JHU POLITIK
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APRIL 6, 2015
VOLUME XVII, ISSUE X
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JHU POLITIK EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Eliza Schultz MANAGING EDITOR Christine Server
HEAD WRITER Julia Allen
ASSISTANT EDITORS Katie Botto Dylan Etzel Preston Ge Abigail Sia
POLICY DESK EDITOR Mira Haqqani
CREATIVE DIRECTOR Diana Lee
MARYLAND EDITOR David Hamburger
COPY EDITOR Florence Noorinejad WEBMASTER Ben Lu MARKETING & PUBLICITY Chiara Wright FACULTY ADVISOR Steven R. David
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CAMPUS EDITOR Juliana Vigorito
STAFF WRITERS Olga Baranoff Dylan Cowit Arpan Ghosh Alexander Grable Rosellen Grant Rebecca Grenham Evan Harary Shrenik Jain Shannon Libaw Robert Locke Morley Musick Sathvik Namburar Corey Payne Zachary Schlosberg
• April 6, 2015 • Volume XVII, Issue X
INSIDE THIS ISSUE
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Week in Review: The Eurozone William Theodorou ’18 License to Speak:
Walker and the Recasting of the Free Speech Discussion
David Hamburger ’18 Open Access:
A Hidden Insurgency in Scientific Publishing
Preston Ge ’17
Why an Iran Deal Won’t End the World As We Know It Robert Locke ’15 Johns Hopkins Traditions, Beyond the Scarf Eliza Schultz ’15 The Clinton Email Controversy:
A Sexist Blip on a Powerhouse’s Political Radar
Callie Plapinger ’16
U.S.-Israel Alliance:
Of No Use to Us Anymore?
Alexander Grable ’15
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Week in Review: The Eurozone by William Theodorou ’18, Contriburting Writer Hollande and the Socialist Party Trudge on Despite Local Defeats In the past year, French President François Hollande and the French Socialist Policy have enacted more conservative, pro-business economic policies. These policy changes are clearly connected to Germany’s increasing sphere of influence, and are part of a continent-wide trend that is growing as other Eurozone economies continue to wither. Last Sunday, the French administration faced the voice of the people as Hollande’s party suffered crushing defeats in local elections. Hollande responded to the losses by once again pledging his commitment to what he called “France’s fixed economic course.” On Tuesday, Hollande’s cabinet held true to their word by sending an investment proposal to the European Commission to coax private lenders into financing infrastructure projects throughout the Eurozone. The proposal is backed by a 16 billion euro commitment from the European Investment Bank.
German Debt May No Longer Be Able to Support the ECB In January, the President of the European Central Bank, Mario Draghi, announced the bank’s new bond-buying program, which would, in theory, help Eurozone economies recover by lowering yields and allowing countries to finance at lower interest rates. The program was expected to work much better than the ECB’s prior liquidity programs; however, in practice, it relies too heavily on the liberty of German debt. Unfortunately, the fast rate at which the ECB will buy up the German debt will soon deplete the supply of short-term debt, a preferable outcome because its yields are above the ECB deposit line. Draghi considers these fears “unfounded,” but the ECB has already begun buying long-term bonds. Whether the ECB will have to enact policy changes in order to accommodate these long-term, high interest bonds remains to be seen.
Spanish Government Meets Deficit Obligations The Spanish economy has been under the watch of the European Commission since 2009 due to the country’s ever-increasing debt. Earlier this month, Vladis Dombrovskis, Vice President of the European Commission, doubted claims made by Spain’s Finance Minister, Luis de Guindos, that the country would see rapid growth and meet this year’s deficit target. De Guindos was vindicated this past week when Spain met its debt commitments for the first time since 2008. The deficit now stands at 6.5 percent of the national GDP, and Soraya Sáenz de Santamaría, Deputy Prime Minister of Spain, attributes the declining debt and growth of the economy to the lack of bailout funds awarded to banks in the past year. The Central Bank of Spain believes the economy will continue to grow, projecting a 2.8 percent increase. ■
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• April 6, 2015 • Volume XVII, Issue X
License to Speak:
Walker and the Recasting of the Free Speech Discussion by David Hamburger ’18, Maryland Editor
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wo weeks ago, on March 23, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the case Walker v. Sons of Confederate Veterans. In Walker, the Court was asked to consider whether a state has the right to prevent certain messages on vanity or specialty license plates – in this case, those bearing the design of the Confederate flag. By recasting the question in Walker as an issue of First Amendment liberties rather than the much narrower one of government speech, free-speech proponents risk significantly misrepresenting the nature of the case and, in so doing, provoking undue concern about infringement on constitutional rights. At the heart of the consternation regarding Walker lies the issue of offensive speech. Many – from as varied backgrounds as the ACLU and the Cato Institute – argue, in the words of Ilya Shapiro at Cato, that “offensive speech shouldn’t merely be tolerated, but celebrated as evidence of democratic health.” Shapiro is unquestionably correct, I think – offensive speech is not only evidence, but indeed perhaps confirmation of “democratic health.” The right to offensive speech is fundamental to our constitutional principles, having been ingrained in popular understanding and affirmed repeatedly by the Courts. Attempts to “eradicate offensive speech,” as Shapiro has vividly cast the debate, should be rebuffed by a broad coalition of civil liberties supporters. But in Walker, the issue at hand is one of defining the more mundane, but nonetheless important, principle of government speech – in short, raising the question of whether the text on a license plate represents a public forum for free speech, or a product of the government that is thus not subject to First Amendment restrictions. Here, the vital determination is not whether Texas’ decision to reject the Confederate flag design represents an infringement of First Amendment rights, but rather whether they apply at all. As Justice Sonia Sotomayor expressed clearly during oral argument, “if you had … a normal case where we were regulating private speech, of course, we would find that [limiting speech on the basis of offense] impermissible. But the question is whether this is a very different kind of context.”
Omitting that context serves only to unnecessarily arouse concern and ire. Such concern has only been heightened by media coverage of the case, which has tended to the more dramatic First Amendment question rather than the crux of the issue. The recent Associated Press article on the case relegated the topic of raising the question of government speech to one line at the bottom of the 25-paragraph piece. Much of the AP article instead echoed the more dramatic statements made by the attorney for the Sons of Confederate Veterans that all forms of offensive speech – whether advocating drug use or promoting terror – should be permitted. By raising the specter of license plates bearing the term “jihad” without contextualizing the debate, the AP article and other accounts of the arguments on Walker contribute little to the nature of the debate at hand. That the debate has been recast should not diminish the importance of engaging in a discussion on offensive speech more broadly. The questions and consequences of the Supreme Court decision, however, are important enough that a misconstrued debate is both unnecessary and unproductive. Maryland, for example, as one of several states with specialized license plates displaying the Confederate flag, may be forced to reconsider its position on vanity plates in the wake of a decision in Walker. In a broader sense, Walker could drastically impact the entire program of customizable plates, as Justice Kennedy claimed during oral argument. Such issues are the true ones under examination in Walker, and it is on these that the conversation should thus be focused. ■
Volume XVII, Issue IX • March 23, 2015 •
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Open Access:
A Hidden Insurgency in Scientific Publishing
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by Preston Ge ’17, Assistant Editor
n January 21, 2012, Sir Timothy Gowers, professor of mathematics at Cambridge, declared war against Elsevier, one of the largest academic publishing companies in the world. In a blog post, he lambasted Elsevier for business practices that limited the accessibility of scientific information and called for a worldwide boycott of journals published by Elsevier. Gower’s boycott has amassed signatures from nearly 15,000 scholars, including many well-respected ones. The boycott’s guiding principle – the idea that research findings should be accessible to all – has spawned one of the strongest challenges to traditional scientific publishing in recent years: the Open Access movement. Traditionally, scientific publishing in the biological sciences has been conducted through subscription journals. Access was limited to authors who could afford to pay high publication fees and institutions that could afford subscriptions. Although modern technology allows for instant and widespread dissemination of scientific discoveries, these journals still charge exorbitant fees for online access. On April 17, 2012, Harvard University’s library issued a memo stating that rising costs of subscription journals was becoming “an untenable situation.” The memo cites huge profit margins of publishing companies (upward of 35 percent) and subscription costs sometimes reaching $40,000 per journal annually. Between 1986 and 2003, journal prices have increased by 215 percent – far faster than the rate of inflation. Research libraries face spending an increasing percentage of their budgets, but on fewer journal subscriptions. Ironically, even as technology is making information more readily available, access to scientific information is becoming increasingly restricted. A natural solution to this, of course, is to simply reduce or eliminate subscription fees altogether. This is the guiding principle of the Open Access movement. While efforts to make academic literature freely accessible began in the 1960s, the modern Open Access (OA) movement began with the Internet’s first scientific forum, arXiv, in 1991. By 2011, 12 percent of scientific literature was published in articles with either immediate or delayed OA. Even industry giants, such as Elsevier or Nature Publishing Group, have started a number of OA journals. The differences in cost are striking: publishing a scientific paper costs around $3500 to $4000,
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but OA journals publish papers for an average of $660. Much of the disparity comes from differences in operating cost. Traditional publishers operate and maintain expensive printing equipment, as they publish in print, whereas OA journals tend to be exclusively online. Newer, more dynamic OA journals also benefit from more streamlined workflows, whereas huge publishing companies have not adapted to modern technologies and methods as quickly. However, OA publishing is not without its flaws. In 2013, Science correspondent John Bohannon submitted fake scientific papers to 304 different OA journals. Bohannon’s papers all contained such grave and obvious scientific flaws that they would not have survived even a cursory review. The flawed papers were accepted by more than half of the tested OA journals, including some published by Elsevier. With the growth of OA, there has been an explosion of predatory journals, which publish with essentially no review or editorial process as long as the publication fee is paid. OA increases access to scientific literature for all, but it means sacrificing some integrity in the review process. But perhaps the greatest challenge to OA is that it falls far short of the prestige commanded by journals like Nature, Science, or Cell. For better or for worse, faculty positions, grants, and recognition are still largely bestowed upon those who publish more in high-profile journals, almost all of which are still traditional subscription journals. For young scientists just starting their careers, publishing Naturequality work in an OA journal would prove to be a drag on accumulating citations and achieving recognition. If the Open Access Movement wishes to reverse the trend of exploding costs and increasingly restricted access in the scientific publishing industry, it must revamp its image. The problem is not getting academic libraries to shift away from subscription journals; that is already happening. The issue is getting scientists to submit groundbreaking work to OA journals rather than to subscription journals. A journal lives and dies by the papers it publishes; expensive journals only survive if the scientists believe the journal is able to maximize the impact of their work. Thus, OA journals need to convince scientists that they can maximize the impact of the papers they publish. Otherwise, they will remain on the fringes of scientific publishing. ■
• April 6, 2015 • Volume XVII, Issue X
Why an Iran Deal Won’t End the World
As We Know It by Robert Locke ’15, Staff Writer
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iplomacy seems like more and more of a lost art these days. Gone are the days of historic summits like Bretton Woods and Yalta, where world leaders collaborated to establish the current structures of international relations. We seem to be living in the age of “coalition air strikes” as the primary solution to the world’s conflicts, as we have seen in Libya and are now seeing in Yemen. Whether this transition has been to satisfy the military industrial complex or perhaps just to make a statement, it is high time to resort to diplomacy once again. When it comes to Iran, a variety of prominent leaders have covertly, and even overtly, called for military intervention to mitigate the threat Iran supposedly poses. For a moment, let us assume that Iran actually does pose a nuclear threat. In this case, then, why would working out a deal with favorable terms to keep Iran in line and our world safe be such a bad idea? If anything, working toward diplomatic relations with Iran could very well open the country up to the long-term benefits of international trade, globalization, and relative freedom, and make significant inroads in diminishing the radical nature of Iran as it currently stands. This is not the first time we have been led to believe a grave threat of other countries developing nuclear weapons. In the 1970s, when Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto of Pakistan went ahead with plans for developing nuclear weapons, he was met with stern consternation from the international community. Forty years later, Pakistan has a substantial nuclear weapon arsenal that has had no directly adverse effects on the country, region, or the international community. If anything, one could even argue that nuclear weapons have made the region safer, as the idea of MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) prevents Pakistan and India from digressing into a full-scale conflict.
Certainly, there is a threat present, as it is in any country, that nuclear technology could somehow find themselves in the wrong hands. However, we have seen no such thing happen to this date. To say Iran poses a real nuclear threat is merely fear-mongering. Iran is bordered by Pakistan, not far from India, and perhaps within reach of Israel, which has nuclear technologies of its own. Iran would undoubtedly not risk its own well-being, knowing that any one of the nuclear countries in its vicinity could annihilate it with frightening speed. And this is all assuming, of course, that the country actually wishes to develop nuclear weapons – which we do not actually know for sure. We are currently faced with a unique opportunity to engage with Iran as the country seeks diplomacy and cooperation with the West more proactively than at any point since the Iranian Revolution of 1979. To squander this opportunity, walk away from the bargaining table, and push instead toward war with Iran is reckless, irresponsible, and foolish. We will not know the potential of diplomacy until we try it, and it should be refreshing that President Obama is leading us down this path. Should diplomatic talks not work out on this subject, we will be right where we started, having lost nothing, and can reconsider our position on sanctions at that point. It’s time to put historical grudges, predispositions, and fear-mongering aside, and pursue the potential of diplomacy. As a nation, we do not have the money to do otherwise – and, most importantly, we should not be sending our sons and daughters abroad to fight a conflict that could have been addressed through diplomacy. With that in mind, last week’s news of a preliminary deal with Iran should be heralded as a diplomatic achievement and a formative step to what we should hope is a full and well-thought-out deal come June 30. ■
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Johns Hopkins Traditions, Beyond the Scarf
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by Eliza Schultz ’15, Editor-in-Chief
ot long ago, a group of Johns Hopkins administrators formed the Committee on Traditions, whose task was to revive old traditions and conceive new ones. While the Committee has since been dissolved, its website, which invites University affiliates to “submit a tradition,” is still intact, and its charge has now been adopted by President Daniels himself. As the Committee on Traditions and the central administration have observed, there is indeed a perceived absence of history and unity at Johns Hopkins. Our senior class gift participation rate stands between 20 and 40 percent lower than that at Yale and Harvard, and our endowment has suffered relative to peer institutions due to low alumni donations. Both facts lend credence to a serious disconnect between students and the University. The popularity of Greek life, which has seen a record number of recruits for each year in recent memory, indicates that students desire a sense of community and lineage, perhaps because the University wants for one. Even our Wikipedia page acknowledges that Johns Hopkins is thought to have few traditions for an institution of its age. The effort to remedy this problem has been a concerted one. Ten by Twenty, the framework to guide the University through the remainder of the decade, is peppered with references to “our exceptional history.” Its conclusion states a final aspiration, for “an even stronger common identity” and “a sense of affiliation with the University.” Toward that effort, the administration launched “identity.jhu.edu” and created a new University-wide logo to be used in place of our traditional seal. Some students, who see this brand overhaul as an undue move toward corporatization, have met the new logo with skepticism. To effect a sense of attachment between students and the University, administrators and student government representatives have employed a different strategy: traditions. Old, borrowed, and new, these traditions have included the rejuvenation of the Commemoration Ball, which celebrated its second year out of hibernation this February, and Convocation, reintroduced in 2005. New traditions have included the Lighting of the Quads, begun in 2004, and High Table Dinner, in 2010. Others seem to
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exist only as promises to prospective students. I know not a single student who has rubbed the plaque of Ira Remsen before a chemistry exam. On a campus that offers little in the way of a social scene, these events have largely benefited students. The Commemoration Ball is a boon to those not involved in Greek Life, who otherwise do not have the chance to attend a formal event. The Lighting of the Quads offers sustenance and a respite from the library just before the onset of finals period. Still, it is not enough to “submit a tradition.” When an event is promoted as a tradition in its infancy, it feels contrived. A genuine tradition is adopted over time, and has attached to it a sort of nostalgia. Perhaps, in time, the Lighting of the Quads will have achieved this. But for now, I contend that these “traditions,” along with the identity initiatives to unite our eleven divisions, have caused – or, perhaps, have reinforced – a sort of identity crisis. Many of our Johns Hopkins traditions do not exactly belong to Johns Hopkins. The Lighting of the Quads is undoubtedly based off the Tree Lighting Ceremony at Columbia, and High Table Dinner is based off a centuriesold Oxbridge custom. The experience of the latter felt to me to be inauthentic, in part because it is impossible to replicate a medieval dinner in a basketball court, but also because, in an effort to develop an identity and sense of history as an institution, we have relied on the customs of others. But as Ten by Twenty has identified, we do have an exceptional history. Johns Hopkins was the first American institution to combine research and instruction, and invented the concept of the modern-day seminar. And yes, our founders feared that social diversions would detract from academics – an attitude reflected in the senior class cocktail party held each May in the library. The popularity of this event, I think, is explained by its location, which honors our experiences at Johns Hopkins, and, apparently, those of generations of students before us. It is events like this one, which reflect our unique institutional history, that will help us to foster an identity that is true to Johns Hopkins. Because we do have a history, and we do have much to celebrate. ■
• April 6, 2015 • Volume XVII, Issue X
The Clinton Email Controversy: A Sexist Blip on a Powerhouse’s Political Radar
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by Callie Plapinger ’16, Contributing Writer
s a likely presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton’s recent email scandal might taint her run for the highest office in America. Clinton has been accused of communicating with foreign officials on her personal email account, allegations which have raised a host of concerns regarding Clinton’s judgment, national security, and the confidentiality of this sensitive information. Until recently, countless polls named her the clear leader even among all Republican candidates. But now, with polls documenting the public’s plummeting estimations of her trustworthiness and credibility, the question arises: will this affect Clinton’s run for the presidency?
Clinton’s email controversy has also highlighted the media’s tendency to stereotype female politicians, depicting them as emotional and unstable. Many articles described Clinton as “agitated,” “exhausted,” and “irritated” when she appeared before the House Select Committee on Benghazi. This onedimensional portrayal of Clinton completely ignores the grueling, hours-long questioning she endured before this committee, perpetuating a societal dichotomy of masculinity and femininity: whereas male candidates showing emotion signifies a brave revelation of sensitivity, female candidates responding in similar fashions face criticisms for so-called uncontrollable outbursts of emotion.
Given that Clinton has been in the political spotlight for two decades, the answer is that this scandal likely will not, and undoubtedly should not, affect her inevitable bid for the presidency. However, the subtle rhetoric and framing techniques employed by both the media and male politicians reveal the sexism that has continued to perpetuate this scandal and its presence in the news cycle. Throughout Clinton’s career, the media has frequently chosen to focus heavily on her personal life, including her daughter Chelsea’s wedding in 2010, at the expense of her impressive political experience ranging from New York Senator to Secretary of State. Sadly, the email scandal is indicative of a continuation of this pattern, masked in political terms.
While many news outlets project – and Republicans hope – that the email controversy will negatively affect Clinton’s presidency prospects, the chances of this scandal denting Clinton’s announcement or campaign are highly unlikely. As a deeply established household political name, Clinton wields significant power, and thus both Democrats and supporters award her a reasonable amount of doubt. Voters don’t seem to regard this situation as Clinton having automatically done something wrong, as opinions polls have shown; further, as a seasoned politician with years in the game, it would take a big misstep to change voters’ perceptions of Clinton.
When compared to the controversy surrounding Chris Christie and “Bridgegate,” the sexism and dramatization surrounding Clinton’s emails become clear. Christie, the governor of New Jersey, faced corruption charges after several of his staff members were found to have collaborated with political appointees to cause petty lane closures on the George Washington Bridge in 2013 – allegedly as punishment for a local mayor who did not endorse Christie in that year’s gubernatorial elections. Despite these significant allegations, the media rarely employed the words “scandal” or “drama” to describe Christie’s controversy; meanwhile, Clinton’s alleged exclusive use of a personal email has been regularly depicted as a scandalizing, dramatized event. Though Christie is a lower-level official than Clinton and has not thrown his hat into the presidential ring, the media portrayal of his scandal is nonetheless indicative of the higher levels of respect that are routinely awarded to male politicians.
Though some liberals have gone so far as to attempt to ban certain words from being used when covering Clinton in the media, the real danger is not in the usage of these charged phrases alone. Rather, the crux of this issue lies in the insidious and subtle sexism that characterizes the media coverage of Clinton and other female candidates, who may have less power to overcome it. ■
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U.S.-Israel Alliance: Of No Use to Us Anymore?
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by Alexander Grable ’15, Staff Writer
he United States has long backed Israel through both economic and military aid. U.S. and Israeli intelligence services have cooperated extensively, and American political parties go to great lengths to underline the alliance between the two countries. But perhaps it is past time to consider suspending the alliance and either adopting a friendly neutrality toward Israel or even isolating Israel diplomatically. Israeli actions in Palestine and over Iran, particularly over the last ten years, have consistently been detrimental to the U.S. foreign policy goal of a so-called “two-state solution” to the Israel-Palestine question, as the Israelis have deliberately acted in a manner contrary to this goal. However, even in addition to this, there are other reasons for the U.S. to distance itself from Israel. While the United States has been a good ally to Israel, Israel has historically been a bad ally to the United States. During the Six Day War, Israeli fighter-bombers and torpedo boats attacked the USS Liberty. Although both the U.S. government and the Israeli government officially maintain that the attack, which cost the lives of 34 American sailors, was an accident, there is strong evidence to indicate the Israelis deliberately attacked the Liberty. According to the surviving crew of the Liberty, the ship was flying the American flag during the attack. From testimony of those in the U.S. Military with access to Israeli radio transmissions intercepted at the time of the attack, Israel Defence Forces command knew that the ship was American. The U.S. Sixth Fleet was ordered not to retaliate. In 1983, during the Israeli intervention in Lebanon, Israeli forces repeatedly challenged and threatened U.S. forces as the Israelis attempted to break agreements over the demarcation of the city of Beirut. In one incident, an Israeli tank commander threatened to storm past a Marine Corps checkpoint only to be stopped when a U.S. captain climbed up on the commander’s tank and threatened him at gunpoint to turn stop. Russo-Israeli cooperation has usually been strong, and has continued to be strong in the post-Cold War era. In 1984,
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the U.S. Navy intelligence analyst Jonathan Pollard began passing intelligence to Israel. The reason Pollard ended up in jail is because the Israelis then promptly passed the intelligence they had obtained from Pollard to the Soviet Union. A recent example of Russo-Israeli cooperation is in the aftermath of the 2008 South Ossetia conflict: the Israelis passed drone technology that the U.S. had given them on to the Russians. Finally the Israelis, under increasingly rightist governments, have negotiated over a two-state solution in bad faith, particularly under current Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The Israelis have continued to build illegal settlements in the West Bank, despite repeated promises to the international community that they would not. The Israelis have also enforced a brutal blockade of Gaza that has been structured to, in effect, turn Gaza into an open prison rather than a city. The brutal air and ground campaign against Gaza last summer appalled much of the world with its brutality, including Israeli attacks on U.N. compounds in Gaza. During that campaign, violent, murderous, and chilling Arab-phobic rhetoric frequently came forth from Israeli citizens and legislators, occasionally backed by deeds such as Ayelet Shaked calling for more unrestrained violence against Palestinian civilians. This explains much of the revulsion the world expressed when Netanyahu deliberately stirred up Arabophobia during the recent Israeli elections, even though 20 percent of Israelis are Arabs. Netanyahu openly declared during the same election his opposition to a two-state solution, and his new denials only reinforce the argument for no longer considering him a partner for peace. Israel has long been an unhelpful ally and has recently undermined U.S. foreign policy while making itself, through its actions, more and more into a pariah state. The United States cannot afford to isolate itself even more by supporting a pariah state that enforces a form of religious and ethnic apartheid. Israel has legitimate security concerns, but our support must not be unconditional – not to Israel nor to any other country. ■
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JHU Politik, founded in 2008, is a weekly publication of political opinion pieces. We proudly seek to provide the Johns Hopkins community with student voices and perspectives about important issues of our time. Rather than hide within a cloistered academic bubble, we know we must critically engage with the world that surrounds us. That, we believe, is at the heart of what it means to be learning. We are lucky to be situated in the city of Baltimore, a city with a rich history and an ever-changing politics. We aim to look at the politics of the Homewood campus, the city of Baltimore, the domestic landscape of the United States, and the international community . While we publish the Politik weekly, we work simultaneously on our special issues which come out once per semester. These magazines confront a single topic from multiple angles. We have run issues covering topics like the political nature of research, the Arab Spring, and our city Baltimore.
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