The Yale Globalist: Control

CONTROL SPRING 2020 | VOLUME 20 | ISSUE 3

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Editors in Chief Vy Tran Mercy Idindilli Chair Abigail Grimes Managing Editors Keigo Nishio Clare Morneau Ariq Hatibie Shreeya Singh Rada Pavlova

In This Issue

SPRING 2020 | VOLUME 20 | ISSUE 3 | CONTROL

Copy Editors Sean Callahan Kara Liu Marlika Marceau Business Director Karen Lu Business Team Julia Brown Phoebe Campbell Mary Chen Xiaoke Luo Shirley Shi Creative Director Vera Villanueva Production & Design Editors Isabella Canava Alexandra Galloway Tessa Mapplebeck Find us online: www.tyglobalist.org @yaleglobalist tyglobalist@gmail.com Cover photo by: Karen Lu (Zhujiajiao, Shanghai, China) 2

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LETTER FROM THE EDITORS

India’s Foundation in the Balance

BY NICK MCGOWAN Dear Globalist readers,

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COCA-COLA IN CHINA

How Big Corporations Control National Health Systems

BY JULIA LEVI

Chief Online Editor Nicole Zhen Online Editors Yilin Chen Megan He Byron Ma Martina Amate Perez

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MODI & SECULARISM

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EXCEPTIONALLY PROMISING STUDENTS A Look at Education Programs in Prisons

BY SARAH MCKINNIS

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FOREIGN INTERFERENCE IN VENEZUELA The Ethics and Practicality

BY MAO SHIOTSU

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PLACE, NATIONS, GENERATIONS, BEINGS Indigenous Art at the YUAG

BY YILIN CHEN

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FIVE DEMANDS, TWO SYSTEMS, ONE HONG KONG The Story Behind the 2019-20 Protests

BY FRANK LUKENS

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THE DRAWBACKS OF EXERTING CONTROL IN OUR PERSONAL LIFE The Pursuit of Optimality

BY RADA PAVLOVA

For this issue, we wanted to toy with the word ‘control.’ Who has control? Why do they have it? What does this mean at the individual level compared to the international level? What happens when we are dissatisfied with those who are in control and we want our power back?

In our first issue of the new year, we highlight activists and events around the world that have challenged those in control. Mao Shiotsu ’23 analyzes the amount of control that Nicolas Maduro, Juan Guaido, and the international community have on Venezuela.

Nick McGowan ’23 writes about the Modi administration’s attempt to control who can be in India and who cannot. Julia Levi ’23 sheds light on Coca Cola’s control over China’s nutritional health. Yilin Chen ’23 reflects on Indigenous artists reclaiming control and space in the Yale University Art Gallery. Sarah McKinnis ’22 writes about who controls the education of those affected by the US prison complex.

We invite our readers to consider who or what has control over various aspects of our lives and how this influences the way we go about life. In the spirit of being conscious of who has control in our lives, we encourage our US-based readers to vote at all levels they can during this election season. Register and vote in your states at https://www. eac.gov/voters/register-and-votein-your-state.

Warmly, Vy, Mercy, & Abigail

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Coca-Cola in China How Big Corporations Control National Health Systems

BY JULIA LEVI

In 2015, the New York Times revealed Coca-Cola’s attempt to influence public health through partnerships with nutrition researchers in an article titled “CocaCola Funds Scientists Who Shift Blame for Obesity Away from Bad Diets.” The soda company needed a way to respond to and protect themselves from people’s increasing awareness of health, especially city wide movements to regulate food and tax sugary drinks. In order to keep their profits, maintain their place in the American economy, and increase sales of their products, Coca-Cola partnered with the founders of the Global Energy Balance Network (GEBN), a United States-based nonprofit organization. The GEBN was founded in 2014 by two long-time public health researchers: Dr. Steven N. Blair of the University of South Carolina and Gregory A. Hand of West Virginia University. Supported by Coca-Cola, they promoted that exercise alone, not the quality of food, determines health. The GEBN was disbanded in 2015 after their partnership with Coke was brought to the open. Coca-Cola serves as the emblematic example of big soda and fast food chain companies staking their claim over a country’s people through deceptive marketing strategies that aim at refuting

what they are being attacked for–causing obesity and illness.

While large corporations’ deep influence on public health and policy may come as a surprise, this episode is only one of the many instances in which CocaCola (and other big firms) directs research and government in order to maintain a dominant position in the market. CocaCola may have failed in the United States, but similar tactics have been going on in China for the past 20 years. As the first corporation to enter China in 1978 after the country’s declaration of the Open Door Policy, Coca-Cola’s relationship with the Chinese government is strong and distinct. Pepsi took over the USSR’s soda market in 1972, and Coca-Cola’s mission was to surpass its competitor by establishing itself in China. In December 1978, Coca-Cola Chairman J. Paul Austin introduced his product to China through Peter Lee, a chemical engineer who negotiated with the China Oil and Foodstuffs Corporation to allow beverage sales in tourist shops and hotels. Both Coca-Cola and China benefited: CocaCola could expand sales globally while China gained foreign exchange and technology. From then on, despite backlash in the early 80’s to reject anything that could

Shelves lined with coca cola bottles in a Chinese grocery store IMAGE: WIKIMEDIA COMMONS TH E YAL E GLOBA LIS T 4

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IMAGE: FLICKR

Beijing Olympics Coca-Cola Ad associating exercise with their beverage

Big corporations want to stay in business, and in a world where health research and awareness increases each year, they will do whatever it takes to keep their profits and remain desirable. harm the domestic market, Coca-Cola’s relationship with the Chinese government and its influence in the country only grew.

It continues to be prominent today, with China being the soda company’s third largest market.

Coca-Cola’s impact on China goes beyond its product placement, close relationship to the government, and advertising. Through behind-the-scenes funding, it has actually affected health policy in the country. To respond to the growing obesity crisis, Coca-Cola has been using their tight connections with the Chinese branch of the International Life Sciences Institute (ILSI) to determine how the government directs people in addressing their health. The ILSI, a global nonprofit organization, was founded in the United States in 1978 by Coca-Cola’s senior vice president and food technology specialist, Alex Malaspina. When Coca-Cola entered the Chinese market, ILSI-China, as a non-profit, non-governmental organization, became an appealing way for a country who was short on money for public health exploration to conduct nutrition research. ILSI’s Chinese branch, one of the company’s 17 offshoots, became a way for China to globalize and positively influence state policy. While ILSI has other branches in emerging market countries, China is a special case because the ILSI has the most direct relationship with the government and thus determines policy from inside. But if ILSI China is a way to research and enhance the public’s nutrition, examining its funders leads us to 6

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question what exactly is going on behind the scenes. Founded by Coca-Cola representatives, this non-profit organization is also funded by similar fast food and classically unhealthy corporations like Nestle and McDonald’s.

Around 2004, ILSI-China began promoting physical activity as the central preventative measure against obesity. This aligned with Coca-Cola’s support for an active lifestyle as the determiner for health and their claim that the beverage is part of a healthy diet. Through several years of Coca-Cola influencing conferences where different representatives from the company were present, ILSI-China and Coca-Cola began creating exercise-based groups to solve the obesity problem.

Happy 10 Minutes, a national operation to have ten-minute school day exercise breaks, spread in 2006 and was supported

by Coca-Cola, eventually becoming a healthy lifestyle campaign backed by the Ministry of Health. In 2012, Coca-Cola was also one of the founding partners of Exercise Is Medicine, a project to promote exercise as a medical treatment for obesity.

In the years leading up to 2015, diet was discussed in ILSI-China conferences in ways that supported large food corporations. Susan Greenhalgh, a research professor on Chinese society at Harvard, found information from meetings in which Coca-Cola claimed that the ingredients in their sugary drinks were beneficial. In her article “Making China Safe for Coke: How Coca-Cola Shaped Obesity Science and Policy in China,”

Greenhalgh mentions a 2006 conference in which Zhang Huaying, a member of Coca-Cola’s Beverage Institute Health and Wellness, claimed that the soda is a good source of water.

Coca-Cola’s “Coup in China,” as a 2008 New York Times article calls it, is only one instance of the control exerted by major food corporations over scientific research and government policy. We can see similar cases of this in the United States, where researchers have recently uncovered more and more information on the links between “big soda” and other major food companies and nutrition studies. Marion Nestle of the Department of Nutrition, Food Studies, and Public Health at New York University writes that she “identified 76 industry-funded studies” in her 2015 article “Corporate Funding of Food and Nutrition Research: Science or Marketing?” Seventy of these studies are in the “funder’s interest,” backed by sponsorship from major corporations. She brings in a 2015 study about the effects of cocoa flavanols on blood pressure and cardiovascular health, which

was funded by Mars, Inc. (the company behind M&Ms). In a 2015 New York Times article, Mars released an advertisement stating that “Cocoa Flavanols lower blood pressure and increase blood vessel function in healthy people,” even though in reality, cocoa flavanols are broken down in the process of making candy.

But is it necessarily bad for corporations to be funding research? In response, Nestle responded: “It is okay for them to fund research, but it is not okay to engage independent scientists in marketing research disguised as science.” With regard to corporations interested in supporting basic science, Nestle said, “They should set up a fund run by an independent third party and never have anything further to do with the research until it is published. Otherwise, the influence is for marketing purposes.”

And what about the relationship between major corporations and government policy? Who exactly is in control over how people act in a country?

According to John Kane, a visiting professor in the Political Science department

at Yale, “The biggest winners in modern economic globalization, produced by intentional diminishing of international regulation, have undoubtedly been giant corporations, either transnational or multinational.” This is because they have “immense resources and [are] able to maneuver across various jurisdictions to evade the regulatory controls of any particular state” but are still considered “sources of investment and employment.” Professor Kane called Coca-Cola in China a “special case:” the government has a lot of power, but Coca-Cola has been in China for forty years now and has become the “prestigious symbol of modernity” in the country. However, its influence isn’t necessarily a political threat; it just plays the “traditional big corporation game” through promoting exercise as the determinant of health.

The Chinese government is simply “playing along with Coke” rather than resisting or submitting to it Professor Kane said.

If Coca-Cola is going to directly fund nutrition research in China through the ILSI, they should either remove their

self-promoting interests from the picture, or start to create and sell healthy products to the public. Coca-Cola’s close link to the government puts the public in danger down the line if the soda company continues to deceive the public through incomplete truths about what can help tame obesity (exercise alone will not fix anything). Unfortunately, even in the United States, where Coca-Cola’s influence on health research has been thwarted, food product marketing continues to use elements of nutrition to control and affect the public, causing them to buy the good.

Big corporations want to stay in business, and in a world where health research and awareness increases each year, they will do whatever it takes to keep their profits and remain desirable.

Julia Levi is a first-year in Benjamin Franklin College. She can be contacted at julia.levi@yale.edu.

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Foreign Interference in Venezuela: The Ethics and Practicality

BY MAO SHIOTSU

“A minimum wage won’t give you enough to buy a kilogram of meat, let alone medicine,” says Paola Zerpa, a Venezuelan national studying engineering at the University of Texas. Human Rights Watch reports that hyperinflation has left around 80 percent of the population food insecure. But rising up against the inept Maduro regime is dangerous—the colectivos, an armed government force, harshly crack down on protests. Since 2014, over three million Venezuelans have fled this reality—almost ten percent of the country’s population.

To make matters worse, it’s not clear who the president is. Is it Nicolás Maduro, Hugo Chávez’s socialist successor, or Juan Guaidó, the relatively new face from the progressive Voluntad Popular party? Government opposition parties boycotted the May 2018 Venezuelan presidential election, accusing Maduro of bringing the election forward to his advantage and persecuting political opponents. With only about 30 percent of eligible voters having voted, as reported by BBC, Maduro won a second term of presidency. The opposition rejected this outcome. In January of last year, Guaidó, speaker of the National Assembly, claimed himself the rightful interim president of Venezuela. There have seemingly been two presidents ever since.

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Nicolás Maduro assuming office, 2013 IMAGE: WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

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president, but it quickly faded and nothing really changed,” Zerpa says. Indeed, the self-declared interim president has failed to produce significant results in the past year. Power still lies with Maduro and his loyalists occupying government, a truth laid painstakingly bare in February last year when Guaidó’s plans to deliver supplies to the public were barred by Maduro, and also three months later when Guaidó’s coup attempt failed.

Aware of this power imbalance, Guaidó has turned to the international community for help— most notably the US, one of fifty countries recognizing his government as legitimate. In the World Economic Forum held earlier this year, Guaidó, speaking amongst the likes of Angela Merkel and Greta Thunberg, asserted, “Por eso estoy aquí hoy. Para que ningunos de ustedes deje a Venezuela fuera.

(That’s why I’m here today. So that none of you leave Venezuela out).”

International intervention in Venezuela so far has mainly manifested in the form of economic sanctions levied by the US, as well as targeted sanctions against Maduro’s government officials by some EU states. Earlier this month, President Trump met with Guaidó at the White House, where he “pledged more action to ramp up pressure” on Maduro, as reported by CNN. What these “action(s)” entail is not clear. Perhaps harsher sanctions, or even military aid. But is the US’s increased interference truly beneficial to Venezuela? Should the US—and other states—interfere less? More? Should they at all?

In considering what foreign intervention should look like, one could examine whether some states have a moral responsibility to help others. Perhaps Spain, as Venezuela’s conqueror, has some responsibility to aid Venezuela. In Why Nations Fail: The

Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty, Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson argue that the reason for the current political and social turmoil in many Latin American states lies in their colonial history.

Spanish conquistadors followed a specific method of colonization: capture the indigenous leader, install a Spaniard in their place, then extract wealth and labor from indigenous populations. This is the gist of the encomienda system. There were other similar systems in Latin America, such as the mita and repartimiento. For around three centuries, the Spanish gained wealth through these structures at the expense of the native population.

Acemoglu and Robinson claim that these oppressive systems laid the roots for the authoritarian governments that persist in Latin American countries today, going so far as to claim that the Spanish “stamped out the possibility of economic growth” in the places they colonized. “Extractive” institutions are defined as those where power is concentrated in the hands of a select few and equity and security are not ensured by the government, effectively preventing overall growth of the country. On the other hand, “inclusive” institutions create flourishing societies by securing economic competition and personal freedoms, therefore creating incentives for individuals to pursue innovation and education.

But Dr. Cristina Soriano, Associate Professor of History at Villanova University whose research focuses on revolutions and society in colonial Venezuela and Latin America, warns that we cannot be too quick to point fingers. Dr. Soriano cautions that to push responsibility only on the Spanish “without acknowledging the crucial participation” of other imperial actors during the 20th century —when

Juan Guaidó at the World Economic Forum, January 2020

IMAGE: WORLD ECONOMIC FORUM / CIARAN MCCRICKARD

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Venezuela became an oil-producing country— “seems a little simplistic and shortsighted.” Indeed, claiming that all colonial powers are responsible for the state of their previous colonies does seem overly simplified. After all, the current condition of every country can be traced back to a part of its history.

Then perhaps foreign countries have a different moral responsibility to provide aid: goodwill. But the other, sinister side of this coin becomes obvious when considering why the US is so keen on asserting its support for the liberal Guaidó: imperial interests. The superpower’s interference in overthrowing governments in Latin America, or, its “backyard,” as former Secretary of State John Kerry put it, followed by the installation of US-friendly regimes is a repeating pattern—take Panama and Bolivia. Thus, it seems that the US’s support for Guaidó is merely a grab for power over its “backyard,” disguised as a fight for justice for the Venezuelan people. According to Dr. Alejandro Velasco, Associate Professor of History at NYU specializing in Venezuelan history, and Editor in Chief of NACLA (North American Congress on Latin America)’s news site, Venezuela has even become a “mini-Cuba,” a “useful domestic political tool” for US governments to gain domestic votes. These veiled motivations further complicate the question of how foreign states should provide aid.

Dr. Velasco proposes an intriguing approach: differentiating between international “intervention” and “engagement.” “Intervention” connotes foreign states picking sides to further their own interests. It’s what’s currently happening—the US and many EU states support Guaidó. Russia, China, and Cuba support Maduro. This is counterproductive. US economic sanctions may have pressured Maduro, but they’ve also arguably worsened living conditions for citizens by further damaging the economy.

Instead, foreign powers must “engage” in the crisis.

They must aid Venezuela, not by promoting what they arrogantly believe the country needs, but by providing support to advance the public’s best interests. They must prioritize Venezuela’s autonomy.

The international community must also recognize the Venezuelan population’s opinions on foreign interference. Professor Sebastian Díaz, Venezuelan professor of Spanish at Yale, comments that the Venezuelan population’s views split largely into two. One group believes that a democratic and peaceful election is the best way to strip Maduro of power, and therefore does not want international help, fearing that it will bring unnecessary blood-

shed. The other group regards democratic elections as unrealistic, and trusts that the only way to overthrow the dictatorship is through violence backed by foreign countries. Paola claims that it will require “the Venezuelan people and military unifying to drive out those currently in power and have democratic elections.”

Thus, the general consensus is that for Venezuela to recover from the crisis and for the Venezuelan public to feel safe in their own country, Maduro’s dictatorship needs to end. The most bloodless avenue seems to be a peaceful handover of power through democratic elections. The belief that this is unrealistic is reasonable judging from past Venezuelan elections, for example in May 2018 when opposition parties boycotted the election. But as Dr. Velasco asserts, perhaps it’s not about whether it’s realistic, but “whether it’s necessary.”

Many of the past US military intrusion in Latin American politics have failed spectacularly in creating long-term stable democracies. Thus, military intervention is out of the question when considering Venezuela’s best interests. What’s necessary seems to be for the Venezuelan population to collectively elect a new president, and for Maduro to peacefully hand over power to the newly elected government.

Perhaps this is where the international community can step in. They could apply smart pressure to ensure that Maduro, should he lose the election, steps down without creating trouble. This should be done not through arbitrary sanctions and promises of help that stem from imperial incentives, but through policies targeted towards securing Venezuela’s long-term stability, such as multilateral election monitoring. But what if Maduro wins the election?

This outcome is plausible—due to the spiraling economy, he has announced the reintroduction of liberalizing policies, such as securing private property. Perhaps these will stabilize Venezuela’s economy and allow Maduro to continue to hold on to power. In that case, as long as the elections were held democratically, foreign powers must not interfere. Otherwise, Venezuela will become yet another battling ground for the world’s imperial actors.

These veiled motivations further complicate the question of how foreign states should provide aid.

Mao Shiotsu is a first-year in Jonathan Edwards College studying Global Affairs and Latin American Studies. She can be contacted at mao.shiotsu@yale.edu.

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FIVE DEMANDS, TWO SYSTEMS, ONE HONG KONG:

The Story Behind the 2019-20 Protests

Some protestors have romanticized Hong Kong’s British past and have taken its colonial flag to the streets. One protestor displays a sign stating, “Sino-British Joint Declaration breached by CCP!” The 1984 declaration established the principle of One County, Two Systems.

BY FRANK LUKENS

Hongkongers are searching for what they were promised when the Basic Law was put into effect twenty-two years ago—the freedom to be Hongkongers neither in Britian nor in China, but in Hong Kong.

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bulent time in its history. Furthermore, the British authored the Hong Kong Constitution, known as the Basic Law, which outlines the “One Country, Two Systems” policy that has governed Hong Kong since 1997, when the city was handed over—as if it were a prize—from Britain to China. According to Davis, the “One Country, Two Systems” structure gives Hong Kong the western, capitalistic institutions—including the freedom of assembly— introduced during colonial rule that neighboring, socialist People’s Republic of China does not give to its citizens.

It is Hong Kong’s unique identity fostered over nearly two centuries that is currently at stake.

According to Yale sophomore Jamie Chan, also a Hong Kong native, much of the controversy behind the ongoing protests stems from an extradition bill proposed last February by the Hong Kong government. This bill would permit the transfer of criminal fugitives who are wanted in mainland China, which is currently not included in the extradition law set up after British rule. Chan notes that “[the potential for China to have extradition privileges] specifically raises political concerns, because China is known for abducting people who have diverging political views from the government,” mentioning a controversy in 2015 when Hong Kong booksellers disappeared in mainland China for selling banned books there.

However, both Chan and Davis tell the Globalist that the heavily youth-driven protests have moved beyond simply wanting to withdraw the extradition bill and toward a greater discussion of Hong Kong’s identity and what it means to be a “Hongkonger.”

Pointing to a black sticker on the back of her phone case, Chan reads me what is printed in bold, white Chinese characters and capitalized English words:

“FREE HONG KONG—REVOLUTION NOW.” This cry for freedom is manifested in Five Demands, according to Davis: “(1) Complete withdrawal of the extradition bill, (2) Re-characterization of the protests to not be riots, (3) Exoneration of arrested protesters, (4) An independent investigation into police brutality, and (5) Universal suffrage.”

Considering the intensifying backlash against a potential increase in Chinese control over Hong Kong, full sovereignty from the People’s Republic of China is not on the list of Five Demands. “For the most part, independence is not something people are searching for. People want democracy, liberalism, and human rights fulfilled,” Davis tells the Globalist. “No one is asking for something that is not already promised.” Thus, what is at stake in Hong Kong’s protests is not necessarily independence

IMAGE: WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

It has not been an easy year for Hong Kong. Since March 2019, protestors have covered the streets as police officers fired tear gas at them. Thousands of demonstrators have been injured, and thousands more arrested. As the entire world focused on the chaos ensuing in Hong Kong, Hongkongers became even more focused on seeking what they truly want—democracy, liberalism, and human rights.

What began as a protest in reaction to a controversial bill evolved into a movement that has strengthened Hongkongers’ desire for freedom in their unique home with a special identity.

In order to understand what has led to the ongoing protests, it’s important to illustrate Hong Kong’s colonial past. Yale senior Hana Davis, a Hong Kong native, underscored the importance of history to what is currently happening in her beloved home. “Hong Kong was given as a concession to the United Kingdom in 1842 after the Opium War, followed by the 99-year lease of surrounding territory in 1898,” Davis tells the Globalist, giving credit to the U.K. for building up a fishing village into the skyscraper-filled, global trading hub that Hong Kong is today.

Along with their language, the British brought human rights, liberalism, and civic freedoms that Hong Kong cherishes, especially through this tur-

IMAGE: WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

from a colonial ruler, as most postcolonial histories have proceeded. Rather, Hongkongers are searching for what they were promised when the Basic Law was put into effect twenty-two years ago—the freedom to be Hongkongers neither in Britain nor in China, but in Hong Kong.

Frank Lukens is a sophomore in Ezra Stiles College studying History. He can be contacted at frank.lukens@yale.edu.

One of the mottos used in the 2019-20 Hong Kong protests. The demands of this motto—freedom and revolution—are boldly printed in black and white.

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IMAGE: WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

Protest artwork in Delhi.

Modi & Secularism:

India’s Foundation in the Balance

BY NICK MCGOWAN, STAFF WRITER

From the moment results came out on May 16, 2014, people knew the day would go down in history: for the first time in thirty years, a single Indian political party had won enough votes to govern the country without the support of any coalition partners. The Guardian proclaimed, “Narendra Modi’s landslide victory shatters Congress’ grip on India,” while the BBC said that Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) had “risen like a phoenix from the depths of despair.” However, the day that allowed the BJP to form one of the largest coalition governments in living memory will also be seen by critics as the beginning of the end for one of India’s 14

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founding values, enshrined in the preamble to the Indian Constitution: secularism.

Almost six years later, protests are happening daily across India over the passing of the Citizenship Amendment Act, a law that divides those applying for citizenship into groups based on religion and therefore threatens to violate the Constitution’s promise to guarantee equal protection for all people in India. Combined with the controversial announcement to register all citizens for the first time under the newly expanded National Registry of Citizens, the Modi government threatens to divide citizens in a way not seen since 1947, when the British colonial government

divided the British Raj into India and Pakistan through the events of Partition.

Rise of Modi & the BJP The story of Narendra Modi and the BJP dates back to the founding of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), commonly known as the RSS and translated roughly as the National Volunteer Organization. Founded as an anti-British organization, the RSS focused its efforts on both protecting and strengthening Hindu society through its paramilitary activity and promotion of “Hindutva.” In an interview with the Globalist, Felix Pal, a Fox Fellow at Yale University’s MacMillan Center and a Ph.D. candidate at the Australian National University, described Hindutva as an ideology which “holds that India is fundamentally Hindu and that non-Hindus cannot be Indian.” More generally, Hindutva promotes the idea that India is a Hindu state, and forms

the foundation of Hindu nationalism in Indian political discourse.

The Hindutva agenda came into political being through the RSS’ founding of the Bharatiya Jana Sangh, a BJP predecessor, in 1951. The BJP as known today was founded in 1980, after several mergers and splits in the late 1970s. Currently, about half of the the BJP-affiliated members of Parliament in the Lok Sabha and around 70 percent of BJP central government cabinet ministers are members of the RSS. As a child, Modi attended RSS training sessions and became a full-time campaigner for them in his 20s. During “The Emergency” from 1975 to 1977, Modi went into hiding while Prime Minister Indira Gandhi jailed and disbanded opposition groups, but continued his work protesting against the government, creating a network of safe houses for those wanted by the government, and fundraising for political refugees and activists. In

1985, he was assigned by the RSS to the BJP, where he was praised for his political prowess in organizing election efforts.

Modi rose through the party’s leadership rankings until becoming the BJP’s General Secretary in 1998, then the Chief Minister of Gujarat, a state in Western India, in 2001.

Modi’s ministership was marred by political and religious violence, most notably in the 2002 Gujarat Riots. After a train was set on fire in Gujarat, killing almost sixty Hindu pilgrims, Modi declared the incident a Muslim-planned and organized terrorist attack. After this and a right-wing Hindu militant organization called for a statewide strike, anti-Muslim violence swept Gujarat, killing thousands of people, and displacing over 150,000.

While supporters called him a Hindu Hriday Samrat, or an Emperor of Hindu Hearts, Modi was accused of failing to stop the massacre, with University of Chicago Professor Martha Nussbaum and THE YALE G LOBALIST | CON TR OL

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IMAGE: PRESS INFORMATION BUREAU

Muslims in India and under Modi Hindu-Muslim relations have been fraught throughout modern Indian history, mostly for one reason: Partition. In 1947, as part of a compromise between the All-India Muslim League and the Indian National Congress, the British announced that they would split the British Raj into two independent states: a majority-Muslim state named Pakistan (covering modern-day Pakistan and Bangladesh), and a majority-Hindu but secular state named India. The ensuing chaos and violence as people clambered to be on the right side of the border killed over one million, and displaced over fifteen million people.

Since then, sporadic large-scale violence has occurred, partially from old wounds and the ideologies of Hindu nationalism and Islamic extremism. As the spokesperson for Hindu nationalism, the BJP has amplified right-wing, Hindu-dominated narratives. This came clear through the destruction of the Babri Mosque in 1992

by Hindus who believed it was built over the birthplace of the ancient deity Rama; the resulting religious riots caused at least 1,200 deaths.

While the Constitution mandates that India is a secular state, the wave of Hindu nationalism that Modi rode to victory in 2014 has only become more overwhelming since his election, and calls to declare India a Hindu state have increased dramatically. With those calls came violence against Muslims; over 90% of religious hate crimes in the last decade have occurred since Modi came to power in mid-2014. According to Hate Crime Watch in 2018, even though Muslims only make up 14% of India’s population, they were the victims in 62% of cases of religious violence recorded by the group. Many of the attacks have religious tones, whether it be Hindus forcing Muslims to recite chants glorifying Hindu deities, or attacks based on dubious allegations of cow-killing—an action considered sinful in Hinduism.

With dog whistle election politics and lack of action in the face of religious violence, Modi has only continued to embolden those who carry out these attacks.

The Citizenship Law & National Registry of Citizens In the spirit of Hindutva, during the 2014 Indian general election, the BJP offered to provide a “natural home” for persecuted Hindu refugees. In 2016, the government legalized refugees belonging to religious minorities from Pakistan and Bangladesh—specifically Hindus, Sikhs, Christians, Jains, Parsis, and Buddhists.

While these moves did not raise a lot of questions, 2016 ended on much more controversial notes as the BJP introduced a bill in Parliament to amend the Citizenship Act, and pushed through efforts to update the National Register of Citizens (NRC) for Assam.

The Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) codified the BJP’s promises to provide this “natural home,” amending the Citizenship Act of 1955 to provide a path to Indian citizenship for illegal migrants who had arrived before December 2014.

All major faiths in India that were listed above were included in the CAA, however, those who had fled from religious persecution due to their Islamic faith would continue to be prosecuted for illegal migration. By dividing these people into groups based on faith, critics say that the government is attempting to flout the Constitution, specifically its guarantees to secularism and the equal protection and treatment under the law to all people in India, regardless of immigration status. Legal analysts say it is unclear what rationale the government will provide for treating migrants differently based on their faith.

The NRC was first created in 1951 to determine who was born in Assam, and who might be a migrant from Bangladesh. 2016 was the first time that the NRC has been updated since it was first created, and people are required to show documentation to prove their lineage and maintain their citizenship. The renewal efforts were completed in August 2019, and when the register was made public, the results were shocking: approximately 1.9 million residents, or approximately 6% of the population, were not on the list and therefore in danger of losing

Prime Minister Narendra Modi speaking in Gujarat in 2017.

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IMAGE: WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

other academics going as far as to call it “ethnic cleansing,” “premeditated,” and “carried out with the complicity of the state government and officers of the law.”

Modi submitted his resignation to the BJP in April 2002, but it was not accepted.

The state assembly was dissolved, and in new elections in December, a mix of anti-Muslim rhetoric and religious polarization among voters gave the BJP 70% of seats in the State Assembly. As a result, Modi was elected and sworn in for a second term as Chief Minister. His second term focused mostly on economic growth, and Gujarat’s economy achieved an impressive 16.6% annual growth rate from 2000 to 2010. It was this economic performance, along with a return to Hindu nationalist rhetoric, that won him and the BJP the 2014 general election.

The women-led protest at Shaheen Bagh, which has been going on continuously since December 15th, 2019.

protect non-Muslims from deportation under the NRC, essentially removing Muslims to further solidify the Hindu demographic majority in the country.

their citizenship. Citizens had 120 days to appeal against their exclusion on the list, but those who lose their appeals could be detained and expelled from India. Furthermore, the courts set up to deal with these cases have been non-transparent and been accused of bias; Journalist Rohini Mohan analyzed more than 500 cases in one district court and calculated an 82% conviction rate, with 78% of decision being delivered without the accused ever being heard, and more Muslims being declared foreigners than any other group.

In November 2019, Home Minister Amit Shah announced efforts to expand the NRC nationwide, to widespread criticism.

Those from poor and marginalized communities will certainly bear the burden of proving their citizenship.

While there is no official link between the CAA and the NRC, the closely-timed announcements of their implementation touched a nerve with parts of the populace who have not agreed with Modi’s Hindu nationalist stance. Experts worry that the CAA could be used to

Response in India After the CAA was approved, Modi celebrated on Twitter: “A landmark day for India and our nation’s ethos of compassion and brotherhood! This bill will alleviate the suffering of many who faced persecution for years.” Meanwhile, many others saw this as a turning point and a threat to the foundation of the Indian state. In an interview with the Globalist, Yale student Vaibhav Sharma said that “once CAA was passed, people started saying that if we don’t protest this right now, if we don’t speak up against it now, there is no way to go back.” Sharma said that on a more personal level, from his and his friends’ observations in Delhi, “urban youth have seemed pretty angry about it, especially because we all have Muslim friends and know Muslim families, and we all know that this is something that affects them.”

According to Protest Monitor, part of India’s first dedicated Fact Checker Initiative, 586 protests have been held over CAA and NRC as of early February, with just over 500 of these being against their

implementation. Certain protests such as the women-led Shaheen Bagh protest in Delhi have gotten press coverage for their 24/7 sit-in since December 14th, but other protests made international headlines for far more violent reasons. Jamia Millia Islamia University students marching to Parliament were prevented by baton and tear gas-equipped policemen from continuing; after a violent standoff, thousands of students came back two days later to protest. During the night of December 15th, hundreds of police officers forced their way into the campus, beating and arresting over 100 students.

In the week after, over a thousand protesters around Delhi were detailed by the police, including politicians; bans on public gatherings were instituted, and metro stations and roads were closed. Violence on campuses continued into January, when a masked mob of up to 100 people attacked Jawaharlal Nehru University, assaulting students and vandalizing buildings while police allegedly stood by. So far, at least thirty-one deaths have been reported from CAA/NRC protests across India.

While limited in its use as an indicator, most social media coverage and polling has been against the implementation of CAA and NRC. India Today, one of India’s leading magazines, found

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Response in the United States There has been widespread condemnation of the CAA on local and national scales across the United States. The Congressional Research Service, the United States Congress’ independent research wing, released a report on December 18th, 2019, that said: “in tandem with a National Register of Citizens (NRC) planned by the federal government, the CAA (Citizenship Amendment Act) may affect the status of India’s large Muslim minority of roughly 200 million.” The report went further to say that CAA’s provision to give religious minorities a path to citizenship while excluding Muslims may violate Articles of the Indian Constitution, and that it is not clear why “oppressed Muslim minority communities such as Pakistan’s Ahmadis and Shias enjoy no protection under the CAA.” The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom called for sanctions against Home Minister Amit Shah and other “principal leadership,” while the House Committee on Foreign Affairs noted that “any religious test for citizenship undermines the most basic democratic tenet.” On a local level, the Seattle City Council voted on February 3rd to urge India’s Parliament to repeal the CAA and stop the NRC, and many 18

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communities across the United States are considering similar measures of support.

College campuses across the United States have been home to one of the most vocal proponents against the implementation of CAA and NRC. Students Against Hindutva started with an open letter to Congress, urging them to support House Resolution 745 which urges India to end restrictions and mass detentions in Jammu and Kashmir and to preserve religious freedom for all residents. In an interview with the Globalist, Students Against Hindutva founder Shreeya Singh said that the “organization’s short term goal is to signal solidarity with the protesters around the Citizenship Amendment, but in the long term to form a resistance against Hindutva in the United States.” She remarked that the Indian diaspora has been integral to political independents since the 1940s, from the first seeds of the independence movement to the funding of the BJP, and that it was time to continue that impact through “signaling that the diaspora stands behind the actions and resistance of those on the front lines.”

Since its founding at Yale University in December 2019, the organization has expanded to over thirty college campuses and plans to hold a nationwide protest on March 5th named Holi Against Hindutva.

What Now? Over 140 petitions have been filed in the Supreme Court of India regarding the Citizenship Amendment Act. On January 9th, the Supreme Court refused to rule on a plea for the CAA to be declared “constitutional,” saying in a statement that the country is “going through difficult times.”

A little under two weeks later, on January 22nd, the Court refused to stay the implementation of the CAA, giving the government four weeks to respond to the petitions. The Court will not rule on the issue until the government puts forth its argument and how it plans to implement both the CAA and NRC.

In the case that the CAA and NRC are implemented, Pal believes of the biggest questions regards what will happen to a Muslim if and when they are declared a non-citizen. Detention centers are currently being built across India to house illegal migrants, who will most likely be Muslim Indians who do not qualify for NRC. India has not released any plans regarding the deportation of illegal migrants identified under NRC, which will be made harder by the fact that India does not have all the bilateral agreements in place to deport migrants from surrounding countries, notably Bangladesh.

As a result, will people who are stripped of their citizenship be left in camps indefinitely? No one knows.

With the enactment of the CAA and NRC, “taken alongside the anti-minority vitriol being used by the Hindu right, that routinely dehumanizes Indian Muslims as a ‘virus’ or as ‘termites,’ raise genuine concerns about the possibility of largescale genocidal violence in India against Muslims,” says Pal. Regardless, the damage may have already been done, exposing new and deepening old cleavages in Indian society.

“If this kind of law gets passed, then what laws are they going to pass in the future? What direction are you letting them go in, and how far will they go?”

Sharma said. By passing the CAA and the expansion of the NRC, Modi’s government has shown that they are fully in control of the national legislative agenda going forward, and have no issue with using it to reinforce ideals of Hindu nationalism, regardless of the consequences.

IMAGE: WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

in January 23rd poll that 43% of people believe that the implementation of CAA and NRC are attempts by Modi’s government to divert attention from serious economic issues like unemployment, and that a majority believe that minorities feel justifiably insecure about the implementation of CAA and NRC. At least nine states are refusing to implement the CAA and/or the NRC, and are currently fighting with the Ministry of Home Affairs regarding the legality of the acts.

Chief Minister of Kerala State Pinarayi Vijayan was quoted as saying, “It is clear that NPR and NRC are traps [...] which clearly target the Muslim community.”

Members of the public looking at a photo wall and sculpture protesting the implementation of the CAA and NRC.

IMAGE: WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

If we don’t protest this right now, if we don’t speak up against it now, there is no way to go back.

Jamia Millia Islamia students and locals protesting against the CAA and NRC.

Nick McGowan is a first-year in Pauli Murray College. He can be contacted at nick.mcgowan@yale.edu.

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Exceptionally Promising Students: A Look at Education Programs in Prisons IMAGE: YALE PRISON EDUCATION INITIATIVE WEBSITE

BY SARAH MCKINNIS

Students learning during a class offered

by YPEI at the MacDougallWalker Correctional Institute in Suffield, CT.

The whiteboard at the back of the room details the class schedule for the week, which includes an Ethnicity, Race & Migration course and a Physics course. Previous offerings included English classes such as “Readings in American Literature,” a Philosophy course, and an introductory Latin course taught five days a week over the summer. These are rigorous Yale classes taught by esteemed professors to a select group of engaged learners. However, this was not taking place in a lecture hall in New Haven, but instead in Suffield, Connecticut, where the Yale Prison Education Initiative offers courses at the MacDougall-Walker Correctional Institute.

Founded and directed by Zelda Roland (BR ‘08 & PhD ‘16), the Yale Prison Education Initiative (YPEI) offered its first courses in the summer of 2018 through Yale Summer Session, marking the first time an incarcerated student was enrolled in Yale College. YPEI also offers not-for-credit courses five days a week during the fall and spring semes-

ters; Roland hopes to offer B.A. courses for credit soon. Enrolled students go through a competitive admissions process and they are connected with Yale resources such as graduate and undergraduate peer tutors and editors. Roland explains, “Every time we put up flyers [advertising the courses] we get 600 applicants.” They only admit ten to twelve students, making YPEI statistically more selective than Yale College itself.

Similar programs aiming to bring higher education opportunities to incarcerated individuals exist at other universities—including nearby at Bard, Wesleyan, Cornell, and Princeton—and are changing the lives of their students by acknowledging their dignity and giving them an opportunity to exert more control over their lives, something often denied to people in prison. One student at MacDougall-Walker Correctional Institute writes in a testimonial posted on YPEI’s website that “For the first time in 12 years I have had a real positive change in the quality of my day to day life. Thank you so much

“They’re just the most engaged learners I’ve ever worked with.”

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Discriminatory policies have led to a one-inthree probability that a black man in the U.S. will be incarcerated in his lifetime.

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can fluctuate based on which local and state government officials are in charge.

Nonetheless, these women and their programs are revolutionizing access to higher education, one student at a time. At one point in our conversation, Roland reaches for one of YPEI’s informational pamphlets on the table and begins to read the mission statement of Yale College: “to seek exceptionally promising students of all backgrounds from across the nation and around the world and to educate them, through mental discipline and social experience, to develop their intellectual, moral, civic, and creative capacities to the fullest.” It’s clear that YPEI is wholly fulfilling this mission. Stockwell echoed this sentiment in explaining her desire as an educator to expand access to higher education for all people.

There have been around three or four courses offered through Princeton’s Prison Teaching Initiative that aim to develop the intellectual and moral capacities of two groups of students simultaneously.

‘Combined courses’ are taught at the prison facility, with students from Princeton’s official campus learning alongside their incarcerated classmates.

Greene described how Princeton students interested in criminal justice reform were really pushing for courses like these to happen and that “the Princeton students who have participated in these classes [are] uniformly… humbled by the experience.” She added that students are carefully vetted and “are really invested in making sure all the learning happens in the classroom so that everyone can be on an equal footing.” In addition, Greene added, “just having a larger cohort of people to bounce ideas off of is powerful for [the incarcerated students].” PTI hopes to expand in the future to offer more B.A. courses for credit, much like YPEI does. One key difference between the programs as they currently stand is that YPEI offers Yale credit to their students for summer courses, while PTI classes are taught

by Princeton staff and faculty but are all accredited through local community colleges.

The problems of mass incarceration and the disproportionate impact it has on people of color are already intertwined with unequal access to education in communities of color. The War On Drugs, racial profiling, and other discriminatory policies have led to a one-in-three probability that a black man in the U.S. will be incarcerated in his lifetime, compared to one-in-seventeen likelihood of imprisonment for white men in the U.S.; the U.S. also has the highest incarceration rate in the world, according to data compiled by The Sentencing Project. In my conversation with Roland, she touched upon the fact that those in prisons are disproportionately black and brown people. In the prisons in which her program operates, incarcerated people are also disproportionately from the city of New Haven, which

IMAGE: BOOKS THROUGH BARS NYC, FACEBOOK

for being the spark of that change, I have it because of you and it makes me work harder knowing that it’s a responsibility not a gift.” The drive and passion exhibited by these students were also evident when I spoke with Jenny Greene—the Co-Founder and Academic Director—and Jill Stockwell—the Program Director—at the Prison Teaching Initiative (PTI) at Princeton, which currently offers courses to fulfill an Associate’s degree and a small number of courses that count towards a four-year Bachelor’s degree. “They’re just the most engaged learners I’ve ever worked with… It’s a wonderful environment to teach in,” Greene told the Globalist.

From my conversations with those involved in both PTI and YPEI, support from other educators and faculty has been just as positive. Roland described widespread support throughout different departments at Yale, among both faculty and students. This semester, Paul Tipton—the former Physics Department chair—is teaching a course, and Professors Roderick Ferguson, Daniel HoSang, Lisa Lowe, and Leah Mirakhor are co-teaching a seminar through the Ethnicity, Race, & Migration department. Two graduate students are implementing a Latin curriculum, another is serving as a Teaching Fellow for Professor Tipton’s course, and one is serving as a Graduate Professional Development Fellow. Undergraduates also volunteer in prison as peer tutors and on-campus as research partners. Similarly, at Princeton, there’s strong support from the faculty, with about 100 volunteers—professors, graduate students, and postdocs—teaching each semester.

PTI is “one of the largest volunteer opportunities for graduate students,” Greene tells me. Stockwell herself got involved with the program initially by teaching literature classes as a graduate student.

Despite the success of these initiatives and the incredible faculty support, YPEI finds itself clashing with administration on several levels. Yale is currently deliberating if YPEI can offer classes for credit year-round, and there are political challenges inherent in the organization’s work. There has long been a sentiment in some areas of government and specifically from those with a more conservative political ideology that incarcerated individuals do not deserve an education, and that resources are better spent on people who are not in prison. This outlook is not uncommon—as former New York State Senator George Mziarz has been quoted saying, “‘Do the crime, do the time,’ not ‘do the crime, earn a degree.’” As such, support for these programs

itself has been disenfranchised by Yale. Greene explained how mass incarceration and education are entangled, saying, “People who are incarcerated… have been systematically excluded from education in their past, and so they really didn’t have the tools to survive in the world.” She adds, “giving people those tools and the hope that they can live full productive lives and make it out in the world is a wonderful thing to be able to do.” Indeed, the Yale Prison Education Initiative notes on their website that only 22% of people in state prison have had some form of postsecondary education.

A country failing to provide equally for its citizens will necessarily have problems with the strength of its democracy, and this troubled relationship between incarceration and democracy in the United States is the focus of some of Stockwell’s research and scholarship. She explains, “The U.S. disproportionately incarcerates people who have had fewer educational opportunities than the general population,” which further emphasizes the entanglement of these matters. In part, this is because incarceration disproportionately impacts people of a lower socioeconomic status, and these

individuals also have fewer high-quality educational opportunities pre-incarceration. With a Bachelor’s degree becoming the new high school diploma, it becomes difficult to find a steady, well-paying job.

Furthermore, the policies mentioned above essentially criminalize homelessness and poverty, creating a direct pipeline to prison for economically disadvantaged communities.

Generally, access to education programs and books serves to build dignity in a system that has become brutal and that cultivates dehumanization.

Besides educational and rehabilitation programs in prisons, there are a number of nonprofits across the country focused on expanding access to books and other educational resources. Books Through Bars NYC is one of these groups. Completely volunteer-run, they work to match requests mailed in from people in prison to the books they have collected through donations. They then package and send books directly to individuals. On their website, they state, “We believe literacy and access to reading material is a human right.” This is a right that the U.S. government has continually taken away, cutting funding for education programs in prisons and

A section of the donated books that the volunteer-run nonprofit Books Through Bars NYC will package and send to incarcerated individuals who have mailed in requests.

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IMAGE: BARD PRISON INITIATIVE, FACEBOOK

Students enrolled full-time in courses through the Bard Prison Initiative, which extends the Bard College liberal arts curriculum into six prisons in New York State.

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excluding incarcerated individuals from the federal Pell Grant program. Despite the existence of prison libraries, they are often severely understocked.

Author and activist Rachel Kushner expressed her frustration with the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) when she responded to questions from the Globalist. She wrote “20 times” to the state librarian, Brandy Buenafe, to try to donate books from Scribner—her publisher—that “the state might find useful for people in prison,” including Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and other acclaimed writers. Buenafe replied in June of 2018 saying she would “review [her] request” and get back to her, but Kushner never heard from her again. She gave this anecdote as an illustration of how the CDCR “has absolutely no concern with providing books or educational materials.”

When it comes to financing for formal education, the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 banned incarcerated students from receiving Pell Grants, which are need-based grants awarded to low-income undergraduate students to be used for postsecondary education.

Ending the ban on incarcerated individuals would make millions of dollars available to them through these grants. In 2015, the Department of Education began a pilot program called the Second Chance

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Pell Experimental Sites Initiative, which allowed about 12,000 incarcerated individuals to be eligible for Pell Grants. However, this is only a sliver of the incarcerated population. Those who want to pursue an education while behind bars are often unable to, simply because they cannot afford it.

The value of educational access goes beyond a person’s time in prison. Educational rehabilitation programs like PTI and YPEI are shown to greatly improve reintegration outcomes for formerly incarcerated individuals. Now that so many jobs in the U.S. require a college degree or higher, education in prison can make a huge difference in the options people have once completing their sentence. Erin Flowers, the graduate student Math Chair for PTI, wrote to the Globalist, “The most impactful part for me has been seeing how the classes we offer can change the lives of our students while they are in prison, and how it can potentially change their lives for the better once they complete their sentences.”

A report released by the Prison Studies Project backed this up with statistics from studies that show nearly unanimously that higher education in prison reduces recidivism, which translates into numerous benefits not only for formerly incarcerated individuals and their families and communities, but also society as a whole.

Nobody should be reduced to a dollar value, though a comparison between the cost of incarceration and the cost of education works to refute the claims of anyone who opposes educational access in prison because of the cost. The cost of educating an incarcerated person is significantly less than the cost of traditional incarceration. On their website, YPEI outlines the high cost of incarceration and compares it with the cost of books for a student—notably much lower: the books and supplies for one incarcerated student during the pilot of YPEI cost $165, versus the $60,000 cost to taxpayers for the incarceration of a person for one year. Additionally, the opportunity to save money on incarceration allows for increased investment in our public education system and in expanding access to higher education—a move that would decrease the number of children disenfranchised by the system and eventually incarcerated.

There are numerous examples of the graduates of prison education initiatives going down impressive paths. George Chocos (‘16 M.Div ‘17 STM) currently works for Georgetown’s Prisons and Justice Initiative; he earned his own B.A. while incarcerated through the Bard Prison Initiative (BPI) before graduating from Yale Divinity School. Graduates of the PTI program have returned to Princeton to do summer research with faculty, and Greene described the “tremendously impactful” experience of one formerly incarcerated student who traveled to the Czech Republic for a study abroad research experience, and is now enrolled in a twoyear Masters of Social Work program. For these men and hundreds like them, access to education while in prison created the opportunity for them to pursue careers, find jobs, and reintegrate in society.

Right now, programs like BPI, YPEI, and PTI are at the forefront of providing this access. However, Jill Stockwell is quick to note that PTI is a program you “don’t want to be around forever.” There is a hope that widespread access to higher education is eventually implemented throughout the country and that issues of disenfranchisement surrounding education and incarceration are addressed through policy and reform.

The debate surrounding access to education and books in prison gets at a bigger question: what are prisons for? Some Republican senators refuse to give up their “tough-on-crime” ideology, but decades of statistics have shown that this is not successful. Though prisons have traditionally been

viewed as being a place for punishment, there is reason to believe that the current measures go too far. It may be that taking away someone’s freedom is punishment enough. High recidivism rates across the U.S. demonstrate that these measures are not acting as a deterrent and that what is being done in prison does not go far enough in the way of rehabilitation. If the goal of the penal system is to improve the wellbeing of society, then it is clear that rehabilitation programs, including prison education initiatives, should take the place of traditional incarceration.

The United States only needs to look abroad to see the efficacy of implementing higher education programs and other comprehensive rehabilitation programs in prisons. Norway’s system of incarceration has garnered global attention and has proven to be so effective that other countries are beginning to use it as a model. The key is that they focus on rehabilitation and emphasize access to education and health services. As a result, they boast one of the lowest recidivism rates in the world, with 20% of those released from prison being arrested within two years, and their incarceration rate is less than a tenth of the U.S. ‘s. In comparison, 68% of people who are released in the U.S. are arrested again within three years.

Educational rehabilitation programs are just the beginning for the prison abolition movement in the U.S., which embraces these types of reforms and pushes further. As Rachel Kushner noted, “people who are incarcerated also do not have access to their families, to privacy, to dignity, to the right to work, to the ability to make amends for acts of harm.” The groups and activists supporting this movement believe in addressing these issues by reducing or eliminating prisons and the penal system and replacing them with systems of rehabilitation. U.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has supported this idea, explaining on Twitter, “We have more than enough room to close many of our prisons and explore just alternatives to incarceration.” These alternatives would work to improve society as a whole by making way for true rehabilitation. Serious prison reforms and shifts in the way we conceptualize punishment and imprisonment in this country are required before the cycle of incarceration begins to break.

Access to education programs and books serves to build dignity in a system that has become brutal and that cultivates dehumanization.

Sarah McKinnis is a sophomore in Trumbull College studying Political Science. She can be contacted at sarah.mckinnis@yale.edu THE YALE G LOBALIST | CON TR OL

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Indigenous Art at the YUAG

BY YILIN CHEN, ONLINE EDITOR

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“Those who collected these objects ... often believed they were helping to preserve Indigenous cultures by doing so—a practice known as ‘salvage anthropology’—even as settler institutions were dispossessing Indigenous nations of their lands and forcing them to abandon their cultural practices,” the curators wrote. They argued that the act of removing art from their communities threatened present and future Indigenous art practices.

After sorting through thousands of objects scattered in the three major institutions, the curators carefully compiled a list of artworks to put on view.

According to Laurence Kanter, the Chief Curator at the YUAG, the process involved considering the role of the objects within their original contexts and cultural practices. He explained that if, for example, the object was meant to be buried or was part of a living ritual, the museum has no right to display it.

What came to life is an exhibition that honors the cultural story and aesthetic value of Indigenous objects. Under the umbrella of “Place, Nations, Generations, Beings,” four thematic sections respectively highlight the relationship between Indigenous people and their lands, the expression of nationhood and sovereignty, the transmission of traditions and values from one generation to the next, and the significance of non-human entities and spirits.

Featured prominently on one side of the gallery, First Teachers Balance the Universe anchors the exhibition. This 2015 work by Marrie Watt (Seneca) consists of two embroidered wool blankets that situate the Seneca creation story of Sky Woman in the context of twenty-first-century popular culture and technological advancements. The rich colors of the threads stand out against a dark background, imbu-

Marie Watt, First Teachers Balance the Universe (2015), reclaimed wool blankets, thread and embroidery floss.

IMAGES: YUAG

After ascending the monochromatic, geometrically pristine staircase of the Yale University Art Gallery (YUAG), I reach the fourth floor. The first thing that leaps out at me is a wall of vibrant purple hue.

Titled “Place, Nations, Generations, Beings: 200 Years of Indigenous North American Art,” the exhibition features over 90 works of drawings, photography, textiles, woodwork, pottery, and basketry from over 40 Indigenous nations.

Curated by Katherine Nova McCleary (Little Shell Chippewa-Cree) ’18, Leah Tamar Shrestinian ’18 and Joseph Zordan (Bad River Ojibwe) ’19, the exhibition marks one of many firsts for the University. It is the first major Indigenous art exhibition to ever go on view at the YUAG. It is also the first initiative to foster a direct conversation about Indigenous art between the YUAG, the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History, and the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.

Of course, it was no easy task. Bringing the exhibition from concept to reality required a critical examination of Yale’s relationship with Indigenous art, as well as an open discussion around best practices for educating the public.

As McCleary and Shrestinian point out in their introduction to the exhibition catalogue, “Indigenous North American art is an enduring yet under-recognized presence at Yale University.” Yale was founded on land that belonged to the Quinnipiac people, and its institutional establishment was inextricably connected with the Quinnipiac peoples’ displacement. Generations of Yale scholars and alumni have amassed a sizable collection of Indigenous objects, the majority of which are held at the Peabody.

ing the gallery space with the energy of their bright purple, pink, blue, and red hues. These are exactly the colors dominating the gallery room, each corresponding to a theme in the exhibition title.

“We didn’t want to choose earthy colors, because they often make the space feel darker and visitors would tend to associate Indigenous people more with nature. We wanted to steer away from that implicit messaging,” Shrestinian said. Such “implicit messaging,” or misrepresentation, was a central reason for the curators’ efforts to move Indigenous art from the Peabody to the YUAG: they hoped to convey that Indigenous art is art, not artifact. Zordan emphasized the way that the setting could influence visitors’ perception of Indigenous works. In a natural history setting, people consider them as anthropological artifacts, putting them into

conversation with ancient history and natural specimens. In a gallery setting, where Indigenous objects are displayed alongside European and Asian art, people are drawn to ponder their aesthetic value and the singularity of individual works and artists.

Turning a corner, I find myself gazing at framed photos hung on a light pink wall. They are portraits of Indigenous people, part of Will Wilson’s (Diné [Navajo]) Critical Indigenous Photographic Exchange project in 2012. In response to his predecessors who sought to “document” Indigenous people before a settler-imagined extinction, Wilson chooses to highlight each person’s unique identities by allowing the subjects to take control: they can choose their clothes and poses and write their own captions. These captions showcase a variety of roles that each individual is proud of: Citizen of Cheyenne

Indigenous art is art, not artifact.

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IMAGE: YUAG

Photos from the Critical Indigenous Photographic Exchange project of artist Will Wilson (Diné [Navajo])

and Arapaho tribes, Delegate to UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, Matriarch of Wonderful Family (Grandmother, Companion, Mother, Sister), Lifelong Sundancer, Defender of Mother Earth, Vietnam Veteran. Wilson gifts the tintype (a photograph on tin plate that’s produced on the spot) to the participant, then reproduces the images with their permission.

Similar to Wilson’s project, the YUAG exhibition itself is a collaborative endeavor that directly engages with the voices of Indigenous people. In close collaboration with Yale’s Native American Cultural Center, the curators established an all-Native student advisory group. The committee had open discussions about the selection of objects, the appropriate language for the labels, and the presentation of Indigenous artworks in a gallery setting. Drawing on their personal backgrounds and community connections, the Indigenous students provided crucial knowledge that helped the curators address the misrepresentation of Native people.“The students were our best critics because they were willing to be honest with us in a way that other people might not be,” McCleary said.

According to Anna Smist ’21 (Sac & Fox, Seminole, and Muscogee Creek), who was part of the student advisory committee, the members were able to directly influence curatorial decisions and interact with Indigenous objects. “I think the conversations were really good on both sides,” Smist said.

“As Native students, we were able to see the work the curators were doing. And on their end, they were able to think about how to make their work accessible to an audience that is not as familiar with our world.” Smist continued to explore Indigenous art after her participation in the advisory group. Over the summer of 2019, she curated an exhibition titled “Misunderstood! Indigenous Art and Poetry as Political Resistance” at the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art in Norman, Oklahoma.

Following the suggestion of the advisory council, the curators chose to use “Artist Once Known” instead of the conventional phrase “Unknown Artist” to identify artists whose names weren’t recorded in the Yale archives. They aimed to acknowledge that these artists once occupied an important place in their respective nations. Even though their exact identities might be difficult to pinpoint, their artistic practices and cultural legacies continue to make

an impact on their communities.The scope of the Native people who were consulted extended beyond Yale’s campus. Zordan described his interaction with the Mohegan nation, which gave him an opportunity to ask questions such as “How can Yale continue to work with you through this exhibition?

How do you want to be represented? What do you feel is important to communicate?” Specifically, the curators stressed that there is no unified, monolithic Native American voice. Each artwork and community should be approached on a case-by-case basis.

In April 2019, as a direct result of the student curators’ recommendations, the YUAG, the Peabody, the Beinecke, and the History of Art Department convened Yale’s first Advisory Council on Native Arts and Cultures. The meeting brought together Indigenous scholars and community members as well as non-Indigenous experts. Because there was no previously available infrastructure for such a Council at Yale, the curators had to build it from scratch, and the Council was only able to meet towards the end of the curation process. Nevertheless, participants provided first-hand knowledge and discussed the future possibilities for Indigenous art at Yale.

Yale is certainly not the first institution to assemble an Advisory Council, yet it aims to carry out the task with a level of respect and openness that might be lacking elsewhere. “The unfortunate reality is that in a number of cases [at other museums], the recommendations of the Advisory Councils were respectfully collected, but selectively followed,” Kanter said. “Yale did not want to go down that path because [the advice of the Council] is not a shopping list. It quickly became clear to everyone [in the Council] that . . . Yale wanted to know what the greatest number of people think is the right way to approach any given issue.”

While receiving suggestions from Indigenous communities, the curators collaborated with the photography department at the YUAG to return the favor. They took extra photographs of the objects and sent the photographs back to their original communities so that the people could have them as records. Shrestinian explained that they wanted to “make the exhibit relevant for Indigenous nations, not just for people at Yale.”

McCleary echoed this sentiment by expressing her wish to center Indigenous voices and audiences in the gallery space. “It can be tricky to navigate,” she added, “because you want to find the balance between educating non-Indigenous people and making Indigenous people feel that they belong.”

In the exhibition room, captions become a medium to bring forward Indigenous voices. They include quotations from Indigenous artists explaining the inspiration for their work and Indigenous scholars detailing cultural practices. One quotation from Kim Tallbear (Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate),

Associate Professor of Native Studies at the University of Alberta, reads, “[for Indigenous peoples,] ‘objects’ and ‘forces’ such as stones, thunder, or stars are ... sentient and knowing persons.” It explains a facet of Indigenous beliefs that would otherwise be inaccessible for visitors.

Adding quotations is only one approach among many. In order to foster a stronger sense of belonging for Indigenous audiences, Shrestinian expressed her hope to see Indigenous languages in similar exhibitions in the future. She cited the examples of the Minneapolis Institute of Art, who prepared full labels in the language of the Indigenous artists, and the Art Gallery of Ontario, who used the language of the Indigenous people whose land they settled in addition to English and French captions.

As I approach the opposite end of the gallery, I notice Yale’s land acknowledgment, written in a sans-serif white font on a bright red wall. It honors the Indigenous peoples that once resided in what is now the state of Connecticut long before the establishment of Yale. Next to the wall is a 2017 bowl by artist Justin Scott (Mohegan) that echoes the Mohegan basket near the entrance to the exhibition. The Mohegan tribe is one of many Indigenous nations in Connecticut. Scott’s bowl, in addition to reiterating the land acknowledgment, represents a new chapter in the Yale-Mohegan relationship: it was gifted to Yale to mark the return of hundreds of objects from the Yale Peabody to the Mohegan people in 2017.

Embedded within the wooden bowl is a circle of wampum, a purple and white shell that Northeastern Indigenous nations often use in their jewelry. It inspired the extensive use of purple in the gallery space as an additional layer of land acknowledgment.

Throughout the exhibition, labels actively inform visitors of the circumstances in which Indigenous artworks were produced and the collecting practices of non-Indigenous people. Even the legal acquisition of objects in the past two centuries is inseparable from violent assimilationist practices.

“Many of the works were created under duress,” Zordan said. Oftentimes, Native artists were forced to participate in a settler-colonial economy where they made artworks for a non-Indigenous market in order to survive. In some cases, they were forced to make art while in captivity.

In the process of confronting the hardships that Indigenous people had to endure, the exhibition celebrates the artistic prowess and communal identities that unite these objects.

“I think the exhibition has done something remarkable,” Kanter said. “I can’t congratulate the students enough. Unlike most museums and collections, this isn’t just a selection of interesting objects to put on view. The students went to great lengths to reanimate those objects. They become more than just trophies or relics of past activity. They are vital objects that offer an illustration of, as well as a portal

to, the world they came from. I don’t know another museum that has done that.”

He smiled genially. “This may be my naivete, but I’ve been around museums for 40 years.”

The exhibition will remain on view through June 21, 2020. Yet long before the end or even the inception of the exhibition, the curators and members of the student advisory group had been actively compiling a list of best practices for Yale institutions displaying Indigenous art. Going forward, they suggest that the YUAG and the History of Art Department hire professionals with expertise in Native art and curation. Their recommendations include a permanent Advisory Council, a reconfigured display of Indigenous art at the Peabody, a separate Indigenous North American Art Department at the YUAG, and public artworks on campus that acknowledge the original inhabitants of Yale’s land.

These measures could all help the University reevaluate its relationship with Native American culture, as well as how Yale represents it.

“We’re making headway,” Kanter said, “but there are challenges to this.” He described the extended timeline that’s required to find an expert curator or faculty member. The number of competent applicants is scarce, it takes time to train a less qualified applicant, and many existing experts of Indigenous art are already employed at other institutions and will be reluctant to relocate. For example, when the History of Art Department advertised a postdoctoral position in Native American Art, it took almost a year to fill it.

Although the proposed changes will undeniably take time, Kanter expressed his optimism about bringing them to fruition. “We’re all definitely determined to not let the momentum die out,” he concluded. It’s almost closing time when I leave. The security guard pacing in the room seems to be wondering what’s taking me so long. As I step out of the door, I think about the legacies of this exhibition that extend beyond the fourth floor of the YUAG. Tomorrow the vibrant purple will once again await the arrival of curious visitors. It waits to tell a story of 200 years of Indigenous art, a story molded into glistening bowls and woven into radiant textiles.

Yale aims to carry out the task with a level of respect and openness that might be lacking elsewhere.

Yilin Chen is a first-year in Timothy Dwight College. She can be contacted at yilin.chen@yale.edu.

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OPINION

The Drawbacks of Exerting Control in Our Personal Life: The Pursuit of Optimality

BY RADA PAVLOVA, MANAGING EDITOR

IMAGE: RADA PAVLOVA

Always looking for the colors in life.

What does it feel like to be a victim of your own thoughts? In a book titled Camino, Bulgarian journalist Tihomir Ivanov describes his personal attempt of letting go of what he calls an over obsession with being in control of every situation. In pursuit of this endeavor, he embarks on the journey of completing the 500-mile-long route El Camino De Santiago—one of the oldest and most famous Christian pilgrimages in Spain. It is not the religious enlightenment that inspires his travel, but rather the urge to discover the traits of his personality that have made it impossible for him to enjoy the events that make up his life.

A big part of Camino focuses on the idea of opportunity cost. In the pursuit of making the most strategic choices—pondering which path to take on the route of El Camino, which city to stay in overnight,

which people to stick with on the way, Tihomir would often end up in worse situations than he could possibly imagine.

Sometimes, he would find himself in front of the door of a closed auberge under the

the great conversations he could have had if he had only adjusted to their pace.

Throughout his whole journey, Tihomir kept making decisions based on what he thought would bring him the ultimate “Camino” experience, constantly looking for the “most optimal” response to arising questions and difficult situations. His concrete plan and overpowering ambitions combined turned the 20-mile-long daily walks from an opportunity to clear his mind into a sequence of exhausting internal battles.

When I read Camino, I felt like the desire to make the most out of an experience—meet the MOST interesting people, have the MOST interesting conversations, become the BEST possible version of yourself on the way - sounded way too familiar. Isn’t that what we are all trying to do here at Yale? Don’t we sometimes get stricken by anxiety caused by the

In an environment with so many opportunities like the one at Yale, a “most optimal” decision does not exist.

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pouring rain just because he refused to fall a few miles behind his initial plan for the day. Other times, he would hear people’s stories of the amazing time spent in a hut that he had just left the night before and continue feeling angry about missing out on a great experience for the next few days.

He would rush in front of the friends he had just made and then feel sorry for

realization that we are not making full use of the incredible environment and limitless resources around us? If there is one thing that I have learned during my first year, however, it would be the fact that in an environment with so many opportunities like the one at Yale, a “most optimal” decision does not exist.

I often like to joke about how I have two types of friends—those who make me feel bad about my grades, and those who open my eyes to the fact that not everyone is looking to graduate with a 4.0 GPA. But what has been the most interesting to me is to see how looking back on their experience, both groups wish they had done things differently. My “studious” friends realize that now is most likely the only time in their lives when they will be surrounded by so many bright and intelligent people in such close proximity. They worry about not making full use of that incredible opportunity by focusing too much on academics. My “relaxed” friends are the ones who constantly look for ways to enjoy life.

They spend a lot of time around people, party even on the weekends before a week of midterms and spend hours in the dining hall without rushing to go to another meeting or finish one more question of a pset. At the same time, they are also the ones I have seen have the most severe breakdowns and experience the biggest self-doubts due to poor performance on some exam or an assignment.

The people from both groups described above are in full control of their actions. They have made a deliberate decision about how they want to spend their time—a decision that aligns with their vision of what it means to be at Yale and why they have chosen to be here. Still, something in their master plan of making the most out of the four years at college must have failed for them to fall into a state of regret and self-doubt. One way to think about personal control is as the belief that we have the capacity to change the environment within which we reside and shape the flow of events that constitute our lives. A failure to achieve the desired goal even after exerting full control over one’s actions would, therefore, come from the fact that there are other active forces that work simultaneously with ours, such as other people or circumstances. When the decisions we make fail to bring us the satisfaction we

have been looking for, it is not because we didn’t pick right, back at the time when we had a choice, but because our choices are not a unit on their own. They are rather intertwined with the choices of many other people and with many other circumstances which we do not control.

When I was on the verge of tears after an Intermediate Microeconomics exam last semester, I called my mom on the phone and she told me, “You really want to get the highest grades possible? Then do what those who get only As do, wake up at 7 every day, stop going out, stop doing a million other things and focus only on your work. Do you really want that?” Of course, I didn’t. I didn’t want to change my lifestyle. I only wanted to change the feeling of self-doubt caused

by the possibility that the decisions I have made with such certainty in the past have been fundamentally wrong. Personal control, however, is not only about controlling our actions. It is also about establishing control over our reaction to the events that come as a result of those actions. It’s about being confident that at the time you made a decision, you picked what you thought was the “most optimal” choice, and that should be all that matters.

Rada Pavlova is a sophomore in Pauli Murray College studying Economics. She can be contacted at rada.pavlova@yale.edu.

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