, became a spirited sing along. Sekou brilliantly involved the audience, inspiring a few in attendance to get up and dance in the aisles while singing lyrics about “the racist police” and a chorus proclaiming “the revolution has come, we’ve already won.”

While it is unclear that either of those two assertions hold water, it was spirited and fun for many involved.

The bottom of the event’s program outlined the celebration goals, which were “to honor and celebrate Dr. King’s life” in a number of different ways.

REVEREND SEKOU Reverend Sekou in Ferguson, Missouri

How well did the committee achieve that goal? Regarding the goal that “members of our community may understand and value his [King’s] transformational politics and actions, the broader context of his leadership in the civil rights movement, and the ongoing power of this legacy,” the event was a failure. Compared to proclamations of victory, and discussions of the plights of highly specific subgroups of society, Dr. King received very little attention. In fact, really the only time anyone spoke of him (outside of broad generalities) was Sekou’s celebration of his socialist ideals.

As for the goal “that members of our community may be inspired and motivated to apply Dr. King’s philosophy and approach to our own lives and work,” the event was also a failure. Sadly, King’s principles of nonviolence and inclusivity received little airtime. There was little mention of applying either principle to anything besides active protest, an action that doesn’t constitute the daily lives or work of many of our community members.

The event was a qualified success in its goal to call members of the community “to address the causes and impact of social inequality and injustice—individually, locally, and globally.”

While the program certainly did call attention to several alleged social inequalities, all were presented through a lens of race, and to a lesser degree class. Each problem was painted as a result of domination by white, male elites—at one point, Sekou referred to “white folks,” “straight men” and “comrades” separately. This created a divisive, often inaccurate image of the problems of the world and largely failed to “address the [real] causes and impacts” of the many real inequities within our society. That bias, combined with a few questionable claims, is best summed up by one of Reverend Sekou’s most disturbing quotes of the evening: “We must seize history and bend it to our will.”

Courtesy of Democracy Now

12 Monday – Jaunary 30, 2017

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Dartmouth Dining Servcies Brandon Teixeira Contributer

Overpriced and poor quality food, zero flexibility with Declining Balance Account (DBA), debilitatingly long lines, mishandling of dietary restrictions, a monopoly on student eating to go along with massive profits, and now, no more napkins at tables; the bevy of complaints against Dartmouth Dining Services (DDS) continues to grow. Dartmouth students come from all over the world and hold many different beliefs, but most generally concur that DDS is a poor service, only concerned about profits, as opposed to student health or well-being.

The U.S. government has passed many laws to prevent the formation of monopolies and to increase competition within many industries in the economy. However, Dartmouth and its dining services have a de facto monopoly on student eating, and there is nothing anyone can do about

to accommodate the rule. DDS also locks incoming freshman into either of the most expensive meal plans for their first term, leaving them with very little DBA to use, and thus very little flexibility with eating. Though the oft-cited explanation is to facilitate social interaction amongst incoming students, mandatory meal plans essentially amount to nothing more than the College trying to turn a profit on the backs of students; it is even more telling given the poor handling of its own investments and finances.

Not only does DDS require students to be on a meal plan, it also charges high prices for all the food. A single egg at Collis costs students over a dollar. A sixteen-ounce smoothie, with a little fruit, a ton of ice, and some juice costs students four dollars. For a spoon of energy or protein powder, tack on an extra dollar. Collis sushi is marked up three dollars on the exact same product at Novack Café or the Courtyard Café.

The Class of ’53 Commons,

“In addition to constantly shortcharging students, DDS consistently shows a disregard for student demands and needs.” it. Every single Dartmouth student is required to be on a meal plan, something very few schools mandate. Even students living off-campus, for whom it makes much more sense to purchase and cook food from grocery stores, are still required to purchase a meal plan at the price of $970 Mr. Teixeira is a freshman at the College and a contributor to The Dartmouth Review.

called FoCo by students, is the main dining hall on campus, and typically costs a swipe to enter. Pricing for nonswipes, however, is exorbitant; whereas swipe dollar-values are $5.25, $7.75, and $10 for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, respectively, FoCo cash entry options are $7.75, $10.50, and $14.75. Typically consisting of poorly-cooked meat, cold pasta, and tasteless salad, FoCo food is truly inconsistent

and decent at its best. At the Courtyard Café, commonly called the Hop, food pricing easily exceeds that of a standard meal swipe value. The pasta is consistently undercooked and sits out for hours on the buffet. Moreover, some

Collis, the Hop, and KAF. Collis is a tremendously cramped space, where it is difficult to even turn around during peak hours. Waiting in line for pasta or stir-fry can take upwards of 30 minutes. Smoothies are some of the best Collis has to

took away the allergy signs on food at the beginning of the 2017 winter term. After confusion from many students, the signs were replaced after a week. Perhaps the biggest issue this year is the decision to take away napkins from all in-

“Dartmouth and its dining services have a de facto monopoly on student eating, and there is nothing anyone can do about it.” small bottles of juice cost over five dollars. Overcharging coupled with required plans certainly qualifies as a manipulative practice.

During freshman fall, students get less than $200 of DBA. Most students then choose to move off that meal plan in subsequent terms and onto one with more DBA, to give them more freedom in their food choices. However, many students consistently are forced into negative balances due to the overpricing of a la carte options, resulting in a bigger tuition bill later. King Arthur Flour (KAF), a popular place for coffee and treats on campus, boasts the highest quality food and drinks on campus, but is extremely expensive. Conveniently, DDS does not allow swipes to be used at KAF, so students must pay with DBA; given the widespread incidence of coffee addiction on campus, the price of a daily drink in addition to food takes a toll on available DBA. Many colleges with required meal plans have deals with their towns or cities that allow students to use dining plan money at off-campus locations. This is not the case with DDS; if you eat off campus, you pay directly from your own bank account.

Another student complaint tends to be the long lines at

offer, and a very popular option; however, there is only one blender at the station. At such a high profit margin, it would make sense to invest in a second blender, so students will not be deterred by a long line. Peak time at the Hop is equally as frustrating; waiting in the line can take upwards of a half an hour, not including the five minutes for your order to be made, and another five to pay, as often only one of the two registers is open.

KAF lines almost always overflow into the library lobby; even though there are two windows, they use only one for the majority of the time.

DDS could expand spaces to create shorter lines and therefore more student purchases, but instead understaffing and high prices are the general policy.

In addition to constantly shortcharging students, DDS consistently shows a disregard for student demands and needs. Last year, students were concerned that the food provided by FoCo was not properly kosher; the situation was grossly mishandled. Ultimately, the failure to cater to a diverse student body with a variety of dietary restrictions runs antithetical to the College’s commitment to diversity and inclusion in student life.

For an unclear reason, DDS

VERILY I SAY UNTO THEE, THOU SHALT READ THE REVIEW!

dividual tables in every dining hall, instead only offering a limited number of dispensers in a set location in each hall.

Though cited as “an effort to reduce waste rather than incur inconvenience,” students seem to be less than enthused by the decision.

Due to massive profit share, over-priced and low quality food, and long lines, DDS always seems to makes its way into the forefront of student complaints. A million-dollar profit margin coming off unethical monopolization of student dining results in a continued poor reputation for the oft-criticized service. Perhaps the College may one day heed the complaints of countless students and implement the reforms often demanded, yet consistently ignored.

The Dartmouth Review

Monday – January 30, 2017 13

FEATURES

Parkhurst Needs to Retake Econ 001

Shawn Honaryar Johnathan R. Fried Contributors One surprisingly warm January night in Hanover, Marcus, Shawn, and Jonny found themselves sauntering across campus in eager anticipation. It was Friday, the weekend had finally arrived, and each young man simply wished to enjoy a few hours of fun and leisure. When Shawn had logged into his Blitz earlier that day and read an email from the campus-events listserv, he had learned of a concert being held at Sarner Underground.

The colorful text and the vibrant photos in the email, the offers for free snacks and drinks, and the promise of live music and an open dance floor immediately seized Shawn’s attention, and he had decided to invite his friends Marcus and Jonny to accompany him to the concert.

“I thought college would be all stress and studying,” announced Jonny, as the three boys walked down the road.

“I wonder if there will be girls there...heehee,” mused Shawn.

“Don’t get too excited,” warned Marcus.

Shawn wrapped his fingers around the handle of the door to Sarner Underground and paused for a moment to relish what was to come. He imagined himself walking into a dark room checkered with the light from a disco ball, the booming music immediately overwhelming his ears. From wall to wall, the room would be packed with other Dartmouth students all constantly bumping against each other in a relentless excitement to outmatch each other’s dance moves.

Mr. Honaryar is a freshman at the College and a contributer to The Dartmouth Review. Mr. Fried is a freshman at the College and a contributer to The Dartmouth Review.

What Shawn really observed, though, was quite the opposite.

The music had a slow, lulling beat. There were so few occupants that each could wave his or her arms around freely without any risk of accidentally jabbing another person nearby. Worst of all, the intended dance floor was more akin to a designated standing area within which each inhabitant seemingly had his or her feet glued to the ground.

Shawn and Jonny had been paralyzed with far too much disbelief and disappointment to evacuate themselves from the dismal party. Marcus thus took it upon himself to lead the two boys, heads hanging low, back outside.

“One day, one day, you freshman will wisen up,” Marcus declared.

That January night was a manifestation of merely one form of Parkhurst’s profligate spending tendencies. Indeed, the College spends far too much money purchasing snacks and beer, setting up, managing and cleaning up venues, and hiring entertainment (and sometimes even providing them with equipment) all for events that scarcely anyone will attend.

Groups such as Friday Night Rock (FNR) which organize College-sponsored social events, such as the aforementioned concert, stem from Hanlon’s defective “Moving Dartmouth Forward” initiative. When the plan was initially implemented, Parkhurst allocated upwards of $800,000 annually to a variety of programming boards similar to FNR. After observing that the majority of the sponsored social events received very poor attendance, Hanlon decided to act, and he responded quite interestingly. Indeed, one section of the Second Annual Moving Dartmouth Forward Review Panel Report reads, “the President has committed additional resources to enable the Collis Center

to fund more student initiated social events open to the entire student community.” Exactly the type of tactfulness one would expect from Parkhurst. The evidence demonstrates that students prefer the Greek scene to the “inclusive” and “diverse” College-sponsored events. Furthermore, fraternities and sororities purchase their own drinks and they manage and clean their own venues; the Greek scene puts much less stress on the College’s pocketbook than do these “student initiated social events.” And yet, despite these simple observations, President Hanlon judicially concluded that we should allocate more funding to these events. The fact that we now find ourselves in the midst of a financial crisis shouldn’t come as a surprise.

Here’s an overview of said crisis: Dartmouth College’s streak of operating at a loss has continued once again with the termination of the previous fiscal year.

Last year the college operated at a loss of $126 million, a substantial jump from the 15.2 million dollar loss they experienced in 2015. These losses stem from a decrease in revenue accompanied by an increase in expenses: a bad financial recipe.

Dartmouth’s primary streams of revenue stem from tuition and fees, government and corporate grants, and alumni donations.

As the latter two forms of revenue have become stagnant in recent years, Dartmouth has begun to put more burden on its students to maintain the College’s revenue. Last year only 44% of Dartmouth’s alumni donated, as compared to other Ivy League institutions like Princeton where 63% of alumni gave money.

Dartmouth’s low donation rate led their endowment to shrink by $189 million over 2016. Government and corporate research support has also been lagging as well, remaining fairly stagnant over the past years at around $183 million. With these streams of revenue embarrassingly low, Dartmouth has turned to students to fill their revenue void.

In 2013 when Phil Hanlon took over the office of President of the College tuition and fees were $58,000. Three years later in present time, tuition and fees are now $66,200, making Dartmouth one of the most expensive colleges in the United States. In total, Dartmouth garnered $199 million in tuition revenue in 2016. The fact that more of Dartmouth’s revenue comes from tuition rather than grants is concerning. Most other research universities obtain much more money in grants; so much so that their grant money exceeds their revenue from tuition. Dartmouth is either being skimmed out of grant money, or not actively pursuing grants.

It seems as though Dartmouth would rather take the simpler

route of increasing costs for students. When combined, these lagging revenue streams, have led to a decrease in revenue by $20 million or 2% for Dartmouth in the 2016 fiscal year.

Parkhurst, very tactfully, has greeted the financial crisis with more prodigal habits. In the 2016 fiscal year, Dartmouth expenses rose by 3% or $27 million to $918.1 million. With the decrease in revenue for 2016, Dartmouth needed an additional outlet to pay for their expenses.

Thus they decided to sell $250 million in bonds, increasing their total outstanding debt to $1.25 billion. One would assume that Dartmouth is increasing their expenses to better the human body, and putting their money to good use; this couldn’t be farther from the truth.

First and foremost, Dartmouth’s increased expenses can’t be attributed to their generous pay of professors, as they pay their professors poorly. In 2016, a tenure track faculty member at Dartmouth earned only $177,000. This number is nearly $15,000 below the average pay of Ivy League faculty members, making the recruitment of talented faculty difficult. So if the administration is not spending money on faculty, then what are they spending it on? This is where we begin to encounter our problem.

Dartmouth’s housing communities have been a money hole.

Beyond the cost of new social spaces, the administration has allocated each house $1 million for social events. Not surprisingly, house community programming has seen very similar results to

a wood carved fire place, sleek modern furniture, granite counter-tops, and much more. Houses are state of the art, and all paid for

by Dartmouth. The homes for the housing professors are far nicer than they need to be. Instead of budgeting $650,000, to build these homes, they could have easily been built for $400,000. The only silver lining to this is that at least the College’s money is going to professors, not more unpopular initiatives and expanded bureaucracy. These new homes are not even getting the use that the administration believed they would get. It was thought that the homes of the housing professors would be “safe spaces,” to be used for performances, and small intimate talks. Many of these events have not been realized. Instead the homes have become private to the house professors.

Ultimately, we can point our fingers towards Hanlon’s “Moving Dartmouth Forward” initiative as an increasingly significant source of financial bungling. Indeed, the new housing community programs, the homes of house professors, and the Collis Center social events, each rife with fiscal mismanagement, place substantial stress on the College’s budget during a time when parsimony is most imperative.

The driving idea behind the study of economics is the concept of scarcity—the fact that there exist infinite human wants on a planet with limited resources. Thus, it is imperative that we allocate our resources prudently. Instead of misusing them on unmerited, gratuitous initiatives, Dartmouth should direct its funds towards providing more

“Ultimately, we can point our fingers towards Hanlon’s “Moving Dartmouth Forward” initiative as an increasingly significant source of financial bungling. Indeed, the new housing community programs, the homes of house professors, and the Collis Center social events, each rife with fiscal mismanagement, place substantial stress on the College’s budget during a time when parsimony is most imperative.” those of the aforementioned College-sponsored events—poor attendance, wasted food and drink, etc.—but the money squandered on programming pales in comparison to the profligacy of other portions of the housing system.

With the establishment of the housing communities, the administration thought it would be a good idea to build the housing community professors new homes. Dartmouth ended up paying $4 million, or $650,000 each, to construct 6 homes: one for each housing professor. Some have actually had the ability to step inside one of these homes; one is instantly awestruck by the ornate hard wood flooring,

financial aid so that more deserving, lower-income students may attend without financial worries.

Or towards funding more intricate research projects for professors. Or towards training tutors more rigorously so that they may better assist their clients.

The possibilities are limitless and the benefits could be two-fold.

Undoubtedly our alumni would contribute more if they had confidence their money would go to worthwhile initiatives.

The burden falls to all subordinates to recognize that, when a leader proves his incompetence, they must seek change, or at the very least, recognize when projects such as MDF have failed.

14 Monday – January 30, 2017

The Dartmouth Review

FEATURES

Great Professors: Meir Kohn

me of this notion that the government was a natural instrument for improving things. By default, and empirically, I am a libertarian.

TDR: How has that intellectual journey influenced your scholarly work?

MK: It’s sent me in fairly unconventional directions.

Throughout my career I’ve been more interested in the things that economics should be talking about but doesn’t, why it doesn’t, and what we can do to explain those things.

I have generally not been very good at blindly buying into things, even things that sound good initially. I try to question and come to my own conclusions.

TDR: What do you consider to be your most significant intellectual contribution to economics?

MEIR KOHN the economics legend (Courtesy of the Dartmouth Economics Department)

Zachary P. Port James R. Chartouni Contributors The Dartmouth Review (TDR): Once every two years you give a consistently well-received talk on how you became a Libertarian, which is really your life story through the lens of political experiences. In a cliff notes summary, how did you become a libertarian?

Meir Kohn (MK): I started off as a socialist. As a teenager I went off to a kibbutz in Israel and experienced socialism. It was a very benign form of socialism, not like the Soviet Union. It was voluntary: you could leave anytime. It was very small scale socialism. But even then I was disillusioned. For example, people sometimes think that money is the root of all evil and inequality. I found on the kibbutz that there was Mr. Chartouni is a sophomore at the College and a contributor at The Dartmouth Review. Mr. Port is a freshman at the College and a harlequin at The Dartmouth Review.

very little inequality between people. We all pretty much had the same things. But, as differences between people decrease, the human capacity to see differences increases. People were just as upset if someone had more, maybe even more so, because things were usually allocated rather than earned. So that was part one.

So I left the kibbutz and started studying economics. I was a progressive then because economics led me into that direction. The second and third parts of my story taught me what was wrong with progressivism, and left me by default as a libertarian. I now want to see government contained rather than have expansive involvement. The second part is my teaching of ECON 26, the study of financial systems.

It deals specifically with the American financial system, which is characterized by a large amount of government intervention, presumably to make things better. It is pretty obvious, without going into the details, that government intervention uniformly makes things worse. It is partly because we don’t know how to make things truly better, and

government actions have unintended consequences.

The other issue is that once government gets involved it becomes political: there is influence and corruption.

The result of government intervention here has been to create one of the most unstable financial systems in the world. The United States is characterized by both a large amount of intervention and instability. So that was part two. The idea that the government is there to help you, knows what to do, and can make things better - that taught me otherwise.

The third part was my research, where, without going into details, I unusually but not uniquely had to study government rather thoroughly. I was trying to develop a theory of economic progress, and the role of government in that was very important. I took an economic view so that I could study and try to understand it. If you told someone even 150 years ago that government was there to help, they would have laughed. That is a very modern idea. In the past, the government was there to help the rulers, not the people. So my research disabused

MK: I spent most of my years as a mathematical theorist, and that was kind of a waste of time. I did a bit of history of economic thought, trying to understand where we went wrong. Not for its own sake, but for the sake of trying to retrace our steps. I wrote a paper, “The Value of Exchange,” which I am very proud of. It identifies where, how, and why economics went wrong. The other big thing is the project I’ve been working on, which is a book that I am close to finishing. I don’t know how it is going to be received. The economics profession is not primed to receive this kind of thing. But I’m pleased with it. I think I have gotten the answers to my questions.

TDR: What can you tell us about your book?

MK: It is something that I stumbled into by accident.

One thing led to another.

What it wound up being was an attempt at developing a new framework of understanding economic progress, a topic where the field of economics is particularly bad. Beyond that, I think it puts forward a great framework for economics. It is a new kind of economics, and it combines new and old. It has a lot in common with classical economics, and Austrian economics to some extent.

TDR: Economics 26 has become your signature class.

It is completely different than anything else in a Dartmouth experience. What is your teaching philosophy for the course?

MK: Partly by accident, I ex-

perimented in other classes with doing this sort of thing.

I taught econometrics for example. That class had two lectures every week and an assignment discussing empirical work. I had experimented with the idea, so when I wrote a textbook for ECON 26, which essentially used my lecture notes, I thought it was idiotic to spend all that time lecturing when you could just read the book. I don’t need to recite it in class. Let’s do all the class in the Socratic method. I was really happy with the result. The class was much better, and the method made more sense to me. My philosophy is that if you are going to have a live professor with you, rather than watching a video, you need to have interaction. Otherwise you don’t need the guy, you can watch it online. How I see it, as it has matured, is that what I’m really trying to do is not to teach answers, or material, or facts. What I’m trying to do is to get people to internalize questions. They will then be primed to ask questions about other material.

TDR: How has the course changed over the years?

MK: Only some minor changes. I did something new for the first time this year. Most people seem to adjust well to the class. It is a bit scary in the beginning, but within a few classes it is comfortable.

But some people don’t adjust.

The first thing I did this term when I introduced the class was that I said “if you are really having trouble, come talk to me and maybe we can make you more comfortable.” I did that, somebody came, and it has been very good. It is good to address these things rather than just leaving them there.

TDR: Did the class change at all with the financial crisis?

MK: No. That was the surprise to me actually. When It all happened I thought “oh dear, a lot of the stuff is going to have to change.” But I found that I had anticipated a lot of the key parts of the crisis. Not the facts, but the ways of thinking. Take subprime mortgages for example, the absolute center of things.

When I wrote the book, I was barely aware of them. They did exist but were not a big thing. It was really after the book, after 2003, that they ballooned and exploded. I did talk about securitization and mortgages, and I had an assignment where I suggested the possibility of securitizing small business loans. When you think about if this is a good idea and whether it will

The Dartmouth Review

Monday – January 30, 2017 15

FEATURES work, you can actually substitute subprime loans for business loans and come to the same conclusions.

TDR: Like you said, the goal of the course is to provide us with ways of thinking to approach problems in the future, which is very different than a lot of courses. I think you succeeded in your goal.

MK: I mean it works. It definitely works. It’s sort of hidden, and I don’t tell you explicitly what to do. I’m not making a speech: “think this way!” We’re going through and discussing things. Actually, both my sons taught English to executives in Belgium. And they learn a method of teaching a foreign language, and the method is quite good. You have a conversation with a high power executive–normally at a beer company–and when someone makes a mistake in the language, you don’t correct them. But as you’re speaking subsequently, you show them the right way of doing it. You don’t say you’re doing that.

They’re smart enough they’ll make the connection. But you do it the right way after, and they notice that. So it’s the same kind of thing in my style of teaching, where you do it without explicitly saying you’re doing it.

TDR: What do you believe to be the purpose of education? Given that students only have four years at Dartmouth, what’s the best way to make the most of it?

MK: I have never been a big fan of the liberal arts. I grew up in England, and I went to school in Israel and taught there. And the idea in both places is that you go to college to learn a subject, so in England you go to read Economics or to read Chemistry

or some other subject. It’s not a general education. You’re learning specific skills that presumably will provide you with a way of making a living.

I like that idea. I tend to see students that very much think along those lines—self-selection obviously. They’re also taking computer science, they’re taking engineering, they’re taking economics, and they’re taking humanities less and less–as much as they have to but not much more. When I think of education, I think of it as the acquiring of skills.

Basically you’re learning to do something that will enable you to make a living.

TDR: If you had to take another course at Dartmouth, what would it be?

MK: Other than mine? I’m not that familiar. In Economics there are a bunch of courses that are quite good.

Outside of Economics, I know Paul Christesen in Classics.

He’s really good. I would take his class.

TDR: What books have been particularly interesting to you? And again, you can’t choose any of yours.

MK: There are a bunch, but the one we’re doing in our reading group, Jane Jacob’s The Economy of Cities, has been a real eye opener for me.

Early on, a book that had a big effect on me was Galbraith’s Affluent Society. Later, when I studied it and thought about it more carefully, I realized that it actually wasn’t such a great book. But the thing that I found was a real eye opener and pushed me in the direction that I went was that Galbraith was talking about things that I thought were very important and interesting. I think he got a lot of things wrong in retrospect.

But it was stuff you should

have been able to talk about economics, but couldn’t. You didn’t have the language. That was the first occasion where I thought that there’s something wrong with economics if we can’t discuss these obviously important economic issues.

TDR: What is something you uniquely believe in?

MK: I think my views about economics are unusual. I think relatively few economists agree with me. But I wouldn’t want to believe in things that nobody else believes in. Maybe Einstein could get away with it, but that’s very rare.

You want to have a different version or refinement. You want to say something new, but if it’s totally new that’s not a good sign. That means it’s either crazy or you’re Albert Einstein, and I have no pretensions.

TDR: Many people think that we are living in a period of misinformation and deception. If you could set the record straight in one area, what would it be?

MK: The effects of free trade.

I think that story is badly misunderstood. The correct view is that expansion of the market, free trade, has enormously beneficial economic effects. It creates those effects by disrupting things. The disruption it causes isn’t a bug.

You hear “free trade is good, but it causes disruption”–– no. It’s only good because it causes disruption! It moves people out of things that are less productive into things that are more productive and causes us to reorganize things in new ways that are more productive. The recent problem with free trade and the unhappiness it has caused so many people is because that necessary adjustment has

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been made much more difficult than it needs to be. So the problem is not that we’re open to free trade or that it’s disruptive. It’s that there are now huge impediments to the adjustments people need to make in response to free trade, and those impediments come universally from government. Not just the federal government, but state and local government too. If you lose a job, you want to move somewhere where there are jobs. So the federal government has this program to help you buy a home. Now as the industry you work in has gone down the tubes, the value of your home has gone down the tubes. If you had been renting you could just pick up and move, so that’s one thing that reduces mobility.

Suppose you were lucky and were renting, and you want to go somewhere where there are jobs. You can’t afford to live there, because of restrictive zoning and environmental protections and all these kinds of things. In the places there are jobs, there isn’t enough building and housing is therefore incredibly expensive. So you’re stuck. You can’t move to where the jobs are.

So you’re going to stay where you are but are going to go into a different line of work.

Uh, not so easy, because the state imposes licensing requirements. Typically, there used to be five or so professions in a state for which you needed a license. Now there are something like fifty. So if you want to do people’s hair, you have to do two years of school to study the physiology of hair. The reason is just monopoly, what’s called rent-seeking. The current hairdressers don’t want competition, they make nice contributions to the politicians and the politicians impose licensing requirements. Ok so this poor guy or gal lost his or

her job because of trade; what are we going to do about it?

We’re going put them on welfare. This will totally destroy their lives. All the incentives they had to find a new job just vanish. I remember something that happened when I came to the United States in 1970 to go to graduate school: I was watching the news on television, and foreign competition, maybe it was Japanese then, had caused some American steel plants to close down. They were interviewing workers as they came out of the plant, and it made a tremendous impression on me.

They asked one of the workers: “what are you going to do now?” And the man said “Well I’ve got unemployment for six months, and I guess after that I’ll start looking for a job.”

And what was the government’s response when people remained unemployed after the six months? They extended it! And meanwhile you’re making these people’s lives miserable. That guy who’s sitting there for six months doing nothing, it’s not as if he’s going to be happy. Do you actually want to help him? Give him a lump sum! So that way he’ll have every incentive to go out and look for work. So it’s not impossible to fix, it’s really easy to fix.

TDR: Speaking to someone who has been here for 40 years, we would love to know your fondest memories of Dartmouth.

MK: Just sometimes when I see former students or they send me an email and they say “Wow! I’m still using that stuff. It really made a huge difference.” Anything like that, when we see that what we’re doing is really making a difference. It’s nice and gratifying. So what’s the best part of Dartmouth? The students!

Yaakov Katz Editor-in-Chief The Jerusalem Post A lecture hosted by Dartmouth Students for Israel, Chabad at Dartmouth, and The Dartmouth Review

Rockefeller 001 6:00 PM February 8, 2017

16 Monday – January 30, 2017

The Dartmouth Review

THE LAST WORD GORDON HAFF’S

COMPILED BY ZACHARY P. PORT

“You’re a grand old flag, You’re a high flying flag, And forever in peace may you wave.”

–George M. Cohan

“Burn my Flag and I will shoot you…but I’ll shoot you with a lot of love, like a good American.”

-Johnny Cash

“Our hearts aching, our prayers praying, our flags waving, never forget.”

-Betsy Ross

“I pledge allegiance to my Flag and the Republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”

-Francis Bellamy

“Sure I wave the American flag. Do you know a better fag to wave? Sure I love my country with all her faults. I’m not ashamed of that, never have been, never will be.”

-John Wayne

“We do not consecrate the flag by punishing its desecration, for in doing so we dilute the freedom that this cherished emblem represents.”

-Texas v. Johnson

“Cheers for the sailors that fought on the wave for it, Cheers for the soldiers that always were brave for it, Tears for the men that went down to the grave for it, Here comes the flag!”

–Arthur Macy

“One night I dreamed that I painted a large American flag, and the next morning I got up and I went out and bought the materials to begin it.”

-Jasper Johns

“HIPPIE!”

“We give our Heads! and our Hearts! to Our Country!

One Country! One Language! One Flag!”

-Colonel George T. Balch “There is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people.”

-Howard Zinn “One flag, one land, one heart, one hand, one nation evermore.”

-Oliver Wendell Holmes “When we honor our flag we honor a Nation- freedom, equality, and hope.”

-Ronald Reagan

“As long as I live, I will never forget that day 21 years ago when I raised my hand and took the oath of citizenship.

Do you know how proud I was? I was so proud that I walked around with an American flag around my shoulders all day long.”

-Arnold Schwarzenegger “As long as I live, I will never forget that day 21 years ago when I raised my hand and took the oath of citizenship.

Do you know how proud I was? I was so proud that I walked around with an American flag around my shoulders all day long.”

-Abraham Lincoln “...Our flag was still there,”

-Francis Scott Key

BARRETT’S MIXOLOGY

“The American flag is the most recognized symbol of freedom and democracy in the world.”

-Virginia Foxx “I hate the result [in Texas v. Johnson]... I would send that guy to jail so fast if I were king,” -Antonin Scalia “I prefer someone who burns the flag and then wraps themselves up in the Constitution over someone who burns the Constitution and then wraps themselves up in the flag.”

-Molly Ivins “Nobody should be allowed to burn the American flag -- if they do, there must be consequences -- perhaps loss of citizenship or year in jail!”

-President Donald J. Trump

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The Smell of Treason in the Evening

THE POWER OF MEANING

Ingredients

• 1 bottle of Stolichnaya vodka • 1 BIC lighter, rainbow-print design with a small hammer and sickle sticker • 1 tremendously hand-sewn American flag (made in Trump’s America)

BOOK SIGNING WITH AUTHOR & TDR ALUMNA

Colonel Phil Hanlon ’69 finished lacing up his spit-shined jump boots and ducked through the flap of his tent into the evening light that shone on Camp Dartmouth. He strode toward the Green, flanked by Major Carolyn Dever on his right and his aid, Corporal Eng-Beng Lim, on his left. COL Hanlon ’69 ran gritty fingers through his sweaty mustache and stepped over the limp body of Dartmouth Liberation Army Grand General Inge-Lise Ameer, which no one had bothered to move for several weeks. He stood before a mass of exhausted students waiting for his address, their sweaters caked with mud and their faces singed.

COL Hanlon ’69 waved his hand in a circle, directing his men (MAJ Dever is in transition) to form up around the charred remains of the Tremendous American flag.

“Smell that? You smell that?”

COL Hanlon ’69 kneeled, taking a whiff of the recently burned Tremendous American flag.

“Treason, son. Nothing else in the world smells like that.”

Looking off into the distance, towards the DLA rebels held up in the bombed-out remains of Dartmouth Hall, COL Hanlon ’69 clenched his fists.

“I hate the smell of treason in Trump’s America. You know, one time there was a protest on the Green, it lasted for two hours. When it was all over, we didn’t find one of ‘em, not one stinkin’ dink liberal. The smell, you know that gender neutral, man-hating, anti-capitalist smell, the whole Green.

Smelled like… treason. Someday this protest is gonna end….”

COL Hanlon ’69 wandered off towards the Choates minefield with no explanation and no hesitation.

— Conrad Kissinger

-Counter-Protestor

EMILY ESFAHANI SMITH

FEBRUARY 11 AT NOON IN THE DARTMOUTH BOOK STORE