Fire

WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY

POLITICAL

REVIEW

31.2 | October 2019 | wupr.org

Table of Contents Fire

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Gunfire and Mental Health Emily Angstreich

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National

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International

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What the Fyre Festival Shows about American Wealth Politics Elizabeth Piasecki Phelan

Social Media: Far Right vs. Wrong?

Rebecca Runge

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9/11, Islamophobia, and False Unity Fadel Alkilani

The Church Is Burning Emily Jayne

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What's Hot this Season?

Adler Bowman & Alaina Baumohl

Connecting Around the Campfire Christian Monzon

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Ashes Unify: The Aftermath of Notre Dame Elena Murray

Down Wind: Pollution and Discrimination Andrew Leung

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There Is No Such Thing as a Neutral Think Tank Jaden Lanza

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Abortion Legislation Hannah Richardson

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Why the White Working Class is the Key to Defeating Trump Rachel Olick-Gibson

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Facebook's "Fight" Against Hate Speech Malar Muthukumar

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In the Crosshairs of a Media Firestorm Nick Massenburg-Abraham

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Theme Art Haejin An

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Don't Touch My Hair Nkemjika Emenike

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Drawbacks of the E-Cigarette Ban Salil Uttarwar

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Theme Art Jessica Zepeda

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A New "America First" Foreign Policy Aidan Smyth

Let Us Burn Ishaan Shah

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Studying Abroad in the Arab World Clare Grindinger

Fueling our Fires, Fueling our Passions Caroline Foshee

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"Howdy Modi!": Diaspora Diplomacy Fans the Flames of Facism in India Rohan Palacios

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Change the Narrative: Corporations and Climate Change Yanny Liang

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Flames in the face of Loss Megan Orlanski

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Theme Art Anonymous

Editors' Note Executive Director Ishaan Shah Editors-in-Chief Hanna Khalil Sophie Attie Design Director Catherine Ju Staff Editors Max Lichtenstein Christian Monzon Jon Niewjik Rohan Palacios Features Editors Nick Massenburg Megan Orlanski Assistant Design Directors Leslie Liu Jinny Park Programming Director Liza Sivriver

Dear Reader, Ever since humans discovered fire long ago, it has held central significance to both daily life, and how we understand our place in the world. Long understood as a defining difference between man and animal, fire has been a foundational link between nature, human, and civilization.

We often think of fire as a spontaneous phenomenon—with one spark, flames engulf their surroundings, and just as quickly, settle down into ashes. But fire can also be a consistent, controlled force, fueling industry. Fire has the power to destroy, and yet is also central to rituals of rebirth.

In this issue of WUPR, writers have explored various interpretations of fire across time and space, literal and metaphorical, spontaneous and steady. Article topics range from the response to the Fyre Festival controversy to personal anecdotes that reflect on the things that fuel us in our day-to-day lives.

Rebecca Runge takes on the Fire issue by analyzing perhaps one of the most glaring fire-related issues at the moment: the Amazon fires, taking on a nuanced lens by comparing the burning forest to the recent Notre Dame fire. Nkemjika Emenike reflects on the politics of black women’s hair, recalling the burning smell of her curls being straightened as a child. And together, Adler Bowman and Alaina Baumohl provide a critique of the “fast fashion” industry, which literally burns unsold clothing en masse.

Treasurer Natalia Rodriguez

Some of our writers took more abstract approaches to the Fire theme. For example, Ishaan Shah reflects on the unsustainable rate at which we as a society are burning out through a realistic perspective. Caroline Foshee looks at what fuels students in academic settings in order to succeed. And, as always, we have articles discussing a broad array of national and international topics, including our new columnist, Rachel Olick-Gibson, who will be presenting unique angles on the democratic candidates for the 2020 presidential race.

Front Cover Lindsay Wang

We hope this issue of the Washington University Political Review will inspire you, our readers, to consider the various manifestations of fire all around us.

Back Cover Haejin An

Warmly,

Web Editor Conor Smyth

Sophie Attie and Hanna Khalil Theme Spread: Thomas Fruhauf Feature Designs Catherine Ju Leslie Liu Jinny Park

Editors-In-Chief

WU Political Review

Gunfire and Mental Health Emily Angstreich

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fter the mass shootings in Dayton, Ohio and El Paso, Texas, Donald Trump said, “mental illness and hatred pulled the trigger. Not the gun.” Arguably, without the gun, 31 people would not have died in less than 24 hours.

In the wake of these recent mass shootings, politicians on both sides of the aisle have been working to pass new legislation. A bill for universal background checks was passed in the House earlier this year. Senators Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Patrick J. Toomey (R-PA) have reintroduced a bipartisan bill that enforces stricter background checks.

While these measures are being debated in Congress, Donald Trump wants to focus on “reform[ing] our mental health laws to better identify mentally disturbed individuals… and make sure those people not only get treatment but, when necessary, involuntary confinement.”

Other politicians on the right have made similar arguments. Senator Rick Scott of Florida said, “there’s too many people that have mental illnesses that we’re somehow not addressing and they have access to weapons and they shouldn’t.”

As ‘thoughts and prayers’ have stopped being enough, it seems that the right has found a new scapegoat for mass shootings: mental health.

According to the American Psychiatric Association, “...the overwhelming majority of people with mental illness are not violent and are far more likely to be victims of violent crime than perpetrators of violence.” Additionally, “rhetoric that argues otherwise will further stigmatize and interfere with people accessing needed treatment.”

Arguably, without a gun, 31 people would not have died within 24 hours. administration is looking into a new, highly controversial policy to monitor those with mental illness. Bob Wright, a friend of Trump’s and a former NBC chairman, has urged the administration to form the Health Advanced Research Projects Agency (HARPA). HARPA’s proposed purpose is to explore new ways to solve health problems.

What relation does HARPA have to mass shootings in America? Members of the administration have recently created a proposal known as SAFEHOME (Stopping Aberrant Fatal Events by Helping Overcome Mental Extremes). According to The Washington Post, SAFEHOME would explore, “whether technology including phones and smartwatches can be used to detect when mentally ill people are about to turn violent.”

There are several problems with tracking the actions of “mentally ill” people: the stigmatization of those that struggle with their mental health, the lack of definition of who is “mentally ill” and who would be part of this program, and the breaches of privacy for millions of Americans.

The Washington Post reported on studies of mass shootings, finding that of all the mass shooters, “only a quarter or less have diagnosed mental illness.” Other factors such as past domestic violence, narcissism, and access to firearms are “more significant commonalities in mass shooters.”

The concept that people who struggle with mental health are dangerous can prevent Americans from wanting to seek psychological help and be open about their mental health. When people are disinclined to seek support for their mental health, their conditions worsen. Rather than increasing safety, stigmatizing mental disorders as dangerous will prevent Americans from getting mental health care and allow conditions to worsen.

With these ideas in mind, Trump’s remarks blaming mass shootings on mental illness seem questionable at best. Despite this, the Trump

If this plan is passed, would it stop mass shootings? A 2012 Defense Department Study titled “Prediction: Why It Won’t Work” found that

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while mass shooters may have pre-existing behaviors that could be red flags, “they are of low specificity and thus carry the baggage of an unavoidable false alarm rate.” Essentially, predicting mass shooters via these indicators is too inefficient and inaccurate to be feasible.

Why has the Trump administration turned to mental illness as the cause of mass shootings when research on other factors such as access to guns and narcissism have proved to be stronger links? A recent study by Boston University used data of gun violence and the sale of guns across different US States to show that, “laws banning people convicted of violent misdemeanors from possessing firearms can… significantly reduce gun-related deaths.” Further research showed that “state gun laws requiring universal background checks for all gun sales resulted in homicide rates 15% lower than states without such laws.”

The evidence shows that background checks and banning the sale of guns to certain individuals is effective in preventing mass shootings, yet these measure still face resistance. Instead, there is a focus on stigmatizing mental health and monitoring those with mental disorders when the facts prove that those efforts won’t effectively predict or prevent mass shootings. Mental health has become a scapegoat for mass shootings in order to stop laws for universal background checks.

Emily Angstreich ‘22 studies in the College of Arts & Sciences. She can be reached at emily.angstreich@ wustl.edu.

Fire

Social Media: Far Right vs Wrong?

Rebecca Runge

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his summer, social media platforms erupted over the gaping disparity in public response between the Notre Dame fire and the Amazon fires. Many took to social media to swiftly condemn the endless airtime and donations Notre Dame’s cause has received, advocating for a wider recognition and intensified response to the fires still devastating the Amazon rainforest to date. One Tumblr user mused it was “interesting” that the world’s billionaires were so diligent in donating to the rebuilding of “a church in France,” yet there was no equivalent response to the Amazon fires. Comparisons between the two respective fires are useful to an extent, but the fact of the matter is that multiple forces were at play for the poor public response to the Amazon fires that were not focused on or explored by social media users.

It took three minutes after the flames began to creep up the spire of the Notre Dame for over 100 news channels to air their Notre Dame segments. The Amazon rainforest burned for three weeks in the largest fire rampage ever recorded before it was broadcasted on mainstream media channels like, CNN, MSNBC and Fox News.

Even then, the Amazon fire coverage peaked at a measly 11 segments per day as compared to the 150 mentions per day of the Notre Dame fire. This rightly warranted global outrage; people took to social media to drum up awareness of the Amazon fires through various hashtags, Instagram stories, and tweets.

Another source of upset was the fact that Notre Dame received almost $2 billion in donations in the span of 48 hours from billionaires and transnational organizations alike. Social media users compared Notre Dame’s donations to the $20 million in aid given towards the Amazon from the G7 committee, members of which include: Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the U.K, and the U.S. They argued that those who donated to Notre Dame should extend the same courtesy to the environmental catastrophe in Brazil. The Amazon is the lungs of the Earth, and as such, it should be treated with the same urgency as the Notre Dame was.

What was missing from the 280-character text posts was the appropriate analysis behind the environmental disaster, that was the Amazon fires.

What was missing from the 280-character tweets was the appropriate analysis behind the environmental disaster that was the Amazon fires. Short, punchy text posts criticizing the billionaires who “emptied their pockets” for the rebuilding of the Notre Dame were no better than the vague and fleeting headlines on mainstream news segments. The social media advocacy for the wider acknowledgement of the Amazon fires focused too much on comparing public responses to Notre Dame, and failed to include information about the far-right Brazilian government that played a key role in the fires and lack of public response.

The Amazon fires are not a spontaneous and unfortunate accident like the Notre Dame fire; they are in fact an economically charged act by far-right Brazilian president, Jair Bolsonaro.

Since Bolsonaro took office in January, there has been a 39% increase in the loss of forest cover since 2018. Bolsonaro’s personal ideological opposition to the West has caused the suffering of countless indigenous and urban populations and has caused the reversal of climate change policies reliant on the survival of the Amazon. According to Matias Spektor,

a leading International Relations professor at a university in São Paulo, Bolsonaro “deeply, ideologically, believes that environmentalism is part of a left-wing view of the world.” This has resulted in Bolsonaro gutting the environmental ministry, vacating half of this agency's positions.

As part of his election campaign, the Brazilian president promised to decrease the areas of protection that cover the Amazon, remove the fines associated with violating environmental protectionist law, and ward off the NGOs dedicated to protecting the Amazon. His government purposefully waited to pass legislation that would abolish the protection of indigenous territories and vast amounts of forest in order to avoid international attention. Bolsonaro also rejected multiple financial aid packages from the G7 committee, the Amazon Fund, and even general aid offers from countries like the U.K and Germany, claiming it was an infringement upon Brazil’s sovereignty. This is the background that was left out of many of the social media posts advocating for greater attention to global climate change.

The social media presence, so passionate about the Amazon fires, directed too much of its focus on creating a parallel between the Notre Dame and the Amazon Fires.

Bolsonaro’s regime has been severely detrimental to the progression of climate change policies in Brazil and will no doubt continue in this. The tool of social media advocacy proved powerful this summer by increasing the awareness of the Amazon fires. Yet, the direction of people’s outrage was somewhat misplaced and, if directed towards the true root of this disaster, it could be that much more powerful.

Rebecca Runge ‘21 studies in the College of Arts & Sciences. She can be reached at rrunge@wustl.edu.

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WU Political Review

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Fire

The Church Is Burning Emily Jayne Artwork (left) by Haejin An, staff artist

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he cross of the spire burned on the Parisian skyline like a scene out of Birth of a Nation. I streamed the footage for six hours. The church was on fire; the roof was coming down. The narrative of the ensuing flames was clear, and yet I could not peel my eyes from the screen. It was more than a simple church fire. Notre Dame is the pinnacle of 800 years of Parisian and French culture. Henry VI was crowned there, and Napoleon walked its aisles. It withstood bloody revolution and the bombing of world wars. Yet there is something profound to be said for the simple act of human misstep. We as beings possess an innate desire to hold on to the past. It defines individuals and cultures. We spend countless dollars and hours maintaining monuments to our species’ perseverance. But it was in this pursuit of restoration that presumably the spark was struck. Those flames embodied our failure as a human race to protect what we have labelled as precious. Physical objects crumbled as the beautiful craftsmanship of the architecture disappeared. But with it burned the decaying spiritual backbone of a continent.

As I watched the spire crash through the great forest of roof last April, I witnessed the Catholic Church fall with it.

Notre Dame is possible the most recognized symbol of western Catholicism. Constructed in the 13th century, the building predates the Vatican basilicas. France has long been a stronghold of the Catholic Church, historically referred to as the “eldest daughter of the church.” Roman Catholicism was named the state religion by Clovis I in the 5th century and retained the designation for thirteen centuries. In 1910, the country was 99% Catholic, accounting for 13% of the global Catholics population. A stark contrast to modern numbers, as according to Pew Research only 54% of the French population identify as Catholic and 17% as practicing. This course of decline follows one seen by the institution worldwide. It is true that religion in general has taken a blow as atheism and agnosticism become household terms. However, it is particularly devastating in a country geographically and spiritually entwined with the Vatican.

For many, Benedict is the physical representation of the old church he so strongly advocates for. This image is further perpetuated with the juxtaposition of his successor.

While an explicit cause of death will never be declared, several events of the last century can be assumed as contributors to the Church’s decline. In recent years, countless members of Church leadership have been exposed as knowing bystanders or instigators of sexual abuse.

Accusations of lies and cover-ups have permeated every level of the institution, all the way to the Vatican. Since the opening of the floodgates by the Spotlight team in 2002, the Church continually finds itself apologizing and paying monetary settlements. The Boston Archdiocese alone has settled over $85 million to five hundred plus victims; globally, these numbers total a staggering $4 billion.

Joseph Aloisius Ratzinger, later known as Benedict XVI, was born in 1927 in Marktl, Germany. He studied theology in Munich and was ordained in 1951. Ratzinger is an expert on traditional Catholic doctrine and spent the first two decades of his career as a professor. He rose through the ranks of the Vatican and in 1981 was appointed prefect of The Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith, the church body charged with defending Catholic doctrine. His strong

advocacy for a return to fundamental Christian values earned him nicknames such as “The Enforcer” and “God’s Rotweiler”. For many, Benedict is the physical representation of the old church he so strongly advocates for.

This image is further perpetuated with the juxtaposition of his successor. Jorge Mario Bergoglio was born in Buenos Aires in 1936. Pope Francis’ election in 2013 propelled him to the status of pioneer, the first South American and Jesuit to sit on the Chair of St. Peter. As a member of the Society of Jesus, his priestly tenure has focused on social reform and service. Unlike Benedict, Francis does not don the red papal cape or shoes, opting for a simple white garb. He also has forgone the papal residence, opting for a modest suite in the Domus Sanctae Marthae.

His papal reign has been defined by a concern for the poor and openness to interfaith dialogue.

Since ascending to the Chair of Saint Peter in 2013, Pope Francis has prioritized addressing sexual abuse and corruption within the clergy.

This past February, he convened a conference of 190 of bishops in an attempt to discuss the issue. While very little was produced, many viewed the mere acknowledgement of the endemic as a step. However, the real waves were made in April when Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI published a 6,000 word letter discussing what he believes to be the true nature of the crisis. In the eyes of the former pope and highly regarded theologian, there is one true culprit of the abuse scandal: the sexual revolution of the 1960s.

As Benedict argues, the sexual revolution and concurrent secularization of the West contributed to the abandonment of God by many individuals. There is some empirical truth in this claim.

The next assertion, however, is where the argument falters. What suddenly arouse as a direct result of this abandonment of God? According to Benedict: homosexuality and pedophilia. It is easy to immediately dismiss this claim as homophobic and socially tone deaf. But to truly understand and refute his logic, it is important to examine the actual implications of the 1960’s sexual revolution.

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WU Political Review

Sexual abuse is not about the growing societal acceptance of heterosexual or homosexual activity. It is about power.

The 1960s, particularly in America, was a period of profound social change. The Civil Rights Movement had forced the discussion of race relations into the dining room. Woman’s rights were again on the mind with the persistence of second wave feminism. The Vietnam War and subsequent anti-war activism had forced the country to reexamine the role of young people in society. No beloved American institution or ideal appeared to sit on solid ground. Sex was no longer reserved solely for marriage. In addition, increased female empowerment in the work place spilled into every aspect of American life. As income earners, some women now possessed the ability to provide for themselves and in turn gained a new-found sense of autonomy, leading to a rise in single culture.

The decade also ushered in many changes for the Catholic Church itself. In October 1962, Pope John XXII opened the Second Vatican Council.

The three-year assembly gathered thousands of bishops and dignitaries from around the world to discuss the Church’s relation with the increasingly modern world. With the decree of papal infallibility in 1870, the announcement of the gathering shocked the religious community.

Many viewed that councils were no longer necessary under the belief of the pope’s protection from error. The gathering sought to increase the Church’s accessibility to the lay person, decreeing that mass no longer had to be performed in Latin and promoting ecumenism. The council is accepted in theological study as the turning point from the “old” to “modern” church.

Benedict’s letter in April signals a concerning

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divide in the Catholic Church. As the first pope to resign in six centuries, he holds unprecedented privilege. He has chosen the title “Pope Emeritus”, rather than the more modest “Bishop Emeritus of Rome”. He has also decided to spend his remaining years in The Pontifical Palace steps from St. Peter’s rather than return to his native Germany. The bottom line is that Benedict still retains power. Whether he chooses it or not, when he speaks, people listen. In light of the sex abuse scandal, Pope Francis is charged with the difficult task of reunifying the Church. This mission is proven more difficult when his predecessor publishes a letter directly contradicting him.

As previously discussed, Benedict points to the chaos of the 60’s as culprit of the church scandal. While it is true that many of the priests prosecuted were raised during the decade, it is dangerous to draw that conclusion. It is unlikely that a 2000-year-old institution suddenly developed a pedophilia streak in the late 80s. A more logical explanation being that the growing media was finally able spot the holes in the degrading Catholic power curtain. Furthermore, blaming the rise of “homosexual cliques” in seminaries reflects the distasteful homophobia that has long plagued the Catholic community.

Sexual abuse is not about the growing societal acceptance of heterosexual or homosexual activity. It is about power. To paint it otherwise is to disregard the innocence and value of the victims. If the issue was simply about sexuality, then most clergymen would break their celibacy vows with other adults. Many of them do, and they manage not to molest children in

the process. Catholic clergymen are clothed in immense amounts of historically misogynistic power. The traditional church has long failed to acknowledge this, and Benedict’s letter reflects it. His failure to recognize the power dynamic demonstrates a personal lack of introspection advocated for by Christian theology. Instead, he employs the 1960’s and secular culture as a scapegoat.

The Catholic Church presently sits at a crossroads. It must change if it wants to continue inspiring over a billion people. Francis has dipped his foot in the waters of this transition.

His willingness to admit his own sinful status illustrates a papal humility not often seen. For many young Catholics he embodies the hopes of a loving, more accepting new church. But he is still tethered by the antiquated institutionalism epitomized by his predecessor and much of the senior leadership. Much work is still needed to address the Church’s many issues. The solutions will not be comfortable. To let the light in, some more roofs may need to burn.

Emily Angstreich ‘22 studies in the College of Arts & Sciences. She can be reached at emily.angstreich@ wustl.edu.

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Connecting Around the Campfire Christian Monzon, staff editor

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s the subtle orange light of the campfire flickered a soft glow onto my face, I found myself deep in thought. I found myself in my own universe, free from the chaos of the rest of the world, hypnotized by the glow, lost in my own thoughts and completely focused on those around me.

The silence of the woods eased our minds.

We started lightly, talking about issues like our favorite travel destinations, our most bizarre experience, laughing and chewing our marshmallows as we heard crickets emerge from the silence. One person talked about how they met Barack Obama before he won the presidency; two of them bonded over their collection of fun socks; I reminisced about a vacation to Key West, Florida – all topics we would normally talk about.

But something about the fire – maybe its calming stability of staying rooted in one spot or its chaotic movement that feels open and spontaneous – turned the conversation in an unexpected direction. My friends and I opened up about grief and loss – their last phone calls with a late relative or inability to see their dying family member or sense of guilt over losing someone to suicide. Others talked about their crippling mental illness – depression and panic disorder and anxiety.

Empathy, compassion and appreciation for others is difficult.

But at the campfire, understanding my friends with their problems and struggles was easier.

In a world with seemingly greater uncertainty, divisiveness, and hatred every day, a bonfire can teach us how to share and connect.

The crickets grew more intense now as the embers floated high above the trees in a woody, wild environment we quickly realized was unfamiliar, strange and intimidating new territory.

We would never talk as openly as we did that night in a normal setting, so I asked myself as we returned to our cabins that night, why did we feel the need to be as vulnerable as we were?

Maybe it was the silence – in the absence of car engines and sirens and air conditioning units that we never seem to notice, the natural sounds of the forest felt refreshing. Crickets, the crackling fire, and the occasional owl created a serene, reflective atmosphere in which our voices carried the same natural tone as the woods around us. Our authenticity matched that of the woods – untouched by our modern world, we found ourselves trapped in our thoughts and unable to avoid our emotions.

Or maybe I asked myself the wrong question.

When we left the campgrounds, I started to wonder why we can never openly communicate our thoughts and emotions like we did the night of the campfire. We returned to normal conversational topics like memes, sports and the media, and lost ourselves again in our busy, stressful, and frustrating lives where we often interact more often with electronics and machines than other human beings.

Keeping relationships surface-level, narrowly viewing the world through an individual perspective, and neglecting our diverse array of experiences and knowledge often supersedes our desire to connect to those around us and learn from each other’s experience. Empathy, compassion and appreciation for others is difficult. But at the campfire, understanding my friends with their problems and struggles was easier, and opening up to them about my own issues helped me realize that I do not have to face them alone.

The campfire connected us in a way we could never replicate outside of its specific setting.

Sitting in a circle, we could not see anything beyond ourselves (the fire provided the light, and though the moonlight shined slightly on the woods and we all carried flashlights, the dark forest beyond us felt like a giant black wall), creating an ambiance conducive to thoughtful, reflective conversation. We had only each other, forcing an environment of inclusion, respect and vulnerability – after all, if one person decided to judge or ridicule and distance themselves from the group, they would have nowhere else to go.

But while the environment deepened our discussion, the fire itself intrinsically personalized it and helped us empathize with each other. The silent, unmoving chaos of the fire can remind us that although our lives constantly face change, isolation, exhaustion, fear and stress, we can rest assured that the people in our lives can help move us – like the fire – in the right direction through their loving warmth. And like the warmth emanating from a campfire on a chilly night and the soft marshmallows it provides, we as individuals can all provide others with the same comfort and openness we all seek.

In a world with seemingly greater uncertainty, divisiveness, and hatred every day, a bonfire can teach us how to share and connect. And we should pay attention, since we all still have much to learn.

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

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Ashes Unify: The Aftermath of Notre Dame Elena Murray Artwork (right) by Mingyi Suo

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n the evening of April 15th, horrified onlookers huddled at the banks of the River Seine while one of Paris’ most iconic monuments was engulfed in flames. The Notre Dame de Paris cathedral, more than 850 years old, has long stood in Gothic glory as a symbol of the French nation. Having both endured desecration during the French Revolution and housed celebration following Paris’s 1944 liberation, Notre Dame symbolizes everything from wealth and religiosity to freedom and nationalism. Despite periods of disrepair, the cathedral has endured, inspiring French citizens and visitors alike in the wake of multiple renovations projects.

Notre Dame was in the midst of yet another restoration initiative when its roof caught fire.

While the cause of the ensuing blaze remains unknown, the increased likelihood of short-circuits and wayward sparks magnify fire risk during renovations. With a roof of aged, dry timber and a latticed attic known as “the forest,” any spark might blossom into flames and any flames might spread rapidly across the cathedral.

Although Notre Dame had invested in a sophisticated fire warning system, it was not enough.

The fire department was called a full 30 minutes after the system initially notified fire security employees, a reaction far too slow to prevent the ensuing destruction.

The fire blazed for nearly five hours, requiring the efforts of hundreds of emergency responders.

Fortunately, no citizens or emergency responders were killed in the battle against the flames.

Instead, the blaze took its emotional toll on the crowds of people who cried, gaped, and gasped in horror as the world-renowned cathedral crumbled. A feeling of helplessness pervaded the crowd. The New York Times reported that one onlooker, a mayor in local government, described the scene as “an end-of-the-world atmosphere.” The leader of the first firefighting team to arrive contrasted the typical peaceful

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Tragic events remind us of our commonality, so that out of the devastating fires of destruction a better future might be forged together. environment around the cathedral with the one the night of the fire: “it was more like hell.”

When the blaze brought down Notre Dame’s iconic 300-foot spire, the onlooker Pierre-Eric Trimovillas solemnly proclaimed from the crowd, “Paris is beheaded.”

In the fire’s aftermath, the world mourned with Paris. Leaders of nations from every continent sent their condolences, while business leaders in the private sector philanthropically put forward nearly a billion dollars in donations toward the cathedral’s reconstruction. As a show of solidarity and unity, French President Emmanuel Macron cancelled a planned speech addressing the “Yellow Vest” protests which had plagued his administration. When tragedy struck at home, in short, petty differences could be put aside.

It followed the classic pattern of mourning: the horrific event itself, then an ensuing grace period in which compassion and generosity reign, and lastly a return to normalcy and all its bitter infighting as soon as vibrant memories of the tragedy fade and former disagreements resurface. We see this every time a shooting takes place in America, every time climate change strikes in the form of a devastating natural disaster, every time a child dies from a preventable

illness. We see an outpouring of sympathy, media attention, and financial donations, only to be followed by a return to the same squabbling, with little being done in aggregate. Some say such is human nature, that we are psychologically incapable of keeping our attention on an individual issue for the time needed to truly remedy it. Some blame the 24/7 media cycle for moving on too quickly in the interest of keeping viewers and readers by sensationalizing everything that comes to pass. Some condemn the elites, claiming they profit from such events and thus are motivated to suppress any real action.

This distinction matters, but not in the case of Notre Dame and other national tragedies like it.

The Notre Dame fire appears more similar to the events of 9/11 than to the events listed above.

No one questions that the destructive fire did not (at present knowledge) involve premeditated and malicious intent by foreign terrorists, result in massive military campaigns overseas, or tragically and unexpectedly end the lives of thousands of citizens. Rather, both events destroyed precious national symbols, all but paralyzed the victim cities and nations for a time, and prompted worldwide reactions of horror and sympathy.

This past fall, the United States acknowledged the 18th anniversary of that September day which changed the course of history. Every year, the country mourns anew and remembers in unity. The partisan games are suspended, the infighting is called to a ceasefire, and all the nation voices compassion in solidarity. Tragic events remind us of our commonality, so that out of the devastating fires of destruction a better future might be forged together. From the scorching blaze, the phoenix re-emerges in strength and defiance, revealing to all its power.

Arising from the ashes, is unity.

Elena Murray ‘22 studies in the College of Arts and Sciences. She can be reached at elenamurray@wustl.edu.

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In the Crosshairs of a Media Firestorm Nick Massenburg-Abraham, features editor

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he media’s reach is so wide now that it has blurred the lines between digital and real life. Many of us approach what we see on our screens as the objective, unequivocal documentation of the world and its events, because that’s what media was purposed to do—to show us what is going on, and provide perspectives on those matters. But we forget in our passionate and often heated consumption that digital algorithms, private corporate and moneyed interests, and a focus on entertainment value distort and augment our reality for the screen. Media platforms often and readily pump out disastrous outcomes, misinformation, and controversial headlines with high clickbait value in the mostly economic effort to keep our eyes on their content.

In this arena, many of us feel hopeless due to the problematic and troubling developments we constantly consume. We feel as if humanity has reached new lows in its quest to build and maintain society.

I do not think, however, that we have experienced some sudden degeneration of the human moral center, as many people have come to believe due to the constant calamity broadcasted to us through news and social media—the opposite really. We have over time become more tolerable of unique ways of life, created more room in society for different perspectives, and made unprecedented advances. Especially here in America, we do not suffer the wretched horrors experienced by many of our ancestors in days past.

But in this new age, mass communication and digital media funnel the issues of our world into each of our individual lives by the second, every day.

burden, or had to adjust to this constant level of traumatic visual stimuli, all from devices that can fit in our pockets and travel with us everywhere.

The frantic and inciting ways in which our media covers real world stories has contributed to a collective sense of hopelessness that we are more out of touch with our humanity than ever before.

And we’re hooked—we can’t help but engage with these things because they really get to us.

a new home in the comment section. Bigots hide behind their keyboards and spread hate at digital speed. Legislation is fought in gridlock through tweets. Disaster craves a place on the screen.

We have all been caught in the crosshairs of a perpetual media firestorm, and in the milieu, we have each been badly wounded with the view that everyone and everything is doomed.

Doing so, we might then be able to take the stories and ideas we are broadcasted and the purposeful frequency with which they are displayed at face value, and allow those things to inform, rather than completely shape our conceptions of our world. Perhaps with that frame of reference, each of us might not feel so hopeless, and could instead make more productive contributions to the bettering and upkeep of our society. This increased awareness of how the media firestorm has impacted us might lead to a more objective and rational societal discourse. And with this we could get out into the real world with more level heads, ask people about their experiences instead of making prejudiced assumptions from our media viewership, and engage with societal systems and institutions on our own terms. This would be a moving reclamation of our reality from the digital space that now so closely defines who we think we have collectively become.

In truth, I think we may honestly just be seeing the inevitable faults that come with living in a society in its modern iteration, but played out for and marketed to us now at unprecedented rates on our smartphones and television screens. It all simply just feels like too much. Feels like. But is it really? Are we all as doomed as we think?

Considering the resulting consequences here of mass panic and hysteria, what are the ethical bounds and limitations of media coverage as it starts to do more harm than good for society?

Sure, we must be reporting the truth, good or bad, at all times. But what happens when those with an influential voice in the media landscape distort that truth for clicks and larger, more anxious audiences?

We have to separate our relationship with digital from the ones we have with others and our reality in order to be untethered from this stress-induing dynamic.

What do we do, for example, when politicians use digital platforms like Twitter to spread misinformation and incite real world violence against others?

The President of the United States, perhaps.

24/7.

All year long.

At no other time in human history has each of us been forced to carry this emotional and mental

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It is time for us to fully appreciate the troubling impact that media—traditional, digital, new and social—has had on humanity’s ability to conceive of and engage with the problems of our modern world in real time and space. Discourse has found

Nick Massenburg-Abraham ‘22 studies in the Olin Business School. He can be reached at nick.m@wustl.edu.

Fire

Artwork by Haejin An, staff artist

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DON'T TOUCH MY HAIR Nkemjika Emenike

Artwork by Leslie Liu, assistant design director

Many of my black friends share similar memories and we look back humorously at the times we begged our mothers not to “bump our ends,” knowing they would do it anyways. We cringe intensely at those tender-headed memories of getting box braids as a child, the tugging and endless hours of sitting in the chair waiting for those Kanekalon hairs to be braided to perfection. Some of these memories I will repeatedly look back on with a smile on my face. However, part of me always looks in sadness at the moments when I was so unloving of my natural hair, and even deeper sadness to know that this was such a phenomenon for so many black women.

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ten-year old me sat in between Ms. M’s legs as the smell of burning hair filled her living room. She was stroking my beautiful brown curls with two plates of metal heated to 450 degrees, the burning point for hair. I would cringe when she got too close to the scalp and a sense of relief would come over me as when the heat was released from the top of my head as she went down my strands. At the time, Ms. M was the first person to ever straighten my hair. She was a black woman who knew the struggles of managing black hair, and did my Filipino mother a favor by teaching her to “manage” the big fro on top of my head. The smell of burning hair soon became a Sunday night staple, and every two weeks my mother would run the iron through my coils and I was always so glad to rid my hair of the curls and kinks. I wanted to be able to style and run my fingers through my hair like the white girls did. I wanted my hair to flow down my head like the white girls’. I wanted hair like silk like the white girls had. So I washed, detangled, blow-dried and flat ironed my hair, struggling to obtain—what I had convinced myself at the time was—the pinnacle of beauty.

So, let’s talk about hair—let’s talk about the politicization of these miniscule follicles of keratin that sprout from our heads. Let’s talk about the way our society has conditioned young black girls to look down on their beautiful selves.

And when we’re done, let’s talk about how black women are burning down every Eurocentric beauty norm in favor of one that deems both them and their curls far more than enough.

I stopped straightening my hair when I was thirteen and the reasons were endless. I was lazy, and hated spending two hours straightening my hair over and over again just to wash it again at the end of the week.

My hair was also getting more and more damaged; every time I went for a haircut, my locs became increasingly shorter and the split ends became more abundant. I think the ultimate deciding factor in my ending this cycle was that I was simply so tired of constantly struggling to meet a standard centered around women who didn’t even look like me. I needed to be beautiful for me, and I needed to seek a type of beauty that would represent girls like me. So one Sunday, I washed and detangled, and didn’t blow dry, and left the flat iron unplugged; the house smelled like dinner, and nothing else.

Now, this entire process was nothing short of a hot mess, mostly because I didn’t even attempt to style my hair, nor did I own a silk wrap. So I went to bed and woke up with a ball of frizz that was half curly, half dead ends.

I went to school like that for a solid week, until I discovered leave-in conditioner, curling creams and styling gels. And bless my mother’s soul, but being a Filipino woman with hair as straight as a pencil, she had no clue what to do with my hair. It has been a long run of trial and error after error after error. I watched YouTube videos trying to figure out how to style my hair, and spent hours looking up hair products trying to decipher if my hair type was 3c or 4a (and I still haven’t figured it out). I didn’t do a big chop—in the natural hair community, this is when a person decides to “chop off” the dead ends of their hair in order for their curls and kinks to grow as healthily as possible. Instead I gradually cut my hair off until it was all gone, which was a time-consuming process.

However, I don’t think any of these things were the hardest part of going natural. For me, it was having to go out in public with a big afro. I was not deemed “beautiful,” according to the societal standards by which I raised.

As a teenage girl who put so much value in what others thought of me, I felt awkward and alone in a sea of straight hair and whiteness. I had friends who constantly complimented my new look; but there were also kids who thought it would be funny to throw pencils in my hair during class and see how long it would stay or the kids who would touch and grab at my hair without asking. So many days I wanted to crawl back into the smoke of burnt keratin and pretend and pray that I had naturally straight hair. The hardest part was never feeling beautiful enough, never feeling good enough, feeling as if my black was simply not enough.

hair praised on these global platforms was such a new concept to me, another example of why representation is so important. Black women have since forced themselves into the media, allowing black women to be held as a standard of beauty. For black girls everywhere, this has shown us that our hair and our blackness isn’t just enough—it is magical.

Don’t get me wrong; there is absolutely nothing wrong with straightening or relaxing your hair. What you do to your hair is your choice, and you deserve to wear it anyway you so desire. I do not claim to be the sole representative for the experience of growing up as a black woman in America. In truth, I can only speak from what I know.

I know that I have a problem with black girls and women thinking that they are not enough just being their natural selves. And I do know that there is a constant depiction of what it means to pretty in America that is constantly broadcasted to women of color. It is one that we will never and should never have to live up to.

So I say to every black girl and to every black woman—to the ones with box braids, weave, wash-n-gos, cornrows, Marley twists, lace wigs, shaved heads, relaxer—you are enough. You always have been.

But I was also constantly reminded that my situation could have been a lot worse. On social media and in news outlets, there were horror stories circulating about black girls being barred from going to school for wearing their hair natural or in braids, women being chastised in the workplace after being told their natural hair was “unprofessional.” There was even a Supreme Court case that ruled in favor of an employer who refused to hire a woman simply because she had locs. Though there has been constant pushback from the black community over these issues, I hardly ever saw these efforts supported by other racial groups. It angered me that these issues existed for so long and that so many people didn’t see the issue with policing black hair like this. But instead of suppressing my desire to wear my natural hair it motivated me even more to do so. I refused to feel more silenced than I already had been.

As I hit ages fifteen and sixteen, feelings of insecurity about my hair slowly started to fade as I saw a rise in the presence of women who owned their natural hair and didn’t let anyone tell them that it wasn’t beautiful. And it was more than just the hair; there was a movement mobilizing us to embrace all forms of black beauty. There was a noticeably felt shift within the black community. We were done being told that natural hair was unprofessional, troublesome, hard to manage, and messy. We burned down the walls that caged in our hair and our blackness was set free. For me, this moment of independence from the anchors of American beauty ideals came from several moments—seeing Uzoamaka Aduba wearing her natural hair on red carpets, Miss USA walking on stage to crown her successor wearing her natural hair, and the plethora of black hairstyles that graced the stage of Beyonce’s Formation tour. Solange sang and black girls everywhere declared “DON’T TOUCH MY HAIR!” It was a reclamation of our culture, our beauty. Seeing natural

Nkemjika Emenike ‘23 studies in the Olin Business School. She can be reached at nemenike@wustl.edu.

WU Political Review

Drawbacks of the E-Cigarette Ban Salil Uttarwar, staff writer

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n a recent Oval Office press conference, President Donald Trump proposed plans to implement a wide-scale ban on the sale of flavored e-cigarette products after several deaths were found to come from mysterious pulmonary illnesses associated with vaping. This move prompted many states, such as New York and Michigan, to announce or even implement their own bans of flavored e-cigarettes. These bans foreshadow a possible trend of restricting these products in states across the country.

Despite how proposed legislation is targeting flavored e-cigarette products, the FDA has linked the unknown deaths and illnesses to Vitamin E acetate, an oil found in black-market marijuana products, not the commercially sold vape products. Vitamin E acetate is used as a thickener in black market vaping products. It allows dealers to lower the THC content of their products by diluting them without noticeable impacts on the product. According to a New York Department of Health press release, Vitamin E Acetate was found in every cannabis-based product submitted for testing by patients in New York but was not found in any of the nicotine-based products tested. Although the FDA has not determined a causal relationship between the use of vape products that have the oil and the unidentified illnesses, it still has strongly cautioned against their use.

A significant problem with banning the commercial sale of flavored e-cigarette products is how it will encourage the growth of black markets for vape products. By instantly cutting off the supply of these products without altering their demand, the public could either turn to illegally purchasing flavored e-cigarettes liquids or creating and selling their own flavored liquid mixes.

People already buy unregulated vape products over eBay and other social media channels in an attempt to save money. A rise in the unmanaged sale of products by unlicensed dealers, which is an issue already linked to numerous deaths and illnesses, is bound to cause more problems.

In addition to the formation of black markets, rapidly banning flavored e-cigarette products paired with unfair dramatizing of nicotine

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Implementing similar public health campaigns targeted against nicotine vaping could lower its prevalence. vaping’s association with recent deaths may even incentivize a return to conventional cigarettes. Health officials are still not completely certain of the exact cause of the deaths, with the FDA advising people to avoid vaping THC products and the CDC advising people to avoid vaping in general. These mixed messages paired with how many media sources do not mention that most of the reported deaths and illnesses associated with vaping have been connected to THC products with Vitamin E Acetate may lead people to switch back to smoking cigarettes to get their nicotine fix. After all, cigarettes can kill in decades while nicotine vapes reportedly can kill within years. Banning flavored e-cigarettes may just lead to people smoking cigarettes, exactly what e-cigarettes were intended to stop.

Teenagers in middle school and high school use nicotine products at alarming rates; this rise in nicotine usage must undoubtedly be curbed.

Due to the vaping culture's strength among American youth, simply banning the sale of flavored e-cigarettes will not change it. A recent Federal Survey found that 27.5% of high schoolers had used an e-cigarette product within 30 days of taking the survey. Early exposure to nicotine during the brain’s development can damage the parts of the brain that coordinate attention, learning, and memory, and can start life-long nicotine addictions. Banning such products will only cause them to find other outlets for nicotine. Instead, to determine the most effective solution to stopping teenage nicotine usage, wide-scale public health campaigns should be implemented to educate the public about the

dangers of nicotine vapes.

Cigarette use was once widely prevalent in the United States. In 1953, 47% of American adults smoked cigarettes. As research focusing on the harms of cigarettes was widely publicized through similar wide-scale public health campaigns, cigarette usage steadily declined. People learned about nicotine’s strongly addictive property and about how second-hand exposure to cigarette smoke can be dangerous. With an educated public paired with stricter laws about where people can smoke, stigmas against cigarettes slowly spread in the United States.

Implementing similar public health campaigns targeted against nicotine vaping could lower its prevalence. Mandating that nicotine vape packaging have vibrant warnings against the dangers of nicotine along with graphic images of what vaping can do to one’s lungs would cause people to hesitate when purchasing vape products; those who can benefit from nicotine e-cigarettes would still purchase them to wean off cigarettes and people who have not smoked would be discouraged from doing so. By mirroring policy that significantly reduces cigarette use rather than outright banning the sale of the majority of e-cigarette products, lawmakers could safely reduce unnecessary consumption of nicotine.

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

Fire

Artwork by Jessica Zepeda

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WU Political Review

Let Us Burn Ishaan Shah, executive director Artwork by Avni Joshi, staff artist

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plume of black smoke tarnished the baby blue sky. My bumper was glued to the Ford F150 in front of me. I could not tell where the smoke was coming from but I knew I was moving towards it. I bent slowly around dilapidated houses overgrown with summer brush, inching towards I-80 on my end-of-theweek drive home. When I took the first exit, I joined the caterpillar crawl and laid back into my seat. I looked outside my driver-side window at the ashen hill, little flames licking the asphalt on the other side of the highway. The traffic kept moving and the world kept burning. The skin on my forehead knotted and I looked off in the distance at the cars in front of me.

I inhaled deeply from the small marbled pipe, coughing and spitting out smoke into the window next to me. Sitting comfortably on my couch, I chugged a cup of water and turned my attention to the TV in front of me as my fingers began to tingle and the room began to vibrate.

4K Drone Footage of a Hawaiian rainforest played in the background with soft classical music. I was happy but my eyes were watering.

How long would this last? How long would we last? I waited for an answer and brought the lighter back to the pipe for one more try.

In an interview with Vox journalist Sean Illing, Malcolm Harris, author of Kids These Days, a social history of the Millennial generation, argues that for today’s generation, “our entire lives are framed around becoming cheaper and more efficient economic instruments for capital[ism].” As we walk into a nearby career fair, post furiously on Linkedin, and try to gain marketable skills in every facet of our life, we must remember that like land, like oil and coal, and like the rainforests, we are the tinder that capitalism burns on. In a world where it is difficult to predict the future costs of the actions we take, capitalism is unchained, free to prey on the uncertainty of the public costs that private welfare creates. Private interests have become more adept at developing land, extracting natural resources, and transporting goods and people across borders within existing regulatory constraints. At the same time, they have also become more prepared to

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use the human resources they depend on more efficiently by passing on the cost of education, providing fewer benefits like pensions and health insurance, and by reinvesting the profits that increased productivity brings into capital rather than into worker’s compensation.

To America and the world, I say let us burn. Let us burn our environment, erasing the biodiversity and priceless ecosystem services (carbon cycling, nutrient capture, temperature regulation, etc.) that our natural world provides us largely for free. Let us burn out of our idealized professions, isolating us from the people we care about and the people who care about us, and spend more of our adult lives working than any previous generation had the opportunity to. Let’s take a match to our mental health, and spend an enormous amount of time, money, and intellectual thought trying to piece together a haphazard self-care routine to make ourselves feel better at night. And lastly, let us burn controlled substances in our homes, in the bathroom, and in the library to try to cope with the flames around us and make it to tomorrow.

According to an analysis by the Global Footprint Network, only one country in the world, Cuba, was assessed to be operating a sustainable economy when comparing its human development index to its ecological footprint. While this isn’t a perfect measurement of sustainability, it is clear that globally our rate of consumption is so far from sustainable that it would take immense conservation efforts targeted at our wellbeing and the wellbeing of our environment to come even close to preserving generational equity.

Why are we holding on so dearly to a world

and civilization which is going to destroy itself?

Today’s definition of progress and growth under extreme capitalism, one which incorporates the worst of deregulation with the entrenched protection of monopoly power, is at odds with our survival and the survival of the environment. Our children are likely to inherit a world far worse than their parents have lived in. Why don’t we let it burn?

In Harris’s interview with Vox, he later admits, “The more I think about it, the more convinced I am that the historical task confronting us may be larger than we ever imagined. It may well be that America dies or the world dies, or that this global economic order dies or our problems just get worse.” We must allow ourselves to prepare for and accept the worst consequences of our ancestor’s actions. This will require us to stop trying to put up with the absurdities that extreme capitalism created in modern society.

We will have to let ourselves burn and tell the world about it.

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

Fire

Fueling our Fires, Fueling our Passions Caroline Foshee, staff writer

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magine a kettle of water on a gas stove, waiting to be heated. Elsewhere, another kettle of water has a flame burning strong beneath it. The water boils. For some kettles, their fires are on a low simmer; others burn steadily on medium. Upon first ignition, the water goes an unsettling yet powerful transformation from tranquility to disruption. The water ripples. From there, the flame will grow or die. At a boil, particles disperse as steam, diffusing through the atmosphere. This phenomenon is representative of how our minds—the water—behave when finding our intellectual passions—when our fires are lit. Sufficient conditions are critical to igniting that fire, whether that fuel comes from the support of our families and teachers or from within.

My fire ignited at a very early age. My parents told stories at bedtime and taught me the ABCs. The flame beneath me grew, burning steadily as I entered elementary school. I loved my teachers, classrooms, and friends. My middle and high schools continued to fuel that fire. As I neared the end of high school, however, people began to really embody their interests.

Journalism students reported on the March for Our Lives rally. STEM classmates developed internationally-renowned projects, their water boiling. My water, on the other hand, was rippling at the same rate it had been since elementary school. Nothing I was learning sparked a true curiosity within me.

From my perspective, the education system is not designed to light that fire for students to explore their passions. Specifically, standardized curricula programs stymie curiosity. The Common Core is a widely adopted math and language curricula for students K-12. According to its developers, 41 states have adopted the Common Core. Though it may seem like an effective teaching tool, limited curricula produces limited results. According to Professor James Beane,

We must breathe into whatever opportunities we have, no matter what our backgrounds are. the Common Core’s two main goals are college preparation and employability, rather than inspiring intellectual curiosity, critical thinking, or collaboration.

Other than the Common Core standards, most schools teach science and social studies and incorporate some language, music, art, and physical education. These subjects light the fires of some students, but for many like myself, our passions don’t fit these categories. It wasn’t until senior year that I took a course in Economics, the first subject that I truly loved. My water rippled the fastest it had in years. Coming to college has allowed that water to come to a boil.

Being here at WashU has ignited a flame beneath me stronger than I ever could have imagined.

No longer can my interests be categorized into boxes. Not only am I able to study economics, but I can examine it through an interdisciplinary lens. I am able to criticize, analyze, and create new arguments. My steam is dispersing.

Although it took me so long to find my favorite subject, what kept my fire burning was that I loved going to school everyday. However, this can be a challenge for students who lack a positive learning environment. A beneficial education does not solely depend on the curriculum of a school. Both engaging, stimulating curricula and a positive environment are two very necessary factors in order to ignite a strong fire beneath students. The National Center on Safe

and Supportive Learning Environments reported that both teacher and peer support in the classroom are crucial to student success and that a poor environment is strongly associated with “poor test scores, low graduation rates, low attendance rates, and student disengagement.”

Many studies have found that low income students have worse quality teachers than their higher income counterparts, contributing to a learning environment not conducive to learning.

Low income students are also more exposed to behavioral problems in the classroom.

According to the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, social and emotional problems lead to acting out, impulsivity, and impatience, an environment much less conducive to learning. Nevertheless, many students are able to overcome these challenges and succeed academically.

That’s where our personal abilities to control our own fires comes in. Our environments and circumstances may influence our flames, but we must breathe into whatever opportunities we have, no matter what our backgrounds are.

In reflecting upon our own passions and interests, we must consider what got us here, what we have overcome, what opportunities we have had, and what roles we and other people have played in our lives. Could we be doing anything to fuel our fires even more? Could we express gratitude to those who have helped us along the way? And ultimately, what can we be doing to ensure that all people have fuel for their flames?

Now is the time to encourage the fire beneath us all.

Caroline Foshee ‘22 studies in the College of Arts & Sciences. She can be reached at caroline.foshee@wustl.edu.

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WU Political Review

Megan Orlanski, features editor Artwork by Catherine Ju, design director s the school year began, I found myself consistently reaching for my phone to call my grandmother on my way to class, text her a picture of my new room, or listen to the usual voice message she would send me every afternoon to ask about my day. But this year, that integral part of my regular routine was missing; my grandmother passed away this summer, leaving my walks to class and my very being with a gaping hole.

IN

THE

OF

I felt alone in my experience, in my grief, and every time I was asked: “how was your summer?” I was reminded of the pain it brought me and my family. But I know now that I am not alone. And if you feel the way I do, know that you are not alone either. An estimated 23 to 30 percent of college students have experienced the loss of a loved one in the past year. Talking about my grandmother is still difficult for me, but I write about my experience of grieving to highlight the prevalence of loss on college campuses in the hopes that it becomes easier to talk about openly.

I began to rethink the way I framed my grandmother’s passing as we held a vote to decide the theme for this issue. The options were “Fire” or “Loss”. I voted for “Loss”, even though I felt uncomfortable talking about it at the time, because it spoke to one of the predominant feelings swirling around in my mind. But, as you can tell by the cover of this magazine, “Fire” was chosen, and I was left drawing a blank. All I could seem to think about was the loss of my grandmother, and fire, although not quite the opposite, brought to mind warmth and comfort.

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Fire

T H E F E E L I N G T H AT THERE IS A FLAME IN WHICH I ONCE S AW A N E M P T Y VO I D HAS HELPED ME THINK MORE ABOUT T H E I N C R E D I B LY F O R M AT I V E RO L E M Y GRANDMOTHER HAS HAD IN MY LIFE. I began to think more about the theme and tried to reframe the sense of loss I was feeling into one that emphasized all of the positive impacts my grandmother had on my life, not simply the fact that she had passed away. I thought of the pendant that hangs around my neck, one of a little girl with my name on the back. My cousins have their own pendants with their names as well, each of which we separated from a necklace our grandmother used to wear. I began to think of the pendant as a physical manifestation of the flame that each of us holds with the memory of those who have impacted us. Before my grandmother passed away, her presence was a flame in my life, comforting and supporting me, maintained by our phone calls and our times together.

When she was with us, I maintained the flame of her memory in my mind. But, when she passed away, all I could envision was a void once filled by her presence. Now I maintain her flame by thinking about the memories we shared, just

as my family and friends do the same with their own memories of my grandmother.

Oftentimes, the flame brings waves of grief and longing along with it. But the feeling that there is a flame in which I once saw an empty void has helped me think more about the incredibly formative role my grandmother has had in my life, not just that she is no longer physically with me. This grief can often feel overwhelming, like a wave washing over us. But the flame still burns, the memories don’t fade, and bonds you created are not erased.

We often think of our college years as ones of growth and new experiences, ones in which we make friends that last a lifetime, refine our interests and discover what impact we want to make in the world. These connotations we associate with the ‘coming of age’ often make it difficult to confront the hard and painful new experiences

that come with growing up, and they can’t be ignored. We can, however, change the ways in which we think about them.

As I think of my grandmother’s flame that I keep with me, I think about the Buddhist quote that reads: “Thousands of candles can be lighted from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened.” Each person my grandmother has touched holds a flame with them, and although the sadness of losing her remains, I don’t feel alone. We each carry the flames of our loved ones, just as they carry ours. And in the darkness of grief, a light continues to shine, reminding us of the memories and the people who made us who we are.

Megan Orlanski ‘22 studies in the College of Arts & Sciences. She can be reached at morlanski@wustl.edu.

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WU Political Review

Artwork by Anonymous

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Fire

What the Fyre Festival Shows about American Wealth Politics Elizabeth Piasecki Phelan

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he 2017 Fyre Festival was marketed as an opulent music festival of internet-breaking magnitude. Headliners included Blink182, Tyga, Pusha T, and other major musicians.

Mastermind Billy MacFarland, in collaboration with rapper Ja Rule, promoted the festival as an idyllic bacchanal in the Bahamas, with ticket packages costing up to $250,000, promising perks such as a ride in a private yacht.

In a failure of spectacular proportions, every musician pulled out of the festival. Attendees were given prepackaged sandwiches, not gourmet meals. Instead of luxury bungalows, they were housed in tents that resembled FEMAissued hurricane shelters. The ensuing chaos was compared to William Golding’s Lord of the Flies; attendees resorted to stealing mattresses and luggage. Some reportedly fainted from the heat. The Fyre Festival’s colossal fallout spawned intense social media commentary, inspired two documentaries, and made an indelible mark on contemporary pop culture.

The entire debacle was breathlessly documented on social media. Some attendees called it “a complete disaster” and “mass chaos.”

People watching the events unfurl on social media hurled jeers in tweets that were potent with schadenfreude. Twitter user @chrisdelia tweeted that the Fyre Festival “is my favorite.

You paid 12k to see Ja Rule in the Bahamas?

And when you GOT there you realized you were ripped off?” @maddecent called the festival “NAKED AND AFRAID FOR RICH KIDS.” Many tweets were infused with righteousness and justice, as if to say that the famous, despite their wealth and power, aren’t immune from discomfort and chaos. @RuleYork tweeted “Thank you all for participating in the Fyre Festival social experiment, where we exposed hundreds of millenials who have never experienced true adversity [to] the hardships facing refugees in foreign countries…. we walk away from this event with a new perspective on the human condition.”

Although facetious, the “social experiment” remark rings true; the fallout from the Fyre Festival reflects a truth about American society and shows how social media is shaping the politics of wealth. The joy that many felt at witnessing the discomfort of wealthy millennials stems from the fact that until the Fyre Festival, most of the attendees had apparently never faced any hardship. In accordance with the unspoken laws of social media, they exclusively posted content showcasing highlights of their idyllic lives; to do otherwise would have risked losing face, followers, and exposure.

The Fyre Festival debacle, and the social media response, has also shown how invested we are in sharing our lives through social media, and how eagerly we consume the lives of others.

Social media is sometimes portrayed by baby boomers as a dark specter that steals our time, attention, and peace of mind; others paint it as a new, genuine form of human connection through a quadrangle of light. While the truth probably flirts with both extremes, our intense affinity for social media reveals a new frontier for the human experience and the body politic.

Social media has become the foremost way of displaying wealth, in an age where wealth politics are shifting markedly. As the American economy has raced to dizzying heights, socioeconomic mobility has slowed to a glacial crawl.

According to a report released by the Federal Reserve of Minneapolis, there has been a consistent decline in American social mobility since 1980. More dramatically, the lower quintile of the economy is almost frozen; a report by the Pew Charitable Trust and the Economic Mobility Project showed that Americans born into the lowest quintile of wealth are overwhelmingly likely to stay there.

Popularized since our nation’s conception, the American dream celebrates the ability of any individual to rise in the economic ranks with hard work, but it now seems that the reality

of capitalist economics has shaken America awake. Harvard researcher Raj Chetty showed a near-linear relationship between the economic status of parents and their children (“A 10 percentile point increase in parent rank is associated with a 3.41 percentile increase in a child’s income rank on average”). Intergenerational wealth, or the lack thereof, has come to define the American life, and as such has left deep claw marks on the American psyche.

For many influencers, most of social media performance involves displaying wealth, and conspicuous consumption has become commonplace. In a stunning, uniquely capitalist stunt, when we observe these posts on social media, we ourselves are consuming conspicuous consumption. For those who watch with bitterness and longing as the famous flaunt their wealth, the Fyre Festival was a refreshing subversion of the traditional socioeconomic order.

Moreover, the response to the festival heralds a new era of identity and wealth. As we move deeper into a world that is increasingly social media-dominated, we must think seriously about how we represent ourselves, online and in person, and evaluate whether material wealth should be as integral to our identities as we make it seem.

Elizabeth Piasecki Phelan ‘21 studies in the College of Arts & Sciences. She can be reached at ephelan@ wustl.edu.

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WU Political Review

9/11, Islamophobia, and False Unity Fadel Alkilani

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he fiery explosion overhead, rubble falling, people screaming; uncertainty fills the air along with the dust. Then, another plane hits. People are dying. Heroes are suffocating while jumpers are leaping from the fire.

An outpouring of support floods to the U.S., its government, and the survivors. Blood donations more than double. Presidential approval ratings skyrocket through the roof, reaching 90%, according to Gallup. America has reached a moment of “national unity” unrivalled in recent history, not a unity around a positive ideal, but one centered on hatred of Muslims.

On the 18th anniversary of 9/11, I was scrolling through Twitter and I saw pundit after pundit quoting the (albeit true) statistics of how united the U.S., and the whole world, was behind our government. Every U.S. ally supported the war.

Even Russia helped. But who was the enemy? Al Qaeda, surely. But Al Qaeda say they’re Muslim!

They’re also brown! That time period saw the highest-ever surge in hate crimes against Muslims. According to the FBI, hate crimes against Muslims jumped from 28 incidents in 2000 to 481 the following year, an increase of over 1600%. Harassment against Muslims skyrocketed as well. Muslims were placed on registries, received extra scrutiny at the brandnew TSA checkpoints, spat on by strangers, and monitored by the government. Even non-Muslim brown folk were targeted. How many Sikh people have died at the hands of an ignorant white man, whose eyes burned with hatred at the sight of someone different? The murder of Balbir Singh Sodhi, a Sikh man mistaken as a Muslim by a vengeful white man, was right after the attacks. The FBI did not record statistics of incidents against Sikh people at the time, so there may have been many other incidents that went under the radar.

Meanwhile, the Patriot Act was passed overwhelmingly. What else is under attack? Privacy is a safe haven for terrorists. Criticizing the war is “un-American” and “unpatriotic.” Fighting for individual liberty is “wanting the terrorists to win.” Democrats fall in line behind the new rhetoric. All the while, hatred and Islamophobia burn. As the news spreads like wildfire, kids in

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How many Sikh people have died at the hands of an ignorant white man, whose eyes burned with hatred at the sight of someone different? class turn to look at the brown kids. “Are you a terrorist?” they ask innocently, their eyes wide with fear, echoing the assumptions they see and hear from their parents, the media, and the president himself. Neighbors watch suspiciously, communities close off. My parents, on a fast track to citizenship through my dad’s job, found their papers no longer moved. Coworkers no longer speak to him as often. Employers approach others with opportunities and tasks first. My father changes jobs to go somewhere better.

Meanwhile, the Department of Homeland Security is created. The government starts spying on everyone. Intelligence operations ramp up and torture is excused to “protect America.”

And when “weapons of mass destruction” are found, the spark lands on a truckload of gasoline.

America flies into a war. Cash is used so quickly it might as well have been on fire. Thousands die as a result: innocent, hardworking people who now fear the blue sky for the fire it can drop from invisible specks far above. “Collateral damage.” The 9/11 attacks are recreated hundreds of times on foreign soil. Brown people are massacred for the sake of quelling terrorism. A conservative estimate puts the Iraqi death toll in the first few years of the Iraq war at 150,000.

Saddam Hussein’s government is toppled. But the invasion ignites hatred where there was

none before. People who had never had a reason to hate America now had their families slaughtered. Children were raised in an occupied area.

They see soldiers, dressed in bulky gear, breaking down their doors. They grow to hate these invaders. In the two years after the American invasion of Iraq, there were 9,200 recorded Iraqi civilian deaths at the hands of Americans and their allies, more than three times the number of Americans killed in 9/11. Imagine 9/11, occurring not once, not twice, but three times, on a population that was less than a tenth of the size of America’s. To have the same scale as Americancaused civilian deaths in Iraq, America would need to experience 30 9/11 attacks. That’s the amount of devastation America caused in just two years. This drags on for years and years as the region dissolves into chaos: the American death toll is 4,424; the Iraqi civilian death toll is approximately 200,000; the insurgent death toll is about 23,000. In Afghanistan, the American death toll is 2,353. Meanwhile, over 31,000 Afghani civilian deaths have been recorded. Over 111,000 Afghans total have died in the conflict.

American soldiers, raised in a hateful environment, who have been groomed from a young age to fight for the notion of “freedom in their homeland,” barely adults, some under 18, march out to fight terrorist fighters, raised in a hateful environment, who have been groomed from a young age to fight for the notion of “freedom in their homeland,” barely adults, some under 18.

They both use explosive materials: one army with explosives mass-produced by companies who have a vested interest in war, another with explosives slapped together by youth who learned from a variety of places, some material from Iran and other countries, who have a vested interest in the chaos to keep them powerful. An explosion blows up under someone’s feet, leaving behind a blackened corpse. The remains are taken home, where the youth is lauded as a someone who “died for his country.” If it was difficult to discern which side is being spoken about, then you realize how blurred the lines became. Who was right? Who was wrong?

For years, this war continues. A Democratic administration takes power, promising peace

Fire

Imagine 9/11, occurring not once, not twice, but three times, on a population that was less than a tenth of the size of America’s.

and claiming to support human rights. However, money continues to be funneled into the production of killing machines, which make their way overseas to mow down brown people by the thousands. 18 years after America invaded Afghanistan, little American kids who were born after the war started are still dying there.

But before that, a presidential candidate plays on the fears that still exist in the hearts of many Americans. An ember before, the rhetoric blows over them, allowing it to catch. The idea for a ban on Muslims entering the country is proposed by Donald J. Trump, and a sizeable portion of the United States agrees, the conversations they held behind closed doors and around the Thanksgiving table spilling to the national stage. Particularly in rural America, racists masked as conservatives get excited at the prospect. Anyone who stops “others” from entering the country is ideal. “Let’s just stop those Muslims from coming in!” They’re elated that someone on the national stage is exactly echoing their racist thoughts and ideas. They say they support Trump because he says what’s on his mind, but truly, it’s because he says what’s on their minds. Finally, someone is willing to be outwardly Islamophobic without hiding it like other Republicans had in the past.

I’m 15 now, finally old enough to notice these trends as my neighbors plant Trump signs on their lawns. I walk through the high school, and I see shirts and red hats. One of my best friends stands in support of Trump and I get sick to

my stomach, realizing that my humanity was a compromise for them. I can’t wait to leave the school day—to leave the town, really, and go to college. But then I think about my sister, her hijab a bright target, and I get angry. I sigh with relief when another potentially Islamophobic comment ends, my existence not obviously offending. But my sister must endure it. Teachers do nothing to stop it. It’s a resurgence to the post9/11 era. Hate crimes surge once more. The Klu Klux Klan masks that covered online profiles are removed, and Neo-Nazis exalt in their newfound mainstream support. The “alt-right” mobilizes, the media giving them a platform to spread Neo-Nazi ideology. Fox News provides a “fair and balanced” perspective that Muslims are a threat to the nation. Old, white retirees on their couches soak it up, their Facebook feeds filled with self-selected content that affirms their ideas. Their weird looks in shopping malls, the fake smile, and tone of voice when they speak to a non-white Christian person grates on my nerves.

But Americans ache for another moment in time when the country was united in hatred. When the voices that reminded them that Muslims are Americans too were quiet. When civil liberties were thrown into the wind. When America flew into a war that killed more people than the 9/11 attackers ever could. When 90% of Americans could support a president committing war crimes. Most of those 90% are still around today. They didn’t just disappear. Some of them

changed their minds. Some have not. But all of them stood for it at one point in time. So next time you stand for the American flag and sing the national anthem, think: does this America stand for all its citizens as it expects them to stand? What truly unites us, ideals of freedom and democracy, or hatred for those who are “other”?

Fadel Alkilani ‘22 studies in the School of Engineering & Applied Science. He can be reached at falkilani@ wustl.edu.

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WU Political Review

Adler Bowman & Alaina Baumohl Artwork by Jinny Park, assistant design director

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hat's hot this season? From handbags to cotton t-shirts, millions of tons of merchandise each year meet their fiery fate at the mouth of an incinerator.

they no longer want to receive “clothes of dead white people," as donated items threaten their efforts to build domestic textile industries, according to The New York Times.

In July 2018, British designer brand Burberry admitted to tossing $36.8 million of merchandise into the flames to prevent their high-end products from falling into the wrong hands.

Facing backlash and boycotts, Burberry reevaluated the decision, and stated they would no longer send excess materials up in smoke.

The Ellen Macarthur Foundation, an environmental organization, released a report in 2017 regarding the fashion industry as the most wasteful in the world.

Influential brands like Nike, H&M, Urban Outfitters and Louis Vuitton have been known to employ this strategy in order to preserve brand exclusivity or simply dispose of unsold goods.

Nike employees have been asked to slash old shoes before throwing them away, according to The New York Times.

Another Evening Standard article reported that some branches of Urban Outfitters pour green paint on their “deadstock.” Even clothing companies and consumers that do not destroy excess product contribute mounds of textile waste.

According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 3.1 million tons of textiles were combusted in municipal solid waste in 2015. They accounted for 9.1 percent of collected waste combusted with energy recovery.

Municipal landfills consumed 10.5 million tons of textiles in 2015. They accounted for 7.6 percent of all solid waste in landfills. Even donating clothes has become a harmful means of purging waste. East Africa, Rwanda, Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, South Sudan and Burundi have said

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They report an exponential growth of textile consumption in the past 15 years, attributing the stunt in data to “a growing middle class across the globe with higher disposable income” and “the emergence of the ‘fast fashion’ phenomenon.” Our generation has come of age in this era of fast-fashion.

Most of us are accustomed to buying our clothes at stores like H&M or Forever 21 because of the affordable prices and rapid turnover of trends.

The perks of fast fashion seem almost too good to be true, but going below the surface level appeal reveals that these cheap prices and quick product turnover come at high costs for people and our environment. In the long-run, our current fast-fashion model is highly unsustainable.

In the long run, our current fast-fashion model is highly unsustainable.

The evolution of the fashion industry into what we know it as today began with a company called Inditex, the trailblazer for fast fashion.

Of their eight current brands, Zara is the most widely known. What originally made their business model unique was their use of vertical integration, which streamlined the design, production, and retail processes.

This vertical integration shortened the design to retail cycle and cut costs in production that would later translate into lower clothing prices for consumers.

As fast fashion has evolved into what it is today, more and more production has moved outside of the US. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 56.2 percent of all clothing purchased in the United States was made stateside in 1991; but by 2012, only a shocking 2.5 percent of clothing purchased in the U.S. was made in the country.

As more and more clothing is manufactured outside of the US, and less Americans work in clothing production, the number of people working in fashion production around the world has significantly increased, with an astounding

Fire one sixth of the world’s population working in the fashion industry. As glamorous as ‘working in the fashion industry’ might sound, safety remains a serious concern as a vast majority of workers regularly work in hazardous conditions. In 2012, a massive fire at a garment factory in Bangladesh that produced clothing for chains like Walmart killed 112 workers.

According to NPR, the casualties were a result of the building’s lack of emergency exits, inadequate safety standards, and managers that prevented many workers from escaping the burning building. In addition to concerns around the safety of working conditions, many workers are not paid a living wage.

Ultimately, while some boast how overseas clothing manufacturing has contributed to the growing economies of countries such as Bangladesh, the fashion industry meets its product demands through the exploitation of foreign workers.

Not only does sustaining the ever-growing fast-fashion industry rely on exploiting the labor of workers in developing countries, but the cheapest clothing manufacturing processes cause extreme pollution in the environment.

According to the World Bank, the fashion industry contributes to 20 percent of all industrial water pollution and releases 10 percent of annual carbon emissions.

Maybe some of this pollution would be justified if it meant that all of this clothing was put to good use, but “of the more than 100 billion items of clothing produced each year, some 20 percent go unsold”. These unsold items are either incinerated or dumped into landfills.

And most clothing produced nowadays contains synthetic fibers, meaning they will remain intact in landfills for thousands of years to come.

What seems most necessary to solve the problems of the fashion industry is for consumers to become more conscious of all the costs that go into making their clothes, not just the one on the price tag.

According to the World Bank, the fashion industry contributes to 20 percent of all industrial water pollution and releases 10 percent of annual carbon emissions.

“Today’s textile industry is built on an outdated linear, take-make-dispose model and is hugely wasteful and polluting.”

Ellen MacArthur said in an interview with The Guardian, “We need a new textile economy in which clothes are designed differently, worn longer, and recycled and reused much more often.”

Adler Bowman '23 studies in the College of Arts & Sciences. She can be reached at adlerbowman@ wustl.edu.

Alaina Baumohl '23 studies in the College of Art & Sciences. She can be reached at abaumohl@wustl.edu.

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WU Political Review

Down Wind: Pollution and Discrimination Andrew Leung

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t Midnight one Tuesday, I was working on Calculus when a GroupMe notification drew my attention. Apparently, my suite was on fire. Or at least, the smell of smoke had permeated most of Rutledge House and may have been from my suite. Opening the door, I immediately discerned a smoky, almost metallic odor filling the space. It came from the A.C. vent, so I opened the balcony door to a more intense smoke. Multiple people on the South 40 noticed the smoke, and hypotheses explaining the phenomenon ranged from plausible to ridiculous. One student mentioned the University’s administration physically burning students’ tuition money, but I pinpointed the actual source of smoke to an industrial complex in Granite City, IL using NOAA’s near-surface smoke radar map.

Roughly ten miles northeast from campus, manufacturing plants constantly emit fumes into the atmosphere, a by-product of the steelmaking process. But why could Wash U students suddenly detect this smoke?

Simple. The wind that night shifted from the Northeast, covering the city of Clayton in a smoky haze.

The pollutants from these factories normally travel a limited distance before dispersing to levels undetectable by human senses, so communities that are not close to the factories rarely notice this problem. The wind conditions in St. Louis narrow down the locations of exposure to include North County and East St. Louis, two areas with disproportionate levels of economic insecurity compared to the greater metropolitan area. Communities excluded from exposure are more affluent neighborhoods west of Clayton, because the smoke cannot travel far westward without a strong wind from the East.

East St. Louis is only one example of a concerning correlation between socioeconomic status and air pollution exposure. Across the nation, socioeconomic status declines among communities adjacent to these industrial facilities or

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East St. Louis is only one example of a concerning correlation between socioeconomic status and air pollution exposure. downwind from them. Large cities like Chicago with three coal-fired power plants lining the South Side, or New York with manufacturing complexes in the Bronx, reveal a fundamental issue of air pollution disproportionately affecting millions of Americans every day.

Politicians and corporations frequently downplay the effect of airborne pollutants on susceptible demographics, blaming unhealthy habits like smoking for most respiratory problems. This reasoning plays on a traditional classist stereotype on how individuals in poorer neighborhoods have a higher incidence of smoking. It makes sense for certain groups to defend industries responsible for air pollution by citing economic factors, but going as far to say that smoking has a greater negative impact is in fact false. While smoking is still a major health concern, a Forbes study places air pollution above smoking as the greatest global human health risk, reducing global life expectancy by 1.8 years. Children growing up in polluted socioeconomically disadvantaged neighborhoods have higher risk of developing asthma, obesity, and several respiratory illnesses that require hospitalization. Adults may eventually develop preventable debilitating respiratory conditions and cancers that are costly to deal with.

The effect of air pollution lasts much longer than most people expect. Particles in the air eventually enter homes and can remain trapped, increasing exposure for residents. Returning to the South 40, I remember how intense the smoke smell was coming out of the A.C. vents. However, some of my friends living in modern dorms like SoFoHo or Liggett House did not smell anything that night. As modern dorms have newer and more advanced central-air conditioning systems, the smoke may not have been detectable. For traditional dorms like Rutledge, which were built in the 1960s before central-air became mainstream in residential housing, the ventilation system cannot effectively filter out the smoke.

Applying this situation to the greater St. Louis area, most homes in North County and East St. Louis were built before the 1960s and lack the proper infrastructure to purify polluted air.

Installing and maintaining an air purifier can cost thousands of dollars, which presents a significant expense for homeowners considering the low median home value in East St. Louis and North County. The constant exposure to industrial emissions should gain the attention of the entire community, but these adverse effects are largely ignored in politics and lawmaking.

There is a real health concern for thousands of people in St. Louis, and there are several solutions that can reduce the impact on not only humans, but also the environment. The most apparent solution is reducing overall emissions, but especially in steelmaking. Coal is still a vital ingredient in steelmaking, so finding more efficient methods for production can benefit the local community and mitigate the climate crisis. Using our knowledge in advocacy can only aid in protecting our health and our ecosystem, because everyone, not just Wash U students or our affluent neighbors, should have the right to breathe in clean air.

Andrew Leung ‘22 studies in the College of Arts & Sciences. He can be reached at andrew.leung@wustl.edu.

National

There Is No Such Thing as a Neutral Think Tank Jaden Lanza

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he first time I laid eyes on Brookings Hall evoked a certain feeling that can scarcely be replicated. It’s larger than life; awe-inspiring and magnificent in scale. Through its architecture as well as its namesake, Robert S. Brookings, the building epitomizes the grandiosity of Washington University. Walking through the arched entrance with the ornate university seal, and down the vast staircase spilling out into Tisch Park is a breathtaking experience.

However picturesque Brookings Hall may be, more interesting than the building is the man himself. An American businessman and philanthropist, Robert S. Brookings spent significant time investing in Washington University in the early twentieth century and was a prominent early figure in the college’s history. But his most lasting impact on the world was not produced here. In 1916, he founded arguably the United States’ premier policy think tank—the Brookings Institution.

It is widely recognized that most think tanks, at least to some extent, are arms of the elite to reinforce dominant forms of knowledge. Most Americans recognize that they have an agenda; the Cato Institute, Heritage Foundation, and American Enterprise Institute (AEI) are wellknown for being conservative, with many of its authors self-identifying as such. The Center for American Progress, likewise, is not shy about the fact its purpose is to promote progressive or liberal policy.

Curiously, however, none of the Brookings Institution’s 100+ scholars identify with any political leaning—despite pretending that its authors do not have any bias whatsoever being preposterous. Centrism, or moderate leaning views, are still infused with political ideology, yet this is neglected in American political discourse. Brookings is widely considered the most influential policy organization in the contemporary world, cited frequently by Republican and Democratic politicians alike and covering issues

Authoritarian sources of centrism have long infected political discourse—yet gone unnoticed. ranging from US exports to the Middle East. The world’s top policy institution is lauded for its prestigious rank of scholars—and considered to be apolitical.

This is, in short, nonsense. The Brookings Institution repeatedly demonstrates a lack of neutrality that is not recognized by most of the policymaking sphere. Much of Brookings’ funding now comes from vested interests or even foreign governments—ties that cannot be divorced from the conclusions made by Brookings scholars. “Experts” employed by Brookings often have ties to relevant industries in question—such as energy research being produced by scholars with extensive connections to big business.

According to the Washington Post, Brookings has increasingly become reliant on corporate and wealthy donors.

At an event in 2014, energy experts in cooperation in Brookings made a pitch for lifting the US embargo on oil exports, with little disagreement.

This view happens to coincide neatly with the opinions of industry lobbyists—and energy companies Chevron and Exxon Mobil just so happen to be major donors of the Brookings Institution, with at least $2 million provided for research.

Brookings used to invite speakers from large teachers’ unions to forums on education policy.

Now, having hired scholars who hold more antiunion views, its education forums shun these same union speakers.

Just as troubling is the proliferation of Brookings experts that have extensive ties to the United States governments inner political circles—in 2004, it was determined that more than half of Brookings’ 142 researchers had previously worked for the National Security Council or the White House. Even the highest echelons of Brookings leadership came from elite circles; for example, Strobe Talbot, made President of the institute in 2002, was a longtime friend of Bill Clinton and served as Deputy Secretary of State. The result of connections like these are unmistakable in their effect on their scholarship, which consistently has consistently advanced pro-business economic policy and a realist interventionist foreign policy. Another Brookings writer, Kenneth M. Pollack, wrote a book about Iraqi policy in the early 2000s that was used to help advance arguments in favor of hostilities precipitating the disastrous 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Brookings Hall, and its grand, visionary scope, is symbolic of all of Robert Brookings’ efforts to help along public policy and social progress.

Unfortunately, it’s wonderful architecture only obscures the ugly underside of how the power of scholarly institutions are used to benefit elites.

The next time you walk past Brookings Hall, reflect upon how the purported idealism, or nonpartisanship of institutions like Brookings are vain.

It is important that we question the institutional credibility of “prestigious” think tanks and recognize that “neutral” publications do not exist.

While think tanks like the Brooking Institution, but also others such as the Cato Institute and the Heritage Foundation, dominate the higher echelons of policy circles, it does not have to stay that way forever. We can change the way we think about policy and look carefully at who benefits from the policies recommended by these groups.

Jaden Lanza ‘23 studies in the College of Arts & Sciences. He can be reached at jadenlanza@wustl.edu.

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WU Political Review

Abortion Legislation Hannah Richardson Artwork (right) by Arushee Agrawal

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bortion: a topic everyone in America seems to become an expert on the moment it is introduced into the conversation, but what do you really know about abortion in America and the current legislation surrounding it?

On May 15, 2019 Alabama Governor, Kay Ivey, signed into law the Human Life Protection Act. This bill, introduced by two men in the Alabama house and senate, aims to make it a felony for doctors in Alabama to perform abortions, with an exception if the mother’s life is in serious danger. This is a near-total abortion ban. Under this new law, if a woman were to be raped and then receive an abortion, her doctor would face more prison time than her rapist. Under this new law, if a woman is found guilty for her own miscarriage, she faces prison time.

It is inhumane to punish women for making decisions about their own bodies, especially in cases of rape or incest. We, as a society, have moved past the idea of women being created solely for reproduction, so if a woman does not want a child, then she should not be forced, by men who have never been pregnant or given birth, to have one. This way of thinking that men like Terri Collins and Clyde Chambliss, creators of the Human Life Protection Act, encompass, is not only backwards and arrogant, but it shows a blatant disregard for anyone who is not white and privileged and male. Men should not be allowed to have such a detrimental influence, specifically in congress, on something that does not pertain to them or their bodies.

In a state where 17.2 percent of its residents live beneath the federal poverty line, where 76 different public schools are failing, and where comprehensive sex education is nonexistent, wealthy white men have decided that it is ‘humane’ to outlaw one of the only affordable, well known, and safely accessible forms of contraception.

This should outrage you. There is a prevalent lack of care and knowledge in my state’s lawmaking body, and it is catalyzing the same effect in many other states across the nation. We cannot let ignorance lead us back to the twentieth century.

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This is once again, a prime example of society allowing women’s choices and bodies to be ruled by a nescient patriarchy.

At my public middle and high schools in Alabama I never once recieved any form of “sex education.” I grew up thinking you either could use a condom, get on birth control, or go get an abortion. I was never taught the many other ways to have safe and protected sex. Sadly, this is the story for most girls growing up in Alabama, especially in the poorly run and funded public school system. This lack of compendious knowledge regarding options when having sex inevitably leads to unwanted pregnancy, and for the large majority of the state who is poor and lives in underfunded and unsafe areas, abortion ends up being one of the most humane options for both the mother and child. This abortion ban is explicit systemic socioeconomic discrimination.

While this ban has been passed into law, it does not go into effect quite yet. As of right now, abortion is still legal in Alabama, and Planned Parenthood is actively expanding their services and facilities to other cities throughout the state.

President and CEO of the company, Staci Fox, said to Frontline news that their facilities are planning a contingency program that will get women to the closest abortion facilitlies if the law does go into effect in the next few years; however, as of right now the closest abortion clinic would be in Illinois. Fox said even if the lawsuits brought up by the ACLU and Planned Parenthood are not able to halt this new law, Alabama Planned Parenthood facility doors are “staying open no matter what.” While this is reassuring to hear, it sadly does not change the fact that when and

if this law is implemented, women will begin turning to other options, specifically unsafe and unsanitary options, because they have lost that accessibility and affordability that is, as of right now, available to them.

There is currently lots of action being taken to stop or lessen the blow of this ban, but women in Alabama are still being directly and immediately impacted. The Reproductive Health Clinic in Montgomery, the capital of Alabama, reports receiving multiple calls a day since the bill was signed that typically follow along the lines of “Are you still doing abortions?” or “Where can I go to get a safe abortion?” The owner of Alabama’s Center for Reproductive Alternatives, Dalton Johnson, told reporters, “These women are being scared to death.” Johnson reports that his clinic has also received many calls a day from women confused and worried about either their current reproductive health appointments, or ones they had thought they would be able to make in the future. This is once again, a prime example of society allowing women’s choices and bodies to be ruled by a nescient patriarchy.

Now that you know what this legislation means for the people of Alabama, I think it is important that you also know why this legislation is being implemented.

In 1973, the Supreme Court made a ruling on the court case, Roe v. Wade. This ruling set precedent that would make abortions legal for all women in America. As of 2019, this decision has been in place for 46 years, enough for stare decisis to have taken place. This basically means that if the Supreme Court were to revisit the idea of abortion, they would not turn over Roe V. Wade.

Alabama lawmakers know this, but with the lawsuits brought up by the ACLU and Planned Parenthood, this issue could make it back to the Supreme Court, where with a newly appointed conservative majority, new exceptions could be made to the current abortion ruling. This would ulitmately allow Alabama and other red states to not neccesarily ban all abortions, but come pretty close.

National

We cannot stay silent while young girls are having their futures stunted by the lack of opportunity due to reproductive oppression.

Alabama’s own governor, Kay Ivey, told reporters that the ban would be “unenforceable” and that it is mainly serving the purpose of getting the topic of abortion back on the Supreme Court’s docket.

This is a surreptitious and abusive use of legislative power. Governor Ivey’s decision to sign this bill into law is not only hypocritical since she, too, is a woman and was once a member of the democratic party, but also it is a slap in the face to every woman in the state of Alabama.

Pro-lifers in Alabama are sanctimonious hypocrites—they only care about the fetus when it is in the womb, and the minute that child comes out of the mother, they want nothing to do with helping support it. Pro-lifers do not care about children dying due to gun violence, they do not care about immigrants fleeing and seeking asylum, they do not care about the young black men dying at the hands of police officers. The pro-lifers in Alabama who are trying so hard to get this topic back in the hands of our now conservative Supreme Court, only care about this issue because they think their religion tells them to.

In my honest opinion, I do not believe abortion has direct correlation to religion or faith. Belief in the choice of abortion is an issue of morality rather than an issue of religious obligation.

While these two things can be congruent, being religious should not mean that you automatically condemn a woman’s right to choose. Our country was founded on the basis of separation of church and state, and legislation surrounding abortion is not an exception.

While many may not morally agree with the physical act of aborting a fetus, many people still believe that a woman should have the right to make that decision herself. Imagine a woman

who lives below the federal poverty line, she unintentionally becomes pregnant because she cannot access birth control and her boyfriend’s condom broke. This hypothetical woman is poor, like a lot of people in these southern low-income states, and she cannot afford to pay $32,000 to have a child, let alone raise it, so she turns to an abortion. This is the most economically, mentally, and physically humane choice this woman can make at this point in her life, and this is the case for many women, especially in Alabama.

This right to choose what you do with your own body based on what you think is best for you, is being taken away, and it is inexcusable.

The Human Life Protection Act is doing nothing but protecting ignorance and a lack of humanity hidden by the mask of religious duty in the Alabama state government, and it is both immoral and unconstitutional. We cannot sit back in complacency while the United States government allows citizens to be wrongfully stripped of a basic human right. We cannot stay silent while young girls are having their futures stunted by the lack of opportunity due to reproductive oppression. This is not just unethical, it is nefarious and hateful. Do something, say something, write something. Do not sit silent in the face of immorality and injustice.

Hannah Richardson ‘23 studies in the College of Arts & Sciences. She can be reached at hrichardson@ wustl.edu.

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WU Political Review Race to the whitehouse:

Why the White Working Class is the Key to Defeating Trump Rachel Olick-Gibson In the WUPR issues leading up to the Democratic nomination, Rachel will be writing a monthly column presenting new angles on the candidates for the 2020 presidential race.

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resident Trump’s approval ratings are extremely low. 42.4% of Americans approve of his performance while the majority disapproves. However, despite his nationwide unpopularity, the President is well-positioned to win re-election and by an even greater margin than he did last time due to the structure of the Electoral College.

In 2016, the president lost the national vote by two percentage points but won the electoral college, and therefore, the presidency. The Electoral College is organized such that votes in most states are awarded on a winner-take-all basis. This system allocates the greatest power to battleground states. Historically, these states have included several in the Rust Belt, an informal geographical region in the northern U.S., named for its industrial history. While the president’s national approval rating has declined, he has retained and, in some places, even gained support in critical Rust Belt states. Therefore, although the President may again receive fewer votes nationwide, he has the potential to win another Electoral College victory.

The clearest path Democrats have to defeat the president in 2020 is to target voters in the Rust Belt. While some argue that the Sunbelt, a geographic region stretching from the Southeast to Southwest region of the country, presents a viable option for Democrats due to increasing Hispanic populations, this path would be significantly more challenging. Although the President’s support has declined in states such as Texas, Arizona, and New Mexico, these states are not yet blue enough that they present an easy option for Democrats to flip. Therefore, the most feasible option for Democrats is to win over battleground states in the Rust Belt.

Critical states in the Rust Belt include Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, and the white

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While candidates such as Biden speak more to the daily costs of living through a personal connection to the Rust Belt, the idea that the white working class voter cares more about the promise of change calls into question which candidate represents a vision capable of capturing the consciousness of the white working class and of the American people.

working class vote plays a crucial role in turning the tide in these states. This demographic is defined as white adults over the age of 25 without a four-year degree and is largely considered to be the demographic that secured President Trump’s victory. In 2016, President Trump won this group by a staggering margin of 39 percentage points. The most recent census data indicates that the white working-class makes up 42 percent of the American electorate. While this group already represents the largest singular group in America, the white working class constitutes an even greater portion of the Rust Belt.

In Wisconsin, the white working class makes up more than half of the electorate. Therefore, if Democrats are to win the general election, the Democratic nominee for 2020 must appeal to white working-class voters.

To find out how Democratic primary candidates are approaching this reality, I spoke with a top Democratic strategist, currently advising one of the highest polling 2020 candidates’ campaigns. He explained that, although right now campaigns are tactically focused on winning the primary, which would generally lead them to focus on winning states such as Iowa, New Hampshire, or Nevada, they know that many voters care about who can beat President Trump.

Therefore, an important piece of winning the primary is not only for candidates to campaign in the earliest primary states but also to prove to voters that they can win key states. To demonstrate their electability, several candidates have been campaigning in Rust Belt states, despite their relative insignificance at this early stage in the election cycle.

When asked how candidates can most effectively appeal to white working class voters, this strategist identified three central messages. First, a candidate must demonstrate an understanding of the hardships voters face through a personal

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connection to such difficulties. Candidates must prove that a piece of their identity allows them to understand the realities of a voter’s life on a personal level. For example, Mayor Pete Buttigieg consistently calls upon his experience as the mayor of a small town in the Rust Belt, highlighting his intimate understanding of the problems his constituents face. Meanwhile, Former Vice President Joe Biden frequently discusses the fact that he grew up in Scranton, Pennsylvania. This personal connection to the lives of voters in the Rust Belt is intended to create a bond between the candidate and the voter such that the candidate is no longer viewed as an elitist outsider but as “one of them.”

Specifically, voters want to know that candidates understand the anxiety produced by the dayto-day costs of living. This includes healthcare costs, housing costs, uncertainty surrounding retirement, and the costs associated with the care of children and elderly parents. Candidates must speak to and have specific policy proposals to address these personal economic pain points to win voters’ support.

Furthermore, the candidates must discuss these proposals with rhetoric that relays their understanding of these daily costs. For example, although every candidate in the presidential field has released a healthcare proposal, the strategist I spoke with argued that white working class voters are more attracted to candidates with proposals to address specific daily healthcare costs rather than broad systemic change. This assessment of voter preferences suggests that Democratic candidates such as Vice President Biden or Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) who are proposing moderate healthcare plans may be better positioned to win the white working-class vote than Senators Bernie Sanders (D-VT) and Elizabeth Warren (D-MA).

Voters want to know that candidates understand the anxiety produced by the day-to-day costs of living.

Finally, he stated that the white working class, but also, more broadly, America is looking for a candidate who can articulate a clear vision for the direction of this country.

“We are completely rudderless as a country; we have no north stars.” This last point reminded me of President Obama’s 2008 campaign with its winning slogan “Change we can believe in” and the chant “Yes we can.” This message drew the American public into an inclusive and promising vision for our nation’s future.

In 2008, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin voted for President Obama and in 2016 they all voted for President Trump. Popular narratives describe Obama’s rise to the presidency as a groundswell in the turnout of new, young, minority voters, ignoring the former president’s support from the white working class. His popularity in this demographic allowed him to win these critical Rust Belt states and secure the presidency. President Obama was so popular amongst white working class voters that he would have won these states without a single vote in any of the major cities we typically associate as blue. He had enough support in Michigan that he could have won without Detroit, and enough support in Wisconsin that he could have

won without Milwaukee. However, in 2016, 25 percent of those who voted for Obama did not vote for Hillary Clinton; these voters either voted for a third-party candidate or President Trump.

I asked the strategist I spoke with how President Obama managed to appeal to white working-class voters, why some of them chose to vote for Donald Trump eight years later, and how a Democratic candidate might hope to draw these voters back into the fold. He responded, “The thing Obama and Trump have in common is that they both symbolized change for people who view[ed] government and politics as not working for them and sought something radically different. This is who Obama was in ’08 and who Trump was in 2016. They represented the change the country wanted in the moment.”

Normally, when we think of the candidates in this field advocating change, candidates such as Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders come to mind. The idea that more revolutionary candidates might appeal to the white working class contradicted his earlier assertion that a candidate solely focused on bread-and-butter issues should serve as the next face of the Democratic Party. Even though current polls show Vice President Biden beating President Trump in the Rust Belt, pollsters failed to adequately account for the white working-class in the 2016 elections. While candidates such as Biden speak more to the daily costs of living through a personal connection to the Rust Belt, the idea that the white working class voter cares more about the promise of change calls into question which candidate actually represents a vision capable of capturing the consciousness of the white working class and the American people.

Rachel Olick-Gibson ’21 studies in the College of Arts & Sciences. She can be reached at rachel.olick-gibson@wustl.edu.

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WU Political Review

Facebook’s “Fight” Against Hate Speech Malar Muthukumar

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he Rohingya people have faced oppression from the Burmese government since the 1960s, when the military government pushed more than 200,000 Rohingya out of Myanmar and into Bangladesh. The Rohingya are an ethnic and religious minority in Myanmar.

They are Muslims, while the majority of Burmese people are Buddhist. Although the Rohingya people have lived in Rakhine State (which is located on the west coast of Myanmar) for just as long as the Buddhists, they have long been marginalized and discriminated against by the majority. Now they are being forced out of their homes by the military’s violent actions, causing a massive refugee crisis. In 2018, the United Nations released a damning report, saying that “the Myanmar military should be investigated and prosecuted in an international criminal tribunal for genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes.”

A common slur against Rohingya people is “Khoe Win Bengali”, which translates to “Bengali that sneaked in”. Rohingya people are often referred to as Bengalis in social media posts, fueling the idea that they are illegal immigrants that need to be purged. Hate speech against the Rohingya is a massive issue, especially on the country’s most popular social media platform: Facebook.

Essentially everyone in Myanmar has Facebook, and for many people the word “Facebook” is synonymous to “the Internet”. Buddhist nationalist organizations and the Burmese military have conducted extensive propaganda campaigns against the Rohingya on Facebook. Most people get their news from their Facebook feeds, so their vitriol has had a magnified impact.

At first, Facebook did not pay much attention to the Rohingya crisis. However, in the face of mounting international criticism, they eventually decided to take action. In April 2018, Mark Zuckerburg testified before the US Senate, promising that Facebook would take a more active role in policing anti-Rohingya hate speech by hiring more Burmese speakers to monitor

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Removing all posts deemed “hate speech” does more harm than good. content. In August that same year, a Reuters Special Report found more than 1,000 examples of hate speech against Rohingya Muslims on Facebook. Clearly, the Facebook’s actions have not solved the problem.

In fact, there is evidence that Facebook’s policies have actually had the opposite effect.

Mohammed Anwar, a Rohingya activist living in exile in Malaysia, told VICE News that Facebook’s censoring policies were preventing him from posting about crimes committed against the Rohingya by the military. Reportedly, dozens of activists have the same complaints their accounts are suspended, and their posts are deleted or censored. If posts from activists are being censored, and numerous vitriolic anti-Rohingya posts are “slipping through the cracks” of Facebook’s monitoring system, what does that say about Facebook’s method for dealing with this issue?

Some might argue that Facebook simply needs to employ more Burmese content reviewers and do a better job of teaching them which posts should be removed and which should not be removed.

However, banning all hate speech might not be the most effective strategy. As we have seen with mass shooters in the United States, who publish their manifestos online for the world to see, the censoring policies of individual companies will not stop hate speech. The users will simply find other platforms where they can spew their hatred. Suppression of hate speech by companies or governments can make it harder to find, but it has never made it disappear.

Social media companies do have a moral responsibility to prevent violence, but that does not involve attempting to remove all hate speech from their platforms. Removing all posts deemed “hate speech” does more harm than good. It is extremely difficult, and perhaps impossible, to create a blanket, objective policy that will remove all hate speech without negatively affecting counterspeech. If individual content reviewers are given the discretion to make subjective judgements about the “appropriateness” of content, then that would give those few people far too much power over public discourse. In addition, it would be impossible to expect social media companies to hire such a large number of content reviewers and give all of them comprehensive training about different types of hate speech. Given the deep and varied history behind different types of hate speech around the world, this method would be both impractical and expensive. Perhaps Facebook should adopt a different strategy. For example, YouTube does not does approach hate speech and misinformation by banning it. Whenever users search for misinformed content, the YouTube algorithm will also pull up posts and videos that debunk those arguments. While no information about the effectiveness of this method is readily available online, it is an idea worth considering.

Under the First Amendment, private companies such as Facebook’s content cannot be regulated by the government. Faced with international criticism, Facebook has been forced to deal with the crisis in Myanmar, but they have clearly failed miserably at their goal. It is time for them to consider an alternative approach.

Malar Muthukumar ‘23 studies in the College of Arts & Sciences. She can be reached at malar.muthukumar@wustl.edu.

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A New “America First” Foreign Policy Aidan Smyth

“A

merica first” is a phrase often invoked by politicians when they describe their foreign policy ideology, although it’s not always clear what the label qualitatively means. A politician could use it to refer to noninterventionist policies as much as he or she could use it to refer to carpet bombing a third-world country to oblivion; so long as America’s “interests” come first, one can plausibly claim to put “America first.”

But what if one were to interpret “America first” in a wholly different way, to give the phrase a new meaning? What would that look like?

Under a new version of “America first,” discussions would be framed around the role the U.S. has played in shaping international conditions and how U.S. policy can redefine those conditions. The guiding principle of U.S. foreign policy would be the idea that the U.S. is responsible for its own actions first and foremost since that’s what the U.S. can most directly control.

To ground this notion of “America first” in reality, it is worth examining the current situation in the Middle East, specifically regarding Iran. Tensions between Saudia Arabia, the U.S., and Iran have escalated dramatically following attacks on Saudi oil fields that occurred on September 14.

Iran denies involvement, pointing instead to the fact that Houthi rebels in Yemen have claimed responsibility for the attacks. However, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo accused Iran of committing a “state-on-state act of war,” and President Trump tweeted that the U.S. is “locked and loaded” while waiting for confirmation from the Saudi government on how to proceed.

An “America first” foreign policy under the conditions that I have outlined would require that the U.S. first examine its own role in creating tensions in the Middle East before choosing to follow a reactionary policy. U.S. involvement in the Middle East , most notably with the U.S. and Britain’s overthrow of the democratically-elected

The guiding principle of U.S. foreign policy would be the idea that the U.S. is responsible for its own actions first and foremost since that’s what the U.S. can most directly control.

Iranian government in 1953. The U.S. must keep these historical facts in mind when crafting Middle Eastern foreign policy, which should lead to a much more careful approach and potentially even a decision of non-interference.

However, the United States announced on September 20 that it will begin deployment of troops to Saudi Arabia in response to the oil field attacks. Though Secretary of Defense Mark Esper claims they are “defensive in nature,” it is evident that the U.S. is preparing for a possible war with Iran.

In response to the Saudi-Houthi conflict, the United States has sided with its Saudi allies and helped block humanitarian aid from reaching Yemen, exacerbating what UNICEF reports is the largest outbreak of cholera on record, with 1.3 million cases and over 2,700 deaths. It has also sought to severely cripple the Iranian economy by reducing its oil output to zero through a series of economic sanctions. It has actively aided Saudi efforts against the Houthi rebels with billions of dollars in weapons deals for the Saudi government.

Is it not distinctly possible that the U.S. is making matters worse in the Middle East by getting involved? Not only is the United States providing weapons to an aggressive state in the region, it is contributing to conditions that could certainly be construed as desperate for the Houthis and Iranians. Such desperate groups may be pushed to an act such as bombing oilfields in an attempt to defend themselves against the Saudis.

It is evident that the U.S. has engaged in inflammatory actions; thus, the United States should take action to withdraw itself from the conflict and stop supplying the Saudi government with weapons, allow humanitarian aid into Yemen, and end its attempts to cripple the Iranian economy.

Yes, the United States has a large vested interest in the Middle East, especially regarding its oil reserves. We have been significantly involved in the Middle East for the better part of the last century, and it would be a complicated process to simply go from having a massive U.S. presence in the region to none at all. But there is a more moral and intelligent means of engaging in the Middle East and the world as a whole than what we have done up to this point. And that means that we have to look inward, at America first.

Aidan Smyth ‘22 studies in the College of Arts & Sciences. He can be reached at a.smyth@wustl.edu.

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WU Political Review

Studying Abroad in the Arab World Clare Grindinger

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know why I am studying Spanish. I am from Texas and Spanish is necessary to learn to speak with a large portion of the population of our state. But no one ever asks, “Why Spanish?” instead, I am asked, “Why Jordan?

Why Arabic?” even from my professors.

After finishing three years of studying Arabic, my Arabic professor asks me why I am studying Arabic and I stare back at him with a blank face.

I told him it was because I liked the language, but Arabic is a tough language to master, and “liking the challenge” would not be enough to satisfy anyone asking, “the question.” Instead, my answer is more complicated. With hindsight, I realize that I did not need a reason to start Arabic or go abroad, rather I needed the motivation to stay with it. After living with my host mom and learning from my teachers, I developed relationships in Arabic that would not have been possible in English. My reason for staying abroad for two semesters and re-enrolling in Arabic this semester was not that I wanted to save the world or become fluent, but rather, because of the relationships I made with Arabic speakers. I want to continue to make more Arabic speaking friends as I develop the necessary dialect skills.

My reason for staying abroad for two semesters and reenrolling in Arabic this semester was not that I wanted to save the world or become fluent, but rather, because of the relationships I made with Arabic speakers.

After spending the year abroad in Jordan, I have returned to campus with a myriad of ambiguous answers to the inevitable questions. Often, I am asked, “so, like, you’re fluent in Arabic now, right?” and I have to answer, “well, not exactly.”

I am learning how to navigate questions like, “did you feel safe in Jordan?” staying true to my experience while also remaining conscious of stereotypes. When Israel/Palestine conversations come up, people look to me for an opinion, as if I have gained credibility after living in the region.

dialect. Arabic dialect can be split into a few regions: the Gulf dialect (Saudi Arabia, Qatar, UAE, Kuwait, Oman, and Yemen), the Levantine dialect (Syria, Palestine, Jordan, and Lebanon), Egyptian, and the Maghreb (Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia). The consensus of the Arabic student population is that the Gulf dialect is more guttural, the Levantine dialect is the easiest to learn, the Egyptian dialect substitutes the “J” sound for “G”, and the Maghreb dialect is basically French and Arabic combined. Students are scared away from learning Gulf dialect because of the politics of the region, Egyptian after the Arab spring, and the Maghreb largely because of the fear that if a student does know French, they will only be speaking French and not learn any Arabic.

Arabic is a complicated language that is typically reduced to a language of political hegemonies.

Classical Arabic is the language found in the Qur’an, the holy text of Islam. In Arab countries, countries that speak Arabic across North Africa and the Middle East, classical Arabic can be heard from news correspondents and read in literature and newspapers. However, the Arabic used in common conversation is the countries’

Because of political conflicts, Jordan and Morocco are the most viable study abroad options for American students. While most Arabic professors I have met learned Levantine Arabic dialect and recommend studying abroad in Jordan, one of my Moroccan Arabic professors argued that Morocco is an equally viable choice, often underrepresented in a student’s study abroad options. He explained to me the

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strange politics behind the assumptions that Arabic students have, specifically comparing Moroccan and Jordanian dialect. Most students go to Jordan for linguistic reasons, but those reasons are, according to this professor, based on ill-informed assumptions. He told me that Moroccan Arabic and Jordanian Arabic are equally distant from Classical Arabic. I, however, still believe Moroccan Arabic is harder to grasp without any outside knowledge of French and an American Arabic student can grasp the Jordanian dialect easier because of its similarities with Classical Arabic.

To understand a student’s decision to go to a certain Arabic speaking country, we must unpack the causes that will point a student in a certain direction. In the American Arabic classroom there are roughly four identities (and students may identify with multiple categories): ROTC students who want to learn Arabic for possible deployment in the Arab world, Jewish students who already know Hebrew and/or have a personal interest in Israel/Palestine, Arab students who know a dialect or have relatives who speak the language and want to learn classical Arabic, and other students who are interested in politics, human development, or, rarely, classical or linguistic studies.

Students who focus on Israel/Palestine, human development, or politics go to Jordan because Amman is less than an hour away from Israel/ Palestine (and very accessible to other countries for easy travel), borders Syria for political and humanitarian concerns, and is an easier linguistic transition from Classical Arabic. Some Jewish students, however, do not feel comfortable in Jordan because of lingering anti-Semitic sentiment after the establishment of the State of Israel. While withholding one’s Jewish identity is encouraged in Jordan, the country gets a bad reputation because the population is painted with a broad stroke, even though a large percentage of people are open to Jewish companions.

Once a student weighs the safety, linguistic, and accessibility concerns of studying abroad, she must commit to a program. There are multiple programs for studying abroad in the Middle East,

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specifically in Morocco and Jordan. Lebanon and Egypt are great possibilities for study abroad, but because of the State Department’s Travel Advisory rankings, enrollment has suffered.

These rankings, largely determined by US political interests, affect whether American universities allow their students to study abroad in the ranked country. Up until Spring 2018, before the State Department changed how they rank countries, Egypt and Lebanon were ranked “3” or “Reconsider Travel”. Most of the Arab world including Egypt and Lebanon (excluding Syria, Yemen, and Libya) are now ranked “2” or “Exercise Increased Caution”. After 2011, programs like CIEE, SIT, and Middlebury pulled their study abroad programs from countries like Egypt and Syria for political concerns and, although Egypt is now stable with an authoritarian dictator, these programs have not returned.

I chose Middlebury when I studied abroad because of its reputation for quality language instruction, but there are options for students who have not learned Arabic or are uncomfortable with keeping the “Language Pledge,” a pledge that all communication, excluding calls to home, will be in Arabic. Students also chose the

When I returned, not only did I have other people labeling what they assumed to be my language level, but also there was the expectation that I could explain the political concerns of the Middle East.

Studying abroad was not easy—although the highs were really high, the lows were quite low. length and term they go abroad but despite how few months a student spends in the Middle East, there seems to be a new credibility gained after living abroad there.

ways of Classical Arabic, picking back up where I left off a year before, relearning grammar structures and vocabulary I hardly remember, but my classmates who did not go abroad easily digest.

I feel like there are a lot of expectations that I fall short of in my study abroad experience in the Arab world. Too often, I have to elevator-pitch my experience, people expected a thirty-second summary of my year abroad. I tend to falsify and simplify my story for the comfortability of others, but that does not change the reality of my time abroad.

When I returned, not only did I have other people labeling what they assumed to be my language level, but also there was the expectation that I could explain the political concerns of the Middle East. This concerned me because I know students with whom I studied abroad, who had very real experiences that promulgated established stereotypes of the region.

In Amman, I never experienced any serious sexual harassment that I had not already experienced in cities like New York. However, when a student returning from studying abroad in the Middle East tells a story about how a man would honk at her on the way to the gym, that story is not heard in terms of general toxic masculinity, but an Arab-ing of her experience, as if the mistreatment of women would be expected there.

Studying abroad was not easy—although the highs were really high, the lows were quite low.

I had trouble making new friends in the study abroad program in a language that none of us could speak well, living with a family whose routines were different from what I was familiar with, and running into situations that I never thought would arise. My experience was valuable, good and bad, but in coming back to the US, I had a lot of problems. I did not want to misrepresent the region but wanted to be conscious of the truth to my story. Furthermore, I came back to Arabic class here at Wash U, after speaking a year of dialect, to return to the old

Clare Grindinger ‘21 studies in the College of Arts & Sciences. She can be reached at cgrindinger@wustl.edu.

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WU Political Review

“Howdy Modi!”: Diaspora Diplomacy Fans the Flames of Fascism in India Rohan Palacios, staff editor

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riends, this election is important because we have won with a massive mandate which has stunned the world…If anybody has won today it is the democracy and the people!” Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi struck a triumphal figure in declaring victory after India’s May 2019 general election, delivering his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) a massive electoral mandate. His tone contrasts with the alarm of those concerned for the health of Indian democracy.

"Under Prime Minister Modi's leadership, India has descended into dangerous and deadly chaos that has consistently undermined human rights and democracy" wrote Nobel laureates Mairead Maguire, Tawakkol Abdel-Salam Karman, and Shirin Ebadi in a letter to the Gates Foundation protesting the decision to present Modi with an award for development. Actors Riz Ahmed and Jameela Jamil pulled out of the award ceremony amidst widespread outrage over the foundation honoring a man known to some as the “Butcher of Gujrat” for his role in 2002 pogroms that displaced and killed thousands of Muslims. Making sense of India’s present situation requires understanding the movement that propelled Modi and the BJP to power, as well how that movement uses the Indian diaspora to advance its goals.

The BJP was created in 1951 as the political arm of the Rastriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a Hindu nationalist organization with a founding mandate to “protect” and “nourish” Hindu culture in India. The founders of the RSS believed that Hindus are descendants of the ancient Aryans. In 1938, MS Golkawar, the second leader of the RSS, praised Nazi Germany’s racial policies and asserted: “If we Hindus grow stronger, Muslim friends … will have to play the part of German Jews.”

The RSS goal of Hindu supremacy brought them into conflict with Mahatma Gandhi’s pluralistic vision of Hinduism and the secularism of independence leaders such as Jawaharlal Nehru. Indeed, Gandhi was murdered in 1947 by

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MS Golkawar, the second leader of the RSS, praised Nazi Germany’s racial policies and asserted: “If we Hindus grow stronger, Muslim friends … will have to play the part of German Jews."

Nathuram Godse, a former RSS member. Bitter conflict between the Hindu nationalists and those advocating for a secular and diverse India gave birth to a modern organization dedicated to bringing about its vision of a Hindu state.

The RSS remains a potent force behind an increasingly fanatical Modi regime. They lament the "erosion of the nation's integrity in the name of secularism" and "endless appeasement of the Muslim population." Over five million volunteers run thousands of schools, youth groups, and women’s clubs across the country. Prime Minister Modi and most of his cabinet are RSS members, and over the past few years the organization has committed its massive grassroots movement to keeping the BJP, RSS’s political arm, in power. For example, Modi’s cabinet members, often RSS members themselves, routinely make incendiary promises to destroy mosques to build temples on land contested by Hindus and Muslims. Schools in states controlled by the BJP now teach Hindu scripture as fact, including

bizarre claims that credit ancient Hindus with the discovery of stem cells. Orwellian history curriculums, written with input from RSS members, revive old and inaccurate tropes that label Muslims, who represent nearly 15% of the population, as “invaders” and “colonizers.”

This rhetoric has tragic consequences for the most vulnerable. India is now the site of routine lynching and mob attacks against Muslims, Christians, low caste Hindus, and people accused of smuggling or consuming beef, since the slaughter of cattle is forbidden in Hindu practice. In June, a viral video showed Tabrez Ansari, a young Muslim man, bound and beaten to death over the course of hours while a Hindu mob forced him to chant “Jai Shri Ram” (Glory to Lord Ram). Ansari’s sickening death is another entry in a growing list of brutal murders and hate crimes perpetrated by militant Hindus. Time magazine reported that 90% of hate crimes over the past decade took place since Modi came to power five years ago.

The BJP government’s increasingly despotic policies in Kashmir, a Muslim majority territory on the border of Pakistan, also reflect the rapid encroachment of fascism underway in India.

Kashmir has been the site of numerous proxy wars between India and Pakistan, and due to decades of sectarian violence and separatist movements, had governed itself semi-autonomously for decades in order to maintain a fragile peace. In August, the BJP government revoked that partial autonomy and sent in thousands of soldiers to enforce what amounts to martial law. Since then, the Indian army shuttered businesses and schools, imposed a communications blackout, and arbitrarily imprisoned and tortured thousands of young Kashmiri men.

The government’s actions in Kashmir is an obvious example of stoking the nationalist fervor essential to the BJP’s electoral strategy. In contrast, the “National Citizenship Register (NCR)” represents a more subtle yet impactful way for

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the BJP and RSS to manipulate India’s demography. The NCR will require people to produce documentation establishing their family’s residence in India before 1971. The millions of Indians who cannot produce such documentation will be labeled illegal immigrants. In a critique of the policy, lawyer Nizam Pasha points out that “the government is, in parallel, pursuing the Citizenship Amendment Bill, which amends the Citizenship Act of 1955 to make undocumented migrants who are Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis and Christians—basically anyone who is not a Muslim—eligible for citizenship.”

These policies could lead to mass deportations, civil unrest, and intra-ethnic violence, all of which play into the hands of a nationalist government seeking to divide the Hindu majority from their Muslim countrymen. Pasha compares the proposal to 1935 Reich Citizenship Laws passed by the Nazi government, which sought to rescind political rights from those who lacked “pure” German blood, a definition which became more strict as the Nazis grew stronger. Such comparisons may seem outlandish, but the BJP government is already jailing journalists, lawyers and political opponents. These dissenters are labeled “anti-nationalists.” Hitler’s Germany is the most infamous and horrific example of previously democratic institutions producing fascist dictators. In India, the descent towards autocracy is well underway.

Events in India paint a terrifying picture of life for marginalized communities. However, Modi’s popularity with the Indian diaspora remains unscathed. 50,000 Indian-Americans packed into Houston’s NRG stadium for “Howdy Modi!” an event in which President Trump and Modi walked hand in hand to the stage and affirmed their mutual admiration and commitment to fighting “radical Islam.” “Diaspora Diplomacy” is a key component of the BJP’s strategy for projecting their vision for India around the world.

The RSS and its American subsidiary, the Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh (HSS), have fought to rehabilitate Modi’s image ever since the Bush

administration denied him a visa due to his complicity in anti-Muslim pogroms in 2002.

The HSS donates money to anyone willing to advocate for the BJP in Congress, including Democratic Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard and former Republican Congressman Joe Walsh.

In addition to American political allies, Western media outlets like The Economist and New York Times burnished Modi’s reputation by casting him as an economic wizard. Yet, in reality, India is facing a serious economic slowdown. Its 6.1% unemployment rate is the highest it has been in 45 years and its GDP growth will reach a five year low in 2019. International investors initially attracted to Modi’s pro-business outlook are now starting to withdraw massive sums of money from the country, leading to a 15 year low private sector investment rate. While rising oil prices have hurt growth, the blame for the slowdown can be laid at least partially at the government’s feet. An outlandish currency reform removed about 85% of currency notes from circulation creating a massive shock to the economy without achieving anything positive.

The government also botched the roll out of a new taxation system for goods and services, and their failure hurt small business nationwide.

Modi supporters have used the false narrative of economic growth and development to justify and obscure the rise of fascism in India. The BJP’s economic mismanagement means that weak justification no longer exists.

As members of the diaspora, opposing fascism in India means combating its symptoms in our communities. Now more than ever, it is important to push back on relatives and friends who parrot BJP talking points about “Islamization” or right-wing versions of history which erase centuries of diversity on the subcontinent.

Challenge those who donate to or participate in organizations like the RSS or HSS in the name of philanthropy or community. The diaspora should demand that American politicians not provide cover for Hindu fascists. Call on politicians to

condemn the systematic abuse of Kashmiris and the imprisonment of dissidents throughout India. Challenge Congresswoman Gabbard to explain her strong support for Modi despite her stated commitments to progressive values.

Such statements should not be difficult to make for those who believe in democracy and human rights. We can also inform ourselves on the history of places like Kashmir and on the current political situation in India. Finally, we can support independent journalists and NGOs that strive to hold the Modi government accountable.

The BJP and RSS ask for unconditional support from the diaspora to demonstrate patriotism, but we must remember that living outside of India does not preclude criticism of the Indian government. Prime Minister Modi and the BJP government rose to power in close collaboration with a group of Hindu nationalists inspired

by European fascism. The government has since implemented autocratic and discriminatory policies that young Indians in the diaspora would rightfully oppose if they were rolled out

by President Trump. It will seem challenging, but even the simplest conversations with families and friends can begin to harness the very real influence of the diaspora to resist the rise of Hindu fascism. With the stakes so high, apathy is complicity.

Rohan Palacios ’21 studies in the College of Arts & Sciences. He can be reached at rpalacios@wustl.edu.

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WU Political Review

Change the Narrative: Corporations and Climate Change Yanny Liang Artwork (right) by Jinny Park, assistant design director

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he day after I turned eighteen, I participated in a citywide climate strike. Along with over a hundred students from my high school, I walked out of class onto the field outside our school to protest stronger action from our government to combat climate change.

We then joined thousands of other students from around the city at City Hall to make our voices heard on the issue. This wasn’t my first encounter with environmental activism, but it prompted me to probe further into the climate change movement. I discovered that a large portion of the movement’s narrative pushes the idea that it is the individual’s responsibility to save the planet from environmental catastrophe.

There are countless news stories and social media posts calling for people to forgo the use of plastic straws, bags, and other single-use items.

In particular, the anti-plastic straw movement caught my attention. The movement began in 2015 when a video of a sea turtle with a straw up its nose went viral. And while this movement has been admirable, it distracts from the more dire issues that lie underneath the surface.

According to a 2018 study in Scientific Reports, plastic straws account for just 3% of the plastic that enters the ocean every year while 46% of the plastic in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch consists of fishing nets discarded by the seafood and fishing industry.

This is simply one example of the way the current movement places majority responsibility on individuals to fix the planet. Add the popular call to “fix this for future generations,” which is meant to appeal to our familial love and responsibility, and you have a story that redirects the culpability for this disaster from giant corporations to individuals.

This damaging narrative needs to shift and the corporations that are responsible for most of the pollution on the planet need to be held responsible. It can no longer only be an individual’s

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The world is moving steadily towards clean energy alternatives, and the companies that have been polluting it for decades need to step up and choose the planet over their profit. prerogative to save the planet. That responsibility needs to be shifted to the companies that, for years, have fueled the climate change denial movement, and to the industries that dump tons of pollutants into the air, soil, and water every year.

ExxonMobil, one of the largest gas and oil companies in the world, knew as early as 1981 of the relationship between fossil fuels and climate change. In 1982, scientists hired by Exxon itself surfaced with research stating that what Exxon planned to do with regards to fossil fuel extraction would raise sea levels, increase droughts, and warm the climate. However, because the prices of oil were decreasing at the time, the executives at Exxon decided to ignore the findings and focus instead on growing the business and making a profit.

In the 1980s, an internal memo at Exxon was released saying that the company needed to start emphasizing “the uncertainty around scientific

data concerning climate change.” This was the planting of the seed for what has grown to be known as climate change denial. In 1997, Lee Raymond, the CEO of Exxon at the time, stated in a presentation that according to the company’s science, the earth was cooling. This was a blatant lie, as evident by earlier research produced by Exxon’s own scientists. Since the first memo came out, the company has spent over $30 million funding think tanks and research to promote climate change denial. It was only in July 2015 that Exxon told The Guardian that it now acknowledges climate change and no longer funds climate denial groups.

According to the 2017 Carbon Majors Report, more than half of global greenhouse gas emissions since 1988 can be traced to twenty-five corporate and state-owned entities. Exxon, Chevron, Shell, and BP have been identified as some of the companies with the highest emissions. These companies need to be held accountable for the damage they are doing to the environment. Their business models need to be radically altered if they want to help the planet like they say they do. They can help to diversify the energy sector and start investing more in renewable energy sources, including solar, wind, and hydro power, even if most of their product currently derives from fossil fuels.

There are companies such as Google, Ikea, Apple, and Facebook that have committed to 100% renewable energy under the RE100 initiative. Oil companies have started investing in green energy. Shell set up a renewables arm in 2015 with a $1.7 billion investment. According to spokespersons for the respective companies who spoke to The Guardian, Chevron is “committed to managing its emissions,” and BP is “investing in renewables and low-carbon innovation.” However, the pace of change is no longer enough, and these companies face extinction within the next several years if they

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do not revolutionize their business models, according to Paul Stevens, a fellow at the think tank Chatham House.

This isn’t to say that individual action doesn’t benefit the planet. But the reality of the situation is that the monumental progress necessary to save the planet cannot be made without drastic change from multinational companies. In a way, this is where individuals can take action.

There is great tension between short-term profits for the companies and an urgent need to reduce emissions. Thus, if consumers, the people who provide companies with the profits they so desperately desire, decide to withdraw

their support, both monetary and ideological, then perhaps the companies will be motivated to change their policies. The world is moving steadily towards clean energy alternatives and the companies that have been polluting it for decades need to step up and choose the planet over their profit.

This is where our lawmakers can step in.

Changing the narrative is one step, but there needs to be concrete action to reinforce a new narrative. We need policymakers to step up and put into effect vigorous legislation that will push corporations to reduce their emissions and invest in clean energy. Bipartisan

and international collaboration will be required.

If national and international bodies can come together to create legislation that incentivizes companies to reduce pollution, then we’ll stand a chance at passing on this planet on to future generations.

Yanny Liang '23 studies in the College of Arts & Sciences.

She can be reached at liangyanfen@wustl.edu.

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