Wash U & St. Louis

Washington U niversity

POLITICAL REVIEW 28.3 | May 2018 | wupr.org

TABLE OF CONTENTS 6

WASH U & ST. LOUIS 8

NATIONAL

10

12

That Should Be Funny

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Trevor McKee

Kirk Brown

Qualifications for University-Sanctioned 27

Why Elections Matter and Why We Care Too

Protest

Much About Them

Jonah Klein-Barton

Luke Voyles

St. Louis's Identity, Told Through Food

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13

Two Slaps, Rogernomics, and The

Hanna Khalil

Unpredictability of Historical Eras

Max Lichtenstein

Luke Voyles

The Bubble

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Nine on the Mind

Race And The Right To Bear Arms Josh Hill

Arushee Agrawal

INTERNATIONAL

When is a March Not A Protest?

30

Clashing Sensitivities Across Cultures

Natalie Snyder

Yiran Cheng

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Wash U Loves Construction Projects — How About a Journalism Major?

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Divya Walia

Kayla Steinberg

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Two Classrooms

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First in the Family Liza Sivriver

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Illustrations on the Riverfront Jack Frischer

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Student Activism in Wash U and STL Hanna Khalil Max Lichtenstein

We Cannot Permit Israeli Injustice Conor Smyth

Ishaan Shah

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Syria Still Burns

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What's Next?

Christopher Hall

EDITORS' NOTE Editors-in-Chief: Michael Fogarty Dan Sicorsky Editor-in-Chief Emeritus: Rachel Butler Executive Director: Sabrina Wang Executive Director Emeritus: Sam Klein Staff Editors: Sophie Attie Max Handler Daniel Smits Katelyn Taira Features Editors: Hanna Khalil Max Lichtenstein Finance Director: Adya Jain Director of Design: Dominique Senteza Assistant Directors of Design: Maggie Chuang Maddy Angstreich Web Editor: Nicholas Kinberg Director of External Operations: Josh Hill Programming Director: Liza Sivriver Front Cover: Thomas Fruhauf Theme Spread: Michael Avery Feature Designs: Maggie Chuang Dominique Senteza

Dear Reader, With every new year comes a new Wash U & St. Louis issue. The Political Review certainly strives to dedicate each issue to a new theme, but this is one topic that merits repetition. As long as new questions, puzzles, and problems keep surfacing on and off our campus, there will always exist a recurring duty to write about our university and its city.

The past year has been notable and tumultuous for Washington University, and for St. Louis: the verdict of the Jason Stockley trial, the changing physical landscape of our university, Chancellor Wrighton’s planned retirement, and more.

Wash U’s role in the St. Louis community remains at once central and removed.

The University may fence itself in on its hilltop campus, yet it remains a powerful player in the region’s politics, business, and culture.

We invited contributors to address questions about Wash U’s institutional identity, and its relationship with the St. Louis area. Kayla Steinberg responded with an article advocating for the establishment of a journalism major at Wash U. Hanna Khalil and Max Lichtenstein explore some of the iconic foods and drinks that define St. Louis’s identity. Jonah Klein-Barton scrutinizes the University’s relationship with student protest and activism. And other writers delve into topics such as Wash U’s Prison Education Project and the resources available to first-generation college students.

As always, we also feature content addressing national and international issues.

Kirk Brown contrasts the racial dynamics of the Black Lives Matter and March for Our Lives movements. Divya Walia reflects on the U.S.’s role in the ongoing Syrian conflict and humanitarian crisis, while Christopher Hall wonders if we are on the verge of a new geopolitical era.

As graduation nears, we want to recognize Sam Klein and Rachel Butler, our outgoing Executive Director and Editor-in-Chief, who have for four years contributed to, shaped, and nurtured this publication. Their leadership and dedication have made the Washington University Political Review a better publication and a stronger organization. We would like to also congratulate and extend our gratitude to executive board members Max Handler, Katelyn Taira and Adya Jain. A warm thank-you goes out to them, to all seniors who have ever contributed to WUPR, and to all soon-to-be alumni for never forgetting that everything is politics.

Sincerely, Michael Fogarty & Dan Sicorsky Editors-in-Chief

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THAT SHOULD BE FUNNY Trevor McKee | Photo courtesy of Time Out

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he doctors are frantically operating, and I sit nervously in the waiting room. Hours pass until eventually the doctor comes to meet me, “I’m sorry, but he didn’t make it.” I begin to weep, and you should too. He was a dear friend to all of us once. But he is gone now. Humor is dead. The next generation of liberals on college campuses have reduced comedy to nothing. It is true that people’s lives and identities should be respected, but college students really can’t take a joke. They hide behind their sensitivities and, in turn, miss out on the value of humor.

Those students prevent the use of comedy as a social lubricant for meaningful discussion.

Most humor should be allowed to be unsettling because it creates interactive and engaging communities, and colleges, especially, should let comedy challenge their students instead of encouraging a helpless over-sensitivity.

Finding great comedians becomes difficult when the scope of humor is limited to completely non-offensive and politically correct comedy.

The goal of humor is not to foster a safe-space.

Good humor is confrontationally and unapologetically uncomfortable. Good humor forces the listener to encounter opposing perspectives of the world, and college is a place that is advertised to be a life-changing experience. Is it really all that life-changing when the only views presented are nullified arguments stemming from a rigid sensitivity toward diversity and inclusion?

Caitlin Flanagan, in her Atlantic article, “That’s Not Funny”, would tell you “to think of college not as an institution of scholarly pursuit but as the all-inclusive resort that it has in recent years become”.

Comedy can be used as a tool to express concern. In many communities, challenges of mental health are not often publicly discussed.

Self-deprecating humor, then, allows for mental health to be addressed, collectivized, and better understood in a situation in which emotional pain cannot easily be made explicit. Comedy is a coping mechanism, bringing students together to know they are not alone in their struggles. It eliminates the negative social stigmas associated with self-expression while allowing for that self-expression to occur. Humor masks the vulnerability of emotion and thus allows for discussion.

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Another facet of college is that students need to be mentally challenged to fulfill the purposes of higher education. They are not mindless, droning sheep waiting to be grass-fed political and social views. The goal of a college student should be to seek out engagement in subjects that distress them, including political views that differ from the norm of a university. Comedy allows for this awkward yet enlightening engagement.

Comedy opens the door to discussion in two ways: by presenting controversial opinions and by loosening tensions over delicate subjects.

One of the best ways to make students think for themselves is to suppose an outlandish argument, or one that is at least unfamiliar to their closed-off bubble. Comedy breaks the ice and begins to lead the discussion. The awkward silence of the freshman seminar is finally overcome as students begin to form opinions and feel comfortable in their situation to express them. Without a starting point, students have no reference and are disinclined to participate.

Conversations are much more productive when engagement centers around reactions and responses rather than disjointed and poorly formed starting opinions.

Once students begin to think for themselves, the college experience has succeeded. By creating a “safe space”, in the sense that all difficult conversations and ideas are averted, colleges create a bubble for their students and do not prepare them for the real world because in the real world, people have vastly differing opinions. Students should have experience interacting with opinions that differ from their own, and they should be ready to defend their argument. Creating a safe space only inhibits students from understanding and developing the reasons they believe in certain ideologies. And while that responsibility lies mostly on the student to immerse her/himself into environments that are uncomfortable, it also lies on the university to present students with opportunities that will help them progress mentally.

One issue with the perceptions of comedians brought to college campuses is that students will assume the reaction of others before understanding their own authentic reaction. As

Caitlin Flanagan points out in her article, during a stand-up comedy session by Kevin Yee, two white students negatively reacted to his use of the phrase “sassy black friend” while the black girls enjoyed and applauded the performance.

We assume that those around us cannot handle humor the same way that we can, and that assumption creates an unnecessary barrier between comedian and audience. We should not immediately jump to the conclusion that groups of people need to be consoled when a joke is told about them; we should not assume that all jokes are so offensive that they merit a sensitive reaction.

Universities excel at finding and bringing to campus diverse people, but usually fail to present diverse thinkers.

One claim regarding offensive humor is that a comedian must have a certain identity to make jokes about that identity. For example, a white male cannot make jest towards the struggles or personalities of black females. The issue with this comedic limitation is that exclusivity of identity does not lead toward cooperation nor understanding on behalf of the out-group. By restricting the roles we can assume, we prevent ourselves from empathic learning and experiencing of another’s life. If I cannot joke about the lack of representation in our government as a white male, how can I even begin to understand the reasons why a lack of representation is a problem?

In other words, comedic exclusivity prohibits us from exploring social issues through humor, completely demeaning its central purpose.

Comedic exclusivity breaks down even further when the hypocrisy of college students is

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critically evaluated. Just like conservatives find jokes about liberals funny, liberals find jokes about conservatives to be funny. The sensitivity and politically correct nature of liberals only takes effect when the jokes are about liberals.

I’ve been at fault, too; I have found straight jokes hilarious, being gay, but I become hypersensitive when straight people make jokes about gayness.

How can I claim to be inclusive and politically correct when those qualities are thrown out the window at the prospect of a straight joke?

As liberals, we justify our hypocrisy by claiming an identity, but the end effect is elitist, exclusive groups that do not foster the interaction or engagement for which college should be striving.

Colleges tend to think that diversity ends with identities of race, gender, and sexuality. But true diversity extends beyond our biological characteristics into our ideological beliefs. Universities excel at finding and bringing to campus diverse people, but usually fail to present diverse thinkers. Comedians presented by student groups are almost all liberal and have a focus on inclusion.

Their jokes are inoffensive, but they often have no point. Intellectual thinkers of different ideologies should be brought to campuses to encourage reevaluation and engagement in discussions.

While humor should be challenging students in their views, there should be certain boundaries it should not cross. Some fail to recognize the importance of this comedic restriction.

The issue with using comedy as a platform to present and argue ideas is that racists, sexists, homophobes, ableists, etc. can use it as a scapegoat to justify their violations of basic human principles. This is the type of humor that has no purpose will only serve to perpetuate hate across impressionable youth. Humor is inherently offensive, but there are non-partisan human rights that transcend political views.

It is one thing to present an unpopular political opinion through humor, and it is another to disrespect a person’s very existence while hiding behind the fortified wall of comedy.

I believe jokes should have meaning. They should, if even tangentially, address an issue or present a significant argument. Comedy should not be so toxic such that its only purpose is to offend, nor should the same joke be repeated so often that the original intent is no longer conveyed. Humor is meant to encourage thinking, and pure disrespect with no motive to question, persuade, or motivate only prohibits it.

While comedy has its limitations, it should be embraced by colleges as a tool to introduce arguments and allow for students to engage in meaningful and productive discussions. Schools should encourage a culture of questioning and arguing; they should stop hiring “diverse” comedians purely for their ethnicity. Bring speakers to campus who will challenge the students because our liberal sensitivity to everything that offends is what prevents universities from teaching students how to be active and functioning members of society. And responsibility lies on us, too. We just have to start laughing.

Trevor McKee '21 studies in the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts. He can be reached at trevorjmckee@wustl.edu.

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QUALIFICATIONS FOR UNIVERSITYSANCTIONED PROTEST Jonah Klein-Barton | Photo courtesy of Flickr

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n Feb. 24, following the Parkland school shooting and resultant protests, Washington University sent out the following tweet: “#WashU22 Applicants: We encourage civic engagement. Your acceptance will not be rescinded if you are disciplined for engaging in peaceful protest. March on.” When I read this the first time, it seemed reassuring.

I think that it is important for a university to reassure its incoming class of first years that they will not be discriminated against because they used their rights to assemble speak freely. On reading it again, when Chancellor Wrighton retweeted it, I began to think about why a tweet like that would be necessary, how it should go without saying that an institution of higher learning wouldn’t punish students for exercising their rights. Finally, I started thinking about how it compared to both the University and the chancellor’s response to protest and activism here, on campus, by currently enrolled students.

Protest has been a defining feature of my time as a student at the university. A few days before I came to St. Louis to start as a freshman in 2014, Darren Wilson—a police officer in Ferguson— shot and killed Michael Brown. The St. Louis community came together both to memorialize him and to protest against the rampant police

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violence, militarized policing, and systemic targeting of people and communities of color.

Some students went to join these protests.

There was no statement in support of protest from the university.

Before Thanksgiving of that year, a grand jury failed to indict Darren Wilson, dismissing the case with no charges. People came together again to protest the judicial system’s treatment of the case, with a widespread feeling that the prosecutor was not trying to secure an indictment. Much of the protest was against the systemic racism within both the judicial system and the police force. Again, some students went to join these protests. Again, there was no statement in support of protest from the University. Instead, there was an email sent out on behalf of Chancellor Wrighton which said the following: “At this point, we have experienced very little in the way of protest activity on or near our campuses, and all has been peaceful. However, none of us can predict what might transpire over the coming days and weeks, so we have taken every precaution to be well prepared. … Our Emergency Response plans are up-to-date and thoroughly vetted. We have solid procedures and infrastructure in place. If it might become necessary, we are prepared to activate

24-hour, 7-day-a-week Emergency Operations Centers to manage any necessary response across all of our university functions.”

Rather than supporting students protesting, this email celebrated the lack of protest happening on campus. It used fear-mongering and vaguely threatening language, talking about what additional (police) response might be necessary if students were to protest on campus, and alluded to precautions and responses for any scenario which might arise. This email was sent on the heels of then-Governor Nixon sending the national guard into the St. Louis streets, also as a “precaution,” a move which dramatically escalated tensions and ramped up the militarized police presence already in the city and county.

Nearly a month later, as the semester drew to a close, Chancellor Wrighton sent out an email that technically supported student protest. In it, he said, “I am proud of all of our students and of the work they are doing in classrooms, in laboratories and in studios and, yes, on the streets and sidewalks of St. Louis, to help raise the awareness of what is wrong and what, together, we can do to begin to set it right.” To me, and to many other students at the time, this was too little, too late.

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Fast forward three years to last semester when the Stockley verdict comes out, which found another police officer not guilty after shooting a black man. This time, protest was not as removed from campus as it was in 2014. These protests happened in St. Louis City, outside city hall, in the Central West End, and on Delmar.

Students joined the marches and witnessed heavy bouts of police brutality including kettling, mass arrests, and “nonlethal” weaponry such as rubber bullets and tear gas. Some student protestors were among the victims of this police violence, but still there was no tweet or email that sent by Chancellor Wrighton or the University supporting student protestors. The one email which did concern protests stated that the University’s position is to “certainly encourage [students] to stay on campus and participate in community activities here.” Rather than supporting students who went to join with the St. Louis community, university administration urged us to further silo ourselves off and stay in our safe privileged bubble.

Secondly, and this is a more global issue, is the racializing of different types of protest. The faces of the March for Our Lives are majority white and lighter skinned, while the faces of the Ferguson, Black Lives Matter, and Stockley protests were majority black and darker skinned.

This has not just affected how Washington University has responded, but also how press and public opinion nationwide has reacted to them and is honestly deserving of its own article and analysis. One symptom of a systemically racist society is the difference in assumptions of behavior. When hundreds or thousands of black people marched, the university, the media, and the police all prepared for violence. When hundreds or thousands of white people march, the media is quick to give interviews and the university tweeted out its support. This doesn’t just affect peoples’ perception of protest. Rather, university-spread fear mongering gives cover to violent actions from police which puts already marginalized people of color (including students) in direct physical danger.

Our Lives, there were police smiling, relaxed, not expecting any trouble. I didn’t see even one cop with a hand on their weapon, let alone a full battalion outfitted in riot gear, hands clutching their batons and shields, yelling at us as happened to us just months ago, not three blocks away during the Stockley protests. However, however large the scope of this problem is, it does not give our community and leadership a pass to follow suit and do the same. Washington University’s response is one where we as a student body should have a say. As students at such a privileged institution, we have a responsibility to speak out. If we don’t, it will only be read as tacit support for the university’s default positions. With a new chancellor coming in the near future, it will be on the student body to demand that university administration respect student and community voices and protest rather than condemn them. History has shown that left to their own devices, the university will isolate itself from communal issues in the name of “safety” unless forced to do otherwise.

When hundreds or thousands of black people marched, the university, the media, and the police all prepared for violence.

When hundreds or thousands of white people marched, the media was quick to give interviews, and the university tweeted out its support.

So why am I writing this then? Shouldn’t I be happy that the WashU is turning over a new leaf, embracing the activist bent of their newest class, and making it clear that it stands behind them?

I guess I would be if I really thought that’s what they were doing, but there are two distinct differences which come to mind between the walk-out movement currently happening and the Ferguson or Stockley protests, one which is more specific to Washington University, and one which is more universal. First, the impetus for the recent gun control protests did not start here in St. Louis.

Thus, the protests are not going to be directed at power structures with which the university has any ties or complicity. Unfortunately, the university acts differently (with much less care) when a movement challenges something that the university or a member of the board of trustees has financial ties to, such as coal or private prisons.

That tweet was a risk-free move for the university. By widely sharing it through at least three university associated twitter accounts, Wash U gets good publicity for standing behind what is a widely uncontroversial—to its donor and applicant base—widespread youth protest movement, with no concern that the movement will make life uncomfortable for University administration or anyone associated, or that Wash U would need to take any real actions to back up their words. To me, that doesn’t count as “supporting civic engagement,” let alone supporting student protest and activism.

In the past few weeks, it has become painfully clear that there is a systemic national problem in different perceptions of protest based around race. It does not just exist within our university bubble. When I went to the St. Louis March for

This is a case where I really hope I’m wrong. I hope I’m reading the situation incorrectly, and the next time students stand up to protest police brutality, systemic racism, discriminatory immigration policy, rights to unionize, or environmental justice, the administration will—freely and without prompting—publicly signal their support for those students. Given the history of the past four years however, I’m not counting on it.

Jonah Klein-Barton ‘18 studies in the College of Arts & Sciences. He can be reached at j.klein-barton@wustl.edu.

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ST. LOUIS’S IDENTITY, TOLD THROUGH FOOD Hanna Khalil and Max Lichtenstein Food has long held greater significance than the nutrition it provides. From sharing a meal around a dinner table, to adventuring to new neighborhoods to try out a famous restaurant, food provides a way for Wash U students to connect with one another and the city they now call home. Perhaps most significantly, food serves as an important source of urban community, culture, and identity. Generation-spanning debates over New York Style Pizza versus Chicago Deep Dish, which Southern state has the best style of barbeque, and even nominal distinctions (would you like a soda, a pop, or a coke?) prove this critical interplay between food and regional culture.

Food can also provide a lens into the past: revealing new perspectives on times gone by, and the people who lived through them. This holds especially true for St. Louis – a city with a long and rich food tradition. Starting with its foundation as a French settlement in the 18th century, the cuisine of this city has been shaped and molded by new waves of immigration, historical events, and invention. However, St. Louis is also a city on the decline. Once boasting more than 850,000 residents in 1950 (the 8th most populous U.S. city at the time), the population has since shrunk to around 308,000. The city’s economy has also stagnated in the last half century due to suburbanization and a decline in manufacturing jobs. Racial tensions drove residents everywhere but the urban center itself, as white families fled to the Western suburbs to escape the heterogeneity of the city, and racist zoning policies forced black residents to settle Northeast of the Mississippi into Illinois. Facing dilapidated streets and an eerily empty downtown, St. Louis tells the classic story of a Rust Belt City. Along with 500,000 residents, St. Louis has lost a lot of what once gave it a unique identity. Despite these challenges, the city has been able to cling on to a key aspect of its selfhood: its quirky and one-of-a-kind delicacies. Many food favorites of Wash U students are unique to this city, and continue to inject life and personality into this still-vibrant community. In this feature, we explore the brief histories of some of St. Louis’ and Wash U’s most iconic eats.

Toasted Ravioli Toasted ravioli is one of the most famous comfort foods of St. Louis. This dish, affectionately called toasted rav, is a deep fried stuffed pasta creation, served with a sprinkling of Parmesan and a side of rich marinara sauce – it’s clear to see why it is a beloved favorite. What is surprising is that a dish that seems so logically good, was an accident! Dating back to the 1950s, toasted ravioli is said to be invented in a restaurant called Angelo Oldani, located in the famous Italian-American neighborhood, the Hill. Legend has it that on a busy day, the owner of the restaurant passed on the task of cooking ravioli to a German cook.

Unknowingly, the cook dropped the ravioli into a pot of boiling oil instead of water. The result was a deep fried dish that Angelo tried to recover by topping it with Parmesan. 60 years later, toasted rav continues to be enjoyed by St. Louis residents. It stands as a reminder of the term “happy accident.” It also is a testament to the many immigrant communities that have shaped the St. Louis community throughout history.

Ted Drewes Inarguably, the most famous frozen treat [FM5] in all of St. Louis is the legendary Ted Drewes. To be precise, Ted Drewes serves frozen custard, and has been doing so for over 80 years. Started by Ted Drewes Sr. in 1929, the first Ted Drewes store was actually in Florida. An STL native, Drewes was a famous tennis star and would travel to Florida to continue playing the game during the winter months. Shortly after, he opened up two stores in St. Louis, the most famous one today being the 12 window giant Chippewa location, located on the historic route 66. Ted Drewes’ most famous offering is the “concrete”: a shake so thick it can be turned upside down.

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

Max Lichtenstein ‘20 studies in the College of Arts & Sciences. He can be reached at max.lichtenstein@wustl.edu.

Breweries St. Louis has a long and rich history with breweries, institutions that continue to serve as major employers of the city, and help to drive its economy and revitalize neighborhoods. The influx of German and Bohemian immigrants to the Soulard neighborhood of St. Louis during the 1930s initially brought the brewery industry to the city, as many of these immigrants brought along an unprecedented Beer-making ability. German immigrant John Adam Lemp pioneered the industry, who abandoned his grocery to sell exclusively lager beer at brewery on South Second Street in 1840. What became known as The William J. Lemp Brewing Co. became an industrial powerhouse before abruptly shutting down as a result of prohibition in 1919.

Of course, the most famous brewery to come out of St. Louis is AnheuserBusch, which adopted the moniker in 1879 after German-born businessman and pharmacist Eberhard Anheuser began working with his son-in-law, Adolphus Busch. The pair pioneered many practices in the brewing industry, including pasteurization to keep beer fresh, the introduction of pilsner beer to the United States, mechanical refrigeration, and refrigerated railroad cars that ensured both the longevity and geographic reach of the product.

The company even managed to survive prohibition, shifting production to non-alcoholic items. Today, the Anheuser-Busch Brewery offers free tours to visitors, attracting locals, students, and tourists alike.

In more recent years, however, an explosion of craft breweries has marked the beer landscape of St. Louis. Perhaps the 2008 acquisition of AnheuserBusch by Inbev, 21st century worldwide monolith, has given the Budweiser name a less local feel. Bud Light is, in fact, losing market shares. Indeed, the president of O’Fallon Brewery, an increasingly competitive craft company

Fitz’s Fitz’s Root Beer exists as more than just another restaurant on the Delmar Loop, but as a St. Louis success story. Fitz’s initially established its place as a local staple at a drive-in restaurant in 1947. After closing down some years later, Fitz’s was reimagined as a soda microbrewery within a vintage-style restaurant in 1993. Mass producing the root beers using a refurbished bottling line from the 1940s (originally used for beer, of course) and kegging the soda in huge barrels to be served on-tap at the restaurant, Fitz’s treats its sodas like a high-end beer. Since the 90s, Fitz’s has become iconic as the best of the best and a beverage unique to St. Louis, with a secret formula to boot. Fitz’s Root Beer: “If it wasn’t better, we wouldn’t bother!”

in the suburbs, once worked as an Anheuser-Busch marketing executive.

Regardless, these trendy, local companies have experienced a huge boom in popularity. Today, there are more than 81 craft breweries in Missouri (up from 54 in 2011), with several dozen of these existing in the St. Louis area alone. While the industry is constantly growing, with new breweries and brewpubs opening every month, the most ubiquitous name remains Schlafly. Like Anheuser-Busch before it, Schlafly was a pioneer of its time when it first opened in 1991. Under the St. Louis Brewery, the city’s largest craft brewery, Schlafly injected new life into St. Louis’ beer industry in a post-Prohibition America, offering an exciting alternative to mainstream lagers. While Schlafly exists largely as a regional powerhouse, beer drinkers nationwide have felt the effects it had on the industry.

Gooey Butter Cake Gooey Butter Cake can be found in every St. Louis travel guide, a must have for tourists and locals alike. Two stories exist about its origins. Like toasted rav, it too started as a culinary mix-up. The first legend claims that a German baker in the 1930s (back then, the German immigrant community dominated the baking industry) accidentally switched the proportions of butter and sugar in his cake recipe -– resulting in a gooey, bar-like creation.

The more accepted story is that in a bakery owned by John Hoffman, two buttes were routinely used: deep butter was mixed into the batter of cakes and gooey butter and was used as a decorative adhesive. One day, the butters were accidentally swapped in a recipe, but as to not waste resources during the Great Depression, Hoffman baked and sold the cake anyways. It became extremely popular and began appearing in bakeries around the city, to be continuously enjoyed to this day!

"The Bubble”

by Arushee Agrawal

"Nine on the Mind�

by Natalie Snyder Did you know what you were getting into?

Medium: pen on paper

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WASH U LOVES CONSTRUCTION PROJECTS — HOW ABOUT A JOURNALISM MAJOR? Kayla Steinberg | Illustration by Sarah Davis

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ashington University seems to have it all. It boasts tempurpedic mattresses, high-quality food (at least at Ibby’s), and enough student activities to satisfy the extracurricular cravings of its diverse student body. In addition, the school features over 90 undergraduate majors and fields of study, so that students with interests from finance to French to forensics can take courses in the subjects of their dreams. And with its unending stream of construction projects, Wash U appears to continuously expand and improve its campus. But for a school that likes to build, Wash U has yet to fill a massive hole in its programming: a journalism major.

Journalism schools in America are only 100 years old. However, nearly all of the top 20 schools in the United States have journalism and communications (or similar) majors. Some schools, such as Northwestern and Columbia, have gained notoriety for their world-class journalism schools.

While Wash U ranks eighteenth on US News & World Report ’s 2018 Best Colleges list, it has yet to construct a major so prevalent at other elite institutions in the country. It also lacks majors related to journalism, such as communications and writing, though it does offer a writing minor as a consolation prize.

The deficiency is cleverly concealed by a carefully worded “Journalism & Communication” brief on Wash U’s website. The page describes how studying the two disciplines can help students “develop important skills” in a “an intriguing, fast-paced, multidisciplinary field” with a “global influence.” It also includes a section entitled “Journalism and Communications at Washington University” that lists some of the University College classes in the two disciplines. However, the section fails to explicitly note that there is no journalism or communications major at Wash U. The absence of a journalism major has not been for a lack of trying. Several years ago, the

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English Department unanimously agreed that the school should offer an option for students to study journalism and decided to create a proposal. It spent five years fashioning and petitioning for a journalism concentration for the English major, parallel to the Creative Writing concentration for the English major.

The proposal suggested that the major consist of twelve classes including five pertaining to journalism. Some of the classes in the proposal were only offered at Wash U’s University College while others were from Arts and Sciences.

The journalism concentration proposal faced immense barriers. Academic ties between journalism and English literature are weak at best, and the concentration relied heavily on University College offerings rather than on journalism courses offered by Arts and Sciences (granted, there are few.) The lack of journalism-trained Arts and Sciences faculty members, coupled with the high cost of the program, made the proposal unattractive to Wash U’s administrators. Ultimately, the proposal failed.

Since then, no new proposals have been created for a journalism major or program. Yet J. Dillon Brown, who is the Director of Undergraduate Studies for the English Department, strongly advocates for the creation of the major. He considers educating journalists to be a “civic duty.”

Having been asked about journalism by prospective undergraduate students and full-time Washington University students, Brown has seen significant interest in creating the major.

Kiva Runnels is one of the many students at Wash U hoping to study journalism. Obsessed with NPR—the self-professed “soundtrack” to her life—Runnels wants to become a broadcast journalist.

Runnels did not realize the poverty of journalism options at Wash U until she started college, for if she had, she may have chosen to study elsewhere. Perusing the University College journalism options, she was disappointed to find that

the school offers a single broadcast journalism class, taught only online. Runnels is forced to compete for broadcast journalism internships— now the only potential source for her of a broadcast journalism education—against students trained in dedicated journalism classes.

Journalism programs at other schools include some courses which prepare students broadly for the field and others which are catered to each student’s unique interests. For example, at Northwestern University, students can take Philosophy of Modern Journalism alongside computer science courses, immersing themselves in deep journalistic conversations while also learning about the code behind the screen.

Yet for students just hoping for a general journalism education at Wash U, the current journalism offerings—namely student-run activities, University College journalism courses, and a few Arts and Sciences classes— are simply not enough.

In an utter contrast, one of Runnels's friends, who is a freshman at Mizzou, FaceTimed with one of the editors of Vogue. She has since been promoted to publishing writer at one of their publications, allowing her to make strong connections with leaders in the industry, while Runnels contemplates whether she will even be able to study journalism during her four years at Wash U. Another campus journalism queen, Ella Chochrek, advocates for the creation of a journalism major at Wash U. Formerly at the helm of Wash. U.’s Student Life newspaper, Chochrek loves to write the articles read by thousands of students, to impact Wash U with the power of words. To Chochrek, who is majoring in International and Area Studies, a journalism major is becoming more important for students now than ever before given the increasingly politicized world.

“Journalism is something that has really become more impactful in this current administration,

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training in web editing, photography and videography that often accompanies a journalism degree is applicable to a larger range of careers and activities.

Runnels recommends that the university at least offer some introductory journalism courses within the school of Arts and Sciences rather than at University College. However, she also believes that the major can and should be created.

“I think that the major would elevate Wash U’s status as a school,” said Runnels. “An institution as high caliber as this one should give its students a range of options.”

Brown knows that creating the major will be incredibly difficult, financially. The university’s 6.5 billion dollar endowment “has strings attached to it,” he explained.

The money to start a journalism program at Wash U and hire some tenured faculty members would likely require reallocation of Arts and Sciences funds as well as generous donations. But when there’s a will, there’s a way, as Brown quips.

where we see a lot of threats against journalists that may not have been made in the past,” she said.

Chochrek argues that without proper journalism training, journalistic hopefuls will be unprepared after they graduate for the cutthroat world of “fake news” accusations and deadline writing. More students have opted to enroll in journalism undergraduate and graduate programs now than ever before. Twenty years ago, barely 150,000 students enrolled in journalism and mass communication degree programs; that number has since climbed above 200,000, a testament to the importance of a journalism education.

The benefits of a journalism degree transcend the field—in addition to learning about journalism from renowned faculty and receiving guidance from advisors and fellow students, the

Brown is already thinking about solutions. He said that the major can be started in two ways: top-down, where someone is willing to fund it, or bottom-up, where surveys showing undergraduate students’ strong desire for a journalism major compel administration to act.

another field, ideally one that they would like to write about. This, modeled on the double major requirement for education majors, would ensure the applicability of students’ journalism skills to real world situations and give future journalism majors a well-rounded liberal arts degree.

Runnels suggested an alternative option: students can major in journalism and concentrate in a given area, such as news reporting, sports, film or photojournalism, each of which will require a couple of additional classes relevant to the specific concentration.

She also recommended that the major require some technology classes, such as those from the computer science department, given the contemporary shift towards online publications.

The major could even include such requirements as interviewing professors about their research or producing news segments and writing articles in conjunction with campus organizations such as KWUR, something from which the greater Wash U student body and faculty could benefit.

Yet these dreams and suggestions are nothing without concrete proposals and actions.

Washington University is an incredible institution. It aims to provide its students with education they need to succeed post-graduation. It now has an opportunity to redesign its future, to create a new program, to give journalist hopefuls the tools and training to impact people around the globe with their stories. Perhaps Wash U will begin another construction project soon.

Brown recommended that students first demonstrate a desire for the creation of the major through surveys. He added that conversations would need to occur with Jen Smith, the Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Wash U, in order to initiate a major within Arts and Sciences. Brown noted that Smith is already on board with the idea of a journalism major, as she had supported the English Department’s journalism concentration proposal.

Chochrek argues that there already is significant student interest in a journalism major, and that while it may begin small, the major would still be very beneficial to the Wash U community.

She proposed that the journalism major come with a stipulation: students can major in journalism as long as they have a second major in

Kayla Steinberg ‘20 studies in the College of Arts & Sciences. She can be reached at kaylasteinberg@wustl.edu.

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TWO CLASSROOMS Ishaan Shah, STAFF WRITER | Illustration by Michael Avery

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n 1914, Dr. Howard B. Gill joined the administration of President Herbert Hoover as part of the Federal Commission on Prison Labor. As he learnt about the private prison industry, he decided to commit his life to prison reform. So, in 1927, Dr. Gill founded the Norfolk State Prison Colony. The Norfolk State colony was unlike any other prison that existed in that time; it was anointed the “prison without bars,” where prisoners would collaborate in a community-based setting to pursue a higher education. The “prison community” at Norfolk was at times indistinguishable from the society outside of it: it had a jazz band, an orchestra, a debating society, and a theatre troupe. Unfortunately, four inmates escaped from the Norfolk State Prison Colony and Dr. Gill was dismissed. In the coming years, America’s “tough on crime” ideology of the 1980’s would erase many of the programs that Norfolk State Prison Colony had first instituted.

One of the inmates of Norfolk State Prison Colony, Malcolm X, reflected on his time there: “I knew right there in prison that reading had changed forever the course of my life. As I see it today, the ability to read awoke inside me some long dormant craving to be mentally alive.” The same sentiments which inspired Dr. Gill, almost one hundred years ago are returning to our modern discourse on prisons.

In 1997, San Quentin State Prison started the Insight Prison Project, a degree-granting educational program where prisoners could take college-level courses and obtain certifications within the correctional facility. This level of educational support was unprecedented; a majority of prison education programs provided basic education, not college-level coursework. Soon after, other universities began adopting their own prison-education opportunities including Yale, Georgetown, Princeton, Cornell, Wesleyan, and NYU. In 2014, Washington University started its own faculty-led program at the Missouri-Eastern Correctional Center to offer college classes to inmates, called the Prison Education Project.

The reason that these programs are coming back strong is clear: in 2015, the RAND Corporation concluded a landmark study which

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demonstrated that education lowered recidivism rates by 43 percent and that every dollar invested in correctional education saves five dollars in reincarceration costs over a threeyear period. These studies inspired the Obama administration to grant prisoners eligible for release an educational opportunity through the Second Chance Pell program in 2016. In California, New Jersey, and New York, state legislators are proposing bills to expand opportunities for correctional education. The conversation

I said: "Well, that's just a straight forward ad hominem attack, and if that's what we're going to go with, you're going to fail this class." around prisoners and the role of prisoners is evolving. Public debate is shifting towards the

recognition that prisons can strive for rehabilitation, not just mass incarceration.

In a state like Missouri, where governor Eric Greitens signed a budget which cuts 1.7 million from prison education programs in 2017, this conversation is even more important. Wash U’s PEP stands to shape Missouri’s approach to prison education and its success could provide Missouri with an effective model for correctional education. Not only would engaging the prison community facilitate prisoners’ transition back into society, but it would also educate the Wash U faculty and students about the challenges that inmates face every day.

The prisoners valued their opportunity for education as much as their own lives. A professor of Argumentation at the MECC, Dr. Victoria Thomas, recounted that “the [prisoners] are unfailingly polite and courteous … they are quite protective of me … on one occasion I had to be out [in the yard] … and I could see that I was getting some catcalls and I suddenly saw bunches of my students walk very quickly up next to me and two of them engage me in conversation by standing on either side of me. And then four of them formed a sort of unofficial walking group around and I realized that they were basically giving the stink card to anybody who looked at me.” Dr. Thomas saw that the prisoners could

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see their educational opportunities through the MECC as their “ticket out” of the prison system.

For many of them, demonstrating successful completion of coursework, a recommendation from a professor, and the skills they learn in each class are essential to finding work and leading stable lives. Prisons are often defined by a strict set of rules which are familiar to prisoners but can often confuse outsiders who engage these prisoners. On the podcast Ear Hustle produced by prisoners within San Quentin State Prison one prisoner, Adnan Khan, lamented how when he met his mom for the first time after thirteen years, it was hard for him to explain to her why

"I have jobs and only money to send my kids to the community college. And so I’m ambivalent even though the prisoners are getting a good education." there was a yellow line he could not cross when she went to buy him his favorite ice cream on the other side.

These arbitrary lines also shape the interactions that professors have with the prisoner-students.

Eileen G’Sell, Professor of Writing at the MECC, highlighted her biggest struggle with teaching prisoners was “developing patience and greater flexibility to the environment.” Professor G’Sell discussed how it was often difficult how, “for example [she] might prepare for a class and there's drug testing going on spontaneously or there's some other logistical matters to attend to that affects the way classes are taught.”

Although the PEP is working to create a computer lab, the MECC classrooms and the prisoners currently have no access to computers. The

prisoners can only work on books and papers brought in by the professor. On of Dr. Thomas’ students missed class for three weeks since he was placed in solitary confinement. Another one of her students’ possessions were stolen every time he came to class. If the student retaliated, he would be punished and no longer be allowed to come to class; he could not fight back.

Nevertheless, the prisoners and the faculty make do with the situations in which they find themselves. In one of Dr. Thomas’s Argumentation classes, she explains that the conversation “was going very nicely and one of them said something along the lines of ‘I'm bigger than you.’ I said: ‘Well, that's just a straight forward ad hominem attack, and if that's what we're going to go with, you're going to fail this class… I'm teaching you how to have civilized arguments that actually change people's opinions rather than simply threatening them with your size. Everybody laughed [at the end].’” The prisoner-students and the professors do their best to challenge each other’s ideas and encourage intellectual discussion. Ms. G’Sell even recounted that most of the time her students at the MECC are more open to argumentation than her students at the University. “Having a student disagree with you happens so much more often [at the MECC]” she discusses, “[this disagreement] can lead to actual discourse on a level that is hard to come by.” There is intellectual capital and engagement which occurs within these restricted environments which is not part of our current discourse on correctional education. These prisoners are often isolated from their communities and are forced to introspect more than most members of society, so much so that their unique perspectives could bring value in academic and non-academic settings.

The correctional officers see the value of the education as well. Many of them have not completed high school or obtained the GED and they share the enthusiasm for the prisoners’ opportunity to access education. At the same time, there is tension between the prisoners’ access to education and the lack thereof for correctional officers. One correctional officer described to Dr. Thomas, “I’m making minimum wage. I have jobs and only money to send my kids to the community college. And so I’m ambivalent even though the prisoners are getting a good education.” In response, the PEP is offering more classes to

the correctional officers so that they, too, can pursue an education. Courses can be taken for college credit at the MECC through U-College.

Correctional officers are hurt by similar injustices that affect the prisoners even though they are in positions of power, so an arrangement where correctional officers can learn alongside prisoners helps create a more engaging, collaborative environment for rehabilitation. This model of co-educating prisoners and correctional officers is one which could broadly increase opportunities in other prisons, since the people who run the prison are also invested in the success of the program.

While the PEP is taking large steps to break down the barriers between Wash U and local prisons, an important group plays only a minor role in this community engagement effort: undergraduate students. A couple classes like Dr. Thomas’s Argumentation class at the university have the opportunity to visit the MECC as a co-curricular experience. The PEP is just starting programs to include undergraduates as research or teaching assistants for MECC courses. Outside of this there is little engagement between Wash U’s undergraduate population and Missouri’s prison population. Many of the university’s students are not familiar with the trials prisoners must go through to access basic features of society, such as education, Internet, cooking, etc. Established opportunities for undergraduates to interact with local prisoners are important for educating undergraduates about the criminal justice system: students will learn more from the first-hand experiences of prisoners than they can from any individual class. Furthermore, undergraduate involvement will add legitimacy to the PEP providing inmates educational programs that might otherwise be out of reach. As the Prison Education Program expands, there needs to be a coalition of undergraduate students who begin building a relationship with local prison populations. Expanded outreach through the undergraduate, graduate, and faculty members will re-shape the conversation around correctional education. It will make an indisputable argument for the expansion of correctional education elsewhere in Missouri.

Ishaan Shah ‘20 studies in the College of Arts & Sciences. He can be reached at ishaanshah@wustl.edu.

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FIRST IN THE FAMILY Liza Sivriver, PROGRAMMING DIRECTOR | Illustration by Michael Avery

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ver since elementary school, my grandma has proudly exclaimed at any chance she gets, “Liza will get a PhD!” Because I exceeded familial expectations in grade school, my family expected me to attend college. And while my grandma and the rest of my family have always been my biggest cheerleaders, I feel an enormous amount of pressure to excel in college and to further my education, a pressure that other students don’t face. This is because I am a first-generation college student, unlike many other students at Wash U. Because I lacked knowledge of and access to SAT prep, college counseling, essay guidance, best strategies for choosing a school, and much more, applying to college and getting into Wash U was challenging enough as a first-gen student. However, I didn’t realize how difficult life would be once I was actually in college. Unfortunately, the concerns I have from being a first-gen student have been largely unaddressed at Wash U.

Learning about meal points, time management, Greek life, and campus involvement was a culture shock at arrival, one that many students don’t experience because they have grown up being familiar with the institution of higher education. Before coming to Wash U, I had never met anybody involved in Greek life or with an advanced degree, but a majority of my peers have familial connections to and knowledge of these integral college experiences. At home, nobody ever taught me how to use a syllabus to my advantage or how to approach a professor about struggling in the course. But it wasn’t the ignorance of college life that made the transition difficult—it was the casual stories that my friends told. Hearing fellow students mention their mom’s sorority sisters, recall their dad’s experiences in medical school, cite their parents’ help on an essay or a coding assignment, bring up what occupations and connections their family friends held, and even being able to engage in conversation about their course material with their family, I felt like I wouldn’t be able to reconcile my upbringing with their experiences.

Professionally, first-gen students lack a network, and I was no exception. I am lucky enough that my four-year advisor is first gen, but other

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first-gen students are not usually that fortunate.

Many of those I have encountered do not seem trained in identifying and understanding firstgen concerns; this ignorance has been especially apparent for me in professors, faculty advisors, career counselors, and SHS mental health counselors. These interactions can look like “Where did your parents go to college?” to “Why don’t you just use your parents’ network to get an internship?” If faculty and staff more clearly understood the first-gen college experience, they would be much more helpful in guiding me and my fellow students to not only better integrate into Wash U, but help plan first-gen students’ success. My experiences surely overlap with being low-income and a first-generation American, among my other identities, but my experience as a first-gen student deserves dedicated attention and support.

Even through all of his efforts, Newlin doesn’t think there will be much change without “a student-driven ask for resources and advocates."

At Wash U, there exists a phenomenon of using “catch all” spaces to address the concerns of underrepresented students. Wash U established the Center for Diversity and Inclusion (CDI) to “support and advocate for undergraduate, graduate, and professional students from underrepresented and/or marginalized populations.” The CDI serves students from marginalized—and often overlapping—populations, anywhere from the black community to international students to LGBTQ students,

using similar resources to cater to vastly different needs. The CDI serves a crucial function on campus, but this does not mean that Wash U could not better serve students by supplementing the CDI with more customized resources to support a variety of populations.

Using programs like Cornerstone’s TRiO and The Office of Student Success’s Deneb STARS, Wash U aims to address concerns of economic diversity, serving low-income and first-gen students. In reality, concerns that come with being low income and setbacks that arise from being first-gen require distinct approaches and resources. In the future, I hope to see initiatives that not only serve the individual needs of firstgen students, but also clearly name first-gen students as the target audience.

I need academic and professional resources as well as a community of first-gen students.

Even when looking for what support is offered for first-gen students, I wasn’t even able to find statistics on how many first-gen students attend Wash U. The unofficial number of firstgen students is 6 to 7 percent of the undergraduate population, but this data is taken from the Common App or FAFSA, wherein the person filling out the information may incorrectly self-identify because of the vague wording of the question. Regardless, the first-gen population is significant in size, but Wash U has no programs that explicitly state in their mission that the primary community they serve is first-gen students. The only Wash U program that explicitly even includes support for first-gen students is TRiO, a federally funded program for first-gen, low-income students.

Unfortunately, being accepted for a TRiO grant is few and far between since the federal government only provides a limited number of grants. Low-income, first-generation college students outnumber the available number of grants and spaces in Wash U’s TRiO program, and most are turned away from the program’s benefits and stipends. Additionally, some firstgen college students are not low income and thus automatically do not qualify for the TRiO program. Consequently, a significant number of first-gen students on our campus are left without support. Even when programs like TRiO

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serve some students, all first-gen students are left without resources that address the specific needs that come with being first-gen.

On the other hand, our peer institutions have robust resources for first-gen college students.

Schools like Northwestern, Emory, Harvard, Penn, and Vanderbilt have extensive resources, dedicated spaces, and strong administrative support behind centers and programs for first-gen students. The First Generation, Low Income, Immigrant Network at the University of Chicago is available to students, faculty, and staff of those communities. The Network provides programs like First Generation Conversations with professors, where firstgen students can interact with faculty. It also offers panels, listening sessions, socials, and a directory of first-gen staff and faculty. Robust peer and faculty networks, specialized orientation guides, and professional tools for firstgen students common are well-established at schools of Wash U’s tier. These resources are just examples of what could create a community of support at Wash U. Matt Newlin, Assistant Director of Financial Aid at the Brown School and a first-gen student himself, is working on creating these kinds of

resources and building a first-gen community on our campus. His short-term interest is in building groundswell of smaller initiatives to “hopefully give the administration that there’s clearly enough of a need and enough of a population who is asking [for these resources] to consolidate and centralize [these efforts].”

These smaller efforts look like advising a student group for first-gen students, as well as a campus wide first-gen marketing campaign. He remarks that many prominent figures at Wash U are first-gen, including Dean McKay of the Brown School and even Chancellor Wrighton.

Modeled by the Green Dot campaign, Newlin hopes that this project would highlight “those role models and aspirational figures to normalize [first-generation students] across campus.” This project would not only serve to inspire first-gen students, but also create a wider online directory of first-gen faculty and staff that have volunteered to support firstgen students, which is common at our peer institutions.

Ultimately, he hopes that these efforts will culminate in an office that supports first-gen and low income students through academic, social, and mentoring programs called the Office of

Access and Opportunity. In this office, Newlin aims to create a “mentor program where my Brown School students who are first-gen would mentor first-gen undergrads who are interested in grad school.” Among the goals of the office are to provide financial literacy workshops, summer bridge programs, and resources to help students navigate the hidden curriculum of college. The office would also build partnerships with other programs for underrepresented students like TRiO and Deneb STARS. One of the most pressing concerns to Newlin is “better training faculty and staff to understand the first-generation experience if they are not first-generation themselves,” citing experiences of students that have felt isolated from Wash U offices and resources. The Office of Access and Opportunity would provide trainings to staff and faculty to create more equitable experiences across campus. Not only would the Office of Access and Opportunity deliver academic and professional resources, but would also create a social meeting space for first-gen students to convene. The community essential to surviving college as a first-gen would have a home if Newlin’s plans will come to fruition.

Despite all of his efforts, Newlin doesn’t think there will be much change without “a student-driven ask for resources and advocates.”

Newlin is right. Our administration will not create these resources until it is held more accountable by students. First-gen students and concerns have not been brought to the forefront of student and administrative discussion of campus socioeconomic diversity. When challenging diversity at Wash U, it’s important that we prioritize first-gen students in our demands for equity.

Liza Sivriver ‘20 studies in the College of Arts & Sciences. She can be reached at lizasivriver@wustl.edu.

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ILLUSTRATIONS ON THE RIVERFRONT Jack Frischer

These compositions were created for the Word & Image course at the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts. Based on live drawings and photographs taken on site, they are meant to illustrate the experience of being at the St. Louis Riverfront.

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REMEMBERING STUDENTS AGAINST PEABODY: A REFLECTION ON STUDENT ACTIVISM AT WASH U C

ollege campuses have long been considered hotbeds for young student activism.

Between interactions with new people from a variety of backgrounds, and challenging exposure to classes addressing structural forms of inequality, it is often during their college years that young people start questioning their role within these systems and look to create change within their communities. This trend is no different at Wash U, which has a long history of student activism and protest.

But speaking to students today, it is unclear if this same passion and drive continues to exist.

To examine this issue, it is important that we place the current classes of 2018-2021 within a much larger context of student engagement.

Roots of Activism Student activism has existed prominently since the 1920s, before truly becoming a well-known phenomenon in the 1960s with the rise of the counterculture. Wash U has been no stranger to this ebb and flow of activism. The University was one of many to adopt a Students for a Democratic Society during the 1950s, a New Left organization which aimed to lift up schools as a tool for social change. An anti-war presence has also existed on campus, culminating in episodes of setting the ROTC building on fire in protest of the Vietnam War in 1970, as well as protesters burning an American flag in protest of the U.S. presence in Iran in 1979.

In addition, Wash U students have been participating in direct action demanding better of the school itself for decades. In 1968, demonstrators staged sit-ins and protests in Brookings Hall in a call for better treatment of black students and the addition of a Black Studies program following the police beating of a black Wash U student. 2005 saw students’ lengthy sit-in and accompanying hunger strike to push for fair wages and benefits for workers on campus. In 2014, some Wash U students joined millions around the country in protest of the murder of Michael Brown, which occurred just a few miles away from Wash U’s campus in Ferguson, Missouri. In the wake of the shooting, Wash U joined other schools in the St. Louis area in calling for a better quality of life for students of color on campus. Through various acts of solidarity (including a campus-wide silent walkout), they spoke out against the routine killing of unarmed black youth by the police,

bringing attention to the systematic injustices at the root of his death. They demanded action from their administration and peers. So where does student activism stand today? Are students as passionate about demanding change as they were in the 60s, 70s, or even 2014? Or has apathy and disengagement taken place?

Students Against Peabody This question can’t be fully answered without first reflecting on the largest and longest held student action held in recent years: Students Against Peabody (SAP). In the spring semester of 2014, hundreds of students occupied the steps of Brookings for 17 days in protest of Wash U’s financial and administrative connections to Peabody Energy Corporation.

Hanna Khalil and Max Lichtenstein

Peabody is the largest private-sector coal company in the world. At the time of the 2014 demonstrations, its CEO, Greg Boyce, was a member of Wash U’s Board of Trustees. This meant that a man representing a company well known for its exploitative labor practices, occupation of indigenous land, environmental degradation, and human rights violations, held the privilege of contributing to our University’s administrative and financial decisions. In addition, Peabody also sponsored the creation of Wash U’s Consortium for Clean Coal Utilization, whose goal is to “foster the utilization of coal as a safe and affordable source of energy, and as a chemical feedstock, with minimal impact on

It is often during their college years that young people start questioning their role within these systems and look to create change within their communities.

the environment.” Considering that Peabody is the world’s largest contributor to coal use, this move has been criticized as a way to cover up the real impact that Wash U’s continued investment in such companies has on the environment and our collective future.

Through various rallies, events, and occupying Brookings, over 2,000 students participated in demanding that Greg Boyce step down from his position, in anticipation of the upcoming Board of Trustees election. On May 2, 100 students marched to the Board of Trustees Office to deliver a letter of resignation to Boyce during a Board of Trustees meeting. This action was met by police in riot gear and the arrest of 7 students. Ultimately, Boyce was re-elected.

Activism Today Despite the administration’s patterns of ignoring the outcries of its students’ protests, it joined its peers in announcing that high schoolers choosing to walk out in defiance of lax U.S. gun laws would not face threats to their admission. In February 2018, they tweeted “WashU22 Applicants: We encourage civic engagement.

Your acceptance will not be rescinded if you are disciplined for engaging in peaceful protest. March on.” This declaration proposes another contradiction in Wash U’s image and rhetoric surrounding protest. Wash U’s Official Statement on Demonstrations and Protests, reads: “In pursuit of its mission to promote

teaching and learning, Washington University in St. Louis encourages students, faculty and staff to be bold, independent and creative thinkers.” However, it goes on to say that students’ rights to free speech, assembly, and expression do not include “any activity that disrupts or obstructs the functions of the university or imminently threatens such disruption or obstruction.” These two statements seemingly contradict one another. Protests, the vehicle through which student can demonstrate their bold thinking and demand change, by their very nature are meant to disrupt—the SAP demonstrations lasted for as long as they did because of their disruptive nature, forcing the administration and student body to acknowledge the issues at hand. Within an atmosphere as regulated and insular as a college campus – with its hour by hour class schedule, perfectly demarcated walking paths, and swipe-access residential buildings, “disruption” is how activists force their peers to look up from their phones, pause from their booked schedules, and pay

attention to issues that are larger than themselves. It promotes typically apathetic individuals to ask themselves critical questions about the status quo. How much weight can Wash U’s #MarchOn tweet truly hold when they overtly discourage disruptive activity on its campus? The University cannot both champion engagement in peaceful protests and watch on as its own students get dragged away in arrest for partaking in a peaceful direct action.

The Wash U Administration’s cold response to student activism may explain the results of the following survey questions. A majority of respondents indicated that they had taken part in an off-campus activist event, while less than a third had engaged in activism on Wash U’s campus. Indeed, our results also indicate that Wash U students perceive the administrative as unresponsive to student demands, with the majority of respondents rating the school a 1 or 2 out of 5 on a responsiveness scale. If a student body is made to learn the intensely stubborn nature of their administration, they may logically be less inclined to participate in campus activism. Protests falling on deaf ears will discourage students from pushing for social justice, but may drive them out to pursue activist efforts in the greater area of the University.

St. Louis is a highly politicized city. With high rates of police brutality, huge wealth discrepancies, and environmental issues of its own, the St. Louis area is ripe with opportunities for participatory democracy. As with the protests reacting to the Stockley verdict, some of these collective action events take place just adjacent to campus. 62.3% of survey respondents answered that they had participated in a St. Louis activist event off-campus. This trend negates the college stereotype of the “campus bubble,” as Wash U students who are willing to protest seem more inclined to go out into greater St. Louis than demonstrate within the bubble. Somewhat surprisingly, a typical respondent to our survey prefers to act on a much a larger democratic stage, electing to speak out as one voice in 300 million Americans rather than one in 7,500 students.

Furthermore, as a sizeable U.S. city, St. Louis has taken part in nationwide Trump-era movements like the Women’s March and the March for Our Lives. These events take place on a

massive scale, and are relatively easy and lowrisk to participate in, as far as activist events go.

Could this changing political landscape signify an evolution of the concept of student activism itself?

Students may see calling for the action of city, county, state, or country politicians as a more productive use of resources than a call to action for an administration, or a board of trustees. But this conclusion is troubling – as students, we are the only people who can hold our university accountable for its actions – actions

If a student body is made to learn the intensely stubborn nature of their administration, they may logically be less inclined to participate in campus activism. that impact the city of St. Louis and communities beyond our “bubble.” While participating in large marches is an important act of solidarity, they can’t be seen as a replacement for the important work of students on-campus.

Instead, these forms of activism must work together and simultaneously, in order to both support those organizing beyond the borders of campus, while doing our part within it.

The logistical setbacks of student activism, and the body of students that occupy such a space, may also dampen enthusiasm for campus action. Student activists exist in a fouryear revolving door, allowing administrative forces to employ successful stalling techniques.

Empty promises hold little accountability when a fresh set of faces appears every few years.

These new students have little to no memory or knowledge of a given movement’s history and progress, allowing those they are pushing

against to continue a cycle of perpetuating false optimism. More typical political spaces, on the other hand, can actually develop when people have the opportunity to build upon a history of successes and failures. Larger-scale politics will in most cases be less of an uphill battle.

Activism Tomorrow?

As we approach the 4th anniversary of the Student Against Peabody, it is important that students reflect on past actions, both to learn valuable lessons and for future inspiration. Through its activism, SAP continuously emphasized the disproportionate impact that Peabody’s actions had on low-income communities, communities of color, and indigenous peoples; reflecting an intersectional approach to social justice, rather than one privileging white, middle class people ‑ something movements as powerful as the Women’s March and March for Our Lives have been criticized for lacking. In addition, SAP proved that students with little formal organizing background could mobilize a campaign of this magnitude. The students of SAP, some of whom will be graduating this May, are our peers. They demonstrated the power of student voice, and the obligation that we as the beneficiaries of our prestigious Washington University education have in demanding that this education does not come at the cost of others. Ultimately, apathy is a choice. As Wash U students, as much as our predecessors did in 2014 or in 1960, we can choose action instead.

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

Max Lichtenstein ‘20 studies in the College of Arts & Sciences. He can be reached at max.lichtenstein@wustl.edu.

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40 Number of Responses

ON A SCALE OF 1–5, MOST RATE THE WASH U STUDENT BODY TO BE A 3 IN TERMS OF PASSION FOR ACTIVISM AND SOCIAL JUSTICE

30

20

10

0 1

2

3

4

5

Rating

62.3% ANSWERED THAT THEY HAD PARTICIPATED IN A ST. LOUIS ACTIVIST EVENT OFF-CAMPUS

37.7%

LESS THAN A THIRD HAD ENGAGED IN ACTIVISM ON WASH U’S CAMPUS

62.3%

50

31.9%

THE MAJORITY OF RESPONDENTS RATE THE SCHOOL AS UNRESPONSIVE TO STUDENT DEMANDS (ON A SCALE OF 1–5)

40 Number of Responses

68.1%

30

20

10

0 1

2

3 Rating

4

5

WU POLITICAL REVIEW | NATIONAL

NATIONAL

WHEN IS A MARCH NOT A PROTEST? T Kirk Brown | Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons he answer is simple: when there are white lives around to give a movement rationale and appeal. Now, do not get me wrong; I fully support March for Our Lives. It’s a movement that demonstrates the power that young voices have in this democracy and what they can do when they join together. Gun violence is one of the more important issues that plagues our nation, as it feels like we can’t go a month without seeing another “Breaking News” headline flashing across our TV screens, detailing how more children were killed because 18th century laws failed to regulate weapons that did not exist 200 years ago. There is no age limit on having a valid opinion about laws that do or do not relate to a lived experience. Unfortunately, many of our congressmen do not recognize that. They value the money that the NRA lines their pockets with more than those who they are sworn in to represent. I’m thrilled that the youth of this country can come together to fight for their rights. But that’s not exactly what I’m here to talk about.

Last semester, we witnessed the Stockley trial over the murder of Anthony Lamar Smith. The result didn’t turn out so great. Once again, we saw a young black man gunned down by the men that were supposed to protect him. As a result, we saw marches in the streets—or “protests” or “riots”, or whatever the media calls it when the right to assemble is taken advantage of by somebody not white—a die-in in the DUC, and an emotionally distraught black community. Where was “March for Our Lives” back then during the Stockley protests or the protests we had on campus to support the renewal of DACA? Where was “March for Our Lives” when Anthony Lamar Smith was killed?

Or when Michael Brown was killed? Or Sandra Bland, Freddie Gray, Tamir Rice, Trayvon Martin… all lives lost to gun violence. Did gun control not matter simply because the murderer was a cop instead of some “disturbed” or “troubled” white teenager? Or was it because it was a black

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life that was lying face down on the concrete?

Although March for Our Lives pertains to civilian gun violence, it is critical that gun violence committed by police against black citizens be addressed. Even in March for Our Lives, we have seen few black students from Parkland have media access to talk about their lived experience, such as how the heightened police presence at the school doesn’t work as well for black people as it does for white people. Adding more police to protect the students might make white students feel safe, but that is not always the case for black students.

White silence kills, folks. Have a nice summer.

Being an advocate for victims of gun violence isn’t anything new. This kind of advocacy has been preached for a long time by the Black Lives Matter movement, yet I don’t remember seeing many of my classmates who went to March for Our Lives at the Stockley protests last semester. If anything, everybody wants to join in now because this is an issue they can get behind, since the victims aren’t “thugs”, another term adapted solely used for black victims of gun violence by the media, and activism has become cool. We see it on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and even Snapchat. Activism has become more popular as a method of making sure your voice is heard by those who represent you. It’s respected to go out there and “get your hands dirty”, doing some kind of public good. Whether you do it for the photo-op or not, activism has become mainstream in this community and it has helped in getting more people out there throwing their weight behind different ideas.

To my classmates, I’m glad you went out for March for Our Lives. Keep up the good work.

Activism through assembly is one of the best tools in our belt when our rights are infringed.

The mobilization of the youth of our country towards fighting for our rights that should be fundamental has been truly inspiring. But, have a sense of double consciousness. I expect to see each of you who went out in support for that march the next time we see another black person killed from police brutality. Bring this same energy next time another member of the black community dies at the hands of gun violence and police brutality. After all, isn’t that still advocating for gun control? White silence kills, folks.

Have a nice summer.

Kirk Brown ‘20 studies in the College of Arts & Sciences. He can be reached at kirk.brown@wustl.edu.

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WHY ELECTIONS MATTER AND WHY WE CARE TOO MUCH ABOUT THEM Luke Voyles, staff writer

T

he title of this piece might seem like an odd statement that could be from the Cheshire Cat rather than be an actual statement of fact. Yet the more general elections, midterm elections, and by-elections of various nations around the world are studied, the less they tend to feel permanent in the long-term, even though they did change history in a definitive, though inconclusive, manner. Elections are important for the simple reason that they set the history of their nation on a specific path that is unknown to any observer either within or outside of their nation. Nevertheless, time passes quickly (though seems to slog for administration opponents) between each election.

An excellent case study is in analyzing the lifespan of the oldest living person at the time of writing, Nabi Tajima of Japan. Tajima was born on August 4, 1900, and is currently 117 years old. While accustomed to hearing about centenarians and supercentenarians on news channels, there is an odd fact concerning Tajima. As she was born several months before the United States’ 1900 presidential election, she has lived through 30 American presidential elections during her years on this earth. By contrast, only 28 presidential elections occurred before her birth. Nabi Tajima has lived throughout the majority of the presidential era in the United States. Her longevity is a reminder of how young our nation actually is and yet how long it has survived.

Politicians and political observers can also show how elections are important at the time but how electoral trends can change frequently and unpredictably. Peter Carington, born in 1919, is the last surviving member of the third Churchill Ministry (1951-1955), the Anthony Eden ministry (1955-1957), and the Harold Macmillan ministries (1957-1963). He is also the last surviving cabinet minister for Alec Douglas-Home (19631964) and Edward Heath (1970-1974). He was the Foreign Secretary when the Falklands War commenced in 1982. Carington and pioneering researcher of elections David Butler both served

in World War II and are both alive at the time of writing. Since the war, they have seen 20 general elections in the United Kingdom over a period of 72 years. If a general election were equivalent to a quadrennial presidential election, they would have monitored elections for 80 years.

Politicians and political observers can also show how elections are important at the time but how electoral trends can change frequently and unpredictably.

Elections are crucial in the proposal and enacting of policy, but it is fascinating to think about Tajima, Carington, Butler in the context of longevity. They presumably cared deeply about events that took place in 1945, and, in the cases of Carington and Butler, for every election since.

They studied the causes and effects of each government, carefully monitoring the policies of each new prime minister and how they would time general elections to optimally capitalize off of any sort of wave of popular support for the prime minister’s governments. They have seen five years go by without an election and one year where there were two such elections (1974).

They presumably cared deeply about each election that they lived through. Now, they are faced with the elections they once cared so deeply about being left for historians to study. The

elections that Carington and Butler analyzed are ignored by the majority of people, thought the elections themselves were important and are still important today. All of the time and energy that they put into studying and even in influencing the outcome of the elections in which they participated seem so abstract nowadays.

Nevertheless, elections are still an important and do create concrete changes within the histories of states and nations. There is no doubt that college students, and all other eligible voters, should vote with their conscience in the 2018 midterm elections and in the 2020 general election. But at the same time, there is simply no need for people becoming so invested in the electoral process that it consumes their lives.

Major political and movements tend to thrive in opposition. Could the Tea Party have flourished during the presidency of George W. Bush or Donald Trump? Likewise, could the March for our Lives activists and even the #MeToo movement have happened in a presidency other than under a president who is a strong supporter of the National Rifle Association (NRA) and who is accused of sexual harassment. Even if Trump is reelected in 2020, there are always the elections of 2024, 2028, 2032, and so on about which to worry. Also, the midterm elections of 2022, 2026, 2030, and the following ones will also consume quite a bit of energy. There is no need for overwhelming optimism or sinking pessimism no matter how the elections go. In a democracy, elections always carry the promise of a better present and a better future.

Luke Voyles '18 studies in the College of Arts & Sciences. He can be reached at lrvoyles@wustl.edu.

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WU POLITICAL REVIEW | NATIONAL

TWO SLAPS, ROGERNOMICS, AND THE UNPREDICTABILITY OF HISTORICAL ERAS T Luke Voyles, staff writer

hrough years of studying history books and essay, a person can come to view certain times in history through the lens of historical models. Perhaps they might see things through economic, moral, religious, or pragmatic lenses, but the lenses can be omnipresent in the thinking of many people. For instance, the end of the 1960s and the early 1970s are usually portrayed by history teachers and by historians in general as a time of collapsing authority throughout the all nations. Also, the 1980s are viewed as a time when unregulated capitalism ran rampant throughout the entire world, while the 1990s saw the rise of leftist party who adopted neoliberal policies from capitalist philosophers, and who were consequently branded traitors by the old-guard thinkers within the leftist parties. While the aforementioned models are attractive for their easy portrayals of the world during the times they describe, they are not completely accurate for the very simple reason that all historical eras are unpredictable.

Eras pop into existence long before they are first spotted, fizzle out during their supposed height of popularity and reappear throughout subsequent moments of history. Therefore, the use of historical models in teaching history is both necessary and somewhat impractical.

In regard to the argument about increased rebelliousness during the later 1960s and early 1970s, there are compelling examples that seem to reinforce the model. In 1968, Beate Klarsfeld slapped Chancellor Kurt Georg Kiesinger of West Germany for his past membership to the Nazi Party and to his service toward the Nazi government. In 1972, Sinn Fein MP Bernadette Devlin slapped the Home Secretary, Reginald Maudling, after he claimed that police were attacked first in the Bloody Sunday massacre in Northern Ireland. The two slaps seem to reveal events unique for the era in which they occurred. However, they do not completely account for the state of other nations. Social Democrats in Sweden held power for forty years (1936 to 1976) and Christian Democrats controlled the post of Prime minister from 1945 to

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1981. Meanwhile, Japan’s Liberal Democratic Party (which first came to power in 1955) only relinquished power in 1993 and remained confidently in power throughout both the 1960s and the 1970s. Both right-wing and left-wing governments continued to command respect at the polls throughout the supposedly rebellious 1960s and 1970s.

Therefore, the use of historical models in teaching history is both necessary and somewhat impractical.

The twin stereotypes of right-wing economic policies being enacted in the 1980s and leftist parties copying those policies when coming to power in the 1990s might seem harder to dismiss than the previous model. During the 1980s, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher of the United Kingdom and President Ronald Reagan of the United States both enacted policies that cut taxes and encouraged a deregulated marketplace. In the 1990s, the supposedly left-wing politicians Democrat Bill Clinton of the United States (1993-2001) and Labour Party leader Tony Blair (1997-2007) both espoused a highly pro-business rhetoric that contrasted with their more leftist predecessors. The predecessors included such notable politicians as Walter Mondale, Jimmy Carter, and Michael Dukakis in the United States and Michael Foot, James Callaghan, Neil Kinnock, and Harold Wilson in the United Kingdom. Despite the pendulous 1980s-1990s stereotype working in the case of the United States and the United Kingdom, other nations did not fit their model. In France,

right-wing politician Jacques Chirac succeeded Francois Mitterrand of the Socialist Party in 1995 and the socialist Prime Minister Felipe Gonzalez of Spain was replaced by conservative Jose Maria Aznar. Perhaps New Zealand presents the best counterpoint to the Anglo-American model of the 1980s and the 1990s. A leftist prime minister of New Zealand, David Lange, came to power in 1984. He resigned after having conflicts with his extremely pro-business Minister of Finance, Roger Douglas. Douglas enacted policies that reporters called “Rogernomics,” a portmanteau based on the more popular portmanteau “Reaganomics.” The Labour Party lost power in the 1990 general election, two years before Clinton even became president. New Zealand’s governments of the 1990s were dominated by the right-wing National Party, rather than belonging to left-wing parties that followed pro-business policies.

Finally, the concept of stagflation (where inflation and unemployment are both high) has a colorful and misleading history. Stagflation is usually thought to have defeated the Keynesian thinking that dominated the governments of the United States and Western European nations from 1945 to 1973 with the onset of the OPEC embargo. In fact, Conservative politician Iain Macleod coined the term in 1965. The concept was already plaguing the British government of Harold Macmillan in 1962 before he replaced a third of his cabinet ministers to restore public confidence in his government.

There is no evidence that historical models are based on anything other than coincidences arising from coinciding and similar (though not universal) events.

Luke Voyles '18 studies in the College of Arts & Sciences. He can be reached at lrvoyles@wustl.edu.

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RACE AND THE RIGHT TO BEAR ARMS Josh Hill, director of external operations | Illustration by Avni Joshi

O

ver the course of the most recent episode of the American gun debate, a common narrative flowing from the armed among us is that a citizen’s right to provide for their own self-defense, from both other citizens and the State, cannot be infringed upon. Arguments are often made that frame an armed citizenry as a deterrent to state-sponsored tyranny. Staunch supporters of the second amendment claim that the ability to intimidate or combat government official using private weaponry is necessary for the continued protection of personal liberty.

This position is fundamentally pro-violence and reveals a deep mistrust of the democratic process.

One only needs to open their nearest American history textbook to find a strikingly similar school of thought: the teachings of Malcolm X.

Malcolm X taught a philosophy of defense and advancement by “any means necessary”, as written in When the Word Is Given by Louis Lomax. He earnestly believed that African Americans were living under the tyrannical rule of their white countrymen. He, along with the rest of the nation, bore witness to the torture and murder of Emmitt Till at the hands of white men who were subsequently exonerated by the State. Inspired by the mistreatment of his people, Malcolm X, along with a variety of other often forgotten community development initiatives, organized efforts to arm members of the African American community for their own protection. This is labeled as militant behavior by many, but it is difficult to find meaningful differences between his teachings and the current Right to Bear rhetoric.

Logically, you might expect Malcolm X to be held up as a historic champion of the cause in pro-gun circles. According to polling from YouGov, only 26 percent of white Americans have a favorable opinion of him. This differs wildly from the 65 percent of all Americans who see gun rights as a protection against tyranny according to Rasmussen. These groups would likely claim that the racial or religious dimensions of their cause are unremarkable, if even existent, but his blackness and Islamic faith are undeniably relevant to his absence from their gallery of supporting historical figures. Treating Malcolm X’s teachings as problematic while still supporting the pro-violence Right to Bear

movement exposes an understanding of violence as only being justified when white people are under the boot of tyranny.

Polling sheds even more light on the racial divisions found in the Right to Bear movement.

In a report last updated on June 22, 2017, the Pew Research Center states that while 55 percent of white identifying Americans support protecting gun rights, only 25 percent of black identifying Americans feel the same. The Right to Bear movement’s greater favor among white Americans is indicative of the deeper racial implications of their argument.

The pro-gun faction’s racially selective attitude is likely best exemplified in the National Rifle Association’s unwillingness to aid the family of Philando Castile in their attempt to seek justice against the police officer who cut his life tragically short. Castile identified himself as being in possession of a firearm, per his legal requirement, and was ruthlessly slaughtered by a member of law enforcement in front of his own child. NRA spokesperson Dana Loesch has fairly responded that Castile was in possession of a controlled substance while carrying his firearm, an obvious violation of his concealed carry permit responsibilities. This observation, made after more than a year of silence following the shooting, disregards the fact that the officer could not have possibly known of the substances. Simply smelling marijuana is not indisputable evidence for the presence of marijuana and is absolutely

not justification for taking a life. Philando Castile was shot and killed for being black while being in possession of a firearm. The NRA, claiming to represent gun-owners of all races, had a clear prerogative to support his case and they actively chose to remain silent.

Further evidence of this relationship includes the widespread admiration of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. shared by nearly all Americans. Dr. King’s teachings were truly inspirational and have had an indescribably profound effect on the American way of life. That being said, his dogmatic support of non-violence, as describe in Stride Toward Freedom, has been twisted to relegate minority groups to peaceful demonstrations while predominantly white movements are allowed to openly voice hypotheticals of widespread violence on national television without condemnation. Ben Shapiro’s ability to describe widespread violent protest against governmental oppression on Piers Morgan Tonight and still be taken seriously as a political commentator exemplifies the bizarre nature of this double standard.

The tyranny deterrent narrative of Right to Bear supporters is undeniably racialized, and until the ‘violence is justified in the face of oppression’ opinion is generalized to non-whites it should be considered a form of overt racism.

Josh Hill ‘20 studies in the Olin Business School. He can be reached at josh.hill@wustl.edu.

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WU POLITICAL REVIEW | INTERNATIONAL

INTERNATIONAL

CLASHING SENSITIVITIES ACROSS CULTURES Yiran Cheng

C

hina has now become a de facto superpower, second to only the US through its great sway in world economics. However, China achieved this by developing a unique economic and political structure very unlike that of the US or many other Western countries.

Needless to say, the authoritarian communist government has attracted the most attention and criticism in the political domain. But not enough focus has been placed on an interesting and equally important phenomenon: why Chinese people often shows disdain and mockery toward liberals or radical leftists rather than develop such politics themselves.

“白 左 (baí zu),” which roughly translates into “white left supremacists,” is a Chinese phrase that refers to the group of liberals that’s easily offended by an opinion that doesn’t match their own, also known as "snowflakes" in some contexts. The phrase now commonly refers to the far-left Democrats (who don’t actually need to be “white”). In the past few years, Chinese people, including the more liberal among them, have generated a strong backlash toward 白左 at a level matched only by criticism toward the Communist Party. And there are plenty of explanations for the origin of this feeling.

Number one on the list is the liberals’ hypocrisy; namely, the lack of attention paid to racial prejudice toward the Asian population. One widely known example occurred at the 2016 Oscar ceremony. Host Chris Rock brought three Asian children onto the stage and referred to them as the best accountants in the country. He went on to say, “If anybody’s upset about that joke, just tweet about it on your phone that was also made by these kids.” This blatant attack on Asians is not only ironic considering the theme of that year’s Oscars (#diversity), but it also

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smeared the reputation of that vanguard of liberalism, Hollywood. Even more ironically, after this incident, only Asian public figures offered criticism, and it failed to create much of a ripple in politically-correct Hollywood. Rock never even issued an apology. This kind of hypocrisy and racism generated from liberalism’s home base can only be interpreted by Chinese people as a total disregard for Asians in liberals’ vision for equality.

Another explanation is the admissions process of American universities. It is almost an established fact that Asians need to exceed the SAT scores of students of other races by a hundred points or more in order to compete with them on the same level, due to affirmative action. This seems especially outrageous to Chinese people, since the Chinese education systems judge students’ abilities solely based on their test scores.

This notion was reinforced when people discovered that in California universities, where affirmative action is banned, Asian students take up 40% of the student body, as opposed to 20% at other top universities.

Similarly, some aspects of the liberal agenda are ludicrous to the Chinese, perhaps the most ridiculed being animal right groups such as PETA. This division on issues of animal rights stems from the root of Eastern and Western civilizations. Chinese society came to desacralize the natural world around 1 millennium B.C., much earlier than the cradle of Western civilization.

With this transition, the Chinese started regarding the world as inanimate, and saw animals as lacking the emotions, insight, and reason that humans possess. This stance is reinforced by communistic belief that humans are the only self-conscious species on Earth. Therefore, when animal right activists preach that killing

animals is murder or breeding animals is rape, it would come as no surprise that most Chinese would see that as crazy talk by the delusional.

Many Chinese people also cannot comprehend the rationale behind the U.S.’s treatment for illegal immigrants as exemplified by the DACA bill, a division also caused by cultural roots. From the dawn of history, Chinese people have occupied what is now China, and whoever wanted to immigrate to the country—whether that was the Huns, the Mongols or the Westerners in recent history—always turned out to be a foe that sought to destroy the Chinese way of life.

Therefore, unlike the U.S., a nation built on immigration, China came to have a natural suspicion of immigrants, believing that excessive immigration would have a negative impact culturally. It is only logical that the Chinese would be unable to understand why liberals would open their arms for refugees, illegal immigrants, and legal immigrants alike.

Of course, these are not the only reasons why many Chinese people think so little of 白左.

Some even believe that it’s because the left wing tends to remind people of totalitarian communism in Chinese political settings. That said, neither side is deserving of blame. By establishing more communication, the two groups can come to understand each other better, and contribute toward an era of greater political and ideological openess.

Yiran Cheng '21 studies in the College of Arts & Sciences. He can be reached at yirancheng@wustl.edu.

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SYRIA STILL BURNS Divya Walia | Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

I

n the summer of 2016, I studied abroad in Qatar, taking an Arabic class with a group of expatriate professionals. Our teacher was named Ustaaz Muhammad, who had fled Syria and the war with his wife, being on the wrong side of the Assad regime. He was a patient and thoughtful teacher, and in our private conversations he would tell me about Damascus, the capital city, where he had lived his whole life, teaching Arabic in universities and institutes in the city. Damascus was the best place in the world to learn Arabic, he would say, telling me about the Western students who would flock there to learn Arabic organically, living in a vibrant, diverse city surrounded by culture and opportunity. He told me that he intended to go back and teach once more and that I must come and learn with him there.

I almost wouldn’t blame you if you had turned the page just by looking at this title, if the word “Syria” has become so burdensome in your political consciousness that the very thought of reading another article makes you turn away. I could understand. But seven years have passed since that spring when a few Syrians gathered in the streets to announce their protests to the world. They were joined by a few more and a few more until, in a country where freedom of political speech had been banished for decades, there suddenly arrived a genuine ray of hope. Since then, there have been seven years of war. Seven years of citizens forced to leave their home of generations for foreign shores and given the label “refugee,” leaving them an unwanted burden on the world. It is worth reminding ourselves what has happened in these seven years. What would we tell those hopeful voices that sang in the streets about what became of their revolution?

Yassin Al Haj-Saleh, a Syrian writer and revolutionary leader, splits the conflict into three distinct parts. He termed what began in 2011 and ended in 2013 as the true Syrian Civil War, Syrian fighting Syrian to secure freedom and change against an oppressive regime. What followed was the sad decline into a Sunni-Shi’a struggle, wherein ISIS used the chaos to plant their flag of Sunni extremism, finally drawing

the attention of the larger world. In 2014, the war began its current reality of an imperialist struggle that has devolved into a power grab between world superpowers led by Russia and the US. The looming figure above all of this is Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian president who has used chemical weapons, violence, and terror on his people, reducing countless Syrian cities to rubble and killing thousands. The death toll now exceeds 500,000. Yet, the fight for freedom was so much bigger than this one man. Syrians have lived under the oppression of the regime for two generations, beginning with the suffocating rule of Assad’s father. What the Syrian people called for nearly a decade ago was much more than the removal of Assad, but a demand for change, for new life and hope that the country has desperately needed for half a century. In response to these demands, Assad has shown an unimaginable capacity for violence and suppression in order to retain control and, without further intervention, currently stands of the brink of being handed back the reigns with the help of Russia and Iran. As an international community, are we willing to leave Syria in the hands of this man after all he has done?

Syria was not a country devoid of problems

before 2011; centuries of state-enforced division had segregated citizens between religious minorities and races. The opposition to the regime was far from perfect or organized.

And the reasons for Western action and inaction during the war were not one-sided—they were complex, borne out of constant weighing of costs and benefits and changing political landscapes. There was never an easy answer to the Syrian question, neither for those who were in it nor for those who looked on from the safety of a violence-free world. But we have a duty to remember, as we watch the war blaze on to what may be its tragic end, what became of that ray of hope that shone so brightly seven years ago.

On the last day of my summer in Qatar, my teacher, Ustaaz Muhammad, shook my hand and said, al mara al qadima, fil Damashq: next time, in Damascus. At that point in the war, Damascus and Syria had already faced what seemed to be irreversible destruction, but I only had to look in his eyes to know that my teacher truly believed this: that we would meet again in his native country, in the beautiful city that he so loved. And, for one brief moment, I believed it too.

Divya Walia ‘18 studies in the College of Arts & Sciences. She can be reached at dwalia@wustl.edu.

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WE CANNOT PERMIT ISRAELI INJUSTICE Conor Smyth | Illustration by Michael Avery

M

arch 30th, 1976 is a day remembered

by Palestinians as Land Day. That day marked one of the first significant mass demonstrations by Palestinians of national unity and opposition to Israeli policies. The point of contention at the time was a recent formal declaration by the Israeli government that it would expropriate lands in the Galilee region for the purpose of settlement construction. Much of the land, approximately 2,000 hectares, was owned by Palestinians. When Palestinians demonstrated on March 30th, 1976, the Israeli government did not respond by reconsidering its decision. Instead, Israeli forces killed six unarmed protesters, injured about a hundred, and arrested hundreds more.

42 years later, on Friday, March 30th, 2018, Palestinians in the Gaza Strip joined the “Great March of Return.” This protest was planned to last through May 15th, a day known among Palestinians as the Nakba, or “catastrophe.” On that day, Palestinians annually commemorate the forced displacement of around 750,000 Palestinians during Israel’s War of Independence.

The protest aimed to bring attention to the Israeli occupation and Israel’s expansion of illegal settlements and, above all, espoused Palestinian refugees’ right to return to their homeland.

Although decades have passed since the first Land Day, the illegal seizure of Palestinian land remains a major issue today. Despite the passage last December of UN resolution 2334, which called upon Israel to halt its settlement activities in the occupied territories, the Israeli government still approved the construction of over 6,000 settlement homes since the start of 2018. Additionally, Israel has increased the rate of demolition of Palestinian homes and has passed legislation that will allow for the retroactive legalization of 53 settlements and outposts, effectively permitting the expropriation of 80 hectares of Palestinian land.

Meanwhile, Gazans remain living in what former British Prime Minister David Cameron famously referred to as “an open-air prison.” Roughly 70 percent of Gaza’s two-million-person population are formally recognized as refugees, and over half a million of those refugees live in

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refugee camps. In Gaza, access to electricity is limited to four hours per day and 97 percent of drinking water is contaminated. Since imposing an air, sea, and land blockade in 2007, Israel has, at different points, banned the import of chickens, chips, and chocolate and conducted calorie counts to determine the minimum supplies necessary to support the population of Gaza. In 2011, cables leaked by WikiLeaks cited Israeli diplomats expressing their desire to “keep Gaza's economy on the brink of collapse.”

Now, the general unemployment rate in Gaza is upwards of 40 percent, and the youth unemployment rate is near 60 percent.

In addition, brutal conflicts with Israel over the last ten years have left thousands of Palestinians dead and more wounded as well as unbridled destruction in their wakes. The past three military conflicts between Hamas and Israel— Operation Cast Lead (2008-9), Operation Pillar of Defense (2012), and Operation Protective Edge (2014)—have claimed the lives of 3,662 Palestinians, 2,308 of whom were civilians. By comparison, during the same operations, 91 Israelis were killed, 14 of whom were civilians.

Thus, on Land Day this year, Palestinians in Gaza had much to protest. However, they did not take to launching rockets to resist. As the man credited with inspiring this year’s protests, Ahmad Abu Artema, remarked, “It’s not necessary to resist the occupation with bullets. You can resist the occupation with dabke [a form of dance], or by just sitting there.” In Abu Artema’s view, peaceful protest can go much further in achieving Palestinians’ goals than armed struggle can.

Israel does not “want to confront people. They want to be confronted by a rocket or a missile.”

Attempting to make Abu Artema’s hopes a reality, the protest’s coordinating committee called on protesters to remain “peaceful.” Hamas, the dominant political party in Gaza, released a statement on March 29th urging Palestinians “to effectively take part in the Great March of Return and remain peaceful to achieve the objective of this event.” Muhammad Shehada, a Palestinian journalist, wrote the morning of March 30th that Hamas “plans to deploy its security personnel in civil clothes amongst the protestors to prevent individual attempts to spoil the march with violence.” Furthermore, a spokesman for Fatah, the dominant political

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party in the West Bank, implored protesters to “preserve the [protest’s] peaceful character.”

On the day of March 30th, 30,000 Palestinians set up camp near Gaza’s border with Israel.

Although some of the protesters strayed from the commitment to nonviolence, hurling rocks, tires, and even Molotov cocktails at IDF (Israeli Defense Force) soldiers, the vast majority were peaceful. Even with the violence of some protesters, no IDF officer was harmed.

Nevertheless, IDF officers deemed it necessary to kill 18 Palestinians and wound potentially over 1,400 more, making March 30th the single bloodiest day in Gaza since the end of Operation Protective Edge in 2014. Subsequently released footage of the protest depicted protesters being shot as they prayed and as they ran away from the border wall.

If even the Palestinians’ peaceful protest of Israeli policy is met with violence, what incentive is there for Palestinians to refrain from violence of their own?

Condemnation from human rights organizations, the United Nations, and even the New York Times editorial board quickly followed. One of the most powerful responses was from the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem, which released a statement demanding that soldiers “refuse to comply” with “orders to use live fire against unarmed civilians.” The organization emphasized that international law limits the use of live fire “to instances involving tangible and immediate mortal danger, and only in the absence of any other alternative.” While “the military is allowed to prevent” and even arrest protesters “for approaching

the fence, damaging it, or attempting to cross it… firing live ammunition solely on these grounds is absolutely prohibited.”

Elizabeth Throssell, the UN human rights spokeswoman, later commented that the unjustified use of firearms by Israel may amount to the willful killing of civilians, which the Fourth Geneva Convention prohibits. Her assessment of the events was that the protective gear worn

by Israeli soldiers and the protection afforded them by their defensive positions “would have mitigated the risk” posed by the violence of the protesters “and should not have led to recourse to lethal force.”

According to the U.S. Code of Federal Regulations, terrorism is “the unlawful use of force and violence against persons or property to intimidate or coerce a government, the civilian population, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social objectives.” Given that the day after the protests the IDF tweeted, “everything was accurate and measured, we know where every bullet landed,” and that the IDF’s actions were a response to a mostly nonviolent protest rather than a military operation, we can rule out the idea that any dead Palestinian protesters can be categorized as “collateral damage.” After all, the fact that Israel deployed at least a hundred snipers, multiple tanks, and tear-gas-deploying drones to the border reveals their intention to, as Israel’s defense minister Avigdor Lieberman phrased it, “neutralize” the protesters. The Palestinians killed were, except for two armed militants, unarmed protesters. As Throssell and B’Tselem make clear, the risk posed by even the violent protesters was not nearly significant enough to justify the use of force. As a result, the IDF’s actions were illegal under international law. This is all to say that the IDF, breaking international law, killed 18 civilians and injured potentially over 1,400 more in an attempt to coerce protesters to stop demonstrating against Israeli policy. That sounds dangerously close to the definition of terrorism for me.

Yet, in response to international condemnation, the Israeli government has characterized its army’s actions as measured and justified. It has said that the soldiers’ actions were necessary in order to prevent any encroachments on Israel’s sovereignty, meaning the protesters had to be shot to be stopped from crossing the border.

But no one crossed the fence, and video shows protesters who demonstrated no clear intention to cross the fence being gunned down from afar. Still, Defense Minister Lieberman remarked that the IDF “did what had to be done” and that Israeli “troops deserve a commendation.”

Some important questions worth considering now are: What message do Israel’s actions send to the Palestinians? If even the Palestinians’ peaceful protest of Israeli policy is met with violence, what incentive is there for Palestinians to refrain from violence of their own? Why should they be held to a different moral standard than Israelis?

The day of the protests, Kuwait proposed a resolution to the United Nations Security Council calling for an “independent and transparent investigation” into the violence. However, siding with the Israeli government, the U.S. rejected Kuwait’s resolution out of hand.

If the U.S. wants to be able to claim the mantle of the world’s most moral nation, we cannot allow one of our top allies to continue its violations of human rights and international law. Israel currently receives $3.8 billion a year in military assistance from the U.S. There ought to be consequences for that paycheck if they continue perpetrating violence, bloodshed, destruction, and injustice. It does not make sense to block an investigation into Israeli acts of aggression and killing unless there is something to cover up, which obviously there is here if the Israelis are to retain any semblance of moral defense for their actions. Rather than granting free gifts like moving our embassy to Jerusalem, we must condemn Israel’s abuses and compel them to reform their actions and seriously negotiate with the Palestinian people. If we do not do so, the blood of every massacre will increasingly be on our hands.

Conor Smyth ‘21 studies in the College of Arts & Sciences. He can be reached at c.smyth@wustl.edu.

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WU POLITICAL REVIEW | INTERNATIONAL

WHAT’S NEXT? Christopher Hall | Photo coursey of Business Insider

O

ne of my friends recently spoke to me about a family vacation to Russia. It happened a few years ago, or in her words, “before everything got weird.” She hit on something strange that is happening all around us.

We are eighteen years into the 21st century, and there is a feeling that something undefinable has changed. The world feels different now than it did just a few short years ago. Populists rise in Western democracies, the ghosts of Cold War conflicts haunt Washington and Moscow, and Chinese and American warships ply the South China sea, eying each other suspiciously. Technology companies are seeing billions of dollars evaporate in a growing panic about the harvesting of personal data. China builds a security state that would give Orwell nightmares, all while exporting valuable infrastructure projects across the world. The U.S. rejects immigration while staying on track to have the highest foreign-born population in the nation’s history inside of a decade. There are always changes, but the historical moment right now feels pregnant with possibilities, a fundamental shift towards a new reality that will define the rest of the 21st century. This future will be a strange combination of old and new. The United States and China will remain the world’s pre-eminent powers, but the nature of their competition will benefit regional hegemons. Economies and political institutions will see accelerated growth, but the risk of failed states and violent conflicts will rise.

Comparisons to the early 20th century miss much that has changed since 1914, but there is an undeniably similar current in modern international politics. Like then, there are increasing numbers of regional powers jostling for position. However, this fluid international system is developing in the midst of an accelerating power struggle between the United States and China.

Both nations are well positioned to be dominant powers for the rest of the 21st century. They have strong economies and large populations, which allows their governments the freedom to allocate substantial funds on military kit and diplomatic missions. The United States is still an immigration magnet, with an estimated population of 404 million in 2060. That would still

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only be a third of China’s estimated 1.2 billion but would be almost solely a result of immigration rather than natural population growth. Both China and the United States see themselves as natural leaders, and as Xi Jinping solidifies his one-man, one-party rule, the two have increasingly divergent systems of government, society, and economics. This has already resulted in escalating tensions and low-scale confrontation, from military competition in the South China Sea to the Trump Administration’s denial of a U.S. computer-chip maker by a Singaporean company on national-security grounds.

Despite the fears of a looming trade war, both nations’ economies remain deeply intertwined, and neither country would benefit from armed conflict. How politicians in Washington and Beijing manage this uneasy relationship will dominate international relations for the foreseeable future. Both will court allies across the globe to buttress their position, enhancing the influence of a variety of regional powers such as the European Union, India, Brazil, Nigeria, and South Africa. Even if none of these entities aspire for or attain international prominence, their regional dominance will grant them a great deal of power. This is especially true in Africa, as the story of the next fifty years will increasingly be a story of African prosperity or poverty, democracy or dictatorship.

Most future population growth will come from Africa, with outcomes that will range from economic boom to stagnation and civil war. By 2050 Nigeria will vie with the United States as the world’s third-most-populous country, with over 300 million people. Djibouti is home to the first overseas Chinese base, and is already home to bases for Japan, the United States, the European Union, and others. Thirty nations of the African Union have already agreed to the African Continental Free Trade Area, which creates a single market that could one day cover all of Africa, increasing intra-African trade by over 50%. As infrastructure expands throughout the continent, markets will boom. But the skyrocketing wealth of the region could also lead to corruption, massive inequality, and the undermining of fragile governments, causing civil war

and worse. The Democratic Republic of Congo is a good example of the promise and pitfalls that will fill the headlines for the next decades.

The DRC is especially pregnant with great promise but huge pitfalls. The country is hugely rich in the rare earth elements that will be increasingly important with the rise of electric cars and ever-more-powerful computing.

Its population is booming, with Kinshasa on track to have more than six million inhabitants by 2025. But it is chaotic and undemocratic, poorly positioned to manage its growing population and economy. If it were to become a failed state in a future of ubiquitous batteries and electric cars, the international repercussions and human cost would likely be massive. Such a conflict would risk becoming a proxy war as states vied for control of valuable resources, with the population of Congo caught in the middle. It could combine the lawlessness of Somalia, the death toll of previous wars in Congo, and a lust for resources that would match anything seen in the Middle East.

The historical moment right now feels pregnant with possibilities, a fundamental shift towards a new reality that will define the rest of the 21st century.

Conflicts and opportunities across the continent could be accelerated amidst Chinese-American competition. Somalia, a failed state for over twenty years, has already effectively ceased

WU POLITICAL REVIEW | INTERNATIONAL

to exist. New nations could become important overnight as each side searches for allies. For example, the de facto independent region of Somaliland, with a relatively well-functioning democratic government, could become a magnet for American money and military assistance.

It is conceivable that a stable Somaliland might one day be home to the U.S. 6th Fleet, given the uncomfortable relationship the U.S. has with authoritarian Bahrain. Likewise, as China becomes confident in its position as a global powerhouse, it might help similarly-minded authoritarian regimes stamp out terrorist organizations and domestic dissent. Perhaps under a new president an authoritarian regime such as Zimbabwe could enhance its legitimacy by using Chinese loans to build up its economy, in return for which China would gain economic access and closer political ties. Authoritarianminded technocratic leaders, such as Rwanda’s Paul Kagame, will find similarities with China, and economic integration would benefit both nations and allow each to extoll the virtues of their preferred system over liberal capitalism.

In Asia, there is a similar economic and political ambiguity. China is asserting itself in the South China Sea and courting longtime American allies such as the Philippines, with aims to build a blue water navy that can go toe-to-toe with the United States. This is provoking a backlash.

Even after the United States withdrew from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the other signatories re-negotiated and signed the deal, signaling their independence from China. While still a great strategic loss for the U.S., this was an assertion of sovereignty for the Asian nations involved. It is possible that most of these nations will continue to play both nations off each other without committing to a definite camp. This would further increase the relative power of regional hegemons, although it would also increase the risk of failed states, as intense competition would accelerate local conflicts.

It is as yet too early to see whether most Asian and African nations will adopt a Chinese or American model. China is attempting to exercise influence through its Belt and Road initiative, a generous program of infrastructure investments.

Railways in Kenya, roads in Pakistan, a massive “land port” in Kazakhstan: by re-centering trade around China, Beijing hopes to build the foundation for a new political reality. However, even as Kenya took a huge Chinese loan to build a

Political and economic competition will increasingly come to bear on new industries.

Computing will become increasingly integrated into our lives, but the questions that plague the West about privacy and monopolies are not a concern in China. Indeed, the nation is building a surveillance system that uses facial recognition technology with the goal of recording where everyone is at all times. The country is also in the early stages of rolling out a social credit system

new railway, its Supreme Court demonstrated an independence and authority in the 2017 elections that moved the nation closer to the political norms of the West.

that determines eligibility for international travel and city living, in which citizens receive perks for informing on their neighbors. This 21st-century update to totalitarianism could one day be packaged wholesale and sold to Chinese-friendly regimes in Asia and Africa that struggle with instability. Indeed, relatively democratic nations in unstable parts of the world might buy into this surveillance state “franchise” as a way to address terrorist threats. This will occur alongside more traditional technological change, as companies such as Amazon and Alibaba will compete in new markets, and against homegrown champions. Economics and politics will most likely become more closely integrated, as economic decisions will be viewed through a political lens. Whether a country takes a Chinese or an American loan, for example, might be seen as an indicator of its political allegiance.

We seem to be on the verge of a new world, with new geopolitical trends and new international flashpoints. Given that the emerging contours of America–China competition are less restrictive than during the Cold War, regional powers will gain increasing importance as they play both sides or come down firmly in a particular camp.

This will likely accelerate economic growth and political development, especially in Africa.

However, there will be increasing risks to failure, with potentially disastrous consequences.

Christopher Hall ‘18 studies in the College of Arts & Sciences. He can be reached at c.a.hall@wustl.edu.

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