Eagleton Political Journal: Volume I (Spring 2022)

Spring 2022

|

Volume I

071182349356622

Transforming political thought into meaningful practice

eagletonpoliticaljournal.rutgers.edu

The Eagleton Institute of Politics at Rutgers University—New Brunswick studies how American politics and government work and change, analyzes how the democracy might improve, and promotes political participation and civic engagement. The Institute explores state and national politics through research, education, and public service, linking the study of politics with its day-to-day practice.

i

The Eagleton Political Journal is a non-partisan, scholarly, student-led publication dedicated to transforming political thought into meaningful practice. As a student platform for thought-provoking political research and analysis, the Eagleton Political Journal provides a hub for political dialogue.

The journal engages students from across Rutgers University with American politics in furtherance of the mission of the Eagleton Institute of Politics.

Through the Eagleton Political Journal, Rutgers will continue to serve its students and the greater New Jersey community as a centerpiece for political discourse and engagement.

Contact: eagletonpoliticaljournal@gmail.com eagletonpoliticaljournal.rutgers.edu

ii

THE EDITORIAL TEAM EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Caleb Kuberiet Caleb Kuberiet is an alumnus of Rutgers University–New Brunswick, where he graduated in 2021 from the School of Arts and Sciences. At Rutgers, Caleb studied Political Science and English and was also an Eagleton Undergraduate Associate. On campus, Caleb was involved with WRSU–Rutgers Radio as the News Director, Rutgers University Alternative Breaks as a Site Leader, and the Institute for Domestic and International Affairs as a Director. Today, Caleb is an Under-Secretary-General for the International Model United Nations Association, a non-profit that organizes international Model United Nations conferences, and the founder and Editor-in-Chief of the Eagleton Political Journal.

EDITORIAL BOARD Justin Alexander Justin Alexander is a senior majoring in Urban Planning and Design at the Rutgers University Honors College, the School of Arts and Sciences, and the Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy. He has served as CoPresident of the Bloustein Public Service Association, Undergraduate Chair of EJB|DESIGNS (the Bloustein School’s nationally recognized planning student organization), and Bloustein Representative to the Rutgers University Student Assembly. He has also represented undergraduate students on several committees at the Bloustein School and the Florida and New York Metro Chapters of the American Planning Association. Justin joined the Eagleton Political Journal in 2021 as Campus Section Editor and previously wrote for the Examiner, Rutgers’ undergraduate pre-health journal, for two volumes. Justin will be pursuing a dual J.D./Traurig LL.M. in Real Property Development at the University of Miami School of Law beginning in the fall of 2022.

Fiona Doyle Fiona Doyle is a junior double-majoring in Political Science and Cognitive Science and minoring in Economics. She is a student in the Honors College and the School of Arts and Sciences. Fiona previously interned with U.S. Senator Chris Coons, which helped to heighten her interest in government and law. On campus, Fiona is an executive member of the Honors College Professional Development Council and the Director of the Rutgers Women in Business Mentorship Committee. She also conducts independent research through the Aresty Research program centered on the equity of access to preschool programs around the country and currently writes for the Daily Targum.

iii

Varun Gaitonde Varun Gaitonde is a senior majoring in Political Science and minoring in History.

Varun has worked on Democratic campaigns across the state. On campus, he serves on the executive board of the Rutgers Democrats as Secretary and is an Eagleton Undergraduate Associate. Varun was involved with the founding of the Journal and is passionate about international relations, particularly as they relate to trade and the economy at large. He hopes to attend law school and pursue a career at a government agency with a focus on regulatory affairs.

Alicja Haran Alicja Haran is an Honors Program student in the School of Arts and Sciences at Rutgers University—New Brunswick. She is finishing her junior year double-majoring in Political Science and Philosophy. She is involved with the Rutgers Pre-Law Society and just completed a research project with the Rutgers Aresty Undergraduate Research Center, which investigated the disseminatory methods of high-stakes socio-political projects. In addition to her internship at Siemens, she enjoys cooking, writing, and studying German.

Ardita Mirza Ardita Mirza is a School of Arts and Sciences Honors Program student doublemajoring in Criminal Justice and Political Science and minoring in Critical Intelligence Studies. She is currently the Vice President of Philanthropy for the RUAA Scarlet Council, an Alcohol and Other Drugs Peer Educator with the Health Outreach, Promotion, and Education (HOPE) office, and a Peer Mentor with the SASHP Peer Mentorship Program. Her experiences as a Research Fellow for the Data Science Intelligence Center of the National Intelligence University, a Research Intern for the Rutgers Center on Policing, a Policy Advocate for the Rutgers Advocacy Corps with the Office of Federal Relations, and a Fundraising Intern for a major gubernatorial campaign have inspired her to pursue a career in policymaking.

Nina Paranjpe Nina Paranjpe is a senior studying Public Health and History/Political Science. Nina is the Co-President of the Bloustein Public Service Association, an undergraduate organization in the Bloustein School dedicated to professional development, career networking, and community service. Nina has a passion for community health, and she currently works as an intern with Prevention Links, a non-profit that provides prevention and recovery services for substance use disorders. A lover of museums and history, Nina previously helped develop digital exhibits for the Thomas A. Edison Papers at Rutgers.

iv

Laura Vorbach Laura Vorbach is a senior in the School of Arts and Sciences Honors Program double-majoring in Political Science and Criminal Justice and minoring in Economics and International and Global Studies. Laura is a resident assistant, the President of the Rutgers University Alumni Association Scarlet Council, a Vice President of the Rutgers Mock Trial Association, a Vice Resident of the Women’s Pre-Law Society, and a mentor to youths through Rutgers Pilot Me. As an Undergraduate Associate at the Eagleton Institute, Laura has supported the founding of the Eagleton Political Journal and interned with the Network Contagion Research Institute. Her aspirations lie in public international law, particularly at the intersection of politics and crime in international relations and societies around the world.

Thank you to the faculty and staff of the Eagleton Political Journal Dr. Saladin Ambar Benjamin Clapp Dr. Elizabeth Matto

Ronald Chen John Farmer Gabriella Morrone John Weingart

v

Randi Chmielewski Sarah Kozak Francine Newsome Pfeiffer

LETTER FROM THE EDITOR-IN-CHIEF At a virtual Model United Nations conference in 2021, I was fortunate enough to meet many fascinating and ambitious students from across the United States and the world. I really enjoyed hearing how students were involved at their universities and I began to notice a theme among these engaged students.

I consistently heard how students were involved in political reviews and journals.

Knowing that Rutgers University—New Brunswick did not have a political review or journal, I asked how exactly these publications worked.

The publication process consisted mainly of students writing articles that were reviewed and approved by student editors with the goal of publishing a collection of the best submissions. In some instances, the articles were even reviewed and approved by faculty members of the university. Every journal and review would therefore be thoroughly revised, improved, and perfected before publication. During the COVID-19 pandemic, I kept returning to this idea of students fulfilling their academic potential by crafting their own insightful articles on politics, policy, or government.

Although I found my political science courses at Rutgers University—New Brunswick to be interesting and challenging, I wondered why Rutgers did not have a political journal or review. This publication would serve as a platform where students can meaningfully engage with topics and issues they would not normally discuss in the classroom. It would be recognized as a scholarly publication where students could practice their own editorial skills by perfecting another student’s writing. Most importantly, the publication would establish a centerpiece where students could meaningfully and respectfully discuss politics during a polarized era in American politics. With the help of many undergraduate students and the faculty at the Eagleton Institute of Politics, the Eagleton Political Journal was created.

I understood from the beginning that it would be difficult to motivate both students and faculty to join such a new program while many were still adjusting to the new virtual world and grappling with the COVID-19 pandemic.

Simultaneously, I knew as an Undergraduate Associate at Eagleton that the mission of the institute would pair perfectly with the goals of this potential journal. Even through the difficult circumstances, Eagleton would end up serving as the necessary foundation for this project to succeed. If it were not for the guidance and advocacy of Eagleton professors and staff, the Eagleton Political Journal would still be a mere idea rather than the completed publication vi

it is now. The esteemed staff of the institute would turn out to be even better mentors and supporters of the journal than I could have imagined. Additionally, the enthusiastic Undergraduate Associates and other Rutgers students who first agreed to join this project based solely on its mission would become pioneers in creating the journal and improving the political community at Rutgers University. It is safe to say that this journal would not be possible without the Eagleton Institute of Politics.

Many thanks to all of the writers, editors, and staff involved with the Eagleton Political Journal. I hope you enjoy the fantastic articles from these incredible students. I truly cannot wait to see how the Eagleton Political Journal will continue to grow in its quest to improve the political community at Rutgers and improve democracy.

Best, Caleb Kuberiet Editor-in-Chief

vii

viii

TABLE OF CONTENTS

US DRONE WARFARE AND CIVILIAN CASUALTIES: A COMPARISON OF THE OBAMA, TRUMP, AND BIDEN ADMINISTRATIONS. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

by Robert Wargaski RACE TO THE TOP AS A BLUEPRINT FOR NATIONAL POLICE REFORM . . . . . . . . 11

by Isaac Velez THE SINO-VIETNAMESE PARTNERSHIP: OPPORTUNITIES FOR AMERICAN ENGAGEMENT IN THE ASIA-PACIFIC. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

by Adam Y. Soliman UNDERSTANDING ESSA: REFORMING THE FUNDAMENTAL AMERICAN IDEAL OF EDUCATION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . 23

by Neha Saju THE SPARKS OF CHANGE: WHY THE PROTESTS OF GEORGE FLOYD ARE A TURNING POINT IN AMERICAN HISTORY. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . 31

by Anniyah Shelton HOW BEING IN THE MINORITY HAS BEEN DETRIMENTAL TO LATINO IMMIGRANTS IN ARIZONA. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37

by Sarah Samdani.

DIRTY POLITICS: HOW ROGER STONE GAVE RISE TO THE PARTISAN DIVIDE OF TODAY. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44

by Tejas Sinha

ix

US DRONE WARFARE AND CIVILIAN CASUALTIES: A COMPARISON OF THE OBAMA, TRUMP, AND BIDEN ADMINISTRATIONS

by Robert Wargaski Introduction In the wake of the tragic attacks on September 11th, the United States began a campaign to find and punish those responsible for the terrorist attacks. America’s War on Terror required a wide variety of strategies to combat international terrorism. One of the responses used was, and still is, drone warfare. First envisioned as early as the 19th century, when Austrians used hot air balloons to bomb Venice, it was not until 2000 that the CIA was able to successfully fit a missile onto a drone.1 Drones have been utilized for many goals. During the Kosovo conflict in the 1990s, NATO used drones for intelligence-gathering and surveillance over the Balkans.2 In October 2021, a US-led drone strike in Syria killed senior al-Qaeda leader Abdul Hamid al-Matar.3 While drones have been extolled by elected officials for their alleged precision and accuracy, there are questions regarding the civilian impact of drones. Ever since the US engaged in regime change in both Afghanistan and Iraq, local

reporting in the region has documented various instances of civilian casualties due to drone strikes. It is estimated that civilian casualties due to drone strikes are in the low thousands.4 Beginning in the early 2000s, the number of civilian casualties by drone strikes continued to climb. Only under the Biden administration have we seen a reduction in drone strikes’ harm to civilians.

This paper looks at the civilian death toll resulting from drone strikes across the Obama, Trump, and Biden administrations. These specific administrations had high levels of military involvement in the Middle East, including the common use of drone strikes. After analyzing each administration’s history and policy on drone strikes, I will recommend solutions that could minimize civilian casualties in the future.

It is important to note that the Bush administration is absent from this article. Under the Bush administration, drones were not commonly utilized until 2008. In part, this was due to technological constraints of

the time. Looking at the case study of Pakistan specifically, the drone usage by Bush pales in comparison to his successor.

Bush only authorized 51 drone strikes from 2004-2009. 5 By contrast, Obama authorized more than 400 drone strikes between 2009-2013, making drones “the centerpiece of U.S. counterterrorism strategy.” 6 There just is not enough data on the Bush administration’s use of drones to justify a thorough examination and evaluation of policy.

Justifying the Drone In the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks and the US’s subsequent invasion of Iraq in 2003, drones became an essential way to gather intelligence on al-Qaeda operations and determine further troop engagement. According to former national security reporter Scott Shane, two major claims were made to justify the use of drones. One claim was that drones were accurate and had “pinpoint precision.” A second claim made by drone advocates was that the operators knew exactly who they were shooting at when looking at the camera

1 “History of Drone Warfare,” The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, accessed February 21, 2022, https://www.thebureauinvestigates. com/explainers/history-of-drone-warfare#:~:text=Drones%20have%20been%20part%20of,air%20balloons%20to%20bomb%20 Venice.&text=The%20term%20drone%20itself%20started,by%20radio%20from%20the%20ground 2 Katherine Hall Kindervater, “The Emergence of Lethal Surveillance: Watching and Killing in the History of Drone Technology,” Security Dialogue 47, no. 3 (June 2016): [Page #], accessed April 14, 2022, https://www.jstor.org/stable/26294130.

3 Associated Press, “U.S. Military Says It Killed al-Qaeda Leader in Drone Strike,” NBC, last modified October 23, 2021, accessed April 15, 2022, https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/us-military-says-killed-al-qaida-leader-drone-strike-rcna3653.

4 Chalin Askew, season 5, episode 2, “Drones and Civilian Casualties: Can Anything Be Done?,” March 18, 2022, in The Delve, podcast, audio, accessed March 26, 2022, https://anchor.fm/thedelve.

5 “The Bush Years: Pakistan Strikes 2004-2009,” The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, accessed April 25, 2022, https://www. thebureauinvestigates.com/drone-war/data/the-bush-years-pakistan-strikes-2004-2009.

6 Daniel Byman, “Why Drones Work: The Case for Washington’s Weapon of Choice,” Foreign Affairs 92, no. 4 (July/August 2013):, accessed May 1, 2022, https://www.jstor.org/stable/23526906?seq=1.

1

screen, thereby minimizing civilian casualties.7 These claims were echoed by US Presidents as well as intelligence officials. In a 2013 speech, former President Obama argued that because of drone strikes carried out under his administration thus far, hundreds of al-Qaeda members were killed, and dozens of terrorist attacks directly targeting the United States were prevented.8 These views from politicians are corroborated by military officials, who argue that drones are necessary to wage effective combat against transnational terrorist organizations. In a paper published on behalf of the United States Air Force, Second Lieutenant Alexander Farrow states that drones, when used properly, “suffocate” terrorist organizations by minimizing casualties for the operator and providing precise strikes on intended targets.9 A paper published in Military Review echoes similar claims, where the US Army states that drones are vital for operational success on the battlefield writ large.10

Obama and Subsequent Drone Embracement, Civilian Casualties When the War on Terror was in its initial stages, drone spending accounted for a small portion of the total defense budget. Spending on drones only topped $4 billion in 2001, according to a report published by the Secretary of Defense.

The report predicted that drone spending would increase to more than $10 billion by 2010.11 While data on how much the US spends on drones alone is sparse, data compiled by the website Statista states that the US spent more than $17 billion between FY2017 and FY2021 on drones, seemingly confirming the estimations made by the Secretary of Defense years earlier.12 When Barack Obama took office in 2009, drones had not yet become commonplace in US actions overseas. Soon after taking office, however, the drone became essential to Obama’s foreign policy strategy.

According to various sources, Obama carried out ten times more drone strikes than his

predecessor, allegedly telling his advisors that he was “surprisingly good at killing people.” 13 During his presidency, Obama and his aides sought to create a legal and ethical framework for carrying out drone strikes, which was then used by future administrations.

Using the Use of Force Authorization given to the Presidency after 9/11, Obama argued that he had a legal right to develop what was commonly called a “kill list” for potential al-Qaeda targets and carry out these targeted killings via drone strikes.14 Until around 2013, Obama carried out hundreds of drone strikes across the Middle East. In the runup to the 2016 election, Obama substantially cut down on the use of drones due to mounting public pressure.15 According to Airwars, a UKbased NGO that tracks civilian casualties from US airstrikes, thousands of civilians have died due to US drone strikes overseas in the Middle East.16 According to the US intelligence community, these casualties are often the result of poor information or human

7 Askew, “Drones and Civilian Casualties.”

8 “President Obama Addresses Use of Drones,” video, YouTube, posted by Wall Street Journal, May 23, 2013, accessed March 30, 2022, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1tz9XiqqMQ. 9 Alexander Farrow, “Drone Warfare as a Military Instrument of Counterterrorism Strategy,” Air and Space Power Journal, [Page #], accessed February 21, 2022, https://www.airuniversity.af.edu/Portals/10/ASPJ_Spanish/Journals/Volume-28_Issue-4/2016_4_02_ farrow_s_eng.pdf.

10 Zachary Morris, “U.S. Drones: Smaller, Less Capable Drones for the Near Future,” Military Review, May/June 2018, [Page #], accessed March 30, 2022, https://www.armyupress.army.mil/Journals/Military-Review/English-Edition-Archives/May-June-2018/USDrones-Smaller-Less-Capable-Drones-for-the-Near-Future/.

11 Unmanned Ariel Vehicles Roadmap 2002-2027 (Office of the Secretary of Defense, 2003), accessed March 30, 2022.

12 “Estimated drone spending by select country worldwide, between FY2017 to FY2021,” Statista, accessed 2022, https://www.statista. com/statistics/757608/global-drone-spending/.

13 “Obama’s Covert Drone War in Numbers, Ten Times More Strikes Than Bush,” Bureau of Investigative Journalism, last modified January 17, 2017, accessed March 30, 2022, https://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/stories/2017-01-17/obamas-covert-drone-war-innumbers-ten-times-more-strikes-than-bush.

14 Jo Becker and Scott Shane, “Secret ‘Kill List’ Proves a Test of Obama’s Principles and Will,” The New York Times, last modified May 29, 2012, accessed March 30, 2022, https://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/29/world/obamas-leadership-in-war-on-al-qaeda.html.

15 Spencer Ackerman, “Fewer Deaths from Drone Strikes in 2013 after Obama Policy Change,” The Guardian, last modified December 31, 2013, accessed April 18, 2022, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/31/deaths-drone-strikes-obama-policy-change.

16 Airwars, https://airwars.org/.

2

error. To US Armed Forces members, civilian casualties are unavoidable and a tragic inevitability of war.17 However, these civilian casualties prove that drones are a gross example of too much executive authority with little oversight. According to Veterans for Peace, drone strikes offer “no accountability to the public for how many civilians were killed.” 18 Obama: Increased Executive Control In the eight years that President Obama was in office, the United States conducted more than 500 drone strikes throughout the Middle East.

While Obama mainly focused on nations such as Afghanistan and Yemen, other nations such as Somalia were the target of multiple drone strikes as well. According to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, Obama’s drone strikes killed 400-800 civilians. In a single year, Obama carried out more drone strikes than President Bush did during his entire presidency.19 Along with ramping up the drone program, the Obama administration also increased the executive authority to use drone strikes to take out suspected al-Qaeda targets, for both the President as well as military commanders. Obama gave US military commanders

the authority to launch drone strikes, independent of executive sign-off.

In 2011, American citizen Anwar al-Awlaki was assassinated in Yemen via a Predator drone.

Al-Awlaki, born in New Mexico, was radicalized by al-Qaeda and by 2011 was the leading English propagandist for the terrorist network. One of the main justifications for the strike was that, even though al-Awlaki was an American citizen, his right to due process was nonexistent due to the “imminent threat” he

Obama had developed his “kill list” in which suspected terrorists were designated as “kill or capture, of which the capture part has become largely theoretical.” 21 This kill list gave him near-total control over who could be killed in drone strikes. In terms of legislative or judicial oversight, it was more or less nonexistent. In practice, extreme deference is given to the executive branch regarding national security, meaning that the President often has the final say in the foreign policy making

Source: The New York Times

posed and how it was “infeasible” to capture him.20 Around this time, it was made public that

decision process.22 For instance, in Ziglar v. Abbasi, the Supreme Court ruled that former

17 Azmat Khan, “Hidden Pentagon Records Reveal Patterns of Failure in Deadly Airstrikes,” The New York Times, last modified December 18, 2021, accessed February 21, 2022, https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/12/18/us/ airstrikes-pentagon-records-civilian-deaths.html?name=styln-civilian-casualties®ion=TOP_BANNER&block=storyline_menu_ recirc&action=click&pgtype=Article&variant=0_Control&is_new=false.

18 “No Drones Working Group,” Veterans for Peace, accessed March 31, 2022, https://www.veteransforpeace.org/our-work/workinggroups/drones-robots-and-future-weapons-working-group.

19 “Obama’s Covert,” Bureau of Investigative Journalism.

20 Scott Shane, “The Lessons of Anwar al-Awlaki,” The New York Times, last modified August 27, 2015, accessed February 21, 2022, https://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/30/magazine/the-lessons-of-anwar-al-awlaki.html.

21 Becker and Shane, “Secret ‘Kill,” The New York Times.

22 Shirin Sinnar, “Courts Have Been Hiding Behind National Security for Too Long,” Brennan Center for Justice, last modified August 11, 2021, accessed April 18, 2022, https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/courts-have-been-hiding-behind-nationalsecurity-too-long.

3

Guantanamo Bay detainees could not sue for constitutional violations, arguing that “special factors” such as “sensitive issues of national security” made it highly unlikely that such a case would ever rule in their favor.23 With regard to drone strike policy, this meant that Obama had unilateral authority to order drone strikes, irrespective of long-term consequences and undeterred by other branches of government.

When looking specifically at the civilian casualties that resulted from Obama’s drone war program, much of it can be attributed to the sheer number of strikes that occurred during his presidency. Under the Obama administration, the president was given unilateral authority to conduct strikes via the Use of Force Authorization enacted post-9/11. With respect to the powers given to the Executive branch, this unilateral authority made it possible for the President to overstep certain policies concerning rules of engagement. For instance, in many cases where a so-called “high value target” (HVT) was located, certain concerns for civilian casualties would be overshadowed by the importance of taking out the HVT in question. In other words, the need for a wide latitudinal approach to

combating terrorism oftentimes neglected the civilian concerns of a particular situation.24 However, between 2013 and 2016, due to mounting public pressure, Obama and the DNI agreed to keep track of the number of civilians killed in drone strikes. They also agreed to bolster the requirements to launch a drone strike. However, even today, the criteria still uses vague terms such as “infeasibility of capture” or “imminent threat,” which is problematic in the sense that strikes could still be justified under vague pretenses.25 As noted previously, the idea of “kill or capture” was largely theoretical in practice.26 There are arguments to be made that because a strike on a high-value target was of the utmost importance when combating terrorist groups, the process of determing whether the strike in question would lead to civilian casualties was rushed. An example of this occured in Yemen in 2009, where the US military launched cruise missiles into a supposed al-Qaeda encampment hastily.

They did this because, according to military intelligence, alQaeda operatives in Yemen were planning to storm the capital Sana’a and bomb it. However, in the aftermath of the strike, it was determined that the cruise missiles instead hit an

encampment of civilians, killing more than 40 individuals.27 If anything, this grievous failure of intelligence should demonstrate the hastiness that policymakers, the military, and the Executive branch had with regard to the use of drones. These groups are very quick to use drones without thinking of the civilian consequences of their actions.

Trump: Enlargement and Ease of Use When Donald Trump took power in January 2017, his foreign policy rhetoric was isolationist in terms of the American economy. Actions such as withdrawing from the Trans-Pacific Partnership and criticizing international organizations like the UN were in lockstep with more general calls for an “Americafirst” policy. However, Trump pursued a very hawkish and interventionist foreign policy in terms of military engagement.

In January 2020, Trump ordered a preemptive drone strike in Baghdad which killed Iranian commander Qasem Suleimani.

Trump argued that the strike was necessary in order to prevent an attack on American soldiers overseas.28 This type of foreign policy led to many changes that increased the opportunity to use drone strikes.

In 2017, Trump expanded the “areas of

23 Ziglar v. Abbasi, No. 15-1358, slip op. at (June 19, 2017). Accessed April 17, 2022. https://www.supremecourt.gov/ opinions/16pdf/15-1358_6khn.pdf.

24 Lynn E. Davis, Michael McNerney, and Michael D. Greenberg, “Clarifying the Rules for Targeted Killing,” Rand Corporation, last modified 2016, accessed April 17, 2022, https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/research_reports/RR1600/RR1610/RAND_ RR1610.pdf.

25 Spencer Ackerman, “Obama Claims US Drone Strikes Have Killed up to 116 Civilians,” The Guardian, last modified July 1, 2016, accessed April 2, 2022, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/jul/01/obama-drones-strikes-civilian-deaths.

26 Becker and Shane, “Secret ‘Kill,” The New York Times.

27 Askew, “Drones and Civilian Casualties.”

28 Karen Zraick, “What to Know About the Death of Iranian General Suleimani,” The New York Times, last modified July 9, 2020, accessed April 20, 2022, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/03/world/middleeast/suleimani-dead.html.

4

operation” as a counterterrorism strategy. For context, drone strikes can only occur legally in designated areas of operation.

Under Obama, these included Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria.

Trump expanded these areas to include Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan, and Libya.29 According to data from the Long War Journal, strikes in Yemen increased threefold to 125 strikes launched once the Trump administration designated it as an area of operations.30 Strikes in Somalia increased substantially due to the growing threat of al-Shabab at the

Source: National Public Radio

time. Additionally, since the US designated these areas as active engagement, military commanders were given the Obama-era unilateral authority to conduct drone strikes without Presidential authorization so

that a potentially short window to capture an HVT was used effectively.31 In terms of civilian casualties, there is no statistic provided by the Department of Defense. However, when aggregating the findings from the Bureau of Investigative Journalism for strike data from 2016-2018 in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia, it can be determined that, at a minimum, around 150 civilians were killed.32 However, two things are important to note.

First, this is based on incomplete data, with a lot of the data points only going until 2018 and not taking into account the latter half of the Trump presidency.

Second, these estimates are a minimum, meaning that it is quite possible that many more civilians were killed as a result of drone strikes. Nevertheless, this data does present a broad picture of civilian casualties under the Trump administration.

Biden: The End of the Drone?

Joe Biden, in many ways, has experienced “both sides” of the drone war. As Vice President to Obama, Biden was second in command when it came to Obama’s use of drones and actions such as implementing the “kill list.” As President, Biden’s foreign policy thus far

is based on non-interventionist principles. The withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021 signified a turned point in American foreign policy.

Concerning drone strikes, the Biden administration has substantially cut down on their use. Even though Biden is less than two years into his presidency, he has promised to more or less end the drone program. Biden has launched very few drone strikes during his time in office.

In addition, his administration seems to be the most transparent of the three when it comes to acknowledging the failure of the drone program. After the withdrawal from Afghanistan, the US launched a drone strike against suspected ISIS members, killing an American aid worker and seven children.

An investigation conducted by The New York Times found that the US government was at fault for the strike. Because of this investigation, the US military was forced to publicly admit wrongdoing for the strike.33 In many ways, this investigation was the first of its kind. Very rarely has the US military publicly admitted wrongdoing for a drone strike that has killed civilians. This is an immediate improvement

29 Rebecca Malone, “Trump’s First Year: Analyzing the Trump Administration’s Use of Drone Strikes as a Counterterrorism Strategy in 2017,” Georgetown Security Studies Review 6, no. 2 (August 2018): accessed February 25, 2022, https://georgetownsecuritystudiesreview. org/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/GSSR-Vol.-6-Iss.-2-Final-Online.pdf#page=6.

30 “US Airstrikes in the Long War,” Long War Journal, accessed April 1, 2022, https://www.longwarjournal.org/us-airstrikes-in-the-longwar.

31 Malone, “Trump’s First Year.”

32 “Drone Warfare,” Bureau of Investigative Journalism, accessed March 16, 2022, https://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/projects/ drone-war.

33 Charlie Savage et al., “Newly Declassified Video Shows U.S. KIlling of 10 Civilians in Drone Strike,” The New York Times, last modified January 19, 2022, accessed April 2, 2022, https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/19/us/politics/afghanistan-drone-strike-video. html.

5

from the Obama and Trump administrations regarding accountability and public transparency. Additionally, according to the Bureau, Biden has killed around 20 civilians thus far, with the higher end being close to 70. While it can be argued that even a single civilian casualty is bad, within the totality across these three administrations, these civilian casualty numbers are very low and a great improvement over previous presidencies. However, there are always improvements to be made.

Solutions Given the large problem of civilian casualties as a result of US drone strikes, the US government and policymakers must work to combat the issue.

There are a variety of solutions that can be implemented. Two broad strategies are explained below, along with a variety of other more general solutions.

One major solution that could lower the number of civilian casualties is the adoption of a “near-certainty” standard both in declared and undeclared areas of operation. This means that before a strike is conducted, there must be a “near-certainty” that no civilians would be harmed. The Obama administration adopted this strategy in undeclared areas of

operation. In declared areas of operation, however, there is no “near-certainty” standard that is adopted. According to a study conducted by Brookings, civilian casualties were reduced greatly in areas where a “nearcertainty” standard was adopted compared to areas where it was not adopted.34 The Biden administration can easily adopt this strategy in both declared and undeclared areas of operation.

Another major strategy that the Biden administration can implement is transferring control of the drone program over to the military from the CIA. As it stands right now, there are two separate but very similar programs led by both the CIA and the military. This can lead to communication problems and general ineffectiveness. A report issued by the Stimson Center recommended that the drone program be carried out via a military “fusion center” which ensures that the military can have access to real-time intelligence in the field. This would streamline the process of intelligence-gathering and strengthen it as well, which could work well in preventing civilian casualties.35 There are other general solutions that Biden could implement, such as increasing

the level of transparency with regard to drone strikes.

Biden has already done so to a certain extent, as seen with the Pentagon’s response to the strike that killed an American aid worker in August 2021.36 Additionally, the Biden administration could do what the Obama administration promised and provide the public with information on the civilian death toll. This way, journalists can be more informed on these problems and publish accurate reporting. Overall, it seems like these solutions can be easily implemented by Biden, seeing as he already more or less ended the US drone war.37 Drones are not going away anytime soon. If anything, technological advancements are poised to make drones more necessary than ever. For instance, Ukrainian fighters are using drones to take out Russian military convoys in the ongoing conflict Russia - Ukraine conflict started in early 2022.38 To reiterate, drones can be very useful tools for the US military.

Like any tool, however, it needs to be used correctly.

While drones are vital for intelligence-gathering and other non-lethal actions, restraint should be exercised when using drones for lethal purposes. The intelligence justifying the strike

34 Sarah Kreps, Paul Lushenko, and Shyam Raman, “Biden Can Reduce Civilian Casualties During US Drone Strikes. Here’s How.,” Brookings, last modified January 19, 2022, accessed April 4, 2022, https://www.brookings.edu/articles/biden-can-reduce-civilian-casualtiesduring-us-drone-strikes-heres-how/.

35 John P. Abizaid, Rosa Brooks, and Rachel Stohl, “Recommendations and Report of the Task Force on US Drone Poicy,” The Stimson Center, last modified April 2015, accessed April 17, 2022, https://www.stimson.org/wp-content/files/file-attachments/recommendations_ and_report_of_the_task_force_on_us_drone_policy_second_edition.pdf.

36 Savage et al., “Newly Declassified,” The New York Times.

37 Charlie Savage and Eric Schmitt, “Biden Secretly Limits Counterterrorism Drone Strikes Away From War Zones,” The New York Times, last modified May 3, 2021, accessed April 19, 2022, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/03/us/politics/biden-drones.html.

38 Julian Borger, “The Drone Operators Who Halted Russian Convoy Headed for Kyiv,” The Guardian, last modified March 28, 2022, accessed April 18, 2022, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/mar/28/the-drone-operators-who-halted-the-russian-armouredvehicles-heading-for-kyiv.

6

should be accurate, so as to not put the US in a similar situation as it did in Sana’a in 2009.39 A “nearcertainty” principle should be adopted, in order to protect civilians from harm to the fullest extent possible. This paper is not a condemnation of drones writ large. I personally believe that drones are vital to our security interests both domestically and overseas. However, the high civilian death toll is unacceptable and the United States must adopt policies that significantly reduce the civilian death toll of drones immediately.

Source: Business Insider

39

Askew, “Drones and Civilian Casualties.”

7

BIBLIOGRAPHY Abizaid, John P., Rosa Brooks, and Rachel Stohl. “Recommendations and Report of the Task Force on US Drone Policy.” The Stimson Center. last modified April 2015. https://www.stimson.org/wpcontent/files/file-attachments/recommendations_and_report_of_the_task_force_on_us_drone_ policy_second_edition.pdf.

Ackerman, Spencer. “Fewer Deaths from Drone Strikes in 2013 after Obama Policy Change.” The Guardian. December 31, 2013. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/31/deathsdrone-strikes-obama-policy-change.

Ackerman, Spencer. “Obama Claims US Drone Strikes Have Killed up to 116 Civilians.” The Guardian.

July 1, 2016. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/jul/01/obama-drones-strikes-civiliandeaths.

Airwars. Accessed on February 21, 2022. https://airwars.org/.

Askew, Chalin. Interview with Scott Shane. “The Delve - Drones and Civilian Casualties: Can Anything Be Done?” March 18, 2022. podcast audio. https://anchor.fm/thedelve.

Becker, Jo and Scott Shane. “Secret ‘Kill List’ Proves a Test of Obama’s Principles and Will.” The New York Times. May 29, 2012. https://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/29/world/obamas-leadership-inwar-on-al-qaeda.html.

Borger, Julian. “The Drone Operators Who Halted Russian Convoy Headed for Kyiv.” The Guardian.

March 28, 2022. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/mar/28/the-drone-operators-whohalted-the-russian-armoured-vehicles-heading-for-kyiv.

Byman, Daniel. “Why Drones Work: The Case for Washington’s Weapon of Choice.” Foreign Affairs 92, no. 4 (July/August 2013): accessed May 1, 2022. https://www.jstor.org/stable/23526906?seq=1.

Davis, Lynn E., Michael McNerney, and Michael D. Greenberg, “Clarifying the Rules for Targeted Killing,” Rand Corporation, 2016, https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/research_ reports/RR1600/RR1610/RAND_RR1610.pdf.

“Drone Warfare,” Bureau of Investigative Journalism, Accessed on March 16, 2022, https://www. thebureauinvestigates.com/projects/drone-war.

“Estimated drone spending by select country worldwide, between FY2017 to FY2021,” Statista, October 2016, https://www.statista.com/statistics/757608/global-drone-spending/.

Farrow, Alexander. “Drone Warfare as a Military Instrument of Counterterrorism Strategy.” Air and Space Power Journal. accessed February 21, 2022. https://www.airuniversity.af.edu/Portals/10/ ASPJ_Spanish/Journals/Volume-28_Issue-4/2016_4_02_farrow_s_eng.pdf.

“History of Drone Warfare.” The Bureau of Investigative Journalism. Accessed on February 21, 2022. https://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/explainers/history-of-drone-warfare#:~:text=Drones%20 have%20been%20part%20of,air%20balloons%20to%20bomb%20Venice.&text=The%20 term%20drone%20itself%20started,by%20radio%20from%20the%20ground.

Khan, Azmat. “Hidden Pentagon Records Reveal Patterns of Failure in Deadly Airstrikes.” The New York Times. December 18, 2021. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/12/18/us/ airstrikes-pentagon-records-civilian-deaths.html?name=styln-civilian-casualties®ion=TOP_ BANNER&block=storyline_menu_recirc&action=click&pgtype=Article&variant=0_Control&is_ new=false.

8

Kindervater, Katherine Hall. “The Emergence of Lethal Surveillance: Watching and Killing in the History of Drone Technology.” Security Dialogue 47, no. 3 (June 2016). Accessed on April 14, 2022, https://www.jstor.org/stable/26294130.

Kreps, Sarah, Paul Lushenko, and Shyam Raman. “Biden Can Reduce Civilian Casualties During US Drone Strikes. Here’s How.” Brookings. January 19, 2022. https://www.brookings.edu/articles/ biden-can-reduce-civilian-casualties-during-us-drone-strikes-heres-how/.

Malone, Rebecca. “Trump’s First Year: Analyzing the Trump Administration’s Use of Drone Strikes as a Counterterrorism Strategy in 2017.” Georgetown Security Studies Review 6, no. 2 (August 2018). https://georgetownsecuritystudiesreview.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/GSSR-Vol.-6Iss.-2-Final-Online.pdf#page=6.

“No Drones Working Group.” Veterans for Peace. Accessed on March 31, 2022. https://www. veteransforpeace.org/our-work/working-groups/drones-robots-and-future-weapons-workinggroup.

Purkis, Jessica and Jack Serle. “Obama’s Covert Drone War in Numbers, Ten Times More Strikes Than Bush.” Bureau of Investigative Journalism. January 17, 2017. https://www.thebureauinvestigates. com/stories/2017-01-17/obamas-covert-drone-war-in-numbers-ten-times-more-strikes-than-bush.

Savage, Charlie and Eric Schmitt. “Biden Secretly Limits Counterterrorism Drone Strikes Away From War Zones.” The New York Times. May 3, 2021. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/03/us/ politics/biden-drones.html.

Savage, Charlie, Eric Schmitt, Azmat Khan, Evan Hill and Christoph Koettl. “Newly Declassified Video Shows U.S. Killing of 10 Civilians in Drone Strike.” The New York Times. January 19, 2022. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/19/us/politics/afghanistan-drone-strike-video.html.

Shane, Scott. “The Lessons of Anwar al-Awlaki.” The New York Times. August 27, 2015. https://www. nytimes.com/2015/08/30/magazine/the-lessons-of-anwar-al-awlaki.html.

Sinnar, Shirin “Courts Have Been Hiding Behind National Security for Too Long.” Brennan Center for Justice. August 11, 2021. https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/courtshave-been-hiding-behind-national-security-too-long.

The Associated Press. “U.S. Military Says It Killed al-Qaeda Leader in Drone Strike.” NBC. October 23, 2021. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/us-military-says-killed-al-qaida-leader-dronestrike-rcna3653.

“The Bush Years: Pakistan Strikes 2004-2009,” The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, accessed April 25, 2022, https://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/drone-war/data/the-bush-years-pakistanstrikes-2004-2009.

“Unmanned Aerial Vehicles Roadmap 2002-2027.” Office of the Secretary of Defense, 2003). December 1, 2022. https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/citations/ADA414908.

“US Airstrikes in the Long War.” FDD’s Long War Journal. Accessed on April 1, 2022. https://www. longwarjournal.org/us-airstrikes-in-the-long-war.

Wall Street Journal. “President Obama Addresses Use of Drones.” YouTube video, 8:29. May 23, 2013. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1tz9XiqqMQ. Zachary Morris, “U.S. Drones: Smaller, Less Capable Drones for the Near Future,” Military Review, May/June 2018, https://www.armyupress.army.mil/Journals/Military-Review/English-Edition9

Archives/May-June-2018/US-Drones-Smaller-Less-Capable-Drones-for-the-Near-Future/.

Ziglar v. Abbasi. No. 15-1358. June 19, 2017. https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/16pdf/151358_6khn.pdf.

Zraick, Karen. “What to Know About the Death of Iranian General Suleimani.” The New York Times July 9, 2020. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/03/world/middleeast/suleimani-dead.html.

10

RACE TO THE TOP AS A BLUEPRINT FOR NATIONAL POLICE REFORM

by Isaac Velez three times more likely to be of government. The Fraternal killed and Latinos are twice as Order of Police is the country’s Police misconduct is a likely to be killed by police than largest union with more than perennial issue in the United 1 White Americans. Furthermore, 2,000 chapters and nearly States that disproportionately a study from researchers at 350,000 members.3 Police unions affects minority communities.

Rutgers University, Michigan have used tools like collective The similarities between police University, and Washington bargaining agreements and reform and education reform University found that death lobbying for state laws, among policy create an opportunity to by police is a leading cause of others, to protect police officers replicate a Race To The Top death for young Black men in from facing disciplinary action program to reform and reverse 2 America. Statistics like these for misconduct. While some trends that policing reinforces. and the frequency of gruesome police reform advocates suggest The White House and the murders by police, such as the that defunding the police and Department of Justice should cases of George Floyd, Breonna finding alternatives to policing request $6 billion from Congress Taylor, Eric Garner, Michael is a feasible solution, in his for legislationto recreate Race To Brown, Philando Castille, and 2022 State of the Union speech, The Top (RTTT) with the goal many more, President of reforming police departments suggest Biden nationally. While there are that police proclaimed differences between education reform is “We should and policing that could reduce needed all agree, the impact that a repurposed to reverse the answer Race To The Top program would these trends. is not to have on police departments, the defund the program’s design is proven to However, police. It’s quickly and successfully change national to fund state and local policies and police the police.

Source: Georgetown Security Studies Review should be attempted for other reform is Fund them. national reform efforts. difficult Fund them.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

PROBLEM STATEMENT The result of policing in America is that many minority communities disproportionately face brutality, discrimination, and other forms of misconduct as compared to their white peers. Black Americans are

to accomplish because it is primarily a state and local issue.

While most police departments receive funding from the Department of Justice (DOJ), policing is administered by local and state governments.

Moreover, police unions have a powerful presence at all levels

Fund them with resources and training. Resources and training they need to protect their communities.” This statement has reinforced national sentiments, among all demographics, that policing plays an irreplaceable role in American society.4 However, the

Merkl, Taryn A. “Protecting against Police Brutality and Official Misconduct.” Brennan Center for Justice. Brennan Center, March 25, 2022.

2 Edwards, Frank, Hedwig Lee, and Michael Esposito. Risk of being killed by police use of force in the United States by age, race–ethnicity, and sex. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, August 5, 2019.

3 Bazelon, Emily. “Police Reform Is Necessary. but How Do We Do It?” The New York Times. The New York Times, June 13, 2020.

4 Parker, Kim and Kiley Hurst. “Growing share of Americans say they want more spending on police in their area,” Pew Research Center, October 26, 2021, https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/10/26/growing-share-of-americans-saythey-want-more-spending-on-police-in-their-area/.

1

11

essential function of policing in America does not give a pass to the current mediocrity, malpractice, and racist actions we see within police departments across the country. It suggests that we must hold the police to a higher standard, and work within the system to incentivize reforms and make policing more accessible, accountable, and community oriented for everyone, not just the wealthy suburbs.

To better understand how the federal government can play a role in reforming policing, the Background section below will provide insights into how applications from Race to The Top, a competitive grant program that successfully reformed schools nationally administered by the U.S. Department of Education (ED), can be repurposed for national police reform.

BACKGROUND The RTTT program was born out of a provision in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 and implemented by the Obama administration. The program was successful in its goal of incentivizing national education reform through a national competition for state applicants.

The Obama administration asked states and local education agencies to suggest ways in which they would use the federal funds by grouping them into six categories: Great Teachers and Leaders, which offered the largest

opportunity to receive points.

This category was meant to improve school effectiveness by focusing on teacher and principal performance, rather than student performance.

State Success Factors, which focused on states articulating their reform agenda, building capacity to implement and sustain this agenda, and demonstrating progress in raising achievement through performance metrics.

Standards and Assessments, which included adopting common standards such as Common Core, and supporting school transitions to common and high quality assessments.

General Selection Criteria, which involved supporting charter and other innovative schools.

Turning Around the LowestAchieving Schools, which included more extreme measures such as firing underperforming teachers and principles, or turning the school over to a charter.

education, and attempting innovations for improving early learning outcomes. States that received RTTT funding adopted 88 percent of RTTT reforms, while applicants who did not receive funding implemented 68 percent, and states that did not apply for funding implemented 56 percent of reforms.5 Further, there are a number of similarities between education reform and police reform that lead RTTT, as a successful incentive tool, to be a model for facilitating police reform.

SIMILARITIES BETWEEN EDUCATION AND POLICE REFORM First, education policy and policing are both issues that rely on federalism. In both instances, the federal

Source: Current Affairs

Data Systems to Support Instruction, which included implementing a statewide longitudinal data system and using data to improve instruction in schools.

In addition to these six categories, there were 15 all-ornothing points that states could receive based on six priorities such as prioritizing STEM

government provides financial resources to state and local governmental agencies which then determine the policies they consider appropriate for their individual schools and police precincts. While federalism poses challenges because of the various actors involved in funding,

Howell, William G. “Results of President Obama’s Race to the Top.” Results of President Obama’s Race to the Top. Education Next, March 11, 2022.

5

12

oversight and management, it created an opportunity for ED to tie education reform to $4.35 million. To win an award, states would compete for a grant based on their proposed efforts to effectively apply reforms.

Second, in education and policing there are strong lobbies including unions and advocacy organizations that resist change in order to protect their members. For instance, the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers have a significant impact in influencing policy to protect teachers. Likewise, the Fraternal Order of Police and the International Association of Chiefs of Police, as mentioned earlier, have also played a significant role lobbying in favor of police officers at all levels of government. However, RTTT was successful in reducing the role that union and advocacy groups had in derailing the policy implementation process for education reform because the awards were too enticing for state governments to pass on.

Third, there are a multitude of indicators suggesting the need for national police reform at this moment.

The Black Lives Matter protests in the summer of 2020 following his murder demonstrate a large appetite for reform to address police brutality and misconduct.

Aside from the dismal rates of police violence towards racial and ethnic minorities previously mentioned, rising rates of violent crime, the national police shortage, and the economic impacts of the COVID-19 recession on police departments create an opportunity for reform

through a competitive program like RTTT. Similarly, preceding RTTT’s passage and implementation, there was a desire to reform schools in the United States as a result of lagging international competitiveness in testing, achievement gaps among minority groups and white peers, and the economic impact of the Great Recession on schools. The implementation of this incentivized program for education reform promoted teacher accountability, an investment in data infrastructure, and common standards for local school districts; furthermore, police reform would benefit from a similar grant program to create police accountability through independent police investigators in departments, investments in data, and standardization in training to address the institutional failures that expose civilians to harm at the hands of the police.

Lastly, RTTT was successful in part because ED allowed a coalition of trusted experts to help create the standards and reform principles driven by the RTTT competition.

Various expert organizations, unions, and advocacy groups trusted in bipartisan settings, such as the Gates Foundation, the National Governors Association, the Council of Chief State School Officers, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce played a role in dictating common education standards and determining reforms to address the gaps that were leading to disparate education 13

outcomes. Comparably, trusted experts in the field of criminal justice reforms could build a bipartisan coalition to guide the goals for police reform that would be amenable to the relevant stakeholders. This includes organizations such as the Brennan Center for Justice, the Brookings Institution, the CATO Institute, and philanthropic organizations with aspirations of leading a police reform effort.

RECOMMENDATION There are many similarities between the conditions that led to education reform in the RTTT era and the call for police reform today. Therefore, I recommend that the White House work in conjunction with the DOJ to retrofit the RTTT program for police reform. Within this recommendation, there are steps

Source: USNews.com

that the White House and the DOJ can take to promote RTTT 2.0 focused on reforming police departments.

Initially, the Biden administration should advocate for a provision in the Build Back Better Act, the social spending bill currently being negotiated in Congress for an incentive grant geared towards state applicants

to fund police departments. This could be set at $6 billion, which is comparable to the $4.35 billion for RTTT in 2008-2009 after accounting for inflation.

Furthermore, the White House and the DOJ should determine their police reform priorities in conjunction with expert organizations in the criminal justice field to ensure the effectiveness of proposed police reform goals and standards. For instance the Biden administration could incentivize evidence-based procedural reforms such as banning chokeholds, requiring de-escalation, banning shooting at moving vehicles, and establishing independent civilian review boards of police misconduct.

This process would also incorporate police union concerns to reduce the risk of political derailment, and philanthropic organizations to promote these ideas among its networks. Lastly, the new iteration of RTTT for policing should consider the drawbacks that reduced the effectiveness of an equitable RTTT implementation by ED. This could include increased opportunities for technical assistance for state applicants and focusing enhanced assistance efforts for specific groups of police departments such as urban, suburban, and rural areas as they all face unique challenges in enforcing the law.

CONCLUSION The circumstances linking education and police reform are quite similar, however they are not identical. Police unions have arguably far more power than teacher unions do and may be successful in thwarting reform efforts to protect its members as was recently done with Senators Booker (D-NJ) and Scott (R-SC) in their attempt at reforming police. A RTTT 2.0 could face an insurmountable amount of risk due to dissimilar aspects between education and police reform, the polarization present in the issue of policing, and American politics being more polarized now than in the 2008 era. However, the aforementioned success that RTTT had in quickly and effectively changing state and local education policies through incentives and competition during a period of necessary change and standardization is a proven model that should be attempted for other reform efforts that the United States grapples with such as police reform.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Bazelon, Emily. “Police Reform Is Necessary. but How Do We Do It?” The New York Times. The New York Times, June 13, 2020. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/06/13/magazine/policereform.html.

Edwards, Frank, Hedwig Lee, and Michael Esposito. Risk of being killed by police use of force in the United States by age, race–ethnicity, and sex. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, August 5, 2019. https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1821204116.

Howell, William G. “Results of President Obama’s Race to the Top.” Results of President Obama’s Race to the Top. Education Next, March 11, 2022. https://www.educationnext.org/results-presidentobama-race-to-the-top-reform/.

Merkl, Taryn A. “Protecting against Police Brutality and Official Misconduct.” Brennan Center for Justice. Brennan Center, March 25, 2022. https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/researchreports/protecting-against-police-brutality-and-official-misconduct.

Parker, Kim, and Kiley Hurst. “Growing Share of Americans Say They Want More Spending on Police in Their Area.” Pew Research Center. Pew Research Center, October 26, 2021. https://www. pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/10/26/growing-share-of-americans-say-they-want-morespending-on-police-in-their-area/.

14

THE SINO-VIETNAMESE PARTNERSHIP: OPPORTUNITIES FOR AMERICAN ENGAGEMENT IN THE ASIA-PACIFIC

by Adam Y. Soliman THE IMPORTANCE OF A U.S. COMMITMENT TO VIETNAM Vietnam and the People’s Republic of China (PRC) have a complicated and often uneasy relationship. Although both countries have similar political structures and maintain close military, economic, and crossparty relations, ties between Hanoi and Beijing in the modern era are characterized by distrust of each other’s motivations, especially among the Vietnamese.1 Policymakers in Hanoi are increasingly concerned with the PRC’s assertive foreign policy actions in the Asia-Pacific region under President Xi Jinping. The two countries have competing territorial and maritime claims in areas of geopolitical significance, such as the South China Sea (SCS). Amid tensions between the two nations, Vietnam seeks to limit the influence of the PRC to preserve its autonomy.2 Similar to the conclusions of policymakers in other nations that are also contending with the intensifying threat of Chinese regional

assertiveness, Hanoi increasingly views the U.S. as an ideal country with which to strengthen relations and counterbalance the PRC economically and militarily.

While it is doubtful that Hanoi will completely break from Beijing to seek a formal alliance with the U.S., there is a valuable opportunity for America to deepen its engagement with Vietnam and gain a strategic partner in Southeast Asia.

The U.S. should thus engage productively with Vietnam by fostering closer economic ties and offering military support to help Vietnam respond to the PRC’s increasingly aggressive posture in the Asia-Pacific region.

AN OVERVIEW OF PRC– VIETNAM RELATIONS Before exploring how the tense Sino-Vietnamese partnership provides an opportunity for greater U.S. engagement, one must first understand the multifaceted nature of Vietnam’s relationship with the PRC and Hanoi’s strategy for handling it. Sino-

Vietnamese ties deteriorated after the end of the Vietnam War in 1975 for various reasons.

This included Vietnam’s 1978 overthrow of the PRC-Backed, Marxist Khmer Rouge in Cambodia to which the Chinese responded by sending troops into Northern Vietnam in a short, but bloody conflict in early 1979.3 However, since the two countries restored formal diplomatic relations in 1991, they have established strong bilateral connections on the political, military, and economic fronts.4 The PRC and Vietnam have similar ideological and political structures as well.

Each is a totalitarian party-state, respectively controlled by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV).5 They both also loosened some financial restrictions toward the end of the twentieth century to open up to the global economy while still maintaining single-party control.6 It is thus unsurprising that despite tensions in the countries’ relationship, the

1 Michael Yahuda, “China’s Relations with Asia,” in China and the World, ed. David Shambaugh (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2020), 286, accessed December 1, 2020, https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190062316.001.0001.

2 Ngo Di Lan and Truong-Minh Vu, “The Sino-US-Vietnam Triangle in a Belt and Road Era,” East Asia 36, no. 3 (October 16, 2019): 236, accessed December 3, 2020, https://doi-org.proxy.libraries.rutgers.edu/10.1007/s12140-019-09318-6.

3 Stephen J. Morris, Why Vietnam Invaded Cambodia: Political Culture and the Causes of War (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1999), 221.

4 David Shambaugh, “China Engages Asia: Reshaping the Regional Order,” International Security 29, no. 3 (Winter 2004/2005): 81-82, accessed December 3, 2020, https://www.jstor.org/stable/4137556.

5 Mikio Oishi and Minh Quang Nguyen, “Brothers in Trouble: China-Vietnam Territorial Disputes and Their Bilateral Approach to Conflict Management,” International Journal of China Studies 8, no. 3 (December 2017): 294, accessed December 5, 2020, https://login. proxy.libraries.rutgers.edu/login?url= ?url=https://www-proquest-com.proxy.libraries.rutgers.edu/scholarly-journals/brothers-troublechina-vietnam-territorial/docview/2002968795/se-2?accountid=13626.

6 M. Gainsborough, “Beneath the Veneer of Reform: The Politics of Economic Liberalisation in Vietnam,” Communist and PostCommunist Studies 35, no. 3 (September 2002): 357, accessed November 7, 2021, https://doi.org/10.1016/S0967-067X(02)00015-6.

15

CPV and CCP retain close-party ties.7 For example, there is a committee made up of key officials called the VietnamChina Steering Committee for Bilateral Cooperation which meets annually and has been effective in helping to negotiate disputes in areas like the SCS.8 Vietnam and the PRC also collaborate militarily on some matters of mutual interest, including security along their maritime borders. Both countries even operate joint patrols by coast guard vessels in their common waters.9 Also, Vietnamese and Chinese military officials frequently communicate with one another by holding joint military conferences with regional commanders, and Vietnam is among the PRC’s top-ten most important global military partners.10 Perhaps the most important relationship to consider when studying Sino-

Vietnamese ties is the nations’ economic partnership. This is particularly important for Hanoi given that the PRC is its top export partner, and its second-largest export market after the U.S..11 Vietnam was one of the first countries to join the PRC’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), and Chinese companies are undertaking transportation infrastructure projects which include upgrading Vietnam’s shipping ports and constructing new highways.12 This has strengthened cross-border economic connections and enabled Vietnam to get muchneeded capital from the PRC.13 Some observers expect that Chinese companies will move a lot of their operations to Vietnam in the coming years, which would further deepen the already-close economic relationship.14 Despite their strong ties with the PRC, Hanoi has

many disputes with Beijing over maritime borders in the SCS and the Gulf of Tonkin.15 The contested areas contain valuable resources such as oil and fish.16 Mutual trust that developed between the two countries since the early-1990s helps them to negotiate some of these issues, but tensions still manifest.17 For instance, there was a major incident in 2014 when the PRC attempted to install an oil rig in disputed waters, and the Vietnamese responded by ramming the Chinese vessels.18 While both nations still maintained highlevel communication, the 2014 incident is one of the most serious confrontations since the 1979 war.19 Both nations have yet to formally agree on the exact maritime boundaries in the SCS, or even on what areas are actually in dispute. This issue remains one of the prime contributors to ongoing strains

7 Le Hong Hiep, “Vietnam’s Hedging Strategy against China since Normalization,” Contemporary Southeast Asia 35, no. 3 (December 2013): 347-348, accessed November 30, 2020, https://www.jstor.org/stable/43281263.

8 Robert Sutter and Chin-Hao Huang, “Xi Jinping Stresses Cooperation and Power – Enduring Contradiction?,” Comparative Connections 20, no. 1 (May 2018): 57, accessed December 3, 2020 9 BenoÎt De Tréglodé, “Maritime Boundary Delimitation and Sino-Vietnamese Cooperation in the Gulf of Tonkin (1994-2016),” China Perspectives, no. 3 (June 21, 2016): 40, accessed December 5, 2020 10 Shambaugh, “China Engages Asia,” 81. AND Phillip C. Saunders, “China’s Global Military-Security Interactions,” in China and the World, ed. David Shambaugh (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2020), 202, accessed December 7, 2020, https://doi.org/10.1093/ oso/9780190062316.001.0001.

11 Duong Van Huy, “A Vietnamese Perspective on China’s Belt and Road Initiative in Vietnam,” Contemporary Chinese Political Economy and Strategic Relations 6, no. 1 (April/May 2020): 161, 164-165 accessed December 3, 2020, https://login.proxy.libraries. rutgers.edu/login?url=?url=https://www.proquest.com.proxy. libraries.rutgers.edu/scholarly-journals/vietnamese-perspective-on-chinasbelt-road/docview/2436132124/se-2?accountid=13626.

12 ibid. 147 13 ibid. 147 14 Teng Ma, Yuli Liu, and Yuejing Ge, “A Comparative Study of Trade Relations and the Spatial-Temporal Evolution of Geo-Economy between China and Vietnam,” Sustainability 9, no. 6 (June 3, 2017): 13, accessed December 5, 2020, https:doi.org/10.3390/su9060944.

15 Jason J. Blazevic, “Navigating the Security Dilemma: China, Vietnam, and the South China Sea,” Journal of Current Southeast Asian Affairs 31, no. 4 (March 7, 2013): 90, accessed November 30, 2020, https://doi.org/10.1177/186810341203100404.

16 Katherine Morton, “China’s Ambition In The South China Sea: Is A Legitimate Maritime Order Possible?,” International Affairs 92, no. 4 (June 20, 2016): 923, accessed December 5, 2020, https://doi-org.proxy.libraries.rutgers.edu/10.1111/1468-2346.12658.

17 Joseph Y.S. Cheng, “Sino-Vietnamese Relations in the Early Twenty-first Century: Economics in Command?,” Asian Survey 51, no. 2 (March/April 2011): 386, accessed December 3, 2020, https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/as.2011.51.2.379.

18 Xinbo Wu, “Cooperation, Competition and Shaping the Outlook: The United States and China’s Neighbourhood Diplomacy,” International Affaris 92, no. 4 (June 20, 2016): 857, accessed December 5, 2020, https://doi-org.proxy.libraries.rutgers.edu/10.1111/14682346.12651.

19 Hung-Jeng Wang, “China’s Assertive Relational Strategies: Engagement, Boycotting, Reciprocation, and Pressing,” Issues and Studies 54, no. 3 (September 2018): 21, accessed December 5, 2020, https://doi.org/10.1142/S10132.51118500066.

16

between the two nations, and it seems unlikely to be completely resolved soon.20 VIETNAM’S ‘HEDGING STRATEGY’ AND THE IMPORTANCE OF U.S. INVOLVEMENT Given the PRC’s deep ties in Vietnam and its growing influence in the Asia-Pacific region, Hanoi policymakers face a dilemma to ensure that their autonomy is not compromised

by Beijing. There is a serious risk that Vietnamese sovereignty could be threatened by the Chinese. To a certain extent, this has already happened, especially on the political and economic fronts. Following a 2015 agreement where the CPV and CCP moved to integrate with one another, some Vietnamese analysts expected that Beijing would gain even more influence in Vietnam’s affairs and strive to further align them with the PRC’s interests.21 Regarding Vietnam’s participation in the BRI, there are concerns in Hanoi that Vietnam is at risk of falling into a “debt-trap” with Beijing and being unable

to repay their massive Chinese loans.22 Many Vietnamese worry that the BRI projects could thus undermine Vietnam’s autonomy and leave them in an unfavorable position with the PRC on issues such as the SCS maritime disputes.23 Vietnamese policymakers therefore pursue a “hedging strategy” designed to balance the need to maintain cordial relations with Beijing while still trying to ensure that the PRC does not undercut their autonomy.24 Per the first prong of the hedging strategy, Vietnam engages with the PRC by doing a lot of what has been mentioned, such as partaking in the BRI and bolstering the relationship between the CPV and the CCP.25 However, in order for its hedging strategy to work, Hanoi must also engage with other powerful nations to balance the PRC’s influence in the country; it is here where the U.S. becomes very important to the Vietnamese. The 2014 oil rig incident, and increasing Chinese assertiveness in general, helped turn many Hanoi policymakers toward the Americans.26 Vietnam

knows that engagement with the U.S. is one of its most important tools to preserve its autonomy from the PRC.27 It is thus unsurprising that there is some momentum within the CPV for rapprochement with the U.S., and this is helped by the fact that Chinese-sympathetic CPV members have lost some of their political influence.28 Even though Vietnam already reestablished relations with the U.S. in the 1990s,29 Vietnamese leaders tried to bolster these ties further during the Obama administration. They entered into a “comprehensive partnership” with the U.S. around the time of the 2014 oil rig crisis.30 The U.S. responded favorably to Vietnam’s efforts in various ways, including by revoking a lethal weapons export ban on Vietnam and earmarking millions of dollars to help Vietnam patrol its maritime claims in contested waters like the SCS.31 When former President Trump took office in 2017, the Vietnamese prime minister was the first leader from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations

20 Ramses Amer, “China, Vietnam, and the South China Sea: Disputes and Dispute Management,” Ocean Development & International Law 45, no. 1 (2014): 29, accessed December 5, 2020, https://doi-org.proxy.libraries.rutgers.edu/10.1080/00908320.2013.839160.

21 Jeffrey Reeves, “Imperialism and the Middle Kingdom: The Xi Jinping Administration’s Peripheral Diplomacy with Developing States,” Third World Quarterly 39, no. 5 (April 5, 2018): 989, accessed December 3, 2020, https://doi-org.proxy.libraries.rutgers.edu/10.1 080/01436597.2018.1447376.

22 Duong, “A Vietnamese Perspective,” 168.

23 Duong, “A Vietnamese Perspective,” 171 24 Hiep, “Vietnam’s Hedging Strategy,” 334.

25 Ngo and Vu, “The Sino-US-Vietnam Triangle,” 236.

26 Alexander L. Vuving, “The 2016 Leadership Change in Vietnam and Its Long-Term Implications,” Southeast Asian Affairs, 2017, 431, accessed December 9, 2020, https://www.jstor.org/stable/26492622.

27 Ngo and Vu, “The Sino-US-Vietnam Triangle,”. 237 28 Vuving, “The 2016 Leadership Change,” 431.

29 Naval War College Joint Military Operations Department, A U.S. Base at Cam Ranh Bay, Vietnam: Will it Strengthen PACOM’s Efforts to Contain PRC Expansion in Southeast Asia?, by Kristopher M. Dickson, report no. ADA546175, 1, May 4, 2011, accessed December 3, 2020, https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/citations/ADA546175.

30 Hiep, “Vietnam’s Hedging Strategy,” 357.

31 Ngo and Vu, “The Sino-US-Vietnam Triangle,”. 237 AND Library of Congress Congressional Research Service, South China Sea Disputes: Background and U.S. Policy, by Ben Dolven, Susan V. Lawrence, and Ronald O’Rourke, research report no. IF10607, 2, accessed November 30, 2020, https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IF/IF10607.

17

(ASEAN) to meet with the thennew president.32 Later that year, Vietnam’s defense minister went to the U.S. for security talks where, among other things, he agreed to allow an American aircraft carrier to visit his country – an unprecedented and highly symbolic move given the recent history of hostile U.S.Vietnamese relations.33 Two carriers, the USS Carl Vinson and the USS Theodore Roosevelt visited Vietnam in March 2018 and February 2020 respectively.34 There are even some indications that Vietnam may be open to allowing the U.S. to establish a naval base at Cam Ranh Bay, which flows into the SCS.35 If the U.S. established a base there, it would be able to directly counter the PRC in the SCS with America’s powerful navy.36 However, less progress has been made with Vietnam in areas like trade. The U.S. has a nearly $70 billion trade deficit with Vietnam, and trade tensions deteriorated to the point that the Trump administration even designated Hanoi as a currency manipulator. Despite challenges in the American-Vietnamese partnership, Congress authorized about $170 billion in foreign assistance to Vietnam in FY 2021.37 The U.S. also

remains Vietnam’s top export market,38 and Hanoi seems keen to maintain or even strengthen that relationship as it tries to reduce its economic and security dependence on Beijing.39 RECOMMENDATIONS TO BOLSTER THE U.S.-VIETNAM PARTNERSHIP When considering many of the current U.S.-Vietnam agreements, it is evident that one of the primary objectives for the U.S. is to check the PRC’s growing influence in Vietnam and the Asia-Pacific region (especially in the SCS).

There is little doubt that expanding security cooperation and economic arrangements with the U.S. is completely in line with the hedging strategy that Vietnam pursues when dealing with the PRC.40 Policymakers in Hanoi are likely aware that the U.S. is the only country capable of challenging the PRC’s military and financial ambitions and, by extension, preserving Vietnam’s autonomy.41 While important progress has been made in strengthening U.S.-Vietnam ties, it would be unwise to conclude that Vietnam will move towards a formal American alliance, economically or militarily.

Vietnam and the PRC

maintain an intricate and multifaceted partnership, and there are challenging barriers that must be overcome to formalize the U.S.-Vietnam partnership into an alliance. Hanoi currently does not want to make a drastic decision that might anger Beijing.42 The PRC would likely not react favorably to a formal American-Vietnamese alliance and could respond by pulling the massive capital investment that Vietnam desperately needs as a developing country.43 Other challenges to an American alliance with Vietnam include existing trade tensions and the fact that the country does not fulfill key U.S. policy objectives, especially on political freedoms.

As a totalitarian partystate, Hanoi has an abysmal human rights record that has only worsened in recent years.

The Congressional Research Service reports that the government has increasingly repressed protesters and other dissenters, while more closely monitoring people’s social media activity. Vietnam has also targeted lawyers who represent pro-democracy and religious freedom activists.44 It should be noted that the U.S. maintains alliances with other nations in the region that are accused of human rights violations,

32 Ngo and Vu, “The Sino-US-Vietnam Triangle,”. 237 33 ibid. 237 34 Library of Congress Congressional Research Service, U.S.-Vietnam Relations, by Mark E. Manyin and Michael F. Martin, research report no. IF10209, 2, February 16, 2021, accessed November 7, 2021, https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IF/IF10209.

35 Naval War College Joint Military Operations Department, A U.S. Base at Cam Ranh Bay, 2-3.

36 ibid. 14 37 Library of Congress Congressional Research Service, U.S.-Vietnam Relations, 2.

38 Duong, “A Vietnamese Perspective,” 161.

39 Vuving, “The 2016 Leadership Change,” 430.

40 Hiep, “Vietnam’s Hedging Strategy,” 358.

41 ibid. 359 42 Library of Congress Congressional Research Service, U.S.-Vietnam Relations, 2.

43 Duong, “A Vietnamese Perspective,” 177.

44 Library of Congress Congressional Research Service, U.S.-Vietnam Relations, 2.

18

such as the Philippines with President Rodrigo Duterte’s violent drug policy.45 President Duterte’s ‘War on Drugs’ has resulted in the deaths of over 12,000 Filipinos, mostly urban poor, as Duterte and senior officials provoke killings that can be defined as crimes against humanity. 46 However, it would likely not help America’s global reputation to publicly forge a new alliance with Vietnam unless Hanoi makes tangible improvements in this policy area.

A final challenge to a U.S. alliance comes from within the CPV itself. While American sympathies have increased within the governing party,47 it remains divided on U.S. engagement. Part of the reason for this is that many party leaders are suspicious that the U.S. ultimately wants to see the CPV’s grip on political power weaken and are thus leery of bolstered U.S.-Vietnam relations.48 Other Vietnamese leaders think that their hedging strategy in dealing with the PRC has been successful and are not keen to break it by formally allying with the U.S..

These leaders seem to think that it is better for Vietnam to not align completely with either side, particularly as the U.S.-PRC rivalry intensifies.49 Consequently, it is clear that a formal U.S.-Vietnam alliance is

unlikely in the short term.

Despite the challenges to striking an alliance with Vietnam, the U.S. should not stop cooperating with Hanoi.

While the Vietnamese seem unlikely to pursue an alliance now, they could consider doing so in the future. Should Vietnam’s security situation with the PRC deteriorate further in the SCS, some think that Hanoi would seek an American alliance regardless of the possible risks.50 Vietnam has demonstrated that it will do everything it can to preserve its autonomy from its powerful and increasingly aggressive northern neighbor.

The U.S. should thus be prepared to formally ally with Vietnam if Hanoi’s changing security situation with the PRC causes Vietnamese policymakers to seek such a partnership. Even if Sino-Vietnamese relations do not hit a breaking point, the two nations’ partnership remains strained despite their close political, military, and economic links. Xi Jinping’s aggressive actions in the Asia-Pacific region have helped persuade Vietnam’s policymakers to bolster ties with the U.S..51 Going forward, the Biden administration must keep Hanoi’s options for American engagement open and undertake other actions to improve the countries’

partnership and strengthen Vietnam’s ability to protect its sovereignty. This includes working to reduce the countries’ trade deficit, providing Vietnam access to military weapons to defend its maritime claims, and even offering Vietnam Western-made mRNA COVID-19 vaccines. There is some evidence that mRNA-based vaccines like the one produced by PfizerBioNTech are more effective at generating antibodies against the coronavirus than Chinese inoculations such as Sinovac, which rely on inactivated viruses.52 The mRNA immunizations may thus be more preferable to the Vietnamese, and Hanoi might respond favorably to U.S. shipments of these innovative vaccines.

Overall, it is important that President Biden continues to strengthen economic and security ties with Hanoi, as doing so will help protect U.S. interests in the crucial AsiaPacific region given Vietnam’s strategic location.53 While there would seemingly be no question that Vietnam would be a strong ally of the PRC, their partnership is complicated and marred by tensions. As Hanoi strives to preserve its sovereignty from its increasingly aggressive neighbor, the U.S. must demonstrate

45 Gregory Winger, “Alliance Embeddedness: Rodrigo Duterte and the Resilience of the US–Philippine Alliance,” Foreign Policy Analysis 17, no. 3 (July 2021): 5, 7, accessed November 7, 2021, https://doi-org.proxy.libraries. rutgers.edu/10.1093/fpa/orab013.

46 Carlos H. Conde, “Philippines’ ‘War on Drugs,’” Human Rights Watch, accessed on January 26, 2022, https://www.hrw.org/tag/ philippines-war-drugs#.

47 Vuving, “The 2016 Leadership Change,” 430 48 Library of Congress Congressional Research Service, U.S.-Vietnam Relations, 2.

49 Vuving, “The 2016 Leadership Change,” 430.

50 Ngo and Vu, “The Sino-US-Vietnam Triangle,”. 238 51 Oishi and Nguyen, “Brothers in Trouble,” 301-302.

52 Denis Sauré et al., “Dynamic IgG seropositivity after rollout of CoronaVac and BNT162b2 COVID-19 vaccines in Chile: a sentinel surveillance study,” The Lancet Infectious Diseases, September 9, 2021, 7, accessed November 7, 2021, https://doi.org/10.1016/S14733099(21)00479-5.

53 Library of Congress Congressional Research Service, U.S.-Vietnam Relations, 2.

19

its commitment to the Asia-Pacific region by deepening its economic and military involvement, and convince Vietnam that America can be trusted to preserve its autonomy from the PRC. BIBLIOGRAPHY Amer, Ramses. “China, Vietnam, and the South China Sea: Disputes and Dispute Management.” Ocean Development & International Law 45, no. 1 (2014): 17-40. Accessed December 5, 2020. https:// doi-org.proxy.libraries.rutgers.edu/10.1080/00908320.2013.839160.

Blazevic, Jason J. “Navigating the Security Dilemma: China, Vietnam, and the South China Sea.” Journal of Current Southeast Asian Affairs 31, no. 4 (March 7, 2013): 79-108. Accessed November 30, 2020. https://doi.org/10.1177/186810341203100404.

Cheng, Joseph Y.S. “Sino-Vietnamese Relations in the Early Twenty-first Century: Economics in Command?” Asian Survey 51, no. 2 (March/April 2011): 379-405. Accessed December 3, 2020. https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/as.2011.51.2.379.

Conde, Carlos H. “Philippines’ ‘War on Drugs.’” Human Rights Watch. accessed on January 26, 2022. https://www.hrw.org/tag/philippines-war-drugs#.

De Tréglodé, Benoît. “Maritime Boundary Delimitation and Sino-Vietnamese Cooperation in the Gulf of Tonkin (1994-2016).” China Perspectives, no. 3 (June 21, 2016): 33-41. Accessed December 5, 2020. https://login.proxy.libraries.rutgers.edu/login?url= ?url=https://www-proquest-com. proxy.libraries.rutgers.edu/scholarly-journals/maritime-boundary-delimitation-sino-vietnamese/ docview/1832576846/se-2?accountid=13626 (accessed December 5, 2020).

Duong, Van Huy. “A Vietnamese Perspective on China’s Belt and Road Initiative in Vietnam.”

Contemporary Chinese Political Economy and Strategic Relations 6, no. 1 (April/May 2020): 145-85. Accessed December 3, 2020. https://login.proxy.libraries.rutgers.edu/ login?url=?url=https://www-proquest-com.proxy.libraries.rutgers.edu/scholarly-journals/ vietnamese-perspective-on-chinas-belt-road/docview/2436132124/se-2?accountid=13626.

Gainsborough, M. “Beneath the Veneer of Reform: the Politics of Economic Liberalisation in Vietnam.”

Communist and Post-Communist Studies 35, no. 3 (September 2002): 353-68. Accessed November 7, 2021. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0967-067X(02)00015-6.

Hiep, Le Hong. “Vietnam’s Hedging Strategy against China since Normalization.” Contemporary Southeast Asia 35, no. 3 (December 2013): 333-68. Accessed November 30, 2020. https://www. jstor.org/stable/43281263.

Library of Congress Congressional Research Service. South China Sea Disputes: Background and U.S. Policy. By Ben Dolven, Susan V. Lawrence, and Ronald O’Rourke. Research report no.

IF10607. Accessed November 30, 2020. https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IF/ IF10607.

Library of Congress Congressional Research Service. U.S.-Vietnam Relations. By Mark E. Manyin and Michael F. Martin. Research report no. IF10209. February 16, 2021 Accessed November 7, 2021. https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IF/IF10209.

Ma, Teng, Yuli Liu, and Yuejing Ge. “A Comparative Study of Trade Relations and the Spatial-Temporal Evolution of Geo-Economy between China and Vietnam.” Sustainability 9, no. 6 (June 3, 2017): 1-15. Accessed December 5, 2020. https:doi.org/10.3390/su9060944.

20

Morris, Stephen J. Why Vietnam Invaded Cambodia: Political Culture and the Causes of War. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1999.

Morton, Katherine. “China’s Ambition In The South China Sea: Is A Legitimate Maritime Order Possible?” International Affairs 92, no. 4 (June 20, 2016): 909-40. Accessed December 5, 2020. https://doi-org.proxy.libraries.rutgers.edu/10.1111/1468-2346.12658.

Naval War College Joint Military Operations Department. A U.S. Base at Cam Ranh Bay, Vietnam: Will it Strengthen PACOM’s Efforts to Contain PRC Expansion in Southeast Asia? By Kristopher M. Dickson. Report no. ADA546175. May 4, 2011. Accessed December 3, 2020. https://apps.dtic. mil/sti/citations/ADA546175.

Ngo, Di Lan and Truong-Minh Vu. “The Sino-US-Vietnam Triangle in a Belt and Road Era.” East Asia 36, no. 3 (October 16, 2019): 229-41. Accessed December 3, 2020. https://doi-org.proxy. libraries.rutgers.edu/10.1007/s12140-019-09318-6.

Oishi, Mikio, and Minh Quang Nguyen. “Brothers in Trouble: China-Vietnam Territorial Disputes and Their Bilateral Approach to Conflict Management.” International Journal of China Studies 8, no. 3 (December 2017): 287-319. Accessed December 5, 2020. https://login.proxy.libraries. rutgers.edu/login?url= ?url=https://www-proquest-com.proxy.libraries.rutgers.edu/scholarlyjournals/brothers-trouble-china-vietnam-territorial/docview/2002968795/se-2?accountid=13626.

Reeves, Jeffrey. “Imperialism and the Middle Kingdom: The Xi Jinping Administration’s Peripheral Diplomacy with Developing States.” Third World Quarterly 39, no. 5 (April 5, 2018): 976-88.

Accessed December 3, 2020. https://doi-org.proxy.libraries.rutgers.edu/10.1080/01436597.2018 .1447376.

Saunders, Phillip C. “China’s Global Military-Security Interactions.” In China and the World, edited by David Shambaugh, 181-207. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2020. Accessed December 7, 2020. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190062316.001.0001.

Sauré, Denis, Miguel O’Ryan, Juan Pablo Torres, Marcela Zuniga, Emilio Santelices, and Leonardo J. Basso. “Dynamic IgG seropositivity after rollout of CoronaVac and BNT162b2 COVID-19 vaccines in Chile: a sentinel surveillance study.” The Lancet Infectious Diseases, September 9, 2021. Accessed November 7, 2021. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1473-3099(21)00479-5.

Shambaugh, David. “China Engages Asia: Reshaping the Regional Order.” International Security 29, no.

3 (Winter 2004/2005): 64-99. Accessed December 3, 2020. https://www.jstor.org/ stable/4137556.

Sutter, Robert, and Chin-Hao Huang. “Xi Jinping Stresses Cooperation and Power – Enduring Contradiction?” Comparative Connections 20, no. 1 (May 2018): 53-60. Accessed December 3, 2020. https://login.proxy.libraries.rutgers.edu/login?url=?url=https://www-proquest-com. proxy.libraries.rutgers.edu/scholarly-journals/xi-jinping-stresses-cooperation-power-enduring/ docview/2056815658/se-2?accountid=13626(accessedDecember3,2020).

Vuving, Alexander L. “The 2016 Leadership Change in Vietnam and Its Long-Term Implications.” Southeast Asian Affairs, 2017, 421-35. Accessed December 9, 2020. https://www. jstor.org/stable/26492622.

Wang, Hung-Jeng. “China’s Assertive Relational Strategies: Engagement, Boycotting, Reciprocation, and Pressing.” Issues and Studies 54, no. 3 (September 2018): 1-26. Accessed December 5, 2020. https://doi.org/10.1142/S10132.51118500066.

21

Winger, Gregory. “Alliance Embeddedness: Rodrigo Duterte and the Resilience of the US–Philippine Alliance.” Foreign Policy Analysis 17, no. 3 (July 2021). Accessed November 7, 2021. https://doi-org.proxy.libraries. rutgers.edu/10.1093/fpa/ orab013.

Womack, Brantly. “Modernization and the Sino-Vietnamese Model.” International Journal of China Studies 2, no. 2 (August/September 2011): 157-75. Accessed December 5, 2020. https://login. proxy.libraries.rutgers.edu/login?url= ?url=https://www-proquest-com.proxy.libraries. rutgers.edu/scholarly-journals/modernization-sino-vietnamese-model/docview/1272100830/se2?accountid=13626 Wu, Xinbo. “Cooperation, Competition and Shaping the Outlook: The United States and China’s Neighbourhood Diplomacy.” International Affairs 92, no. 4 (June 20, 2016): 849-67. Accessed December 5, 2020. https://doi-org.proxy.libraries.rutgers.edu/10.1111/1468-2346.12651.

Yahuda, Michael. “China’s Relations with Asia.” In China and the World, edited by David Shambaugh, 270-90. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2020. Accessed December 1, 2020. https://doi. org/10.1093/oso/9780190062316.001.0001.

22

UNDERSTANDING ESSA: REFORMING THE FUNDAMENTAL AMERICAN IDEAL OF EDUCATION

by Neha Saju families, former President Lyndon B. Johnson explained that, “Poverty perpetuates itself.

Five- and six-year-old children Education, often are inheritors of poverty’s curse considered the bedrock of and not its creators.”5 Since America’s future, has been a it brought education into the source of inequity as well as a forefront of the national assault remedy of equality since the on poverty, the Elementary establishment of the United and Secondary Education States.1 Within the discussion of Act (ESEA) was a hallmark of educational equity, a student’s President Johnson’s “War socioeconomic and on Poverty,” the expansive racial identities are social welfare legislation often a central topic introduced in the 1960s “With this bill, we reaffirm that since these factors as a part of the Johnson have the greatest fundamentally American ideal­—that administration’s larger impact on the type of every child, regardless of race, income, legislative reform program education a student background, the zip code where they live, known as the Great receives. deserves the chance to make of their lives Society.6 In an attempt to

ESEA can best what they will.” map out what be described as having caused children to “accomplished two struggle academically, primary goals: distributing researchers in the —President Barack Obama, December 10, 2015 money to students in 1960s focused on the poverty through the home environments vehicle of Title 1 and of disadvantaged directing grants to state families, especially Moreover, children education agencies to build families of color.2 This view was are only able to receive the capacity, resulting in a steady sometimes summarized as a education afforded to them by growth in federal involvement theory of “cultural deprivation.” the socioeconomic situations in education.”7 ESEA established Its proponents argued that of their parents. In 1965, at a norm of increased federal impoverished families lacked the the beginning of Head Start, involvement allowing mayors, skills required to instill a love a program which provides governors, state legislators, of learning in their children, free resources and services U.S. Secretaries of Education, fueling a gap between the to children from low-income and presidents to later play a BACKGROUND INFORMATION, EDUCATIONAL EQUITY AND ESSA

actual needs of poorer families and what researchers believed that they needed.3 Instead of supporting policy that would ameliorate the living conditions of these families and adjusting the system to better support the needs of these individuals, this view served to fuel long-standing stereotypes that blamed poor families for their struggles.4

1 Growe, Roslin, and Paula S. Montgomery. “Educational Equity in America: Is Education the Great Equalizer?.” Professional Educator 25.2 (2003), page 23.

2 Raz, Mical. “Perspective | What We Get Wrong about the Poverty Gap in Education.” The Washington Post, WP Company, page 1.

3 Ibid, page 1.

4 Ibid, page 1.

5 Kirp, David L. “How to Break the Poverty Cycle.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 27 Nov. 2019, page 2.

6 Paul, Catherine A. “Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965.” Social Welfare History Project, Virginia Commonwealth University, 29 Apr. 2018, page 1; “War on Poverty.” Encyclopedia Britannica, Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc., page 1.

7 Egalite, Anna J., Lance D. Fusarelli, and Bonnie C. Fusarelli. “Will decentralization affect educational inequity? Every student Succeeds Act.” Educational Administration Quarterly 53.5 (2017), page 761.

23

more active role in shaping educational policy.8 As illustrated by history, alleviating social issues and derailing the cycle of poverty can be best achieved by a combination of public investment as well as a renewed dedication to racial integration.9 Segregation in the United States reached its peak in 1968 and declined through about 1980 before plateauing.10 In other words, “it has been four decades

Source: Unsplash

since progress toward more integrated schools flat-lined.”11 Integration has the potential to help equalize the playing field. Even though the practice has been abandoned for years, integration gave Black children in newly desegregated schools a boost and these students benefited the longer they learned in these integrated

school systems.12 Those opposed to renewing the commitment to desegregating America’s public schools operate under the assumption that racially divided schools are a relic of the past, long dissipated after calls for equality during the Civil Rights Movement. But, in reality, educational outcomes for minority children are much more a function of the unequal educational opportunities afforded to them,like skilled teachers and quality curriculum, than they are a function of race.13 Despite clear differences in funding, curriculum, class sizes, and teacher quality between disadvantaged students and privileged ones, the prevailing view remains that if students do not achieve, it is their own fault.14 Although education policy seems to sit on the policy agenda indefinitely, there are certain historical events that give it a seat in the front row.

Johnson’s Great Society and school desegregation efforts of the Civil Rights Movement, which culminated in the 1954 case of Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, were historical moments that triggered a national conversation around education equity. While other monumental events set

the tone historically, these two moments are notable instances of altering the educational fabric of the United States by highlighting the importance of equity.15 COMPARING THE NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND ACT AND THE EVERY STUDENT SUCCEEDS ACT The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) had many lives before its eventual signage into law by former President Barack Obama in 2015.

Originally passed in 1965 as the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), the law was intended to demonstrate the federal government’s commitment to “quality and equality” in education.16 After reformulating ESEA as the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) in 2001, former President George W. Bush added accountability procedures to the act to help states level the playing field for students living and learning in poverty.17 NCLB represented the federal government’s most dramatic attempt at influencing the elementary and secondary public school policymaking terrain.18 NCLB endeavored to attach strings to federal funding under the Elementary and

8 Ibid, page 761.

9 Kirp, David L. “How to Break the Poverty Cycle.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 27 Nov. 2019, page 2.

10 Reardon, Sean F., et al. “Is separate still unequal? New evidence on school segregation and racial academic achievement gaps.” (2019), page 2.

11 Startz, Dick. “The Achievement Gap in Education: Racial Segregation versus Segregation by Poverty.” Brookings, Brookings, 17 Jan. 2020, page 2.

12 Kirp, David L. “How to Break the Poverty Cycle.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 27 Nov. 2019, page 2.

13 Darling-Hammond, Linda. “Unequal Opportunity: Race and Education.” Brookings, Brookings, 28 July 2016, page 1.

14 Ibid, page 2.

15 “Education Policy in the United States.” Ballotpedia, pages 3-4.

16 Turner, Cory. “No child left behind: What worked, what didn’t.” NPR Ed (2015), page 1.

17 Turner, Cory. “No child left behind: What worked, what didn’t.” NPR Ed (2015), page 2.

18 Heise, Michael. “From no child left behind to every student succeeds: Back to a future for education federalism.” Colum. L. Rev. 117 (2017), page 1859.

24

Secondary Education Act by requiring states to annually test high school students and third to eighth grade students.19 Then, these scores would be tracked by “race and ethnicity, low-income status, disability status, and status as English-language learners.” 20 If students in any one of these subgroups failed to meet specific scores on state administered tests, the entire school would be at risk of shutting down.21 This law set a goal for all students in the country to achieve specific reading and math proficiency levels by 2014, but this goal was so impractical that the Obama administration had to grant most states a waiver from meeting NCLB’s targets.22 The Every Student Succeeds Act attempted to respond to popular backlash surrounding NCLB’s dependence on standardized testing and punitive sanctions.23 While ESSA preserved federally mandated standardized testing, the punitive consequences for states and districts that underperformed were removed.24 ESSA also prevents the “government from imposing

academic requirements like the Common Core.”25 The requirement that all children must become proficient in reading and math by a certain date was removed from the rewrite.26 Moreover, ESSA required states to specify their procedures for holding schools and districts accountable for meeting state educational standards.27 This more statecentered approach did not exist under NCLB, which ensured that one accountability structure was applied to all of the states.28 Furthermore, under NCLB, school performance was determined by a measure of Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP).29 According to a Congressional Research Service Report on the act, AYP is determined by three main components: student academic achievement on required reading and mathematics assessments administered by the state, student participation rates in assessments, and performance concerning another academic indicator like graduation rates for high schoolers.30 Schools

must fulfill all three components for all students, including those in specific subgroups, to meet AYP standards.31 NCLB differentiated students into subgroups based on variables like their race, disability, and socioeconomic status and if one group underperformed, this meant that the entire school was considered underperforming even if the school may have been high performing previously.32 As Donald C. Baumer and Carl E. Van Horn explained, “NCLB allowed states to design the standards students and schools would be judged against, and this scenario created a natural incentive for some schools to water down their standards to meet AYP benchmarks.” 33 NCLB penalized states with rigorous testing standards and rewarded those with more relaxed ones.34 For example, in 2005 Mississippi had the highest percentage of proficient fourth graders in the nation at 89 percent, but the state ranked at the bottom when students took the more demanding National Assessment of Educational

19 Quinton, Sophie. “The Lessons of No Child Left Behind.” The Atlantic, Atlantic Media Company, 24 Apr. 2015, page 1.

20 Quinton, Sophie. “The Lessons of No Child Left Behind.” The Atlantic, Atlantic Media Company, 24 Apr. 2015, page 1.

21 Ibid, page 1.

22 Ibid, page 1.

23 Black, Derek W. “Abandoning the federal role in education: Every Student Succeeds Act.” California Law Review 105.5 (2017), page 1309.

24 Davis, Julie Hirschfeld. “President Obama Signs into Law a Rewrite of No Child Left Behind.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 11 Dec. 2015, page 1.

25 Ibid, page 1.

26 Ibid, page 2.

27 Dynarski, Mark. “State Plans under the Every Student Succeeds Act: Where Is the Research?” Brookings, Brookings, 1 Nov. 2017, page 1.

28 Dynarski, Mark. “State Plans under the Every Student Succeeds Act: Where Is the Research?” Brookings, Brookings, 1 Nov. 2017, page 1.

29 Turner, Cory. “No child left behind: What worked, what didn’t.” NPR Ed (2015), page 5.

30 “Reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act: Highlights of the Every Student Succeeds Act” Congressional Research Service. December 4, 2015, page 11.

31 Ibid, page 11.

32 Ibid, page 5.

33 Baumer, Donald C., and Carl E. Van Horn. Politics and public policy: Strategic actors and policy domains. CQ Press, 2013, page 249.

34 Ibid, page 249.

25

Progress test with only 18 percent of fourth graders being proficient in reading.35 ESSA eliminated the AYP measure and replaced it with more specific indicators used to measure school performance.36 In public high schools, for example, academic achievement is measured by reading and math proficiency as well as student growth on the assessments for public high schools.37 Under ESSA, states must still identify achievement gaps by subgroups, as mentioned previously, but they are no longer required to follow prescribed remedial measures.38 ESSA is considered by many to be a new era of educational policy in the United States. In the process of dramatically reducing the federal role in shaping education policy and returning power to the states to design education systems, ESSA “explicitly reverses the decades-long federal effort to more tightly couple the U.S. educational system.”39 However, civil rights groups are worried that restricting federal authority to

intervene in states and districts means forfeiting what has been a necessary tool in decades past to rectify racial discrimination in the nation’s divided school districts.40 Leslie Proll, the director of policy at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, states that the original purpose of NCLB was to protect the nation’s most vulnerable students, and while “some states will do the right thing, and that [is] great, others may not, and therein lies

Source: Unsplash

the problem.”41 Her group and other civil rights organizations recommend utilizing federal authority to set education parameters for states.42 How states handle the newfound authority vested in them by this act will determine whether or

not ESSA becomes an enduring shift in education governance and education federalism or if it simply remains a reversal of a decades-long trend of increasing federal control over education systems.43 Crafting legislation capable of winning broad political support can lack necessary specifications and undermine the act’s effectiveness when implemented.44 In the case of ESSA, the law strikes a better balance than NCLB when it comes to the role of the federal government in administering education achievement standards.

If the issues of NCLB had been left to fester, they could have undermined efforts to hold schools and educators accountable for their performance nationwide.45 An essential aspect of ESSA is that it applies the most important lesson learned from NCLB: “the federal government has a constructive role in ensuring transparency about student achievement and shining a bright light on lingering inequalities, but it is poorly positioned to dictate the details

35 Ibid, page 249.

36 “Reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act: Highlights of the Every Student Succeeds Act” Congressional Research Service. December 4, 2015, page 11.

37 Ibid, page 11.

38 Egalite, Anna J., Lance D. Fusarelli, and Bonnie C. Fusarelli. “Will decentralization affect educational inequity? Every student Succeeds Act.” Educational Administration Quarterly 53.5 (2017), page 765.

39 Egalite, Anna J., Lance D. Fusarelli, and Bonnie C. Fusarelli. “Will decentralization affect educational inequity? Every student Succeeds Act.” Educational Administration Quarterly 53.5 (2017), page 757.

40 Davis, Julie Hirschfeld. “President Obama Signs into Law a Rewrite of No Child Left Behind.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 11 Dec. 2015, page 2.

41 Ibid, page 3.

42 Ibid, page 3.

43 West, Martin R. “From Evidence-Based Programs to an Evidence-Based System: Opportunities under the Every Student Succeeds Act.” Brookings, Brookings, 28 July 2016, page 1.

44 Hess, Frederick M., and Max Eden, eds. The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA): What it means for schools, systems, and states.

Harvard Education Press, 2021, Chapter 5.

45 Ibid, Chapter 5.

26

of states’ efforts to improve their schools.”46 While ESSA ameliorated the role that the federal government is meant to fill, it fundamentally maintains a testdriven, top-down, remediate and penalize law.47 Instead of federal mandates, states are required to implement many of the same features—the end result, that the same tests in the same grades are still being administered, remains.48 There are other areas where ESSA falls short. Shifting implementation control to the states may strain capacity since some states want additional federal guidance and state assessments are currently in flux so ESSA’s language may soon be out of date.49 IMPLICATIONS OF THE EVERY STUDENT SUCCEEDS ACT There was a wide range of goals for implementing ESSA in state education systems.50 Some states decided on fixed goals that aim for all students, including specific sub-groups like low-income students to reach the same target.51 Also according to Klein, Kansas aims to have 75 percent of all students and students in each subgroup scoring proficient on state tests by 2029–30. States

pursuing this route include New York, Mississippi, Rhode island, Hawaii, Arkansas, Ohio, Minnesota, South Dakota, Virginia, Wyoming, and West Virginia.

Other states pursued relative goals, meaning students who are behind do not have to meet the same end goal as students who start further ahead.

For example, Pennsylvania aims to reduce by half the percent of students and students within each subgroup scoring below proficient on tests by 2029–30. States in this category are California, Kentucky, Alaska, Georgia, Indiana, Iowa, Maryland, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Carolina, Utah, and Wisconsin. Along with differing implementation goals, states also had differing implementation timelines.

Iowa, for example, expects growth of one-half to one percentage points annually for schools and subgroups in a five year period while other states have timelines spanning more than a decade like Georgia, for instance, which is aiming for yearly three percent improvements in proficiency rates over 15 years.52 While ESSA’s goals were not adjusted, because they already allowed states so much more

flexibility, they were measured using the metric of “evidencebased” school improvement.

This method differs from the NCLB requirement that improvement policy and practice should be grounded in “scientifically-based research.”53 Evidence-based and scientificallybased seem like interchangeable terms, but they refer to vastly different practices. Essentially, the evidence-based approach encourages state and district leaders to examine multiple tiers of evidence as well as analyze the strength of the evidence in decision making.54 Although fulfilling ESSA requirements varies based on the specific education plan of a state, this process successfully replaced NCLB’s one-size-fitsall approach. While the success of the law depends on which political aisle one stands on, ESSA has succeeded in providing states with more realistic academic achievement goals to attain as well as severing the tight grip of the Department of Education on state education plans.

The reduced power of the federal government in this policy realignment, however, must be considered through the lens of civil rights groups and activists.

The elimination of overbearing

46 Ibid, Chapter 5.

47 Mathis, William J., and Tina M. Trujillo. “Lessons from NCLB for the Every Student Succeeds Act.” National Education Policy Center (2016), page 7.

48 Ibid, page 7.

49 Rentner, D. S., M. Frizzel, and N. Kober. “States reflect on year one implementation of ESSA: Planning for progress.” Center on Education Policy, The George Washington University (2017), pages 2-4.

50 Klein, Alyson, et al. “A Guide to State ESSA Plans: Goals, Teacher Quality, and More.” Education Week, Education Week, 12 Dec. 2020, page 7.

51 Ibid, page 7.

52 Ibid, pages 7–8.

53 Fleischman, Steve, Caitlin Scott, and Scott Sargrad. “Better Evidence, Better Choices, Better Schools: State Supports for EvidenceBased School Improvement and the Every Student Succeeds Act. Series on Implementation of the Every Student Succeeds Act.” Center for American Progress (2016), page 1.

54 Ibid, page 1.

27

national achievement standards is viewed by many as one of the main successes of ESSA, but these organizations and individuals are rightly concerned with meeting the needs of underserved student groups.

There are aspects from NCLB that have not been modified under ESSA that need to be addressed to ensure education equity. For example, several policies for students with disabilities remain in ESSA that have not been fairly altered from NCLB.55 States still are required to separate and report the performance of students with disabilities on state tests, and ESSA places a one percent cap on the percentage of all students who can take alternate assessments intended for students with severe cognitive disabilities.56 The restriction in the number of students allowed to take alternate assessment means only 10 percent of students with disabilities will be accommodated.57 In order to improve ESSA’s performance, the law must be amended to not be a hindrance to students from underserved communities.

The loss of federal power is a severe blow for some advocates. For the first time in 50 years, the federal government does not have the ability to

induce prompt improvements in student achievement and to demand equal resources for disadvantaged students.58 ESSA operates under the presumption that the states will take initiative to improve educational opportunities for underserved students with little encouragement from the federal government.59 There are some that believe that ESSA essentially commits to equality nominally without having the operating procedure to substantiate this claim. Giving states wide latitude on student performance, accountability, and school reform simply opens Pandora’s box to 50 disparate state systems—none of which ensure equality.60 By reversing the federal government’s role in education, “ESSA moves

Source: Unsplash

education in a direction that was unthinkable just a few short years ago: no definite equity

provisions, no demands for specific student achievement, and no enforcement mechanism to prompt states to consistently pursue equity or achievement.”61 There is no consensus as to whether or not the Every Student Succeeds Act is a symbol of progress. ESSA represents a renewed commitment, or at least intention, to better the life outcomes of underserved and disadvantaged students.

Previous laws were designed to try to ensure no children were left behind by pushing them to perform at the level of their peers, but now there is an opportunity to discard this mentality in favor of a system that allows for additional flexibility and more compassion for students.

In the context of a world scarred by COVID-19, this educational legislation is now tasked with standing the test of time. Former President George W. Bush declared a national crisis in education and then persuaded Congress to enact major education policy reform, resulting in No Child Left Behind.62 It would be understandable if current President Biden decided to follow a similar route and prioritize education policy during a time when the nation’s schools are being tested unlike

55 Samuels, Christina A. “Spec. Ed. Groups Dig in on ESSA: Advocates for those with Disabilities Push to Ensure the Interests of such Students are Well-Represented in State Plans.” Education Week, vol. 36, no. 16, 2017, page. 33.

56 Ibid, page 33.

57 Ibid, page 33.

58 Black, Derek W. “Abandoning the federal role in education: Every Student Succeeds Act.” California Law Review 105.5 (2017), page 1309.

59 Ibid, page 1309.

60 Ibid, page 1309.

61 Ibid, page 1312.

62 Baumer, Donald C., and Carl E. Van Horn. Politics and public policy: Strategic actors and policy domains. CQ Press, 2013, page, page 171.

28

ever before. The Every Student Succeeds Act pushes the needle towards achieving a more equitable future for the United States. Although this political direction may need to be reserved in the face of national emergency, its success hinges on bettering the future of every student across the country.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Baumer, Donald C., and Carl E. Van Horn. “Politics and Public Policy: Strategic Actors and Policy Domains.” CQ Press. 2014. page 249. https://sk.sagepub.com/cqpress/politics-and-public-policy.

Black, Derek W. “Abandoning the federal role in education: Every Student Succeeds Act.” California Law Review 105.5 (2017). https://www.californialawreview.org/print/2-abandoning-the-federalrole-in-education/.

Darling-Hammond, Linda. “Unequal Opportunity: Race and Education.” Brookings. March 1, 1998. https://www.brookings.edu/articles/unequal-opportunity-race-and-education/.

Davis, Julie Hirschfeld. “President Obama Signs into Law a Rewrite of No Child Left Behind.” The New York Times. December 11, 2015. https://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/11/us/politics/presidentobama-signs-into-law-a-rewrite-of-no-child-left-behind.html.

Dynarski, Mark. “State Plans under the Every Student Succeeds Act: Where Is the Research?” Brookings, Brookings, November 1, 2017. https://www.brookings.edu/research/state-plans-under-the-everystudent-succeeds-act-where-is-the-research/.

“Education policy in the United States.” Ballotpedia. Accessed on May 7, 2022. https://ballotpedia.org/ Education_policy_in_the_United_States.

Egalite, Anna J., Lance D. Fusarelli, and Bonnie C. Fusarelli. “Will decentralization affect educational inequity? Every Student Succeeds Act.” Educational Administration Quarterly 53.5 (2017), page 761.

Egalite, Anna J., Lance D. Fusarelli, and Bonnie C. Fusarelli. “Will decentralization affect educational inequity? Every student Succeeds Act.” Educational Administration Quarterly 53.5 (2017), page 765. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0013161X17735869?journalCode=eaqa.

Fleischman, Steve, Caitlin Scott, and Scott Sargrad. “Better Evidence, Better Choices, Better Schools: State Supports for Evidence-Based School Improvement and the Every Student Succeeds Act. Series on Implementation of the Every Student Succeeds Act.” Center for American Progress (August 2016). https://cdn.americanprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/30141500/ EvidenceESSA-report.pdf.

Growe, Roslin, and Paula S. Montgomery. “Educational Equity in America: Is Education the Great Equalizer?” Professional Educator 25.2 (2003), page 23. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ EJ842412.pdf.

Heise, Michael. “From no child left behind to every student succeeds: Back to a future for education federalism.” Colum. L. Rev. 117 (2017). https://scholarship.law.cornell.edu/cgi/viewcontent. cgi?article=2722&context=facpub.

Hess, Frederick M., and Max Eden. “The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA): What it means for schools, systems, and states.” Harvard Education Press. February 23, 2017, Chapter 5. https:// www.aei.org/research-products/book/the-every-student-succeeds-act-what-it-means-for-schools29

systems-and-states/.

Kirp, David L. “How to Break the Poverty Cycle.” The New York Times. November 27, 2019. https:// www.nytimes.com/2019/11/27/opinion/how-to-break-the-poverty-cycle.html.

Klein, Alyson, Stephen Sawchuk, and Andrew Ujifusa. “A Guide to State Essa Plans: Goals, Teacher Quality, and More.” Education Week. December 12, 2020. https://www.edweek.org/policypolitics/a-guide-to-state-essa-plans-goals-teacher-quality-and-more.

Mathis, William J., and Tina M. Trujillo. “Lessons from NCLB for the Every Student Succeeds Act.” National Education Policy Center (2016), page 7. https://nepc.colorado.edu/publication/ lessons-from-NCLB. Paul, Catherine A. “Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965.” Social Welfare History Project, Virginia Commonwealth University, April 29, 2018. https://socialwelfare.library.vcu.edu/ programs/education/elementary-and-secondary-education-act-of-1965/.

Quinton, Sophie. “The Lessons of No Child Left Behind.” The Atlantic. April 24, 2015. https://www. theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/04/the-lessons-of-no-child-left-behind/431970/.

Raz, Mical. “Perspective | What We Get Wrong about the Poverty Gap in Education.” The Washington Post. WP Company. July 2, 2018. www.washingtonpost.com/news /made-byhistory / wp/2018/07/02/what-we-get-wrong- about-the-poverty-gap-in-education/.

Reardon, Sean F., et al. “Is separate still unequal? New evidence on school segregation and racial academic achievement gaps.” September 2021. page 2. https://cepa.stanford.edu/sites/default/ files/wp19-06-v092021.pdf.

“Reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act: Highlights of the Every Student Succeeds Act” Congressional Research Service. December 4, 2015. https://crsreports.congress. gov/product/pdf/R/R44297/13.

Rentner, Diane Stark, Mattew Frizzel, and Nancy Kober. “States reflect on year one implementation of ESSA: Planning for progress.” Center on Education Policy. The George Washington University (2017), pages 2-4. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED583013.pdf.

Startz, Dick. “The Achievement Gap in Education: Racial Segregation versus Segregation

by Poverty.” Brookings, January 17, 2020. https://www.brookings.edu/blog/brown-centerchalkboard/2020/01/20/the-achievement-gap-in-education-racial-segregation-versussegregation-by-poverty/.

Turner, Cory. “No child left behind: What worked, what didn’t.” WAMU 88.5- American University Radio. October 27, 2015. https://wamu.org/story/15/10/27/no_child_left_behind_what_ worked_what_didnt/.

“War on Poverty.” Encyclopedia Britannica. Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc. Accessed on May 7, 2022. https://www.britannica.com/topic/War-on-Poverty.

West, Martin R. “From Evidence-Based Programs to an Evidence-Based System: Opportunities under the Every Student Succeeds Act.” Brookings. February 5 2016. https://www.brookings.edu/ research/from-evidence-based-programs-to-an-evidence-based-system-opportunities-under-theevery-student-succeeds-act/.

30

THE SPARKS OF CHANGE: WHY THE PROTESTS OF GEORGE FLOYD ARE A TURNING POINT IN AMERICAN HISTORY

by Anniyah Shelton INTRODUCTION “I can’t breathe,” were the last words that were cried out by a Black man named George Floyd in the Summer of 2020.

After Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin killed George Floyd by pressing his knee into Floyd’s neck, more than 4,700 protests erupted across the United States from the first protest in Minneapolis on May 26th until July 3rd, 2020. 1 In the beginning of July 2020, at least 1,360 counties or more than 40 percent of counties in the U.S. had a Black Lives Matter protest for George Floyd. Contrary to previous Black Lives Matter protests, 95 percent of counties that protested for George Floyd at the time were majority white.2 Additionally, surveys conducted in New York, Washington D.C., and Los Angeles during the Summer of 2020 indicated that the majority of protestors were white.3 Experts have observed an increase in the number of white protesters that attended the protests for George Floyd

compared to the number of white protestors of the Civil Rights Movement.4 The incredible amount of white participation in the protests for George Floyd displays how this movement was unprecedented in American history. The diversity and size of the protests, the media’s focus during the protests, and the COVID-19 pandemic were all factors in amplifying the 2020 protests for George Floyd and transforming this social movement into a turning point in U.S. history.

largest and one of the most diverse movements in American history.5 Figure I represents protestor data that was collected from the beginning of June 2020 until the beginning of July 2020 in Los Angeles, New York City, and Washington D.C.6 According to the data, 54 percent of protestors were white, 21 percent of protestors were Black, seven percent of protestors were Latinx, 11

DIVERSITY AND SIZE OF THE PROTESTS The protests of George Floyd have been named the

Figure I: Diversity of the Protests in the United States Source: Brookings

1 The New York Times, “How George Floyd Died, and What Happened Next,” The New York Times, November 1, 2021, https://www.nytimes.com/article/george-floyd.html.

2 Larry Buchanan, Quoctrung Bui, and Jugal K. Patel, “Black Lives Matter May Be the Largest Movement in U.S. History,” The New York Times, July 3, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/07/03/us/george-floyd-protests-crowd-size.html.

3 Amy Harman and Sabrina Tavernise, “One Big Difference About George Floyd Protests: Many White Faces,” The New York Times, June 17, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/12/us/george-floyd-white-protesters.html.

4 Larry Buchanan, Quoctrung Bui, and Jugal K. Patel, “Black Lives Matter May Be the Largest Movement in U.S. History,” The New York Times, July 3, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/07/03/us/george-floyd-protests-crowd-size.html.

5 Dana R. Fisher, “The Diversity of the Recent Black Lives Matter Protests Is a Good Sign for Racial Equity,” Brookings, July 8, 2020, https://www.brookings.edu/blog/how-we-rise/2020/07/08/the-diversity-of-the-recent-black-lives-matter-protests-is-a-good-sign-for-racialequity/.

6 Dana R. Fisher, “The Diversity of the Recent Black Lives Matter Protests Is a Good Sign for Racial Equity,” Brookings, July 8, 2020, https://www.brookings.edu/blog/how-we-rise/2020/07/08/the-diversity-of-the-recent-black-lives-matter-protests-is-a-good-sign-for-racialequity/.

31

percent of protestors were Asian or a Pacific Islander, and eight percent of protestors were multiracial.7 Not only are these protests observed by experts to be more ethnically and racially diverse than previous progressive movements during the Trump presidency, experts found the protests for George Floyd to be more diverse than the March for Racial Justice in 2017, previous Black Lives Matter movements, and the Civil Rights Movement of the mid-20th century.8 This data clearly demonstrates how racially diverse these protests were at their peak.

Similarly, a Pew Research Center study showed that those attending a protest for George Floyd were more diverse and younger than the American population altogether. While 11 percent of America is Black, 17 percent of those who attended protests in early June 2020 were Black. Comparatively, 64 percent of all US adults are white while 46 percent of the people who attended protests that focused on racial equality in early June 2020 were white.

While the protesters were certainly diverse, they were also young with 41 percent of the protestors being between

the ages of 18 and 29.9 The protests for George Floyd generated more active white participation in comparison to the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s and even translated to substantive and meaningful change across the country when recent social movements have yielded minimal results.10 With an unprecedented level of white participation in the protests and demographics that are more diverse than the American population overall, the protests for George Floyd were arguably some of the most diverse social movements in American history.

According to early June 2020 polls, the size of the protests for George Floyd ranged from 15 to 26 million people in the U.S.11 These numbers far outnumber the highly organized Women’s March of 2017 and Civil Rights marches. While the Women’s March of 2017 had a turnout of about three to five million in a single day, the Black Lives Matter protests for George Floyd would collectively be five times as large according to some polls. These numbers make the protests for George Floyd the largest movement in American history, displaying the sheer scope of these protests

in the Summer of 2020.12 Most importantly, a social movement that is the largest in American history established by a coalition as diverse as America indicates a universal agreement across racial and ethnic differences that Americans are demanding a country that is more fair and promotes justice for all of its citizens.

SOCIAL MEDIA AND MAINSTREAM MEDIA COVERAGE OF THE PROTESTS Social media and traditional news organizations reveal other factors that sparked the frustration and demand for change evident in the 2020 protests for George Floyd. According to a Pew study graphed in Figure 2, #BlackLivesMatter has been used about 47.8 million times on Twitter, amounting to 3.7 million times per day between May 26 and June 7. The increase in hashtags is directly connected to the timing of George Floyd’s death with #BlackLivesMatter passing 1 million tweets after his death. On May 28, #BlackLivesMatter received a groundbreaking 8.8 million

7 Dana R. Fisher, “The Diversity of the Recent Black Lives Matter Protests Is a Good Sign for Racial Equity,” Brookings, July 8, 2020, https://www.brookings.edu/blog/how-we-rise/2020/07/08/the-diversity-of-the-recent-black-lives-matter-protests-is-a-good-sign-for-racialequity/.

8 Dana R. Fisher, “The Diversity of the Recent Black Lives Matter Protests Is a Good Sign for Racial Equity,” Brookings, July 8, 2020, https://www.brookings.edu/blog/how-we-rise/2020/07/08/the-diversity-of-the-recent-black-lives-matter-protests-is-a-good-sign-for-racialequity/.

9 Amanda Barroso and Rachel Minkin. “Recent Protest Attendees Are More Racially and Ethnically Diverse, Younger than Americans Overall,” Pew Research Center, Pew Research Center, August 18, 2020, https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/06/24/recentprotest-attendees-are-more-racially-and-ethnically-diverse-younger-than-americans-overall/.

10 Douglas McAdam, “We’ve Never Seen Protests Like These Before,” Jacobin, June 20, 2020, https://jacobinmag.com/2020/06/ george-floyd-protests-black-lives-matter-riots-demonstrations.

11 Larry Buchanan, Quoctrung Bui, and Jugal K. Patel, “Black Lives Matter May Be the Largest Movement in U.S. History,” The New York Times, July 3, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/07/03/us/george-floyd-protests-crowd-size.html.

12 Larry Buchanan, Quoctrung Bui, and Jugal K. Patel, “Black Lives Matter May Be the Largest Movement in U.S. History,” The New York Times, July 3, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/07/03/us/george-floyd-protests-crowd-size.html.

32

tweets, making this the highest number of Tweets containing #BlackLivesMatter in a day.13 The number of #BlackLivesMatter hashtags shows the amount of engagement that Black Lives Matter amassed after the death of George Floyd and thus the amount of awareness raised about issues affecting people of color in America.

Another example of online activism is Blackout Tuesday. This campaign was

pioneered by music artists on Twitter to motivate more people to reflect on the killing of George Floyd. People posted black squares on both Twitter and Instagram with the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter. Blackout Tuesday was a successful method for celebrities with large online platforms to raise awareness about police brutality and racism in America. Tiffany Trump, daughter of President Donald Trump, and Mick Jagger posted

Figure II: #BlackLivesMatter surges on Twitter after George Floyd’s death Source: Pew Research Center

a black screen on their social media accounts condemning the social injustices happening to Black Americans. Mick Jagger stated, “It is heartbreaking to see America tearing itself apart again over issues of race.”14 In another Pew Research Center study, it was found that Americans were following the protests of George Floyd in June 2020 just as closely as the COVID-19 outbreak.15 While 46 percent of Americans watched the COVID-19 outbreak “very closely,” about 42 percent of Americans say they watched the 2020 George Floyd protests “very closely.”16 The numbers indicate that the protests for George Floyd had just as much media coverage as the COVID-19 pandemic.

There has also been a difference in opinion about how much media coverage focused on the nonviolent protests or the acts of violence around the protests for George Floyd. While about 51 percent of Americans said that the nonviolent protests for George Floyd received too little coverage, 44 percent of Americans believe that the destruction surrounding the George Floyd protests received too much coverage. Lastly, a majority of Black Americans believe that news coverage has been covering the decision to prosecute the officers involved

13 Monica Anderson et al., “#Blacklivesmatter Surges on Twitter after George Floyd’s Death,” Pew Research Center (Pew Research Center, November 15, 2021), https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/06/10/blacklivesmatter-surges-on-twitter-after-george-floydsdeath/.

14 Gael Fashingbauer Cooper, “Blackout Tuesday: Protest against George Floyd’s Death Spreads Far beyond Music,” CNET (CNET, June 2, 2020), https://www.cnet.com/news/blackout-tuesday-protest-against-george-floyds-death-spreads-far-beyond-music/.

15 Amy Mitchell et al., “Majorities of Americans Say News Coverage of George Floyd Protests Has Been Good, Trump’s Public Message Wrong,” Pew Research Center’s Journalism Project (Pew Research Center, August 20, 2020), https://www.pewresearch.org/ journalism/2020/06/12/majorities-of-americans-say-news-coverage-of-george-floyd-protests-has-been-good-trumps-public-message-wrong/.

16 Amy Mitchell et al., “Majorities of Americans Say News Coverage of George Floyd Protests Has Been Good, Trump’s Public Message Wrong,” Pew Research Center’s Journalism Project (Pew Research Center, August 20, 2020), https://www.pewresearch.org/ journalism/2020/06/12/majorities-of-americans-say-news-coverage-of-george-floyd-protests-has-been-good-trumps-public-message-wrong/.

33

in George Floyd’s death and the larger issue of race in America too little.17 Clearly, Americans were following the George Floyd Protests of 2020 closely as social media played an outsized role in spreading awareness online and news organizations failed to correctly cover what Americans wanted to witness. The outcry of support on social media and the type of coverage desired by Americans on the George Floyd Protests confirms that many Americans deeply cared about the protests and simultaneously advocated for change that would improve the livelihoods for people of color.

IMPACT OF COVID-19 ON THE BLACK COMMUNITY COVID-19 has impacted people of color, specifically Black communities, much different than white communities in America. The U.S Census Bureau of Labor Statistics documented in Figure 3 how Black communities experienced more unemployment than white communities during the pandemic.18 The pandemic has shown the systemic issues that Black communities have to face on a daily basis. Even before the pandemic, Black people were “more likely to be poor, less

Figure III: Unemployment Rate, by Race: 2020-2021 Source: Current Population Survey, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics

likely to have health insurance and more likely to work in the front-line jobs that put them at risk of both infection and unemployment during the pandemic.”19 During the pandemic, the US Census Bureau found that Black people were more likely to face job loss, food insecurity, financial instability, and more anxiety. The combination of these factors has led to Black people not being able to pay their rent and 11.1 percent of Black people not having enough food to eat compared to white people.20 Overall, Black

communities were found to have struggled more financially, mentally, and physically than white communities during the pandemic.21 The protests for George Floyd were a culmination of Black communities facing police brutality, racism, and a greater effect of the pandemic than white communities. After disproportionately suffering from a litany of dilemmas stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic, Black communities and people of color used the protests for George Floyd as a pivot in American history

17 Amy Mitchell et al., “Majorities of Americans Say News Coverage of George Floyd Protests Has Been Good, Trump’s Public Message Wrong,” Pew Research Center’s Journalism Project (Pew Research Center, August 20, 2020), https://www.pewresearch.org/ journalism/2020/06/12/majorities-of-americans-say-news-coverage-of-george-floyd-protests-has-been-good-trumps-public-message-wrong/.

18 U.S. Census Bureau, “Covid-19 Pandemic Hit Black Households Harder than White Households, Even When Pre-Pandemic SocioEconomic Disparities Are Taken into Account,” Census.gov, October 8, 2021, https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2021/07/howpandemic-affected-black-and-white-households.html.

19 U.S. Census Bureau, “Covid-19 Pandemic Hit Black Households Harder than White Households, Even When Pre-Pandemic SocioEconomic Disparities Are Taken into Account,” Census.gov, October 8, 2021, https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2021/07/howpandemic-affected-black-and-white-households.html.

20 U.S. Census Bureau, “Covid-19 Pandemic Hit Black Households Harder than White Households, Even When Pre-Pandemic SocioEconomic Disparities Are Taken into Account,” Census.gov, October 8, 2021, https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2021/07/howpandemic-affected-black-and-white-households.html.

21 U.S. Census Bureau, “Covid-19 Pandemic Hit Black Households Harder than White Households, Even When Pre-Pandemic SocioEconomic Disparities Are Taken into Account,” Census.gov, October 8, 2021, https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2021/07/howpandemic-affected-black-and-white-households.html .

34

to demand a more equitable America.

CONCLUSION The impact of the George Floyd protests have made an imprint on the American people with the diversity of the movement showing a mutual realization of racism still persisting in America, the attention the protests garnered on social media and in news organizations focusing on different topics, and the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the Black community. We are already seeing the results of the protests for George Floyd too. In Austin, the city has successfully defunded the police.22 Austin

was able to cut $20 million from the police department and move $80 million more from the agency by rearranging certain responsibilities to other organizations.23 Police funds were reallocated to medical services for COVID-19, community medics, mental health resources, food access, and more.24 The change in the police budget even allowed the city council to buy two hotels and support homeless residents in the city.25 Austin was able to successfully implement the reallocations of funds to services in the community and many more states have been able to do the same. The

protests for George Floyd have been incredibly impactful and generated significant change, showing that Americans can make a difference through collective organization and advocacy.

22 The Guardian, “These US Cities Defunded Police: ‘We’re Transferring Money to the Community’,” The Guardian (Guardian News and Media, March 11, 2021), https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/mar/07/us-cities-defund-police-transferring-moneycommunity.

23 The Guardian, “These US Cities Defunded Police: ‘We’re Transferring Money to the Community’,” The Guardian (Guardian News and Media, March 11, 2021), https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/mar/07/us-cities-defund-police-transferring-moneycommunity.

24 The Guardian, “These US Cities Defunded Police: ‘We’re Transferring Money to the Community’,” The Guardian (Guardian News and Media, March 11, 2021), https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/mar/07/us-cities-defund-police-transferring-moneycommunity.

25 The Guardian, “These US Cities Defunded Police: ‘We’re Transferring Money to the Community’,” The Guardian (Guardian News and Media, March 11, 2021), https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/mar/07/us-cities-defund-police-transferring-moneycommunity.

35

BIBLIOGRAPHY Anderson, Monica, Michael Barthel, Andrew Perrin, and Emily A. Vogels. “#BlackLivesMatter Surges on Twitter after George Floyd’s Death.” Pew Research Center. June 10, 2020. https://www. pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/06/10/blacklivesmatter-surges-on-twitter-after-george-floydsdeath/.

Barroso, Amanda, and Rachel Minkin. “Recent Protest Attendees Are More Racially and Ethnically Diverse, Younger than Americans Overall.” Pew Research Center. June 24, 2020. https:// www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/06/24/recent-protest-attendees-are-more-racially-andethnically-diverse-younger-than-americans-overall/.

Buchanan, Larry, Quoctrung Bui, and Jugal K. Patel. “Black Lives Matter May Be the Largest Movement in U.S. History.” The New York Times. July 3, 2020. https://www.nytimes.com/ interactive/2020/07/03/us/george-floyd-protests-crowd-size.html.

Cooper, Gael Fashingbauer. “Blackout Tuesday: Protest against George Floyd’s Death Spreads Far beyond Music.” CNET. June 2, 2020. https://www.cnet.com/news/blackout-tuesday-protestagainst-george-floyds-death-spreads-far-beyond-music/.

Fisher, Dana R. “The Diversity of the Recent Black Lives Matter Protests Is a Good Sign for Racial Equity.” Brookings. July 8, 2020. https://www.brookings.edu/blog/how-we-rise/2020/07/08/ the-diversity-of-the-recent-black-lives-matter-protests-is-a-good-sign-for-racial-equity/.

Harman, Amy, and Sabrina Tavernise. “One Big Difference About George Floyd Protests: Many White Faces.” The New York Times. June 17, 2020. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/12/us/georgefloyd-white-protesters.html.

Levin, Sam. “These US Cities Defunded Police: ‘We’re Transferring Money to the Community.’” The Guardian. March 11, 2021. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/mar/07/us-citiesdefund-police-transferring-money-community.

McAdam, Douglas “We’ve Never Seen Protests Like These Before.” Jacobin. June 20, 2020. https:// jacobinmag.com/2020/06/george-floyd-protests-black-lives-matter-riots-demonstrations.

Mitchell, Amy, Mark Jurkowitz, J. Baxter Oliphant, and Elisa Shearer. “Majorities of Americans Say News Coverage of George Floyd Protests Has Been Good, Trump’s Public Message Wrong.”

Pew Research Center. August 20, 2020. https://www.pewresearch.org/journalism/2020/06/12/ majorities-of-americans-say-news-coverage-of-george-floyd-protests-has-been-good-trumps-publicmessage-wrong/.

Monte, Lindsay A., and Daniel J. Perez- Lopez. “Covid-19 Pandemic Hit Black Households Harder than White Households, Even When Pre-Pandemic Socio-Economic Disparities Are Taken into Account.” Census.gov. July 21, 2021. https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2021/07/howpandemic-affected-black-and-white-households.html.

The New York Times. “How George Floyd Died, and What Happened Next.” The New York Times.

November 1, 2021. https://www.nytimes.com/article/george-floyd.html.

36

HOW BEING IN THE MINORITY HAS BEEN DETRIMENTAL TO LATINO IMMIGRANTS IN ARIZONA

by Sarah Samdani INTRODUCTION Throughout the 21st century, the state of Arizona has been in a battle against undocumented immigrants. The US-Mexico border has become infamous for its high numbers of border patrol officers, with U.S. Border Patrol agents nearly doubling from Fiscal Year 2003 to Fiscal Year 2019.1 Some citizens in Arizona have also taken it upon themselves to form their own border “vigilante” groups. Numerous of these groups have gained support from lawmakers, with some legislators even becoming members.2 Injustices are occurring against immigrants at these borders and within the walls of Arizona’s jails and detention centers, with documented incidents of illegal physical and psychological abuse of immigrants.3 In this state, the opportunity for injustice can happen swiftly when a police officer has the ability to stop and question a person

simply for “looking foreign.” 4 Arizona is also home to heavilyarmed border vigilante groups that harass and intimidate immigrants into not voting or seeking necessary services. 5 But one must ask: is there not something wrong with a state system that continuously elects officials who openly advocate for discriminatory policies against the undocumented?

By discouraging political participation, passing unjust legislation that targets immigrants, and re-electing officials who pass legislation that disproportionately affects immigrants, voters in Arizona exclude immigrants from the democratic process and bolster the racial subordination and criminalization of Mexican immigrants.

THE DISCOURAGEMENT OF IMMIGRANT POLITICAL PARTICIPATION First, it is important to take the political demographics of Arizona into consideration.

One in eight Arizona residents is an immigrant.6 This means that in any given Arizona neighborhood, one can expect their child’s peer or local business owner to be an immigrant. Immigrant families also contribute billions of dollars to the Arizona economy.

In 2018, Arizona residents in immigrant-led households had $21.1 billion in spending power.7 Despite all this, immigrants in Arizona are viewed as outsiders, largely because of the political atmosphere of the state.

Republican voters of Arizona have prioritized immigration as “the most pressing issue,” even above jobs and the economy.8 As a result, Republican candidates are expected to put a spotlight on immigration policies because of its high importance to voters. 9 The official platform of the Republican Party in 2016 advocated for more security along the southern border with the construction of a border wall and less opportunity for illegal citizens. 10 By using employment

1 American Immigration Council, “The Cost of Immigration Enforcement and Border Security,” American Immigration Council, January 20, 2021, https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/research/the-cost-of-immigration-enforcement-and-border-security.

2 Adalgiza A. Nùñez. “Civilian Border Patrols: Activists, Vigilantes, or Agents of Government?,” Rutgers Law Review 60, no. 3 (2008): 797818, http://rutgerslawreview.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/Civilian-Border-Patrols-Activists-Vigilantes-or-Agents-of-Government.pdf.

3 Ibid.

4 ACLU, “Frequently Asked Questions about the Arizona Racial Profiling Law,” ACLU, (n.d.), https://www.aclu.org/other/frequentlyasked-questions-about-arizona-racial-profiling-law.

5 Felbab-Brown, Vanda and Elisa Norio. “What border vigilantes taught US right-wing armed groups,” The Brookings Institution, March 12, 2021, https://www.brookings.edu/articles/what-border-vigilantes-taught-us-right-wing-armed-groups/.

6 American Immigration Council, “Immigrants in Arizona,” American Immigration Council, August 6, 2020, https://www. americanimmigrationcouncil.org/research/immigrants-in-arizona.

7 Ibid.

8 Scott Bordow, “ASU alum, market research expert shares results from latest Arizona Public Opinion Pulse,” Arizona State University, February 11, 2022, https://news.asu.edu/20220210-arizona-impact-economy-immigration-top-issues-arizona-voters.

9 Ibid.

10 “Republican Platform 2016”, GOP Convention 2016 (2016): 25-6. https://prod-cdn-static.gop.com/media/documents/DRAFT_12_ FINAL%5B1%5D-ben_1468872234.pdf.

37

verification technology and implementing restrictive entitlement programs, illegal citizens would not have access to the same jobs and benefits as legal citizens. 11 The 2016 GOP platform itself asserted that “illegal immigration endangers everyone, exploits the taxpayers, and insults all who aspire to enter America legally…Our highest priority, therefore, must be to secure our borders and all ports of entry and to enforce our immigration laws.”12 Consequently, right-leaning voters and lawmakers in Arizona believe in increased defenses against immigrants who may be undocumented.

The voting habits and political decisions of Republicans in Arizona are relevant because of the significance of Republicanleaning voters and politicians in the state. In the past 10 presidential elections, Arizona voted Republican in eight out of the ten elections.13 At the state government level, both Arizona’s Senate and House are controlled by Republicans.14 There is a small gap between Democrats and Republicans in the state’s legislative branch, yet that gap is what ultimately makes a difference when it comes to the passing of bills that disproportionately impact Mexican immigrants.

If a new Republican border enforcement bill were to be introduced tomorrow to the Arizona state legislature, it would more than likely pass due to the greater number of rightleaning members. Because of their prominence in Arizonian politics and strong use of antiimmigrant rhetoric, such as “securing the border,” politicians contribute to broader public criminalization of immigrants.

Therefore, immigrant voters will more than likely be intimidated into not voting or altogether not participating in a political system that denounces them.

As such, a problem arises when the majority of citizens in Arizona ––non-immigrants–– hold particular views that place another group––immigrants, particularly Mexican immigrants ––in jeopardy. More than half of Arizona’s immigrants originated from Mexico,15 making Latino immigrants carry an even larger target on their backs. When non-immigrant voters who view immigrants as criminals step into the voting booth, they place immigrants’ rights and needs in danger. This is particularly seen when minority immigrant groups feel discouraged from voting or perceive that their vote does not matter because the majority group’s interests will prevail. Political theorist Alexis de Tocqueville addresses this

issue by stating that “majority rule is especially dangerous in the United States because its legal system bestows all power in the hands of those supported by majority vote.”16 The majority vote can be a gift that easily turns into a weapon, particularly when it falls into the wrong side’s hands. At the state level, Arizona’s right-leaning voters have again and again designated individuals who support prejudiced policies into power, while Democrats in the state’s House and Senate fail to make up the majority.

Proponents of Arizona’s strict immigration policies may argue that if elected officials are the problem, then Latinos should simply come out in large numbers and vote against these officials to elect them out. However, as an ethnic group, Latinos have been less likely to vote than the average American. This is partly attributed to the documented difficulties of prejudice and language barriers.17 Additionally, the threat of stricter border control and crackdowns on the undocumented discourages Latino political participation. Citizen-led groups like Minutemen and Ranch Rescue are prime examples of this, as these organizations are run by citizens who have “given themselves the task of

11 Ibid.

12 Ibid.

13 270towin.com, “Arizona”, Electoral Ventures LLC (n.d.), https://www.270towin.com/states/Arizona.

14 Arizona State Legislature, “Member Roster,” Arizona State Legislature (n.d.), https://www.azleg.gov/memberroster/.

15 American Immigration Council, “Immigrants in Arizona,” American Immigration Council, August 6, 2020, https://www. americanimmigrationcouncil.org/research/immigrants-in-arizona.

16 Gary LaFree. “Too Much Democracy or Too Much Crime? Lessons from California’s Three-Strikes Law”, Law & Social Inquiry 27, no.

4 (2002): 885-93, https://www.jstor.org/stable/829059?seq=1.

17 Conner Martinez. “El Pueblo Unido: How Threats Increased Latinx Turnout in Arizona’s 2020 General Election,” The Graduate Center, City University of New York, June, 2021: 6, https://academicworks.cuny.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=5405&context=gc_etds.

38

enforcing U.S. immigration laws and policies.”18 To top it all off, civilian border patrol volunteers have themselves admitted to intimidating voters19 and keeping polling stations under surveillance to “deter the undocumented from voting,” which ultimately prevented legal immigrants from voting.20 Because the Latino group as a whole is viewed as unlikely to vote, politicians are able to use anti-immigrant rhetoric to excite voters who feel the same way toward immigrants.21

Democracy or Too Much Crime?

Lesson from California’s ThreeStrikes Law,” author Gary LaFree writes, “The public’s naive and ill-informed concerns about crime make them an easy target for unscrupulous politicians.”23 Viewing one’s legislators as supporters of anti-immigration can therefore be detrimental to how a citizen views immigrants as a whole. In particular, several actors in the legal and political sphere have associated an immigrant without papers with

ARIZONA’S GROWING PERCEPTION OF IMMIGRANTS AS THREATS Unfortunately, the public’s ignorance on the true levels of crime allows them to be easily swayed by vicious politicians who criminalize immigrant populations.

Arizona’s predominantly white majority22––which has not experienced the same discrimination by law enforcement or voter discrimination as immigrant populations––can be significantly influenced by political candidates. In “Too Much

Minutemen Militia Group Source: NPR

a person who should be feared.

What is more, some of Arizona’s lawmakers associate themselves with border vigilante groups.

For example, Republican Joseph Sweeney volunteered to

participate in the Minuteman group, a self-described “citizens’ Vigilance Operation monitoring immigration, business, and government.”24 It is for these reasons immigrants continue to be perceived as threats, leading Republican voters to elect officials who are tough on immigration, and then causing the passing of state laws that focus on punishing anyone who is undocumented.

One final comment on the inability of Latino voters to fully participate in the democratic process is the allaffected interests principle. As political theorist Joseph Lampert describes it, “this principle holds that anyone whose interests are affected by a decision should be included in the institutions and procedures that make that decision.”25 Evidently, immigrants are impacted by immigration policies. Why is it then, that citizens are able to intimidate legal immigrants on their way to voting simply because they are members of “border vigilante” groups?26

18 Adalgiza A. Nùñez. “Civilian Border Patrols: Activists, Vigilantes, or Agents of Government?,” Rutgers Law Review 60, no. 3 (2008): 797-818, http://rutgerslawreview.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/Civilian-Border-Patrols-Activists-Vigilantes-or-Agents-of-Government. pdf.

19 Ibid.

20 Vanda Felbab-Brown and Elisa Norio. “What border vigilantes taught US right-wing armed groups,” The Brookings Institution, March 12, 2021, https://www.brookings.edu/articles/what-border-vigilantes-taught-us-right-wing-armed-groups/.

21 Conner Martinez. “El Pueblo Unido: How Threats Increased Latinx Turnout in Arizona’s 2020 General Election,” The Graduate Center, City University of New York, June, 2021: 6, https://academicworks.cuny.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=5405&context=gc_etds.

22 United States Census Bureau. “QuickFacts Arizona,” United States Census Bureau (n.d.), https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/AZ. 23 Gary LaFree. “Too Much Democracy or Too Much Crime? Lessons from California’s Three-Strikes Law”, Law & Social Inquiry 27, no.

4 (2002): 885-93, https://www.jstor.org/stable/829059?seq=1.

24 Adalgiza A. Nùñez. “Civilian Border Patrols: Activists, Vigilantes, or Agents of Government?,” Rutgers Law Review 60, no. 3 (2008): 797-818, http://rutgerslawreview.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/Civilian-Border-Patrols-Activists-Vigilantes-or-Agents-of-Government. pdf.

25 Joseph Lampert, “Democratic Inclusion and the Governance of Immigration,” Social Theory and Practice 41, no. 1 (2015): 53, https://www.jstor.org/stable/24332318.

26 Adalgiza A. Nùñez. “Civilian Border Patrols: Activists, Vigilantes, or Agents of Government?,” Rutgers Law Review 60, no. 3 (2008): 797-818, http://rutgerslawreview.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/Civilian-Border-Patrols-Activists-Vigilantes-or-Agents-of-Government. pdf.

39

PASSAGE OF LEGISLATION THAT TARGETS IMMIGRANTS The power dynamics of Arizona elections which prevent immigrant participation in elections have led to discriminatory policies that negatively affect immigrants, who make up only a minority in elections.27 In particular, Republican residents and lawmakers of Arizona have pushed for the passage of legislation that disproportionately affects undocumented immigrants, claiming it is all to “protect the border.”28 The Arizona state government passed S.B. 1070 in

Sheriff Joe Arpaio Source: The Arizona Tribune

2010, which contained sections implying that racial profiling should be used by officials when determining whether or not to

stop a person who they believe is undocumented.29 Challenges to this law were taken up to the Supreme Court. The four main provisions of S.B. 1070 that the Court considered were the following: police may demand papers and look into immigration status if they suspect someone is undocumented, police may arrest individuals without a warrant if they believe that person is deportable, immigrants who do not carry their federal registration papers are guilty of a state crime, and immigrants who look for or accept work without authorization are guilty of a state crime.30 The Supreme Court struck down three of these main provisions but upheld the first provision allowing for profiling based on suspected immigration status.31 Opponents of the law found this quite troublesome, for after reading just Section 1 of S.B. 1070, it became clear that this legislation was “a textbook example of how facially neutral language can obscure and rationalize racial impacts, if not a discriminatory

intent.”32 When S.B. 1070 was brought to the courts, the U.S. government consciously avoided any complaints that the law would lead to racial profiling of Latinos.33 Still, certain parts of S.B. 1070 allowed the consideration of race to be one of the factors in the law’s enforcement. The Supreme Court itself proclaimed that “Mexican appearance” is permissible as a factor used by border enforcement officers.34 Evidently, law enforcement and border patrol officers could rather easily engage in racial profiling under a law that practically endorsed it. With Provision 1 of S.B. 1070 upheld by the Supreme Court, Arizona lawmakers had a victory on their side. If police suspect someone with a “Mexican appearance” to be undocumented, they can demand to see the person’s papers. Unfortunately, immigrants have little motivation to vote for candidates that would advocate for their protection because of legislation like S.B. 1070 that implicitly creates a political system where immigrants are the enemy.

Since the Supreme Court did not explicitly assert where state governments stand in the hierarchy of immigration regulation, strict laws like S.B.

27 United States Census Bureau. “QuickFacts Arizona”, United States Census Bureau (n.d.), https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/AZ. 28 Celeste González de Bustamante, “Arizona: The History of a State of Exclusion, 1912-2012” in Arizona Firestorm: Global Immigration, Realities, National Media, Provincial Politics. (Rowman and Littlefield, 2012) 19, https://www.researchgate.net/ publication/283731778_Arizona_The_History_of_a_State_of_Exclusion_1912-2012.

29 Ibid.

30 ACLU, “SB 1070 at the Supreme Court: What’s at Stake.” American Civil Liberties Union, 2022. https://www.aclu.org/sb-1070supreme-court-whats-stake.

31 Ibid.

32 Kevin R. Johnson, “A Case Study of Color-Blindness: The Racially Disparate Impacts of Arizona’s S.B. 1070 and the Failure of Comprehensive Immigration Reform,” UC Irvine Law Review 2, Rev. 313 (2012) 316-35, https://scholarship.law.uci.edu/ucilr/vol2/ iss1/9/.

33 Ibid.

34 Ibid.

40

1070 will likely continue.35 Arizona relied upon state legislation to help criminalize conduct that was previously not criminalized.36 As a result, minority rights were drowned out by the votes of the majority.

RE-ELECTING OFFICIALS WITH CLEAR RACIAL BIAS Lastly, citizens of Arizona have elected law enforcement officers who contribute to the criminalization of Mexican immigrants and threaten their democratic participation.

Perhaps the most infamous illustration of this is former Sheriff Joe Arpaio. Arpaio was sheriff of Arizona’s Maricopa County for 24 years and prided himself on his tough-on-crime approach.

For example, Arpaio implemented immigration patrols in which large crowds of sheriff’s deputies concentrated on urban areas of Phoenix, including areas with dense Latino populations. These deputies would stop traffic violators and arrest others who caught their attention as potential lawbreakers.37 20% of the traffic stops conducted during these sweeps violated Fourth Amendment protections.38 Guards in Arpaio’s jails would go so far as to put

Spanish-speaking inmates The majority of Arizona’s voters in solitary confinement if elected a sheriff who clearly they could not understand a prided himself on racially biased command given to them in tactics for six terms, which 39 English. Eventually, Arpaio indicates that many voters saw was convicted of criminal a solution to the “immigration contempt for breaking a court problem” in the form of order demanding he stop Sheriff Arpaio. Meanwhile, his immigration patrols. A the Democratic-leaning Latino Department of Justice expert population in Arizona was too asserted that Arpaio supervised small in numbers to vote out the the “worst pattern of racial sheriff,42 producing a six-term profiling by a law enforcement officer with clear anti-immigrant agency in U.S. history.” 40 sentiment.

In the same way, Arpaio faced CONCLUSION over 6,000 lawsuits in federal courts. Some All in all, of them I argue that included Arizona’s settlements citizens have as high as repeatedly $3.5 million demonstrated in a lawsuit the adverse claiming consequences Arpaio’s of when a office group is mishandled deprived of Source: Center for American Progress the rape participation investigation of in the a 13-year-old girl democratic to an $8.25 million suit for the process and then must reap the asphyxiation death of a man in consequences of not being able one of Arpaio’s jails. to do so. The law enforcement Despite the many officials and legislators who get injustices that took place during elected hyperfocus on whether his time in office, Arpaio has or not Mexican immigrants stated he would “do it all over entered the United States legally again,” indicating absolutely rather than objectively accept no regrets for the wrongs that them as citizens. occurred under his authority.41

35 Ibid., 335.

36 Ibid., 334.

37 Associated Press. “Arizona sheriff Arpaio’s immigration patrols targeting Latinos to cost public $200M”. NBC News. Last modified May 18, 2021. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/arizona-sheriff-arpaios-immigration-patrols-targeting-latinos-cost-pub-rcna955.

38 Ray Stern, “Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s Office Commits Worst Racial Profiling in U.S. History, Concludes DOJ Investigation,” Phoenix New Times, December 15, 2011, https://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/news/sheriff-joe-arpaios-office-commits-worst-racial-profiling-in-us-historyconcludes-doj-investigation-6655328.

39 Ibid.

40 Ibid.

41 Associated Press. “With the latest payout, former Sheriff Joe Arpxaio has cost Arizona taxpayers $100M,” NPR. Last modified October 29, 2021. https://www.npr.org/2021/10/29/1050490391/joe-arpaio-legal-costs-100-million-arizona-sheriff.

42 David Schwartz, “‘America’s toughest sheriff’ in close race to win back old job”, Reuters, August 4, 2020, https://www.reuters.com/ article/us-usa-election-arpaio/americas-toughest-sheriff-in-close-race-to-win-back-old-job-idUSKCN2501AU.

41

By means of racial subordination, criminalization, and intolerant legislation, some of Arizona’s officials are succeeding in limiting the advancement of undocumented immigrants. On a national level, politicians like Donald Trump echo notions of Mexicans’ “inferiority” to boost their own standing in the political sphere and disguise the actual prejudice they feel, and voters continue to support them.

Criminalization is achieved by these political actors who perpetuate the image of Mexican immigrants as “aliens”’ with the help of the media. To top it all off, there is no sign that our current system of democracy will change anytime soon.43 There lingers the possibility of more Sheriff Arpaios and S.B. 1070s to pass, albeit in different forms. Certain voters do not want to see more immigrants enter the U.S., which they believe should be full of citizens who entered legally. But this may be an unfeasible expectation for America, a refuge for many when they face times of need and poverty.

BIBLIOGRAPHY 270towin.com, “Arizona”, Electoral Ventures LLC (n.d.), https://www.270towin.com/states/Arizona.

ACLU, “Frequently Asked Questions about the Arizona Racial Profiling Law,” ACLU, (n.d.), https://www.aclu.org/other/frequently-asked-questions-about-arizona-racial-profiling-law ACLU, “SB 1070 at the Supreme Court: What’s at Stake.” American Civil Liberties Union, 2022. https://www.aclu.org/sb-1070-supreme-court-whats-stake.

American Immigration Council, “Immigrants in Arizona,” American Immigration Council, August 6, 2020, https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/research/immigrants-in-arizona American Immigration Council, “The Cost of Immigration Enforcement and Border Security,” American Immigration Council, January 20, 2021, https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/research/the-cost-of-immigration-enforcem ent-and-border-security.

Arizona State Legislature, “Member Roster,” Arizona State Legislature (n.d.), https://www.azleg.gov/memberroster/.

Associated Press. “Arizona sheriff Arpaio’s immigration patrols targeting Latinos to cost public $200M”. NBC News. Last modified May 18, 2021, https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/arizona-sheriff-arpaios-immigration-patrols-target ing-latinos-cost-pub-rcna955.

Associated Press. “With the latest payout, former Sheriff Joe Arpxaio has cost Arizona taxpayers $100M,” NPR. Last modified October 29, 2021. https://www.npr.org/2021/10/29/1050490391/joe-arpaio-legal-costs-100-million-arizonasheriff.

Bordow, Scott, “ASU alum, market research expert shares results from latest Arizona Public Opinion Pulse,” Arizona State University, February 11, 2022, https://news.asu.edu/20220210-arizona-impact-economy-immigration-top-issues-arizonavoters.

Gary LaFree, “Too Much Democracy or Too Much Crime? Lessons from California’s Three-Strikes Law”, Law & Social Inquiry 27, no. 4 (2002): 885-93, https://www.jstor.org/stable/829059?seq=1.

43

42

Felbab-Brown, Vanda and Elisa Norio, “What border vigilantes taught US right-wing armed groups,” The Brookings Institution, March 12, 2021, https://www.brookings.edu/articles/what-border-vigilantes-taught-us-right-wing-armed-gr oups/.

González de Bustamante, Celeste, “Arizona: The History of a State of Exclusion, 1912-2012” in Arizona Firestorm: Global Immigration, Realities, National Media, Provincial Politics.

(Rowman and Littlefield, 2012) 19, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/283731778_Arizona_The_History_of_a_State_of_ Exclusion_1912-2012.

Johnson, Kevin R., “A Case Study of Color-Blindness: The Racially Disparate Impacts of Arizona’s S.B. 1070 and the Failure of Comprehensive Immigration Reform,” UC Irvine Law Review 2, Rev. 313 (2012) 316-35, https://scholarship.law.uci.edu/ucilr/vol2/iss1/9/.

LaFree, Gary, “Too Much Democracy or Too Much Crime? Lessons from California’s Three-Strikes Law”, Law & Social Inquiry 27, no. 4 (2002): 885-93, https://www.jstor.org/stable/829059?seq=1.

Lampert, Joseph, “Democratic Inclusion and the Governance of Immigration,” Social Theory and Practice 41, no. 1 (2015): 53, https://www.jstor.org/stable/24332318.

Martinez, Conner, “El Pueblo Unido: How Threats Increased Latinx Turnout in Arizona’s 2020 General Election,” The Graduate Center, City University of New York, June, 2021: 6, https://academicworks.cuny.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=5405&context=gc_etds.

Nùñez, Adalgiza A, “Civilian Border Patrols: Activists, Vigilantes, or Agents of Government?,” Rutgers Law Review 60, no. 3 (2008): 797-818, http://rutgerslawreview.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/Civilian-Border-Patrols-ActivistsVigilantes-or-Agents-of-Government.pdf.

“Republican Platform 2016”, GOP Convention 2016 (2016): 25-6. https://prod-cdn-static.gop.com/media/documents/DRAFT_12_FINAL%5B1%5D-ben_1 468872234.pdf RepublicanViews.Org, “Republican Views on Immigration,” Republican Views, November 25, 2014, https://www.republicanviews.org/republican-views-on-immigration/.

Schwartz, David, “‘America’s toughest sheriff’ in close race to win back old job”, Reuters, August 4, 2020, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-arpaio/americas-toughest-sheriff-in-close -race-to-win-back-old-job-idUSKCN2501AU. Stern, Ray, “Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s Office Commits Worst Racial Profiling in U.S. History, Concludes DOJ Investigation,” Phoenix New Times, December 15, 2011, https://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/news/sheriff-joe-arpaios-office-commits-worst-racialprofiling-in-us-history-concludes-doj-investigation-6655328.

United States Census Bureau, “QuickFacts Arizona”, United States Census Bureau (n.d.), https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/AZ.

43

DIRTY POLITICS: HOW ROGER STONE GAVE RISE TO THE PARTISAN DIVIDE OF TODAY

by Tejas Sinha INTRODUCTION: NIXON AND THE RISE OF ROGER STONE

understand one of the pioneers of corruption and dirty politics in Washington: Roger Stone.

Stone got his ticket into politics through the Nixon administration. His respect for the former president is profound; nothing is more telling than the tattoo on Stone’s back, a portrait of a smiling President Nixon located right below his neck. 4 From

As political polarization in the United States has risen over the last few decades, the American people have become more and more divided. 1 While this is a complex problem with multiple factors, much of it can be attributed to the proliferation of corruption, both legal and illegal, beginning in the Nixon era. 2 Corruption, which is defined as “the abuse of entrusted power for private gain,” decreases transparency and weakens our democracy.

During an age of massive issues that require international cooperation such as global warming and the threat of nuclear warfare, it is imperative Source: Salon.com that the US be united and decisive in order to play its part as a global leader. 3 Nixon’s infamously corrupt This makes political polarization administration, Stone inherited one of the most pressing issues a frightening win-at-all-costs of our time. To understand mentality and popularized legal the polarization that America tactics to unjustly influence experiences today, we must first American politics.5

Stone was just a young college student when Bart Porter, the scheduling director of the Committee to Reelect Nixon, brought him in as an assistant. Amidst the greater corruption of the Nixon administration, Stone’s role was small: approach the office of Pete McCloskey, Nixon’s competitor for the Republican nomination at the time, and pretend to be a member of the Young Socialist Alliance. Offer him a jar full of money on behalf of the Alliance and ask for a receipt.

Lastly, send the receipt to the newspaper to discredit McCloskey as a communist. Fortunately for McCloskey, the newspaper refused to run the story and nothing came out of the affair. 6 While Stone’s first dirty trick was small and inconsequential, his actions were brought to light as collateral during the Watergate investigation. When he was called in front of the Watergate Grand Jury, Stone knew he had stumbled upon a

1 Michael Dimock and Richard Wike, “America is Exceptional in Its Political Divide,” PEW, March 29, 2021, https://www.pewtrusts.org/ en/trust/archive/winter-2021/america-is-exceptional-in-its-political-divide.

2 Carroll Doherty, “Key takeaways on Americans’ growing partisan divide over political values,” PEW Research Center, October 5, 2017, https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/10/05/takeaways-on-americans-growing-partisan-divide-over-political-values/.; Sam Berger and Alex Tausanovitch, “Lessons from Watergate: Preparing for Post-Trump Reforms,” Center for American Progress, July 20, 2018. https://www.americanprogress.org/article/lessons-from-watergate/.

3 “What is Corruption?” Transparency International, Accessed on May 5, 2022, https://www.transparency.org/en/what-is-corruption.

4 Reggie Aqui and Eric Shackelford, “Roger Stone’s tattoo of former President Richard Nixon goes viral,” ABC 13 Eyewitness News, January 25, 2019, https://abc13.com/roger-stone-does-have-a-nixon-tattoo-back-of/5107227/.

5 “Frequently Asked Questions,” The American Anti-Corruption Act, Accessed on May 5, 2022, https://anticorruptionact.org/faq/.

6 Dylan Bank, Daniel DiMauro, and Morgan Pehme, dirs, Get Me Roger Stone, Netflix, 2017, https://www.netflix.com/title/80114666.

44

golden opportunity to advance his career. It did not matter if he had actually played a big role in Watergate just as long as people thought he had played a big role. 7 Now, politicians would look at Stone as someone who could help them get ahead. This was the beginning of Stone’s reputation as a master of dirty politics.

Over time, Stone would live up to the role ascribed to him through his revolutionary tactics in the campaigning and lobbying sectors. In 1975, Roger co-founded the National Conservative Political Action Committee, known as NCPAC, which in his own words pioneered “negative campaign advertising in massive doses to win elections.”8 Working from within a political action committee (PAC) rather than a campaign allowed him to bypass newly imposed campaign spending limits meant to restrict the influence of money in elections and combat corruption. While negative campaigning had existed before, it did not dominate campaigns as it does today. To illustrate, from 2008 to 2018, about 70% of ads ran during election years and midterm election years were negative.9 Stone then went on to leverage his influence in the campaign space to start a lobbying firm with Charles Black and Paul Manafort, two other consultants who had been working for Reagan. Black Manafort & Stone was one of

the first of its kind. As a lobbying firm whose members had helped the current president get elected, the firm was essentially selling access to the Reagan administration.

Before Black Manafort & Stone, this practice was viewed as highly unethical. Harry Siegel, editor for the Daily Beast, explains that, “They crossed a line that hadn’t been crossed; Washington’s Source: Pew Research Center been worse for to political machines and the it ever since.” spoils system in the Gilded Age, Motivated purely by profit, the there are many examples of firm’s clients included dictators such as Ferdinand Marcos of the corruption in American politics.

What makes Stone different Philippines, Mobutu Sese Seko is the brazenness with which of the Democratic Republic of he embraced such policies.

Congo, and the leader of the No longer was corruption National Union for the Total something to be hidden behind Independence of Angola, Jonas 10 Savimbi. By representing these closed doors; after Stone, it became the norm. In this sense, dictators, Black Manafort & Stone was an innovator who Stone gave a voice to humanbrought dirty tactics to the rights abusers in Washington forefront of American politics and paved the way for other and influenced many along the lobbyists to do the same. way. There is a direct connection Stone did not create between the popularization of corruption in Washington, dirty politics by Stone and the nor is he the sole source of current polarization in both today’s polarization. From American government and the Corrupt Bargain of 1824

7 Dylan Bank, Daniel DiMauro, and Morgan Pehme, dirs, Get Me Roger Stone, Netflix, 2017, https://www.netflix.com/title/80114666.

8 Dylan Bank, Daniel DiMauro, and Morgan Pehme, dirs, Get Me Roger Stone, Netflix, 2017, https://www.netflix.com/title/80114666.

9 “61% Increase in Volume of Negative Ads,” Wesleyan Media Project, October 30, 2018, https://mediaproject.wesleyan.edu/103018/.

10 Dylan Bank, Daniel DiMauro, and Morgan Pehme, dirs, Get Me Roger Stone, Netflix, 2017, https://www.netflix.com/title/80114666.

45

society.

TODAY’S POLARIZATION There is a plethora of evidence showing how much polarization has increased in the United States. According to a study by the Pew Research Center, an independent nonpartisan think tank, there is now a 36-percentage-point gap between Republicans and Democrats on major political issues. This figure has increased steadily since 1994, when the gap was only 15 percent.11 Compared to other key demographics such as race, religion, and gender, political party is by far the biggest indicator of disagreement on an issue.

At the same time, while political polarization has increased, public trust in government has fallen to one of its lowest points ever. Currently, only 24 percent of Americans–36 percent of Democrats and 9 percent of Republicans– say they can trust the government.

This number has been steadily decreasing from a high of 77 percent in 1965.12 To understand the true significance of these metrics, one must look no further than January 6, 2021 when a mob of Trump supporters descended on the Capitol in an attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election. The lives of our

elected officials were in danger as the Capitol police were overwhelmed and the protestors stormed into the Capitol Building. Most alarmingly, these actions seemed to be encouraged by former President Donald Trump at a rally just hours before the insurrection.

President Trump would go on to be impeached for his involvement.13 In the past, something like this would have been inconceivable to most Americans. But as we see the effects of a decades-long trend of increasing political polarization and lack of trust in the government, these extreme scenarios could become more common. Yet again, Roger Stone and his political strategies can be linked to this unforgettable day in American history.

PRESIDENT TRUMP AND ROGER STONE To understand the chaos that transpired at the end of Trump’s term, we must first look back to its beginning.

From its conception, the Trump campaign was full of divisive rhetoric. Much of it was targeted towards minorities, playing on the building unrest among his voter base of predominantly white Americans worried about the rapidly changing climate of America. He claimed that he

saw “thousands and thousands of people cheering” as the World Trade Centers came down, and called for a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.”14 He promised to build a wall between the US and Mexico to keep out immigrants he described as “rapists,” “bringing drugs,” and “bringing crime,” before adding that “some, I assume, are good people.”15 The effect of this type of rhetoric was twofold: by painting these images of minority groups as something to be feared, he capitalized on today’s polarized climate while attracting an incredible amount of media attention. It’s no mistake that such a polarizing campaign produced an administration with such a polarizing end.

Not many foresaw Trump becoming president. But Roger Stone had been pushing him to run as early as 1987.16 In fact, Stone’s influence can be found all over Trump’s presidential run. Even after Stone was fired from the campaign, his influence was evident in Trump’s negative campaigning strategies, disregard of factual accuracy, and campaign hires.

For example, Trump repeatedly accused Bill Clinton of raping women and Hillary Clinton of threatening them–a topic that Stone wroke a book

11 Carroll Doherty, “Key takeaways on Americans’ growing partisan divide over political values,” PEW Research Center, October 5, 2017, https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/10/05/takeaways-on-americans-growing-partisan-divide-over-political-values/.

12 “Public Trust in Government: 1958-2021,” PEW Research Center, May 17, 2021, https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2021/05/17/public-trust-in-government-1958-2021/.

13 Nicholas Fandos, “Trump Impeached for Inciting Insurrection,” The New York Times, January 14, 2021, https://www.nytimes. com/2021/01/13/us/politics/trump-impeached.html.

14 Will Heilpern, “Trump Campaign: 11 Outrageous Quotes,” CNN, December 31, 2015, https://www.cnn.com/2015/12/31/politics/ gallery/donald-trump-campaign-quotes/index.html.

15 Will Heilpern, “Trump Campaign: 11 Outrageous Quotes,” CNN, December 31, 2015, https://www.cnn.com/2015/12/31/politics/ gallery/donald-trump-campaign-quotes/index.html.

16 Dylan Bank, Daniel DiMauro, and Morgan Pehme, dirs, Get Me Roger Stone, Netflix, 2017, https://www.netflix.com/title/80114666.

46

on in 2015. He entertained the baseless claim that Obama was secretly born outside of the country, something that Stone called “brilliant base building.” And when Trump fired campaign manager Corey Lewandowski, he hired Paul Manafot, longtime Roger Stone associate, on Stone’s recommendation. As Jeffery Toobin, writer for the New Yorker says, “There is no doubt that in tone, in affect, in profile, the Trump candidacy was a pure Roger Stone production.” 17

bad money is legal tender, meaning the law requires it to be accepted as payment of debt. Since the payee is forced to accept it as payment despite its quality, everyone spends the bad money and saves the good, effectively taking the good money out of the market. 18 This scenario assumes that both the payer and payee have equal information on the quality of the currency. However, if information is unequal among the payer and payee, the good money will still be driven out by

Source: BBC

STONE’S INFLUENCE ON POLITICS TODAY To analogously understand Stone’s influence on politics today, one can use an economic principle. Gresham’s Law states that bad money drives out the good. The traditional case of Gresham’s law is when

the bad, even if the bad money is not legal tender. If the payee does not know that the money is bad, they will accept it as payment from the payer whether they are required to or not.19 Again, good money gets pushed out of the market.

After looking at this second scenario, a similar phenomenon can be observed

in politics. Think of corrupt politicians as bad money and non-corrupt politicians as good money. The corrupt practices that Stone and others pioneered in the late 20th century are so effective that they have become necessary to keep up with the competition, increasing the circulation of power hungry politicians in the market.

Because these corrupt practices are so effective and covert, the general public is not aware of them. Therefore, the public accepts corrupt politicians as their representatives, which only deepens polarization.

For example, take the highly effective mass negative campaigning methods that Stone advanced at Black Manafort & Stone. If one side starts using these tactics, the other side is incentivized to start using them as well in order to keep up with the competition. As the two sides take turns attacking each other, their respective voter base’s view of the other side becomes more and more distorted, and the two sides become more and more polarized. In this way, the use of corrupt practices activates a cycle that only reinforces more corrupt practices to compete, thereby increasing polarization.

At the same time, public trust in government decreases, as they are constantly hearing each party denounce government officials of the opposite. Roger Stone is aware of this phenomenon when he once said, “The slash and burn politics of today are what’s

17 Dylan Bank, Daniel DiMauro, and Morgan Pehme, dirs, Get Me Roger Stone, Netflix, 2017, https://www.netflix.com/title/80114666.

18 The Editors of Encyclopedia Britannica, “Gresham’s Law,” Britannica, Accessed on May 7, 2022, https://www.britannica.com/topic/ Greshams-law.

19 Rocío Albert and Francisco Cabrillo, “Gresham’s Law in Politics: Why Are Politicians Not the Most Remarkable Men for Probity and Punctuality?” European Journal of Law and Economics 21, no. 2 (April 2006): 99–112, https://doi.org/10.1007/s10657-006-6644-3.

47

required to get noticed.”20 This is just one example of how corruption increases polarization. Due to the lack of information available to the public about what happens behind the scenes in Washington, corruption in politics creates a problem of “asymmetric information.”

Because the corrupt actor is able to gain an unfair advantage without taking major damage to their reputation, he has a strong incentive to act corruptly.

When the corrupt actor is able to get away with this on a regular basis, politicians who choose to abstain from corruption are at a considerable disadvantage.

Hence, “Good politicians are driven out from the political market by the bad ones.” 21 With every new form of corruption that arises in Washington, this reinforcing cycle of corruption gets worse.

It is no coincidence that it was during the Nixon administration when trust in government began to decline and has not recovered since that time.. From Nixon to Stone to Trump, we can see how corruption has bred corruption.

Unless this cycle is stopped, the January 6th insurrection is only a preview of what is to come.

SOLUTIONS: HOW TO CLEAN UP POLITICS To reduce polarization and restore trust in government, this cycle of corruption and dirty politics must be stopped.

While there has been discussion of stricter laws to prevent corruption, the feasibility of

such a solution is questionable only about the three branches given that the body responsible of government and how they for creating these regulations is function, but also about the full of corruption itself. To truly roles of political advisors, solve this problem, we must find lobbyists, and PACs. Students another way to disincentivize must understand how toxic our politicians from engaging in current political environment corruption. has become, look past today’s Going back to case two divisive political rhetoric, and of Gresham’s Law, the reason begin to reduce polarization that good money is driven by holding our politicians out by the bad is due to a lack accountable. of information. Consumers, This approach will be unaware that the bad money has challenging. The information little value, accept it as payment must be unbiased and from the seller. However, if nonpartisan, and even if it is, there existed a credible source there is a large chance that it of information available to will face pushback from those all buyers and sellers, the in the public already under the bad money would cease to influence of today’s polarizing be accepted. By applying this politics. But there is no mistake solution to the case of politics, that the fixing of our democracy we get the answer to the cycle must start with the people. of corruption: information. If there existed a universal, unbiased source of information on the behaviors of all political candidates in Washington, those that choose to engage in corruption would be voted out. Source: Time Magazine Obviously, that’s an ideal. It would be impossible to know everything about a candidate’s behavior without severely violating individual liberties. Instead, we can look to education as an answer. The public must be aware of the corruption that goes on in Washington and be able to identify corrupt tactics when they see them. Students must be taught in schools not

20 Dylan Bank, Daniel DiMauro, and Morgan Pehme, dirs, Get Me Roger Stone, Netflix, 2017, https://www.netflix.com/title/80114666.

21 Rocío Albert and Francisco Cabrillo, “Gresham’s Law in Politics: Why Are Politicians Not the Most Remarkable Men for Probity and Punctuality?” European Journal of Law and Economics 21, no. 2 (April 2006): 99–112, https://doi.org/10.1007/s10657-006-6644-3.

48

BIBLIOGRAPHY “61% Increase in Volume of Negative Ads.” Wesleyan Media Project. October 30, 2018. https:// mediaproject.wesleyan.edu/103018/.

Aqui, Reggie and Eric Shackelford. “Roger Stone’s tattoo of former President Richard Nixon goes viral.”

ABC 13 Eyewitness News. January 25, 2019. https://abc13.com/roger-stone-does-have-a-nixontattoo-back-of/5107227/.

Albert, Rocío, and Francisco Cabrillo. “Gresham’s Law in Politics: Why Are Politicians Not the Most Remarkable Men for Probity and Punctuality?” European Journal of Law and Economics 21, no.

2 (April 2006): 99–112. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10657-006-6644-3.

Bank, Dylan, Daniel DiMauro, and Morgan Pehme, dirs. Get Me Roger Stone. Netflix. 2017. https:// www.netflix.com/title/80114666.

Berger, Sam and Alex Tausanovitch. “Lessons from Watergate: Preparing for Post-Trump Reforms.”

Center for American Progress. July 20, 2018. https://www.americanprogress.org/article/lessonsfrom-watergate/.

Dimock, Michael and Richard Wike. “America is Exceptional in Its Political Divide.” PEW. March 29, 2021. https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/trust/archive/winter-2021/america-is-exceptional-in-itspolitical-divide.

Doherty, Carroll. “Key takeaways on Americans’ growing partisan divide over political values.” PEW Research Center. October 5, 2017. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/10/05/ takeaways-on-americans-growing-partisan-divide-over-political-values/.

Heilpern, Will. “Trump Campaign: 11 Outrageous Quotes.” CNN, December 31, 2015. https://www. cnn.com/2015/12/31/politics/gallery/donald-trump-campaign-quotes/index.html.

Fandos, Nicholas. “Trump Impeached for Inciting Insurrection.” The New York Times. January 14, 2021. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/13/us/politics/trump-impeached.html.

“Frequently Asked Questions.” The American Anti-Corruption Act. Accessed on May 5, 2022. https:// anticorruptionact.org/faq/.

“Public Trust in Government: 1958-2021.” PEW Research Center. May 17, 2021. https://www. pewresearch.org/politics/2021/05/17/public-trust-in-government-1958-2021/.

The Editors of Encyclopedia Britannica. “Gresham’s Law.” Britannica. Accessed on May 7. 2022. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Greshams-law.

“What is Corruption?” Transparency International. Accessed on May 5, 2022. https://www. transparency.org/en/what-is-corruption.

49