15-16 Issue 3

Spring 2016 Issue 3 The Yale Journal of Politics & Culture

HOSTILE TAKEOVER: THE STATE OF ARKANSAS VS. THE LITTLE R O C K BOARD OF EDUCATION

Editors-in-Chief

Chairman

Managing Editors

Interviews Editor

Azeezat Adeleke Anthony Kayruz

Alex Cooley Katherine Fang Zachary Cohen

Associate Editors

Zach Cohen Diego Fernandez-Pages Ian Garcia-Kennedy Anna Lee Olivia Paschal Alexander Posner Taylor Holshouser

Senior Editors David Steiner Aaron Mak

Jacek Oleszczuk

Justin Katz

Elections Correspondent J.P. Meredith

Creative Director Ana Barros

Design & Layout Ethan Carpenter Cerys Holstege Patrick Shea Caroline Tisdale Catherine Yang

Photo Editors

Copy Editor

Josh Hochman

Online Editors

Pranav Bhandarkar Michael Mei Riddhima Yadav

Blog Editor

Madeleine Colbert

Opinion Editor Gabby Deutch

Joey Ye Thomas Gould

Business Directors Staff Development Mikaela Rabb Advertising Tevin Mickens External Relations Mike Yoon Carter Helschien Publicity Lily Engbith The Politic Presents Zack Austin Technology Eric Yu

Board of Advisers

John Lewis Gaddis Robert A. Lovett Professor of Military and Naval History, Yale University Ian Shapiro Director, Yale Center for International and Area Studies Mike Pearson Features Editor, Toledo Blade John Stoehr Managing Editor, The Washington Spectator *This magazine is published by Yale College students, and Yale University is not responsible for its contents. The opinions expressed by the contributors to The Politic do not necessarily reflect those of its staff or advertisers.

CONTENTS CAMILA GÜIZA-CHAVEZ

2

UNSAFE IN A SANCTUARY CITY New Haven Immigrant Community Faces Threats of Deportation

ZACHARY COHEN

6

GOWN AND GOWN Gateway Community College and Yale Forge a New Partnership

DECLAN KUNKEL

11

IT’S A HARD BARGAIN The Choctaw Tribe Takes Dollar General to the Supreme Court

WILLIAM ROBERTS

15

MUST A FAIR HARVARD BE FREE? Inside the Campaign to Abolish Tuition

WILLIAM VESTER

18

LAND OF THE FREED As U.S. Beauracracy Stalls, Canada Embraces Syrian Refugees

GABBY DEUTCH

21

IT TAKES TWO Paternalistic Policies Harm Maternal Health

ALAN MAY

24

MICHAEL MEI

32

FOOTBALL IS COMING HOME China Dreams of World Cup Greatness

LINA VOLIN

34

ELECTING MADAME PRESIDENT An Interview Jessica O’Connell, Executive Director of EMILY’s List

SARAH DONILON

37

A DOCTRINE OF DESTRUCTION ISIS Attempts to Erase History

LINA VOLIN

41

“WE LIVE ON THE EDGE OF A RAZOR” Inside Putin’s Prisons

SARAH DONILON & JACEK OLESZCZUK

46

THE ROYAL ENVIRONMENTALIST An Interview with Sheikh Abdul Aziz bin Ali al Nuaimi, “The Green Sheikh”

COVER HOSTILE TAKEOVER The State of Arkansas vs.

The Little Rock Board of Education

UN SA FE

IN A SANCTUARY CITY

BY CAMILA GÃœIZA-CHAVEZ

New Haven Communi Immigration Raids

2

PHOTOS BY JOEY YE

“Out of nowhere they knocked down doors”

ity Resists s ON JANUARY 6, hundreds of New

Haven residents gathered on the corner of Grand and Ferry Streets, in the heart of the the Fair Haven neighborhood. Given the date, an onlooker might have assumed the event was a celebratory one marking the end of the winter holidays and the beginning of a new year. But anyone taking part in the gathering would say otherwise. The atmosphere there was not one of joy, but of fear.

Weeks earlier, those in the crowd—the immigrant community of New Haven—received a jolt in the form of a warning. On December 23, 2015, the Washington Post released confidential information it had received from a White House staffer, announc-

ing that the Department of Homeland Security had “begun preparing for a series of raids,” with the ultimate goal of deporting “hundreds of families” who had entered the United States (U.S.) illegally since 2014. The Post reported that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) planned to target people who had already “been ordered removed from the United States by an immigration judge.”

According to Unidad Latina en Acción (ULA), 155 New Haven residents fit this description, and most of them are women and children who had fled gang violence in Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala. The leaked White House note also forebodingly stated that all adults and children found

would be detained and deported, and that “hundreds” would be targeted.

Naturally, this set the nation’s undocumented immigrant community into a frenzy. For any resident of New Haven without legal status, the thought of facing an ICE agent can be debilitatingly frightening––frightening enough to make parents keep their children home from school, where ICE raids might possibly occur.

Karim Suarez, a community organizer working with ULA, told The Politic, “The superintendent will tell you there were more than 30 children missing from each school.” With rumors of ICE agents in their midst, many Latinx immigrant residents became apprehensive of New Haven 3

police officers, whom they thought might potentially be cooperating with ICE. “They thought, ‘If I go in and speak to some type of law enforcement they’re immediately going to turn me into immigration,’” said Suarez.

Ana María Rivera-Forastieri, Director of Advocacy and Program Development at Junta for Progressive Action, an NGO that offers programs and services in the aim of empowering Latinx and low income communities, said that this time bred “a sense of fear that you couldn’t get out of your house or continue with your regular daily activities because immigration might come and get you.”

These feelings may have been cultivated by the White House notice, but the seeds of the fear had been planted years before. In 2007, the immigrant community of New Haven experienced one of its first major convulsions.

Fair Haven, a neighborhood with a large population of Latinx immigrants, was the target of a series of unexpected ICE raids. “Out of nowhere they knocked down doors,” remembered Suarez. Thirty-two people were taken out of their homes and detained. “So this time,” said Suarez, “we wanted to prepare the community.”

It was to this end that so many people gathered on January 6, on Ferry and Grand Street: to prepare. Or at least, to hear information that might illuminate future prospects that at the time were so cloudy with uncertainty. The rally was organized by ULA in conjunction with Junta for Progressive Action and Connecticut Immigrant Rights Alliance (CIRA)–all organizations known for their long-term advocacy for the Latinx community in New Haven.

The goal of the rally was to empower Latinx immigrants in a time when many were feeling powerless.

The main event was a dramatic reenactment of what an ICE agent coming to someone’s door demanding proof 4

of legal status looks like. Fliers were distributed under the heading “Know Your Rights,” detailing how immigrants should act if placed in a defensive position against immigration control.

For example, the fliers reminded people that they have the right to not open their doors to an ICE agent and to demand that the agent slide their search warrant under the door.

The flier also alerted people of their right to remain silent. Rivera-Forastieri confessed that even if passing out fliers and putting on skits cannot prevent an ICE raid from occurring, “At the very least it will give folks a little bit of guidance on what to do, who to call, and how to act, which we hope will prevent really bad things from happening.”

For a person outside of the undocumented immigrant community, it may be difficult to understand the panic that would cause parents to hold their children home from school, businesses to halt operations, and people to gather in Fair Haven.

After all, one could say, the worst case scenario is that the targeted undocumented immigrants are sent back to their home countries, going back to where they started.

To this, Suarez said: “What many people don’t know is that many of these families are coming from very violent, very hostile environments…

Many of our ULA members are running away from not just gang violence,

“[This is] a natio in our country’s i a system that is a burd

but domestic violence and human trafficking.”

While some may come up North, enticed by the prospect of economic opportunities, many immigrants, especially those who came in the recent wave from Central America, come to seek asylum. However, a 2014 study by Syracuse University found that approximately half of people who apply for asylum are denied that status, leaving many of these refugees an ominous choice: either obey the law and go back to their home countries or protect themselves by remaining in the U.S. As much as the Washington Post report shook immigrant residents in New Haven, community organizers said they were not surprised by the Obama administration’s authorization of the ICE raids. The timing of

onwide due process crisis immigration court system, already significantly overdened and under­ resourced.”

American Bar Association

the announcement came as a shock, given its proximity to the holidays, but as Rivera-Forastieri commented, “The tactics are very similar to things they’ve done in the past, persecuting our families and our community.”

Suarez of ULA felt similarly: “I’m not surprised, because the Obama administration has been the administration to deport the most amount of families within his presidency…. He is the ‘deporter in chief.’”

This is a title President Obama has borne among immigrants’ rights advocates since 2013, when it became clear that his administration had deported more immigrants in the first five years of his presidency than the Bush administration had in its entire eight years. According to a recently published figure on the Immigration and Customs Enforcement web-

site, ICE has deported 2,878,672 people since 2008.

Numbers like this do little to reassure community activists and the New Haven immigrant community. So if the fear among many immigrants is that they will be deported because of their lack of documentation, why do they not obtain these documents and apply for citizenship?

According to Rivera-Forastieri, “The reality is that for the majority of people there is no pathway to citizenship.” She added that, unless one has family ties in the U.S. or an employer that is willing to petition for them, the chances of being granted citizenship are very slim.

This is because of what the American Bar Association (ABA) calls “a nationwide due process crisis in our country’s immigration court system, a system that is already significantly overburdened and under-resourced.”

ABA said in a 2015 report that only 32 percent of the children who came during the unprecedented “surge” in 2014 are now facing are represented by legal counsel. Children who are represented by an attorney have a 73 percent chance of gaining asylum. That number drops to 15 percent for children who go to court unrepresented. In other words, the fate of the majority of children who go to court is largely predetermined, and not in their favor.

Rivera-Forastieri said, “Our immigration system is incredibly broken…. it’s very hard to become a citizen if there’s no kind of immigration reform on the books, and we know that that has been the case for quite some years now.”

Indeed, Congress has been stalled in the process of immigration reform since 2013, when the Senate and House of Representatives disagreed over comprehensive immigration control package. However, in 2012, one good thing happened: the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) legislation passed.

According to the policy’s web-

site, DACA is intended for youth who are “Americans in their hearts, in their minds, in every single way—except on paper.” DACA applies to undocumented immigrants between 15 and 35 years of age who came here before their 16th birthday, have graduated or are currently enrolled in high school (or are pursuing a GED), and who have not been convicted of a felony, among a number of other requirements.

DACA allows those who are eligible to do things such as apply for a work permit, open a bank account, and apply for a credit card or a driver’s license; things they wouldn’t be allowed to do otherwise. In the present situation, however, DACA can do little to help.

For the most part, the people that ICE is hoping to target do not fit under the category of DACA recipients.

So now, over a month after the initial scare, there is one question that is doubtlessly on many people’s minds: How badly will an ICE raid affect New Haven?

City leaders are determined to keep undocumented immigrants safe in this sanctuary city. At the January 6 rally, Mayor Harp, New Haven Police Department Chief Dean Esserman, and school superintendent Garth Harries all made an appearance and reassured the community that New Haven would not comply with ICE agents in an effort to help undocumented populations.

But until Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson, or someone else from the Obama administration, confirms that the raids have ended, community leaders must continue to work. “The phones have to be on 24/7” Suarez said, referring to ULA’s immigration hotline. “There are families who are still hearing about this….and they need lawyers and they need help.”

Rivera-Forastieri added, “I don’t know that I can speak about the likelihood of an ICE raid taking place in New Haven or not, but I do think that if there’s a city that is going to fight against something like that happening, it’s the city of New Haven.”

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6

ILLUSTRATION BY CAROLINE TISDALE

“Gownand Gown”

Gateway Community College

and

Yale

forge a new

partnership

BY ZACH COHEN

The day before his final at Gateway Community College, Marc scrambled to find a babysitter. There was a scheduling conflict, he said, and he didn’t have anyone to take care of his eightyear-old daughter, Lera. “It came right down to the wire.”

Marc Strickland, 50, no longer takes classes at Gateway. He has since relocated across the New Haven Green to Yale, where he is in his third year as an Eli Whitney scholar. His political science lectures have moved from Gateway’s glass and steel building at 20 Church Street to the gothic, white brick Sheffield-Sterling-Strathcona Hall at 1 Prospect. Strickland’s wife is also an Eli Whitney scholar from Gateway.

“I don’t think too many people at Yale have to worry about childcare or snow days,” Strickland told The Politic. He and his wife have alternating schedules to watch their daughter.

“It’s like a wrestling ring. One person steps in and the other steps out.”

Strickland only sees his wife late at night, after 9 p.m. It’s a challenge, he admitted. “But there’s no doubt in either of our minds that it’s a worth-

while goal. It’s worth whatever inconvenience it is now.”

Community colleges like Gateway offer a “crucial piece of the puzzle” for people in his situation.

Instructors there understood if he had to watch Lera during a snow day. At Yale, most people mistake Strickland for an instructor, or maybe a postdoc.

He likes to explain his unusual situation in two ways. First, he told The Politic that Eli Whitney students are those who have had an extended break from attending classes. Second, most people go through college to prepare for their careers. His career, he says, prepared him for college. At Gateway, however, no one confused him for a professor. There, he was one of 12,000 students —teenagers and adults, fathers and sons.

Spanning two city blocks, Gateway Community College is, quite literally, a welcome mat for those who live outside of the city limits—one third of its students. The community college hasn’t always been a gateway; it only relocated to the downtown city in 2012. Gateway was once a school split in two, with one half in Long Wharf,

the other in North Haven. Students with classes on both campuses had a ten-mile commute between classrooms.

The North Haven campus, President Dorsey Kendrick told The Politic, felt like a middle school. And at Long Wharf, only one wall of the building actually had windows.

“People had no idea whether it was hot or cold, snowing or raining,” she says.

“It felt oppressive.”

“The main objective,” said Evelyn Gard, Gateway’s director of public affairs, “was to create a building that our students deserved.”

The situation had to change; it wasn’t fair to the students.”

For the new building to happen, she recalled, Kendrick needed to have “courageous conversations” with officials who had money and influence—officials at Yale and City Hall.

“People didn’t know who [Kendrick] was,” Gard told The Politic.

“But she knocked on doors and walked into offices and got it done.” President Kendrick, and Gateway, had come out of nowhere.

7

The historian George W. Pierson once wrote, “Yale is at once a tradition, a company of scholars, a society of friends.” Gateway Community College is a company of scholars and a society of friends—but, given its new building, the school is hardly a tradition. The typical Gateway student is 26, and she commutes from the greater New Haven area. She takes her classes at night, after work. Maybe she chose Gateway for one of its hundred academic programs, or its 3D printer— the largest in the state. Two-thirds of Gateway students receive financial aid. Many are first-generation college students.

At Gateway, Kendrick told The Politic, “We have the baby boomers, generation X, and millennials.” These students create “a microcosm of New Haven,” added Gard.

In a way, Kendrick and Gard represent two different kinds of students at Gateway. Kendrick went to college right after high school as one of three African-Americans at her newly integrated university. Gard’s experience aligns with part-time students who split their time between classes, children, and jobs.

“Their lives are going on,” said Gard, because they’re “raising a family and working. I understand that because I did it myself.”

Unlike nearby schools such as Quinnipiac or the University of New Haven (UNH), Gateway is a two-year college. Its students receive an associate degree or certificate instead of a full Bachelor’s. Many students, remarked Gard, have every intention of transferring to a four-year university after Gateway. Money is a factor— Gateway’s tuition is much lower than that of its private peer institutions.

Gard is quick to note that community college students who transfer tend to do better than those who enter a four-year program directly.

“We’re a feeder,” added Kendrick, pointing to the “menu of options” for Gateway alumni: Quinnipiac, UNH, Southern Connecticut State, and sometimes even Yale.

But despite Gateway’s two-year education, Kendrick has built a school that cares for its students. Even without dormitories or ivy-lined quads, Gateway has created a community with its new $200 million building, the largest public project in the state.

We don’t claim that everyone is qualified, but it would be nice PHOTOS BY JOEY YE

8

if the ones who are could

dream

bigger.

It is unapologetically modern. Long walkways run parallel to Church Street. Natural light pours through a multi-story glass wall. During the day, there is no need yet for the grey streetlights lining the building’s internal stairway; they switch on at night, when most students attend classes.

Equally memorable is the interactive “learning wall,” three stories high, that beams photos of students and faculty to the drivers headed west on George Street.

But most notable are the stairs.

Most buildings relegate stairs to the sides, out of view, strictly as a way to move from floor to floor. These wide, wood-paneled stairs are the equivalent of Gateway’s “Cross Campus.”

Someone standing at the top can see the lobby four floors down. The stairs are the heart of the school, the path that each of the 14,000 students must take from class to class. They are at once an art studio, a study space, and a concert venue.

But Gateway’s community owes less to its impressive architecture than to its faculty. Strickland marveled at the support from his instructors.

After high school, he had attended

Cornell University for two years. He dropped out when he couldn’t afford the tuition. Returning to school after more than twenty years, he found that most of his credits carried over - he only had to complete one semester at Gateway.

But even in that semester, he said, Gateway “had a sincere desire to teach their students. They weren’t put off by unconventional students.”

Aaron Garrison, now a firstyear Eli Whitney scholar, was one of those unconventional students. He was 37 when he sat in his first Gateway lecture, his first schooling since high school. Like Strickland, his career happened before college. He spent his twenties traveling around the world with his wife and Mercy Ships, an international humanitarian group providing free healthcare, and eventually made his way to New Haven, where he had three children. Garrison spoke softly as we sat on the fourth floor of Gateway, at the top of the stairs. It was quieter here than on the lower floors, he said, because of all the science classrooms. His greying hair fell near his shoulders, and his eyes matched his blue cardigan.

Garrison’s passion was art, especially film, but that wasn’t practical for his family. He became a firefighter for a year. Then he opened a small business—Strokes Painting and Design—with some Mercy Ships friends. He met his second wife, a Yale classics professor, while painting her house. She urged him to try something different, to see if making films could be more than just a hobby. Garrison wasn’t sure. “I had no math skills, no writing skills, and no confidence,” he told The Politic. He even had dyslexia, though it was only diagnosed when he came to Yale. His children had moved to Texas with their mother, and he was visiting six times a year.

“But,” he said, “my wife sat me down and told me, ‘You need to know if you can do this.’”

Garrison noted a mentorship from his Gateway professors that he has not seen at Yale. “Here, you have the world at your fingertips,” Garrison said, “but it’s on you to take hold of that.”

Gateway wrapped itself around him. “I started getting emails saying, ‘You made the Dean’s List! We’re glad to see you doing well in your studies.

9

Are you interested in joining this selective program?’” His English professor at Gateway took him under his wing, and told him that he was one of the two best students he had ever had. “You’re not in the right place,” the professor said. “You need to be somewhere more serious.”

Garrison didn’t apply to Yale until the last minute. He had applied to a handful of other programs, including Columbia’s General Studies school. He sent his last application to Yale after some coaxing from his wife and other professors.

Strickland also didn’t see Yale in his future. The university and the city were “town and gown,” two different worlds. He had lived in the city for almost a decade, yet he had never ventured onto Cross Campus or into Sterling Library. His introduction came when he took “New Haven and the American City,” a Yale course taught by Alan Plattus and Elihu Rubin, that had been arranged through his political science class at Gateway. Strickland went to the lectures in SSS, then returned to Gateway to discuss what he had heard.

“Getting to use the library and attend lectures was a huge experience for me,” said Strickland. He would usually arrive early and also hear the last few minutes of the preceding lecture, Professor Paul Kennedy’s “Military History of the West since 1500.”

And when he came to Yale, that was the first class he took. Always a firm believer in “accepting the odds as they are,” when Strickland decided to apply it felt “like flying to the moon.”

But his previous exposure combined with the urging of his professors swayed him towards Yale.

The Yale-Gateway relationship has grown stronger with Kendrick as president of Gateway, and the Eli Whitney Program is only a small piece of the puzzle. The partnership with Gateway Community College is an “area of high priority for our university and one that involves so many 10

different part of the Yale community,” wrote Michael Morand, a communications officer with Yale’s Office of Public Affairs.

The two schools work together as invested partners in New Haven.

When Gateway first moved downtown in 2012, said Gard, it bought an ad in the Yale Alumni Magazine. The ad says “Gown and Gown,” a twist on the oft-used “Town and Gown” to describe the divide between Yale and New Haven.

“We are not Yale,” acknowledged Gard, “but we are just as valuable to the community. We’re partners.

Together, we cover the breadth of what’s needed.”

There’s the New Haven Promise, a scholarship for high-achieving New Haven students to attend a Connecticut college or university. To date, there have been 170 New Haven Promise scholars who have gone from the New Haven public schools to Gateway Community College. There’s the Yale@Gateway lecture series, which invites professors like Akhil Amar and Jacob Hacker as guest speakers.

The Monday night events, which are open to the public, allow residents to become Yale students for a moment.

And then there’s Gateway’s engagement with the New Haven community as a major employer and benefactor.

“We live and breathe a true sense of community engagement,” said Kendrick. “The people we serve are the most disenfranchised parts of our community.”

The relationships between Yale and Gateway are, at their core, about people working as neighbors and colleagues. People like Garrison and Strickland make partnerships real.

Proximity helps, and Gateway’s move downtown has made these relationships more vibrant. Still, there is room for improvement.

“I want to have more students see Yale as a reality for them,” said Kendrick. Each spring, the Eli Whitney Program visits and speaks with Gateway students.

“We don’t claim that everyone is qualified,” said Gard, “but it would be nice if the ones who are could dream bigger.”

Most students never think Yale is a possibility for them. “Yale is such a beautiful, rich, vibrant, ‘prestigious’ institution,” Kendrick commented, making air quotes with her fingers.

“But we would love if Yale was interested in our brightest and best.”

“For some, a Yale degree should be more than just a pipe dream,” added Gard.

Given all that Gateway has learned from Yale, Yale should also learn from its neighbor. Gateway students derive their common ground from shared experiences. Each of them attends school to bridge the gap between where they are now and where they want to be. That drive for self-improvement, said Strickland, holds a powerful lesson for Yale students.

Strickland also noted room for Yale students to learn from those who have lived and worked in New Haven.

Strickland remembered a class last semester in which they had discussed why single parents didn’t bring their children to jobs that offered childcare.

Some students had pitched lofty explanations like “masculine, uninviting architecture” of the workplace.

Then Marc raised his hand. It was difficult, he told the class, to fit a baby carriage on a crowded bus. “That reason didn’t cross anyone’s mind,” Marc said. “It felt good because I contributed a view that people hadn’t considered.”

On the coffee table in front of Kendrick is a picture book called “Soaring in New Haven.” Although its pages are limited to local wildlife, its title applies well to the school of its owner. Gateway Community College, she comments, is what drivers first see when they take Exit 47 into the city.

“We,” she says, stretching her hands towards the highway, “are the gateway to New Haven.”

The Choctaw Tribe Takes Dollar General to the Supreme Court

BY DECLAN KUNKEL

11

FORTY YEARS after the Mississippi Burning trials rocked the United States, the town of Philadelphia, Mississippi is back in the spotlight. The dusty little town of 7,477 residents sits at the heart of the once great Choctaw nation, much reduced over the centuries by steady, state-sponsored encroachment on its land. This year, the Choctaw will go before the Supreme Court as it once again fights to preserve its autonomy, this time from the reach of corporate America.

A local Dollar General store sits on tribal trust land inside the Choctaw reservation near the town of Philadelphia, Mississippi. In late 2003, management agreed to bring young members of the tribe into the store as a part of the Choctaw job training program. The program placed young residents into various internships with the hope that the teenagers would learn valuable skills.

Soon after, a thirteen year old male, Richard Roe, alleged that the store’s non-Choctaw manager made sexual advances towards him. Roe accused the manager of soliciting sex and offering to pay Roe large sums of money in exchange for sexual acts.

Roe’s family filed suit against the manager and against Dollar General for negligence in hiring, training, and supervising the teen.

The suit threatens to shift the delicate balance between the government of the United States and the gov-

ernments of Native American tribes that live within its borders. In essence, Dollar General seeks to demonstrate that Native American courts cannot adjudicate ordinary tort disputes involving non-Native Americans.

The case could redefine interactions between the federal government and the indigenous groups that operate as sovereign nations within U.S. borders.

Relations between the federal government and Native Americans have historically been tense at best. To most Americans, the idea of a Bureau of Indian Affairs seems like a concept that belongs in the nineteenth century, and one that remains a diplomatic black mark on the nation.

The delicate relationship between the indigenous peoples and the government of the United States is fluid, dependent on legal precedent and the interpretation of law rather than the letter of the law itself.

The shifting nature of capital and business investment in reser-

vations has created ups and downs throughout the years.

Native American reservations are generally poorer, more crime ridden, and more economically depressed than the rest of the country. However, at least in Philadelphia, the Choctaw reservation had shown signs of improvement.

With the passage of the Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act of 1975, the Choctaw tribe was provided direct grants to help develop plans for improving schools,

The delicate relationship between the indigenous peoples and the government of the United States is fluid, very much dependent on legal precedent and the interpretation of law rather than the letter of the

12

Cases like sexual assault and criminal matters are usually deemed “low level,” and the Attorney General’s office simply

attracting more jobs, and providing economic stimulus to the area. From 1979 to the early 2000s, the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians became one of the state’s largest employers, running over nineteen businesses and employing almost eight thousand people.

But Dollar General Corporation vs Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians may mark a bleak turning point in U.S.-Native American affairs that could disrupt the growth of the previous decade. In order to under-

stand the significance of this case, one must understand the nature of Indian reservations.

In the United States, Native American reservations are sovereign nations. The tribes themselves possess tribal sovereignty, which puts them outside the jurisdiction of the United States criminal justice system. In order for a business to operate on tribal land, they must agree to the conditions of the reservation – and so, in the case of Dollar General, the company had agreed to have legal disputes negotiated in tribal courts.

In spite of this explicit agreement to comply with tribal law, Dollar General has still fought the tribe’s legal jurisdiction in the case.

While an assault case might seem like a fairly cut and dry criminal proceeding, in reality, any case involving a reservation is a far messier affair. According to the 1978 Supreme Court case Oliphant v Suquamish

Indian Tribe, any crime committed by a “non-Indian,” legally defined as someone who is not a member of the tribe that governs the reservation, cannot be prosecuted in tribal court without having agreed to such conditions before the crime was committed.

A 6-2 decision, Oliphant stands as the legal precedent for the limits of tribal jurisdiction.

In Oliphant, then-Associate Justice William Rehnquist argued that as “domestic dependent nations,” tribes lack complete sovereignty in criminal justice. As a result of this decision, the only action the Choctaw tribe could take against the suspected abuser was to petition the Justice Department for a criminal investigation and subsequent prosecution, something that the U.S. Attorney General’s office very rarely sees through, or even begins.

Gregory Ablavsky, Assistant Professor of Law at Stanford Law School, told The Politic, “The U.S. and the Attorney General are not in the habit of prosecuting low level crime.”

Unfortunately for Roe, he said, cases like sexual assault and criminal matters are usually deemed “low level,” and the Attorney General’s office simply does not take notice.

On the basis of these precedents, there was little the tribe could do, legally speaking, against the manager.

Instead, they turned their attention towards Dollar General in a civil suit.

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In return, Dollar General came up with a defense that is based primarily on the argument that tribal courts are subservient to the United States Department of Justice and that Native American juries are inherently biased against corporations. Unfortunately for the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians, Dollar General’s second claim seems to have some support, as tribal courts have a rocky history with corporations. Few have ever sided with a corporation on any matter at all.

In an interview with The Politic, Chickasaw Nation attorney and small business owner Kari Fisher remarked on the injustice of the case. Fisher called reservations a “black hole” for justice, and felt that the federal government was continuing its long history of “encroaching” on the rights of Native American tribes. She cited the Supreme Court case Montana v United States, which ruled that tribal governments have authority over non-Indians where the authority of the tribe is threatened. Fisher believes that by blocking the prosecution of the assault, the Justice Department directly threatened the sovereignty of the Nation.

The Attorney General’s office is, by all accounts, fairly removed from Indian reservations, venturing in only to break up what they judge as the most serious of offenses.

“Federal prosecution tends to be directed toward elaborate criminal enterprises, and drug cartels. They venture into terrorism and complicated cases, rather than simple criminal charges,” said Ablavsky, the professor at Stanford Law. According to him, the sheer time and procedure involved in litigation in tribal courts makes the Justice Department reluctant to get involved.

Fischer echoed this statement, citing a “breakdown of communication between the Justice Department and the Indian reservations.” She added that the lack of an established pathway for information makes it 14

much more difficult to collect information and accurately try a case.

But Carol Goldberg, the Jonathan D. Varat Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of California Los Angeles, had a slightly different perspective on the absence of the Justice Department from most tribal cases. In an interview with The Politic, Goldberg said that witnesses and attorneys in Indian Reservations are “naturally suspicious” of U.S. prosecutors. This distrust makes it difficult for the U.S. Attorney’s Office and Native American tribes to collaborate, and usually contributes to the absence of federal prosecution, she said. President Obama’s Indian Law and Order Commission, of which Goldberg was a member, issued a report in 2013 to recommend policy changes designed to improve tribal justice. In the report, Goldberg recommended that tribal course fully exit federal and state jurisdiction. A solution like this, she argued, would prevent future cases like Dollar General.

Previously, court watchers speculated that the Supreme Court would make a 5-4 decision in the case, in favor of Dollar General and bitterly split along party lines. But, as Goldberg stated, the February 13 death of Justice Antonin Scalia dramatically “changes the balance.” If the resulting decision is 4-4, then the outcome of the cases reverts to the decision of the lower court, which in this case, sided with the Choctaw tribe. This would be a pivotal moment, as rarely is the vote of one justice enough to radically alter the decision of the court.

It is even rarer that the vote of one justice is all that stands in the way of a potentially standard-setting case that would reassess hundreds of years of American policy.

The true implications of Dollar General stretch far

beyond the settlement of a single case.

Should Dollar General emerge victorious, Native American tribes will have lost a great deal of their sovereignty, along with their right to litigation. Should the tribe win, businesses may flee the grounds of reservations, seeking places with hospitable legal climates that are more conducive to commerce. Businesses have long been skeptical about expanding into reservations knowing that courts could rule against them.

Whatever the result, Dollar General will redefine case law and alter relations between the federal government and tribal nations. Philadelphia, Mississippi serves as the testing ground for legal precedent in a case that threatens the unstable equilibrium between Native American tribes and the government of the United States.

Should Dollar General emerge victorious, Native American tribes will have lost a great deal of their sovereignty along with their right to litigation.

MUST A FAIR HARVARD BE FREE? Inside the Campaign to Abolish Tuition

winds, Unz has proposed a solution that he thinks will spark drastic change in the world of higher education.

The Free Harvard, Fair Harvard campaign has two main goals: to abolish tuition for all Harvard undergraduates and to make the admissions process more transparent. It is the former goal that has attracted far more attention than the latter. Unz is the chairman of the campaign, which is comprised of him and four other Harvard alumni, including five-time presidential candidate Ralph Nader.

The five alumni have, in an effort to see their goals realized, entered the election for Harvard’s Board of Overseers as petition candidates.

EVERY YEAR, THE HARVARD Alum-

BY WILLIAM ROBERTS

In the fall of 1971, when Harvard freshmen arrived on campus for the first time, fresh notebooks and sharpened pencils in hand, the university demanded $2,600 for the privilege of attending. Over the past forty years, some things about Harvard have not changed: the prestige and the bustle of Harvard-Yard for instance. But at least one thing has changed, in a dramatic and unprecedented trajectory: tuition.

In the fall of 2015, Harvard freshmen and their families owed the university up to $45,278 in tuition. Forty years. A 1600 percent increase.

While many families will always write checks to Harvard, no matter what it costs, some members of the

university community are beginning to push back, and Ron K. Unz, a software developer and Chairman of UNZ. org, is leading the effort.

According to Unz, Harvard should abolish tuition for all of its undergraduates. With an endowment of $37.6 billion, Harvard is in control of more wealth than any other university.

Yet it still chooses to charge its roughly 6,600 undergraduates $45,278 in tuition every year. Undergraduate tuition currently accounts for roughly $200 million of Harvard’s annual revenue.

This pales in comparison to the typical investment income from its endowment, which in some years climbs to over five billion dollars.

With his “Free Harvard, Fair Harvard” campaign, Unz demands that Harvard abolish tuition, based on the idea that $200 million is, for the university, a drop in the bucket. While this idea may seem appealing to some, others point to glaring flaws, claiming that the idea is misguided and would hurt more than help.

The issues, though, are clear: in America, college tuition is rising, presidential candidates disagree about education policy, and a few super-rich universities have accrued billions in endowment funds. Facing these head-

ni Association nominates a group of alumni as candidates for the Board of Overseers. Members of the board serve staggered terms of six years, and Harvard graduates vote to elect new members from those nominated. Others who do not receive a nomination from the Alumni Association may enter the race by gathering the signatures of 201 Harvard alumni.

The Board of Overseers has no formal legislative power, but it exerts broad influence over the university’s actions and policies. Members of the board use their diverse backgrounds to give advice and counsel to the administration without actually having the authority to institute any formal changes themselves.

While the Board of Overseers does not have the authority to abolish tuition, Unz told The Politic that if Harvard alumni elect him or his partners to the board, it will cause an “earthquake.” This would put enough pressure on the university that it would have to implement the reforms their campaign demands, he said. Still, Unz admitted that the board has no direct connection to the university’s investment decisions. However, he drew parallels to the last time a petition candidate won a spot on the board, which was when Nobel laureate Archbishop 15

and cutting their costs, their bloated administrative expenses, and therefore cutting tuition drastically as well.”

Ivy League schools and their peers need to continue thinking of ways to remedy the underrepresentation of low-income students.

Photo by Joey Ye

Desmond M. Tutu ran in 1989, leading Harvard to divest from South Africa.

He believes the pressure of his election would be enough to overcome outspoken opposition from Harvard University President Drew G. Faust and various others such as Robert Reischauer, former senior fellow of the Harvard Corporation. Unz argues that by making tuition free, Harvard removes the barriers, real or perceived, preventing high-achieving, low-income students from applying to the school.

“Abolishing tuition gets you more free media than just about anything,” Unz claimed, regarding American universities. He says this free press will ensure that low-income students realize Harvard is accessible to them.

Still, tuition may not be a barrier for low-income students interested in attending Harvard. Doctor Sandy Baum, Urban Institute Fellow and co-author of College Board’s annual publications Trends in College Pricing and Trends in Student Aid, told The Politic, “Harvard is already tuition free for low-income students.” She disagreed with how Unz characterizes the potential effects of free Harvard tuition, claiming that it would only serve to benefit those who can already afford to pay the full amount.

Baum bases her stance on the fact that Harvard promises full financial aid to all families with annual incomes below $65,000, and families with household earnings ranging from 16

$65,000 to $150,000 will pay zero to ten percent of their income. She noted that Harvard has been active in publicizing its financial aid program.

Unlike Unz, who thinks that low-income students don’t apply to Harvard because of a perceived financial barrier, Baum cited the fact that many low-income students do not believe they can get into Harvard. She added that for many, it does not matter where they go to college as long as they are able to attend. Free tuition, she claimed, will not remove either of these barriers.

But both she and Unz agree that Harvard should do more to fix the underrepresentation of low-income students at the university. Unz argues that the solution is free tuition, while Baum advocates for greater outreach in rural areas. She also cites the need for increased efforts to make life for undergraduates better while at Harvard, through the creation of emergency funds for students on financial aid.

In regards to Baum’s point that free tuition would mostly benefit the wealthy, Unz seemed unconcerned. In fact, Unz went on to argue that by abolishing tuition, Harvard puts pressure on its peer institutions, such as Yale, Princeton, and Stanford, to follow suit. He even believes such measures would impact public higher education.

According to Unz, “[Abolishing tuition] will also lead public colleges and universities to begin reining in

THIS PROGRESSION SEEMS especially relevant now, as Senator Bernie Sanders (D-VT) draws immense support in the Democratic presidential primary with free public college as part of his platform.

The idea of free public college isn’t new in America. President Barack Obama has tried to push in that direction with the America’s College Promise Act, which gives incentives for states to offer free community college to eligible students. Currently three states, Tennessee, Minnesota, and Oregon, have adopted the policy, and, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures, legislation is pending in ten more.

But free community college and free four-year public colleges and universities are two very different things.

W. Taylor Reveley, III, president of The College of William and Mary, talked to The Politic about how he thinks free public college would affect him and other public college administrators.

“There is no way on earth that taxpayers, whether federal, state or local, or a mix of all three, are ever going to pay enough of the expenses of public colleges and universities that they can forego tuition,” argued Reveley.

Currently, Virginia taxpayers only provide 12 percent of William and Mary’s operating budget. Tuition covers 45 percent.

Under his College for All Act, Sanders proposes that the federal government would pay for two-thirds of the foregone tuition, with states covering the remaining third. He plans on implementing a “Robin Hood Tax” on Wall Street, claiming it will cover the higher federal tuition subsidies.

“There’s a bunch of things that may get very problematic,” Professor Robert B. Archibald, Chancellor Professor of Economics at William and Mary, told The Politic in regards to Sanders’s College for All Act.

Archibald, co-author of Why Does College Cost So Much?, explained that the policy would create an enormous disparity in the subsidies the federal government pays to certain states. He added that states with high tuition rates would receive large federal subsidies while states with low tuition rates would receive low subsidies. These subsidies would also come with spending guidelines mandated by the federal government. He thinks that both of these factors will lead to widespread opposition to the bill in Congress, making it nearly impossible to pass.

Additionally, assuming Sanders manages to win the election and get Congress to pass his plan for free college, private institutions already struggling financially would feel a tremendous amount of pressure to become more affordable. This would lead many to go out of business, Archibald said.

However, some believe that the conversation surrounding tuition-free college is misguided, with the real problem lying in the quality of America’s higher education.

“The issue of what we charge for college and the effort to get everybody into college simply overlooks the profound need we have to make college a meaningful source of high quality learning that prepares graduates,” Doctor Carol G. Schneider, president of the Association of American Colleges and Universities, argued to The Politic.

She added that higher education must prepare students to become meaningful contributors to society.

She claimed that the platform of free tuition acts as “a good sound byte” for politicians to flaunt and use to gain support in campaigns.

“It’s a good distractor from … the issues that really need to be tackled,” she said.

In regards to the Free Harvard, Fair Harvard campaign, she “devoutly hopes it fails.”

SO, THE IDEA OF FREE tuition seems to be precariously contrived no matter the realm, public or private. But certainly the ends that Sanders and Unz both pursue with their policies are laudable. The question we should be asking ourselves then, is whether free college is an end worth pursuing?

Yale students do not seem to be as sure that it is. When asked whether schools like Harvard and Yale should abolish tuition, four of the five Yale students interviewed said they liked the idea in theory, but wondered whether it would be practical in reality.

Phoebe Chatfield ’18, in considering the feasibility of free tuition, noted that there are other, simpler things to consider first, such as eliminating the student income contribution expected of those on full financial aid.

The one dissenter of the five Yalies was Cameron Riach ’19, who argued along similar lines as Unz. He echoed that free tuition would attract a more socioeconomically diverse group of students, since low-income students would no longer view Harvard and Yale as too expensive.

This disagreement parallels some of the contentions between Unz and his opponents. The four students who had doubts regarding the possibility of free college tuition have good reason to be skeptical. Not only would free tuition lead to a fairly significant loss in revenue, but it would also serve to fund only those who can already afford to pay tuition.

So the pragmatic and economic answer to whether Harvard should abolish tuition seems clear: it should not adopt a policy that would only give more money back to the wealthy.

But what is not so clear is whether the benefits that Unz speaks of would outweigh the loss of revenue. Namely, would low-income students view Harvard as more accessible, and if so, how much more likely would they be to apply and matriculate?

The answer remains unclear. A 2013 study by the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research showed that

low-income students are much more likely to apply to selective institutions when provided with basic information about the application process and net costs. This means that if schools like Harvard increase their outreach to low-income students, they might accomplish the same goal Unz aims for.

But this could also indicate that the tremendous amount of publicity from free tuition would have a greater impact than any other form of outreach.

In 2013, a few months after the Stanford study was published, Harvard began the Harvard College Connection initiative, an effort by the Admissions Office to reach out through digital media, to students from diverse backgrounds. Initiatives like this, along with the university’s generous financial aid, show that the school is committed to attracting a more socioeconomically diverse group of students.

But just how committed is it? There is no question that Harvard and its peers could do more to attract low-income applicants. But that does not necessarily mean they should go so far as to abolish tuition.

One thing is for sure. Even if Unz does not accomplish his goal of free tuition at Harvard, he has certainly drawn attention to one of the most important issues facing America’s elite institutions.

Ivy League schools and their peers need to continue thinking of ways to remedy the underrepresentation of low-income students. If schools like Harvard want the best available, they are going to have to ensure that the top students from the lowest income brackets realize they have access to these selective and historically wealthy schools.

Harvard announces election results for its Board of Overseers on May 26. The Democratic Party officially nominates its presidential candidate in July. The results of both elections could have a tremendous impact on the future of higher education in America. But you probably should not go blowing next year’s tuition just yet.

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LAND OF THE FREED As U.S. Bureacracy Stalls, Canada Embraces Syrian Refugees

BY ZACHARY COHEN

“YOU ARE HOME. WELCOME HOME.” AS THE FIRST SYRIAN REFUGEES arrived in Canada in

December, Prime Minister Trudeau was at the airport to embrace them– and to give out winter coats. While it might be the American Statue of Liberty that bears Emma Lazarus’ timeless words, “Give me your tired, your poor, / Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,” it is Canada that has gone above and beyond to respond to the needs of Syrian refugees. What explains the Canadian willingness to be so accommodating to refugees, while the United States refuses to take a leadership role?

To understand the Canadian response to the Syrian refugee crisis, it is necessary to go back in time to the late ‘70s. The world was witnessing a massive exodus of refugees fleeing Vietnam and Southeast Asia largely in small boats, earning them the nickname “boat people.”

To accommodate the unprecedented number of asylum seekers, Canada developed a unique private sponsorship program in which a group of five or more people could agree to financially support a refugee or refugee family for a year. They were 18

to assume a mentorship role and guide the refugee through the transition to Canadian culture. Canada ultimately brought in 60,000 to 70,000 refugees through this program. In 1986, the people of Canada were presented with the Nansen Medal by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees for their extraordinary efforts on behalf of the boat people- the only such award given to the entire population of a nation. The program was a collective effort: the private sponsors, not the government, assumed the cost of the refugees.

The program was a success.

Peter Goodspeed of LifeLine Syria noted that many of the sponsor groups for Syrian refugees are made up of successfully integrated Vietnamese refugees, “I think a really important aspect of the program is that private citizens learn about refugee populations,” said Gloria Nafziger, head of Amnesty International Canada’s Refugee Program. “I think it substantially has helped to create an empathy about why refugees need resettlement.” It is by building a bridge of friendship and understanding

between refugees and private citizens that Canada has built up the goodwill necessary to undertake another refugee resettlement program.

This concern for refugees played a major role in bringing Trudeau to office last year. The reluctance of incumbent Prime Minister Harper and his Conservative Party to admit refugees drew the ire of voters, who turned to Trudeau for a change in policy.

Part of Prime Minister Trudeau’s platform was a promise to make Canada more responsive to the overwhelming needs of Syrian refugees.

He plans to admit 25,000 refugees through the government’s assisted refugee program, and the total number of refugees and asylum seekers admitted into Canada might reach 35,000 to 50,000 by the end of the year, according to Goodspeed.

In comparison to the 10,000 Syrian refugees President Obama has directed his administration to admit, the scale of Canada’s project is immense. To understand the relative magnitudes of these programs, consider that the United States has a population of around nine times that

of Canada, yet plans to take in fewer than one-third as many refugees.

Canadians are rallying to ensure that the program reaches its goals. “Private groups are stepping up in Canada like we have never seen before,” said Nafziger. Offices, churches, and university groups are all making plans to sponsor refugees.

The consensus among the refugee advocates The Politic contacted was that Canada is witnessing an unprecedented outpouring of public support.

“I’ve been working in this sector for almost 18 years, and I’ve never seen anything like this. It has been phenomenal,” said Huda Bukhari, Executive Director of the Arab Community Center of Toronto.

“Any one of the groups in Canada who have contacts with the federal government is overwhelmed with requests to sponsor refugees,” said Nafziger. Francisco Rico of the FCJ Community Center of Toronto mentioned that the neighbor of his office is even planning on sponsoring three Syrian refugee families.

Several sources pointed to the diversity and tolerance of the Canadian people as an explanation for Canada’s willingness to open its arms to those fleeing from conflict zones.

“Canadians are a very giving people, a very kind people, tend to think the best of people, and have been able to open their homes and their bank account to a lot of these refugees,” said Bukhari.

Despite this overwhelmingly positive image, there remain opponents to the plan. A December 8, 2015 poll by Forum Research shows that Canadians favor refugee resettlement by a slim 48% to 44% margin.

Yet, Canada is unquestionably far more willing to accept refugees than America is. It is too simplistic to say that Canada is just more welcoming than America.

Might there be something in the two nations’ divergent experiences that can explain their vastly different approaches to refugee acceptance?

The generosity of the Canadian people is certainly a far cry from the reaction of most American governors, who have quickly moved to oppose President Obama’s plan. A November 16, 2015 tweet by Texas Governor Greg Abbott read, “BREAKING: Texas will not accept any Syrian refugees & I demand the U.S. act similarly. Security comes first.” Why do Americans believe that accepting Syrian refugees and keeping the homeland safe are mutually exclusive, while most Canadians do not?

One explanation for the two countries’ varied responses is the effect of differences in their refugee admission apparatuses. The United States does not have the private sponsorship program of Canada. Rather, the American system requires the involvement of the government, a national resettlement agency, and

“Canadians are a very giving people, a very kind people, tend to think the best of people, and have been able to open their homes and their bank account to a lot of these refugees.”

-Huda Bukhari a local affiliate group that does the actual resettling, according to Gaye.

She noted, however, that there is a co-sponsorship program that allows private citizens to work with groups like IRIS in resettling refugees and that there has been great demand to participate in it.

What distinguishes the two programs is the level of bureaucratic red tape. The American system requires the participation of two resettlement agencies as well as financial

contributions and oversight from the government. While a desire to protect refugees is admirable, this level of regulation appears to be a barrier to resettlement. The Canadian system has shown that a far simpler version of this co-sponsorship program can work effectively. Through this program that trusts the power of civil society to integrate refugees (and costs the government very little!), Canada was able to integrate 70,000 “boat people” and is on its way to integrating many more Syrians. Even if a group of five Americans were willing to sponsor a refugee today, the bureaucracy of the sponsorship process would remain a formidable barrier. With a program so complicated, it is simply impossible to marshal a public response in the United States like that seen in Canada. The roots of this divergence may also lie in the very different relationships the two nations have had with extremism in the Middle East.

Americans will never forget the trauma of September 11, 2011 or the two wars fought in its tragic wake.

Americans were shocked that children of Chechen asylum seekers were willing to detonate bombs at the finish of the Boston Marathon. Not long after the tragic attacks on Paris, Americans watched the images of an ISIS-inspired shooting in San Bernardino, California. While Canadian soldiers fought in Afghanistan and Canadian citizens were no doubt affected by these attacks, Canada simply has not seen the same level of terrorism within Rico its borders. described this difference in national attitude by noting that while Canada has historically adopted the role of an international peacekeeper, the United States has a far more conflict19

Syrian refugees at Budapest Keleti railway station on September 4th, 2015. There are currently 4.6 million Syrian refugees in need of relocation; Prime Minister Trudeau plans to admit 25,000 of these refugees in the upcoming year.

based national identity. It is far easier to integrate Syrians into Canada than in the United States, a nation that views the Middle East with deep suspicion.

What distinguishes the two programs is the level of bureaucratic red tape.

America has seen its security apparatus fail in ways that Canada has not. Most notably, many of the 9/11 attackers spent considerable amounts of time training in the United States for their suicide missions. The failure to recognize the patterns of these attackers, followed by the colossal intelligence failures surrounding the invasion of Iraq in 2003, cost the intelligence community a great deal 20

of credibility and self-assuredness.

Canadian security agencies have not seen failures on this scale.

As a result, Canadians have faith that their refugee admission process will keep the nation safe. The process has several steps and begins with screening by the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR). It is followed by a thorough review and interview with Canadian immigration officials. Finally, three separate security checks and a medical check are performed.

“People trust the government to do its job,” said Bukhari. As Goodspeed pointed out, it would be far easier for bad actors to come to Canada as a tourist than to gain acceptance through this program.

In the United States the screening process is just as thorough.

Refugees are subjected to interviews, background checks by the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security, and medical checks, according to Alexine Casanova Gaye, Director of Case Management at

Integrated Refugee and Immigrant Services (IRIS). She added that the refugee system was “the most difficult way to get into the country.” Yet, there is a profound public anxiety about a would-be terrorist managing to gain entry, especially after the Paris attacks.

It is for this reason that American governors, with great public support, have refused to comply with President Obama’s plan.

While it is hard to re-instill trust in the government’s ability to provide security, the United States can and must look to reform the refugee admission process. By adopting a Canadian-style private sponsorship program, American citizens who have the will and the means to provide a better life for Syrian refugees can do so, without bureaucratic red tape getting in the way. It is time for the United States to join its northern neighbor as a truly humanitarian global leader.

IT TAKES TWO

BY GABBY DEUTCH

Paternalistic Policies Harm Maternal Health

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THE BACKLASH WAS SWIFT AND HARSH. On February 2nd, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC)— the top public health agency in America—issued a press release urging women “of childbearing years” who are not on birth control (totaling some 3.3 million women) to refrain from drinking alcohol. The reason, argued the CDC, was that these women might unknowingly be pregnant and thus at risk of passing on fetal alcohol spectrum disorders to their children. Many women claimed these guidelines were unnecessary and unfair; headlines in opinion sections across the country were derisive and mocking. The CDC reaffirmed its position. After all, its press release was only updating a similar (and little known) 2005 recommendation. Thousands of women disagreed­—they would not refrain from a casual night of drinking on the off chance they might “unknowingly” be pregnant.

Nor would they allow the CDC to limit their personal autonomy for a child they may not even be carrying.

A JANUARY STUDY published by the American Medical Association urged that all adults be screened for depression because the potential benefits of doing so would far outweigh the harm. Women should be screened during and after pregnancy, it said, to test for postpartum depression. A mother’s depression might negatively affect her child. The father’s mental health was not considered.

THE NEW YORK TIMES first reported on Zika—a virus that is sweeping Latin America and now making its way to the United States—in 2007 in a story on Micronesia. Its coverage did not focus again on Zika until December 2015, when it discussed the threat the disease poses to newborns. The epidemic has purportedly caused an increase in microcephaly—a form of brain damage that results in abnormally small heads—in babies born in Latin America. Many countries in the region have responded to the crisis by urging women to avoid pregnancy until more is known about Zika. El Salvador recommended that women forego pregnancy for two years. The country raised red flags for reproductive rights advocacy groups, which claim the protocol places the burden of the virus on women without deeper analysis of its possible causes.

PUBLIC HEALTH GUIDELINES ARE NOT POLICY; they do not have any binding power to enforce their recommendations. Yet when an organization like the CDC, a government agency, issues a widespread statement, it influences social norms. And these examples illustrate the power of medically-backed announcements in approving and maintaining those norms. The

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American CDC and El Salvador fear possible adverse health effects from alcohol, depression, and Zika respectively on society. But their fear leads to hasty recommendations that further a long legacy of state intervention on female autonomy in order to protect children. Rather than limit a woman’s freedom to act on behalf of her child, society should make child-rearing a more egalitarian pursuit, which would benefit parents and their children.

In a recent New York Times Magazine article, Yale Law professor Emily Bazelon traced the history of Supreme Court rulings that Justice William Brennan called, mockingly, “romantic paternalism.” (He used the phrase in striking down such precedents.) According to Bazelon, for decades, courts upheld laws that limited the number of hours women could work each day and in which professions they could work — all in the interest of protecting them.

Bazelon had cited Columbia history professor Alice Kessler-Harris, who notes the inherent sexism in such laws: “It’s really a euphemism for the public welfare: Women’s purpose is to become healthy mothers and to produce healthy children.”

While this legislation has, for the most part, been resolved (though Bazelon argues that new anti-abortion legislation also claims to protect women), the expectation that women deserve special protection—or at least extra attention— remains.

This attitude persists in public health through guidelines that tacitly “favor” children over their mothers.

When the CDC urges women not to drink alcohol, or when the American Medical Association wants women screened for depression, or when El Salvador encourages women to avoid pregnancy, they are being overly cautious and unfair. But they are not trying to be spiteful. They think women should be more careful—and the state should take extra care in how it treats women—because that is the

way things have always been done.

But what if the child’s best interests requires a complete revision of parental roles? Rene Almeling, a Yale professor of sociology, writes in The Boston Globe, “It’s time to stop ignoring the role men play in reproductive outcomes.” Amy Rowland, Senior Public Affairs and Communication Specialist at the CDC, clarified her organization’s guidelines for women and alcohol to The Politic. Of four recommendations, just one mentioned a partner—that a partner should only be included when asked “to support [a woman’s] choice not to drink.” Such unequal recommendations will only continue to push men away from the responsibility of childcare.

The Yale Child Study Center has long been a source for new ideas in parenting and child development. Its work focuses on advancing policies that benefit children, but it also aims to help families. Walter Gilliam, director of the Edward Zigler Center in Child Development (one branch of the Child Study Center), told The Politic, “When we make the recommendation in a way that seems to speak only to the mother, it seems to put all of the guilt and all of the onus on the mother.

But it also removes and alienates the father from discussions and thoughts about his role within the family.”

Gilliam noted how policy is made in many ways: from laws, from government bodies, and from changing social norms. And according to Gilliam, “You don’t want to make policies on the basis of something that is less than good science.”

He mentioned Edith B. Jackson, who taught in the Yale School of Medicine Department of Pediatrics for over three decades, as an example of a change in policy that can affect societal norms. Jackson established the “Rooming-in Project” that literally brought men into their children’s lives. Until this project changed hospital protocols throughout the country, men had to wait outside the room while their wives gave birth. The

tradition had embedded a difference in parental expectations for women and men.

For Gilliam, children would be better off if society expected the father to also be a healthy, vibrant presence in his children’s lives. But this requires a drastic realignment of social norms or at least our perception of them.

If we want children to be healthy, according to Gilliam, this should come naturally.

The issues of children’s health and a mother’s personal autonomy become more complicated when both are threatened by a new, unfamiliar disease. When governments like those in El Salvador and Brazil urge women to hold off on pregnancy until more is known about Zika, the onus is placed on the woman, not the government. This policy is not a solution.

Christine Ricardo, a clinical fellow at the Global Health Justice Partnership, told The Politic that a shift in responsibility from the government to women ignores other, more pervasive problems. Ricardo, also a lawyer, works with the Partnership’s initiative in Brazil to address Zika. It is easier, she observed, to hold women accountable for public health than to find the root of the Zika epidemic.

Society has often minimized women’s ability to make their own decisions. A group of historians filed an amicus brief backing an abortion clinic in its case before the Supreme Court (Women’s Whole Health v. Hellerstadt). The historians trace the need to “protect” women to “the doctrine of coverture,” an outdated assumption that women are the legal property of their husbands.

Public health guidelines can no longer limit a woman’s actions.

Instead, they should bring fathers and other partners into the equation. Only when the CDC and other public health agencies recognize the immense power they hold in shaping public attitudes can mothers, fathers, and their children make the best choices about how to live healthy, full lives.

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HOSTILE TA K E O V E R : THE STATE OF ARK ANSAS VS. THE LITTLE ROCK BOARD OF E D U C AT I O N

BY ALAN MAY

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IT’S HARD TO PINPOINT THE DAY

EVERYONE REALIZED THE Little Rock School District had

gone off the rails, but January 28, 2015 is a good guess. The Arkansas State Board of Education met that Wednesday and, in a contentious 5-4 decision, placed the district under state control. The Little Rock School Board was dissolved immediately. Local elected officials would no longer supervise the district; it was now the responsibility of the State Board of Education and Arkansas Commissioner of Education Tony Wood.

Sam Ledbetter, then chair of the State Board, said, “We want this to be a new day, a new path forward, and a successful path forward.”

The decision to take over the largest school district in Arkansas, with 25,000 students, was a bombshell. No one knew that the district was in danger until May 2014, when the Arkansas Department of Education told the Little Rock School District that six of its 48 schools met the criteria for academic distress. This is a special classification under Arkansas law that permits the state to take extraordinary measures in schools where fewer than half of children test at proficient or advanced levels on state assessments. The standard was previously 25%, but the criteria was changed in January 2013. One elementary school, two middle schools, and three high schools in Little Rock were placed on the academic distress list. Between 39% and 47% of students fell into the advanced or proficient categories at each.

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The actions were indicative of “utterly bad faith on the part of the State Board of Education,” said Judge Marion Humphrey, formerly of the Pulaski County Circuit Court and the plaintiffs’ lawyer in a suit contesting the takeover, in an interview with The Politic. Failing schools in the district, he said, simply were given too little time— one semester and a summer vacation—to show substantial improvement.

And questions remain about whether the takeover was appropriate.

“It was a very racist decision,” said the Reverend Doctor C. E. McAdoo, pastor of Saint Andrew United Methodist Church in Little Rock and a member of the dissolved School Board, in an interview with The Politic.

The January 28 meeting indicated that opinion was deeply divided. Proponents of state action on the Board of Education claimed it was the only way to improve an ineffective school district.

Board member Vicki Saviers said, “No bold action of improvement has occurred to change the direction of these schools.”

Ledbetter, former chair of the State Board, agreed in an interview with the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. “At some point,” he said, “you just have to go in a new direction.”

(Both Saviers and Ledbetter voted for the takeover.)

But others concerned, including students in the school district, complained that the takeover did not improve the district’s prospects and expressed confidence in the School Board.

“We just want them to be able to finish the job they’ve started,” Josie Efird, a senior at Parkview Arts and Science Magnet High School, told the State Board at the meeting.

“The Little Rock School District has not failed me.”

The decision was complicated by the unresolved

question of whether the failing schools indicated a systemic problem in the district. Two competing pictures could be painted: on the one hand, only six of 48 schools were in distress—worrisome but not necessarily grounds for district-wide action or usurpation of local control. On the other hand, three of the district’s five high schools— Hall, J. A. Fair, and John L. McClellan—were failing, an indication that a large proportion of high school students were not receiving adequate preparation for college or careers.

And on the crucial issue of whether state action was necessary—the question of whether every student in Little Rock can receive an adequate public education, regardless of background or neighborhood—opinion remains divided.

“Absolutely yes,” even though “some schools … do seem to be failing,” Max Brantley, longtime Arkansas political commentator and now a columnist for the Arkansas Times who covered the takeover, told The Politic.

Parents must remain involved to ensure that their children are learning, he said, but the district still provides good opportunities.

But McAdoo said that, although the obstacles were not insurmountable, the answer is no. “There is an effort to marginalize people of color,” he said. “Without some advocate, brown and black folks will always be at the back end.”

The statistics suggest McAdoo’s concern for minority students is well-founded; a report published in January found that, among other indicators, graduation rates for students of color in 2014 were substantially lower than those for white students—77% for African Americans and 69% for Hispanics against 85% for whites.

But determining that there were racial disparities under local control doesn’t lead to a cut-and-dried position

on the state takeover: McAdoo, for instance, said he would have preferred continued control by the School Board, despite the district’s shortcomings and inequities. “It does not help the students,” he said, to have the district under state supervision. “Student achievement has not gotten better.” Only a year after the takeover, it’s difficult to find evidence of trends in the testing data.

The district continues to function more or less normally. Doctor Dexter Suggs, the superintendent at the time of the takeover, left after it surfaced that he had plagiarized portions of his doctoral dissertation. H. Baker Kurrus, a Little Rock lawyer and former School Board member, is now the superintendent. Johnny Key, a former state senator, has taken Wood’s job as commissioner of education. Neither Kurrus nor Key holds a degree in education, and requirements had to be waived before they could assume their positions. Humphrey laments that public accountability has been sacrificed for expediency (Kurrus reports only to Key, who is in turn only accountable to Governor Asa Hutchinson). But the day-to-day work of the district goes on.

FOR ALL THE ACRIMONY with which the district’s

problems surfaced last year, perhaps January 28, 2015 is not the best place to start after all. One of Little Rock’s claims to fame is that it was the site, in 1957, of the Central High School integration crisis, a landmark development in the civil rights movement and an early turning point in the implementation of Brown v. Board of Education. When nine black students walked to Central that September, Governor Orval Faubus ordered the Arkansas National Guard to turn them away. Tempers ran high until President Dwight Eisenhower called in the U.S. Army’s 101st Airborne Division to escort the students, who soon became famous as the Little Rock Nine.

“WE WANT THIS TO BE A NEW DAY, A BETTER PATH FORWARD” 27

The crisis was a watershed moment in the history of school integration. But the rest of the story—what happened after Ernest Green became the first African American to graduate from Central in May 1958—has been just as influential in the later history of Little Rock public education. Faubus called a special session of the Arkansas General Assembly before the beginning of the 1958-59 school year. With his blessing, the legislators passed a bill allowing the state to close schools threatened with integration. The law was invoked in September 1958, when Faubus closed the Little Rock high schools, and city voters supported closure in a special election later that month.

1958-59 is widely known as the “Lost Year” in Little Rock; many students, most of them African Americans, spent the year out of school because no educational alternatives were available.

Although the district reopened fully in the fall of 1959 with a commitment to integration, its later history was fraught. A busing and reorganization program in the 1970s failed to achieve comprehensive desegregation. A federal lawsuit filed in 1982, alleging racial bias in the way students were distributed to schools, led to millions of dollars in annual desegregation funding for the Little Rock School District (LRSD).

But when it was settled in 2014, State Representative John Walker LAW ’64, speaking for the Joshua Intervenors, legal advocates of minority students, told the New York Times that “the settlement is of little direct benefit for black children.” Brantley said the litigation was beneficial and led to measures that encouraged participation in the public schools, but that the time had come for the suit itself to be ended.

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THE SETTLEMENT RAISED new questions for the school district, especially since the end of the suit meant the end of $37 million in state desegregation funds each year. It’s unclear whether the School Board was prepared to deal with the loss of more than ten percent of the district’s roughly $300 million budget.

Though he doesn’t believe the cuts will be crippling, citing “fat [in the LRSD] that can be removed without damaging the classroom,” Brantley described the board at the time of the takeover as “very nearly dysfunctional.”

Although he agrees the board was infected by “dysfunctionality in a political way,” McAdoo objects, describing the members as prepared to address the impending problems. “We were dealing with the loss of funds,” he said. “Whatever came to us, we dealt with it.”

So, why did the state take over the district? The obvious explanation is that, facing a looming fiscal crisis and a judgment that several schools were inadequate, members of the State Board worried about Little Rock students and didn’t trust the School Board to remedy the problems in the failing schools. Some opponents of the takeover, however, have alleged that the state’s action was done for the wrong reasons, perhaps because, as Brantley suggested, the presence of a black majority on the School Board was troubling to a largely white business establishment that didn’t trust African Americans in charge.

Pulaski County Circuit Judge Wendell Griffen, whose court handled the suit contesting the takeover, agrees. “In any other context [the takeover] would be called a coup,” he told The Politic. But in Arkansas education it is “business as usual,” a typical promotion of white authority (Kurrus and

Key) over black authority (Suggs and the School Board).

Opposition to the takeover coalesced in that lawsuit, which was filed in February 2015 by McAdoo, two other former School Board members—Jim Ross and Dianne Curry—and two Little Rock residents—Doris Pendleton, who had voted for Ross for the School Board, and Barclay Key, whose children were students in the LRSD. “The decision of the Arkansas State Board of Education was arbitrary, capricious, in bad faith and will cause wanton injury if it is allowed to stand,” the plaintiffs said. They also claimed the board’s “actions are … outside of its authority” since “the Arkansas Constitution … assigns certain constitutional responsibilities to school boards.” The State Board’s decision forcing the district to operate without a school board, along with the portions of Arkansas law supporting that decision, was thus unconstitutional.

The case ended without resolution in October 2015 when the Arkansas Supreme Court decided that the case could be dismissed on the grounds of sovereign immunity–the portion of the state constitution stating, “The State of Arkansas shall never be made defendant in any of her courts.” The Supreme Court didn’t fully address whether the takeover itself had been legal.

But after several years of unrest, the district seems to have reached an uneasy peace. There’s substantial agreement that the current solution is less than ideal.

“THERE IS AN EFFORT TO MARGINALIZE GROUPS OF COLOR. WITHOUT SOME ADVOCATE, BROWN AND BLACK FOLKS WILL ALWAYS BE AT THE BACK END” 29

“Democratic control is preferable,” said Brantley, while Griffen calls the current situation “taxation without representation.”

“I still think that the approach that I was putting forward was a preferable approach,” Doctor Jay Barth, a State Board member and professor of politics at Hendrix College, told The Politic. At the January 28 meeting, Barth advocated a partnership between the district and the state.

But, when asked about the long-term success of the district, he said “we’re going to get there.”

The academic distress and takeover provisions in the Arkansas Code provide for a five-year time limit on state control, and by then, Kurrus told The Politic, he hopes to promote better academic performance and resolve the looming budget problems associated with the desegregation settlement. “We have to in essence do more with less money,” he said. But, he added, district staff are “making the sacrifice” that will be necessary.

One of the questions Kurrus asks to guide his work with the distressed schools is how to help students “in circumstances that aren’t ideal.” Some schools succeed even though many of their students are disadvantaged. Kurrus says he’s eager to apply their practices elsewhere in the district. He’s reluctant to take a stance on the events of the past year and says his work is driven by the requirement in the Arkansas Constitution that “the State shall ever maintain a general, suitable and efficient system of free public schools and shall adopt all suitable means to secure to the people the advantages and opportunities of education.”

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Attitudes will continue to vary, and it’s fair to say that Little Rock can expect decades of more acrimony over the public schools. But there are glimmers of hope and agreement.

Griffen, the current circuit judge, believes “the future is not likely to be different from the past.” The past, he says, has been largely “racist,” “elitist,” and “dishonest,” but added that “our sense of optimism” is essential.

McAdoo suggests structural reforms are important— the School Board needs to be better informed about relevant legislation. School Board members ought to be trained. He mentions “the importance of public ignorance,” arguing that voters need better information if the district is to be improved in the long run. But, he said, the district’s flaws aren’t fatal: “I feel optimistic about the value of learning.”

But Kurrus, who is now in charge of a beleaguered government agency that also happens to be responsible for 25,000 students, isn’t eager to dwell on questions about the takeover, or even the district’s long-term future. “The interesting thing about this work is that it’s critical,” he says, and he seems eager to roll up his sleeves.

“IN ANY OTHER CONTEXT [THE TAKEOVER] WOULD BE CALLED A COUP” 31

FOOTBALL IS COMING HOME: CHINA DREAMS OF WORLD CUP GREATNESS

BY MICHAEL MEI

SOCCER IN CHINA was not always a “beautiful game.” For many years, the Chinese gleefully mocked the state of the sport within their borders. In a typical joke, one person asks his friend, “Why are you going to hell after having been so charitable?” “Because I watched Chinese soccer on TV,” the other answers. The men’s national team has qualified for the World Cup only once— in 2008—but it lost every game, failing to score a single goal. For a country of nearly 1.4 billion people, a FIFA ranking lower than Qatar’s and Uzbekistan’s is a national embarrassment.

But lately, the jokesters have stopped joking and the doubters have stopped doubting. Like so much else in

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China these days, soccer is undergoing a dramatic renaissance, and Chinese clubs are using their new wealth to build impressive rosters.

Didier Drogba, Eidur Gudjohnsen, Robinho, and Paulinho are just a few of the high-profile foreign footballers who have been picked up by clubs in the Chinese Super League.

In January, the Chinese club Jiangsu Suning signed Chelsea midfielder Ramires in a £25 million ($36 million) deal that broke the national transfer record. That record lasted a week before it was smashed by the signing of Atlético Madrid striker Jackson Martinez to Guangzhou Evergrande for €42 million ($47 million).

It is unclear if these players will galvanize public interest in their respective clubs. Their signings make it painfully apparent that the homegrown Chinese soccer hero remains elusive.

But according to Kevin Moore, director of the National Football Museum in the UK, “This amounts to a real revolution in football in China.

The overseas stars will draw new fans, raise the overall playing standards, and very much help the development of the homegrown players. But the question remains as to whether it will be sustained.”

And it likely will be, thanks to China’s ultimate soccer fan: President Xi Jingping. “The development of soccer has the support of the government, coming from the very top, from the President,” explained Moore. “This is the key factor.” Xi, who loves soccer as much as President Obama loves basketball, dreams of a World Cup trophy for China. Last year, he created a panel of state officials, led by Vice Premier Liu Yangdong, to oversee the development of the sport.

Even more formidable than the political drive to develop soccer is the commercial one. Major Chinese corporations have pumped big money into Chinese and European clubs. In 2015, Chinese conglomerate Dalian Wanda acquired a 20% stake in Atlético Madrid, a prominent Spanish team.

China Media Capital also got in on the game, investing $400 million in Manchester City, which plays in England’s Barclays league.

Alexander Jarvis, Chairman of Blackbridge Cross Borders, a trans-global company that facilitates investment and capital raising in Europe and Asia, spoke highly of the opportunities for Chinese investment in European clubs. With regard to its sudden increase he explained, “The sports sector in China is so small compared to other Asian [sports] sectors. Even South Korea and Japan— next to China, their football sectors are quite big. ”

The sports craze has pushed prices up sharply. “I think the prices for [foreign] players are outrageous,” Jarvis said, but he quickly added, “A lot of Chinese investors talk a lot about investing in football, but not many of them have actually done transactions in the space…I think there will be a bubble, but we’re at the very, very start of it.”

Investments and fandom are indeed correlated. Jarvis noted that China’s presence on the governing boards of European clubs is creating a snowball effect back home: “The more focus on football, the more media attention it gets, and the more money that’s going to be invested.” And more players like Jackson Martinez tearing up Chinese Super League pitches will mean “a larger fan base, a lot of people wanting to buy merchandise. There’d be more people wanting to engage with the football club, to learn about, to potentially sponsor it.”

President Xi’s immense vision has many fronts: national pride and financial prosperity are two, but alone they are not enough to make soccer a beautiful game in China. What makes the game beautiful is its ability to connect people, to unite East and West, poor and rich, past and present on the same pitch. That universality has proved invaluable to diplomacy: last October, President Xi visited the National Football Museum during his state visit to the UK. Moore recounted the cultural exchange: “I gave to the President as a gift from the National Football Museum a copy of the handwritten laws from 1863, and he gave me a gift of a replica Cuju ball.”

Cuju, the earliest known form of soccer, was played in China over 2,000 years ago. Although Cuju did not lead to modern soccer—the game as we know it today was codified in England in the mid-19th century—it had a similar setup, with two teams trying to kick a ball into the opponent’s goal.

That distinction gives the Chinese great pride, and it makes the famous English phrase, “Football’s Coming

Home” especially applicable to China.

The scale of Xi’s vision is no less apparent at the grassroots level.

Enter the Evergrande International Football School, established in 2012 in Guangdong Province. With close to 3,000 students and fifty fullsized pitches, it is the largest soccer academy in the world. Its staff includes more than twenty Spanish coaches approved by the Real Madrid Foundation, whose partnership with Evergrande allows select star students to train in Europe. It is a powerhouse of homegrown soccer talent. And crucially, the school emphasizes academic education, a priority that appeals to wary, traditional-minded Chinese parents. Given the school’s reputation and high coaching standards, Guangzhou Evergrande could soon become the best club in Asia, with a roster full of domestic players.

But despite its hundred thousand new soccer fields and promising prospects, China lags far behind European countries, which have established soccer institutions at every level. A walk through a public space in China, whether in the city or the countryside, reveals that soccer has yet to catch on with the younger generation like it has in England or Brazil. Jarvis predicted, “I think it’s going to take a long time to generate real talent in China…maybe a generation.” Moore was similarly cautious in his optimism: “China could one day win the FIFA World Cup – but it will be many years from now. A realistic goal might be to get in the top twenty nations in the next decade or so.”

The Chinese women’s national team, currently ranked 17th and always in serious World Cup contention, is already there. But the men who could one day hoist the beautiful game’s most beautiful trophy still sleep in the dorms at the Evergrande Football School, dreaming Xi Jinping’s great dream.

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ELECTING MADAME PRESIDENT:

An Interview with Jessica O’Connell, Executive Director of EMILY’s List

BY LINA VOLIN

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What do you see as your main goals at EMILY’s List and the biggest obstacles to overcome in achieving them?

EMILY’s List exists to elect pro-choice, Democratic women. We have a very clear mission. Women are over fifty percent of the country but make up only twenty percent of Congress right now. We’d like to see those numbers get a little bit closer.

[We’ve helped elect] 19 Senators, over 100 women to the House. And we’re focused not just on women, but on women of color because we feel that it’s really, incredibly important to bring diverse perspectives to our governing bodies, so that the voices that don’t normally get heard in Washington have a seat at the table.

What is a moment you feel most proud of during your time at EMILY’s List?

Well, I hope it’s coming still, because this is a really big election cycle for us. I think what I’m most proud of is the diversity and breadth of our candidates. Not only do we have Hillary Clinton at the top of the ticket, with a real chance to become the first woman Democratic presidential nominee and possibly President of the United States, but we have also endorsed nine pro-choice, Democratic women for the Senate. That is a record number for us. In 1992, it was the year of the woman, and that was because we elected four women to the Senate.

We have the chance to elect nine, and of those nine, four of them are women of color. There’s not currently an African-American woman in the Senate.

There’s never been a Latina. We have a chance to change both those things, so I’m working hard on that.

How do you think EMILY’s List’s role in politics has changed over the last twenty years?

It’s changed a lot. When we first started out, nobody believed women could run and could win. That was primarily because of money, even in the Democratic Party. Nobody really believed in women because they didn’t have the money to communicate their message. The very first thing EMILY’s List started doing was raising money for women, so they could have a fighting chance, so they could actually compete. And then we realized, okay, once they have the money to actually get their message out, they win.

So we thought, now we need more of them. We started to recruit.

That was the second thing we worked on: recruitment. We have, at EMILY’s List, trained over 9,000 women around the country to run for office.

We’re very proud of the recruitment. I mentioned that diversity is important to us. We have helped elect every single African-American, Latina, and

Asian-American Democratic congresswomen currently serving in Congress.

The third piece that is really important for EMILY’s List, and for women and elections, is that women have to turn out and vote, particularly young women. That’s a really important piece. We’re going to be running our “Madam President” project, which will speak to women voters and young people about Hillary Clinton. We’re prepared to spend as much as $20 million to help have conversations with voters on behalf of Hillary Clinton, to ensure that women understand what the stakes are and what the alternative is, because the stakes are pretty high with the extremism on the other side. I’m really proud of the efforts we’re making this cycle. I’m proud of our diversity, I’m proud of our success, but we have a long way to go still.

You mentioned young women, Hillary Clinton and bringing them together.

Right now, in the primaries, a lot of young people are planning to vote for Bernie Sanders. What would you say to young people that are planning on voting in the Democratic primary?

Let me start by saying this: I think that Bernie’s ability to bring young people into the process is fantastic. I think it is so important that we galvanize young people on the issues that they care about. Let’s just say, without a doubt, that Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders are both better alternatives to anyone on the other side.

What I would say to young people that are looking at this race is that Hillary Clinton has been a fighter and a champion for women her entire career. From her early days at Yale Law School, where she started work with the Children’s Defense Fund to help kids and families in need, she has fought for women and families. And she has withstood Republican attacks that entire time as well.

35

So for young people who really care about progressive values and want to ensure that there are plans that get enacted, Hillary Clinton has proven that she can do it and that she can get the job done against Republicans in the fall, and that’s what is going to matter most. She’s got a plan, we know she’s a fighter, and she can get things done, and I think that the question of taking it to the Republicans in the fall is a really important one.

The other thing that I would say is important for young people to consider as they look at the Democratic primary is that Hillary Clinton understands that women’s issues are economic issues and economic issues are women’s issues. I think that sometimes others try to marginalize some of the women’s issues and say “Hey, okay, that’s reproductive health, that’s women’s issues.”

But Hillary comes at these issues in an integrated kind of way. She understands, for instance, that one of the biggest economic decisions a woman can make and a family can make is whether or not to have a child and when. That’s not just a physical decision. It’s not just an emotional decision. It’s a financial one. We have to acknowledge that race and gender play a part. We’re still fighting for equal pay. These things are integrated, and you cannot set them aside.

Hillary Clinton has been fighting for these issues—equal pay, healthcare, minimum wage, things that impact women and families—her whole career.

In addition to the presidential race, are there any races in 2016 that you’re particularly focusing your attention on?

Kamala Harris, the Attorney General of California, is running for Senate there.

You hear a lot about the things we talked about: pay, family leave, minimum wage. But Kamala Harris is a woman who is fighting new fights.

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She prosecuted a guy in California who was posting nude, pornographic pictures of women sent to him by their exes. He put them up online, and then when they realized it and they called to complain, he said, “Yeah, I’ll take it down, but for a price.” Kamala Harris secured one of the first prosecutions of a case like that, and she’s setting precedent.

Donna Edwards in Maryland.

She would bring an African-American, female voice back to the Senate.

There have only ever been two women of color in the Senate. I think it’s time to make some room for her. She comes out of Baltimore, she led the conversation on Freddie Gray. It’s time we have people at the table who are part of this social justice and criminal justice conversation.

Catherine Cortez Masto is one to watch. She is running for Harry Reid’s seat in Nevada. She would be the first Latina ever elected to the Senate if she wins. And think about it: you hear about immigration, and there’s never even been a Latina at the table to have that conversation. It’s ridiculous.

How does the state and local work that you do differ from your national strategy?

There are so many fights [at the state and local level]–one of the big [ones] is over abortion. A lot of the governors and a lot of the state legislatures are pushing through incredibly restrictive abortion laws, closing clinics, working to defund Planned Parenthood. Tuesday, Congress voted for the eleventh time to defund Planned Parenthood. They’re also introducing bills that require transvaginal, medically unnecessary procedures on women. That happens at the state and local level, so we need woman champions at that level to fight back against those kinds of laws.

The other thing that we’re working on is preparing for redistricting, which will happen in 2020. We know the congressional maps will get redrawn, and it’s important how these

maps will get redrawn and how we’ll compete. Every state manages that differently. Sometimes the governor is in charge of it, sometimes the state legislatures, so we have targeted, in our FOCUS 2020 program, about 16-17 states where we think if we elect more pro-choice, Democratic women, we can have an impact on redistricting.

In some cases, that may be electing a governor, in some cases that might be helping to flip a state chamber, electing maybe a state senator or a state assemblywoman, who can help make sure that the commissions are fair, that the lines are drawn fairly.

As a last question: what advice would you give a young woman who is interested in a career in politics?

Do it. My advice is to do it. We need more women at every level. We need them to run for office. We need them to work behind-the-scenes creating policy and legislation, and we need them to work on campaigns and help manage campaigns and recruit more women to run and manage what are now million dollar operations. There are not enough woman campaign managers, and we think that’s a really important piece.

And most importantly, we need young women to vote and to talk to their friends and family because at the end of the day, this comes down to conversations. Democracy is about conversations, and we need young people to have important conversations and to tell their own stories and to talk about what’s important to them.

For the first time ever, this cycle, millennials will outnumber baby boomers [among] eligible voters. That doesn’t mean they’ll vote more than baby boomers, but they could. That is tremendous power and tremendous responsibility. If millennials do turn out to vote in those higher numbers, we know the Democrats will win, we know the issues that we care about will be on the ballot, and issues that you care most about will be on the ballot, too.

A Doctrine

of

Destruction

ISIS Attempts to Erase History

BY SARAH DONILON

In August 2015, the Islamic State (ISIS) beheaded Khaled al-Asaad, an eighty-year-old archaeologist and official custodian of the ancient city of Palmyra, Syria. His mutilated body was hung above the museum where he had worked for more than forty years. Tied to his body were plaques that said he had been a “director of idolatry” who attended “infidel conferences.” Before he was executed in the town square, Asaad had refused to reveal information about Palmyra’s treasures to his ISIS captors.

Palmyra has been a meeting point between the East and the West for more than two thousand years.

With elements of both Hellenistic architecture and Islamic tradition, it is a convergence of cultures and a memorial to world history.

Eckart Frahm, professor of Assyriology at Yale University explained to The Politic, “It makes sense that this is something ISIS does not like if you compare this crossroads of civilizations to the monochromatic views of ISIS, which is extremely simplistic ideology.”

ISIS seized Palmyra in May 2015 and used its ancient theater, a UNESCO World Heritage site, as a dramatic

stage for the execution of pro-Assad militants, government soldiers, and anyone else deemed takfir, or impure.

ISIS later reduced the temples to dust, looting what could be carried and destroying that which was too large to move.

While Palmyra and its ancient relics may seem like an unlikely target, the city holds strategic value for ISIS. It sits in the middle of important gas fields. Several highways link Palmyra to major cities in Syria and Iraq. The old city’s occupation also carries symbolic consequences.

As Frahm explained, “[Palmyra’s] destruction is focused on the remote past.”

“The situation with ancient sites is more extreme because no one worships any of the gods of Palmyra today, and yet these sites are destroyed as well,” he continued.

Attacks on ancient sites are part of ISIS’ propaganda strategy.

Amr al-Azm, an associate professor of history and anthropology at Shawnee State University, has led efforts in Syria to protect artifacts in ISIS territory.

Azm explained that ISIS’ strategy is meant to shock the world.

He said, “These atrocities can be 37

Great Collonade at Palmyra built in the second and third century and allegedly destroyed in October 2015

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prisoners, Westerners dressed up in jumpsuits and paraded around, all filmed.”

These acts are designed to “demonstrate the ability of ISIS to act with impunity and the impotence of the international community to respond,” Azm said.

Destroying a UNESCO World Heritage site, Frahm added, is “an easy opportunity for ISIS to humiliate and provoke the West.”

These atrocities also affect local communities. ISIS publicizes its own narrative of success through these acts, which deters locals from resisting and prompts new members to join.

Peter Stone, the UNESCO Chair in Cultural Property Protection and professor of Heritage Studies at Newcastle University, explained that the videos attract disenfranchised youth. They see ISIS “standing up to rest of the world, standing up to the free market and the political establishment,” he said. “Most of the destruction videos that ISIS produces are spoken in Arabic, so there is an overt targeting of those dissatisfied youth.”

ISIS HOPES ITS destruction of historical sites will detach the people of Iraq and Syria from the past. Evan Ryan, Assistant Secretary of State for Educational and Cultural Affairs explained to The Politic, “Psychologically, ISIS is trying to separate Syrians and Iraqis from their history and heritage because then they will be more easily able to absorb them into their own efforts.”

When ISIS brings monuments to the ground, its message is that the caliphate is more powerful than even the greatest civilizations.

According to Michael Danti, assistant professor of archaeology at Boston University, “This is the antithesis of cultural heritage.”

In attempting to destroy the remnants of ancient cultures, ISIS shows that it recognizes that these civ-

ilizations, and their legacies, are key to constructing national and cultural identities. Saddam Hussein attempted to forge a connection between Iraq and ancient Mesopotamia. A popular Iraqi cigarette brand was “Sumer,” for the ancient civilization of the same name.

“It was very hard to produce some kind of identity among these people because their nations were essentially artificially created after World War I by diplomats who didn’t really care about the ethnic divides that existed,” Frahm said.

By attacking ancient civilizations, ISIS aims to remove this common identity and replace it with its own extreme ideology.

ISIS also targets ancient sites like Palmyra for its cultural objects, which it considers “un-Islamic” and shirk, or the sin of practicing idolatry.

Azm explained that ISIS views Islam as a dulled diamond.

He elaborated, “They see themselves as a movement whose job it is to take this diamond, clean it up, get rid of all these impurities, and its true essence will shine through.”

To carry out their planned purification of Islam, ISIS attacks Shiite shrines and Christian churches. In 2014, ISIS blew up the Tomb of Jonah in Iraq, a site associated with the prophet of the Abrahamic tradition.

“What ISIS is aiming at is a purified radical Sunni version of Islam; any kind of veneration of someone other than Allah is anathema, even if it is someone who, like Jonah, is mentioned in the Quran,” said Frahm.

Stone added, “Members of ISIS believe they have a God-given responsibility to destroy all un-Islamic idolatry.”

The profits from selling cultural antiquities are an important source of funding for ISIS. Michael Danti calls the strategy a “dual exploitive doctrine.” Objects too large to move are destroyed and exploited for propaganda. Those objects that can be transported are looted and sold. Though

impossible to estimate how much money ISIS has made selling artifacts, the flow of money is an important and steady source of external funding.

The operations are highly organized. Danti said, “Actions are high impact, and they represent a very planned-out assault designed to enact cultural cleansing, to manipulate cultural identity, and to essentially erase cultural memory as part of establishing the caliphate.”

OTHER TERRORIST GROUPS have

inspired ISIS. In 2001, the Taliban destroyed the Buddhas of Bamiyan in Afghanistan. They forced prisoners to plant dynamite in every crevice of the giant Buddhas for three days. The Buddhas that had stood 150 feet tall for 1,700 years fell to the ground in an instant. The Taliban claimed the statues were idols, a violation of sharia law. Mullah Mohammed Omar, then the spiritual leader of the Taliban, had said, “How could we justify, at the time of the Last Judgment, having left these impurities on Afghan soil?”

TURKEY

Al-Raqqa

Homs

SYRIA

LEBANON

PALMYRA

Damascus

ISRAEL

IRAQ

JORDAN

Though ISIS claims to act in the name of religion, it is “not the driving force, but rather the justification for the atrocity,” Azm argued.

“You find some verse from the Quran that supports the atrocity you have committed, rather than the other way around.”

ISIS’s targeted attacks have exacerbated the damage to cultural heritage that already happens in war.

Danti explained, “You have all the destruction from combat, all the neglect, all the things that are asso39

“

T

he most common customers are ironically, history enthusiasts and art afficionados in the United States and Europe—representative of the Western societies which the Islamic State has pledged to

Alleged images of ISIS destroying Palmyra’s Baal Shamin Temple ciated with conflict, which we expect.

But on top of that, you have this other destruction.”

These factors, Danti believes, make the destruction in Syria and Iraq the worst cultural heritage disaster since World War II.

Just as the Monuments Men protected art from the Nazis eighty years ago, a new generation of scholars is combatting the destruction. Archaeologists and historians in Syria and Iraq have worked to remove objects at risk. And where it is impossible to save cultural objects, much of the work being done focuses on documenting what is being destroyed. The American Schools of Oriental Research (ASOR) documents cultural artifacts, a process that includes everything from working in Iraq and Syria to taking satellite images to conducting online research.

Danti explained this work includes “performing emergency conservation work on damaged mosques and churches, or sandbagging things like mosaics that cannot be evacuated from museums.”

International norms and practices protect cultural heritage under both international humanitarian law and the 1954 Hague Convention.

“If anybody allows cultural 40

property to be destroyed, they are breaking international humanitarian law,” said Stone. Although this is not a deterrent to non-state actors like ISIS, the legal consequences make documentation of cultural destruction essential for future trials.

Governments around the world can play a role in protecting cultural objects. Ryan believes the United States should help to protect cultural heritage around the world. He said, “We are trying to send a message to other countries and cultures that we respect your heritage, we respect your history, we respect your culture.”

The State Department’s anti-trafficking strategy relies on collaboration with other law enforcement agencies.

To help recover cultural objects, the U.S. government publishes emergency “red lists,” which detail objects at risk that might be trafficked from Iraq and Syria. The lists are sent to law enforcement officials, museums, and art collectors. The State Department also alerts countries like Turkey and Jordan to watch for objects passing through their borders.

Despite increased enforcement, cultural objects still find their way to customers around the world. A 2015 report by the Foundation for Defense

destroy.

of Democracies found that the most common customers are art collectors and history buffs in the U.S. and Europe, calling it ironic that they come from “the Western societies which the Islamic State has pledged to destroy.”

Yet, as Danti said, “There are not very many people out there saying ‘I want to buy something from the Islamic State.’” Cultural objects leave ISIS territory through smuggling networks that transport them throughout the world. ASOR hopes to raise public awareness so that people do not unwittingly fund ISIS with their purchases.

“We’re trying to make sure that the liquidation of Syria and Iraq’s cultural legacy is not contributing to the destruction,” Danti said. “It’s a horrible feedback loop.”

AS THE WAR PERSISTS, scholars know successes will be limited.

“To stop the destruction of cultural heritage in Syria and Iraq,” Azm said, “you need to stop the war.

Barrel bombs are going to continue dropping on museums, tunnels are [still] going to be dug, and ISIS from time to time will commit an atrocity.”

Khaled al-Asaad’s nephew remembered his uncle’s despair when ISIS seized Palmyra.

He told The Telegraph, “We knew they would not leave him alone. We used to stand together and watch the trenches and the barricades go up…he couldn’t stop his tears. He’d say they were punishing everything—even the stone.”

Until the conflict ends, brave people like Asaad will ensure that, despite the wishes of those who shatter ancient stone into dust, Syria’s cultural memory will remain.

”

“WE LIVE ON THE EDGE OF A RAZOR”

INSIDE PUTIN’S PRISONS

BY LINA VOLIN

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ON JA N U A RY 14 OF THIS YEAR, the non-governmen-

tal Russian news agency, Interfax, reported the passage of a ban on fenya, the traditional, curse-laden slang associated with Russian prisons.

The law targets pretrial detainees–– who constitute 20% of the prison population––and prohibits inmates from using “lewd, threatening, demeaning, or slanderous slang” to communicate with each other and with prison guards.

But fenya is not merely a random assortment of coarse expressions and foul language. As the language of camps and prisons, it carries powerful historical associations. Leonid Finkelstein, a prisoner in Stalinist Russia and later a reporter on Russian affairs, wrote extensively––and negatively–– on fenya’s origins and partial incorporation into standard Russian. In “The Russian Lexicon,” printed in 2001, Finkelstein traces fenya’s origins from a dialect used solely in prisons and evolution to one that gradually infiltrated the Russian language 42

during the mingling of classes in Lenin’s forced labor camps. Between 1917 and 1987, about one in every six Russian citizens served time in prison, allowing the use of fenya to trickle into the general population.

Fenya’s partial integration into the standard language is evident across social classes, with politicians publicly employing choice words derived from fenya. According to David Satter, a fellow at the Hudson Institute and the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, Russian President Vladimir Putin occasionally uses fenya himself.

Nonetheless, despite its widespread use at all levels of society, the Russian government remains firmly committed to purging the language from prisons.

However, the new law’s effect is more symbolic than tangible.

“I think it’s just a way of giving the administration one more tool for controlling the inmates,” Satter said.

“I don’t think there’s a serious possi-

bility that they can eliminate prison slang. They won’t eliminate it in their vocabulary; it’s already in the culture.”

Considered in context, the fenya ban is part of a larger constellation of human rights challenges facing Russia, both inside and outside its prisons. Recent government crackdowns, including restrictions on advocacy organizations and media outlets, have weakened Russia’s civil society and narrowed the paths to reform.

A recent bill that human rights activists have labeled “the sadists’ law” is a clear example of recent efforts to expand government control. The bill, which passed the State Duma (the lower house of Russia’s Parliament) in 2015 and awaits further votes, would allow prison guards to use more severe punishments on inmates, such as electroshock weapons. Additionally, guards would be granted legal immunity in cases where inmates suffer injuries from “justifiable” violence and would have a full

24 hours to report a prisoner’s death.

Satter sees the proposed law as just another way for the government to affirm its supreme authority.

“They’re untying the hands of the prisons guards,” he said, “which is not to say they weren’t untied anyway.”

The so-called “sadists’ law” is a symptom of acrimonious guardinmate relations in prisons across Russia. In an interview with The Politic, Russian human rights journalist Oksana Trufanova identified prisonguard behavior as one of the major obstacles to reform.

“Most of [the staff] do not believe in better days and in justice,” she said.

“They put themselves above the law and can easily choose to violate it.”

Benedicte Berner, Chair of the Civil Rights Defenders, an international human rights organization based in Sweden, also pointed to the problem of guard impunity.

“The two core problems with the prison system are the violence within the prison and the impunity of the police and the guards when it comes to this violence,” she said. “This is because there is no independent judiciary in Russia. The appointment, promotion, and dismissal of judges is all subject to the authorities, which undermines investigation and the right to a fair trial.”

The toxic relationship between guards and inmates and the former’s relative impunity obstruct potential reforms.

“Employees are sabotaging all the government’s good reforms,” Trufanova explained. “The reforms in our country are often good, but under these conditions they cannot be implemented.”

In addition to poor relations between the prison staff and prisoners, the physical conditions of Russian prisons are often inhumane.

A 2002 report by Andrew Coyle, Director of the International Centre for Prison Studies, describes rooms meant to hold 20 prisoners that instead overflow with 40 three-ti-

er bunk beds. The rooms are so overcrowded that the inmates have to sleep in shifts. According to Valery Sergeev, Deputy Director of the Moscow Center for Prison Reform, this kind of overcrowding occurs in over 50% of pretrial detention centers.

In an interview with The Politic, Andrei Babushkin, Director of the Committee for Civil Rights in Russia and a member of Putin’s Presidential Human Rights Council, noted some main human rights issues in the penal system. He mentioned the poor physical conditions and the lack of effective medical treatment and blamed the excessively long holding periods as the reason for the overcrowding in pretrial detention centers.

Beyond the issues created and exacerbated by poor living conditions, prisons are often the sites of institutionalized human rights abuses. As Babushkin described, there is a “lack of effective mechanisms to check allegations of torture and other grave violations.” Indeed, pretrial detention

centers are notorious for fostering environments in which physical abuse by prison personnel is allowed to thrive. Widespread allegations of torture have been the focus of human rights reports issued by international organizations such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, which have both highlighted a case of the alleged torture of 12 prisoners in 2014. The Russian authorities refused to investigate these allegations.

However, this is not a singular case. Sergeev, for instance, cited another recent case at a pretrial detention center in Moscow. When torture allegations surfaced there, the prison service replaced the center’s director without admitting any beatings had occurred.

“They just silently changed the leadership of this prison,” he said.

These prison abuses reflect a declining state of human rights across Russia. Michael Posner, Co-Director of NYU’s Center of Business and Human Rights and former U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy,

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Human Rights, and Labor, discussed this trend in greater detail.

“There has been a cracking-down in a way we haven’t seen for a long time,” he said. “Human rights organizations shut down, foreign funding cut, journalists and bloggers attacked...it is a pretty grim environment right now, and prison issues are just a piece of it.”

Berner, who studies the intersection of media and democracy at the Institut d’études politiques (Sciences Po) in Paris, sees this crackdown on freedoms in the increasing restrictions placed on the media. She referenced several recent laws, such as the Undesirable Organizations Law (2015) and the Foreign Agents Law (2012), that restrict the few remaining independent media outlets. One such law, called the extremism law, has been particularly successful in shutting down independent media outlets because of the government’s propensity to broadly interpret the law’s vague definition of “extremist views.”

Berner also mentioned the law on treason.

“Again, this is a very vague law, which is a specialty of Russia,” she said. “[With] extremely vague laws...they can put anything into the basket.”

“Putin has realized that civil society in Russia is able to organize civil demonstrations, so a number of laws are being adopted that clean the system from all civil society influence,” she says. “Since 2012, we’ve seen a will of the Kremlin to clear the road from all impact of civil society.”

Posner shared this concern about the deterioration of civil society and the pernicious effects of human rights abuses targeted at advocacy organizations.

“On the domestic scene, there’s a tightening of the noose around civil society, with tremendous draconian restrictions on groups that are in any way critical of the government,” he says. “There is a sense of diminished possibilities for anybody to be opening a civil society organization 44

that gets anywhere near touching on these sensitive ideas.”

These civil society groups are traditionally the most effective agents of change. However, NGOs and public oversight committees, which have often led progressive efforts on prison issues, are increasingly hampered by government restrictions.

Sergeev spoke about the role his NGO, the Moscow Center of Prison Reform, has assumed in the last few years as it navigates these draconian restrictions.

to preserve a cordial relationship with prison officials often limits its ability to advocate for change.

“We do not try to expose some human rights violations we see in these particular prisons because if we raise concerns publicly, our activities and our permission to visit these prisons will be stopped,” he said. “Of course, we try to solve some of our concerns with the particular prison administration that we visit just from the inside, and sometimes it works.”

“We try to do our small work of helping the prisoners, and we need to be accepted by the prison administration,” he said, adding that the organization avoids conflict with the Russian authorities. The group’s need

In addition to traditional NGOs, public oversight committees also work to address these problems. The groups, which are region-based commissions, have human rights protection in their charter and focus

on improving prison conditions.

Babushkin said his role as a member of one such committee includes drawing up reports, making recommendations, and controlling the execution of these recommendations.

Trufanova, also a member of a public oversight committee, pointed to the immediate results of prison visits by members. For example, she said a visit by a member to a neglected, severely ill prisoner enabled the prisoner to be transferred directly to a hospital.

“Or we go to a jail, and there

we see a beaten prisoner— his back and legs covered with bruises and abrasions,” she explained in another example. “It happens sometimes that the officers beat him just for fun. We photograph his bruises, document

the situation, and give a statement to the police after our visit.”

The public oversight committee’s actions often endanger its members, many of whom are the target of repeated threats.

“We’re actually saving lives.

Because of this, we ourselves are sometimes in danger,” Trufanova said.

“We live on the edge of a razor.”

Trufanova also stressed the importance of the public oversight committees in stemming human rights abuses.

“If public monitoring commissions are not in Russia, then we are back in the USSR,” she said. “Our prisons are only one step removed from the gulag system.”

Ultimately, Satter argues that

these recent abuses fit clearly within the trajectory of Russian history, noting the deterioration of human rights in the early 2000s when Putin succeeded Yeltsin.

“After Putin came to power, the criminal ascendency was replaced to some extent by the ascendency of the government bureaucracy, which even under Yeltsin had shown a tendency to amalgamate with the criminal world,” he said. “That criminal KBG, FSB, bureaucratic ruling group continues to dominate the country to this day, and it has taken steady measures to eliminate the possibilities of free

expression, political choice, and normal elections.”

The pernicious effects of this historical inheritance have been exacerbated by Putin’s increasing clash with and isolation from the global community. In many ways, the recent human rights crackdowns can be viewed as a grasp for strength by Putin in a moment of political weakness.

While the sustainability of this approach is uncertain, the human toll is clear. Russian prison conditions are deteriorating, most recently manifested by the fenya ban, and the general state of human rights is declining.

As the mechanisms of civil society become threatened by the law, any hopes of reform become increasingly dim.

PHOTOS COURTESY OF OKSANA TRUFANOVA AND VALERIA PRIHODKINA, BOTH PUBLIC OVERSIGHT COMMITTEE MEMBERS.

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“ You will have

a different future; you are the falcon.

46

�

the ROYAL

ENVIRONMENTALIST An Interview with Sheikh Abdul Aziz bin Ali al Nuaimi, “The Green Sheikh”

BY SARAH DONILON AND JACEK OLESZCZUK

Oil exports make up 30 percent of the UAE’s total GDP, so how can the UAE balance its economic prosperity with environmental consciousness?

In the UAE now, the diversification of the economy is a paradigm shift. In the early 70s, the main [resources] were oil and gas. Now, the UAE is not dependent on oil and gas; it is dependent on renewable energy from the sun, from nuclear power, from waste. So, the leaders are preparing the government for this diversification. The leaders of the UAE—they understand that in the future, people will

not just be relying on oil. And they’re preparing: when the last drop of oil will be exported, what’s next? And we have a culture beyond oil. So they are designing, investing new people with innovation and a new concept of life without energy. That could take another 30 years, 50 years. We don’t know.

And now the oil prices have gone down, so until 2020 there will be 7 percent renewables. In 2030 there will be 15 percent, and in 2050 there could be 55 to 60 percent in the UAE. And the UAE is a model catalyzing other states like Qatar, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia. They feel jealous, and they want to be better or different. So this is a good move.

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So, you’re called the “Green Sheikh.” Are you the only green sheikh, and to what extent do you face opposition or support in the UAE? I was a sheikh from a royal family. I had a passion not to change the world but to change myself and my community. So I mixed the sheikh and the environment, and I became the Green Sheikh. The key is to open hearts and people’s minds.

The Green Sheikh [is inspired by] my father and my godfather. They were hunters. They didn’t use rifles or guns to hit animals. No, they used falcons. So I told my dad, ‘Give me one falcon, so I can be like you.’ And he said, ‘Don’t be a copy. Create a hobby.

You will have a different future; you are the falcon.’

In 2006, the UAE had the highest ecological footprint per capita of any country in the world. In response, the government began the Ecological Footprint Initiative, and the footprint has since dropped.

Are attitudes towards environmental protection changing? What remains to be done?

Yes, attitudes are changing on different levels. The government invests in renewable energy. [We should also] encourage the private sector to support new technologies, innovations and entrepreneurs. And on the other side, the public attitude is changing through schools and awards. They give the best award for young entrepreneurs in environment and for the best practices.

So would you advocate rather to act locally?

Locally and globally. Now I’m starting a new initiative called Blue Youth. We are connecting young people to heaven and to earth. Where does water come from? The sky. We need to connect young people to heaven and to God. This land does not belong to me, it belongs to Him. Water connects everyone. When you 48

look at the planet, you see more blue than green. So the water inside is, and around us, and above us—that’s the blue.

We are connecting people from different faiths on the spiritual side.

We are using water to establish a foundation. The Christians have baptism.

The Jewish do something similar for the spiritual state. And, as Muslims, we wash with water five times a day—it’s a combination of the physical and the spiritual. In the Hindu tradition, they go to rivers, or waterfalls, or oceans, and they do their own ceremony.

Water is priceless and precious, and it is holy. We put in people’s conscience that water is not just a medium, it is a spirit, and it has a value—it’s life.

Does this partnership and connection extend to working with other oil producers in the region, not just the UAE? Yes, we want to link with Jordan and Sudan. When I talk about water, I don’t just talk about the water of my neighbors. No, I talk about water in Canada, which I care about because it’s connected to me. [I care about] water in Antarctica because the ice cap is melting. These are the challenges we are facing, and that’s why we’re initiating Blue Youth for young people, because tomorrow they will be the leaders, the policymakers, the businessmen, the intellectuals, the doctors. So they have to understand the platform we connect with water.

It’s symbolic, a global voice. And now we want to go to COP 22 in Morocco to make that voice of a Blue Youth, and I will be there.

So you made the switch from working in the petroleum industry to becoming an environmental advocate. What influenced your decision?

What I saw. What I lived. I worked for an oil and gas company.

And I really felt myself harming other people. My background is in chemical engineering, which is linked with

the environment directly. So I said, ‘If I have harmed people, I must now protect people.’ So I transformed.

In 1996, I changed. I left the oil and gas company and opened up the Environmental Society as a non-profit organization to bring awareness among the people in the UAE about the importance of a good environment.

What advice would you give to students?

They have to focus on three things. First, education. They have to focus and work hard. Second, do volunteering as much as possible, within the university or outside the university, if possible abroad. You have to go outside of your comfort zone. It will expand your knowledge, it will expand your experience and you will also come to appreciate and respect other cultures. And third, keep your physical training sharp and exercise because exercise will help you to perform your wellbeing, your knowledge and your life pressure.

There is a lot of stress and pressure in life and one of the best reliefs is exercise.

And the final one is spiritual. If you are a Muslim, be a good Muslim.

If you are Jewish, be a good Jew. If you are Christian, be a good Christian. Go to the church. Go to the temple. Go to the mosque. Connect to God because spiritual growth is very powerful.

You need the three, and the fourth is hidden. It’s between you and God. Nobody can know. People will see you study, people will see you volunteering and in the gym. But the fourth—nobody will see you. If you focus on those four, you will be an ordinary person but your actions will be extraordinary. That’s what we call a champion.

Full interview available at thepolitic.org

ONLINE PREVIEW

The New Face of Immigrant America: Welcome to Jackson Heights Between Laguardia Airport and Citi Field thrives the most diverse neighborhood in America. In just half a square mile, 167 languages intermingle as thousands of people pray, eat, work, and live out their day to day. This is Jackson Heights. Sanoja Bhaumik (‘19) describes the new documentary that tells its story.

Looking Back and Forward: An Interview with Ali Velshi The Big Short might have provoked a renewed interest in the 2008 financial meltdown among the ordinary American, but Ali Velshi, former Chief Business Correspondent for CNN and host of Al Jazeera America’s “Real Money with Ali Velshi,” has analyzed the crisis and its impacts for almost a decade. Pranav Bhandarkar (’18) shares Velshi’s thoughts about the economy, journalism, and the 2016 presidential election in this insightful interview.

WANT TO GET INVOLVED? email us at: thepolitic@yale.edu 49

Click in and Learn Yale faculty in international and area studies are interviewed about their current research.

New webisodes air each Wednesday at noon

macmillanreport.yale.edu

The MacMillan Report is made possible through funding from the Whitney and Betty MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies at Yale.

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