THE HARVARD CRIMSON | FEBRUARY 26, 2020
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EDITORIAL THE CRIMSON EDITORIAL BOARD
COLUMN
Prison Divestment and the Pitfalls of Moral Comparison
Mind Full or Mindful?
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Javhlan Amgalanbaatar DARING TO BE
rivate prisons only make a bad justice system worse. Last week, the Harvard Prison Divestment Campaign filed suit against Harvard in Massachusetts state court over the University’s alleged investments in companies with ties to the prison industry. Arguing that the University’s refusal to investigate the scope of potential investments in the prison industry amounts to a “violation of fiduciary duty and break of the Harvard Charter,” the five student plaintiffs asked the court to prohibit Harvard from investing in the “prison-industrial complex” and to make “such practices” illegal. Private prisons take advantage of the overcriminalization of people of color for monetary gain. People of color are disproportionately stopped or arrested by the police, charged by prosecutors at higher rates, and sentenced to longer terms for the same charges. The mistreatment of people of color by the criminal justice system is the result of an abominable combination of racialized socioeconomic disparities and race-driven legislation. For example, when Congress chose to differentially punish crack and powder cocaine, the sentencing disparity between black Americans and white Americans for drug-related crimes more than quadrupled. Increased sentences increase private prison profits. Moreover, private prisons pervert the very principles of justice that should underpin the carceral system, creating structural incentives for disregarding and undermining these principles. For example, in 2009, two Pennsylvania judges were charged with taking millions of dollars in kickbacks in exchange
for sending teenagers to two private juvenile detention centers. But even as we recognize the violence of private prisons against communities of color and American society more broadly, we find ourselves feeling uncomfortable with the nature of divestment politics and our own position, as an editorial board, within them. When we opined in favor of fossil fuel divestment last spring, we wrote that we think supporting divestment is appropriate only in the most extreme cases. But since then, we have confronted a number of calls for divestment — from Puerto Rican debt, from indigenous and agricultural landholdings, from Israel — that have posed the difficult task of having to compare moral wrongs and degrees of existential significance. The existential and moral importance of fossil fuel divestment remains clear, but a reactive approach to divestment does not instantiate a meaningful approach to addressing the sociopolitical significance of Harvard’s financial practices. Divestment campaigns are but one means, championed by students, to raise alarm against a political economy that underwrites deeply troubling and exploitative practices of capital accumulation. In that light, the HPDC lawsuit represents the extreme (and justifiable) frustration — not least owing to the University’s often condescending indifference — that students have with the limited tools available to them to challenge such injustice. After all, the issue they protest does not appear to be particularly juridical — certainly not in the sense of the landmark social justice cases that have ap-
peared before United States courts. Rather, these students would seem to be constructing a legal claim — donating to a university, the values of which they evidently disagree with — in order to pursue a case in the courts that might more typically be pursued on the street or, as they showed last semester, the football field. As one plaintiff said in light of his $12.24 donation, “moral standing” was more important than “legal.” And while we share the frustration of these students, we believe that oneoff editorials supporting the increasing number of divestment campaigns will tend not to constitute a meaningful critique of these structural problems or do justice to their activism. Just as it is not our place to pass judgment on each individual walkout and sit-in, so too it seems presumptuous to do so for divestment campaigns. As such, though we continue to support divestment activism in its power to raise critical moral and social questions from students’ perspectives, private prison divestment does not meet our criteria for support. But that’s not really what matters. What matters is that students are heard loud and clear: It’s time to shut down private prisons for the sake of those whom they dehumanize and the justice system they pervert. This staff editorial solely represents the majority view of The Crimson Editorial Board. It is the product of discussions at regular Editorial Board meetings. In order to ensure the impartiality of our journalism, Crimson editors who choose to opine and vote at these meetings are not involved in the reporting of articles on similar topics.
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The Crimson @thecrimson DISSENT
Dissent: We Shouldn’t Stop Listening — The Case for Prison Divestment By SALMA I. ELSAYED, GUILLERMO S. HAVA, HANA M. KIROS, GABRIELLE T. LANGKILDE, DANIEL L. LEONARD, AND MARCUS B. MONTAGUE-MFUNI
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ast Tuesday, the Harvard Prison Divestment Campaign filed a lawsuit against the University for its investments in companies connected to the private prison industry. In the lawsuit, HPDC argues that Harvard — specifically naming University President Lawrence S. Bacow, Harvard Corporation Senior Fellow William F. Lee ’72, and the Harvard Management Company — has failed to “manage the endowment in good faith” and has violated “its legal duty to consider the charitable purposes of its investments. We acknowledge that the legal basis of this lawsuit is tenuous at best. That said, we laud the lawsuit’s effectiveness as a means to heighten awareness of the often sidelined prison divestment movement. Most importantly, we agree with the moral gumption of its cause. Investments in companies managing private prisons are deeply immoral and signal a willingness to profit from the inhumane practices these institutions perpetuate. As such, the conversations HPDC has sparked on the morally reprehensible state of private prisons in the United States are valuable and urgent. The list of injustices profit-motivated, privatized incarceration perpetuates is depressingly long. Inmates of color are disproportionately represented in private prisons where they are then unjustly housed in inhumane, unsafe conditions. The pursuit of profit encourages private prisons to delay the release of their inmates by actively reducing their likelihood of obtaining parole. Beyond this, stakeholders in the industry erode democracy and decency. They have spent millions lobbying state and federal governments in favor of harsher and longer sentencing. Private prison operators such as CoreCivic and GEO Group — which HPDC asserts the University is connected to through a related Mid-Cap ETF fund — are also known operators of immigrant detention centers that, according to the New
York Times, contain “barely edible food, indifferent health care, guard brutality and assorted corner-cutting measures,” including those that house immigrant children separated from their parents. We recognize that there is a large discrepancy in the amount HPDC and the University estimate Harvard has invested in companies tied to the prison industry. Regardless of whether this figure is as large as the $3 million that HDPC alleges or the much smaller $18,000 that Bacow claims, we believe there is still a strong moral rationale for divesting. Either way, Harvard has effectively turned a blind eye to or, worse, signed off on these egregious injustices.But any fact-friendly person should be able to recognize the well-documented harm private prisons perpetuate. The issue, then, is not whether the private prison industry is highly unethical (it is) nor whether it actively hurts marginalized communities (it does). That much is beyond doubt. The question is how we, as a university community, ought to confront that reality. Adopting a complacent, pessimistic stance, as this Editorial Board has, is tempting. It might even seem logical. Under an economic and corporate status quo in which child labor and environmental destruction remain commonplace, why even bother with ethical investment? Isn’t divesting from anything ultimately futile? Yet cynicism has never been a friend of social change. In cases where the moral alarm is resoundingly, successfully raised, we believe it is the job of all University affiliates at large, and The Crimson Editorial Board, to listen. Though, in our campus’s divestment spring, dissecting all the arguments and movements calling for divestment may be overwhelming, dismissing all of these movements because they are numerous is ham-fisted. To adopt such a mindset obfuscates the University’s and our campus community’s responsibility to consider how to best address injustice and other complex moral quandaries. In the spring of last semester, our Editorial Board articulated, in an overturning of long-held precedent, why it now
supports fossil fuel divestment. The basis of this opinion was made clear: “Simply put, we should not allow our educations to be funded by the destruction of the environment and degradation of human life, particularly those who are already systematically disadvantaged.” To us, arguing that the conditions in prison prisons do not reach the standard of degrading human life or harming the systematically disadvantaged is illogical and facetious. Harvard, because of its economic and institutional heft, enjoys a privileged position — one that allows it the unique fiscal flexibility to choose its investments responsibly and to nudge society in a positive direction. Pushing our university to do so, to avoid the most morally abhorrent investments from a field of tainted options, is far preferable to simply accepting that ethical perfection is unattainable; applying these moral standards — demanding that the food we eat and the buildings we live in are not partially subsidized by outright cruelty — is infinitely superior to indifferent resignation. Our investments might never be perfect. But that doesn’t mean they can’t be better. Dissenting Opinions: Occasionally, The Crimson Editorial Board is divided about the opinion we express in a staff editorial. In these cases, dissenting board members have the opportunity to express their opposition to staff opinion. —Salma I. Elsayed ’23, a Crimson Editorial editor, lives in Stoughton Hall. Guillermo S. Hava ’23, a Crimson Editorial Comp Director, lives in Wigglesworth Hall. Hana M. Kiros ’22, a Crimson Associate Editorial editor, is an Integrative Biology concentrator in Pforzheimer House. Gabrielle T. Langkilde ’21, a Crimson Editorial editor, is a joint concentrator in Sociology and Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality in Eliot House. Daniel L. Leonard ’21, a Crimson Editorial editor, is a joint History of Science and Philosophy concentrator in Winthrop House. Marcus B. Montague-Mfuni ’23, a Crimson Editorial editor, lives in Pennypacker Hall.
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n front of you is a stunning view of a huge forest, up to a mountain top, and you are listening to the sound of birds chirping, with sunshine warmly touching your face, and fresh air coming in through your lungs. Breathing in, you take in this moment fully, and breathing out, you cherish the peace this moment offers you from the chaos of your life. Moments in nature, similar to what you have hopefully just experienced in your mind, sparked my interest in mindfulness several years ago. During a summer countryside trip back in Mongolia, looking at a sunset beside a small lake, I could not help but notice how my thoughts disappeared and how I was simply aware of all my surroundings and sensations: the orange, pink, and red colors of the sky and the fresh smell after rain. It was freeing and peaceful not to think for a time and simply observe my surroundings. Intrigued by these sensations, I started studying meditation and stumbled upon the concept of mindfulness. Mindfulness is defined in many different ways but on the simplest level, it is to be fully present and aware of what is going on in and around you at a given moment. After spending a few years learning more about it and trying to practice it daily, I realized anyone can bring even small mindful moments to their lives to improve their mental health and experience both good and bad moments more fully. Coming to Harvard, I felt and feel constant stress and pressure to achieve, to do more and be more, caused by my own thinking and the ex-
Whether by pushing ourselves to meet the deadlines of various classes and activities, or constantly worrying about the future and if we are doing enough, we exert so much energy into thinking, overthinking, ruminating, and agonizing. pectations I put on myself. Comparisons to other amazing students at Harvard certainly do not help, but intentionally bringing small mindful moments to my day-to-day life allowed me to be more grounded. Mindfulness is usually connected to mindfulness meditation — a form of meditation in which the focus is on breathing and the present moment. There are even some studies that demonstrate the effects of mindfulness meditation on the brain. It would be redundant to list the benefits of mindfulness meditation, because of its increasing accessibility, so I wanted to expound more on what the distinct concept of mindfulness can mean at its very simplified core for busy and stressed-out college students. The concept of being present sounds simple, but it is surprising how rarely we actually do it. With thousands of thoughts going through our minds a day, in our heads, we are usually daydreaming, worrying, or letting our mind wander even if we want to focus on something. Instead of having our “mind full” in this way, being mindful allows us to experience the moment, no matter how good or bad, without judgment or resistance. It starts from being aware of our thoughts, our surroundings, and accepting them as they come. I believe it is especially important for Harvard or any college student to take care of their mental space amid all the pressure and stress they surely experience some time during their college career. Whether by pushing ourselves to meet the deadlines of various classes and activities, or constantly worrying about the future and if we are doing enough, we exert so much energy into thinking, overthinking, ruminating, and agonizing. It is tiring. We burn out. That is why it is critical to allow our mind and body to rest, not only when we are asleep, but also when we are going through our days. Mindfulness is not limited to meditation, and we can bring it into every aspect of our lives, little by little. For me, it begins with something as simple as sitting down for five minutes on my bed in the morning, before the chaos of the day ensues, simply checking in on my body and taking a few deep breaths. Sometimes it is being aware of the morning sunshine and adorable dogs when walking through the Yard instead of ruminating on what I said or did earlier. Other times it is simply sitting with myself when I am stressed or sad and feeling the emotions and thoughts instead of resisting and suppressing them in my mind. Mindfulness is for anyone, and it can start from mindfulness meditation, or just noticing the patterns of the mind, paying more conscious attention to our surroundings, and consistently directing attention to our present reality. Here, I also want to acknowledge that mindfulness is a broad concept, with a long and complex history, stemming from religious traditions, with differing definitions and practices. My definition has been simplified and covers only a small fraction of what mindfulness is. That being said, I encourage my fellow students and those intending to improve their well-being to start practicing mindfulness in order to have more groundedness and experience both wonderful and painful times without getting caught up in their own minds. Even though we might not find ourselves on top of a mountain, looking at a forest every day, there is still peace even in the chaos of things if we open ourselves more to the present and accept it without judgment through mindfulness. —Javhlan Amgalanbaatar ’23, a Crimson Editorial editor, lives in Canaday Hall. Her column appears on alternate Wednesdays.
