Summer 2017: The Cutting Edge

HARVARD POLITICAL REVIEW

TWEETING PROTEST

TREKKING ISRAEL

INTERVIEW: JOSH EARNEST

VOLUME XLIV NO. 2, SUMMER 2017 HARVARDPOLITICS.COM

THE CUTTING EDGE

THE NEW HARVARD POLITICAL REVIEW. ON SCREENS NEAR YOU.

HARVARDPOLITICS.COM

THE CUTTING EDGE

This issue’s cover topic was originally proposed by Erica Newman-Corre.

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For the People: Improving Government with Technology Alisha Ukani

11 Silicon Valley Akshaya Annapragada

9 Algorithmic Decision-Making Saranya Vijayakumar

20 An Imperfect Union Samarth Desai

CAMPUS

CULTURE

3

34 Civic Illiteracy Matthew Shaw

Non-American and Black at Harvard Mfundo Radebe and Kemi Akenzua

UNITED STATES 15 Tweeting Protest Samuel Plank 18 Science, Sensationalized Katherine Ho 20 An Imperfect Union Samarth Desai

26 Brexit Elizabeth Manero

38 Paddy’s Pub Gets Political Nicolas Yan

WORLD 23 Protest Andrew Kim

INTERVIEWS 40 Josh Earnest Quinn Mulholland 42 Rosalyn LaPier Drew Pendergrass

ENDPAPER 44 Growth at Harvard Joe Choe

26 Brexit Elizabeth Manero 30 Rafael Correa Vanessa Ruales 34 Civic Illiteracy Matthew Shaw

31 Trekking Israel Sebastian Reyes and Russell Reed

Email: president@harvardpolitics.com. ISSN 0090-1032. Harvard Political Review. All rights reserved. Image credits: Flickr: 23- Teddy Cross. Harvard Institute of Politics: 40; 42. Twitter: 15. Pexels: Cover; Table of Contents. Pixabay: 14. Wikimedia: Table of Contents; 9; 12; 20; 28; 31; 32; 33; 44.

SUMMER 2017 HARVARD POLITICAL REVIEW 1

FROM THE PRESIDENT

HARVARD POLITICAL REVIEW A Nonpartisan Undergraduate Journal of Politics Est. 1969—Vol. XLIV, No. 2

EDITORIAL BOARD PRESIDENT: Ali Hakim PUBLISHER: Peter Wright MANAGING EDITOR: Samuel Plank ASSOCIATE MANAGING EDITOR: Quinn Mulholland ASSOCIATE MANAGING EDITOR: Samuel Kessler STAFF DIRECTOR: Ari Berman SENIOR COVERS EDITOR: Sal DeFrancesco ASSOCIATE COVERS EDITOR: Nicolas Yan SENIOR U.S. EDITOR: Carla Troconis ASSOCIATE U.S. EDITOR: Henry Brooks ASSOCIATE U.S. EDITOR: Chad Borgman SENIOR WORLD EDITOR: Jacob Link ASSOCIATE WORLD EDITOR: Derek Paulhus ASSOCIATE WORLD EDITOR: Akshaya Annapragada SENIOR CULTURE EDITOR: Chloe Lemmel-Hay ASSOCIATE CULTURE EDITOR: Russell Reed SENIOR CAMPUS EDITOR: Akash Wasil ASSOCIATE CAMPUS EDITOR: Katherine Ho INTERVIEWS EDITOR: Martin Berger BUSINESS MANAGER: Jennifer Horowitz ASSOCIATE BUSINESS MANAGER: Enrique Rodriguez SENIOR DESIGN EDITOR: Kyle McFadden ASSOCIATE DESIGN EDITOR: Victoria Berzin ASSOCIATE DESIGN EDITOR: Eliot Harrison SENIOR MULTIMEDIA EDITOR: Sebastian Reyes ASSOCIATE MULTIMEDIA EDITOR: James Blanchfield SENIOR TECH DIRECTOR: Richa Chaturvedi ASSOCIATE TECH DIRECTOR: Alisha Ukani ASSOCIATE TECH DIRECTOR: Will Finigan

STAFF Perry Abdulkadir, John Acton, Victor Agbafe, Tasnim Ahmed, Solange Azor, Fernanda Baron, Marie Becker, Marty Berger, Devon Black, Mark Bode, Evan Bonsall, Jack Boyd, Harman Paul Brar, Jiafeng Chen, Joe Choe, Hana Connelly, Chris Cruz, Flavia Cuervo, Pedro Luis Cunha Farias, Justin Curtis, Ashish Dahal, Nick Danby, Sunaina Danziger, Ali Dastjerdi, Sophie DiCara, Brandon Dixon, Avika Dua, Casey Durant, Austin Eder, Steven Espinoza, Joshua Florence, Adam Friedman, Daniel Friedman, Miro Furtado, Edgar Gonzalez, Jay Gopalan, Samarth Gupta, David Gutierrez, Olivia Herrington, Thomas Huling, Chimaoge Ibe, Minnie Jang, Michael Jasper, Alejandro Jimenez, Cindy Jung, Matthew Keating, Daniel Kenny, Andrew Kim, Kieren Kresevic, Amelia Lamp, Ashiley Lee, David Leeds, Elton Lossner, Kay Lu, Patrick McClanahan, Olivia McGinnis, Ayush Midha, Malvika Menon, Erica Newman-Corre, Kiera O’Brien, Nadya Okamoto, Anna Raheem, Anne Raheem, Apoorva Rangan, Neill Reilly, Alyssa Resar, Bella Roussanov, Chico Payne, Juliet Pesner, Stefan Petrovic, Lily Piao, Tess Saperstein, Lizzy Schick, Audrey Sheehy, Soraya Shockley, Wright Smith, Nick Stauffer-Mason, Sydney Steel, Gloria Su, Anirudh Suresh, Richard Tong, Rachel Tropp, Nico Tuccillo, Celena Wang, Katie Weiner, Joseph Winters, Jenna Wong, Sarah Wu, Emily Zauzmer, Catherine Zhang, Anna Zhou, Yehong Zhu, Andrew Zucker

ADVISORY BOARD Jonathan Alter Richard L. Berke Carl Cannon E.J. Dionne, Jr. Ron Fournier

Walter Isaacson Whitney Patton Maralee Schwartz

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The Cutting Edge

P

erhaps the most fascinating candidate in the 2016 presidential race had virtually no chance of winning. Zoltan Istvan is the founder of the little-known Transhumanist Party, whose core belief is that science and technology can solve most of the world’s problems. Istvan and his supporters advocate government support for immortality research, reducing legal barriers to gene editing, and using cameras to closely monitor felons as an alternative to incarceration.

Although he didn’t make much of a mark in November, he’s already organizing a campaign for the California governorship race in 2018.

The Transhumanists are far from a major political force in the United States, but they exemplify the increasing prominence of science and technology in political conversations across the globe. With innovations like ride-sharing and commercial drones changing markets faster than politicians and bureaucrats can regulate them, it is easy to wonder whether our democracy is slowly becoming a technocracy.

Therefore, it is impossible today to talk about politics without mentioning technology. From the digitization of governance to the autonomization of production and the programming of intelligence, ongoing technological advances simultaneously present the public sector with boundless opportunity and incessant headaches.

And then there’s the question of how we as individual human beings find our place in a world that’s undergoing a paradigm shift because of devices of our own creation. Do driverless cars and automated factories make us less valuable? Is it our place to engineer the genomes of our children to align with our preferences? Should we want to live

forever?

While it may be easy to shrug off Silicon Valley startups and Boston biotech ventures as a concern for policymakers in Washington, it’s ultimately up to each of us to decide what role we want their innovations to play in our lives.

It is with this reality in mind that we present to you The Cutting Edge, the Summer 2017 issue of the HPR. In it, Saranya Vijayakumar grapples with the difficulty of regulating algorithms.

Akshaya Annapragada makes a case for the central place of Silicon Valley in American society in an era of decreased federal funding for scientific research.

Alisha Ukani highlights the field of civic tech, which is transforming relationships between governments and their constituents.

This magazine is the second produced by the 49th masthead of the HPR. I credit our staff for their dedication in producing this content.

Additionally, I would like to express my gratitude to our graduating seniors, whose years of service and ingenuity as members of the HPR have inspired me.

With that, I hope you enjoy the articles to follow and find them as informative and thought-provoking as I have.

Ali Hakim President

.

.NON-AMERICAN. .AND BLACK. .AT HARVARD.

Mfundo Radebe and Kemi Akenzua

SUMMER 2017 HARVARD POLITICAL REVIEW 3

CAMPUS

“Dear Non-American Black, when you make the choice to come to America, you become black. Stop arguing. Stop saying I’m Jamaican or I’m Ghanaian. America doesn’t care.”

—Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Americanah.

ACCEPTING ADICHIE’S WORDS HAS BECOME MORE THAN A CHOICE. IT HAS BECOME A FRANK REQUIREMENT TO UNDERSTAND THE BLACK SOCIAL FABRIC OF THE UNITED STATES. MY NAME IS MFUNDO RADEBE.

“Y

ou DON’T belong here.” These words turned what was a very tranquil sunny day in Cambridge completely upside down as everybody tried to understand what was going on. I was confused. I turned to locate where the words had come from and the harsh voice punctuated the air once again: “Go back to your country!” As a black student from South Africa, this clearly had to be me. But I realized that things were now different. I was in America.

My heart was beating faster than ever until the white woman ahead clarified her statement. The white lady somehow felt justified that the Muslim woman in a niqab she screamed these words to did not belong in her America. Immediately, “the danger of a single story” that Adichie articulated seemed so blatantly obvious. I feared that just as much as this woman could be reduced to a single identity that fit the society she was in, so too could I. That was September 2016. I had just participated in Harvard’s orientation program meant to familiarize us international freshmen with life in college. This was fundamentally important to me because of the society that I come from, and because coming to America was an indescribably significant cultural adjustment.

I have always had to try and understand how race affects my interactions with society. I grew up in a country trying to rebuild its social fabric after the apartheid period of legislated segregation. In South Africa, identity politics are inseparable from the way society functions. Political parties use them to divide or to unite. Racial context matters. And that is why that raging white voice in Harvard Square confused me. I was ready

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to own the prejudiced statement as though I was born to take it. It was at that moment that I recognized the need to join an organization that would understand the nuances that come with being black in the United States.

It’s October 2016. Black Mens’ Forum is inviting male-identifying members of the black community to be initiated into this community that can be correctly described as a ‘brotherhood’.

I marvel at the mystique of this organization. Its logo, boldly displaying the red, black and green pan-African colors, tantalizes my inherent need to belong with the African polity.

When I arrived at the appointed meeting place, I suddenly found myself at a standstill. Other new ‘initiates’ were standing in an organized line, quiet and waiting for the next instruction.

We were told to be silent, and to march to one of the houses where the event would be held. Our strides along the road were met by onlookers observing and curious as to what we were doing. We passed a few black men. They nodded a simple approval of the gentlemen that were in front of them.

Perhaps, it was retribution for decades of the perpetuated notion that black men in this country cannot be orderly. But, to me, this activity could not align with any sense of retribution or liberation. In South Africa, telling black men to march in a line re-awakens the memories of a bitter aid that was used by an oppressive minority white government that sought to control a black majority. They did so with guns and a trigger-happy police force. Our march was, to me, inappropriate.

My identity was no longer framed in the dichotomous white versus black of South Africa. Within the black community of the United States, my own identity was in itself vulnerable. I began asking myself whether was I black enough. And for many of us who identify as black Africans, or even those who are first-generation African Americans, we feel excluded.

This draws me to a conversation I had with Hakeem Angulu, an intern at the Harvard Foundation for Intercultural and Race Relations. According to Hakeem, “the black experience [in the United States] is geared to the African-American singular experience”. Hakeem believes that “that is not necessarily a bad thing as it can be historically attributed to the way in which the African-American experience in the country has had to draw itself together as the singular black experience.” As he gestured with air quotations to pause and ponder this sensitive topic, Hakeem remarked that there is a need “to recognize that there are people such as Marcus Garvey who are not necessarily ‘African American’” and have “also contributed to the black experience in this country.”

Hakeem is Jamaican. “It’s a different experience for everyone, and not just separating African-Americans, from Afro-Caribbeans, from Africans.” I could see the same internal conflict I had gone through surfacing within Hakeem as well.

CAMPUS

YOU’RE NOT THE ONLY ONE, MFUNDO. MY NAME IS KEMI AKENZUA, AND I WOULD LIKE TO SHARE MY EXPERIENCE AS WELL.

W

hen I was six years old, I began a new school, in a new Sherman Oaks. At that age, I could not internalize much, but I did notice that in a grade with just under 40 kids, I was the only black student. It was a jarring realization but it didn’t affect my experience and I just thought that no one really noticed.

During the third week of school, I learned that this was not the case. While lining up for our Physical Education class, the classmate behind me scoffed and muttered “why do I have to stand next to the black girl?” I froze where I stood and let the words pass through me like a blade. As a 6 year old black girl in this foreign environment, I did not know what to do, so I cried.

Evidently, my experience being black in American schools has been rocky from the start. Comments like the one made to my six-year-old self did not happen again, but microaggressions and ill-thought comments came from my peers and teachers for years thereafter. I, like many black students and people, have had the sly hand reach up and touch my hair, or the stares when the topic of slavery came up, or teachers that asked me to explain to the class what the difference between black and African-American is when I was just 9 years old. These actions did not anger me, but I was always confused by and unprepared for my role as the “designated black person.”

This took a turn, for better or worse, when more students of color came to my school. My status as the only black person changed, but my feelings of isolation did not. As we entered high school, we explored new music, trends, and themes in popular culture. A definition for “being black” emerged for our generation and I did not fit the bill. Things that seemed trivial and inconsequential to me ended up defining my race in the eyes of my peers in high school. I constantly got comments like “wow I’m blacker than you” or “you’re so white.” More often than not, these comments were made because I did not know the lyrics to Drake’s new song, or because I do not know how to “dougie.”

The people who decided to jokingly question my race and identity were from all backgrounds and ethnicities. I went from being a foreign entity with odd hair and an odd name, to a sell-out that didn’t embrace my culture. Perhaps the most egregious part of it all was that I did nothing to combat these ignorant comments. Instead I laughed and changed the subject, and I tried to conform by asking my friends for their playlists or dance lessons.

Perhaps I did become a sell-out. Not because I didn’t know the music or the trends of black culture at my school, but because I was too scared to fight back.

Now I’m in college. The comments and the occasional feel-

ings of inadequacy have not changed, but the stakes have. I discussed this with my friend Maya Em, a freshman at Columbia University from Los Angeles. She viewed her experience with blackness thus far as complicated, especially in college as she struggled to surmount the fear of “being called out or told that [she’s] an Oreo.” This is an experience that too many black students have had on campuses and it often creates stark division in the black community when support and unity is needed most. As Maya elaborated, many black students are coming from high school into college “tackling multiple identities of being the token, as well as the exception, as well as the sell-out.” While these terms alone are not inherently bad, they are perpetuated by society and coalesce to create a divisive, and often competitive, nature within the black community.

The final, and perhaps most important topic we discussed was the need to sit back and listen when other black students describe an experience, or belief that you may not recognize or share. Maya recounted her first meeting with the African Students Association, as a liaison for the Black Students Organization, and realized that this was one of the first “black environments where [she] felt like [she] should sit back and listen” to the students who face many of the same challenges but have such different backgrounds and interpretations of “blackness.”

“So for example, people will say, ‘Oh, you’re so easy to get along with.’ And they’ll tell me some story of some AfricanAmerican woman they knew who just wasn’t like me. Which I find quite absurd.”

—Adichie, in an interview with NPR We think that historically, blackness in this country has been constantly on defense and has never had the space to breathe and to reflect on its own internal diversity. We turned to Hakeem once again, seeking that confirmation. “It’s this one thing that we all share … it is our blackness. I still don’t know what that means,” he reflected. It seems to us that a full recognition of the nuances of black identity, of what it is to us, will be a long process. It will be prolonged because, as Adichie alludes to, we have to withdraw back to the defensive but proudly affirmative ‘I am black’ in a society that seeks to see us divided.

SUMMER 2017 HARVARD POLITICAL REVIEW 5

for the people

improving government with technology Alisha Ukani

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CUTTING EDGE

I

n 2015, inside the Miami-Dade Permitting and Inspection Center was a small dark box affixed to a wall; next to it hung a giant poster that beseeched community members to “Give us your input.” The box itself made its purpose clear, proclaiming: “SUGGESTIONS COMMENTS.” Despite its earnest plea, the feedback system was useless for most of the people it hoped to engage. The poster was in English, but almost three-quarters of Miami-Dade households do not speak English at home.

Beyond the language barrier that it imposed, the suggestion box had another crucial flaw. Once a person gave feedback, there was no way for them to know if anyone would read their comments. Residents described this process with the phrase “por el hueco.” Into the hole.

Luckily, the Miami-Dade county recognized the issue and out sourced assistance. They reached out to Code for America, a civic tech organization with the mission of bridging the gap between talent in the tech industry and the lagging services in the public sector. Miami-Dade enrolled in Code for America’s Fellowship program, which matches a small team of technologists with a specific problem in a city’s government (“A peace corps for geeks,” Code for America founder Jennifer Pahlka joked). The result? It is now possible for Miami-Dade residents to submit feedback online or via text message, in both English and Spanish, and get real-time responses. The Permitting and Inspection Center can also see an aggregated report of all feedback submitted to them.

In many ways, the Miami-Dade fellowship is a perfect civic tech success story. However, it’s not a success story just because of its technical merits; it’s a success story because Code for America examined the problem from the perspective of the people of Miami-Dade County. This wasn’t a magic “ask and ye shall receive” process for the county. After all, this problem with citizen engagement was created when the county didn’t consider the needs of its community.

Civic tech is unique because of its strong focus on user-centered design — a design process focused on understanding users and seeking their input throughout the development process to ensure that the end result actually meets their needs. This feature improves relations between governments and their constituents, making it one of the most important tech movements of the modern age.

DEFINING CIVIC TECH Civic tech is a somewhat nebulous concept. Most people define it only in terms of technology and government. Christopher Whitaker, a Code for America Brigade Manager, defined it as people from different backgrounds collaborating on projects “to engage the public or solve civic problems.” Meanwhile, the Knight Foundation, an organization dedicated to promoting journalism, argued that civic technology can span many fields, but is “focused on promoting civic outcomes.” Breaking down the term “civic tech” makes it obvious that it should involve “technology applied to the government.” But this narrow definition ignores a central aspect of the movement, which is its focus on user-centered design.

A better definition of civic tech, which incorporates the idea of user-centered design, was proposed by Laurenellen McCann, a former Civic Innovation Fellow at New America’s Open

Technology Institute. McCann stressed the importance of “civic tech” encompassing products that people make to improve each other’s lives, in addition to government tech. These products need to become more common in the tech sphere, but can fall under the category of “tech for social good.”

While Code for America focuses on local solutions, civic tech is not limited only to local governments. The United States Digital Service and 18F are federal organizations that use civic tech to help the federal government become more efficient and provide better services. Other groups, like Coding it Forward, help young people enter the tech-for-social-good space. Founded

by Athena Kan, Neel Mehta, and Chris Kuang, Coding it Forward provides mentorship, job opportunities, and a community for anyone interested in learning more about this field, and its members work on many civic tech projects. The definition of civic tech as technology that improves government-constituent relations, created through the process of user-centered design, works at all levels of the government.

“BUILD WITH, NOT FOR” Wherever you can find civic tech, you can find user-centered design as a top priority. Laurenellen McCann introduced a new term for this philosophy—“build with, not for”—at the 2014 Code for America Summit. Even the USDS adheres to this principle: the first rule of their playbook is to “understand what people need.” Similarly, one of 18F’s core principles is “human-centered design.” Both of these organizations promote user-centered design as a core aspect of their missions.

The focus on user-centered design is also clear when talking to civic tech leaders. When asked to define “civic tech” in an interview with the HPR, USDS Director of Design Practice, Marcy Jacobs, said that it involved “designing tech that meets users’ needs.” Similarly, the City of Boston’s Chief Digital Officer Lauren Lockwood characterized civic tech as “technology that enables an interaction between a city’s constituents and their government.”

It must be noted that the intended users of civic tech can look very different, especially when comparing projects at federal and local levels. Local civic tech projects are often specifically designed for constituents. For example, the Miami-Dade Fellowship team designed a service for the residents of Miami-Dade County. In contrast, an organization like USDS may design tools for other federal agencies. In these cases, Jacobs points out that one must also consider “business and agency needs, and technology limitations” so that “what you’re building will help advance the mission from the agency’s perspective.” Still, juggling the agency and constituent needs does not diminish the importance of designing around user needs in general. As Jacobs explains, the goal is always “building something intuitive and with an easy design.”

Ultimately, user-centered design is a more important aspect of civic technology than the technology itself. For example, as USDS helped the IRS redesign their website, Jacobs explained that they “brought some different ways of thinking grounded in user research [and] ability testing.” This involved “writing very technical legal content in a way that made sense to the audience.” While simplifying jargon does not seem like a traditional civic tech project, it still improves government-constituent relations while focusing on user needs.

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CUTTING EDGE

A WIN-WIN SITUATION User-centered design is so important because it allows civic tech projects to actually work for people, facilitating government-constituent relations. This connection is evident at the local level, where people directly seek services from their government. For example, Lockwood’s team designed the City of Boston website to showcase easily-accessible tow lot information that formats to mobile screens. After all, if somebody’s car is towed, they’ll most likely pull up the website on their phones, not a desktop, and will want the relevant information immediately. In this case, user-centered design allowed the City of Boston to make services more accessible for their constituents.

User-centered design can also prevent government services from harming their constituents. For example, Lockwood pointed out that if the city needs to communicate with users, they must be careful about the format of that communication; developers don’t want to text information to citizens with “big, beautiful photos” if those photos would “shoot up” their data plan. Similarly, at the 2015 Code for America Summit, Jake Solomon described how the California food assistance program redesigned its application to stop burdening applicants. The old application was intensive: residents had to answer 200 questions on a website that didn’t work at certain hours (“the websites have business hours,” Solomon noted), have their entire family fingerprinted, and pick up a critical phone call, without any warning of when the call would come. This burdensome, inefficient process made it more difficult for users to access a crucial service. But by understanding user needs and having their civic tech team make small changes, the government stopped hurting its constituents. The application length has been reduced to 15-30 questions, and is available at all hours. Other unnecessary steps in the application process have also been cut out, and people are texted in advance of the all-important phone call.

This design philosophy can prevent governments from wasting their time by ensuring that they only create services people will actually use. The USDS built a College Scorecard, which helps high school students find information about colleges, such as graduates’ salaries. Kan, who is familiar with the work of the USDS, discussed how the team spent hours building a specific feature of the Scorecard website, but users never touched that feature. Even an organization like USDS, which is famous for its user-centered design, needs to improve its process; if they had done more user testing as they developed the tool, they would not have spent so much time working on that feature. Civic tech is truly advantageous to the government, as it increases efficiency. Increasing efficiency also adds another benefit to constituents; besides receiving better services, their tax dollars are spent more effectively.

Governments can also make use of user-centered design to add new services. For example, the Department of Veteran Affairs learned that veterans wanted a way to find specific gravesites in various cemeteries. They hired a programming team to tackle this challenge, which is already a great example of

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creating services around what users want. They also brought in user-centered design to the development process. Kan worked on this project, and at first thought a simple map with GPS locations could solve the problem, but her interviews with veterans made her realize that GPS data alone would not help people learn more about the veterans who are buried in the cemeteries.

Now, she is working to create multiple tools, including a site for grave locators that adds the missing connection between visitors and the people buried in the cemeteries.

Finally, user-centered design can help governments expand access to existing services. Before 2015, if someone wanted to renew their status as a U.S. permanent resident, they would have to fill out a long paper form and mail it to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services agency. USDS developed an online form in March 2015, which has a 92 percent satisfaction rate. Their work in modernizing the immigration process has resulted in 25 percent of immigration applications being completed online, and 1.1 million people being able to make filing payments online. By modernizing the application process, the USDS expanded access to immigration services and met a critical user need.

THE FUTURE OF CIVIC TECH While civic tech is growing, it still faces many limitations.

Lockwood explains that the explosion of civic tech in Boston is unique because Lockwood’s team has the “support of a great mayor, and a great Chief Information Officer who are very supportive of the work we do.” However, she admits that not “every city has this luxury” of strong administrative support. As with any new change, it takes time to convince people to radically uproot structures that may appear to work as intended.

Still, there is hope that civic tech will continue to grow and attract people who want to use their technology and design skills to help the government. Mehta hopes that civic technology will become such an exciting field that computer science students would pursue internships in this field, instead of just at big tech corporations and tech startups.

All of these benefits of user-centered design contribute to the ultimate goal of civic tech: a better relationship between people and their government. As Mehta explained in an interview with the HPR, most people’s current interactions with government are limited to two agencies, the IRS and the DMV, which usually lead to negative experiences. Lockwood adds that for the most part, constituents lack confidence in the ability of their governments to provide essential services; put bluntly, “people expect their interactions with government to suck.” However, she is optimistic about the ability of civic tech to alleviate this problem. She hopes that very soon, civic tech and digital tools will help society “move to a place where constituents have higher expectations for their government.” Civic tech can harness the wonders of tech to drive innovation in government, but more importantly, its focus on user-centered design ensures that the final products actually solve people’s problems.

ALGORITHMIC DECISION MAKING

TO WHAT EXTENT SHOULD COMPUTERS MAKE DECISIONS FOR SOCIETY? Saranya Vijayakumar

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CUTTING EDGE DIVERSITY

A

s much as we may want them to, algorithms don’t think.

The algorithm that compiles Facebook’s ‘Year In Review’ photo albums wasn’t thinking when a father’s “great year” included photographs of his recently deceased daughter.

Algorithms don’t think when they are approving credit cards, counting votes, or determining financial aid. We rarely realize how much blind trust we place into algorithmic decision-making. Algorithms that most of us know very little about have huge impacts on human lives.

Algorithmic transparency is the idea that algorithms that impact individuals should be made public. But as with transparency of processes in general, we must learn to balance transparency with protecting commercial advantages and civil liberties.

How do we hold algorithms accountable if they are incorrect or unfair?

As long as the government employs algorithms to alter behavior or human outcomes, the algorithms used should be transparent and explained to the public. As Kate Crawford, a principal researcher at Microsoft Research, put it in an interview with The New York Times, “if you are given a score [by an algorithm] that jeopardizes your ability to get a job, housing or education, you should have the right to see that data, know how it was generated, and be able to correct errors and contest the decision.”

However, accessibility to relevant code is not always the problem. We must ensure that not only are the algorithms themselves fair and equitable, but also that they are applied in a fair and equitable manner.

POTENTIAL PITFALLS WITH TRANSPARENCY Although transparency is one way to create accountability for algorithms, Cynthia Dwork, a professor at Harvard University, argued that it is not always necessary or sufficient. In an interview with the HPR, she pointed out that companies might want to keep their algorithms secret to maintain their competitive advantages. Similarly, algorithms may involve sensitive data or may be used in security or government applications where one would want them to be protected.

However, Marc Rotenberg, President and Executive Director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), offered another viewpoint. In an email to the HPR, he described how, “transparency can be achieved in a variety of ways, including third party auditing. But the preference should always be for public transparency.” When it is not safe or wise for the public to have access to the code, auditing should go to a third party according to Rotenberg. Regardless, he contended, “there must always be a way to determine how a decision is made.” If that attribute cannot be established, the algorithm should not be used.

Many would argue that human decisions cannot be easily understood or interpreted either: why should we hold algorithms to a higher standard than the human brain? But although transparency is not always plausible or easy, it is certainly worth fighting for. Similarly, the use of algorithms to make large decisions can seem scary, but in the long run, it saves money and time, and has the potential to create more equitable solutions.

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WHAT’S AT STAKE? Criminal sentencing is one area in which algorithms are theoretically useful, because they can help eliminate human racial bias in the criminal justice system. It is well known that the United States has a criminal justice problem. The United States is home to 5 percent of the world’s population, but 25 percent of the world’s prisoners. Americans are incarcerated at the world’s highest rate––1 in 110 adults are behind bars. Black males constitute a grossly disproportionate share of the prison population: 37.8 percent of prisoners are black, compared to only 12 percent of American adults. Arrest rates for black people in the United States are up to ten times higher than for other races. Prisoners have little access to social mobility, creating a cycle of disadvantage to their families and communities that disproportionately affects black people.

Some of the inequities in the U.S. prison population stem from the fact that black people are regularly given much harsher sentences than other races for equivalent crimes. In Florida, defendants in criminal prosecution cases are given a judge-calculated score based on the crime committed and previous crimes.

Matching scores should logically lead to the same sentence, but the Herald-Tribune found that black people get much larger punishments, and that there is little oversight of judges. Meanwhile, the Washington Post found that judges in Louisiana gave harsher punishments following unexpected losses by the Louisiana State University football team, and that these punishments were disproportionately borne by black people. Clearly, the human bias inherent in sentencing is a problem that we must address.

REPLACING HUMAN BIAS Algorithms do not have favorite sports teams, nor do they get grumpy or have a bad day. They also haven’t been born into a system of implicit racial bias. For this reason, various nonprofits, governments, and private companies have been attempting to create algorithms to make the system of setting bail and determining sentence length more impartial to race. Using machine learning, in which historical data is used to inform future decisions and predictions, these algorithms seek to reduce human bias by assigning criminal sentencing decisions to computers.

States have already begun implementing algorithms in risk assessments to help battle implicit human racial bias. In January, New Jersey implemented an algorithm called the Public Safety Assessment. According to the Laura and John Arnold Foundation, a nonprofit which funds innovative solutions to criminal justice reform, the PSA predicts “the likelihood that an individual will commit a new crime if released before trial, and… the likelihood that [they] will fail to return for a future court hearing. In addition, it flags those defendants who present an elevated risk of committing a violent crime.”

The algorithm works by comparing “risks and outcomes in a database of 1.5 million cases from 300 jurisdictions nationwide, producing a score of one to six for the defendant based on the information.” It also provides a recommendation for bail hearings. If someone meets the right criteria, they could be released

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without paying any bail at all.

New Jersey seems to be succeeding with the PSA. The state now sets bail for far fewer people than it once did because the algorithm predicts who is likely to try to run away and who is safe to release. While some believe that the system allows criminals to roam free, others believe that it is a more equitable system because bail often allows the wealthy to buy their freedom. The PSA score also acts as a recommendation, and judges don’t need to follow it.

But what if a person doesn’t have access to the calculations behind the score they received? Furthermore, supervised learning algorithms depend on the data they are given. Learning algorithms are hard to control; Microsoft’s Twitter bot “Tay,” for example, which learned from the people it communicated with, spoke to Millennials and became a racist Holocaust-denier within hours. What if the historical data given to risk assessment algorithms is racially biased? These and other questions have been at the forefront of the debate regarding the ethics of risk assessment algorithms.

COMPAS: A CASE STUDY The Correctional Offender Management Profiling for Alternative Sanctions, or COMPAS, is a risk assessment algorithm developed by Northpointe Inc., a private company. Since the algorithm is the key to its business, Northpointe does not reveal the details of its code. However, multiple states use the algorithm for risk assessments to determine bail amounts and sentence lengths. Many worry that this risk assessment algorithm and algorithms like it have unfair effects on different groups, especially with regards to race.

COMPAS assigns defendants a score from 1 to 10 based on more than 100 variables, including age, sex and criminal history that indicates how likely they are to reoffend. Race, ostensibly, does not factor into the calculus. However, ProPublica, an independent newsroom producing investigative journalism in the public interest, found that the software assessed risk based on information like ZIP codes, educational attainment, and family history of incarceration, all of which can serve as proxies for race.

There are a few ways to define COMPAS’ success. One way is to look at its false positives rate—how many people the algorithm incorrectly labels as being at high risk for recidivism. Another way is to look at false negatives— how many risky people the algorithm misses. The metric that should be applied is contextbased. The justice system must decide if it would rather falsely punish more innocent people because of a bad false positive rate or let risky people roam free with a bad false negative rate.

60 percent of white defendants who scored a 7 on COMPAS reoffended, and 61 percent of black defendants who scored a 7 reoffended. On the surface, these numbers seem fairly equal in terms of output of true positives. But if you consider the false positives, you see a different story. Among defendants who did not reoffend, 42 percent of black defendants were classified as medium or high risk, compared to only 22 percent of white defendants. In other words, black people were more than twice as

likely as whites to be classified as medium or high risk.

These differences highlight the tension between giving longer sentences to ensure less recidivism and giving shorter sentences at the risk of false negatives. This is a problem that we must resolve before we can regulate any algorithm, and it depends on how we define fairness. According to Alexandra Chouldechova, an assistant professor at Carnegie Mellon who has studied the COMPAS algorithm, “Fairness itself… is a social and ethical concept, not a statistical one.” There is very little legal precedent and regulatory power we can hold over private companies. But if governments are going to use these private algorithms for the public interest, they must first figure out how to ensure they are fair and legitimate.

HOLDING ALGORITHMS ACCOUNTABLE The rise of AI and algorithmic autonomy prompts the question: who or what do we hold accountable for unfairness and incorrectness? Accountability involves making a tech company report and justify decision-making done by the algorithm. It also includes helping mitigate potential negative impacts.

To hold algorithms accountable, we must test them and have mechanisms to account for possible mistakes. Hemant Taneja of TechCrunch argued that tech companies “must proactively build algorithmic accountability into their systems, faithfully and transparently act as their own watchdogs or risk eventual onerous regulation.” However, we cannot be this optimistic about tech companies. It is unlikely that corporations will go out of their way to create accountability because there is no incentive to do so. Instead, regulators must push for procedural regularity, or the knowledge that each person will have the same algorithm applied to them. The procedure must not disadvantage any individual person specifically. This baseline draws on the Fourteenth Amendment principle of due process. Due process helps to elucidate why many argue that algorithms should be explainable to the parties affected. Guidelines should be set up to hold algorithms accountable based on auditability, fairness, accuracy, and explainability.

Many of the problems that we currently see with algorithmic fairness are problems with how we define fairness, and what type of equitable outcomes we are looking for. While it is difficult to audit algorithms, it is not impossible. More difficult questions emerge concerning who should define what is fair. Defining a fair process cannot and should not be left up to computer scientists. To properly regulate technology that impacts lives, we need to regulate the choices that technologists are putting into their algorithms first. This is no easy task. But no matter what, keeping algorithms accountable through human intervention, auditing, and strong government regulation is necessary to ensure that we have equity and faith in automated decision making processes going forward.

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SILICON VALLEY THE HERO THE UNITED STATES DESERVES Akshaya Annapragada

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ilicon Valley and its host of enigmatic billionaires love to deride the U.S. government as a slow-moving, inefficient quagmire, incapable of producing real results. In turn, the public sector has criticized Silicon Valley for being out of touch with ordinary people, dreaming too big, and putting profit before principle. However, once you cut past the beach-boy culture and mind-boggling billion dollar valuations, there is a tremendous amount of substance in San Francisco and Palo Alto – real, valuable innovation that’s pushing the boundaries of technological possibility and safeguarding society.

In the 2008 movie, The Dark Knight, Lt. Gordon observes that Batman is “the hero Gotham deserves, but not the one it needs right now… He’s a silent guardian. A watchful protector. A Dark Knight.” In the same manner, Silicon Valley is the United States’ last, best hope. Ultimately, the tension between Silicon Valley and Washington, D.C. serves as a hedge against government abuse of power, while Silicon Valley’s ambitious mentality drives the pace of innovation forward when the government is unable or unwilling to do so. In this age of reduced federal funding for science and technology, coupled with unprecedented governmental invasions of privacy, we desperately need Silicon Valley.

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PROTECTING PRIVACY In early 2016, the FBI attempted to force Apple to bypass its own security encryption and unlock the iPhone of the San Bernardino shooter, who killed fourteen people during a holiday party. Apple refused, citing the fact that it could only comply with this request by writing new software to override its existing software – in effect, the government was forcing it to write software, which the company claimed violated its rights to freedom of speech. After a protracted court battle, the FBI eventually paid a professional hacker to access the phone and dropped the case. Apple, however, in making its decision not to comply, had already established a powerful precedent – that software companies do not violate user privacy on demand.

This decision was widely publicized in an open letter from Apple CEO Tim Cook to the public. The letter stated that Apple had historically complied with all reasonable government requests for data in their possession, but in this case, “[making] a new version of the iPhone operating system, circumventing several important security features, and [installing] it on an iPhone

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recovered during the investigation” was something that “would undermine the very freedoms and liberty our government is meant to protect.” Cook noted that “if the government can [force Apple to] make it easier to unlock your iPhone, it would have the power to reach into anyone’s device” and even to expand this power to demand that Apple build other kinds of surveillance software.

A host of other high profile Silicon Valley companies, including Google, Dropbox, Amazon and Snapchat quickly concurred, filing amicus briefs in support of Apple’s stance. There were a host of factors that compelled the giants of Silicon Valley to draw a line in the sand and align themselves on the pro-privacy side, but make no mistake—Silicon Valley’s collective decision to fight the federal government was not purely an ethical one. Ben Sobel, a fellow at Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society, told the HPR that “fundamentally, these are business decisions. Apple noticed that it would be not only bad PR for them to unlock the phone, but also really intrusive to their future business model,” as complying with these types of requests would take up a lot of their developers’ time.

Mason Kortz, another fellow at the Berkman Klein Center and a Clinical Instructional Fellow at the Harvard Law School Cyberlaw Clinic, agreed with Sobel, elaborating to the HPR that “tech companies want policies that are cheap and easy for them to comply with, appealing to their customers, and don’t mess with their business model.” According to Kortz, when companies are faced with decisions like Apple was, there are a variety of factors, including “actual ethical principles...but also the optics—how it appears to their user base, the potential for liability, and just the actual cost of compliance,” which they must consider.

The good news for consumers is that these complex business considerations create a powerful set of incentives for Silicon Valley technology companies to protect user privacy from government intrusion. In short, the very same business, profit-driven mentality that Silicon Valley is criticized for, serves to create an incentive structure that protects consumers.

WHEN GOVERNMENT CAN’T KEEP UP Outside of the bubble, Silicon Valley is sometimes criticized for its laser focus on disruption, and its self-important airs.

According to Evgeny Morozov, a notable technology critic, “In Silicon Valley’s conception of the universe, everything is already rotten and corrupt and the only source of purity is to be found in Californian basements, where the hard working and hoodiewearing saints are toiling to accelerate progress”. This isolationist attitude can be problematic, and has prompted some within the community to contend that Silicon Valley is out of touch with the general public, and perhaps doing less good for the everyman than they think. Despite this valid criticism, Silicon Valley’s mentality of taking on tough challenges with singular focus certainly has huge benefits for society.

Outside of the software sector, Silicon Valley’s penchant for dreaming big—specifically, for dreaming beyond current technological limitations—may be criticized as out of touch with reality.

This mentality of taking on tough challenges, however, has huge benefits for society. From 2003 to 2015, the National Institutes of Health lost 22 percent of its funding capacity, which led to less money available for medical research. During the same period,

Silicon Valley venture capitalists steadily increased their investments in biotech companies, and provided much-needed capital to companies that were in the process of developing promising treatments for diseases ranging from cancer to Alzheimer’s.

The process of taking a drug from the discovery stage to clinical use is an expensive, multi-year undertaking fraught with regulatory issues. Here, Silicon Valley’s money plays an extensive role in enabling promising medical technology to navigate this journey from bench to bedside. Given that President Trump recently announced a further 20 percent reduction in the NIH’s budget, the role of Silicon Valley venture capitalists as early investors in biotech research, development, and commercialization is more crucial than ever.

Moreover, even when the government creates important technology, Silicon Valley start-ups can improve it and make it more user-friendly and efficient. Take the example of clinicaltrials.gov, a federal government effort to make information on clinical trials transparent and easily available. While a good idea in theory, in practice, government attempts like this have failed to connect with the people who need it most—patients and families searching for clinical trials. Sol Chen, a young entrepreneur, observed this problem and co-founded Clara, a software platform that enables patients to easily find clinical trials and join a community of individuals who have been through the process.

Now the CTO of Clara, she told the HPR how her startup is using clinicaltrials.gov “to scrape what’s on there and present it in a better way. We’re using the data they have, and presenting it in a way that people can digest and understand.” This methodology exemplifies the aspirational nature of the technology start-up scene, and its willingness to take an existing idea and improve upon it when the government is unable or unwilling to.

THE BLEEDING EDGE In Silicon Valley, there’s a special name for technology so cutting edge that ‘cutting edge’ is an insufficient description: bleeding edge. This term is reserved for inventions and ideas so revolutionary they’re not ready for public use without significant validation and testing. But bleeding edge technology isn’t just novel; it’s also so far from reaching the market that investing money in it carries massive risk. This type of technology could be life-changing, but is expensive to develop, and could also completely fail after much time, effort, and money is invested.

Despite the large risks involved, bleeding edge technology is exactly the type of technology that Silicon Valley loves to believe in, and excels at developing.

As the public sector’s investment in space research decreases, Silicon Valley startups are quickly springing up to take their place. Companies like SpaceX are at the forefront of space flight, in many ways superseding NASA and the federal government’s space programs. SpaceX, founded by the quintessential Silicon Valley dreamer and doer, Elon Musk, is re-imagining space flight. In entering an industry that was once the exclusive domain of governments, Musk has reignited the space race by signing contracts with NASA to deliver supplies to the International Space Station, and by making plans for trips to Mars.

It’s important to note that SpaceX’s early attempts at rocket launches ended in abject failure. In fact, it took Musk six years to achieve a successful launch. After its third failure, in 2008, the company would almost certainly have shut down, if not for

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A Falcon rocket like the one pictured above was the first rocket to be relaunched into space.

a large investment from Peter Thiel, Musk’s fellow PayPal cofounder and renowned Silicon Valley investor. It took a unique kind of mentality—the one Silicon Valley specializes in—to see the potential in a bleeding edge company with no record of success, and realize it.

Aerospace is not the only province traditionally reserved for governments that Silicon Valley is disrupting. Bay Area investors and companies are also at the forefront of ed-tech, a growing field at the intersection of technology and education reform.

In 2007, Silicon Valley added a new startup, Khan Academy, a nonprofit dedicated to providing high quality educational materials for free, entirely online. Other companies have since joined the fray, including Coursera, which delivers classes from top universities to students across the world via the internet, and Remind, which enables messaging between parents, teachers and students.

Together, these companies, and many others in the space, are working to make education more accessible, and fundamentally shifting content delivery to online, adaptable mediums. Though the delivery of education is generally thought of as the purview of government, Silicon Valley entrepreneurs are finding innovative ways to engage more students and apply technology for social impact.

This theme, of Silicon Valley providing an infusion of innovation to traditionally government-run industries, and taking on bleeding edge technology despite the risks, is characteristic of the Bay Area’s founders and investors. From software to hard-

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ware, and schools to space, Silicon Valley occupies a unique and necessary spot at the forefront of technological advancement.

INSPIRATION AND ASPIRATION On a daily basis, Silicon Valley’s thirst for technological innovation coupled with business interests combine to create tremendous value for society. These aspects of the high-tech, San Francisco culture may lead to tension with the government, but they ultimately create a fine balance, in which Silicon Valley’s motivations serve to protect consumers from governmental abuse of power and enable technological advances in the absence of government support.

Throughout the last decade, Silicon Valley has consistently been at the forefront of technological innovation. As Chen, the co-founder of Clara, notes, “Silicon Valley especially tends to take larger risks than other cities do, in terms of investing, so [people there will] invest in something that’s a moonshot… [they say] ‘Wow, this would be crazy if it existed, so we should just try to make it exist.’” And it’s this very mentality that may literally lead to the innovation that changes the world.

Just as Batman was sometimes at odds with the Gotham City administration but persevered to help its people, such is the role of Silicon Valley’s entrepreneurs and investors. As technology and society continue to advance by leaps and bounds, Silicon Valley is exactly what we need—a protector and an innovator.

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TWEETING PROTEST

Organization and Mobilization in the New Administration Samuel Plank Call your Senators 202-224-3121 Demand Special Prosecutor&Select Committee investigation on #TrumpRussia #TeamOfLiars #TheResistance

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ith a handful of words and a sprinkling of emojis, an activist group that opposes the agenda of President Donald Trump charged on March 6 its tens of thousands of Twitter followers with dialing Congress. The response was substantial—over a thousand users retweeted the call to action made by “The Resistance Party.” The number of people who contacted Capitol Hill in response to the tweet is immeasurable, but the flood of phone-calls deluging congressional staffers since the January inauguration indicates that people are responding to such organizing tactics.

Ironically, liberal groups like The Resistance Party are multiplying on Twitter in response to a president who revolutionized the social media platform’s use as political media during the 2016 election. Trump’s relentless tweeting throughout the course of his campaign garnered him millions of followers and retweets. His unconventional and combative statements on Twitter often put him directly in the national spotlight. But since becoming president, Trump’s tweeting has not stopped. In fact, he continues to use his personal account in addition to the official presidential Twitter account.

Other players are also mastering the power of Twitter, however. A broad coalition of activist groups is learning tactics for organizing and mobilizing millions of people over the platform.

In an interview with the HPR, Diana Scholl, the social media manager for the American Civil Liberties Union, said activists see tweeting news as being “as important as sending out a press release” because “it reaches press as well as everyone else.”

Amongst the available tactics for mobilization, tweeting out congressional phone numbers has become a potent method for engagement. The tweeter usually decries an abuse by the Trump administration and then asks the reader to call their congressional representatives to express their anger. In the early months of Trump’s term, these tweets catalyzed displays of protest directed at both administration officials and policies emanating from it.

To make sense of these bouts of Twitter protest, Harvard Democracy140, an undergraduate research group led by Professor James Waldo, built a programmatic pipeline for streaming and analyzing political tweets. The group amassed a representative sample of tweets containing the number for either the congressional switchboard or the office of Senator Dianne Feinstein (D – Calif.), as they were likely to be a call to action—much like the tweet made by The Resistance Party. They then analyzed the collected tweets for the people or themes being discussed and for the structure of the underlying networks producing them. The findings show that Twitter is emerging as a key tool to quickly foment protest against the administration. These storms of protest on Twitter have been particularly powerful surrounding the controversy about connections between the White House and Russia. Motivating this direct action in the Twittersphere is

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a key element: urgency.

WHAT ANGERS TWITTER? To say that Trump has remained in the media spotlight throughout his first months in office would be an understatement. He has loudly rolled out executive orders and introduced new legislation with the Republican congress. The White House has also has been embroiled in scandal over suspected and discovered connections between the Trump administration and Russia. Following the public announcement by top intelligence agencies that Russian president Vladimir Putin ordered attacks against the American democratic system and Hillary Clinton during the 2016 election, questions have continued to fester about ties between the Trump administration and Putin.

Of all issues relating to the Trump administration during

February and March, Russia drew far and away the most powerful response from protestors on Twitter. The graph above shows that numerous spikes occurred in the number of tweets containing a congressional phone number and the word “Russia.”

The strongest by far, on March 3, saw over 2,600 tweets either tweeted or retweeted asking the Twittersphere to dial Congress and presumably ask for action on the relationship between the administration and Russia.

The timeline of the activity in this graph aligns with the breaking news about the connection between administration officials and the Kremlin, indicating that the tweets were likely direct responses to scandal surrounding the Trump administration. The period from February 12 to 24 shows spikes in activity surrounding the swift resignation of national security adviser Michael Flynn and the subsequent fallout as the administration dealt with the possibility of charges against the former national security advisor.

The large spike on March 2 is undoubtedly a result of the revelation that Attorney General Jeff Sessions met twice with the Russian ambassador to the United States during the election.

Another issue that received a substantial amount of Twitterbased protest was the health care reform bill introduced by

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Trump and congressional Republicans. The American Health Care Act was publicly released on March 6, and received almost immediate backlash from liberal and conservative groups alike.

The spike of tweets on March 7 containing a congressional phone number and mentioning “Trumpcare” demonstrates how quickly the Twittersphere characterized the new bill and activists organized protest against it. The subsequent, smaller spike on March 14 corresponds to the previous day’s release of the Congressional Budget Office’s analysis of the legislation showing that it would cause millions to lose coverage. The heightened March 23 activity shows the attention the bill received as Republican leadership prepared to bring it up for a vote in the House the next day, an endeavor that ultimately failed.

Notably, the second version of the travel ban on citizens of six majority-Muslim countries was unveiled on March 6 but was apparently didn’t get significant backlash on Twitter. Though the second ban, unlike the first, was blocked on March 15 before it went into effect, there was not any largescale movement on Twitter to call Congress and block the new version of the ban. The lack of attention given to the second version of the travel ban lends insight into how the timeliness of an issue motivates protest on Twitter. Both the Sessions probe and the healthcare legislation were urgent, as they concerned an ongoing investigation and an impending vote. The second travel ban was scheduled, but nobody had yet been detained at an airport.

PROTESTING PEOPLE What drives people to tweet out calls to protest can also be understood by looking at the individuals being targeted. Consistent with the findings made by looking at the tweets by issue, administration officials connected to the scandal with Russia were most widely mentioned in tweets containing congressional phone numbers. Concentrated protest was especially focused on Flynn and Sessions—both central Trump administration officials. The below graph shows that the timeline of mentions for both Flynn and Sessions lines up precisely with the spikes in protest about Russia in the previous graph.

While Trump himself received relatively consistent fire from

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the Twittersphere, he sometimes spiked at the same time as his political appointees. When Flynn and Session surged on February 14 and 17 respectively, Trump did as well. Other times, however, Trump escaped relatively unscathed from a controversy involving someone close to him. Notably, the massive Twitter storm directed at Jeff Sessions on March 3 barely targeted the president at all. This seems to indicate that protesters did not blame Trump for the communications between Sessions and the Russian ambassador, while they did blame him for the scandal involving Flynn.

The only other person connected to the Trump administration who was significantly targeted in protest tweets was Neil Gorsuch, whom Trump nominated to the Supreme Court on January 31. Gorsuch faced, at most, a tepid response from Twitter. His hearings in late March were largely overshadowed by the battle for the AHCA, and the graph shows that he barely drew any ire from Twitter protesters. The lack of gusto behind protesting Gorsuch reinforces the same conclusion—Russian influence over the White House was the central issue during February and March. Additionally, it highlights the finding that urgency was critical in drawing an activist response from Twitter. The Gorsuch hearings did not present an imminent action that had to be stopped.

NETWORKS OF ACTIVISM The final piece in understanding the propagation of protest was determining how it spread and the structure it took. Towards this end, protest tweets and retweets containing congressional phone numbers were put through network analysis using tools created by NYU’s SMaPP lab. Visualizing retweets in this way shed light on the centralized nature of the creation of protest content on Twitter. The lion’s share of the protest activity was the retweeting of a few original users who had a made a call to action to pick up the phone and call Congress.

This graph shows protest tweets during the uncovering of

Attorney General Sessions’ meetings with a Russian diplomat (March 1 to 5). Each color represents a network of a single tweet and all of the retweets that came out of it. As can be seen, the majority of all tweets originate from a small group of users.

During this window of time, three tweets alone were retweeted enough that they were responsible for over 66 percent of the total content in the representative sample of tweets.

The profiles of those who were getting a high number of retweets for their protest content display the diversity of protest activism on Twitter. The top three tweeters over the March 1 to 5 period shown in the graph were Senator Kamala Harris (D – Calif.), actress Mira Sorvino, and user “1st Officer Spock .”

According to Scholl of the ACLU, both strong organizations like the Senate and lesser-known organizations or users, like the Star-Trek-loving user, are essential to successful organizing on Twitter. Bigger groups can use their resources for “elevating smaller groups that are on the ground.” At the same time, stronger organizations can benefit from the authenticity that smaller groups and individual activists provide.

Though some characterize clicking retweet on an activist tweet as “slacktivism” because it requires such minimal effort and allows users to feel that they have accomplished something when they have done little, there is reason to believe that the vast networks of retweets around a few central tweets are actually benefitting protests. “If you have enough people who are doing just a little bit in terms of spreading information about the protest, that can actually cumulatively have a huge effect on the number of additional people who are exposed to information about the protest” according to Joshua Tucker, a professor of politics and data science at NYU, in an interview with the HPR. As Twitter-savvy organizers and activists think about the foreseeable future under Trump, they undoubtedly want to maintain the tremendous energy that has characterized resistance during the first months of the administration. The data presented here shows that in order to keep people engaged in future protests, organizers will have to maintain a sense of urgency in their responses to Trump. Evidence from the world of natural disaster response supports this focus and demonstrates how a punctuated need for urgency can create a durable network. Kate Starbird, a professor of Human Centered Design and Engineering at the University of Washington, studies social media communities that arise to provide volunteer natural disaster relief. In an interview with the HPR, Starbird said she “saw groups start to organize into more long-term volunteer groups that kept a presence not just in that event but across different events.” Just as the immediate need created by natural disasters sustained the emergency-response networks, so too can the urgency created by administrative action sustain activist networks and keep them engaged.

While some patterns of response to the Trump administration are emerging from protestors on Twitter, these trends are hardly settled and will likely continue to evolve as organizers refine their tactics. Undoubtedly, President Trump and those around him are also thinking about how to best craft messaging that does not inspire these fiery and effective reactions. Until the White House can figure out how to avoid the wrath of congressional calling-campaigns spread through Twitter, however, it will remain a major roadblock to the aspirations of the Trump administration.

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SCIENCE, SENSATIONALIZED How the Press Undermines Research Funding

Katherine Ho

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n mid-March, the Trump administration released its proposed budget for 2018. It included deep cuts to federal scientific agencies such as the National Institutes of Health.

In its current form, the bill is unlikely to pass through Congress without a fight, as research funding has traditionally received bipartisan support.

Yet these figures—including a staggering 18 percent cut to the NIH—should be a source of immense concern not only to scientists, but to anyone who cares about public health, evidencebased reasoning, or the preservation of the United States’ status as a mecca of research and intellectual activity. Even in the absence of outright hostility to science—of which there seems to be no shortage in the current administration—if lawmakers fail to keep research funding a priority, we will all lose out.

Judging by the flurry of media coverage following the cuts, one would guess that these decreases were unprecedented. But researchers know that funding has been tight over the past eight years. According to a Science Magazine editorial, the NIH’s 2012 budget funded 18 percent less research than in 2004, and budget sequestration mandated by the Budget Control Act of 2011 has continued to reduce research funding since then.

Unfortunately, rather than illuminating the inner workings of the scientific enterprise or explaining science’s importance as an institution, mainstream news publications tend to instead leverage its superficial narrative potential. As a result of these practices, science is consistently reduced to a political conflict over a grab bag of flashpoint issues. This distorted coverage crucially omits the centrality of federal funding to science’s mission of discovery, a search for the truth, and improvements to the human quality of life.

BACK TO THE BASICS In order to recognize why media coverage of federal funding has been lacking, it is important to understand why federal funding is important. Research exists on a continuum, and some types of research are inherently less compatible with private funding. At one end, basic science aims to understand the natu-

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ral world at a fundamental level and has few immediately clear applications. On the other end is translational research, which “translates” the fundamental discoveries of basic research into methods for the treatment and prevention of disease, or other real-world applications.

In an interview with the HPR, George Daley, dean of Harvard Medical School, describes how basic research can lead to translational successes: “One of my colleagues, Bob Horvitz, did research on a very primitive worm called C. elegans … He studied it from a pure curiosity-driven perspective. He identified mutations that caused certain cells to survive, and that allowed him to define the genetic pathway of programmed cell death.” Daley explained that one of these genes was later found to be related to a human lymphoma gene. Many years down the line, Horvitz’s original “curiosity-driven” research—which at the time had no clear applications—led to the development of lifesaving drugs.

Thus, to promote advances in public health and the treatment of disease, we must support a diverse portfolio of research.

This includes both the translational research that leads directly to treatments, and the basic research that provides the fundamental understanding necessary for translation.

The crucial basic research that eventually leads to public health improvements, however, may not have immediate therapeutic relevance at the time it is conducted. As a result, private sources such as pharmaceutical companies are often less likely to fund basic research. “When companies fund science, they tend to be much more focused and mission-oriented,” said Daley.

“When the NIH funds science, they certainly have their missionoriented efforts, but they are also inclined to fund very basic work.” Basic research yields great discoveries, but it requires an expensive long-term investment that is not always profitable for companies.

Even when it’s possible to shift away from federal funding to private sources like foundations, there are additional issues to consider. A reliance on private funding can result in deference to donor priorities. “The NIH allows you to pick a topic … and spend a career trying to chip away at it,” Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health professor Sara Bleich told the HPR,

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“whereas if you are in the foundation world, you sort have to bunny hop from topic to topic depending on what’s being funded … and often where discovery comes from is really intricate knowledge of a single topic.”

The stakes are clear: basic research is our primary means of understanding the world around us and a cornerstone of public health. In addition to scientific discovery, ample research funding is integral to maintaining American preeminence in academia. As Harvard Chan School assistant professor Michael Barnett puts it, “Funding for basic science is what powers the engines of our most productive elite universities and research enterprises that attract the most talented intellectuals, scientists, and engineers from across the world.”

FORGETTING ABOUT FUNDING But in the media, the “hive mind” of science, a thriving ecosystem of researchers suckled on the bosom of federal funding, is stripped of its institutional beauty and reduced to a cheap political sideshow—a mildly interesting narrative to tell when sexier topics like immigration, gun control, and the economy are having an off day. This coverage overemphasizes a handful of issues and politicizes the topic of science, pulling it into partisan firefights that obscure important discussions on funding of research.

For instance, after Trump’s election in November, news organizations sensed a juicy narrative and jumped on it. Capitalizing on post-election uncertainty, outlets published a flood of articles speculating on Trump’s potential actions on science. As if the entire issue of “science” could be boiled down to climate change and other hot topics, discussion of funding for federal agencies like the National Institutes of Health and National Science Foundation was either omitted or mentioned as an afterthought.

A particularly egregious Washington Post piece titled, “Trump and Pence on science, in their own words” listed quotes on scientific issues organized into headings by topic. These included “climate change,” “vaccines and autism,” “Ebola,” “wind farms,” “lightbulbs and cancer,” “the ozone layer,” “fracking,” and “Pence on evolution.” In the entire article, there was no mention of federal funding, the NIH, or the NSF. The author dedicated an entire paragraph to discussing the merits of compact fluorescent lamps, yet research funding received no mention.

The distillation of “science” down to a grab bag of politicized issues only fortifies the perception that caring about science simply entails having the “correct” positions on a laundry list of important political issues. Implicitly, a checklist representation of science reinforces the erroneous notion that science does not require a strong and sustained commitment. This politicized, narrative-based and hot-topic coverage allows the public to ignore the dearth of research funding. It fails to make readers aware of the immense importance of public research funding in an age where anti-intellectualism is pervasive, yet supporting scientific discovery remains as important as ever.

PUBLIC OPINION, POLITICAL CAPITAL In a Politico article in the wake of Trump’s election, Bill Scher wrote, “A majority of public opinion can mean more than a majority in Congress.” This sentiment should remind us that to rejuvenate federal funding of research, it’s vital to educate and engage the public. Issues like climate change, evolution,

and cancer receive a huge amount of public attention, and for this reason they are addressed by lawmakers. To protect federal science funding, the public needs to be outraged when the NIH might receive an 18 percent cut.

Some may question whether adversaries of research funding actually exist. One need look no further than a recent National Review article extolling Representative Jeff Flake’s (R – Ariz.)

“Wastebook,” an annual publication that compiles examples of wasteful government spending. This year’s edition included several examples of research funded by NIH or NSF grants, and charges “the nation’s most prestigious science agencies” with “squandering resources … by investigating matters most would consider obvious or even absurd.”

Almost everyone, including Flake, agrees that we should fund beneficial translational initiatives like curing cancer. But Flake’s analysis betrays a lack of understanding of the scientific process.

By definition, basic research doesn’t have immediately clear applications, and may seem absurd to some. Nevertheless, it isn’t politicians’ job to determine the merit of research proposals.

Rather than reducing “science” to flashy political issues, the press must educate the public on how science really works—by using basic, curiosity-driven research to arrive at fundamental discoveries, and then translating these basic principles into treatments and preventative measures against disease. In addition, the press must demonstrate how federal funding is integral to that mission. With lawmakers who don’t realize the value of basic science, we need journalists and citizens who do.

A WORD OF CAUTION: POLITICIZING SCIENCE While it is imperative that the public rally around public funding of research, this must be done without making science funding a political issue. The skewed portrayal of science in the media is dangerous because it inherently politicizes science, repeatedly tying it to issues split down party lines. Appropriating the entire concept of “science” to refer to a list of highly controversial political issues is effective in rallying party partisans around certain causes, but falsely implies that science is—or should be—a solely Democratic or Republican issue.

As Mischa Fisher wrote in the Atlantic, “Science’s political constituency is too small and the coalition supporting it is not powerful enough to protect research budgets against other priorities … If it is perceived as a partisan litmus test, it will not continue to exist in its current state as the government’s other financial obligations continue to grow.” This is not to say that issues like climate change are exclusively political issues, or that denial of climate change is somehow legitimate political dissent rather than scientific illiteracy. It is important to remember, as Fisher reminds us, that although the right may be home to global warming skeptics, the left has its fair share of anti-GMO hardliners.

Climate change is the perfect example of how a cut-and-dry scientific issue can become controversial if it is represented in consistently partisan terms. Let’s not drag funding into the fray as well. Those who believe that science is a positive force in our society today should be highly motivated to ensure the federal government continues to support and nurture this essential enterprise. Federal funding of research is a crucial issue that needs bipartisan support, and it should be represented that way in the media.

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AN IMPERFECT UNION The case for a second constitutional convention Samarth Desai 20 HARVARD POLITICAL REVIEW SUMMER 2017

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t’s May 25, and the delegates to the Constitutional Convention have just taken their seats in Independence Hall. There is no doubt among the delegates that the present system of government is inadequate. The country is fractured, the Congress is indolent, and the people have little faith in the executive.

The government is both undemocratic and unrepublican. The delegates have convened in Philadelphia to rectify the defects of the existing constitution and replace it with a new, more perfect Union.

Except this isn’t 1787. The document to be revised isn’t the Articles of Confederation, and the delegates do not include Madison, Hamilton, and Franklin. Senator Elizabeth Warren and Harvard Law School professor Laurence Tribe might represent Massachusetts. Paul Ryan and John McCain could be there, along with Cornel West and Cory Booker. Joe Biden would be able to walk over to the hall from his office at the University of Pennsylvania. Perhaps Chief Justice John Roberts would preside.

A Second Constitutional Convention may seem like an ivory tower pipe dream, but it has a concrete foundation in the text of the Constitution. Under Article V, the legislatures of twothirds of the states could convoke a convention to propose amendments to the Constitution. As a recent article in The New Yorker noted, last year’s elections put Republicans only one state legislature away from the magic number, with all but four of the Republican-controlled states having already passed resolutions to call for an Article V convention.

The case for a Second Constitutional Convention becomes more persuasive with each passing year. Two months into his presidency, President Trump has historically low approval ratings for a new president. Congress is faring even worse: according to one recent poll, only 14 percent of Americans approve of the job Congress is doing. A majority of people believe that the country is heading in the wrong direction, and the 112th, 113th, and 114th Congresses have been the least productive in modern American history.

As America inches closer to its tricentennial, its democracy is collapsing. The government created by the Constitution in the late 18th century isn’t functioning as well in modernity, and it’s worth considering that the root cause of this discord is not partisanship or polarization, but the Constitution itself. If that is the case, then the solution may be to act preemptively and redraft the structure of American government from the ground up, starting with a Second Constitutional Convention.

WE THE LIVING Perhaps the first person to propose a Second Constitutional Convention, albeit implicitly, was Thomas Jefferson, who was overseas in France during the first convention. In a 1789 letter to James Madison, Jefferson wrestled with the question of whether one generation can legislate for future generations. After conducting some calculations, he concluded that no law can be binding after 19 years. “No society can make a perpetual constitution, or even a perpetual law,” Jefferson wrote. “The earth belongs to the living and not to the dead.” It is quite remarkable that, at its core, the structure of American government has not changed in the two centuries since Jefferson declared that “the

earth belongs to the living.” The United States is still a democratic republic with three branches of government, a bicameral legislature, and a presidential veto, but we are starting to see the walls of this old house begin to crack.

To change the basic framework of the constitution would be immensely difficult. Amendments require the approval of twothirds of each house of Congress and three-fourths of the states.

In other words, change by majority rule is hard. As Jefferson predicted, “The people cannot assemble themselves; their representation is unequal and vicious.” Without a Second Constitutional Convention, we are stuck with this form of government for the foreseeable future. The question is, is this form a good one?

AN IMPERFECT UNION For many who have studied the Constitution and American government at length, the answer to that question is no. “I started out as what I would call a friendly or academic critic of the Constitution,” University of Texas Law School professor Sanford V. Levinson told the HPR. “But sometime in the last five or 10 years, I’ve shifted from being a relative moderate critic to really believing that the Constitution is taking us over a cliff, that it is a clear and present danger to the American public, and that it is really a disgrace that we are not having a national conversation about what a constitutional convention might actually do.”

Levinson is one of the most prominent legal scholars to call for a Second Constitutional Convention, having first endorsed the idea in his 2006 book Our Undemocratic Constitution. Since then, the proposition of a convention has been backed by an awkward cluster of thinkers across the ideological spectrum, including Harvard Law professor Lawrence Lessig on the left and the billionaire Koch brothers on the right.

To criticize the U.S. Constitution is usually considered an offense to patriotism. The Founding Fathers have been revered into immortality, and the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution are among the most venerated texts of that era.

When Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg told an Egyptian reporter, “I would not look to the U.S. Constitution, if I were drafting a Constitution in the year 2012,” she was unsurprisingly attacked for her comments. And yet Ginsburg’s point deserves merit. In the two centuries since the Constitution was written, there have undoubtedly been advancements in constitutional design, just as there have been in science, technology, medicine, and every other field. Empirical evidence vindicates Ginsburg’s comment—a 2012 study found that other countries have become increasingly unlikely to model their constitutions after America’s.

Intolerance of constitutional criticism often reflects a lack of understanding of what exactly the Constitution’s critics believe is wrong with the document. When thinkers like Levinson and Ginsburg find fault with the Constitution, it is not for the reasons that most Americans might expect. It is certainly alarming that the rights guaranteed by the Constitution originally excluded poor whites, women, and people of color, but these defects do not explain America’s structural breakdown today. The postCivil War Reconstruction Amendments and the Supreme Court have expanded the rights of those whom the framers originally

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excluded. Instead, the greatest flaws of the Constitution lie in the form of government it created. “What is taking us over a cliff right now is not the Bill of Rights or the 14th Amendment,” Levinson said. “It’s structural provisions.” In Levinson’s view, “we could have perfect rights provisions, and we could still have a dangerously dysfunctional Congress, and we could still have a sociopath in the White House.”

Although we often think of the Constitution as embodying timeless principles, it is very much a document steeped in its time. As Levinson writes in his book Framed, the two great compromises of the Constitutional Convention were the product of arguments about political representation and slavery, and the stakes of these debates were enormous—if one side wasn’t happy, they could walk, and the tenuous Union would dissolve. Thus, the convention created a government that answered the peculiar challenges of the post-revolutionary era, but one not based on the best theories of constitutional design. Then, to add insult to injury, the framers created a highly demanding amendment process, making the Constitution particularly difficult to change.

A perfect illustration of this constitutional defect is the archaic Electoral College. According to Levinson, the electoral system was predicated on the understanding that slave states would receive a numeric boost as a result of the Three-Fifths Compromise, and was created on the assumption that American politics would have no political parties. Since 1787, slavery has been abolished and politics have come to be dominated by a two-party system, and yet the Electoral College is still the law of the land. The consequence has been the designation of just a few states as “swing states,” which dominate the campaign season and decide the election. Voters in other states are left as cogs in a machine, which may partially explain why the United States has voter turnout rates below 60 percent, lower than nearly all other developed countries. And yet this anachronistic system has concrete and enormous consequences: two of the last five presidential elections have handed the presidency to a candidate who lost the popular vote, with Trump having lost the popular vote by 3 million votes.

RE-ESTABLISHING MEANING The structure of American government is not the only outmoded artifact in the Constitution. The Constitution’s language needs updating as well, something that a Second Constitutional Convention could accomplish. Some of the Constitution’s provisions are simply relics of a departed era. For example, under Article I, Section 8, Clause 5, Congress has the power “to coin Money,” but no provision of the Constitution allows the federal government to issue paper money. In the same vein, the Constitution allows for an Army and a Navy, but not an Air Force.

Of course, all of this is not to say that the Supreme Court will or should find greenbacks and the Air Force unconstitutional.

But, the question of how the supreme law of the land can be a Constitution with provisions we wholly ignore is not an easy one to answer, and it provides some insight into the clumsy dilemmas that arise from running a modern government based on a document written in 1787.

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Even more troubling than the cases of paper money and the Air Force are what the Harvard Law professor Noah Feldman has termed “the obscure clauses,” provisions of the Constitution which have never before been litigated. Because these clauses have barely been discussed since ratification, the framers’ language is so far removed from our time that it renders any original intent of these clauses nearly meaningless. One example is Article I, Section 9, Clause 8, known as the Emoluments Clause, which forbids any “Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust” in the United States from accepting “any present, Emolument, Office, or Title” from a foreign state. Recently, numerous lawsuits against Trump claim that his conflicts of interest put him at odds with the Emoluments Clause. Among other things, these lawsuits will have to contend with the Constitution’s antiquated language: does the president hold an “Office of Profit or Trust” under the United States? What exactly are emoluments, and are fair-value transactions included? A Second Constitutional Convention could modernize the Constitution’s language and clarify its principles so that semantic confusion doesn’t stand in the way of legitimate lawsuits.

AN UNCONVENTIONAL PLAN If a Second Constitutional Convention has any chance of coming to fruition, it must be politically viable, and it should avoid the partisanship and polarization that it is trying to remedy. Levinson believes that one way to maintain the political viability of a second convention is by limiting its scope. An agreement beforehand that the Convention will only discuss structural provisions will take off the table many of today’s most divisive issues, such as abortion and gun control. Another of Levinson’s proposals is that the convention’s revisions, if adopted, will have a delayed implementation, perhaps for 10 or more years, situating the country behind a kind of Rawlsian veil of ignorance. He hopes that a delayed implementation will allow delegates to decide matters of government structure without any ideological or partisan bias.

One of the more controversial provisions of Levinson’s proposal is who will make up the delegations. “My proposal is that the delegates be chosen basically at random,” he said. Levinson would call on a polling organization such as Gallop to choose around 800 delegates that are representative of the American population. The only limitation to be a delegate would be age, and the delegates would receive a generous salary, allowing them to travel around the nation and the world to educate themselves about constitutional design. Levinson believes that ordinary people, as opposed to politicians and scholars, are best situated to decide the form of government. “Constitutional design is not rocket science,” he said. “It is basically the requirement to make choices around certain values.”

Levinson acknowledges that “the whole thing is a sort of quixotic fantasy.” But, as Congress continues to do less and less, the political parties become more adversarial, and government as a whole breaks down, a Second Constitutional Convention doesn’t seem like such a bad idea.

WORLD

PR TEST THE SOUTH KOREAN WEAPON OF CHOICE

Andrew Kim SUMMER 2017 HARVARD POLITICAL REVIEW 23

WORLD

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n March 10, after a 92-day trial, the Constitutional Court of South Korea unanimously decided to impeach former President Park Geun-hye, who was suspected of conspiring with Choi Sun-sil, the daughter of a cult leader. The former president was accused of installing those connected with Choi in the government and giving her illegal access to confidential documents and significant power in major decisions, helping her to exert her influence and extort millions of dollars from South Korean businesses. Many Koreans saw these corrupt practices as acts to subvert the Korean Constitution and the hard-fought democratic processes established after the June Democracy Movement in 1987.

In response, protesters began to gather regularly in Seoul’s Gwanghwamun Plaza, a historically significant location where the general population had formally voiced their concerns and requests to the king during the Joseon Dynasty. Every Saturday since October 29, protesters joined together demanding the removal of Park from office. On December 9, the National Assembly passed the motion to impeach Park, and on March 10, anti-Park protesters celebrated as the Court upheld this motion.

These recent protests vastly differ from the protest movements of the 20th century, which were often chaotic and violent.

In an interview with the HPR, Harvard Professor Paul Chang, who participated in the largest of the Park protests on December 3, noted that “what stood out most, other than the incredible scale of course, was how civil the protest was.” Chang “saw so many families protesting together, including young children and infants in strollers. There was not even a hint of possible violence.”

Chang said that one of the biggest feats of these protests was that not a single person was arrested, which highlights the significant role played by the police. Not only did Korean law enforcement steer clear of suppressive tactics, but it also allowed the protesters to assemble peacefully. This was one of the first Korean protests in which the police and the protesters were cooperative. Chang said that the police facilitated the protests by keeping the crowd moving and that some even “seemed to enjoy the gathering [as] they took selfie pictures with the crowd in the background.”

The ability to organize a protest of this scale in a non-violent manner can be accredited to Korea’s history and experience in its fight for democracy. The April 19 Movement in 1960, the Kwangju Democracy Uprising in 1980, the June Democracy Movement in 1987, and the new commitment of the police to democratic processes have contributed significantly to creating a space for effective and peaceful protest.

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NOTHING NEW The seeds of the successful anti-Park movement were sown by the April 19 Movement in 1960, led by labor and student groups in protest of electoral corruption. Rhee Syng-man, a Korean War hero, had been elected to be the first president of South Korea in 1948 by the National Assembly. After his failed attempt to institute a popular vote and change the electoral process so that he could remain in power, Rhee declared martial law and arrested opposing politicians. With the dissenters removed, his constitutional amendment eventually passed, and Rhee obtained power indefinitely.

On March 15, 1960, police opened fire on civilians at a protest against Rhee, leading to the death of high school student Kim Ju-yul. While the government reported that his death was due to drowning, it was later discovered that he was killed by a tear gas grenade. This news shocked the nation, and on April 19, thousands of students marched in Seoul to the Blue House—the residence of the head of state—calling for Rhee’s resignation.

The police once again opened fire on the protesters, and Rhee proclaimed martial law to suppress them. On April 25, professors joined the students in protest, and when the outnumbered police refused to attack, Rhee was forced to resign on April 26.

Rhee, through his false promises to step down after the end of his term, launched the beginnings of democratic change in South Korea. His attempt to retain power stirred the hearts of many South Koreans, and caused them to fight with an increased intensity for the democratic processes he desperately tried to avoid.

While the 1960 protests and removal of Rhee were the first steps away from autocracy and towards democracy, the victory was short-lived. Park Chung-hee, the father of recently impeached Park Geun-hye, overthrew the government with a military coup d’état on May 16, 1961. Park Chung-hee’s military rule in 1972 sparked the 1980 Kwangju Democracy Uprising.

“The Kwangju Uprising in 1980 and the [subsequent] democracy movements were movements directed against the illegitimacy of the political system as a whole, the authoritarian Yusin system erected in 1972 by Park Chung Hee,” Harvard Professor Carter Eckert said in an interview with the HPR. Many viewed this system of government as illegitimate because of its weak democratic underpinnings and the lack of checks and balances; in Park’s electoral college system, the members of the college were chosen by Park and his regime.

After Park was assassinated in October 26, 1979, Chun DooHwan, another military general, seized the opportunity to gain

WORLD

power. On May 18, Korean students, unwilling to be governed under another authoritarian military dictatorship, gathered to protest at Chonnam National University. After being suppressed and beaten by the police, more civilians joined and were also attacked. When Chun sent in special forces to Kwangju, the protesters broke into police stations to arm themselves and fought back. While the government forces were temporarily pushed back, Chun’s military forces later sent tanks to attack the city, and the uprising was immediately crushed. While protesters failed once again to bring democracy in this uprising, the event invigorated pro-democracy sentiments throughout the country, in memory of the several thousand who lost their lives at Kwangju.

In 1987, Chun’s regime announced its support for Roh Taewoo as the next president, triggering the June Democracy Movement in another push for free elections after having endured the authoritarian rule of the previous presidents. Lee Han-yeol, one of the student protesters at Yonsei University, was severely injured after a tear gas grenade penetrated his skull, and he became the face of the protests that followed. On June 29, Roh gave in to the people’s demands for democracy. The first democratic elections were held in 1987, and Roh was ironically elected to the presidency due to a split vote in the opposition party. Regardless, after close to 30 years of protests, the Korean people had finally forced the institution of free and fair elections.

PARK GEUN-HYE’S TRIAL: THE 21ST CENTURY FIGHT FOR DEMOCRACY The struggle for democracy over the past 60 years is still fresh in the hearts of Koreans. To many, the corruption scandal surrounding Park subverts hard fought victories. Park’s trial focused on whether she was qualified to represent the sentiments of the general population. The main argument against impeachment was that the democracy of the country was at risk because of the “so-called” majority opinion. Many of Park’s defenders claim this charge has been fabricated by those attempting to take advantage of a politically fragile situation, and does not, in fact, accurately represent the sentiments of the country. Park’s defenders have compared her impeachment trial to those of Jesus and Socrates, and her lawyers claimed that this was the result of mob justice.

However,Schartz Yonsei University Professor Hans Schattle noted Rachel in an interview with the HPR that the patriotic arguments Park supporters have resorted to are similar to those that the previous Korean authoritarian rulers used. While protesters at anti-Park

rallies carried signs that said “Impeach Park Geun-hye,” those at pro-Park rallies waved South Korean flags. “Park supporters can’t find any kind of slogan at this point that would convey Park’s virtues in a convincing way,” Schattle said, “so they simply wave the flag and imply that patriotic Koreans ought to support the [former] president.”

The revelations of Park’s ties with Choi have cast severe doubts in the minds of many South Koreans, who, after having achieved democratic elections, have put their trust into the democratic system to select a leader who would serve the best interests of the country. Each of the protests of the past half century were aimed at achieving a system in which the elected official would best represent the desires of the country’s citizens—the April Revolution of 1960 was triggered in response to Rhee’s constant amendments of the Constitution to remain in power, the Kwangju Democracy Uprising of 1980 challenged the illegitimate political system erected by Park Chung-hee, and the June Democracy Movement was the final push for democratic elections.

In modern-day South Korea, the protesters have gathered yet again in another democracy movement—this time, with the help of the Korean National Police—to challenge the actions of Park.

Unwilling to take a step backwards in the struggle for democracy, they have successfully voiced their opinions in a peaceful way because of the legacy of past movements. “Precisely given South Korea’s past history, it’s inconceivable that the police would be called out as in the past, [and] there’s very little, if any, support in the South Korean political spectrum for that kind of action anymore” Eckert said. The April 19 Movement, the Kwangju Democracy Uprising, and the June Democracy movements have all contributed to the changes in the political spectrum, and in contrast with previous protests, the Seoul Mayor Park Won-soon has worked closely with the Korean National Police to provide a space for protesters to peacefully express their qualms.

For Mayor Park and many other South Koreans, both protesters and police alike, the memory of the tragic events of previous protests is still fresh, and both sides want to avoid similar outcomes. Protesters have shown great restraint, especially given the outrage that was caused by impeachment, largely due to their commitment towards “those hard-won peaceful democratic norms to effect change,” as Eckert outlined. The police have evolved too, from an accessory for the country’s ruler to use at will, into a resource that works closely with the government to prevent violent protests, and to protect democratic processes.

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BREXIT

THE QUESTIONS THAT REMAIN Elizabeth Manero

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n the months leading up to Britain’s historic referendum to leave the European Union, members of the Leave campaign made a number of promises to the British people, among them, a rejection of the principles of free movement demanded by the European Union, and the halting of membership fee payments that were viewed to offer little return. A common theme among these assurances was that exiting the European Union would not harm the British economy. Indeed, a number of prominent figures in the campaign claimed that Brexit would have a positive impact on the economy, freeing the United Kingdom from unnecessary regulations and encouraging reforms. These promises were enough to sway 52 percent of the more than 30 million people that turned out to vote. Now, the world waits to see what Brexit will bring.

The process of leaving, far from simple, has already begun, and its implications have been thrust under more scrutiny than they ever were in the months leading up to the referendum. As soon as Article 50, the provision that allows member states to leave the European Union, was invoked, the United Kingdom began its two-year window to come to an agreement with the European Union about its withdrawal barring a unanimous agreement for extension. Theresa May triggered this process on March 29, a decision that will prompt Donald Tusk, current president of the European Council, to call a meeting of the remaining 27 EU member states likely in late May. Functioning on this timeline, negotiations between the European Union and Britain would formally begin in June, leaving the two bodies with 22 months to come to a final agreement that the European Council, European Parliament, and Britain’s two Houses of Parliament will vote on.

ARRANGING THE AGREEMENTS This deadline is worrying to some, who claim that the twoyear time schedule is not enough to properly wade through the political and bureaucratic realities that exiting entails. Negotiations cover a wide swath of topics and pose several challenges— particularly economic ones. To begin with, as a party to the European Union, Britain made a number of legal commitments

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that it is still expected to honor—the largest of which is investment in an infrastructure cohesion fund responsible for projects throughout the European Union, a program that makes up roughly a third of the EU’s budget. Other commitments include portions of the EU’s deficit and official’s pension liabilities.

Estimates of the EU’s liabilities—12 percent of which the United Kingdom is responsible for—land at about €600 billion, putting the UK’s responsibility at €60 billion.

One of the most important economic factors facing the United Kingdom in its attempts to exit is the single market, an internal market between the member states of the European Union that ensures the free movement of goods, people, services and capital. Under this market, goods traded between member states are not subject to any tariffs. During his efforts to push Britain to leave the European Union, Boris Johnson, a prominent Leave campaign leader, assured voters that the United Kingdom would continue to have access to the European Union’s single market.

However, in January of this year, Theresa May confirmed her commitment to a “hard Brexit,” stating that Britain will not be pushing for single market access. While membership in the European Union is not a requirement for access to the single market, membership in the European Economic Agreement is. Being a party to this agreement is conditional on the nonnegotiable acceptance of a number of EU laws. The most notable of these are the “four freedoms,” requirements for participants in the free market to allow for the free movement of goods, services, people, and capital—a prospect incompatible with Britain’s goals.

Leaving the single market means that Britain must reach new economic and trade agreements with the rest of the European Union. Gridlock between the two governing bodies might forestall an economic agreement until the deadline of Britain’s official exit from the European Union. An inability to reach a deal before Brexit occurs would mean that Britain and the European Union would be obligated to operate according to the trade regulations outlined by the World Trade Organization. Both Liam Fox, Britain’s International Press Secretary, and David Davis, Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union, have acknowledged to the people, government, and exporters that there exists a real possibility that this scenario will occur.

ECONOMIC ENTANGLEMENTS The political and economic repercussions of a failure to reach a trade agreement would be widespread. While Britain does not need to reapply to the WTO following its exit from the European Union, the organization has a lot of work to do in negotiating the UK’s new trade schedule. Schedules in Britain—the tariffs and subsidy arrangements that farmers and companies are subject to—have up to this point been decided by the European Union as a whole. Currently, Britain exports about half of all of the goods it produces to the European Union, and 63 percent of its exports are linked to its membership within the European Union.

While decreasing tariffs and manufacturing, as well as Europe’s shrinking share of market importance create a small cushion from economic fallout caused by reverting to the WTO rules, the strength of that cushion varies across sectors, and is particularly weak among manufacturing.

Once outside of the European Union, British exports into the EU economic zone will be subject to tariffs they were previously exempt from. On average, EU tariffs stand at just under 5 percent, and if Britain reverts to WTO rules, dairy and meat producers would face tariffs that could reach as high as 40 percent.

Exporters would also be subject to Non-Tariff Barriers, barriers to trade that can be equally, if not more, restrictive than customs tariffs. This would mean that throughout the European Union, British exports would be subject to a number of new regulations pertaining to how products are manufactured and handled, as well as the amount of market penetration they are granted.

The Independent put the cost of these new tariffs to exporters in general at €4.5 billion a year, claiming that the real cost would very likely be much higher. Although foreign investments are still expected to continue, London’s role as a financial center is called into question in light of the UK’s lost influence on single market trade governance. “The reality of the interdependence between the UK and the EU [extends beyond] tariffs to all sorts of norms and standards because the EU is a very powerful market and regulatory power,” said Harvard Kennedy School Professor Muriel Rouyer in an interview with the HPR. Yet, in a rejection of these principles, some leaders have already called for the deregulation of EU norms within Britain, a prospect that Harvard Kennedy School Professor Jose Beneyto, a professor at the Kennedy school warned against in an interview with the HPR., “A ‘race to the bottom’ in terms of regulations and taxes would be very detrimental,” Beneyto said. “If the UK … tries to make itself a cheap target in terms of low taxes and regulations, it would be very negative for the entire global system,” leading the country to experience a “counterproductive backlash.”

FAR REACHING CONSEQUENCES

While the United Kingdom may choose to simply mirror the arrangements it was previously held to, Brexit presents an opportunity for a number of countries to voice their concerns with what they view as overly protectionist policies that inhibit trade.

China, for example, is likely to want to revisit the UK’s policies on steel dumping, and a number of food-importing countries will likely find fault with high subsidies given to farmers. Specifically, if Britain chooses to no longer be subject to the agreements of the European Union, it may face added pressures to discard

the Common Agricultural Policy level subsidies, a system of subsidies and programs for farmers which the country previously employed.

Renegotiating schedules places pressure on the United Kingdom in other ways as well. As a member of the European Union, Britain is currently subject to many multilateral trade agreements. After Brexit, these agreements will have to be renegotiated and readjusted to take into account Britain’s own share of the quotas that went into them. Already a drawn-out process, the issue is further complicated by the need for unanimity in any trade schedule drawn up under the WTO. Renegotiating these will require an immense amount of cooperation and effort by the international community.

Pascal Lamy, former chief of the WTO, has characterized this scenario as “worse than a deal,” and Donald Tusk tweeted in March that, “No deal [is] bad for everyone, above all for [the] UK.” Britain however, does not seem to be prepared for this reality. In fact, representatives have publicly put forward the idea that “no deal for Britain is better than a bad deal.” Brexit Secretary Davis however, admitted to Parliament that the government had yet to carry out an assessment of the economic consequences of leaving the European Union without an economic deal, stating that it may be done within a year. This is a concerning timeline given that the United Kingdom will already be halfway through the negotiation process by then.

Davis also confirmed to Parliament that financial firms stationed in Britain would be likely to lose their passporting rights within the European Union. Passporting is a right reserved to firms that are a part of the European Economic Agreement that allows them to conduct their business within other EEA countries without getting authorized in each country. Without passporting rights, multinational corporations stationed in Britain will have to go through a lengthy bureaucratic process to get authorized within every country that they want to do business with. Along with being costly for firms, this also means that the financial sector in London, which contains a number of large international banks and is responsible for over £60 billion in tax a year and 1 million jobs, will be put under additional stress.

London’s Special Representative to the EU Jeremy Browne estimated that job losses within the city could be as high as seven percent.

Even extracting London from the European Union’s web of interdependence is not so black and white. As Browne explained to the HPR, London is the “one large global financial sector in Europe … The other financial centers in Europe are national or regional level centers. London’s competition is Singapore and New York, it’s not Frankfurt and Paris.” For this reason, he thinks that while “there may be some activity that leaves the city of London as a result of Brexit” it is unlikely that another European city will usurp London and become the financial center of Europe.

Here, Browne is outlining a reality that British voters did not seem prepared for. “The reality is interdependence,” Rouyer summarized. “Europe is a form of soft, sticky power that is hard to get rid of. May will have to come to terms with people who do not have a nationalistic stance on everything and … align the actual degree of sovereignty that you have with the desired level.” Good or bad, the effects of Brexit will permanently root themselves in discussions of international politics and economics from here on out.

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.RAFAEL. .CORREA. THE ECUADORIAN DREAM

Vanessa Ruales 28 HARVARD POLITICAL REVIEW SUMMER 2017

WORLD WORLD

I

n 2005, I was a five-year old little girl living in Ecuador. Despite being merely a child, I have a very vivid and traumatic memory of the chaos and political instability my native land endured. On the morning of April 20, my parents turned on the television and were greeted by the image of thousands of people protesting the policies of President Lucio Gutiérrez on the streets of Quito. Violence erupted between the protesters and the police as the protesters tried to storm the presidential palace. Ultimately, the president was forced to flee the country in disgrace, but not before protesters made an attempt to block his plane on the tarmac.

In most other countries, this would have been an extraordinary event, but in a dysfunctional Ecuador it had become standard practice. The country had already suffered not one, but two presidential oustings in the decade before—those of Abdalá Bucaram in 1997 and Jamil Mahuad in 2000. Both presidencies were marred by charges of abuse of power, corruption, and poor governance. Like Gutiérrez, both Bucaram and Mahuad eventually opted to flee the country. Again, in 2005, the Ecuadorian people had had enough.

Enter Rafael Correa. Elected in 2006, only a little more than a year after Gutiérrez was overthrown, Correa could have easily fallen back upon the habits of his predecessors, engaging in propaganda and failing to carry out the social reforms he had promised during his campaign. Instead, he embarked on a massive and electrifying social spending program called the “citizen’s revolution,” which improved the quality of life in Ecuador dramatically and has cut poverty by 27 percent since 2006. With these measures, Correa lifted the spirits of many Ecuadorians and compelled them to look together towards a brighter future with his creation of a “national project,” one akin to the American dream. Although it seems likely that a victory by the opposition will undo aspects of his project, Correa’s legacy is one that will be felt by Ecuadorians for decades to come.

HISTORICALLY CORRUPT Despite the fact that both Bucaram and Mahuad had been elected as left-wing candidates with mandates to help the poor when in office, the pressure of the moneyed interests and established right-wing political oligarchy proved too much. They reneged on their promises and implemented harsh cuts in social spending that dramatically increased the cost of living for the poor. On top of it all, both Bucaram and Mahuad were found to have enriched themselves either from the government coffers or through bribes taken from the elite.

Following these debacles, Gutiérrez was elected as a leftwing reformer who promised to finally bring relief to the poor, which at the time made up almost half of the population.

Instead, he formed alliances with right-wing politicians and, in consequence, employed generally orthodox economic policies that did little to reduce Ecuador’s rampant inequality. He further cemented his new alliance by exonerating Bucaram, his immediate predecessor, from corruption charges and allowing his return to the country. Harvard professor Steven Levitsky told the HPR that the widespread corruption of the government throughout various presidencies led many Ecuadorians to experience a deep

sense of desgaste, or tiredness, from the failures of the Gutiérrez presidency and the austerity measures he implemented. This feeling drove Ecuadorians to search for a left-wing candidate less willing to compromise with the country’s dominant right wing. They found this candidate in Correa.

A TURNING POINT After serving as finance minister under the transitional presidency of Alfredo Palacio, Gutiérrez’ vice president, Rafael Correa was himself elected president in 2006. Just one year after he took office, the global financial crisis of 2008 occurred, and beat down the Ecuadorian economy, decreasing the price of oil, Ecuador’s main export, by 79 percent. In a country where oil composed 62 percent of exports and a third of government revenue, the fall in oil revenues led to an overwhelming $3.5 billion trade deficit in 2009. This had severe consequences for the economy, and Ecuador ultimately became the hardest-hit country in Latin America.

Correa, an economist by training, decided to take an unorthodox path in economic policy by drastically reforming Ecuador’s financial system, a gutsy strategy given the power of the financial sector in Ecuadorian politics. The central bank was placed under the direct control of the government, and it was forced to bring $2 billion of reserves abroad back to Ecuador for use as economic stimulus. These reserves were used to provide loans for housing, agriculture, and infrastructure—in other words, for the benefit of the average Ecuadorian.

Furthermore, Correa’s financial reforms greatly reduced the impact of the crisis on his citizenry, and Ecuador’s GDP only decreased by 1.3 percent. This came as a result of both the changes in the financial system and Correa’s massive stimulus package, equaling approximately 5 percent of GDP. Despite the blow dealt by the financial crisis, Correa’s economic measures helped Ecuador return to pre-recession output in one year. In comparison, it took the United States more than four years.

These reforms and rising oil prices grew government revenues to an unprecedented 40 percent of GDP in 2012, which allowed for unprecedented social spending. Correa took on projects to dramatically improve the state of the country’s airports and roadways. New ports and shipyards have been built to increase Ecuador’s commercial ventures, with domestic industry and consumer goods consumption increased by Correa’s “Ecuador First” campaign.

Under Correa, Ecuador has dramatically improved the quality of and access to education. Whereas before the school system was not controlled or overseen by the government, now the system is carefully managed and evaluated. Rates of enrollment have increased dramatically, with Ecuador nearing universal primary school attendance, while the rate of secondary-school enrollment has accordingly risen. Most significantly, ethnic groups that have historically lower rates of enrollment, like Afro-Ecuadorians and indigenous groups, have shown exponential increases in school attendance, rates which now near the national average.

The Correa presidency has also had success improving access to healthcare. New spending on healthcare has amounted

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to $13.5 billion, which increased doctor visits at public hospitals from 16 million in 2015 to 38 million in 2016. Most significantly, the rate of malnutrition, a great health problem in Ecuador, has been more than halved, from 1.1 percent in 2007 to 0.4 percent in 2014.

Along with ensuring access to healthcare, Correa has also expanded the country’s social security program, IESS, and now more than 67 percent of people are signed up. Additionally, the minimum wage was increased from $160 a month to $366. Nor have these measures inflicted the severe economic consequences often portended—Ecuador has one of the lowest rates of unemployment in Latin America, at 4.3 percent in 2015.

CORREA’S LEGACY Of course, Correa’s presidency has not been perfect. He has received much criticism from the international community for massively increasing the public debt to 25 percent of the GDP. Both Levitsky and David Cordero Heredia, a professor at the Pontifical Catholic University of Ecuador, told the HPR that eventual decreases in oil revenues will certainly lead to decreases in public spending and an onslaught of austerity measures.

Moreover, under his presidency, there was a serious repression of the press, with the Correa administration litigating against many newspapers for libel. As Cordero indicated, the breakdown of the outlets for expressing dissent, along with the takeover of common mediums of civil society, such as teacher’s unions by Correa’s party, led to heavily one-sided policy making.

However, even among critics, there is a consensus that Correa’s lavish spending was beneficial for the country. In an interview with the HPR, Efren Guerrero Salcedo, another professor at PUCE, stated that although he disapproved of Correa’s “bestial” increase of the public debt and repression of the press, when considering the context of his ascension to the presidency, he has made impressive improvements to infrastructure, education, and other public sector enterprises.

The most important part of Correa’s reforms has been the creation of what Guerrero called “a national project.” The dire political circumstances of the decades prior to Correa’s presidency created a culture of distrust in the political system, and a sense of hopelessness at the prospects for material success by the average Ecuadorian. Correa’s “citizen’s revolution” reinvigorated the Ecuadorian sense of dignity and a hope for a better future, akin to the way the “American Dream” has animated the middle class of the United States since the 1950s.

AFTER CORREA 2017 marks the first election in a decade without Rafael Correa as the presidential candidate of his party, Alianza PAÍS. Instead, Correa’s former vice president, Lenín Moreno, is running against the right-wing candidate Guillermo Lasso of the Creating Opportunities party, or CREO. Election day was February 19, but, as predicted, Moreno could not pass the 40 percent threshold necessary to win the election outright. A runoff election between

30 HARVARD POLITICAL REVIEW SUMMER 2017

the two candidates occurred on April 2, where Moreno became the next president of Ecuador with 51 percent of the vote, to Lasso’s 49.

Moreno’s win in the election comes as a surprise to most international observers. According to Levitsky and Guerrero, after ten years of PAÍS dominating the political scene, the people likely felt a renewed sense of “desgaste” for the governing party.

This was evident in the voting trends from the first round of presidential voting: 33 percent of votes went to smaller, mostly right-wing parties. As in Argentina and Brazil, Ecuador was expected to be the next country in Latin America where the “pink tide” of leftist governments that arose in the 2000s would be dealt another blow. However, Moreno’s win indicates that the majority of Ecuadorians not only continue to support Correa and his party, but that the pink tide may not be over.

What does this mean for Correa’s national project? Moreno’s platform of poverty reduction and championing disability rights seems to indicate that the national project will continue, albeit constrained by the country’s mounting debt. In fact, Moreno promises to invest $2 billion to a new set of social programs aimed at helping newborn children receive natal care, giving a $100 social security credit to the elderly, and helping other vulnerable segments of the population. In opposition to Levitsky and Guerrero, Cordero suggested that the decline in oil prices may not lead to a significant impairment of the government’s ability to spend because of the vast investments the Correa administration made in renewable energy, such as hydroelectric facilities. The Ecuadorian government hopes to increase its revenues by selling hydroelectric power. Hence, Correa’s likely legacy of lessening Ecuador’s dependency on oil may allow for his national project to be sustained throughout Moreno’s term.

Moreover, the continuing strength of Alianza PAÍS in congress—the party won 74 seats to CREO’s 34, enough to maintain their majority—will likely guarantee the preservation of Correa’s most popular initiatives. In an interview with the HPR, the President of the National Assembly and congressional leader of Alianza PAÍS, Gabriela Rivadeneira, said that PAÍS is committed to continuing to make improvements to health, education, and social security programs. It seems that Ecuadorians’ newfound sense of hope for their economic prospects will persist.

Whereas the presidencies coming before Correa were marred by chaos, incompetence, and corruption, Correa’s policies have left a legacy of newfound hope and faith in the effectiveness of the Ecuadorian government. Guerrero said that this election may signify a turning point in Ecuadorian politics; it is finally possible for two strong political parties to exist. With the creation of this strong two-party system along with the fact that, for the first time, there is an expectation from citizens that politicians will get things done, legislators will be forced to make compromises. Indeed, Rivadeneira stated that PAÍS was ready to make compromises on major issues with opposing parties, as it is fundamental to the health of a functioning democracy. Looking back, it seems that, beyond social programs and political stability, Correa’s legacy might also include a stronger Ecuadorian democracy.

TREKKING ISRAEL Sebastian Reyes and Russell Reed

F

or the past four years, the Harvard College Israel Trek, sponsored by Harvard Hillel, has taken 50 Harvard students to Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories over spring break to travel throughout the region and learn about its complex history. This year, we packed our bags and joined the trek for what proved to be nine days of challenging discourse and remarkable adventure.

Upon returning to Harvard, we were eager to share what we saw, to provide fresh insight into the deeply politicized narrative of this age-old conflict through the medium we knew best: our writing. Words failed us, however, as we realized that we had even more questions than we had before departing: Is true democracy possible in a nation bound by its religious identity?

Is our definition of democracy––as shaped, unavoidably, by our experience as citizens of the United States––really the standard of comparison? Is my definition of democracy outdated? After so many years of negotiation, is a lasting resolution even possible?

Is peace possible?

If anything, we learned that the conflict, in all its complexity, is not a dichotomy of two “sides” from which we could choose.

The Israel-Palestine conflict is distinctly personal, and deeply intertwined with the identities of Israelis and Palestinians today.

The pain and tragedy that color the experience of the region’s residents is difficult to comprehend from the United States, so detached from the conflict. The question so often posed—“Are you pro-Israel or pro-Palestine?”—fails to acknowledge the deep nuances that complicate a conflict involving real people, each with their own experiences, politics, and pain. It may be easy to pick a side and to label the other “terrorist” or “apartheid” from a thousand miles away, but standing on the ancient soil of a land so vibrant yet so ruinously tormented, looking into the eyes of

an individual who has lost someone—father, sister, husband, friend—to the carnage, this sort of Manichaean clarity dissipates.

Toward the end of our trip, in a small moshav called Nahalal some ten miles outside of Nazareth, we sat down with Meir Shalev, a prominent Israeli author and columnist. He told us several stories of his early years in Israel, a break from the political discussions with members of the Knesset, former Supreme Court justices, and activists during preceding days. One story in particular sits with us still. He told us of a young woman whom he had written of some 40 years ago, an American lover whom he had lost touch with over decades and borders. She reconnected with him recently, only to contest his telling of their story; she claimed that the events he portrayed misrepresented the facts entirely. He turned to us, a mischievous smile expanding across his face, and explained that there are many ways to tell a single story. Every eye notices different detail, and every ear picks up a different sound. What unites these many narratives is not the way the story is told, nor the significance they have to any individual—it is the facts, the undisputable quantifications, that serve as the basis from which stories can be told.

In the following pages, we present to you a breakdown of the region’s diplomatic, military, and geographic histories. These are some of the few events that can be agreed upon by all parties of the conflict. We seek not to tell you our story, nor that of any individual; our goal is to give you the framework necessary to ask questions of your own, and perhaps, to craft your own story. The Israel-Palestine conflict is merely one of many possible narratives, each as honest as the next. If we are to one day find peace in the region, we must begin by acknowledging the many stories that form its identity.

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TIMELINE

1917: Balfour Declaration The British declare support for a Jewish national homeland in Palestine.

PRE-INDEPENDENCE ISRAEL

1948: Founding The State of Israel is founded on May 14 as the British leave Palestine.

DIVISION IN PROPOSED UN PLAN, 1947

Jerusalem Jewish lands Palestinian lands

1967: Six Day War Israel gains control over Sinai, Gaza, the West Bank, Golan Heights, and Jerusalem.

ISRAEL AND THE PALESTINIAN TERRITORIES, POST-1967

Jerusalem

Jerusalem

Proposed Israeli territory

Israel

Proposed Palestinian territory

Palestinian territories

KEY ISRAELI LEADERS BREAKDOWN OF ISRAELI SOCIETY

BY RELIGIOUS IDENTIFICATION

BENJAMIN NETANYAHU

Christian (2%)

Prime Minister; Minister of Foreign Affairs; Leader of Likud, the largest party in the Knesset “I think the Israeli people understand now what I always say: that there cannot be a situation, under any agreement, in which we relinquish security control of the territory west of the River Jordan.”

Druze (2%)

TZIPI LIVNI

Other / No Religion (1%)

Secular (40%) Traditional (23%)

Co-Leader of the Zionist Union; Former Minsiter of Foreign Affairs; Former Minister of Justice “I understand the sentiments of the Palestinians when they see the settlements being built. The meaning from the Palestinian perspective is that Israel takes more land, that the Palestinian state will be impossible...”

Religious (10%)

AYMAN ODEH Muslims (14%) Source: Pew Research Center

32 HARVARD POLITICAL REVIEW SUMMER 2017

Ultra Orthodox (8%)

Leader of the Arab-dominated Joint List “I know that peace and justice are intersts of both people.

For so many, the occupation is all they’ve ever known...

Occupation is the Palestinian people’s tragedy, but also Israel’s present. We must liberate both people from the occupation.”

1987: First Intifada Amidst increasing Israeli settlement, Palestinians revolt after 20 years of Israeli rule.

2000: Second Intifada Another Palestinian uprising emerges after the failure of a summit at Camp David.

1993: Oslo Peace Accords Israel recognizes the PLO as the representative of the Palestinian people, and the PLO recognizes the right of Israel to exist.

2005: Withdrawal Israeli forces withdraw from the Gaza Strip and construct a wall surrounding the territory.

A Territory — Full Palestinian civil and military control THE WEST BANK CIRCA 2006

B Territory — Full Palestinian civil control and joint PalestinianIsraeli military control

C Territory — Full Israeli civil and military control

Israeli Settlement / Israeli Territory ­— Full Israeli civil and military control

3000000

Total non-Jewish population of the West Bank

2500000

Total Jewish population of the West Bank (settlements)

2000000 1500000 1000000 500000 0

1980

1985

1990

1995

2000

2005

2010

2015

KEY PALESTINIAN LEADERS MAHMOUD ABBAS President of the State of Palestine; Chariman of the Palestinian Liberation Organization “Our efforts are not aimed at isolating Israel or delegitimizing it... We only aim to delegitimize the settlement activities and the occupation and apartheid and the logic of ruthless force, and we believe that all the countries of the world stand with us in this regard.”

HANAN ASHRAWI Member of Palestinian Legislative Council; First woman elected to Palestinian National Council; “I think we are trying our best to make peace in every possible way.... The problem is that you can not enslave a whole nation, and treat it like a sub-human species, with the most racist, hardline extremist violent government in history, and then ask them to lie down and die quietly.”

KHALED MESHAAL Chairman of the Hamas Political Bureau “It is illogical for the victim to be pressed to recognize its murderer and occupier. What is required is a fundamental change in the Israeli position.”

WHAT THEY WANT Israel Palestine 1. Control over Jerusalem.

2. Borders based on the 1967 lines, with land trades considering major settlements.

3. Recognition of Israel as a Jewish state.

4. A demilitarized state of Palestine.

1. An end to construction of Israeli settlements in the West Bank.

2. Jerusalem as the capital of Palestine.

3. Borders based on the 1967 lines.

4. Release of Palestinians in Israeli jails, including suspected terrorists.

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CIVIC ILLITERACY

Matthew Shaw 34 HARVARD POLITICAL REVIEW SUMMER 2017

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S

enate Republicans’ refusal to hold hearings for President Obama’s Supreme Court nominee, Merrick Garland, was viewed by many as a dereliction of constitutional duty. His nomination was ignored for an unprecedented 293 days, ultimately leaving the court vacancy unfilled for over a year. Despite the fact that a solid majority of Americans wanted the Senate to hold hearings and vote on Garland’s nomination, Senate Republicans made what would be a politically astute—yet outrageously irresponsible—decision to wait until the inauguration of the next president. Of course, the election of Donald Trump transformed this risky move into a political victory.

While few would deny that the court has become increasingly politicized in recent decades, Republicans’ treatment of Garland is certainly the greatest threat to an independent judiciary in recent history. Given the court’s significance in our constitutional system, why wasn’t there more public pressure to confirm him?

There may be an easy answer to these questions: the American public simply lacks basic knowledge about the Constitution and the Supreme Court. In fact, a Newsweek survey from 2011 found that 70 percent of Americans didn’t even know that the Constitution is the supreme law of the land. Sadly, this is not the only piece of evidence indicating that Americans are not as familiar with the Constitution and the Supreme Court as one might expect—a 2016 survey by the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania found that only 26 percent of respondents could name all three branches of government, and only 33 percent knew that, in the case of a 4-4 Supreme Court tie, the decision of the lower court stands.

These dismal findings prompt another, broader question: why is it that the American public’s civic literacy is so poor? The basic organization of American government is not very complex, and the U.S. Constitution is a relatively short document. Americans should therefore have a much greater level of familiarity with the way their government operates. Schools, at both the K-12 and collegiate level, must make civic education a priority and should specifically ensure that students understand the Constitution and the Supreme Court.

THE CONSEQUENCES OF FAILURES Many of the failures in civic education seem to originate from a disagreement regarding what a civics education should include. Michael Poliakoff, president of the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, believes that many schools have shifted away from traditional civics education. “I think there’s been a very misguided trend towards ignoring the actual knowledge that a person needs to understand our institutions,” Poliakoff told the HPR. “What’s happened is there’s been a very good, a very wholesome, focus on civic obligations on community service; things that are really quite important for our duty to our communities, but are very different from the things that a school quintessentially is responsible for doing, which is exposing students to the knowledge and skills that they need.”

Rebecca Burgess, who manages the American Enterprise Institute Program on American Citizenship, provided another explanation for why there is little consensus surrounding the components of a thorough civics education in an interview with the HPR: “For a very long time, going back to say the 60s, the whole idea of a civics education kind of got subsumed within

this idea of social studies, and that was just this big umbrella that covers sometimes everything from history to economics to geography to actual civics ... And when you have an area that is so large, it’s hard to know exactly what it is that you’re going to do within that.”

While it would be misleading to say that poor civics education is the predominant cause of America’s current political division, it certainly has played a role. Burgess traced some of our political tensions to poor civic knowledge: “If a third of adult Americans don’t even know what the three branches of government are, that there are three branches of government, that we have a separation of powers, then...our ideas of what government ought to be doing will be different from people who think that there are three branches of government.”

The repercussions of failing to convey basic civic knowledge to students are not always immediately understood, but they are rather dire. To Poliakoff, the consequences of civic illiteracy are severe. “When our schools and our colleges and universities fail to set the kind of requirements that ensure that the students who leave their halls will be ready for engaged citizenship, they’re really letting the nation down.” In other words, we all suffer when civic education suffers.

A WAKE-UP CALL Thomas Jefferson wrote that “wherever the people are well informed they can be trusted with their own government,” implying that our democratic system rests on the assumption that citizens are civically literate. If we are to believe Jefferson, surveys of Americans’ civic knowledge indicate that “the people” currently cannot be trusted to govern. Even Trump himself mistakenly believes that federal judges—like his sister, Maryanne Trump Barry—sign bills. The American political climate desperately requires an improvement in civic literacy.

While civic literacy as a whole is inadequate, it seems that Americans’ knowledge of the Supreme Court and the Constitution is especially poor. A recent survey commissioned by C-SPAN found that 90 percent of likely voters agreed with the statement, “decisions made by the U.S. Supreme Court have an impact on my everyday life as a citizen,” yet 57 percent couldn’t name a single justice on the court. A 2015 survey by the Annenberg Public Policy Center found that 12 percent of Americans thought that the Bill of Rights included the right to own a pet. Such a finding would be humorous if not for the profound consequences that come with an electorate unfamiliar with our Constitution.

All available evidence suggests that the American education system fails to convey basic civic knowledge to students. Despite civics being a common requirement in schools, only 24 percent of 12th grade students scored “proficient” on the 2010 National Assessment of Educational Progress civics test. Even among college graduates, civic literacy is startlingly poor. A 2016 report by the ACTA found that almost a tenth of college graduates thought Judith Sheindlin—more commonly known as Judge Judy—was a member of the Supreme Court.

WHAT HAPPENED TO CIVICS EDUCATION? To understand why civic literacy is so poor, it is necessary to consider the various pressures that have caused civics education

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to fall by the wayside. In a 2015 report on the state of professional development for civics teachers, Burgess argues that the focus on STEM— science, technology, engineering, and math—has limited federal and state funding for civics education.

The emphasis on standardized test scores in subjects other than civics has also taken a toll on students’ knowledge. Burgess explains that while “civics teachers themselves are immensely dedicated to the field ... they’re just not given much time by their own districts. And so they might be the one ... class of teachers ... who would like more testing, because that seems to be the only way where you can get attention.”

Despite the numerous problems that come with excessive testing, Burgess argues that a standardized civics test would be beneficial. Poliakoff agreed, suggesting that a good “baseline” would be if “all the students that leave high school can at least pass the same test that a new citizen would have to pass.”

It is worth noting that the deterioration of civics education is not limited to K-12 schools; it has also been seen at the collegiate level. The 2016 ACTA report found that of more than 1,100 liberal arts colleges and universities surveyed, only 18 percent required students to take a course in American history or government. Considering this statistic, it is unsurprising that many college students graduate civically illiterate.

“What’s happened in higher education is a retreat from addressing the core question of any institution,” Poliakoff explained, “which is what does it mean to be a graduate of our institution, what does it mean to have a college or university degree? What’s happened is that departments have splintered and fragmented into their own little silos.”

BETTER WAYS TO TEACH CIVICS While the level of civic ignorance may be frightening, there are numerous efforts underway to reinvigorate American civics education. A number of programs assist civics teachers by offering free teaching materials. For example, the Civics Renewal Network, run by the Annenberg Public Policy Center, is a group of nonprofit organizations that offer free, online civics education teaching resources.

The CRN seeks to “bring together the many, many civics education organizations that are out there, to collaborate, to start talking to each other ... to make more efficient use of our resources,” Ellen Iwamoto, the director of research support services at the Annenberg Center, told the HPR. The goal is to “help teachers by creating a website where they go and find great resources that they may not have known about.”

One of the most promising programs is iCivics, which was founded by former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor in 2009 with the mission to improve civic education throughout the country. iCivics hosts free games and lessons plans that can be used by teachers and students to “make the subject come alive.” In an interview with the HPR, iCivics Executive Director Louise Dubé said that the platform currently has over 5 million student users, over halfway to its goal of reaching 10 million citi-

36 HARVARD POLITICAL REVIEW SUMMER 2017

zens. “The original idea was to reinvent, or reimagine, civics, by putting kids at the center of the action,” Dubé said. “So in iCivics games you play as the president of the United States. We think that’s the only way to make it relevant to you.”

By making knowledge about our constitutional system more accessible to the average student, this kind of innovation has the potential to drastically change the way civics is taught and to increase the number of Americans who are civically literate.

As proof of iCivics’ teaching model, Dubé points to Florida, which in 2010 passed the Sandra Day O’Connor Education Act to require a semester of civics education in seventh grade. According to Dubé, at least 80 percent of these seventh grade teachers are using iCivics, and last year their students had a remarkable 68 percent proficiency. When compared to the 23 percent of eighth graders who were proficient on the 2014 NAEP civics test, it is clear that iCivics is indeed making a significant difference.

Dubé also confirmed the notion that Americans are especially lacking in knowledge about the judiciary. When launching iCivics, O’Connor “was particularly concerned about the independence of the judiciary ... that really was her main issue,” Dubé explained. “She thought that that was because kids didn’t understand our system.” Consequently, iCivics has plenty of teaching materials that are specifically focused on the judiciary. It also helps that current Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor is on the Governing Board of iCivics and mentions the program to most of the student groups she speaks to.

LOOKING FORWARD While programs like CRN and iCivics offer free, high quality resources to teachers and students, their success depends on whether people actually access those resources. Every school must make civics education a priority, rather than simply a minor graduation requirement. In today’s highly politicized environment, civics may be confused with politics, but they are not at all the same. According to Burgess, “a large part of the civics problem, is that as soon you start to talk about what is a good citizen, or what does citizenship mean, you start to rub up against values.” As a result, teachers “either retreat from inviting more controversy in the classroom, or just try and talk about it in the vaguest, largest way possible.” Requiring students to learn basic information about our government is not a partisan endeavor; it simply ensures that our democracy can function.

Despite the promising efforts being made to improve civic education, there is much more work to do. As Burgess puts it, “Everyone nods and says ‘oh my goodness, [civic illiteracy] is an immensely ... troubling problem’ and then they move on, immediately. Part of that is just because it’s not an immensely sexy issue; it’s a long-term project.” Admittedly, there is no easy solution to the civic illiteracy our country faces, but it is a problem worth solving. The costs of an uninformed public are simply too great for us not to address the current deficits in civic knowledge.

Paddy’s Pub Paddy’s Pub Gets Political Gets Political to be designed HPR presents

Nicolas Yan

Cherie Hu SUMMER 2017 HARVARD POLITICAL REVIEW 37

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“W

ho am I supposed to vote for? The Democrat who is going to blast me in the ass? Or the Republican who’s blasting my ass!” Over the course of more than a decade on the air, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia has—deservedly—developed a reputation for dedicated crudeness, sweeping political incorrectness and gratuitous nihilism. Sometimes veiled by its crass exterior, however, is its willingness to get political. Season 2’s cynical interpretation of the reality of American politics as “one big ass blast” is just one example of the show’s penchant for incisive political commentary, conveyed through scathing satire and absurdism.

Over twelve seasons, It’s Always Sunny has tackled an impressive array of politically-charged issues, including abortion and gun rights. But the uniqueness of It’s Always Sunny may reside in the fact that, as a sitcom first and foremost, its commentary is secondary to its comedy. By prioritizing humor over politics and avoiding the traps of partisanship and elitism, the show manages to examine the faults in our society and normalize complex political issues in an easily palatable format.

Promoted as “Seinfeld on crack” by its network, FXX, the long-running sitcom follows the misadventures of “the Gang”— the five depraved proprietors of Paddy’s Pub, a dilapidated Irish bar in South Philadelphia. There’s Charlie, the lovable illiterate; Dennis, the narcissistic loser; Dee, Dennis’ twin sister and a delusional drunk; Mac, the contradictory Catholic; and Frank, the wealthy degenerate who abandons his expensive lifestyle to live in glorious squalor. The show’s humor relies on the ridiculous, and frequently leans on vulgarity and crudity for comic effect.

A typical episode finds the Gang and its constituent members inventing new and more outrageous ways to exhibit vice in all its multitudes. As Emily Nussbaum writes in the New Yorker , It’s Always Sunny is part of a rising breed of “dirtbag sitcoms”— “crass, confident comedies that feature idiotic characters but are not themselves idiotic.” In many ways, the show’s crude humor helps to normalize and simplify the complex political issues that it examines. Subtle political and social criticisms couched in willful ignorance, moral degeneration, and gleeful idiocy allow the show to avoid any accusations of elitism or excessive preachiness. Indeed, the show’s express purpose is not to effect social or political change. Instead, it offers a rare lens through which we can see how public policy affects the average Joes and plain Janes of America.

THE GANG ON THE ISSUES In the show’s second episode, the Gang tackles both sides of the abortion debate. In accordance with his Catholic beliefs—but mainly in order to impress an attractive staff member at an antiabortion organization—Mac signs up to attend a pro-life rally.

Enticed by Mac’s description of the female “talent” on show there, Dennis decides to join him at a demonstration between the two opposing sides of the abortion debate, but in support of a woman’s right to choose. Dennis’ initial pick-up attempts are unsuccessful, however, and he is convinced that his prospects would be brighter on the other side of the fence with the prolifers. Admitting that he “[doesn’t] really have any convictions,” Dennis tries to scale the fence to hop over to the other side. But in a satisfying twist, as he climbs the fence, he is pelted with

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eggs by pro-life demonstrators. The situation soon erupts into a veritable pro-choice versus pro-life egg-throwing conflagration, and Dennis, caught in the middle—literally ‘sitting on the fence’—is left with egg on his face. In the episode, just like in real life, there was no middle ground to be had in such a divisive and visceral issue.

The show also presents a deceptively-nuanced breakdown of America’s gun-rights issue in Season 9’s “Gun Fever Too: Still Hot,” which aired less than a year after the Sandy Hook school shooting. Dennis, Dee, Mac, and Charlie all find themselves ‘hot’ about the topic of gun ownership—but whereas Dennis and Dee are outraged at how easy it is for anyone to walk into a store and buy a gun, Mac and Charlie advocate for flooding Philadelphia’s streets with firearms (“We gotta get more guns on the streets!”).

Each side decides to take matters into their own hands to prove a point—Dennis and Dee try to prove how easy it is to acquire military-grade weaponry (“Now theoretically, would I be able to slaughter a room full of innocent people with that weapon?”), while Mac and Charlie become vigilantes and patrol the local middle school with a samurai sword and a pistol. Ironically, their respective misadventures lead the teams to backtrack on their original positions and switch sides. Dennis and Dee become convinced by the common catchphrase that the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun, while Mac and Charlie discover the dangers of a weaponized citizenry when their attempted training of middle school students to use common objects as weapons goes haywire. Throughout the episode, clichéd arguments bandied about by Second Amendment zealots and anti-gun advocates alike are simultaneously satirized and dismantled.

THE GANG IN 2017 In its most recent season, It’s Always Sunny has ratcheted up its political commentary. The Season 12 opener was a quasimusical that found the Gang “turned black.” After an incident with lightning and an electric blanket, each member of the Gang wakes up to find themselves in African-American bodies.

The emotionally-charged episode dissects race and privilege by exploring the rules of being black in America—Charlie, Mac, and Dennis try and get into Dennis’ locked car, but the guys, who now appear black to bystanders, end up getting arrested by police. Later in the episode, the Gang tries to go into a closed electronics store, and the fearful owner calls the police. As the cops approach the store, they mistake a toy train that Charlie is holding for a gun; Charlie is shot four times, in a chilling closing sequence that evokes the death of Tamir Rice, the 12-year-old boy who was killed by police in a park in 2014 for waving around a toy gun. ( It’s Always Sunny previously touched on the issue of officer shootings in Season 4. Unable to believe that taxes alone don’t cover hospital stays, Mac exclaims, “You don’t pay a fireman to put out a fire!” With childlike innocence, Charlie adds: “Or a cop to shoot a guy.”)

In Season 12, meanwhile, the show explores what it means to come out of the closet in 2017. Over It’s Always Sunny ’s previous 11 seasons, one of the recurring narrative themes dealt with Mac’s sexuality. The show placed his overt Catholicism and ostensible hatred of homosexuality and gay marriage (as evinced in

CULTURE

the aptly-titled episode “Mac Fights Gay Marriage) in constant conflict with frequent homoerotic slip-ups (Mac to Charlie, in Season 2, on smuggling heroin: “This is the perfect opportunity to prove how hard we are and not have to shove anything into our asses!”). In Season 9, the Gang voiced their view on Mac’s sexuality: “I know we’ve never said this as a group, but Mac’s gay.” In the next episode, however, Mac was once again purportedly straight, and the show reverted to stasis. But in Season 12’s “Hero or Hate Crime?”, Mac’s protracted coming-out saga finallny came to an end. In the midst of a heated arbitration debate, Mac rolls out a bike that he keeps in the basement. Questionably dubbed the “AssPounder 4000,” it is an exercise bike with a large and exceptionally veiny dildo with a fist on the end that periodically bounces in and out of the seat. Mac immediately clarifies that it’s not what it looks like; the protrusion out of the seat can’t be a penis, he says, because it has a fist on the end.

He explains that the point of the fist is to stop you from resting if you get tired (“AssPounder 4000: Never Stop Pumping!”). But at the end of the episode—one replete with gay slurs, falling pianos, unquotable profanities, and lottery tickets—Mac assertively declares his homosexuality. At first, it is a confession premised on self-interest; by professing to be gay, Mac can win the arbitration and collect the winnings of the lottery ticket. But after coming out in name only, in order to claim the money, Mac decides that he would rather stay out of the closet. He admits that he is gay, and self-triumphantly declares, “Gay Mac rules! Gay rich Mac!” As Daniel D’Addario writes in TIME , Mac’s coming out is significant because it didn’t have to happen. The easier course of action for the show’s writers would have been to maintain the status quo: to tease along the gags about Mac’s sexuality without ever making a definitive statement. After all, Mac has other reasons for existing on the show, and does not conform to the stereotypes of homosexuality that society prescribes. D’Addario notes that the episode is a commentary on the polite society we live in today: “Everything is permissible, so long as differences are never explicitly acknowledged.” Leading up to this episode, there had been no evidence that the Gang would have reacted untowardly if Mac came out of the closet. As so often happens though, things can manifest differently when they play out in real life. But Mac’s triumphant declaration pushed the show and its audience to confront the truth head on. That Mac came out, and the Gang (arguably the worst people in the world) plainly accepted his decision, is a message about tolerance for the rest of us.

THE GANG IN REAL LIFE Though It’s Always Sunny’s political depth may at first seem surprising, it is easier to understand when you consider that its actors have been extremely active in political and social issues in real life. Charlie Day, who plays Charlie on the show, said the decision to have Mac come out was a calculated one. “With what the sort of message is behind him making that decision, I think it actually does more sort of societal good to finally have Mac make that decision. So we decided, all right, let’s find a way to actually have that happen,” he explained in an interview after the episode aired. Meanwhile, Danny DeVito, who plays Frank, was a vocal supporter of Bernie Sanders during the primaries and frequently

stumped for him on the campaign trail. Rob McElhenney, who plays Mac on the show and was raised by his mom and her female partner, invited a lesbian student from Pennsylvania who was told to leave her school dance for wearing a suit instead of a dress to make an appearance on the show. The show’s entire cast also proudly marched at last year’s L.A. Pride parade—Kaitlin Olson, who plays Dee, wrote “Orlando” on her arm to draw attention to the horrific mass shooting at the LGBTQ Pulse Nightclub, and Glenn Howerton, who plays Dennis, wore a tshirt that said “You Can Pee Next To Me,” in protest of bathroom bills restricting transgender rights like North Carolina’s HB2.

Howerton later started an online campaign selling the shirts to raise funds for a LGBTQ rights organization in North Carolina.

THE GANG GETS UNIQUE It’s Always Sunny is, of course, not alone in satirizing political issues and events on television. As the demarcating line between politics and satire becomes ever more blurry, dedicated political comedy shows like Saturday Night Live , Last Week Tonight With John Oliver , and The Daily Show have assumed greater importance and enjoyed increased popularity. But despite how funny it may be to see Alec Baldwin strutting around as Donald Trump or Trevor Noah exposing Kellyanne Conway’s “alternative facts,” these shows concern themselves with the actions of elites and their complex politics, which presents a disconnect for the average viewer. It’s Always Sunny portrays everyday people, in everyday situations (albeit sensationalized to the n th degree). The proprietors of Paddy’s Pub may be borderline-sociopaths, but they are still normal people.

In addition, most political comedy shows have obvious liberal biases, and aim to promote a point of view that tends to alienate half of the country. SNL , for example, has overtly criticized the Trump administration for its alleged incompetence, discouraging conservatives to tune in and inhibiting its ability to promote constructive political discourse. As David Sims noted in The Atlantic , the show loses its political power when it “leans on presenting the Trump administration as cheerfully unaware or low on brainpower”—a “toothless approach that’s far easier for viewers of all political viewpoints to dismiss.” The creators of It’s Always Sunny , however, despite their liberal leanings, have been careful to avoid letting the show become a vehicle for partisanship. Like it did in the gun rights episode and the abortion episode, the show consistently presents both sides of any given issue. As individuals gravitate towards echo chambers on both sides of the political spectrum, there is real value in the ability of a show like It’s Always Sunny to reconcile opposing viewpoints while still engaging a broad cross-section of America with important social and political issues.

It’s Always Sunny’s political criticism isn’t likely to cease any time soon. The show has recently been renewed for its thirteenth and fourteenth seasons, at the end of which it will equal the record for the most seasons by a live-action television comedy. And it is likely that the Gang will continue to have plenty of material to satirize in the future. As Glenn Howerton (Dennis) astutely noted, “There’s always some group of dum-dums doing something dumb”—and for that we should be thankful.

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Josh Earnest with Quinn Mulholland

Josh Earnest was the White House press secretary under President Barack Obama from 2014 to 2017. Before that, he served as principal deputy White House press secretary and chief of staff to Press Secretary Jay Carney. He was succeeded in January by President Donald Trump’s press secretary, Sean Spicer.

You are one of few officials in the Obama administration who stayed on for his entire presidency.

What would you describe as the major changes you noticed in former President Barack Obama over the course of those eight years?

There are a couple of things that come to mind. The first is that when President Obama first entered office, the United States was facing a financial crisis the likes of which we hadn’t seen in almost 100 years. He entered the White House at a very interesting time, which meant that he had to act urgently and with dispatch to try to prevent a global financial calamity that would have generational consequences. What it meant was that the president had to make a bunch of immediate decisions, and once the situation stabilized, the president was able to make longer-term decisions. He was able to do that in the midst of a crisis, but it was only something that became perceptible later in his presidency.

Let me give you one example. When President Obama took office, there were two great American car companies that were teetering on the brink of financial collapse, which would probably have taken the entire American auto industry down with it, a million jobs lost. The president, working closely with his

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advisors, engineered a rescue effort that included investing billions in taxpayer dollars in those auto companies. That solution polled poorly with the American public. It even polled poorly in Michigan, a state whose economy depended on the rescue of the auto industry. It was not clear at the beginning that it was going to work, but by the end of his presidency, just six years later, we protected all of those jobs, there were another 800,000 jobs created in the manufacturing sector, and you had the American auto industry, including Chrysler and GM that were on the brink of bankruptcy, that were producing and selling more cars than they ever had in their history. It was not immediately obvious at the beginning; it was certainly not popular at the beginning, but by the end, just six years later, the results of that policy were indisputable.

Recently, Press Secretary Sean Spicer barred certain news outlets from a news briefing. What are the broader implications of this for the media’s ability to serve as a watchdog?

What’s evident from the first six weeks is that the media is not having any trouble at all being the watchdog. That is a testament to really good journalists who take their jobs seriously and are doing an excellent job with it. It has to do with a very

INTERVIEWS

engaged American citizenry.

When you see the cable news outlets are all enjoying significant boosts in their viewership, when newspapers are enjoying an increase in their circulation, when we see the way that political debates, for better or worse, have infused so much of our day-to-day life, an engaged population is a really good thing.

There are lots of journalists that are out there doing good work to hold the administration accountable. It’s very fair to say that the administration is not as invested in supporting that role for our journalists as most Americans would like to see them be, but we’re seeing journalists do important work and do it well.

The Obama administration also faced criticism for its handling of the media, specifically its crackdown on whistleblowers and its slow response to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. Do you think the criticism of the Trump administration’s handling of the media is similar to that of the Obama administration?

No, I don’t think those two things are comparable. It is the job of journalists who cover the White House to demand more access, to demand more transparency, and to demand more accountability. If there’s ever a day where they express satisfaction with the access and accountability that they’ve gotten from the White House, they’ve stopped doing their jobs.

I would expect, and I did expect, when we were in the White House, for people to demand more from the Obama administration. For example, when it came to FOIA requests, the administration was responsive to, and provided information responsive to, more than 90 percent of the requests that we received: some hundreds of thousands of requests every year. That wasn’t every one, so I would expect some journalists to push for more. The fact is that they got a lot when it came to responsiveness to FOIA. I’m not saying that that process is perfect, but I am saying that the picture may not be as bleak as it seems.

With regard to leakers, about half of the prosecutions that our critics like to cite were prosecutions that were commenced under the previous administration. With regard to some of the others, we’re talking about individuals who were accused—and in many cases convicted—of serious crimes, of failing to adhere to the oath that they took to protect classified information. The truth is, in the context of the Obama administration, we put in place additional protections for whistleblowers. We put in place additional reforms that would empower inspectors general and others to more effectively provide oversight in a way that wouldn’t endanger national security by making information public while also making sure that people could be held accountable.

You mentioned on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert that fake news is “nothing new” for Republicans. Are you concerned with the emergence of similar partisan websites on the left that peddle conspiracy theories and falsehoods?

I think it’s important for us to delineate a difference between

straight-up investigative hard-nosed journalism and opinion journalism that is still rooted in facts but is expressing or articulating a particular point of view. Opinion journalism that is rooted in fact and evidence has a role in our public discourse as long as it’s identified as such. The fake news phenomenon is deferent from those two things. The fake news phenomenon is pieces of fiction dressed up as news to try to advance a political narrative or political objective. For example, it’s utter fiction to suggest that President Obama was not born in the United States, and that was a fiction that was propagated by the president’s political opponents to try to delegitimize him. It wasn’t rooted in any fact.

Let’s take the example of someone like Charles Krauthammer. He writes a conservative column in the Washington Post.

That’s a legitimate outlet. He’s got smart things to say, not many that I agree with, but he should have the opportunity as a journalist to make those views known. They represent a world view.

He makes arguments that are usually rooted in fact and evidence that I occasionally find compelling, that some people find really compelling. That’s part of a healthy debate: having smart people showing interest in our government and writing and talking about it. I think that’s a good thing, but that’s different from the journalism that you see in the other pages of the Washington Post and it’s certainly different from the fiction masquerading as news in fake news.

On Twitter, President Trump recently accused Obama of tapping his phones the month before the election. Do you think there is a method to Trump’s madness on Twitter, or do you think he’s just tweeting whatever comes to his mind?

I think it’s two things. One is that even White House officials acknowledge that they had not discussed those tweets with President Trump before he sent them. To the extent that there’s a method to the madness, it’s not a method that has been orchestrated by other White House officials as part of their grand plan.

But what I do think that President Trump is interested in doing is using outrageous statements like that to distract from scandals. I made this observation over the weekend, that there’s one page in the Trump crisis communication strategy playbook and that one play is to say or tweet something outrageous to distract from a scandal. The bigger the scandal, the more outrageous the comment or tweet.

It is true that there is a growing scandal with regard to President Trump and other senior Trump officials, at best, not being forthright about their talks with or ties to Russia. I think it’s difficult to explain why they continued to be less than candid about why there were so many people close to Trump who were having so many conversations with so many different Russian officials. It applies to the president himself. His son, back in 2008, said that money from Russia was flowing into their business interests, at the same time that President Trump refuses to release his tax returns and says that he didn’t do any business in Russia.

These are all unanswered questions that they refuse to confront, and the president would rather say something outrageous to try to distract from the pointed questions that they’re struggling to answer.

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INTERVIEWS

Rosalyn LaPier with Drew Pendergrass

Rosalyn LaPier is a writer, ethnobotanist, and environmental historian, as well as an enrolled member of the Blackfeet Tribe of Montana and Métis. She is on the National Steering Committee of the March for Science. She is also a visiting professor at Harvard Divinity School and an associate professor of environmental studies at the University of Montana.

On April 22, 2017, people across the country will take to the streets as a part of the March for Science. Why are they protesting?

I would argue the March for Science is not necessarily a “protest,” but a march that is for science. We are advocating for something, not protesting against something. The March is about bringing together scientists, people who are science educators, people who are interested in science, and citizens who are impacted by science in their everyday lives. It’s to bring people together to advocate, or continue to advocate, for science in our American democracy.

The Atlantic counts 21 distinct goals for the march outlined in texts published by the organizers, ranging from celebrating science to increasing its diversity. How do you balance so many different ideas into one movement?

I would distill it all down to one thing, which is that the March for Science is advocating for science. I know that there are a lot of ideas on the list. We update our website almost

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on a daily basis, so if you visit day-to-day, there is going to be something new that we have added. There’s always going to be something new added to that list. The most important thing is to make sure that science stays on the agenda of not only public policy makers in Washington D.C., but also in citizens’ minds as to the importance of science in everyday life.

Some scientists, including Robert Young at the New York Times, have described the march as “[politicizing] the science we care so much about.”

How do you respond to this criticism?

I would say that science plays many roles in society; it definitely plays many roles in a democratic society. It is impossible to be completely apolitical, but I think that science is nonpartisan. There really is a difference between being not partisan and being political. This is something I run into personally when I work with people in Washington D.C. related to issues that are in Native American communities and environmental justice issues. I always remind anybody I talk to in Congress or in D.C. that Native American issues or environmental justice issues or environmental issues are not partisan issues. Those are issues that impact everybody.

INTERVIEWS

If you are being impacted by unclean water, it’s not a political issue. It’s whether the water is clean or unclean. I think that folks who are working to address those issues––scientists who are working to address those issues, but also citizens who are working to address those issues––don’t view science as political.

They view it as nonpartisan. But they do view it as part of the world that we live in.

The March for Science follows on the heels of the Women’s March earlier this year. Why, in the time of social media, do you think the march remains a potent form of protest?

People like to get together; that’s the basic answer. As humans, we like to be able to have our voices be heard, but we also enjoy making something, such as advocating for science or advocating for any issue, into a social occasion that can then turn into a social movement. It’s very hard, especially in cyberspace, to get a sense of if something is becoming a social movement. It’s hard to see the numbers out there.

It’s a lot easier when you have a lot of people coming together around a particular cause or a particular issue. One of the things that we saw with the Women’s March, because they had the satellite marches as well, is you saw the number of people that were in D.C. who were supporting that concern, but you also saw the satellite marches, and you saw that there was this collective action that was occurring across the United States that helps people then view their position or their stance collectively, and not as individuals.

Native American organizations were among the first to announce support for the March for Science. Why do you think these groups were so eager to support the march?

Three of the first organizations to partner with the March for Science were the American Indian Science and Engineering Society, the Society Advancing Chicano and Native Americans in Science, and the National Coalition of Native American Language Schools and Programs. All three of them saw this as a great opportunity to continue to encourage their members to pursue science.

They saw that this was something important for them to participate in so that their voices could be a part of the conversation. They would be seen as part of the community of science.

There are indigenous people in the science community who are interested in promoting the idea of indigenous science as something that is parallel to Western science, and that indigenous science should also be viewed as something that is important to the academy.

You are a scholar of indigenous religion and a member of the Blackfeet/Métis tribe. How does the state of science today impact indigenous communities?

Science has played an important role in Native American communities, both in the past and recently. I can give you a few examples. One example is that environmental scientists in particular, and people who work on conducting Environmental Impact Statements, have played an important role in many indigenous communities to help them look at environmental issues within their community by drawing on a lot of different disciplines within science to be able to then make decisions and address certain issues. Whether it is something being built in their community, or whether they are thinking about doing certain types of development, Environmental Impact Statements are extremely helpful. One of the things that has been occurring recently in Native American communities is there has been much more of a push to train from within, more people being sent to study science, technology, engineering, and math. Then those people come back to the indigenous communities to address, again, primarily environmental issues.

A second example would be medical science. There are a lot of health disparities that indigenous communities have––for example, diabetes is disproportionately high in indigenous communities, and there has been a lot of research lately that is looking at diabetes not only in indigenous communities but in other communities as well. Medical science is beginning to help indigenous communities address health issues that are disproportionately prevalent.

A third example would be within the social sciences. Folks who do clinical psychology or social work are addressing issues like trauma or historic trauma within indigenous communities.

There has been a lot of really good research that has been done lately in those fields. Because of that research, indigenous communities can begin to address issues such as the incredibly high suicide rate among indigenous youth in our communities.

There are several different ways in which science has been extremely helpful to indigenous communities and is helping address things that we are interested in. There have been many great partnerships between scientists and individual communities. Historically, one of the criticisms that indigenous communities had of science was that scientists would choose their own project without input from the indigenous community and do a study that did not help or did not have any true impact on the indigenous community. I think that is changing. Most projects that are done now are almost always done in partnership with indigenous communities, so that the indigenous community can help inform and say, ‘this is what we want. This is what is going to be helpful to us,’ versus scientists coming in and saying, ‘this is what we are going to study.’ That has made a huge difference and has greatly impacted in a positive way those relationships.

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ENDPAPER

GROWTH AT HARVARD Joe Choe

I

still remember my very first HPR meeting. I had just settled into my new dorm in Hollis and finally picked out which classes I wanted to shop. All that was left was to choose a few campus organizations to join, and the HPR seemed to be the perfect outlet to explore my dual interest in politics and journalism. But little did I know when I walked into that meeting that I would leave with a pseudo marriage proposal.

I sat next to a girl I had met the week before during a freshman orientation event. The HPR meeting that day was pretty uneventful, but I still remember one thing in particular. As the meeting was ending, the girl tapped me on the shoulder and whispered in my ear: “If you become president of this magazine, I’ll marry you.”

I remember looking back at her, taken aback by the absurdity of her challenge. Even if I did want to marry her, there was no way I could become the HPR’s president. I just slunk into my chair and fiddled my thumbs. I looked around the packed room and took note of all the debate champions and former Senate pages. I began conjuring up all my flaws, and I could feel an imaginary weight crushing down on my shoulders. I had no idea if I was even going to survive that meeting, let alone become the president of the entire magazine.

Two years later when I stepped up to the microphone at a public forum to challenge Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on his stance on comfort women, I was no longer the shy freshman who had doubted himself. I had become more confident in myself and my abilities, including my ability to speak out for what I believe is correct, even if it meant speaking against one of the world’s most powerful figures. That same mindset drove me to challenge Donald Trump six months later when I corrected a misstatement he had made concerning the United States’ military presence on the Korean peninsula. In both cases, I could have thought of my shortcomings and backed down, but I chose instead to believe in myself.

There is no doubt that I have grown immensely since that first HPR meeting. However, everything has not been on an

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uphill trajectory. I have found the importance of learning to cope with failures and using them as learning opportunities. There is no doubt that we will all face roadblocks in our lives, but how we adapt and deal with them is key. We should never be discouraged.

However, being confident does not mean that we should all be dogmatic and unmoving. It is just as important to learn to listen even to people with whom we disagree. We should learn when to admit we are wrong and acknowledge that people with different opinions can also have good intentions. For example, as a Hillary Clinton supporter, I was devastated last year on November 8. But in the aftermath of the election, I decided to keep an open mind and I reached out to individuals who had voted for my candidate’s opponent. Although I do not agree with all the rationale I have heard from Donald Trump supporters, I now understand where the Democratic Party fell short and how it can improve with an eye towards the future.

None of the growth I have experienced during college could have been possible without the classmates and friends I have met during my four years here. As Dean Michael Smith implores us to do at Convocation every year, “Don’t compare. Connect.” I have found that interacting with others and learning from them has been so meaningful. Rather than viewing other people as opponents in a competitive zero-sum game, I have approached them as people I can connect with on deep, personal levels.

Learning from these people has undoubtedly had a huge impact on shaping who I am.

As I embark on the next chapter of my life, I look forward to stepping outside of the Harvard bubble and growing even more.

Just thinking about who I was during that first HPR meeting is enough to prove to me how much can change within such a short amount of time. After all, I did end up becoming the HPR’s president. Unfortunately, the girl seems to have forgotten about her proposal that day. But I suppose that is just an indicator that some things—like my relationship status—just take a bit longer to change.

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