Competition

WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY

POLITICAL

REVIEW 30.3 | March 2019 | wupr.org

featuring: The Plan to Elect the President By Majority An Interview with Suerie Moon After the War in Afghanistan

Table of Contents Competition

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#DefendDiversity Caron Song

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The NFL's Great Failure Christian Monzรณn

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National 9

International

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How the Wealthy Skirt the Organ Waitlist Salil Uttarwar

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Theme Art Emily McPhie

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The Backlash of Captain Marvel's Activism Ryan Martirano

Untitled Jordan Coley

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My Competing Ideals of Affirmative Action Sophia Wu

The Plan to Elect the President

By Majority Garrett Cunningham

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Macroeconomics, Revolutionary Idealism, and the Green New Deal Hanna Khalil

Engaging with Big Pharma: An Interview with Suerie Moon Sabrina Wang

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3D Printed Guns and Gun Control Zachary Sorenson

Empty Chairs at Empty Tables Akshay Thontakudi

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After the War in Afghanistan Nicholas Kinberg

Affirmative Action is Obsolete Johnathan Romero

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Going Towards and Away from Democracy Alexander Newman

Equality, Education, and the Race of Life Jon Niewijk

Editors' Note Executive Director: Sabrina Wang Editors-in-Chief: Michael Fogarty Dan Sicorsky Design Director: Maggie Chuang Staff Editors: Hanna Khalil Ryan Mendelson Jon Niewijk Daniel Smits Features Editors: Megan Orlanski Ishaan Shah Assistant Design Directors: Catherine Ju Leslie Liu Programming Director: Rohan Palacios Web Editor: Conor Smyth Treasurer: Garrett Cunningham Front Cover: Noor Bekhiet Theme Spread: Maggie Chuang Feature Designs: Michael Avery Maggie Chuang Catherine Ju Leslie Liu

Dear Reader, Animals compete, and are we not animals? Like pigeons scuttling and pushing for bread crumbs, we fight over limited resources. You’ve seen younger siblings call attention to themselves to win parents’ love. You’ve dealt with the random guy who asked how you did on that test, and that roommate who brags about how little sleep they’re getting and how hard they work. All of us have sought jobs, opportunities, and acceptances that cannot be given to all: we’ve had to prove ourselves deserving, better. We are not alone in striving for our goals, and often—fortunately or unfortunately, you decide—our gain is someone else’s loss. Our loss is someone else’s gain.

This college, the work force, our government—all are, in large part, a mix of competition and cooperation. What’s a proper balance? Is it possible for everyone to get ahead, at no one’s cost? Can there be motivation without competition? What will we do to get ahead? Bribe college officials? Lie to federal prosecutors? Dope?

Read on to see what contributors to the Competition issue had to say. Christian Monzón takes us to the NFL, which, he says, poorly influences the community and fails to reciprocate fan dedication. Sophia Wu acknowledges that affirmative action debates have no clear answer, and admits being “deeply confused [about] what is best for society.” Salil Uttarwar points out inequalities in the organ transplant waitlist, which favors wealthy Americans.

In the National section, Ryan Martirano warns against removing avenues for user input on Netflix and Rotten Tomatoes, and Zachary Sorensen discusses the implications of 3D weapons for gun control. Our International section features Alexander Newman, who underscores the significance of Thailand’s recent national elections, and Nicholas Kinberg, who warns of the effects of withdrawing from Afghanistan.

This issue’s artwork both complements and completes the magazine. If you ever manage to unlock yourself from the stare of Noor Bekhiet’s front cover, you’ll find fascinating feature designs from artists like Michael Avery, who, time and again, masterfully merges politics and art.

We’re thrilled to announce the next set of WUPR leaders: Hanna Khalil and Sophie Attie will take over as Editors-in-Chief, and Ishaan Shah will be the Executive Director. All have been talented members of our team for years, and we know their skills will take the magazine to new heights. As for us, it’s been an honor to help create this magazine since our freshman years.

Signing off, warmly, Michael Fogarty & Dan Sicorsky Editors-in-Chief

WU Political Review

#DefendDiversity Caron Song, staff writer

M

ichael Wang was the perfect applicant.

After conquering thirteen AP classes, he had a stellar 4.67 GPA and graduated second in his class of 1,002 students. His ACT score was a flawless 36. He attended and placed in various national competitions in math, debate, and music. He even sang at Barack Obama’s inauguration. Michael was the sort of guy who, had he posted his stats on College Confidential, would probably give other college applicants nervous breakdowns during application season. Michael Wang was the perfect

over qualified Asian American applicants. The implications of SFFA v. Harvard, conversely, are anything but black and white. This trial will very likely determine the fate of affirmative action in the United States. It has already divided the Asian American community, perpetuated stereotypes and racist undertones, and, appallingly, pitted minority groups against each other in a toxic competition under the guise of seeking justice within the domain of higher education. Is it really for the sake of Asian Americans?

So, he asked a question to all the Ivy League schools that rejected him: “Was it based on race?” applicant, and yet he was rejected from six of the seven Ivy League colleges he applied to while he witnessed fellow classmates less qualified than he receive congratulatory letters. So, he asked a question to all the Ivy League schools that rejected him: “Was it based on race?”

The ripple effect from Michael’s simple but powerful question along with numerous complaints from disgruntled Asian American college applicants has culminated into the critical Harvard affirmative action lawsuit, a 2014 suit filed against Harvard by an organization called Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA). Led by conservative activist Edward Blum, SFFA is a nonprofit anti-affirmative action advocacy group consisting of more than 20,000 students, parents, and others who believe that “racial classifications and preferences in college admissions are unfair, unnecessary, and unconstitutional.” The lawsuit has recently garnered much national attention as it successfully made its way to a Boston courthouse on October 15, 2018.

Now deemed the Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard trial, the case, at face value, is black and white: Harvard is racially discriminatory by choosing less qualified applicants of other races

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Harvard has unequivocally denied SFFA’s allegations, but SFFA has hard evidence to show that there is indeed questionable activity behind the scenes. An analysis of more than 160,000 student records released for investigative purposes shows that the reason for Harvard’s lower acceptance rate for Asian Americans is because of the “Asian personality penalty.” Harvard almost always automatically assigns Asian Americans a lower “personal rating,” a vital factor during the admissions process that assesses character traits such as kindness, likability, and humor.

While this blatant discrimination is inexcusable, it doesn’t necessarily involve affirmative action.

This, however, is where things become interesting. In order to avoid admitting to discriminatory antics, Harvard chose to frame the lawsuit under the context of affirmative action.

Simultaneously, Blum is using Harvard’s antiAsian discrimination to attack affirmative action. There’s no doubt that Asian Americans are caught right in the middle of this controversial cross-fire. Do they support other minority groups and discredit the SFFA plaintiffs by accepting the inaccurate belief that Asians are “overrepresented” in higher education? Or, to

put it bluntly, do they blindly follow Blum as he uses them for his ulterior agenda of achieving the goal (hint: it mainly benefits white applicants) of abolishing affirmative action? After all, this is the man who shamelessly said he “needed Asian plaintiffs” after his previous attempt to end affirmative action failed because he used a white student.

The unpleasant reality of this situation is that there isn’t exactly a right or wrong answer.

On one hand, affirmative action is necessary to ensure that there are equal opportunities in higher education and to give minorities a chance to break down socioeconomic barriers. It encourages empathy, compassion, and diversity to build stronger generations to come. On the other hand, the SFFA plaintiffs have every right to be angry and should speak up to assert their civil rights, something that Asian Americans tend to have trouble doing. Harvard’s racial bias that is dependent on the notion of “overrepresentation” is a very real issue. It is detrimental to minorities because it focuses on creating unwanted antagonism within ethnic groups while deterring attention from the many white applicants who ultimately have the upper hand. Instead of trying to permanently eliminate affirmative action as Blum wants, there are actually practical ways to deal with Harvard’s discrimination such as making the admission process more transparent or reducing the favoritism shown to athletes and legacy students. The verdict for this trial will be released soon, and no matter what happens, it is clear that SFFA v. Harvard will set racial and political precedents that will change higher education for better or for worse.

Caron Song ‘19 studies in the McKelvey School of Engineering. She can be reached at songcaron@wustl.edu.

Competition

The NFL's Great Failure Christian Monzón, staff writer | Artwork by Leslie Liu, assistant design director

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he New England Patriots have won their sixth title in 20 years. Some hail this accomplishment as a testament to their unending dominance, to their great defensive performance, or to the ageless Tom Brady. New Orleans, however, knows the real story: “D. Brees pass incomplete short right to T. Lewis”, the official play marking the worst officiating mistake in NFL history. With 1:48 left in the NFC Championship, New Orleans Saints wide receiver Tommylee Lewis faced a blatant pass interference penalty from LA Rams defender Nickell Robey-Coleman. A penalty would have extended the amount of time the Saints possessed the ball and would have likely advanced them to the Super Bowl.

The referee’s whistle remained silent, however.

No penalty flag hit the ground. The Rams scored twice more and advanced to the Super Bowl.

Saints fans think their team would have won the Super Bowl, but we will never know.

Why care, though? After all, for non-football fans, football seems backwards. It is merely grown men tackling each other for entertainment and the profits of old, white billionaires.

For many, though, football (and sports in general) serves a fundamental psychological purpose. Psychologist Susan Krauss Whitbourne writes of the phenomena of “BIRGing” and “CORFing” (“Basking in Reflected Glory” and “Cutting Off Reflected Failure”) that help human beings align themselves with feelings of success while distancing themselves from feelings of failure. Our self-esteem increases with our team’s success because of allegiance to a city and it is preserved by our ability to easily cut allegiances (at least temporarily) in failure while still celebrating our sporting heroes.

Football’s psychological effect contributes to its tremendous popularity. According to the analytics firm Nielsen, 103.4 million people— just under a third of the total US population— watched Super Bowl LII in 2018. In the 2017 NFL season, the operating income (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization) of the New Orleans Saints alone amounted to

$115 million, suggesting vast amounts of fans spending on jerseys, tickets and other Saints merchandise – spending that justifies Saints fans’ frustrations at the referee in the NFC Championship.

Saints fans support their team, and their team supports them back. Though terribly underprepared, the Louisiana Superdome managed to house 30,000 refugees who could not evacuate the city in time for Hurricane Katrina. The Saints also help fund local schools, start small businesses, and play an active role in the New Orleans community. Other NFL teams also contribute to the community: the Green Bay Packers, for instance, the only nonprofit NFL team, donate 60 percent of proceeds from concessions (in a perpetually sold-out stadium) to local Wisconsin charities. It seems unjust, therefore, that teams with such tremendous ties to their local communities are dependent on the NFL. Ranging from the trivial to the outright dangerous, the NFL’s problems stem from everyone from the players to the commissioner. Off the field, NFL teams allow domestic abusers in their clubs: in the 2017 draft, the Oakland Raiders drafted Gareon Conley, the Cincinnati Bengals drafted Joe Mixon and the Cleveland Browns drafted Caleb Brandtley, all of whom face accusations of domestic violence. Far from the only accused, all three still play in the NFL. Last autumn, the Kansas City Chiefs chose to cut running back Kareem Hunt not because he assaulted a woman in a Cleveland hotel, but because he lied about it. A few months later, the Cleveland Browns (ironically the city of the incident) signed him. NFL teams actively choose not to hold abusive players accountable for their actions and allow incidents like these to abound.

In addition, the NFL minimally supports brain-damage research, despite the fact that such damage could lead to players losing self-control and committing acts of violence.

In 99 percent of deceased NFL player brains donated for scientific research, scientists found Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE), a disease which disables neuropathways controlling memory, judgement and aggression. Essentially,

the NFL exposes players to a disease potentially leading to situations of violence (violence which, as mentioned previously, NFL teams refuse to take seriously). While the NFL has since funded research, Business Insider reports that they have purposely undermined and covered up more than 100 concussions.

An average fan, however, might justify the NFL’s behavior because the NFL ought to focus on its mission: facilitating quality entertainment and competition. This brings us back to the incident of the NFC championship. If the NFL allowed coaches to challenge pass-interference penalties, the Saints would have unequivocally won the NFC Championship. The Saints, representing the city of New Orleans—its economy, its people and its struggles—lost because of the NFL’s incompetence. Such an organization, which cannot fulfill its mission to provide entertainment, facilitate competition, and positively influence society does not deserve our attention or dedication.

Christian Monzón ‘22 studies in the College of Arts & Sciences. He can be reached at christian.monzon@wustl.edu.

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WU Political Review

Equality, Education, and the Race of Life Jon Niewijk, staff editor | Artwork by Leslie Liu, assistant design director

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n a recent viral clip, a man using aggressively charismatic youth-speak instructs a group of high schoolers to line up in a grass field for a race, where the winner gets a $100 bill. It’s made clear that this race also represents the race of life: the winners end up healthy, rich, and happy; the losers, well, aren’t. Everyone starts shoulder to shoulder on the same starting line, but then the leader makes adjustments. “Take two steps forward if both of your parents are still married…take two steps forward if you grew up with a father figure…take two steps forward if you never wondered where your next meal was going to come from.” By the end, some people are already halfway to the finish line before the race has even started.

had the freedom to vote. Marriage equality is a more recent example. A less obvious family of examples relates to the freedom to play society’s game in the first place. Wheelchair-accessible buildings are a great example of this idea.

A society that provides food, housing, and in-home care to wheelchair-bound people might be equal by some metric of material wellbeing. But its fundamental attitude would be, as Anderson put it in her influential 1999 paper in Ethics, that the wheelchair-disabled are inherently “defective” members of society that must depend on the “vastly superior abilities” of the productive.

It’s a powerful metaphor for how many forms of privilege make life an unfair race, but it misses something: what about the people with hay fever who couldn’t even show up? Why not move the race to a local track with no such allergens?

In other words, what if this race is not only unfair in practice, but it isn’t even the race we should be running in the first place?

The tension between freedom and equality is a common theme of political philosophy. The American Left and Right basically agree: The Right holds that a free society will have some unavoidable and entirely natural inequality, and the Left acknowledges that an equal society requires some sacrifice of individual liberties. But an alternative view, advanced most notably by philosopher Elizabeth Anderson, is that these two values are often complementary and even codependent.

This idea seems obvious in some ways, especially to people that devote significant brain space to social justice. After all, African Americans could not be equal citizens even in name until they

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This society assumes the wheelchair-bound are stuck in their bedrooms with a metaphorical hay fever, unable to participate in the race of life. It assumes that they cannot play; it never considers that, in a slightly different game, they could not only play, but actually win. Although our society may differ from this hypothetical one, its mindset is more similar to oyr own than we like to admit.

Consider the education system. When children or young adults with dyslexia, some degree of autism, or other defined “learning disabilities” receive their diagnoses, they are saddled with the implicit verdict that they will not be able to run

the educational race, or at least face a significant disadvantage. If that game is learning material in the same way and in the same environment as people without those conditions, then those diagnoses are correct. But they shouldn’t have to play that exact version of the game. Moving from the field to the track doesn’t disadvantage those without hay fever; it just lets more people run.

It’s true that educating people with these conditions often requires more individualized attention, more space, and more resources.

Specialized reading programs, tutors that work to find better individualized learning paths for students, and behavioral therapy do not materialize without effort or money. However, some tweaks to the game are simple. For example, the florescent lighting in many schools, easily replaceable with softer lighting, is quite disturbing and distracting for many children on the Autism spectrum.

Making audio versions of class readings or even exam questions available is easy yet transformative for many dyslexic students.

These tweaks are not handouts and they do not hold others back to make things “fair.” Being able to race is more than a personal victory; people that depend on society under the current rules suddenly become contributors. Competition has many benefits, and despite its drawbacks, it’s something humanity will always engage in.

Given this reality, we must recognize that not everyone competes in the same way, nor should they. A race that accommodates these differences becomes a more equal one simply by freeing previous non-participants to compete on the same level as everyone else.

Jon Niewijk ‘21 studies in the College of Arts & Sciences. He can be reached at jniewijk@wustl.edu.

WU Political Review

My Competing Ideals of Affirmative Action Sophia Wu | Artwork by Leslie Liu, assistant design director

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n 2014, Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA), an organization that files lawsuits on behalf of students who feel that they have been wrongly discriminated against, began its lawsuit against Harvard for allegedly discriminating against Asian American students in admissions. SFFA’s attorneys pointed to convincing data depicting how Harvard holds Asian Americans at a higher academic standard than other minorities. To many observers, Harvard’s current admissions policies is a contemporary version of the Jewish quotas that were implemented by many prestigious universities in the 1920s.

As an Asian American, I continue to find myself uncertain about my stance on Affirmative Action. For much of my time in high school, I was a staunch opposer of affirmative action policies, especially in college admissions. My family grilled into me how unfair it was to be Asian, how it was necessary to put in extra work to achieve similar results as my peers. Put simply, it seemed that affirmative action policies put Asian-American students like me at a clear disadvantage. Growing up in Ladue, an affluent suburb about fifteen minutes away from Wash U, I noticed that my high school was especially competitive—many of my classmates would openly complain that they were unfairly treated in the admissions process when denied admittance to top universities.

Like many of my peers, I was once extremely vocal about my opposition to Affirmative Action.

I believed that it was unjust and that it encouraged unnecessary amounts of competition. Even when coming to college, many of my Asian friends would complain that they felt that they had to be better than the rest of the Asians in order to even be considered for a top university.

Oftentimes, I saw my friends with perfect test scores and impeccable grades get denied from their target schools. I believed that nothing could ever sway my stance—I concluded that I would

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effects on their voter turnout. These discussions have shown me more clearly that there is a broader context behind any legislative action. No longer am I a hardcore opposer—nowadays, I view myself as more of a mediator. I am beginning to appreciate that my campus is at least attempting to embrace more diversity.

always be aligned with many of my fellow Asian Americans in what we believe.

A lot of people would agree that Asian-American culture encourages competition, and much of it is due to the belief that Asians are inherently disadvantaged. My parents would make me do multiple activities as a child—Kumon, piano lessons, academic tutors—in order to make me “get ahead of my friends.” To them, even my friends were competition. Whenever I complained that I felt like I was being suffocated, my parents told me that the competition between my peers was an unfortunate byproduct of affirmative action. However, it is interesting to note that in California, where public universities banned affirmative action policies, competition is still pervasive. Students continue to pack their resumes with extracurriculars, hire expensive private tutors to boost their standardized testing scores, and even go so far as to hire a private college admissions coach.

After coming to college, my stance on Affirmative Action has softened. In my courses, I engage in riveting discussions about important topics such as discrimination or inequality. In my sociology class, I learned about how constant discrimination against minorities can result in major health disparities. In my political science classes, I learned about how the historical disenfranchisement of Black Americans has persisting

I’m not going to lie: I still am uncertain about what I truly believe. When I read the court opinions from landmark Supreme Court cases such as the Bakke decision or Grutter v. Bollinger, I wonder about the impact the cases would have if the outcomes were different. Oftentimes, I question if admissions should look at socioeconomic status, and not race, to attempt to make their student body more diverse. At times, I agree wholeheartedly with the Asian-American cause of making admissions entirely based on merit. However, I still desire a campus body that celebrates multiculturalism and appreciates diverse ethnic backgrounds.

Affirmative Action is the number one policy I have the most personal conflict with. I am deeply confused with what is best for society, what is best for promoting diversity, and what is best for maintaining America’s ideals of a meritocracy. When the decision comes out in the Harvard case, there will be a mix of glee and outrage among the parties involved, and rightfully so. However, I often wonder what the deeper implications that might result from these court arguments—will universities instead find their own ways to help disenfranchised groups without penalizing others? Rather than wait for the justice system to figure out a solution, I believe that a multi-dimensional approach on a more local level—with input from everyone involved— is necessary to bring progress to this problem.

Sophia Wu ’21 studies in the College of Arts & Sciences. She can be reached at sophia.wu@wustl.edu.

Competition

Macroeconomics, Revolutionary Idealism, and the Green New Deal Hanna Khalil, staff editor

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s I sat in the second row of a 100-person lecture—my attempt at forcing myself to stay focused during my requirement-fulfilling introductory macroeconomics class—one slide caught my attention. In a sea of explanations for how to calculate GDP using the expenditure and income methods, the differences between capital and consumption goods, and the equations for determining rates of labor force participation, one bullet point stood out, hinting at the limitations of economic models for understanding our world: “Environmental Quality and Resource Depletion are difficult to value. They have value and that value is omitted from GDP.” It dawned on me that the way this detail was presented, quickly and uncritically, resembled how many of our politicians understand the relationship between our environment and economic success.

Perhaps it’s unfair or naïve for me to expect a nuanced critique of capitalist frameworks from an introductory level economics course. But I do expect more from our political leaders.

Thankfully, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Senator Ed Markey (D-MA) have stepped up to the plate with their proposal for the Green New Deal. As soon as the list of resolutions were presented to Congress, critics were quick to brush it off as an idealistic, impractical hodgepodge of every issue that matters to the Left—healthcare, union representation, and the transition to an economy based on renewable energy among other things.

What is concerning about this criticism is its fundamental lack of understanding of the interconnectedness of all the inequities that the Green New Deal boldly confronts head-on, or the scope of a plan needed to properly address them. Since its founding, America’s GDP and its global success have been fueled by the competition inherent in its capitalist economic model, and the exploited labor (slaves, migrants, the poor) at the base of its profit. The belief that the competition between firms, industries, and

The Green New Deal is revolutionary in its idealism because it dares to believe that America can confront the damage done by its capitalist system. multinational corporations, mainly unregulated by governments, will lead to better outcomes for all is reflected in our status as the only developed nation without universal healthcare or paid maternal leave. It is why low-income communities and communities of color carry the burden of toxic waste removal plans, such as the coal ash ponds poisoning the water of Labadie, Missouri.

It is why ultra-wealthy CEOs of companies such as Peabody Energy, which currently funds Wash U’s Consortium on “Clean Coal” Utilization, live far away from the dirty extraction sites giving coal workers black lung disease.

The Green New Deal is revolutionary in its idealism because it dares to believe that America can confront the damage done by its capitalist system. It challenges a worldview in which extreme wealth enjoyed by few is valued above dignity for many. It questions the inequity we have come to accept as part of life, if life can only be imagined where extraction and profit comes before community and restoration. It resets the parameters of possibility.

It’s no coincidence that those smearing the Green New Deal as impractical are often those who benefit directly from the exploitation it is trying to address. According to a Huffington Post report, Senators that do not back the Green New Deal received on average seven times as much money in donations from fossil fuel companies.

These are the same people who make seemingly objective arguments that the Green New Deal is simply unaffordable. This argument falls flat when we consider all the things the government

is willing to spend on—such as tax cuts for the wealthy and defense spending that is roughly the size of the next seven largest military budgets in the world—or when we think about the cost of not acting. A U.N. report warns that we have twelve years to make drastic strides in our fight against climate change, before our earth is irrevocably changed for the worse. When we pass the point of no return, how much will we, and our children and grandchildren, wish we had channeled the Green New Deal’s supposed idealism into action of any kind?

The fact that no other proposal has been put into place suggests that what the Green New Deal’s opponents are really against is the notion that we should be questioning why we don’t deserve more. That we should dare to value the resource depletion and the quality of the environment that we are trained to view as a footnote in Macroeconomics 101. That we should try to repair the legacies of America’s racist, capitalist, extractive system which took root via the ethnic cleansing of indigenous lands. It appears to me that many of our leaders have confused idealism with merely having ideals. I hope for our collective future that we, their constituents, remind them otherwise.

Hanna Khalil '20 studies in the College of Arts & Sciences. She can be reached at hannakhalil@wustl.edu.

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WU Political Review

Empty Chairs at Empty Tables Akshay Thontakudi, staff writer | Artwork by Michael Fogarty, editor-in-chief

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hawarma King was my coping mechanism during junior year. In the midst of what felt like living hell, I found an island of solace within the yellow walls and simple wooden chairs of this beautiful restaurant. Every Thursday, after starting the day with 10 a.m. class and ending at 6 p.m. with a lab section, my lab partner and I would make the walk from Whitaker to Melville, trying to defrag our minds from the tough week. The work seemed endless, and it was difficult to steer the conversation away from the rocky shores of lab reports and problem sets.

The moment we walked through the doors of Shawarma King, however, a blanket was placed over all of those worries. The only thing that mattered now was my hunger and the menu.

Pouring over their entree list, it wasn’t possible to make a wrong choice, and with time I settled into comfortable habits. My bread and butter order was the chicken shawarma with extra tahini sauce if we had time to sit down and eat.

Otherwise, I opted for the sandwich as a quick pick-up and go. Whatever I ended up buying, the first bite was always a moment of pure bliss where I could leave my to-do list and problem sets at the door, and simply immerse myself in a world of flavor. To be honest, the food is some of the best I've had, ever.

Thirty percent of newly opened restaurants close within the first year.

So when I learned at the beginning of this semester that Shawarma King had shut down, I was livid. This was a restaurant that had amazing food and service, and one which helped me avoid a complete mental breakdown on countless occasions. I could rely on the pita and hummus or shawarma sandwich to pull me through long nights spent at Olin or those days when I simply forgot to cook. The shuttering of Shawarma King really puts the entire Melville restaurant strip into glaring focus—this is just one of many closings that have occurred on this side street.

Most of the restaurants on the Delmar Loop feel monolithic, their presence exuding an aura of permanence. Fitz’s, Blueberry Hill, Seoul Taco— all of these places have been around for a few years, and are common stops for lunch and dinner. The Melville side street on the other hand, has restaurants come and go like a pit stop. I can recall a Zippy Burger, 180 Fitness, Bing Bing, an Ethiopian restaurant, and Smoothie King calling that street home. All of those businesses ended up shutting down, being replaced by yet another pop-up restaurant. In fact, the only one of the businesses on Melville that has remained through the past four years is Taj Mahal and Wong's Wok (which closed and was replaced

by Vegas Wok). This seems like an unusually high turnover rate, but I think the competitive

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Competition

nature of the restaurant business lies at the heart of the high turnover.

Because many restaurants on the loop are local fixtures, it becomes much more difficult to start a new restaurant near these venues due to the sheer draw of their brand power. There is charm in trying out a new restaurant, but I think the veteran reputation of Loop mainstays tend to outweigh this novelty.

Gordon Ramsay once said that packing a restaurant on Friday and Saturday comes naturally, but keeping it full on a Monday or Tuesday is the sure sign of a successful restaurant. My guess is that the Loop restaurants are thriving because they can keep themselves full all week. Given that Melville is a side street, it may be more difficult to draw traffic to those storefronts. If the rent on Melville is the same as rent on the Delmar, then budding restaurants face a formidable challenge.

This difficulty is compounded by the fact that 30 percent of newly opened restaurants close within the first year, and it sheds light onto some of the explanation for the touch-and-go nature of those storefronts.

As I make the walk past Melville every morning for class, I am constantly reminded about the heavy loss that me, my friends, and the local food community were dealt with the closure of Shawarma King. Try as I might, I'm not able to point to a singular reason, a single person to blame for this travesty. Yet this is an unfortunate part of life and business. Sometimes even when the idea and execution is stellar, things just don't pan out. In the case of Shawarma King, I think there were multiple factors at play, and now another restaurant will soon replace the storefront where it once stood. But maybe that's just how life on Melville goes.

Akshay Thontakudi ‘19 studies in the McKelvey School of Engineering. He can be reached at a.m. thontakudi@wustl.edu.

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WU Political Review

Affirmative Action is Obsolete Johnathan Romero, staff writer

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ffirmative Action, as practiced in America’s most reputable universities, has outlived its utility. It emerged in U.S. social policy with John F. Kennedy’s 1961 executive order declaring that affirmative action would help ensure federal job applicants “are employed, and that employees are treated during employment, without regard to their race, creed, color, or national origin.” Since then, Affirmative Action has spread to the admissions process at the premier American institutions of higher education. At its inception, Affirmative Action was intended to rectify historical and present racial discrimination in employment and admissions to prestigious universities. In the 2003 case Grutter v. Bollinger, the Supreme Court redefined Affirmative Action’s raison d'être as ensuring “an educational benefit that flows from student body diversity.”

While both the original and current goals of Affirmative Action are commendable, there is reason to believe that its costs now outstrip its benefits. For one, the America of today is not the America of Jim Crow, and as such, Affirmative Action’s potential to counteract widespread racial bias in college admissions has been diminished.

More salient is the rising socioeconomic disparity between the wealthiest and least affluent in American society. With economic inequality unseen since the 1920s, the economic elite wield a tremendous advantage, whether it be access to the most expensive and prestigious schools, private tutors, or an upbringing in the safety of a pristine gated community. Increasingly, the most relevant determinant of success is not race, but economic endowment. College has long been an engine of upward socioeconomic mobility in American society, yet the current iteration of Affirmative Action permits perverse situations in which an economically deprived AsianAmerican student from an abusive home with excellent qualifications might be denied admission to a top university while an equally qualified, affluent African-American applicant from a supportive family would more likely matriculate.

One might respond that an applicant’s rejection from Harvard does little to harm the job

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prospects of an ambitious and sedulous student.

But the reality is that one’s alma mater matters.

Employers do, in fact, weigh the educational backgrounds of applicants as a heuristic for evaluating the intelligence, diligence and potential of prospective employees. Consequently, Affirmative Action does not reduce the gap in opportunity between groups, rather, it to flattens any disparity in success.

This effect is apparent in the federal court case Students for Fair Admission v. Harvard. Documents released by Harvard reveal that on the vague and subjective metric that is the “personal rating,” Asian-American applicants on average were rated significantly lower than their CaucasianAmerican counterparts. This gap widens when compared to African-American applicants, mirrors trends in the relative probability of admission according to the purported effects of Affirmative Action. As reported by The New York Times, while it’s certainly possible that these disparities are due to genuine differences in applicant pools, data released by Harvard itself also revealed that differences in the “personal rating,” between White American and Asian-American applicants were non-existent when interviewed by alumni rather than admissions officers. Even more striking is the fact that admissions officers sometimes generate these ratings without even meeting the applicant.

Ironically, Affirmative Action harms the very individuals it’s designed to help. Consider the menace of self-doubt that accompanies the thought that one’s skin color may have tipped the scale in one’s admission to a prestigious university. Such a pernicious thought would unquestionably undercut a person’s sense of self-worth. Yet imagine compounding that idea with an academic environment in which the majority of your peers are more prepared for the grind of one of the nation’s most rigorous colleges. Harvard’s current Dean of Admissions, William Fitzsimmons, recently testified that African-American, Hispanic, and Native American students are sent Harvard recruitment letters with PSAT scores of 1100 or above, while those same recruitment letters are only sent to Asian-American students who receive a 1350 or above. If the PSAT is any gauge

Increasingly, the most relevant determinant of success is not race, but economic endowment. for college readiness—as it was meticulously designed to be—then Harvard is systematically attracting students who are, on the average, less prepared for its coursework. Under these circumstances, beneficiaries of Affirmative Action at Harvard and other Ivy Leagues are less likely to succeed in the challenging academic environments that define these premier schools.

Moreover, these students are more likely to lose confidence and self-esteem in the face of their better-prepared peers.

Ultimately, the policy of Affirmative Action represents a violation of a superordinate principle in American society: equality under the law. There lies an ironic consensus among proponents of Affirmative Action that discrimination based on race or ethnicity is unjustified. Under any guise apart from Affirmative Action, preferential treatment for people of a specific racial group would be rightfully derided as what it is: racist.

Johnathan Romero ‘20 studies in the College of Arts & Sciences. He can be reached at johnathan.romero@wustl.edu.

Competition

How the Wealthy Skirt the Organ Waitlist Salil Uttarwar | Artwork by Avni Joshi, staff artist

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ou start feeling severe abdominal pain and swelling.

Soon you experience fatigue, nausea, and disorientation. You go to the doctor to ask if anything is wrong.

The doctor runs tests and gives you a harrowing diagnosis: your liver is failing and you need a new one as soon as possible. Unfortunately, she tells you that there are over 11,000 people waiting for livers ahead of you on the transplant waitlist. As you count down your days left, your only option is to hope that strangers who marked themselves as organ donors pass away or decide to donate their livers.

This “you” may not always be you. It could be your mother, father, sibling, or significant other.

Over twenty people die every day waiting for an organ to be available for them. One would hope that a system which dictates the outcomes of thousands of lives yearly is fair: that everyone has to wait their turn until they can get the organ that would save their lives. However, as with most systems, there are ways to get ahead of the competition.

679 patients looking for heart transplants also found disparities between people who registered at multiple centers and people who did not. Those who had registered multiple times came from ZIP codes that have a median income of $90,153 while those registered once came from ZIP codes that have a median income of $68,986.

hospitals in the country, has a shortage of organs because people in New York donate organs less frequently compared to people in almost any other state. Due to this, the wealthy in New York and similar organ-poor areas are incentivized to fly to regions with more organs and to register at different transplant centers far from home.

In the United States, it is possible to register as an organ recipient at multiple transplant centers to be put on multiple regional waitlists. This is not practical for low-income patients, as travel, housing, and medical testing expenses are not necessarily covered by insurance. Robert Veatch, a medical ethicist at Georgetown University and a member of the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS) ethics committee, has stated that "it takes money and knowledge...traveling can make a huge difference in how quickly you get an organ." The incentive to register at multiple centers is further amplified because certain geographic areas have shortages or surpluses of organs relative to other areas.

Correlations between wealth, multiple registration, and waitlist-related deaths are firmly grounded in peer-reviewed research. A study focusing on liver transplants published by researchers at Weill Cornell Medical Center comparing 147 patients found stark differences in the incomes between those who transplanted outside their home region and those who did not. The article revealed that patients successfully getting a transplant elsewhere had higher median incomes than those who had died on the waitlist, respectively $84,946 and $55,250. The study also showed that patients with a median income of less than $60,244 had a 6% chance of living, while those with a median income higher than $60,244 had a 30% chance of living. Additionally, researchers found that 100% of the patients surveyed who were on Medicaid, a public insurance provider for low-income individuals, had passed away while on the waitlist compared to only 77% of patients who had other insurance providers.

According to an article published in the New York Times, New York, despite having some of the best

A different study conducted by researchers at the Columbia Medical Center which surveyed

It’s hard to blame people who register for organ donation at multiple centers; anyone would do what’s necessary to increase their chances of living.

However, the UNOS policy that allows people to have more than one registration undoubtedly gives the wealthy a large advantage. The cost of travel, housing, and testing prohibit those of lower socioeconomic status from registering at multiple centers. Often times, those limited to registering at one center are in worse medical conditions than those who can register at multiple centers simply due to their inability to pay for better healthcare. The advantages given to the wealthy are very representative of profit-oriented healthcare in the United States; however, this system, unlike most, can be easily improved.

In order to create an equitable system, research studies and simple morality suggest that UNOS must either ban multiple registrations or promote the sharing of donated organs between geographic regions. As our society progresses to be more equitable to those from all socioeconomic backgrounds, we must push UNOS to recognize the ethical responsibility it has to fix the unjust process that it oversees. After all, it could be you or someone dear to you that finds out they need an organ transplant to live. Would you want anyone to have an unfair advantage in a system that determines life and death?

Salil Uttarwar ‘21 studies in the College of Arts & Sciences. He can be reached at suttarwar@wustl.edu.

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WU Political Review Theme Art

by Emily McPhie

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National

The Backlash of Captain Marvel's Activism Ryan Martirano

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blockbuster is not only an escape from the scorching sun, but also an escape from our lives and society as a whole.

But with more and more films commenting on social issues, some are questioning whether it is their place to do so. Star Wars: The Force Awakens was lauded for its feminist appeal, but longtime fans of the franchise were skeptical of a narrative that they saw as an unnecessary departure from the films they loved. Specifically, their worry was that the series’ beloved escapism was being sacrificed to push a social agenda.

We need to encourage productive, effective user input, as it provides a stage for those whose understandings are often overlooked.

The most recent blockbuster to receive backlash for this newfound vein of activism is Captain Marvel, starring Academy Award winner Brie Larson. Larson’s comments at the 2018 Krystal + Lucy’s Awards addressed the lack of diversity in critical circles, specifically how 63.9 percent of nearly 20,000 reviews for the top grossing films last year were written by white men.

Preemptively aware that she could receive a negative response, she repeatedly asserted, “I don’t hate white dudes.” Ironically, groups have perceived her comments as indicative of her prejudice against white men. The result was a mass of trolling that tanked Captain Marvel’s user-generated “Want to See” score on the review aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes dropping to 28 percent.

In response to this trolling, Rotten Tomatoes has disabled the comment function prior to a movie’s release date. In a statement describing the changes, Rotten Tomatoes stated, “Unfortunately, we have seen an uptick in non-constructive input, sometimes bordering on trolling, which we believe is a disservice to our general readership.” They are still allowing audiences to leave a user rating and comments on released content, and claim that these changes are part of a larger of site redesign.

Commentators are skeptical that these changes are not merely a response to the events surrounding Captain Marvel, especially given what happened with Netflix.

Back in 2017, Netflix replaced its five-star rating system with a “thumbs up/down” feature.

Under this new system, your upvotes and downvotes, along with your interests and typical viewing habits, influences a “percent match” score for potential content. The company then went one step further and removed the entire decade-long archive of user submitted reviews from its website.

that is necessary for societal progress. Rotten Tomatoes’ decision to remove their “Want to See” score paints the general public as incompetent and lacking the capabilities to judge for themselves. Despite their commendable goal of attempting to elevate and ensure the presence of marginalized groups, practices such as these create a hierarchy of opinion that establishes one voice as elite and the rest as ignorant.

There is a need for more diverse voices in media, but this does not mean that companies should stifle views that are critical of how that diversity is achieved. Disabling user input sets a dangerous precedence for both content providers and review aggregators. It is beneficial for the public to have access to opinions outside the homogenous circle of elite Hollywood critics. Those identities which are not being represented in film criticism can find a place to share their voice in submitted user input. User input should be considered a check on the power that film critics wield. We need to encourage productive, effective user input as it provides a stage to air the concerns of those who are overlooked.

Netflix claimed that it had long planned to make the switch to personalize content ratings for each individual user rather than show them a collective review from their mass userbase.

However, some speculated that poor ratings on Amy Schumer’s stand-up special, The Leather Special, prompted this reformatting. The special had received favorable critic reviews but had scored a one-star rating due to an onslaught of review bombing by alt-right “trolls”. While it has been noted that misogyny was presented in some user reviews, other low ratings came from “self-proclaimed Schumer supporters”.

Language that lacks in constructive appraisal of a piece, or that can be considered inherently harmful and purposely hateful, is understandably susceptible to censorship. However, language that critiques a piece from a conflicting perspective provides a valuable perspective

Ryan Martirano ‘21 studies in the College of Arts & Sciences. He can be reached at rtmartirano@wustl.edu.

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WU Political Review

The Plan to Elect the President By Majority Garrett Cunningham, treasurer Artwork by Maggie Chuang, design director

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he Constitution of the United States is old, rigid, and quirky. It is the oldest living constitution, is notoriously difficult to amend, and it establishes institutions such as the Electoral College which cannot be found in any other country in the world.

The Constitution is also unique in that it cedes a substantial amount of legislative power from the federal level to the states, which have long been hailed as “laboratories of democracy” that can experiment with new policies before they are implemented on the national level. As it turns out, elections in the U.S. are also highly localized, which affords counties and states great leeway to oversee elections for each level of government, whether it be for mayor, state senator, or president.

The President of the United States is chosen by the Electoral College, an institution that has been subject to wide criticism. For instance, the Electoral College substantially overweighs the votes of citizens in the least populous states, centralizes campaigns in competitive “swing states,” and decreases voter turnout in non-competitive states, according to a 2016 study by NPR. Additionally, the system allows for the election of presidents that the majority of voters did not select.

As a result of its many flaws, the Electoral College has long received calls for its abolition.

Yet to do so would require an extraordinary step—an amendment to the Constitution. While there are a few pathways to passing an amendment, the “easiest” method is a two-thirds vote by both houses of Congress, followed by ratification by three-fourths of the state legislatures. In practice, it is extremely difficult to get 75 percent of state legislatures to agree on anything, much less the upending of an entire institution.

However, state houses are experimenting with a creative way of essentially eliminating the

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Electoral College without abolishing it outright.

The plan is called the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact (NPVIC), which is a pledge on behalf of state electors to vote for whichever presidential candidate receives the majority of the national popular vote, once enough states have joined to form a majority in the Electoral College. So, for instance, if Donald Trump receives 51% of the national popular vote in 2020, California, New York, and all states in the NPVIC would vote for Trump even if the majority of voters in those states did not.

Of course, the NPVIC only works if enough states sign on. Since there are 538 total electors in the Electoral College, the NPVIC needs 270 electors, a majority, to become law. Currently, 12 states have joined the compact, amounting to 172 electoral votes or about 64 percent of the votes needed for the NPVIC to take effect.

So far, 19 other state legislatures in their 2019 sessions have introduced bills to join the NPVIC, amounting to an additional 171 electoral votes— well over the 98 additional electoral votes that the compact needs. In Colorado (9 votes), the bill to join the compact has already passed both houses and is pending approval by Gov. Jared Polis. Similarly, New Mexico (5 votes) and Delaware (3 votes) passed their bills by wide margins in their lower and upper houses, respectively, and await a vote in their second chambers.

However, other bills to join the NPVIC have already failed in the lower houses of Virginia (13 votes) and Mississippi (6 votes) in February.

That leaves 16 states, or an additional 152 electoral votes, still in play. Notably among those states are Florida (29 votes), Ohio (18 votes), Georgia (16 votes), Arizona (11 votes), Indiana (11 votes), and Minnesota (10 votes). If a significant number of these states fail to join the compact, it is unlikely that the NPVIC will take effect any time soon.

Holding back the NPVIC is the fact that abolition of the Electoral College has become tinged by partisan interests. After all, five of the past seven presidential elections saw the Democrat win the popular vote. In two of those five Democratic popular vote wins, the Republican won the election due to the distribution of Electoral College votes. It also true that sparsely populated states, who benefit from outsized representation in the Electoral College, tend to vote for the Republican in presidential elections.

These outcomes might explain why red states have been hesitant to join the NPVIC, and why it might be difficult for the compact to pass in those high-population, “critical” states listed above, which range from red (Indiana) to leanred (Florida, Ohio, and Georgia) to purple (Arizona and Minnesota).

However, it also true that George W. Bush won his reelection in 2004 while also winning the popular vote, and most Republican presidents before him such as Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon also won the popular vote. Abolishing or circumventing the Electoral College does not mean that the Republican Party would never win another election. Perhaps instead of defending anti-democratic institutions, partisans ought to consider adopting platforms that appeal to a majority of voters across the country.

Garrett Cunningham ‘19 studies in the College of Arts & Sciences. He can be reached at cunningham.garrett@wustl.edu.

The Road to the National Popular Vote

democratic

States who have joined the NPVIC or are considering doing so have tended to vote for the Democrat in recent presidential elections. Below is a measure of each state's status on the NPVIC, compared to their partisan lean.*

HI

MA RI VT

CA MD

NY

DE

IL

NJ WA

CT

OR NM ME MN

swing state

MI

CO

VA

WI

NV

PA

FL

NC

IA

OH AZ GA MS

AK

TX

LA

SC

MT

MO KY

IN

KS

NE

AR

AL

TN

WV SD

UT ND

NH

republican

OK

ID

WY

* Partisan Scale using the FiveThirtyEight Partisan Lean Index.

electoral votes 50

40

30

20

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WU Political Review

ENGAGING WITH

BIG PHARMA: AN INTERVIEW WITH SUERIE MOON

Sabrina Wang, executive director Artwork by Leslie Liu, assistant design director

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he pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly announced recently that they would be selling Humalog, their most popular fast-acting insulin, at half price—a reduction that still leaves the drug at $137.35 a vial. This decision comes in the face of intensifying criticism over consistent increases in the drug’s price: according to the Healthcare Cost Institute, the cost of insulin doubled from 2012 to 2016. Public outrage has only grown as a drug pricing lawsuit against Eli Lilly, and fellow insulin manufacturers Sanofi and Novo Nordisk, has proceeded.

In the U.S., where lack of drug price regulation allows costs to rise far higher than in other developed countries, headlines like these dominate the news cycle. However, drug pricing is only one of many problems perpetuated by the global pharmaceutical industry. Amongst poor countries, there are ongoing questions of access to the medicines widely available in wealthy states. Moreover, due to the need to recoup development costs, pharmaceutical companies invest little research into diseases that primarily affect the world’s poorest populations. The power and wealth of the pharmaceutical industry complicates ongoing efforts to combat rising drug prices, inequities in drug access, and lack of research into orphan diseases. Particularly as international law is diffuse and often unenforceable,

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it is not immediately clear how policymakers should optimally engage with the pharmaceutical industry to reach global health goals. Should private corporations be shut out of global health solutions entirely, or are they powerful potential partners in such arrangements?

Policymakers have three general ways to engage with industry. The first is direct regulation of the industry, such as the drug pricing regulatory boards present in many countries. The second is reliance on industry self-regulation—in which corporations embark on corporate social responsibility efforts or other decisions that attempt to promote the public good, such as Eli Lilly’s decision to sell cheaper Humalog. Finally, policymakers can create mixed regulatory schemes—in which government entities form public-private partnerships with industry actors to provide a public good or service. Given the insufficiency of self-regulation and the difficulty of directly regulating international corporations, the public-private partnership is an increasingly common form of global health delivery today. Given the insufficiency of self-regulation and the difficulty of directly regulating international corporations, the public private partnership is an increasingly common form of global health delivery today.

National

3 TYPES OF REGULATION Direct regulation Though there are few, if any, examples of direct regulation on the international scale, many countries regulate domestically to ensure drug prices stay low. Australia’s Pharmaceutical Benefits Advisory Committee, for example, is an independent expert body that recommends whether a drug provides enough medical benefit to be covered by the national healthcare system. This stands in contrast with the U.S., where the government does not negotiate drug prices, instead allowing drug makers to set prices themselves. While the U.S. has higher drug prices—per person, we spend around twice as much as the Australians on prescription drugs—the American system also enables greater choice in the number of drugs available.

Self regulation Corporate social responsibility and self-regulation occurs when firms create and fund programs that contribute to society and create social good. In addition to the Humalog decision, examples include Coca-Cola’s college scholarship program as well as the Lilly Cares Foundation, in which the company offers certain patients financial assistance in obtaining Lilly brand medicines.

Mixed regulation and public-private partnerships In the drug delivery context, public-private partnerships feature agreements with pharmaceutical companies to provide lower cost medicines for set periods of time. For example, The Gavi Alliance utilizes funding from states and private foundations to subsidize vaccines, enabling them to be delivered to low-income countries at 3-4 dollars a dose. Helping immunize more than 700 million children since 2000, Gavi has been successful in vaccine delivery. However, the scheme is not perfect, with concerns about the cost-effectiveness of spending and pharmaceutical firms backing out of agreements.

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I sat down with Dr. Suerie Moon, director of the Global Health Center at the Graduate Institute of Geneva, to discuss current challenges to and opportunities in pharmaceutical engagement in global health policymaking.

Sabrina Wang: You’re on campus to give a talk about drug pricing and access to medicines, a policy domain that often involves the pharmaceutical industry. In light of the growing prominence of public-private partnerships in global health, what do you believe is the ideal role of private industry in global health governance?

Suerie Moon: That’s a complex question—let me take a step back before diving in. The pharmaceutical industry is not just a set of companies that research, develop, market, and price and distribute medicines. It’s also a very influential political player — I think it is regularly the highest donor in campaign contributions to US members of Congress. And the industry is enormous: the global pharmaceuticals market is 1.3 trillion dollars, about 10-15% of all health spending.

So, ideally, I would want a socially responsible pharmaceutical industry to invent and develop safe, efficacious medicines that meet unmet health needs, and to ensure that the products that they develop are affordable to all populations, from the poorest countries in the world to the wealthiest. I think it’s possible for the industry to do that, but I don’t think that is what the industry is doing right now.

SW: Right, I read an article just a few months ago about Merck pulling out of a rotavirus vaccine supply agreement with Gavi. So we see that these companies are not always cooperative. Do you believe that there are any fundamental or overarching ways we can ensure that companies occupy this ideal role, or at the very least move closer towards it?

SM: First, I would say that the industry is diverse, so I don’t want to paint with too broad a brush. Oftentimes the diversity of views on public health within the industry is not reflected by lobbying bodies, because a lobby group often has to cater to a consensus position that

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all companies can support. The second caveat I would put on the table is that I do think the industry has changed significantly, and companies are now more aware that they’re expected to make their medicines affordable in developing countries—and in high income countries—than certainly 20 years ago. The third important distinction to make within the industry is between the largest firms and the small to medium enterprises, which are usually much less politically powerful but where more of the innovative activity is currently happening. Many of the large firms are now acquiring and buying up small companies to fill up their pipelines. The drug industry has become very disaggregated today: you have different companies doing early-stage R&D, later stage clinical trials and registration, marketing, manufacturing and distribution—so you have less vertical integration.

So what will it take to get the industry to function and behave in a way that meets public health needs of a global society—I really think at the end of the day it is in the hands of governments. I don’t think we’re going to get the kinds of changes that we need only through persuasion, nor through corporate social responsibility initiatives. Especially today with high drug prices in the core markets of the US, Europe, and Japan, where these corporations make the lion’s share of their revenue. If we want to change their pricing practices, it’s not enough to change norms about responsibility. It’s certainly not enough to tweet. It’s not enough to scold publicly. You have to change laws and policies and incentives, and that of course is in the hands of governments, and [also] where I think we have some big problems. Because if governments are unduly influenced by the industry— through a form of political corruption—then the chances of us getting the laws and policies that we need diminish pretty quickly.

responsible for raising insulin prices, and he’s now responsible for doing something about the problem of high insulin prices. It makes the entire enterprise seem a bit ridiculous on the surface.

So it’s in the hands of governments, but I have concerns as to whether our political systems in this country or elsewhere are up to the task.

Footnote: This transcript has been lightly edited for brevity and clarity.

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s Dr. Moon points out, national regulation is a powerful tool in changing drug prices.

Though particularly potent for wealthy countries, it is a valuable strategy for low-to-middle income states as well, which can facilitate better outcomes through collaborative efforts, such as joint-country drug price negotiations, that lend national governments greater negotiation power. In order for effective regulation to occur, however, our political systems must be up to the task: there must be less undue influence of industry in the political system, whether through campaign contributions or through conflicts of interest. Though harmful for democracy at large, these reforms, as Dr. Moon indicates, also jeopardize human health, both at home and abroad.

SW: And you also hear about former drug company executives are later appointed to positions of significant power in the public sector—you hear of conflict of interest situations.

SM: Right. The current secretary of HHS is the former President of [Eli Lilly], a company

Sabrina Wang '19 studies in the College of Arts & Sciences. She can be reached at s.d.wang@wustl.edu.

National

3D Printed Guns and Gun Control Zachary Sorenson, staff writer | Artwork by Leslie Liu, assistant design director

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remember watching the Vice documentary, “3D Printed Guns,” six years ago. The documentary followed the 2012 Sandy Hook shooting where 26 people, most of them children, were killed — the bloody capstone of what was referred to by some as “the year of the gun.”

The documentary itself covered the existence and development of 3D printed, plastic firearms

by Defense Distributed, a company that seeks to distribute these firearm designs online, free of charge for anyone with the equipment and materials to produce them. This open source distribution would also enable individuals to edit those designs and then redistribute them.

These guns have no serial number and no registration, making it difficult, if not impossible, to track them like we track conventionally manufactured and regulated guns. The documentary introduced Cody Wilson, co-founder of Defense Distributed, and the rapid pace of development of gun parts and then actual 3D printed firearms.

The first 3D printed gun, the “Liberator,” (a terrible single-shot pistol) was published online May 6th, 2013 and was available for two days before the Department of State ordered the retraction of the plans, arguing that publishing those plans violated weapon export rules. Defense Distributed challenged that order, arguing that since they are distributing information about how to make guns, not guns themselves, they are protected by the First Amendment the same way a book about gun making might be protected. Even after Defense Distributed complied with the State Department, copies of their files continued to circulate across torrent sites.

Last year, the State Department settled with Defense Distributed, who then posted designs once again to their website before being promptly sued by 25 states and having to desist once more. Soon after, Cody Wilson was replaced

by Paloma Heindorff after he was arrested for an alleged statutory rape. The New York Times notes, that ironically, he “could be blocked from owning a firearm for life if convicted.”

The debate over whether, and to what degree, we should regulate guns and gun ownership is still churning onward, but that debate is being outstripped by emerging technologies. Gun

control is being challenged by people like Cody Wilson who work to render regulation irrelevant. When discussing his team’s efforts to design high-capacity magazines, he stated, “You can’t ban a box and a spring”.

Likewise, bump stocks, which as of March 2019 are illegal, are easy to fabricate with the aid of a 3D printer (a Google search shows designs already circulating). This brings us to why Cody Wilson is even doing this—he understands that 3D printing and other emerging technologies could “kill” the efficacy of current and prospective gun control measures.

Technology has advanced since the first 3D printed gun six years ago, and 3D printed firearms are significantly more effective and safer to use. Defense Distributed has now shifted to creating low cost CNC machines (machines that use an electronic design to cut down a block of metal, or other material, into objects) that would allow individuals to create handguns easily and secretly in the comfort of their homes and sell their designs “pay what you want” style. The online communities that develop and share innovations in 3D printed firearms have also grown.

Darren Booth, a member of one of the online communities, worked to create the Shuty AP-9 a semi-automatic firearm (with some basic storebought parts) that is capable, reportedly, of firing at least five thousand 9mm rounds over its lifespan. The designs are available to the public free of charge on GitHub along with printing and assembly instructions.

None of this is currently illegal. An individual can manufacture a firearm for personal use if that firearm can be detected by x-ray machines, metal detectors, and if the individual receives permission and pays appropriate taxes on any firearm covered by the National Firearms Act. Two decades ago the proposition to make a safe and usable firearm as an individual would have been difficult for anybody other than an

experienced gunsmith or machinist. Now the barriers have diminished greatly and will continue to do so as additive and subtractive manufacturing becomes cheaper and more pervasive.

This reality provides a challenge for people concerned with gun violence on how to keep certain firearms and accessories out of the hands of criminals when making those firearms is easier than ever.

Regardless of the legal challenges hamstringing Defense Distributed, the government has been outflanked in the realm of gun control by private initiative and a growing community of techsavvy gun enthusiasts. It remains to be seen if legislators will be able or willing to act in any meaningful way to protect existing regulations and the future of gun control. Unfortunately, we may reach, or have already reached, a point where many gun control proposals will simply be ineffectual. Cody Wilson’s first words in that 2013 documentary still stick with me: “Gun control for us is a fantasy…people say [we're] being unrealistic about printing [a] gun. I think it's more unrealistic now, especially going forward, to think you could ever control this technology.”

Zachary Sorensen ‘21 studies in the College of Arts & Sciences. He can be reached at zacharysorensen@wustl.edu.

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After the War in Afghanistan Nicholas Kinberg, staff writer Artwork by Michael Avery, staff artist

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he year is 2029. The U.S. pulled out of Afghanistan in 2022, ending the Afghan war.

This had been a long time coming. The U.S. invaded Afghanistan over twenty years prior, in retaliation for the September 11th attacks. After President Bush’s initial campaign failed to defeat the Taliban and al-Qaeda, the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003. Bush pulled resources away from Afghanistan to stabilize Iraq, and for six years, the largest terrorist haven on the planet was put on the backburner while another such haven— again, Iraq—was being created.

In December 2009, President Obama announced a surge in troops to finish the job in Afghanistan, parallel to U.S. withdrawal from Iraq in December 2011. He also promised, like

Bush, to provide more foreign aid to neighboring Pakistan, in the hopes of enticing the nation to assist in the campaign in Afghanistan rather than supporting the Taliban. Although Pakistan didn’t change its behavior, Seal Team Six was able to kill al-Qaeda’s former leader, Osama bin Laden, in May 2011. Little, however, changed on the ground.

By August 2017, after an entire president’s tenure had passed without progress, President Trump announced another surge in troops, this time pressuring Pakistan by threatening to strengthen ties with Pakistan’s nemesis, India. Unfortunately, results were like Obama’s and Bush’s. So, withdrawal—and failure—were inevitable.

According to The Balance, by 2022, the war had already cost us over $1.1 trillion. Staying in Afghanistan would’ve cost taxpayers ever more.

Trump’s successor argued for “Afghanization,” turning control of Afghanistan from the U.S.

military over to the Afghan National Army.

Reminiscent of Nixon’s “peace with honor,” the U.S. would leave the country to its native American-trained force by 2022, hoping that the Afghan government would be able to negotiate with the Taliban rather than continue to fight.

Results were disappointing. Within a year of U.S. withdrawal, the Taliban returned from rural areas to overwhelm cities. Eventually, they took the capital, Kabul, and killed all high-level Afghan government officials. Those in the lower levels were forced to pledge their allegiance to the Taliban. 2022 looked a lot like the 1990s. The worst misfortune was just beginning.

With the withdrawal of the U.S. came the withdrawal of all other foreign forces, except those allied with the Taliban. In 2029, those allies still include Russia, Iran, and Pakistan. India, upon losing its influence in the Afghan national government, allied itself to the Taliban as well.

With this defeat of the greatest superpower in history, the global jihadist movement was emboldened. The Islamic State, though defeated, was the harbinger of its predecessor: al-Qaeda. Since U.S. forces left in 2022, operatives have been rebuilding their training camps.

Moreover, they’ve been strengthening their connections with other al-Qaeda franchises in

Yemen, Somalia, Nigeria, Libya, and India. They know that an attack against the U.S. will most certainly result in another invasion, so they’re biding their time. They have consolidated their network and are making certain that this next act will result in another invasion and bleed the Republic even more. Because of upgraded security all throughout the West, al-Qaeda believes that their next strike lies not stateside, but in one

The end of the Cold War was supposed to be the end of history. With the fall of the Soviet Union, free markets and free people were supposed to prevail. Yet in the forty years between 1989 and 2029, the world has, if anything, become more dangerous. Non-state actors can fly planes into buildings, make homemade bombs to explode at concerts, and take over entire swaths of territory from legitimate governments.

If the U.S. invades Afghanistan again, the 2030s will belong to Russia and China.

President Bush promised to stop these “terrorist killers” in the wake of the September 11th Attacks. Yet since 2001, the number of terrorist attacks in not just Afghanistan, but all over the world, has increased, according to Our World in Data. And with the U.S.’ attention focused on the Middle East, other crises have flared: in Venezuela, Ukraine, Hungary and Poland, North Korea, India and Pakistan, and the South China Sea. With the exhaustion of Iraq and Afghanistan still hanging over our Republic, it is necessary, but unlikely, that we will meet our obligations in these places. To quote Robert Kagan, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, “the jungle has grown back.”

of the U.S.’ allies. They plan for London 2030 to dwarf Paris 2015.

And with that invasion will come another dearth in resources. If the U.S. invades again, the 2030s will belong to Russia and China. Russia will extend itself deeper into eastern Europe and China will strengthen ties with neighbors, as well as menace Taiwan.

Nicholas Kinberg ‘20 studies in the College of Arts & Sciences. He can be reached at nicholaskinberg@wustl.edu.

WU Political Review

Going Towards and Away from Democracy Alexander Newman Editors' Note: This article was written in anticipation of Thailand's national elections on Sunday, March 24, 2019. At the time of publication, results are still being contested. The country's pro-military party, Palang Pracharat, claims the lead.

O

n March 24, Thailand will hold its first elections since a 2014 coup made General Prayut Chan-ocha the Prime Minister. Currently, Thailand is ruled by a military junta. This isn’t the first instance of junta rule in Thailand. Since it became a constitutional monarchy in 1932, Thailand has experienced twelve coups, more than any other country. The reasons for this instability are complex, but the events of the past twenty years in Thailand can help provide a better understanding of the current problems with Thailand’s electoral rules.

One of the most influential figures in Thai politics is former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra. The founder of the Thai Rak Thai party, Thaksin became Prime Minister in 2001 with broad support for his populist platform that focused on redistributing wealth towards the poor. However, by 2005, Thailand was in a political crisis. Thaksin was mired in a massive corruption scandal and faced political opposition for human rights abuses and abuse of power in major policies like a harsh war on drugs. The People’s Alliance for Democracy movement formed a strong opposition to Thai Rak Thai and there were widespread protests. This crisis eventually resulted in a 2006 military coup that removed Thaksin from power and forced him to flee the country. Thaksin’s party was banned from politics.

Thaksin’s exile did not end his influence on the country. Thaksin's platform remains popular with many voters, although a sizeable minority find Thaksin and his allies to be unacceptably corrupt. The military also views Thaksin's popularity as a threat to their power. When new elections were held in 2007, the PPP, the successor party to Thai Rak Thai, won. Almost immediately,

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the new prime minister was accused of being Thaksin’s puppet, leading to another political crisis. Thailand’s Constitutional Court eventually dissolved the PPP, which gave the opposition Democrat party control of the government.

In the next election in 2011, Thaksin’s sister, Yingluck Shinawatra, won a landslide victory and became prime minister. Once again, there was a political crisis. The Constitutional Court removed Yingluck from power in 2014 and shortly after, Prayut Chan-ocha used the military to seize control. Thailand’s democratic history is extremely complicated, as the results of elections frequently clash with the rulings of the Constitutional Court and the will of the military.

However, this cycle of conflict may come to an end with the new election. The ruling junta modified Thailand’s process of electing the Prime Minister. Previously, voters elected 500 members to the House of Representatives. The House of Representatives then chose a Prime Minister. The House also selects members to serve in the Senate. Senators did not participate in choosing the Prime Minister. This time, however, the Senate does get to help choose the Prime Minister. And one other small change: all 250 senators in 2019 will be chosen by the military. With this change, current Prime Minister Prayut Chan-ocha seems likely to win. If he will have the full support of the Senate, which is likely, he will only need 176 of the 500 seats of the House to support him. In an extreme subversion of democracy, Prayut could potentially suffer a landslide defeat at the polls and still become Prime Minister.

Besides the military and courts, Thailand’s election commission has the power to influence elections with its extremely strong campaign restrictions. This year, the commission banned political posts on social media that contain anything more than basic information such as a candidate’s picture, name, biography, and party. To avoid violations, many candidates quickly took down their Facebook profiles and went dark on

other social media as well. Under the complex rules, even a simple campaign activity like a speech can only be delivered at specific places and times. In the past, candidates have even been banned from using microphones or promising to implement policies. Although these rules seem outlandish, violations can potentially cause a candidate to be disqualified. These restrictions have led to a weakened democracy in Thailand.

In a final complication to the 2019 election, Princess Ubolratana was nominated as a candidate by the Thaksin-aligned Thai Raksa Chart party earlier this year. Although the princess had previously given up her royal title, the involvement of a member of the royal family in electoral politics was unprecedented. She was quickly banned from the election. There were even greater consequences: on March 7, the Constitutional Court dissolved Thai Raksa Chart. This ruling will surely be controversial. Was the court acting to prevent royal involvement in politics, or was this simply a convenient excuse to get rid of a Thaksin-aligned party? The dissolution of a major party just weeks before the election adds even more confusion to an already complicated election. Even though the March 24 elections will transition Thailand from military rule to democracy, Thailand’s democracy seems to be in a more precarious position now than it has been in years.

Alexander Newman ‘20 studies in the College of Arts & Sciences. He can be reached at newmana@wustl.edu.

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