HARVARD POLITICAL REVIEW
HARVARD’S SILENCE ON TITLE IX
HOPE AFTER HEARBREAK
INTERVIEW: MIKA BRZEZINSKI & JOE SCARBOROUGH
VOLUME XLIV NO. 4, WINTER 2017 HARVARDPOLITICS.COM
BRIDGING THE GAP
HARVARDPOLITICS.COM
BRIDGING THE GAP This issue’s cover topic was proposed by Matthew Rossi
9
Internet, Inc. Alicia Zhang
15 Concrete Beauty Lauren Anderson
12 Isolated Matthew Rossi
20 Not Exactly Rocket Science Hank Sparks
CAMPUS
CULTURE
3
Food for Thought Cindy Jung
35 The Zealy Daguerreotypes Hadley DeBello and Esteban Arellano
6
Harvard Silent on Title IX Will Imbrie-Moore
38 Replacing Newsfeeds for Newspapers Jessica Boutchie
UNITED STATES
INTERVIEWS
17 Unity in Diversity Meena Venkataramanan
40 Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinkski Connor Schoen
20 Not Exactly Rocket Science Hank Sparks 22 Hope After Heartbreak Wyatt Hurt 26 We(Chat) The People Hillary McLauchlin
WORLD
42 Roger Stone Humberto Juárez Rocha
ENDPAPER 44 A Night in Naples Samuel Plank
26 We(Chat) The People Hillary McLauchlin 28 Law and Justice Natalie Dabkowski 30 The Current State of Yemen Connor Schoen 35 The Zealy Daguerreotypes Hadley DeBello and Esteban Arellano
32 The Road to the Middle Kingdom Perry Arrasmith
Email: president@harvardpolitics.com. ISSN 0090-1032. Harvard Political Review. All rights reserved. Image credits: Facebook: 40- Jake Tapper. Flickr: 1- Elvert Barnes; 1- United States Department of Defense; 14- Elvert Barnes; 25- Gopal Vijayaraghavan; 28- Nicolas Nova; 37- PunkToad. Pexels: 23. Photographer: 5- Elmer Vivas Portillo. Unplash: 14- Kimberly Richards, 34- Gabriel Garcia Marengo. Pixabay: 24- xoracio. The United States Navy: 8. Wikimedia: Cover- Jamelle Bouie; 1- Balatokyo; 1- Jim Bowen; 11- Kyknoord; 20- Ipankonin; 32; 34; 42- Keith Allison; 44- chensiyuan.
WINTER 2017 HARVARD POLITICAL REVIEW 1
FROM THE PRESIDENT
HARVARD POLITICAL REVIEW
Bridging the Gap
A Nonpartisan Undergraduate Journal of Politics, Est. 1969—Vol. XLIV, No. 4
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: Chad Borgman ASSOCIATE U.S. EDITOR: Henry Brooks ASSOCIATE U.S. EDITOR: Drew Pendergrass SENIOR WORLD EDITOR: Jacob Link ASSOCIATE WORLD EDITOR: Derek Paulhus ASSOCIATE WORLD EDITOR: Akshaya Annapragada SENIOR 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, Victor Agbafe, Perry Arrasmith, Marie Becker, Devon Black, Evan Bonsall, Beverly Brown, Jiafeng Chen, Pedro Luis Cunha Farias, Justin Curtis, Ashish Dahal, Nick Danby, Sunaina Danziger, Hadley DeBello, Sophie DiCara, Casey Durant, Austin Eder, Steven Espinoza, Adam Friedman, Daniel Friedman, Miro Furtado, Melissa Gayton, Jay Gopalan, David Gutierrez, Olivia Herrington, Thomas Huling, Chimaoge Ibe, Michael Jasper, Cindy Jung, Matthew Keating, Daniel Kenny, Andrew Kim, Kieren Kresevic, Amelia Lamp, Jose Larios, Ashiley Lee, Elton Lossner, Elizabeth Manero, Patrick McClanahan, Olivia McGinnis, Jake McIntyre, Ayush Midha, Andrew Morley, Erica Newman-Corre, Iriowen Ojo, Nadya Okamoto, Mfundo Radebe, Anna Raheem, Anne Raheem, Alyssa Resar, Chico Payne, Darwin Peng, Juliet Pesner, Stefan Petrovic, Lily Piao, Allison Piper, Tess Saperstein, Lizzy Schick, Matthew Shaw, Audrey Sheehy, Wright Smith, Nick StaufferMason, Gloria Su, Anirudh Suresh, Sarah Tisdall, Richard Tong, Rachel Tropp, Nico Tuccillo, Derek Wang, Katie Weiner, Joseph Winters, Jenna Wong, Sarah Wu, Emily Zauzmer, Catherine Zheng, Anna Zhou, Andrew Zucker
ADVISORY BOARD Jonathan Alter Richard L. Berke Carl Cannon E.J. Dionne, Jr.
Ron Fournier Walter Isaacson Whitney Patton Maralee Schwartz
2 HARVARD POLITICAL REVIEW WINTER 2017
Every morning, as I begin my day groggily stumbling out of my brutalist 20th-century concrete building, I can walk in either of two directions: north or south. North takes me up DeWolfe Street, which traces the eastern boundary of Harvard Square and leads me to the center of the university’s campus. South takes me across Weeks Footbridge, which has been transporting students over the Charles River to Boston since 1927. And irrespective of which direction my feet choose on a particular day, odds are that my fingers will be unconsciously swiping through dozens of online articles, traveling on an information superhighway that links devices in Cambridge to ones in Cambodia (and everywhere in between). In my morning stupor, it can be easy to forget the degree to which my daily routines rely on physical structures which I take for granted—sidewalks, bridges, carbon fiber cables, and the like. Infrastructure, no matter how mundane or complex, is a fact of life for virtually everyone. And the physical spaces we navigate constantly shape our social and political experiences. In turn, social and political processes determine the function and form of our public spaces and amenities. Indeed, infrastructure is one of a dwindling number of issues that it seems both major American parties can get behind these days. During his campaign, President Donald Trump called for fiscal incentives to boost infrastructure investment, infamously likening New York City’s LaGuardia Airport to a “third world country.” Meanwhile, in 2017, Democrats in each chamber of Congress have pushed for several multibillion dollar deals to increase federal investments in highways, energy grids, and water systems. It is in appreciation of the unsung importance that infrastructure
plays in our lives that we present to you Bridging the Gap. In the following pages, HPR writers explore infrastructural landscapes from throughout the world. Alicia Zhang discusses the role of U.S. tech giants in expanding Internet access in much of sub-Saharan Africa. Matthew Rossi highlights Alaska’s barren infrastructure and how it leaves some of the state’s most vulnerable communities out in the cold. Finally, Lauren Anderson reminds us of the importance of aesthetics in city planning and infrastructure design. Bridging the Gap is the fourth and final issue published under the HPR’s 49th masthead. It has been the culmination of a whirlwind year for our publication. Between launching a new website, initiating a quarterly podcast, and diving into data journalism, the magazine’s staff has maintained our tireless efforts to inform and engage our readers with stories and analysis that cannot be found elsewhere. As always, I thank the staff for the diligence and care that went into producing this magazine. And I thank you, our readers, for picking up a copy. As I sign off on the HPR’s pages for the final time, I’m left feeling sentimental, yet proud of the ways in which we’ve been able to innovate and grow over these past three years. And I’m overwhelmed by an optimism about what is to come under our 50th masthead. Farewell, and happy reading.
Ali Hakim President
FOOD FOR THOUGHT
Disordered Eating at Harvard Cindy Jung
Anna Biggs WINTER 2017 HARVARD POLITICAL REVIEW 3
CAMPUS
M
y junior year of high school marked the beginning of my preoccupation with eating. I developed stringent standards that would keep me under a certain weight. Even before my junior year, I had a problem with how I looked in a sports bra, or my perceived “medium” size compared to my flat-chested friends who seemed to have no flab even when they were sitting. I am still amazed when I reflect on the dramatic food restrictions that my destructive body image caused me to impose on myself. I did not forgo my ritual of a hefty meal and ice cream at Friendly’s every Saturday after my lacrosse game, and I still participated in ‘milk and cookies’ during Wednesday night dorm functions. Eating was satisfying, and I wanted to embrace my natural cravings. But every time I gave into my desires, I withered in self-hatred for not having the discipline to say no to food and sabotaging my goal to become skinny. I resorted to purging; it appeared to be my only recourse, as I could not escape my draconian eating expectations nor the irresistible lure of food. My abusive relationship with food continued into college, yet there were differences at Harvard. My problems with eating manifested in the opposite extreme—I adhered to an unrelenting eating regime, to the extent that eating one more teaspoon of oatmeal than I thought was “safe” to consume for the day would burden me with extreme guilt. I was hardly aware of my problems. My clothes kept getting looser over freshman fall, and people would occasionally tell me things like, “you weigh nothing.” But I looked at the mirror with a distorted image of myself. I was shocked at my mom’s horror towards my thinness when I returned home for Christmas break. I am now in my junior year, but my ups and downs since my time at Harvard began are too painful and tiresome to recount. Despite my significantly improved eating habits, I still struggle to stay away from the scale, or to stop strategizing my daily food intake to comply with my draconian metrics. I do not know when I will be completely free from the fear of gaining weight. Due to my own personal experience with eating and body image, I started looking into eating disorders at Harvard–hoping to start an honest dialog around an issue which has affected countless students on this campus.
STUDENT REFLECTIONS ON HUDS The lack of comprehensive data on Harvard students’ eating habits, especially on how HUDS influences them, prevents any conclusive recommendations for creating a better environment for students with eating disorders. Regardless, conversations with clinical experts and students who have had a history of disordered eating reveal some important insights. These responses warrant more extensive education on eating disorders, nutrition, and positive body image for the entire student population. Most importantly, there must be greater efforts to foster an environment where students can comfortably talk through issues with eating and trust their peers to empathize, so that those who need help seek out treatment and consultation. Although these administrative initiatives are imperative, it is still important to
4 HARVARD POLITICAL REVIEW WINTER 2017
assess the influence of the dining hall on student eating, since the space serves as the primary food provider for most undergraduates. Student comments that focused on eating struggles experienced in the dining hall frequently highlighted the unlimited swipe system, which leads to decreased control over portion size, and the need for “healthier” options like less fried foods and more fresh fruits and vegetables. Many also pointed out a convergence of factors, most often short dinner hours and the predominance of high-carb and high-sugar brain break options like cereal, as reasons for their compunction about “eating badly.” In particular, students who have suffered from eating disorders tended to emphasize their reactions to the unlimited availability of food as freshmen, whether they were affected by the prevalence of guilt-inducing foods or perceivably “healthy” options that thus enabled them to overeat. Andie Turner ‘20, who came to Harvard with a history of orthorexia, a fixation with righteous eating and an adherence to an extremely rigid eating style, told the HPR: “I kind of went the opposite of restricting myself and [ended up] over-indulging in food. I would just go into Annenberg and load up my plate with foods I thought were “healthy” and gorge on them until I was uncomfortably full.” She attributed the change in her eating habits freshman year to the buffet-style and absence of detailed labels in the dining hall. Karen Maldonado ‘18, a former co-director of Eating Concerns and Hotline Outreach who recovered from her eating disorder during college, was similarly overwhelmed by Annenberg. “As someone who struggled a lot with things like guilt, having cereal right there, or an ice cream machine right there, became emotionally overwhelming.”
LIMITED REMEDIES TO DISORDERED EATING National statistics on the status of eating disorders across colleges suggest that a large number of Harvard undergraduates likely wrestle with a range of eating concerns. Whereas the new freedom and responsibilities of college life are correlated to a rise in mental health problems, the social pressure to make friends, have romantic relationships, and achieve academically can lead to maladaptive coping mechanisms in the form of disordered eating,” according to a 2013 survey by the National Eating Disorders Association. College students are at an increased risk of eating disorders also because they fall in a period of development in which disordered eating is likely to arise, resurface, or worsen for many young men and women. Full-blown eating disorders typically begin between 18 and 21 years of age. Clinical knowledge on triggering elements of eating disorders corroborate common themes in student perspectives. “Intervention [for binging disorder] starts with controlling access to something that is a typical binge food for them, ice cream, peanut butter, cereal, etc. And over time, when people have managed to reduce bingeing, you reintroduce those foods to their diet. So, a dining hall could just make that [process] more difficult because you have less control over what foods are avail-
CAMPUS
able” explained Rebecca Shingleton, a Postdoctoral Fellow at VA Boston Healthcare System, in an interview with the HPR. But on the flip side, she explained that for someone who may be trying to gain weight or expose themselves to a larger variety of foods, perhaps as a part of their treatment, having access to a vast array of foods in the dining hall can be very helpful in accessing different types of food. Shingleton’s description of both the costs and benefits of introducing a wide array of foods to students struggling with eating disorders highlights an important point: strategies that may help certain students who struggle with eating concerns may harm others. Therefore, it is particularly difficult to make general claims about how certain HUDS policies perpetuate or reduce the impact of eating disorders.
ADMINISTRATIVE SUPPORT FOR EATING CONCERNS Eating disorders necessitate intensive medical help, but the undergraduate populations that suffer from a range of disordered eating also deserve support and warrant treatment. Nationally, 45-55 percent of undergraduates had shape or weight concerns above normative body image dissatisfaction, 25 percent engaged in some level of dietary restraint and 21 percent reported experiencing objective binge episodes. But a much smaller percentage reported clinically significant levels of eating disorder symptoms. The rates of actual eating disorder diagnosis are lower because a diagnosis takes into account numerous components including weight and occurrence of binge and purge episodes. The diverse spectrum of eating anxieties requires improved initiatives to address detrimental restrictive behavior at the sub-clinical level. Meeting these varied needs lies largely outside the purview of Harvard’s dining services. Harvard students can turn to Eating Concerns and Hotline Outreach, a group of undergraduate counselors who have specialized training to address concerns about exercising, body image, food, eating, and eating disorders, a team of dieticians at The Center for Wellness, and the eating disorder specialist at the HUHS counseling and mental health group, or make an appointment with a nutritionist without referrals. Off-campus resources include the Cambridge Eating Disorder Center, the Renfrew Center for Eating Disorders, Boston Student Eating Disorder Association, and McLean Hospital’s Klarman Eating Disorders Center. The National Eating Disorders Association’s 2013 survey measured the frequency and perceived importance of a variety of programs and services on 165 colleges and universities in the United States and contained recommendations that could help Harvard support students with eating disorders. Key findings highlighted the serious lack of screenings for eating disorders—a critical component of identifying those struggling and intervening early—and the unmet need for individuals on campus who are qualified to identify and refer students. Additionally, the results called for greater educational programming. The only eating disorder workshops at Harvard,
ECHO’s Body Image Workshop and Love Your Body day, are offered by demand and once a year, respectively. Moreover, Harvard does not offer programs on eating disorders during the annual National Eating Disorders Awareness Week, unlike 65.6 percent of campuses in the survey that reported doing so. These workshops cultivate a love of the holistic self and help individuals make peace with food, and students would benefit from even more of them. Likewise, Harvard could offer campus-wide opportunities for eating-disorder screenings and appointments for individual psychotherapies. Another idea would be for nutritionists from HUHS to hold office hours, perhaps in collaboration with eating disorder specialists, to address students’ misconceptions about foods and weight gain, and encourage empowering frameworks for thinking about food. Precautionary efforts and interventions should start early, from incorporating conversations about body image and eating into the Opening Days program. Consistent education workshops across the college—maybe even in the form of academic courses on eating disorders—would help students build healthy relationships with their bodies. The success of current and proposed initiatives depends on students’ willingness to seek help, which is often hindered by a denial of the existence or seriousness of the problem and the stigma surrounding eating disorders. Alana Steinberg, the current co-Director of ECHO, told the HPR that “not eating to look good or pulling a trig because you ate too much are really normalized on this campus.” She continued that, “being vocal about an eating concern is something very difficult to do.” Therefore, the greater challenge lies in creating an atmosphere in which talking about all categories of eating-related stresses are accepted and normalized. A critical, often overlooked, part of tackling the reticence around struggles with food is to raise awareness of disordered eating as a spectrum that is relevant to almost everyone who has a body and a relationship to it. Transforming campus discourse on eating disorders could begin with the administration’s public acknowledgement that food can sometimes induce anxiety. Bolstering solidarity through these initiatives is key to motivating individuals to seek treatment. As Maldonado told the HPR, “Food is such a massive part of college life, the dining hall is such a center of college community, and yet we talk so little about our relationship to food, and how different that could be for people.” For eating concerns at Harvard, ECHO is available at (617) 4958200 from 8 p.m. to 8 a.m. nightly. For eating concerns nationally, NEDA is available at (800) 9312237 from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. Monday through Thursday and from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Friday.
WINTER 2017 HARVARD POLITICAL REVIEW 5