SPRING 2021
ISSUE 01 SPECIAL FEATURE
JUSTICE
The highlights of BPR's coverage of policy and political affairs, wherever you get your podcasts.
Issue 01, Spring 2021
Editors’ Note The Pledge of Allegiance, which many US schoolchildren must recite each day, ends with the phrase “with liberty and justice for all.” The sentiment is clear, celebrating ideals such as equality, freedom, and the rule of law. But the concept of justice encapsulates more than just a courtroom filled with judges, jurors, and written codes of order. We must also think about the ways in which people fight for justice in everyday ways—through protest, for example, and through coming together to clutch cardboard signs and march in step with one another to demand racial, economic, environmental, and other forms of justice. There is no doubt that justice is at the forefront of our lives now and always. Justice does not exist in a vacuum. The world in which we live ensures that our conceptions of justice are ever-changing, that our sense of justice is never satisfied, and that our calls for justice are constantly loud and proud. Injustice persists in every corner of our world—from unequal access to food, healthcare, and shelter to injustices based on gender, race, geography, and religion. We live in a world in which justice is an elusive goal, always hovering out of our reach; but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t keep demanding it. Our special feature authors tackle the concept of justice with grace, nuance, and rigor. Gabe Merkel explores the intersections of healthcare, geography,
The Justice Issue
wealth, and power in his discussion of the disproportionate concentration of Covid-19 vaccine doses in wealthy countries. Justin Barlas dives into injustices faced by K-12 students in the US public education system and argues that these deficiencies could be effectively combatted if the United States amended its Constitution to include a right to education. Sarah Roberts applies the idea of justice to the realm of refugee law, discussing the exclusion of economic refugees from the protections of US asylum policy and the ways in which such exclusion unjustly harms some of the world’s most vulnerable. Chaelin Jung examines the pernicious practice of “doxxing,” or publishing individuals’ personal information online as a form of revenge, arguing that laws must be passed to ensure public safety. Finally, Andrew Steinberg investigates the injustices of no promo homo laws, which limit discussions of homosexuality in US schools, and their disproportionately negative impacts on LGBTQ+ students in the South. As Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said: “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” As we continue to agitate for justice in our communities and beyond, we must keep in mind the spaces in which injustices lurk and take decisive action against them. Whether confronting injustice at home or abroad, one thing is clear: We must all contribute in our own way to build a better and more just society.
– Zander, Emma, Hannah
Brown Political Review
Masthead
EXECUTIVE BOARD
CONTENT BOARD
EDITORS IN CHIEF Emma Blake Zander Blitzer
SENIOR MANAGING WEB EDITORS Ellie Papapanou Tarana Sable
UNITED STATES EDITORS Matthew Bailey Molly Cook Cartie Werthman
MANAGING WEB EDITOR Matthew Walsh
STAFF WRITERS Natalia Ibarra Chaelin Jung Jeanine Kim Jillian Lederman Jack Malamud Kevin Moclair Amanda Page Max Pushkin Gabby Smith Andrew Steinberg Jack Tajmajer Shane Tomaino Jack Wolfsohn Ricky Zhong
CHIEFS OF STAFF Kate Dario Gabe Merkel CHIEF OPERATING OFFICERS Xiaoyu Huang Jackson Segal SENIOR MANAGING WEB EDITORS Ellie Papapanou Tarana Sable MANAGING WEB EDITOR Matthew Walsh SENIOR MANAGING MAGAZINE EDITOR Hannah Severyns CHIEF COPY EDITORS Gabriela Tenorio Peter Zubiago INTERVIEWS DIRECTOR Amelia Spalter DATA DIRECTOR Erika Bussmann BUSINESS DIRECTORS Xiaoyu Huang Jackson Segal CREATIVE DIRECTORS Stephanie Wu Nina Yuchi MEDIA DIRECTORS Griffin McLaughlin Anson Shyu PODCAST DIRECTOR Auria Zhang
ECONOMY SENIOR EDITOR Noah Pirani ECONOMY EDITORS Milo Douglas Clare Lonergan STAFF WRITERS Simon Giordano Ariana Haji Annabelle Hutchinson Garrett Johnson Jackson Kelley Matthew Lichtblau Chloe Perel Nicholas Sawicki Akhil Saxena Mathilda Silbiger Sally Zhang
CREATIVE
SENIOR MANAGING MAGAZINE EDITOR Hannah Severyns MANAGING EDITORS Eunice Chong Ben Singer Rachel Yan ASSOCIATE EDITORS Carmen Bebbington Dalia Bresnick Hyun Choi Claire Hodges Justen Joffe Chris Kobel Annabelle Liu Steven Long Felipe Félix Méndez Sarah Roberts Maia Vasaturo-Kolodner Matthew Walsh
CREATIVE DIRECTORS IN TRAINING Christine Wang Iris Xie ART DIRECTORS Georgina Bronheim Jesse Hogan Kern Lee GRAPHIC DESIGN DIRECTORS Madi Ko Daniel Navratil GRAPHIC DESIGNERS Jiahua Chen Sharlene Deng Jingyu Feng Amy Lim Mehek Vohra
WORLD SENIOR EDITOR Meghan Murphy
DATA BOARD
EDITORS Daniel Halpert Morgan McCordick
DATA DIRECTOR Erika Bussmann
STAFF WRITERS Gabriel Blanc Erik Brown Nealie Deol Natalie Fredman Indigo Funk Deepak Gupta Daniel Halpert Charlie Key Sarah McGrath Thomas O’Neill
ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR Ryan Simpson DATA ASSOCIATES Ashley Cai Gaya Gupta Zeke Hertz Filip Kierzenka
MEDIA BOARD COPY EDITORIAL BOARD
INTERVIEWS BOARD
CO-CHIEF COPY EDITORS Gabriela Tenorio Peter Zubiago
INTERVIEWS DIRECTOR Amelia Spalter
COPY EDITORS Rachel Blumenstein Ben Cunningham Meehir Dixit Elizabeth Duchan Olivia Falkenrath Patrick Gilfillan Bridget Griswold Eric Guo Zeke Hertz Claire Hodges Elias Kaul Jeanine Kim Connor Kraska Caleb Lazar Gene Lu Catherine McClenahan Jessa Mellea Malini Naidu Cynthia Ng Anna Park Eleanor Peters Kelly Raymond Annabel Roth Namsai Sethpornpong Riley Thompson Claire Zeller
CONTRIBUTING ILLUSTRATORS Hannah Chang Naya Lee Chang Sichen Grace Chen Jinghong Chen Nicholas Edwards Katie Fliegel Sophia G Foulkes Joanne Kim Nadia Kossman Lucia Li Rosalia Mejia Aliyah Nadal Joseph Ni Felipe Ortiz Brenda Rodriguez Jocelyn Salim Joshua Sun Evelyn Tan Madison Tom Kelly Wu Jenny Zhang Xuandong (Jack) Zhou
COVER ARTIST Kern Lee
LEAD WEB DEVELOPER Raymond Cao
EDITORIAL BOARD
CREATIVE DIRECTORS Stephanie Wu Nina Jun Yuchi
INTERVIEWS ASSOCIATES Justin Barlas Augustus Bayard Omri Bergner-Phillips Alisa Caira Anna Davis Alexander Fasseas Emerson Goodrich Alice Jo Haley Joyce Charlie Key Sam Kolitch Izzy Lazenby Felix Seungje Lee Shinyoung Lee Alex Lehman Adriana Lorenzini Neha Mukherjee Miles Munkacy Hai Ning Ng Pelumi Omotosho Luke Redden Noah Rosenberg Shilpa Sajja Neil Sehgal Sana Sinha Zach Stern Sam Trachtenberg Alexandra Vitkin Tucker Wilke Anik Willig
MEDIA DIRECTORS Griffin McLaughlin Anson Shyu ASSOCIATES Mary Bibbey Kat Grcic Mira Gupta Mina Kao John Liu Ala Kassandra Rodriguez Autumn-Jade Stoner Irene Sung
BUSINESS BOARD DIRECTORS Xiaoyu Huang Jackson Segal ASSOCIATE BUSINESS DIRECTORS Patrick Gilfillan Steven Long ASSOCIATES Neel Dhavale Tyler Lu Meghan Murphy Lucca Z. Paris Christopher Pool
PODCAST BOARD EXECUTIVE PRODUCER Auria Zhang HOSTS Kate Dario Ethan Drake Michael Seoane PODCAST ASSOCIATES Miriam Arden Casey Chan Tevah Gevelber Lisa Li Skylar Losepovici Gene Lu Alexandra Ali Martinez Lara Mikhail Margaret Nesi Katharine Orchard Geireann Lindfield Roberts Ben Rosenn Emery Shelley Annika Sigfstead Ellie Thomson
TECH DEVELOPMENT BOARD LEAD WEB DEVELOPER Raymond Cao WEB DEVELOPERS Ashley Cai Parker Simon Nick Young
Once an application is submitted, the process isn’t over. At a minimum, waiting lists are one to two years long. Is this truly applying for housing, or applying for waiting lists? What are folks supposed to do for housing in the meantime?
The use of housing vouchers, which assist low-income individuals and families in paying rent, is restricted by location. Landlords can legally deny rent to someone with a voucher in parts of Rhode Island, often facilitating discrimination based on race or family size. Folks with vouchers are also confined to strict time limits within which they must find spaces that are up to code.
Applying for affordable housing entails compiling a variety of documents, such as birth certificates, proofs of income, and housing status. This process enables various agencies to give people in need of affordable housing the runaround.
Background checks can reveal any past evictions on your record, regardless of whether they were thrown out or settled in your favor. Housing developments can see incarceration history and are not hesitant to deny folks housing due to past arrests. These factors perpetuate the overlap between homelessness and incarceration, because when people experience homelessness, they are also more likely to get in trouble with police. Incarceration, then, is both a cause and a consequence of homelessness.
Seeking temporary shelter can be the first step towards finding permanent housing. To do so, one must call a centralized number to formally enter the system. As a result, social workers are often the gatekeepers of knowledge about the affordable housing system. This forces people to rely on a system that sustains itself through their marginalization.
Brown Political Review
Table of Contents
Special Feature: Justice 30 The Great Equalizer by Justin Barlas 34 Twitter, Don't Do Your Thing Chaelin Jung by 36 Over the Rainbow by Andrew Steinberg
United States 08 We Should Chat by Jon Zhang 12 13 Interview with Steve Hough by Augustus Bayard
It Could Be Free Free Free by Hyun Choi 14
Who Bears the Consequences? by Margaret Nesi 16 Engelmann Interview with Thomas by Amelia Spalter 20 with Interview Ashish K. Jha by Sam Kolitch
18 Alien Justice by Matthew Walsh
22 Delivery Room Advocacy by Zander Blitzer
Issue 01, Spring 2021
The Justice Issue
26 A Generic Solution by Gabe Merkel
32
World
The Wretched Refused by Sarah Roberts
38 Witchcraft Worries by Hannah Severyns 40
Welcome to the Big Top by Steven Long 41 Interview with Pamela Reeves by Haley Joyce 42 Eviction Affliction by Maru Attwood 44 Interview with Thomas Pogge Frant by Alex Fasseas and Ryan 47 Mad Cow Rodenbeck by Laila 50 Interview with Josh Levin by Tucker Wilke 51 An Unravelin Industry g by Annabelle Liu
UNITED STATES
We Should Chat How online disinformation impacts the democratic participation of first-generation Chinese-Americans
by Jon Zhang ’24, an intended Biomedical Engineering concentrator illustration by Lucia Li ’24
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“George Soros backed the violence in Charlottesville.” “Liberal media threatens to violently destroy Mount Rushmore.” You have probably seen many sensationalist headlines and bogus claims like these propagated by the likes of Fox News, Newsmax, and One America News Network. But you might be surprised to learn that neither of the two aforementioned headlines came from Fox News, nor did they go viral on traditional right-wing platforms or even Facebook. Instead, they originated from WeChat. WeChat is the social media platform of choice for much of the Chinese diaspora in the United States. It allows its 1.2 billion users to send messages, connect with friends, and maintain communities. However, this seemingly innocuous platform hides a dark underbelly of rampant disinformation. In the United States, older, first-generation Chinese immigrants are more inclined to view articles and messages propagated through WeChat. This tendency can be attributed to the fact that they not only feel more comfortable consuming media in their native languages, but also because they trust the opinions and information circulated by members of their own community. As a result, they leave themselves vulnerable to the spread of disinformation, which has often been crafted to cater specifically to the cultural
beliefs and values of the Asian-American community. False content can reinforce racial biases and sow distrust in the political process, leaving immigrants who are already entrenched in their ethnic enclaves feeling even more isolated from mainstream society and less inclined to participate in US politics at all. While the Chinese-American population is undoubtedly diverse, many have united against one common enemy: the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). In response, Chinese dissidents online have crafted the narrative that Trump alone can stop China. Wang Dinggang, an antiCCP internet provocateur, spread an unsubstantiated rumor in September 2020 that characterized Hunter Biden as a child abuser and human trafficker to paint his father, then-Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden, in a negative light. When Chinese virologist Dr. Li-Meng Yan began claiming that Covid-19 was a bioweapon manufactured and covered up by China, Steve Bannon and an exiled Chinese billionaire gave her a platform that turned her into a household name in many conservative circles. Unfounded allegations like these have appealed not just to Chinese dissidents living in the United States, but also to individuals of many other descents. Any immigrant whose home country has had a
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“Some online content preys on ingrained racial prejudices that some Asian-Americans hold by distorting the Black Lives Matter movement and high - lighting rare instances of violence during protests.”
contentious history with China or communism is especially susceptible to these misleading claims, which serve to reinforce their existing anti-China biases. Entire media companies are embracing antiChina rhetoric too. The Falun Gong-affiliated newspaper The Epoch Times backed President Trump in 2016, allying with him on the basis of his anti-China rhetoric in its crusade against the CCP. Their baseless claims started with “Spygate,” which alleged that Obama administration officials spied on and attempted to sabotage Trump’s 2016 campaign. The newspaper’s affiliates have since doubled down on unsubstantiated and even anti-Semitic allegations, such as claiming that elites like Bill Gates “direct” the Covid-19 pandemic and that a “Jewish mob” controls the world. As the organization has embraced dangerous conspiracies and QAnon, its influence has only grown in the online space. New Tang Dynasty Television and China Uncensored, two of its affiliated YouTube channels, have 1.29 million and 1.54 million subscribers respectively, not to mention a litany of other affiliated channels, social media pages, and even radio stations. This publication, once founded to counter propaganda, has morphed into the very concept it sought to destroy. Some online content preys on ingrained racial prejudices that some Asian-Americans hold by distorting the Black Lives Matter movement and highlighting rare instances of violence during protests. These posts play into the “scarcity mindset” of some Asian immigrants. Those who subscribe to this way of thinking believe that opportunities for underprivileged racial minorities in American society remain limited, which pits Asian-Americans against Black Americans for equality and progress. This inflammatory content has found a receptive audience on WeChat, where users are 10
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not afraid to publicize their anti-Black sentiments. For example, when two Chinese men were shot and killed during a robbery attempt in Chicago in March 2020, WeChat users aired their frustrations through egregious anti-Black statements. “Black people’s lives are cheaper than dirt,” one user remarked. “These animals have no sense of limits,” said another. Disinformation intending to discourage Asian-Americans from participating in US political processes is also commonly propagated. Traditionally, political campaigns tend to focus less attention on Asian voters: The Pew Research Center found that in 2020, only 74 percent of English-speaking Asian voters were contacted by a campaign. When non-English speaking first-generation Asian immigrants were included, that figure dropped to 50 percent, compared to a national average of people contacted by campaigns of 84 percent. As a result, many older immigrants turn to social media, where information is often spread with malicious and deceitful intent, to access the news and form their political opinions. Articles that characterize Joe Biden as a radical socialist while erasing the nuances of his policies resonate strongly amongst first-generation immigrants who have lived under Communist regimes. The day before the 2020 election, a WeChat post stated that the federal government was “preparing to mobilize the National Guard” and “impose a national two-week quarantine” on Election Day. Written in both English and Chinese, this was a clear attempt by right-wing groups to infiltrate Chinese-American circles and decrease their likelihood of voting. When so many of the people reaching out do so with the intent of disseminating disinformation, it is no surprise that many first-generation Asian immigrants are disillusioned by the American political process.
Fortunately, as the Asian-American population grows, there are more opportunities to combat information silos and ideological entrenchment. Against the backdrop of the Black Lives Matter movement, many young Asian-Americans began to confront their families and debunk the lies circulating online. Second-generation immigrants often grow up speaking English and act as translators for their parents: They represent the crucial connection between first-generation immigrants, who prefer to stick within their ethnic enclaves, and a majority English-speaking American society. As second-generation immigrants work to initiate open conversations about racism with their parents and relatives, they have found creative means to connect with their families and dismantle biased or misguided perspectives. Through the same social media platforms that spread conspiracy theories, they have been able to reach out to those who believe such conspiracy theories and set essential antiracism discussions in motion. Others have employed similar methods of working within their own communities to counter general disinformation and conspiracy theories targeting Asian immigrants. For example, progressive Vietnamese-Americans founded Viet Fact Check to refute the online disinformation they encountered within Vietnamese circles. These activists emphasized the need for these efforts to be led by fellow members of the community in order to be trusted. After all, taking refuge within one’s own community is what makes certain Asian-Americans vulnerable to fake news in the first place. Organizations like Viet Fact Check, which only employ community members and stress that the solution must come from within, should work in tandem with national efforts to combat disinformation among Asian immigrants. As second-generation immigrants become more immersed in American politics and find new ways to communicate with their relatives, there is hope that they can reverse the trends of political disillusionment among their family members. In some parts of the country, Asian-Americans are already flexing their political power. In New Jersey, where 10 percent of the population is Asian, voters rallied to elect Andy Kim in 2018, the state’s first Asian-American congressperson. Most recently, in the 2021 Georgia Senate Runoffs, Asian-Americans living in Gwinnett County played a key role in electing Democrats Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock. As politicians begin to recognize the growing influence of Asian voters, they will likely do a better job of reaching out to these communities as well, further combatting the spread of disinformation. If these efforts continue, the trend of disinformation in Asian-American communities may very well be on its way out.
“Second-generation immigrants often grow up speaking English and act as translators for their parents: They represent the crucial connection between first-generation immigrants, who prefer to stick within their ethnic enclaves, and majority English-speaking American society.” THE JUSTICE ISSUE
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It Could Be Free Free Free How the tax preparation industry is cheating taxpayers out of billions of dollars and hours spent filing taxes by Hyun Choi ’21, a Computer Science and Public Policy concentrator and an Associate Editor for BPR infographic by Ryan Simpson ’23, Filip Kierzenka ’23, and Jiahua Chen ’24
The days leading up to April 15 are filled with panic for many Americans who, upon realizing that their tax returns are due, must search frantically for their W-2s and open up TurboTax or a similar software. Taxpayers collectively spend over 3 billion hours annually filing their taxes. But this tedious ritual begs the question: Is all of this necessary? The short answer is no. The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has the technical capacity to make tax filing easy and costless to taxpayers, and Congress should grant the agency the resources to implement pre-populated tax returns. Since the 1990s, Intuit, the owner of the dominant tax software TurboTax, has aggressively lobbied the government to protect the tax preparation industry. When the Bush administration created an initiative to modernize government
and directed the IRS to create a free online tax filing solution, Intuit lobbied politicians to fight against “government encroachment.” The IRS, stuck between industry pressure and a presidential initiative, partnered with tax prep companies to form the Free File Alliance. Taxpayers with an adjusted gross income below a declared threshold—usually ranging from $39,000 to $72,000— would be eligible to file their federal tax return for free through a participating company. In return, the IRS agreed to shelve their own tax filing software. But companies are not required to actively advertise the Free File option. Instead, they advertise deceptively named products like “Free Edition,” “Free Online,” or simply “Free,” which are distinct from their IRS “Free File” programs and are only complimentary to those with the simplest tax returns. Until recently, Intuit even hid their “Free File” option from search results, instead leading customers to their “Free Edition” product. Because of these deceitful tactics, only about 3 percent of eligible taxpayers have filed their returns through the Free File program, and ProPublica estimates that taxpayers eligible for IRS Free File pay $1 billion a year in unnecessary filing fees. American taxpayers are being held hostage by the tax preparation industry and its lobbyists. Americans who do not qualify for Free File are forced to choose between filing electronically using expensive software or filling out paper forms with hundreds of pages of indecipherable instructions. However, it doesn’t have to be this way. For starters, the IRS’s database already includes each taxpayer’s income. When you receive your W-2 stating your income and withheld tax, the IRS receives and stores an identical copy. These forms, called “information returns,” are issued to you and the IRS in most taxable transactions, such as collecting bank interest, receiving unemployment compensation, or paying loans or mortgage interest. Other countries with similar systems of data collection use them to the taxpayers’ advantage. Japan sends all taxpayers a postcard each spring, stating how much the taxpayer earned, the withheld tax, and the tax due to be paid or refunded.
Filings are only required if taxpayers themselves dispute the government’s data. The Swedish tax authority sends a simple text to taxpayers each year with a link to a pre-filled tax return. If they agree with the government, they can confirm it on their phone, and the process is done. In Estonia, 40 percent of taxpayers are able to file their returns with just one click in less than a minute. This practice is made possible thanks to the use of “pre-populated returns.” These pre-populated returns ensure that the taxpayer only needs to confirm data the government already has, rather than requiring the taxpayer to compile that data themselves. Imagine if filing your taxes was as simple as logging onto the IRS website and clicking “confirm.” We know that the IRS is fully capable of this, as it sends out millions of “Automated Underreporter Notices” per year after cross-referencing tax returns with information returns from third parties. For example, if someone accidentally reports $50 of stock dividends instead of $500, the IRS will send them a notice with the additional tax due. Yet the IRS currently doesn’t use this information to help taxpayers, and the prospect of the IRS actually doing so is so frightening to Intuit and the tax industry that they have lobbied Congress many times to legally prohibit pre-populated returns with mixed results. It is absolutely infuriating that the IRS has the technical capability to save taxpayers billions of hours of their time, yet lobbyist influence and budget constraints prevent the agency from doing so. It seems as though the government is making it as difficult and expensive as possible for taxpayers to follow tax laws. Fortunately, there is still hope. After the 2019 ProPublica revelations, Congress retracted a bill that would have legally prohibited the IRS from creating its own tax software, and the IRS retracted that same promise with the Free File Alliance. There is now nothing stopping the IRS from implementing pre-populated returns for taxpayers using its own software. Congress should grant the IRS the resources it needs to implement such a program, if only to make April 15 a little less stressful and a little less expensive for everyone.
Filing a tax return in the US takes over 13 hours.
Compared to the Netherlands: ~15 mins
Or in Japan, Germany, the UK, and 33 more countries: 0 mins - No return necessary for most Source: The Brookings Institution, New York Times, Tax Policy Center
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parties an opportunity to endorse or nominate their own candidates in some other fashion. Why would this change have been a good thing?
INTERVIEW WITH
Steve Hough
Well, several reasons. First of all, I ran the numbers on the general election for the state legislature in 2018, and roughly 75 percent of those races were either uncontested—one or other of the parties had no opposition—or else they were won by margins greater than ten percent. So in a case where so many races are actually decided in a primary election, we just feel that it’s incumbent on the legislature, or, in this case a citizen’s initiative, to allow the about 3.8 million people that are barred from voting in our primary elections [to vote]. Secondly, in these primary races that are deciding so many elections, the turnout is traditionally low. In 2020 after the August primary, we had a banner headline in the front page of my local newspaper saying, "Florida breaks record for turnout in primary: 28 percent." In my view, that's not anything that we should be bragging about. Now there are two aspects
Steve Hough is the director of Florida Fair and Open Primaries, an organization that, alongside Open Primaries and All Voters Vote, supported Florida’s 2020 Ballot Amendment 3. Amendment 3 would have implemented a top-two jungle primary system in Florida, allowing all registered voters to vote in a nonpartisan primary where the top two vote-receiving candidates, regardless of party, would advance to the general election. Under the current system in Florida, only registered party members can vote in primaries. While the amendment garnered the support of 57 percent of voters, it ultimately didn’t meet the 60 percent threshold required for it to be adopted.
interview by Augustus Bayard ’23 illustration by Aliyah Nadal ’23 Augustus Bayard: Your organization, Florida Fair and Open Primaries, advocated for Amendment 3 this election cycle. What would that amendment have done if it had been adopted? Steve Hough: Amendment 3 proposed a top two primary, as they conduct in California and Washington State currently, with the exception that it would only pertain to our state races. That would be the Florida legislature, the governor, and the cabinet positions that are elected. All candidates for every seat and office would appear on a single ballot and all voters would be allowed to vote in an open primary for each seat regardless of political affiliation. The top two vote-getters would move on to the general election. And under Amendment 3, candidates would be allowed to display their party affiliation on the ballot, as well as giving the two major political This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
to that. A lot of registered voters that are members of parties don't participate in primaries, so there's education to be done there on the importance of voting in primaries. But when 27 percent of the electorate is actually barred from participating, that's another matter. What would you say to those who opposed the amendment because it could lead to strange results, like having an election between two Democrats, as happened in California’s 2018 Senate election? There is a valid concern that in a very Democratic district, you could have five candidates running on the Democratic side and only two on the Republican side. Well, if the Democrats split the vote, if there's real competition between all five candidates and they split the vote, there's potential that two Republicans go, and how is that right? You're a Democratic district and you get a Republican representative. So, now that's a valid concern. However, based on a Washington [State] study, same-party-candidate races, across all years, were an average of seven percent of the total races and the vote-splitting where that had an effect on the outcomes was an even smaller percentage.
“...we had a banner headline in the front page of my local newspaper saying 'Florida breaks record for turnout in primary: 28 percent.' In my view, that's not anything that we should be bragging about.” It seems to me as if the states that have recently embraced electoral reform— Maine and Alaska for example—have been known for an independent maverick streak. How can proponents of electoral reform advocate for it in states with stronger political parties? I think that it's gonna boil down to more money being spent on education and perhaps coordination of some of these nonpartisan reform organizations. Currently, there are quite a few out there, and I wouldn't say that they're working at cross-purposes, per se, but there are limited funds, there are limited donors in this area, so they're all trying to push their own agendas. Education is going to be key in any situation, but especially in states where they don't have this history of independent voters, and they're very polarized and locked into either Democratic or Republican parties. It's a slog, but as more people get exposed to different ideas, and as the political environment becomes more and more toxic, more people are looking for those kinds of alternatives, so the two working together might see more forward progress here in the near future. What’s the next step for electoral reform in Florida? I'm excited about [Alaska’s new top-four system]. I started leaning towards that in 2017. I worked my heart out for the top-two because I've been involved in it for so long. I even contributed quite a bit of money to it. So I don't feel guilty because I didn't waver in my support for Amendment 3. But I'm thinking personally we're going to move on to something different. I think top-two might be dead in Florida. I think that'd be a high mountain to climb given what the precedent is. So I'm going to focus, I think, on this final-five, just from a grassroots perspective and do what I can to promote it and educate people. What exactly do you mean by final-five voting? Same as Alaska's top-four, except it'd be a top five in the primary and then ranked-choice voting in the general election. Matter of fact, just before you called I was working on a new logo for a Facebook page that I'm thinking about starting for Final-Five Florida. THE JUSTICE ISSUE
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Who Bears the Consequences? Discontinuity in the protection of Bears Ears National Monument by Margaret Nesi ’24, an intended Engineering and Music concentrator and a Podcast Associate for BPR illustration by Felipe Ortiz ’22
Each year, hundreds of thousands of wanderlusting adventure-seekers travel to Blanding, Utah, a quaint town with a population of under 4,000 people located in the southeastern corner of the state. What intrigues these excited travelers? The answer is simple: Blanding is home to the breathtaking Bears Ears National Monument. What some visitors may not expect, however, are posters, bumper stickers, and billboards protesting the exact attraction that they came to see. Bears Ears was thrust into the spotlight in 2016 when President Obama issued an executive order naming it a national monument before leaving office. Just a year later, President Trump reduced its acreage, and now President Biden plans to re-expand the monument to its original size, most likely by way of another executive order. While the effort to protect this monument today is worthwhile, President Biden must come to realize that the cycle of downsizing and restoring the monument based solely on which party controls the executive branch would leave both San Juan County and the land it covers in indefinite limbo, offering no longstanding protection to Bears Ears or its surrounding townships. Formal governmental protection of Bears Ears has been hotly debated for generations due to the land’s rich history. Bears Ears contains thousands of artifacts from the Ancestral Puebloans, a prehistoric Native American tribe 14
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“By re-expanding the borders of the monument through an executive order, Biden would once again bypass Congress and, in doing so, neglect the concerns of Blanding’s residents.”
that inhabited Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, and Colorado from approximately 100 AD to 1600 AD. The Ancestral Puebloans are speculated to be the ancestors of current Indigenous tribes in Utah, including the Navajo, Hopi, Zuni, Ute, and Ute Mountain Ute peoples. Given the historical significance of the land and its sacred status, Indigenous peoples have long lobbied for state or federal action to protect it. Most notably, several tribes formed a joint coalition that proposed a comprehensive plan to protect over 1.9 million acres of Bears Ears and eventually accepted a compromise presented by the Obama administration to protect 1.35 million acres. Included in this protection were prohibitions on mining and energy development within the national monument’s borders. Despite praise from environmental groups and the coalition of Indigenous tribes, the
“However, the potential re-expansion of the boundaries of the monument begs the question: Would another executive order restoring the monument to its original size do more harm than good?”
decision was a controversial one. The executive order came as a last-ditch effort by President Obama to protect the land after years of pushback in Congress. More specifically, Republican leadership in Utah vehemently opposed the designation because of the detrimental impacts that it would have on neighboring towns such as Blanding. For many Blanding residents, the designation of the monument was their worst nightmare come to fruition. The new status meant the decline of the uranium industry, which employs many residents at a mill in the area. Advocates for the monument have argued that these jobs would be replaced by service industry and tourism jobs; however, opponents countered that such jobs are less financially reliable because of their seasonal nature. Moreover, because the land would no longer be owned by the federal government, San Juan County schools would lose funding from the State of Utah School and Trust Lands Association, which previously financed a significant portion of Blanding’s education system. In 2017, encouraged by fellow Republicans, President Trump reduced the amount of protected land for the monument by 85 percent. This shrinkage served to protect the vitality of the uranium industry—specifically the uranium plant in San Juan County—and assuage the aforementioned worries of opposing residents. However, the reduction had unintended consequences. The
downsizing of the monument did not stop the growing foot traffic that heightened publicity had brought, and despite increased tourism, there is now a lack of federal funds to sustain effective measures to protect the land. Until 2019, the San Juan County Commission, one of the county’s governing bodies, aligned itself with President Trump and supported his action to downsize the monument. However, in 2019, the San Juan County commission changed its stance: In a 2-1 vote, the commission formally condemned President Trump’s actions and advocated for the re-expansion of the monument. This new alignment came after a redistricting process that led to San Juan County’s first ever majority-Navajo commission. On January 22, the Biden administration announced that it will review the Trump administration’s decision to downsize Bears Ears, in tandem with President Biden’s comprehensive plan to address the existential threat of climate change. However, the potential re-expansion of the boundaries of the monument begs the question: Would another executive order restoring the monument to its original size do more harm than good? Republican Senators such as Mitt Romney (R-UT) argue that it will. When asked for a comment on Biden’s announcement to review the downsizing, Romney responded, “A review in name only with predetermined results, which ultimately leads to the unilateral executive order enlarging the monuments’ boundaries, will not solve the root of the problem and will only deepen divisions in this country.” Romney’s response references years of debate prior to Obama’s designation of Bears Ears as a national monument, as well as the economic and social repercussions of such a decision on San Juan County residents. By re-expanding the borders of the monument through an executive order, Biden would once again bypass Congress and, in doing so, neglect the concerns of Blanding’s residents. The town would continue to lack funding for education and incur more layoffs as a result of closing the uranium mill. Furthermore, by contributing to a cycle of expanding and contracting the size
of the monument, the Biden administration would perpetuate a multitude of other problems. For example, despite a consistent flow of tourism to Bears Ears, the land would constantly be losing and regaining financial resources for upkeep and conservation, thereby undermining the purpose of designating Bears Ears as a national monument in the first place. Moreover, with the most lucrative work continuing to fluctuate between service industry jobs and jobs in the uranium, mining, or extraction industries, residents of San Juan County would never have a stable financial income that lasted more than a single president’s term. With all of these consequences in mind, the Biden administration should carefully consider its options. The beautiful, sacred land that is Bears Ears National Monument deserves some form of protection. However, instead of enacting yet another executive order that would only provide a transient safeguard and leave residents of Blanding and other small towns on the border of Bears Ears in economic uncertainty, President Biden should pass bipartisan legislation in Congress that addresses both the concerns of San Juan County residents and solidifies the protection of Bears Ears. Such legislation should include compensation to the local San Juan County government, increased funding for education, decision-making power to Indigenous tribes regarding how the land is protected, and plans to effectively train and transition laid-off workers into new jobs. President Biden has often described himself as a bipartisan compromiser, but only time will tell whether he can deliver when it comes to protecting monuments such as Bears Ears.
THE JUSTICE ISSUE
15
INTERVIEW WITH
Thomas Engelmann
Thomas Engelmann was a former high-ranking member of the Aryan Brotherhood. After Engelmann decided to permanently exit the group in 2015, two members attempted to assassinate him. He survived, but with near total loss of his sight. This catalyzed Engelmann to dedicate the remainder of his life to sobriety and antiracist volunteering. Engelmann worked to help others seeking to leave extremist groups through a process of “de-radicalization” with not-for-profit organization Life After Hate and raised awareness about the opportunities to separate from extremist groups and ideologies by speaking publicly about his experiences. Engelmann passed away in August 2020.
interview by Amelia Spalter , 21 illustration by Aliyah Nadal , 23 16
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Amelia Spalter: What circumstances led to your decision to join the Aryan Brotherhood? Thomas Engelmann: When I was 19 years old I robbed a service station and was sentenced to 15 years in prison. About two years into my prison time, I joined the Aryan Brotherhood. It wasn’t for protection or any of that other crap. I’m a pretty big guy, I can handle myself. It was mainly for family, community, and things like that, things I didn’t have. Most of my family had passed away while I was incarcerated. When you eventually left, two members of the Aryan Brotherhood attempted to assassinate you. You managed to photograph your assailants and get the photos to the police. How did you maintain such a presence of mind immediately after being shot in the face? I was so high on crystal methamphetamine that you couldn’t knock me out with a nuclear missile at that point. I’m not proud of this. I hate bringing up my drug use, because I’m so ashamed of it. What happened that day was I went outside and noticed two guys in a truck circling the block. I knew they were out of place, because it was a couple white guys, and I lived in a predominately African American neighborhood. So I got in my car and I took pictures of their truck and who was in it and all
that, as best I could. I pulled up and told them, “This is my house. You better go.” Because I thought, a couple guys circling the block in a truck, they’re probably there to rob me. But they weren’t. I got on the interstate, and then I saw they were following me. Once I realized they were following me, I hit about 110 miles an hour, to try to lose them and see if they would still follow me, and they did. I called 911. While I’m so focused on telling 911 where I’m at, I fail to look back and keep track of the guys, I get shot. I slammed on the brakes, and some guy, who I guess pulled over when he saw me crash, said, “The police are on their way.” I gave him my phone and said, “Look, I have pictures of the people who shot me. I took pictures on my phone. Here’s the code to unlock it. Please don’t let me die without the police knowing.” Then I start praying. He’s like, “Are you praying?” I said, “Yes.” He says, “Good, you need to, it’s bad.” To this day, I don’t know who that person was. I don’t know if he was an angel or what because as soon as he said, “The police are here,” he disappeared. And there’s no report of anyone having been there. You’ve talked about what a wake-up call this event was for beginning your de-radicalization process. How would you describe de-radicalization, and how did you first become involved with it? A lot of de-radicalization is exposure therapy to help the individual become sensitized to other ethnicities, cultures, and things like that. There are many different aspects that might be called for in each individual’s approach, nobody is the same. My de-radicalization happened a year after I got shot. I was finally able to go through life without any hateful rhetoric pouring through me. A lot of people going through de-radicalization are hardcore, they actually have a hate addiction. They might need a lot longer and might relapse back into that life. Hate is just like a drug. What is the most misunderstood aspect of the de-radicalization process? The most important thing to know is that de-radicalization doesn’t happen overnight. But the most misunderstood thing? Well, people need to realize that extremists who are trying to become former extremists (formers) are still human beings who deserve compassion. Society as a whole has already shunned them because of what they affiliated themselves with before, so usually want nothing to do with accepting them back into society. So many times, I see comments about, “Once a Nazi, always a Nazi.” People don’t realize that just because someone was once a neo-Nazi does not mean they can’t change. What were some of the especially challenging aspects of de-radicalizing for you,
“When you’re deradicalizing, the first thing you need to do is be completely open and vulnerable.”
(besides getting all 56 of your Swastika tattoos removed)? When you’re de-radicalizing, the first thing you need to do is be completely open and vulnerable, which is hard, because people in this area of gangs and extremist groups are very paranoid and highly defensive. So, it’s really hard to get them to open up and be willing to change integral parts of themselves enough to take in views opposite of the rhetoric they’ve been taught, by either their groups, or even just the everyday racism that can be passed down through families. I had to learn a lot of things. One of the first things I learned about was white privilege. This is going to sound kind of crazy, but I got so aggravated with my de-radicalization mentor, because she tried to tell me about white privilege. I had seen a post online explaining what white privilege was and I didn’t believe it; it made me mad. So, I asked my mentor and she’s like, “No, that post is right.” So I started to get mad at her too. But then I asked some other formers and they were all telling me the same thing, so I said, “Okay, well, maybe I need to take a step back and readjust this part of my outlook on life. Maybe this isn’t wrong, maybe it’s just something I didn’t know about.” Then, once I started to really learn about it, I was like, “How can I not have seen this before?”
Then they go to the website on the flyer, and it gets even deeper, and by the end of it, it’s extreme. But by then you’re desensitized to the material, so you’re willing to agree with these opinions, or even join an organization. Does the prevalence of “Once a Nazi, always a Nazi” stigma ever give you pause about engaging in volunteer work that reveals your past? I love my volunteer work. This is part of my healing process. This is what helps me de-radicalize. This is what helps me become a better me. The way you combat that stigma is through actions. If someone thinks you haven’t really changed, you’re never going to [convince them otherwise] through confrontation. You have to change somebody’s mind gradually through actions, like going out and doing things in the community, especially things that help fight the problems your past actions might have contributed to. That’s the biggest way that formers can show that they’re not in that group, or even in that mindset anymore. Community engagement is the biggest way you can combat stigma. Because people can talk all day, but your actions show what you’re really thinking.
What does white extremist recruiting look like on a college campus? Usually it starts with soft hits like posting flyers that say, “It’s okay to be white and proud.” Then there will be people who see it and go “Yeah, true,” so they pick it up and start reading. Before they realize it, it gets a little deeper.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
THE JUSTICE ISSUE
17
UNITED STATES
ALIEN JUSTICE
by Matthew Walsh ’23, a Political Science Concentrator and a Managing Editor for web and an Associate Editor for BPR infographics by Zeke Hertz ’23, Erika Bussmann ’22, Mehek Vohra ’24 and Daniel Navratil ’23
How a 200-year-old law remains deeply relevant for US foreign relations If you’ve ever had a Crunch Bar, there’s a chance a child slave in Côte d’Ivoire produced the cocoa. As illegal as that sounds, the question of whether US law can punish the two companies—Nestlé and Cargill—accused of aiding and abetting such slavery remains unresolved. But within the next few months, the Supreme Court will settle that question in Nestlé & Cargill v. Doe. The Court will decide if, moving forward, multinational corporations will enjoy impunity or face accountability when they violate human rights abroad. How could US courts have jurisdiction over this case, given that the abuses occurred in Côte d’Ivoire and the plaintiffs are foreigners? The answer is the Alien Tort Statute (ATS), an arcane provision of the 1789 Judiciary Act. It grants federal courts jurisdiction over “any civil action by an alien for a tort only, committed in violation of the law of nations or a treaty of the United States.” Simply put, it allows foreigners to seek relief in US courts for violations of international law. Originally conceived to safeguard the early republic’s foreign relations, the ATS has become an avant-garde tool for international human rights accountability. But there exists a tension between the ATS’s original objective and its current human rights orientation. While the statute is a promising tool for American corporate accountability, applying it to human rights violations globally would insult the sovereignty basis of international law and damage US foreign relations.
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A literal reading suggests that the ATS affords “world court” authority over international law violations, but its original formulation had more modest objectives. The 1784 Marbois-Longchamps affair in Philadelphia serves as a useful origin story of the statute. Charles Julian de Longchamps was a French adventurist with a shady, bellicose reputation who immigrated to Philadelphia. Amid a disagreement with Barbé de Marbois, a well-respected French diplomat, de Longchamps struck de Marbois with a cane. Assault of a diplomat is an unambiguous violation of the law of nations—or what we now call international law—so an inability to punish de Longchamps would communicate to the rest of the world that the early United States was not a serious player on the global stage. This issue nagged at the Constitution’s framers. Years later, Alexander Hamilton argued in Federalist No. 80 that failing to give redress to foreigners victimized by Americans would be “among the just causes of war,” and so federal courts should preside over international law claims. He proposed something resembling the ATS, and his rationale suggests that the statute’s intent was to prevent feuds from escalating into wars. At first glance, the basic fact pattern of the Nestlé & Cargill case seems to fit well with the ATS’s original vision of accountability for Americans on foreign soil. The plaintiffs, who are foreigners, are suing two American companies for committing torts, defined as inflictions of harm that merit civil damages, against them. But applying the ATS to non-American
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“While the statute is a promising tool for American corporate accountability, applying it to human rights violations globally would insult the sovereignty basis of international law and damage US foreign relations.”
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human rights violators, while tempting, is inconsistent with the law’s original vision. The first case that conferred liability under the ATS on a foreigner was Filártiga v. Peña-Irala in 1980. In Filártiga, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals found that the former Paraguayan Inspector General, who had immigrated to the United States, could be held liable for torture he committed under dictator Alfredo Stroessner. The court argued that international human rights laws against torture fall under the “law of nations” and are thus subject to ATS jurisdiction. It is hard not to celebrate the Filártiga case for holding a torturer accountable. However, the reasoning does not comport with the ATS’s original objective of protecting US foreign relations, since no one involved was a US national when the torts were committed. In fact, broad application of the ATS to foreign perpetrators could strain US relationships with other countries, since the international law system prizes sovereignty. For a human rights claim to proceed in international courts, the country of the defendant must first accept a court’s jurisdiction in writing, either ad hoc or by treaty. But subjecting a foreigner to the jurisdiction of American courts without the consent of their country of origin affronts basic principles of international law. Acknowledging this conflict, recent Supreme Court decisions have limited the ATS’s scope, but their vague language has given lower court judges considerable latitude to interpret these decisions as they wish. A recent split in circuit court interpretation led to Jesner v. Arab Bank, a Supreme Court case that decided whether Arab Bank, a Jordan-based financial institution, could be held liable for aiding and abetting terrorism abroad. In response, the Jordanian government filed an amicus brief arguing that the case was a “direct affront to its sovereignty.” Citing potential damage to foreign relations, the Supreme Court ruled that the ATS cannot apply to foreign corporations. Whether or not you believe Jordan’s argument, its brief foreshadows a world in which
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wide application of the ATS to foreign defendants draws contempt from the international community for American violations of sovereignty. Many countries already scorn the United States for its interventionist approach to foreign policy, so using the statute to give “world court” authority could draw further scrutiny. It could also invite accusations of hypocrisy, given the United States’s refusal to join the International Criminal Court and its cavalier attitude toward human rights in its wars in the Middle East. But a ruling in favor of Nestlé and Cargill could still have adverse effects by communicating to the world that American multinational corporations can abuse human rights with impunity. Therein lies the dilemma of the ATS: Applied to torts committed by Americans or American companies, it can both protect human rights and maintain amicable foreign relations. But applied to torts committed by foreigners, it can only achieve one of those two outcomes. Anyone who values human rights and the rule of law should have reason to celebrate if the Supreme Court chooses the path of corporate accountability in Nestlé & Cargill. But this ruling should not transform the ATS into an all-encompassing tool for human rights enforcement against foreigners. Expanding the ATS’s scope to compensate for the failures of international human rights courts may seem tempting, but given the importance of sovereignty in international law, wide ATS applicability will only be a scourge to US foreign relations. In the long run, it may even impede progress on human rights, as the United States could find itself with less leverage to persuade countries with poor human rights records to strengthen their enforcement mechanisms. The most sustainable path toward global human rights accountability, then, is the establishment of robust, consent-based international courts. This approach will not provide the immediate rewards that the ATS offers, but it will be more lasting, effective, and responsible. THE JUSTICE ISSUE
19
INTERVIEW WITH
Ashish K. Jha Ashish K. Jha, MD, MPH is the Dean of the Brown University School of Public Health. Before arriving at Brown last September, he served as Faculty Director of the Harvard Global Health Institute and Dean for Global Strategy at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. An expert on pandemic preparedness and health policy research, Dean Jha has been featured on CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News, among other news outlets, as a prominent voice providing insight into the global Covid-19 response. He has also been published in the popular press, including The New York Times and The Washington Post, as well as in prestigious academic journals like the New England Journal of Medicine.
interview by Sam Kolitch , 23 illustration by Aliyah Nadal , 23
20
SPRING 2021 | ISSUE 01
Sam Kolitch: You have proposed that we prioritize the vaccination of Americans over the age of 55, instead of 65, once healthcare workers and residents of long-term care facilities are vaccinated. Why? Ashish K. Jha: This pandemic has disproportionately impacted poor people and minorities, particularly African-Americans, Latinos, and Native Americans. So when it comes to vaccines, many public health professionals have thought about ways to avoid what initially happened with Covid-19 testing—where tests were made more available to wealthier white people than to other demographics. Right now, there are a lot of very complicated vaccination schemes that officials have been developing in order to create equity. While these complex schemes can be well-intentioned and well designed, they are being implemented into a society that is inequitable at its core. So what I and others have called for is a simpler system that lowers the age cutoff to 55, which is an easily enforceable approach. If you look at death by age and race, for instance, more than 90 percent of all African-Americans who have died in this pandemic are over 55. So, lowering the age to 55 will not only save as many lives as possible but it will also guarantee that people
“I think that it is never good to mislead the public for its own good. Doing so breeds mistrust.”
of color are not left behind. This will produce much greater equity than keeping the age cutoff at 65 or 75. Are you confident that the existing vaccines will effectively immunize people against the variants from the United Kingdom, Brazil, and South Africa? I am not worried about the vaccines becoming ineffective against the variant from the United Kingdom. While there is less scientific clarity on the vaccines’ effectiveness against the variants from South Africa and Brazil, all the evidence I’ve seen suggests that the vaccines will be effective against these as well. There is a larger point worth mentioning with regard to variants, though. Larger outbreaks will inevitably bring about more variants, which increases the likelihood that we’ll need to build more vaccines for specific variants. While we can build new vaccines that would be effective against variants, we would have to re-vaccinate people who had already been vaccinated—which is such a pain from a public health perspective. So we need to do the best that we can right now to mitigate the spread. Some public health experts have recently underplayed the efficacy of vaccines, citing concerns that vaccinated people who begin to ignore public health guidelines would encourage unvaccinated people to do the same. Is misleading the public—for its own benefit—a public health tactic you support? I think that it is never good to mislead the public for its own good. Doing so breeds mistrust. And once you’ve created mistrust amongst the public, public health officials have nothing to work with. On the issue of masks, I’ve gone back and done a lot of thinking about what I was saying in March of 2020. There were several times I said that I did not think masks were important. But I didn’t say this because I was worried that people would buy them and prevent hospitals from getting them. Perhaps there were some people who thought that way, but I honestly did not know in the beginning of March whether masks were going to be important based on the data. And I generally don’t tend to recommend things unless I feel I have a pretty good reason to recommend them. At this point in time, I am very frustrated with some of the underselling of the vaccines’ effectiveness. I think some public health professionals mistakenly believe that if we tell people how beneficial the vaccines are, people are going to act irresponsibly. My strategy throughout the whole pandemic has been to be as truthful as possible with people. If people are going to act irresponsibly, they don’t need my permission to do so. I am not going to trade in my credibility to try to manipulate people’s behavior. Additionally, I think the thing
“So a lot of things we care about that we consider to be ‘normal’ will begin to come back soon.”
that is driving a lot of ‘irresponsible behavior’ is hopelessness. There’s this sense that we’re in this pandemic that is awful and will never end. But we actually have things that should give people real hope based on data. So I think it’s insane if we undersell and underplay the effectiveness of the vaccines. How should dating apps adapt to the pandemic in order to decrease the chance that their platforms become superspreader tools? I can certainly imagine somebody in July, when the majority of Americans are hopefully vaccinated, saying that they would not date somebody who is not vaccinated because it is too risky. So six months from now, it would be completely plausible for dating apps to include people’s vaccination status in their online profiles. The tricky part would be how to authenticate this, since the companies and their users obviously do not want people to be able to lie about their status. But this can quickly become a privacy issue: Should people’s vaccination status be collectable and available to platforms? When can we expect to resume activities that we once considered normal? What activities, Sam? That’s the entire question! This is such a major, catastrophic public health
event. If you’re asking me when I think life will go back to how it was in 2019, my response would be that it could be years. Sometimes pandemics can change life forever. But hold on a moment, because what I just said is depressing and is not the point. Personally, what I want to do is to be able to see my friends and my family. I want to be able to give my parents a hug. I want to invite friends of mine over for dinner, which I have not done since last March. I want to go out to dinner. Once you begin to ask yourself specific questions about what you want to accomplish in light of the pandemic, the answers are much easier to achieve. There is a small chance I may be wrong, but I am willing to bet dollars to doughnuts that I am going to be able to comfortably host a backyard barbecue at my house on July 4 with twenty people—and no masks. This is a little bold, but let me be very clear: I’m going to make sure that all of those people are vaccinated. Implicit in this scenario is that by July, anyone who wants a vaccine will be able to get one. Would I have twenty people inside my house for a dinner party on July 4? This would feel a little less comfortable for me, but it’s possible that this could happen by the end of the summer. So a lot of things we care about that we consider to be “normal” will begin to come back soon. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. THE JUSTICE ISSUE
21
UNITED STATES
How doulas can mitigate the effects of medical sexism and racism
by Zander Blitzer ’22.5, a History and Early Modern World concentrator and Editor in Chief for BPR illustration by Sophia G. Foulkes ’22
Delivery Room Advocacy
The internet is littered with harrowing stories of childbirth gone awry. In The New York Times, Tara Haelle chronicles Tamoyia Hashim’s experience with her third child, in which she lost three quarts of blood and needed a hysterectomy. A. Rochaun Meadows-Fernandez similarly wrote in The Washington Post about post-birth complications that nearly killed her. What do these stories have in common? These women had no one to champion their needs in the delivery room and subsequently became advocates for doula presence during labor. Each year, 700 women die in the United States as the result of pregnancy or delivery complications. The United States has the worst maternal mortality rate in the global North, and it is also the only country where this rate is still rising. A staggering 135 women per day endure traumatic and life-threatening complications during and after childbirth, including extensive blood loss and permanent infertility. The numbers are more shocking still when accounting for racial disparities. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report that the pregnancy-related mortality rate for Black, American-Indian, and Alaska Native women older than 30 is four to five times higher than it is for white women. Heartbreakingly, almost two-thirds of these pregnancy-related deaths are preventable. Doulas are one essential component in combatting this maternal mortality crisis. Most basically, a doula is a pregnant woman’s advisor, a laboring mother’s advocate, and a parent’s guide to taking care of a newborn. Beyond offering critical emotional support, doulas can have a significant
“Studies have shown that doulas are especially equipped to aid low-income and Black women, as they are uniquely capable of minimizing the impact of medical racism by recognizing bias and providing culturally sensitive, patient-centered advocacy.” 22
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impact on facilitating positive birth outcomes and improving laboring mothers’ experiences. Numerous studies have shown that working with a doula leads to fewer birth complications, greater success with breastfeeding, and a decrease in the length of labor. Further, the presence of a doula has been shown to lower rates of cesarean deliveries, a surgical procedure which can cost twice as much as a vaginal birth. Considering the crisis of maternal mortality in the United States, which is deeply intertwined with medical racism and sexism, reimbursing doula services for Medicaid beneficiaries is one small step toward achieving reproductive justice for all. Hiring a doula is one way to navigate a medical system in which a woman’s pain is taken less seriously than a man’s. In comparison to men, the
average woman experiences longer wait times in emergency rooms, decreased access to pain medication, and dismissal of symptoms by health professionals. In fact, physicians often belittle women’s pain, in some cases telling patients that they are fabricating their discomfort or that it is “a normal part of being a woman.” Doulas can help mitigate the effects of this kind of medical sexism, which are especially acute for minority women, by advocating for the mother in the delivery room and ensuring that her pain is taken seriously. Beyond these valuable health-related impacts, working with doulas is associated with cost savings for private insurance companies and state Medicaid programs. Because doulas significantly decrease rates of cesarean deliveries, they simultaneously help to circumvent preventable deaths
women; the state would also likely save money due to a lower predicted rate of cesarean procedures among laboring mothers. Rhode Island would be only the fourth state to expand Medicaid coverage to include doulas, following the lead of Indiana, Oregon, and Minnesota. This is an opportunity for Rhode Island to establish itself as a leader in the reproductive rights sphere, potentially prompting its liberal neighbors to follow suit. This measure is particularly necessary in Rhode Island because the state legislature spends a staggering 23.4 percent of its budget on Medicaid, a larger allocation than any state except New York. Though recent reports have concluded that outsized spending on Medicaid overall is a “worthwhile investment,” with nearly one-third of Rhode Island residents served by the program,
“Most basically, a doula is a pregnant woman’s advisor, a laboring mother’s advocate, and a new parent’s guide to taking care of a newborn.” and save costs for mothers. Critically, however, the costs of hiring a doula are high, ranging from about $800 to $2,500 , and not all insurace companies will pay for a doula. Due to this significant financial barrier, doulas represent one of the fundamental challenges to reproductive justice: access. Because of the ways in which doulas improve a woman’s laboring experience, their services must be made readily accessible, particularly to women of color. Studies have shown that doulas are especially equipped to aid low-income and Black women, as they are uniquely capable of minimizing the impact of medical racism by recognizing bias and providing culturally sensitive, patient-centered advocacy. However, doulas can be cost prohibitive. While some women can pay for doulas out of pocket without worrying about the expense, low-income women often struggle to afford these services. Though local nonprofit organizations sometimes fill these gaps, coverage under Medicaid is necessary to make sure all women are able to access this vital resource. Rhode Island is currently considering a bill that would require that doula services be eligible for reimbursement throughout the state under private insurance and Medicaid. The bill, entitled “The Rhode Island Doula Reimbursement Act,” previously passed unanimously in the State Senate. It is a huge step forward for low-income women who may otherwise be unable to access a doula and are therefore at an inordinately high risk of experiencing severe complications during labor. This bill, however, would not only benefit these
any opportunity to decrease expenditures and route savings to other programs would certainly be welcome. The Rhode Island Doula Reimbursement Act must be passed as soon as possible, and other states must follow suit in order to ensure that all women have access to physical, emotional, and informational support before, during, and after childbirth, regardless of their income. Doulas are indispensable in helping women navigate the daunting, confusing, and sometimes violating process of giving birth. They are especially valuable for women who are already predisposed to face disadvantages in our medical system due to racism and sexism. Though doulas are poised to mend critical disparities in maternal health, they alone cannot fix inequities in the health system. Standing up for the rights of pregnant women must go beyond the delivery room and extend into other spheres of advocacy related to disproportionate access to housing, lack of nutritious food, deficient public transportation systems, inadequate sexual education, and even voter suppression. Nonetheless, by investing in doulas as a means of helping pregnant women—especially low-income women and women of color—access support systems that assist in the pre- and post-partum processes, policymakers can contribute to a more equitable healthcare system. Editor's Note: If you are interested in getting involved with advocacy around this bill, please contact Zander at alexandra_blitzer@brown.edu
THE JUSTICE ISSUE
23
26 The race for a Covid-19 vaccine is over. But with intellectual property rights inhibiting global inoculation, does anyone really win? A Generic Solution
by Gabe Merkel
30 Most of the world has recognized a child’s constitutional right to education. Why haven’t we? The Great Equalizer
by Justin Barlas
Special Feature:
Justice
32 Ninety-six percent of Venezuelan households live in poverty yet few qualify for asylum status in America: The economic refugees abandoned by US asylum policy. The Wretched Refused
by Sarah Roberts
34 Cyber-vigilantes have used the practice of doxxing to take down racists and identify domestic terrorists. But what happens when victims of doxxing are not white supremacists or violent criminals, but society’s most vulnerable? Twitter, Don’t Do Your Thing
by Chaelin Jung
36 “No promo homo” laws have long enshrined state-sanctioned homophobia in public school curriculums. Their grip on the wellbeing of LGBTQ+ youth might finally be loosening. Over the Rainbow
by Andrew Steinberg
SPECIAL FEATURE | JUSTICE
26
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A GENERIC SOLUTION by Gabe Merkel ’23, an intended International and Public Affairs concentrator and Chief of Staff for BPR illustrations by Nicholas Edwards ’23
Since the Covid-19 pandemic began in early 2020, Americans have considered vaccines to be their ticket back to normalcy. Pharmaceutical companies like Pfizer, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson quickly became household names as the entire world followed the top vaccine candidates and their race through clinical trials. By January 2021, just 10 months after Covid-19 was declared a pandemic, widespread inoculation had begun in the United States. For Americans, this signaled the beginning of the end to this difficult and deeply isolating time in our nation’s history, but for dozens of developing countries around the globe, relief is nowhere in sight. While many wealthy countries are on track to vaccinate large swaths of their citizens by the spring or summer of 2021, some developing countries still do not know if or when they will receive the vaccine. By the end of January, over 90 million vaccine doses had been administered worldwide; only 25 of those doses were administered in sub-Saharan Africa, a region with over 1 billion people. According to research conducted by the People’s Vaccine Alliance, nearly 70 low-income nations will only be able
to vaccinate 10 percent of their population in 2021. This unequal distribution of vaccine doses is a moral failing, a public health crisis, and an economic catastrophe. The only way to vaccinate a larger portion of the world on an acceptable timeline is to increase manufacturing across the globe. Luckily, there is a way to do this: Suspend intellectual property rights and allow companies to produce generic vaccines. In October 2020, South Africa and India put forward a proposal to the World Trade Organization (WTO) to exempt member countries from the obligation to enforce patent rights, trade secrets, and pharmaceutical monopolies under the WTO’s Agreement on Trade-Related Intellectual Property Rights, known as TRIPs. This proposal would allow countries with unused manufacturing capacity to produce vaccines, bringing additional doses to market and into people’s arms more quickly. It received widespread enthusiasm, with over 100 of the 164 member countries in support. Given that the WTO generally makes decisions on consensus, the proposal failed. It was opposed by the United States, Canada, the
Suspension of patent rights for Covid-19 vaccines could save millions of lives
European Union, Britain, and others, nearly all of which are wealthy countries with existing and robust contracts with vaccine manufacturers. According to spokespeople from these countries, suspending intellectual property rights to manufacture vaccines and treatments during the pandemic would stifle innovation and undermine existing efforts to combat Covid-19. A representative for the UK mission to the WTO called the proposal “an extreme measure to address an unproven problem.” What US and UK trade officials fail to understand, though, is that the unequal distribution of vaccines is not just a problem for developing countries. According to researchers at Northeastern University, the widening inoculation gap between developed and developing countries will extend the pandemic for everyone, and the current monopolization of vaccines by rich countries is projected to cause twice as many deaths as a plan for global distribution of vaccines would. If international travel returns to near pre-pandemic levels before every country has vaccinated large portions of their populations, people with Covid19 from countries with low vaccination rates
“While many wealthy countries are on track to vaccinate large swaths of their citizens by the spring or summer of 2021, some developing countries still do not know if or when they will receive the vaccine.” THE JUSTICE ISSUE
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SPECIAL FEATURE | JUSTICE will inevitably travel to countries like the United States, disrupting progress toward herd immunity. As the media and public health officials love to say: “No one is safe until everyone is safe.” This risk is even more severe with the emergence of new Covid-19 strains around the world. While the vaccines on the market offer some protection against all of the identified variants currently, recent clinical trial data suggests that most vaccines are less effective against some of the new strains, especially the one originating in South Africa. If the virus is allowed to continue to spread and mutate in developing countries, there is a reasonable chance that eventually a variant will emerge that is resistant to the lauded protection offered by vaccines. In that worst case scenario, the entire global population might have to endure more lockdowns until vaccinations for the new variant become available. Unless the virus is prevented from spreading from person to person—which can only be achieved through widespread, global inoculation—the risks of vaccine-eluding variants arising will remain a concern. While public health has been and should continue to be the chief concern for governments around the world fighting Covid-19, it is worth considering how unequal vaccine distribution will impact the global economy. According to a recent study from the National Bureau of Academic Research, in a scenario in which wealthy countries are mostly or fully vaccinated by the end of June and poor countries are mostly boxed out, the global economy would suffer losses upward of $9 trillion. While these losses would be felt everywhere, the majority would be felt by wealthy countries. Selva Demiralp, one of the authors of the study and a former economist at the Federal
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Reserve, echoes the sentiments reflected in the idea that no one is safe until everyone is, stating that “no economy will be fully recovered unless the other economies are recovered.” While the WTO proposal has clear advantages, especially during the Covid-19 pandemic, it is important to recognize the possible ulterior motives of the countries pushing this plan. The proposal would require vaccine producers like Pfizer and Moderna to release information on their confidential processes for drug production to the benefit of the generic drug manufacturing industry. Generic drug companies could then mass-manufacture vaccines, directly competing with the companies that developed the vaccines in the first place. India, one of the proposal’s
“If the virus is allowed to continue to spread and mutate in developing countries, there is a reasonable chance that eventually a variant will emerge that is resistant to the lauded protection offered by vaccines.”
sponsors, is the leading exporter of generic drugs in the world. South Africa, the proposal’s other sponsor, is also a leader in this industry and is home to Aspen, one of the world’s top generic drug manufacturers. Certainly, it would be naïve to suggest that South Africa and India are just looking out for developing countries with their proposal. In reality, their domestic pharmaceutical industries would greatly benefit from this change now and in the future. It is likely that India and South Africa’s economic motivations for sponsoring the WTO proposal have deterred wealthy countries from backing it. If the proposal were passed, demand for vaccines from companies like Pfizer and Moderna would decrease as other sellers (e.g. Indian and South African companies) entered
the market. While many US vaccine companies received federal funding for vaccine development, these companies also invested billions of their own dollars into research and development for their vaccine candidates. It is impossible to know right now how suspending intellectual property rights for vaccines would impact the sales of leading vaccine producers, and in the event that it cuts into their profits, it is possible that doing so would disincentivize them from moving as quickly on vaccine production in the future. That said, given that many of these companies are expected to make north of $10 billion in sales based on existing contracts, Covid-19 vaccines will still be an extremely lucrative product for pharmaceutical companies even if generic vaccines were to cut into their market. In addition, the positive press and goodwill resulting from developing effective vaccines will stick with these companies for years to come. This could enable them to effectively lobby against government regulation and may increase their sales of other drugs. Even if pharmaceutical companies lose a few billion dollars in sales to generic vaccines, governments could choose to compensate them for their lost profits in order to incentivize future innovation. With people’s health and future vaccine profits at stake, neither governments nor the companies themselves would want big pharma to delay vaccine development during the next pandemic. In the present day, however, South Africa and India’s WTO proposal is unlikely to pass, leaving the world’s most vulnerable countries to fend for themselves in a devastating pandemic that surely requires global cooperation.
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The Great Equalizer How a constitutional right to education could save our schools
by Justin Barlas ’23, an Applied Mathematics-Computer Science and Urban Studies concentrator and an Interviews Associate for BPR illustration by Jocelyn Salim ’23
The word “education” appears in the constitutions of 185 of the 193 recognized states in the world. Of the eight countries that do not designate education as a fundamental constitutional right, all but one are subject to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, which recognizes a child’s right to education. Standing alone as the one country that has not ratified this Convention is the United States. Despite having ratified the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which recognizes that “everyone has the right to education,” the United States does not guarantee its citizens a constitutional right to education. The exclusion of the right to education in the US Constitution is at odds with the country’s long history of recognizing the social importance of education. Horace Mann, a 19th century pioneer of American public schools, called education “the great equalizer.” He recognized that education is not only a key contributing factor to economic and social mobility but also a vital prerequisite to participation in a functioning democracy. Given the power of education in fostering social and political change, the US Constitution must recognize this fundamental federal right. Owing in part to the lack of federal legislation concerning educational equity, some education reformers have pursued legal remedies to combat educational inequities. Ideally, a federal right to education would be recognized through a Supreme Court ruling, though the Supreme 30
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“Despite...recogniz[ing] that ‘everyone has the right to education,’ the United States does not guarantee its citizens a constitutional right to education.”
“At one school in the district, a math teacher quit near the beginning of the year due to frustrations with a lack of support from the administration and unreasonably large class sizes. He was subsequently replaced with the highestperforming eighth grade student.”
Court rejected such a notion in the 1973 case of San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez. In Rodriguez, the plaintiffs argued that the unequal distribution of funds amongst Texas school districts violated the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause because the funding system created unequal access to education based on a student’s district. The Supreme Court ruled 5-4 against this claim, reasoning that education is not a protected right given its absence from the Constitution. The Court did, however, suggest that some judicial intervention in education might be necessary. Since the Rodriguez ruling, reformers have continued the legal fight for the right to education, though they have had to approach the issue in new and creative ways. The case of Gary B. v. Whitmer was filed in 2016 in the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals by students from five different schools over the abysmal conditions in the Detroit Public School District, which suffered from decaying buildings, poor teacher retention, and near-zero proficiency rates in all subject areas. At one school in the district, a math teacher quit near the beginning of the year due to frustrations with the lack of support from the administration and unreasonably large class sizes. He was subsequently replaced with the highest-performing eighth grade student. The plaintiffs claimed that these conditions violated their fundamental right to education, including their right to literacy, granted under the 14th Amendment of the Constitution. In a landmark shift from the Supreme Court’s ruling in Rodriguez, the three-judge Sixth Circuit panel affirmed that the Constitution affords students a fundamental right to education and sent the case back to trial. The case was then set to be reheard by the
full Sixth Circuit Court, where the panel’s decision seemed likely to be overturned. However, Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer reached a settlement with the students before the rehearing. The settlement led to a Sixth Circuit vote that vacated the panel’s decision, thereby tossing out the possibility of establishing legal precedent for the constitutional right to an education. Nevertheless, Gary B. v. Whitmer paved the way for Cook v. Raimondo, in which plaintiffs argued that students have a right to a civics education. In this 2018 class action lawsuit filed against the State of Rhode Island, 14 student plaintiffs claimed that the State of Rhode Island was not equipping them with the necessary skills to carry out their civic responsibilities. A year after the case was filed, the Johns Hopkins Institute for Education Policy released a 93-page report on the Providence Public School District. This report quantified the plaintiffs’ claims, describing deteriorating buildings, an atmosphere in which students and teachers felt unsafe, and little measurable student learning. District Court Judge William Smith reluctantly dismissed the case on October 13, 2020, on the grounds that the Constitution does not grant his court the power to rectify this flaw in the education system. With cases like Gary B. v. Whitmer and Cook v. Raimondo, it is clear that conversations surrounding the federal right to education are garnering public support. Accepting education as a constitutional right would surely prompt a slew of legal questions. However, taking the steps to answer these questions is not only worthwhile but necessary for the United States to ensure a well-educated citizenry in the future.
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THE WRETCHED REFUSED “Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.” Today, US asylum policy is a far cry from the open approach described in Emma Lazarus’s poem inscribed on the bottom of the Statue of Liberty, a universal symbol of justice and freedom. The United Nations, via the 1951 Refugee Convention and the 1967 Protocol, defines a refugee as a person who is “unable or unwilling to return to his or her home country, and cannot obtain protection in that country, due to past persecution or a well-founded fear of being persecuted in the future on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion.” The United States Congress incorporated this definition into US immigration law in the Refugee Act of 1980. This definition includes an omission with alarming implications: There exists no legal basis for asylum for those suffering from economic persecution in their home country. Modifying this
by Sarah Roberts ’24, an intended Philosophy concentrator and an Associate Editor for BPR infographics by Ashley Cai ’25, Gaya Gupta ’23, Erika Bussmann ’22, and Jingyu Feng ’23
How US asylum policy has failed Venezuelan economic refugees
Inflation in Venezuela Apartment
Utilities
Cup of coffee Minimum monthly income: 800K Bolivars ($3.22 USD)
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definition to include refugees fleeing large-scale economic devastation comparable to that caused by war is a moral imperative for the United States. The current Venezuelan refugee crisis illustrates the need for this policy change. According to the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), there are seven million people in need of humanitarian assistance in Venezuela along with 5.4 million Venezuelan migrants and refugees worldwide, making this one of the largest displacement crises in world history. The economic collapse in Venezuela stands out because it was not triggered by foreign conflict or civil unrest. Rather, it was manufactured by those in positions of political power. The incompetent and corrupt administrations of deceased former President Hugo Chávez and his successor, dictator Nicolás Maduro, have wrecked businesses and livelihoods, triggered exponential inflation, and brought the entire country to its knees. As the country’s economy plummeted, public services collapsed and most Venezuelans were forced to sustain themselves on only a few pounds of flour and animal fat per month. Venezuela's hyperinflation reached 10 million percent in 2019, resulting in the longest period of inflation since the crisis in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in the 1990s. The annual inflation rate lowered to a still-absurd 2,665 percent in January of 2021. This situation has rendered 96 percent of Venezuelan households impoverished and forced 79 percent of households into extreme poverty. Although the Venezuelan crisis is not the result of conventional war or conflict, the conditions Venezuelans face daily are not much different from those in active war zones. To find similar levels of economic devastation, economists can only point to countries ravaged by
armed conflicts, such as Syria, Iraq, or Nigeria. It is estimated that the drop in Venezuela’s economy under Maduro represents the steepest economic decline in any country not at war in the past 50 years. Hospitals struggle to provide basic services to the malnourished. Unemployed individuals scavenge through dumpsters for scraps of food and pieces of plastic. According to the World Justice Project’s Rule of Law Index for 2020, Venezuela now ranks last in its adherence to the rule of law, including for its restrictions on law enforcement, government powers, and criminal justice. Therefore, the refugees fleeing Venezuela should be afforded protections that align with the severity of the devastation. Accepting economic refugees into the US is not just a moral decision but an economically beneficial one. When denied legal admission to the United States, most refugees do not return home. Instead, they remain in the country as undocumented individuals, forced to obtain jobs illegally and endure workplaces that violate health codes and minimum wage laws. Despite attempts to enforce sanctions against these refugees, employers continue to hire undocumented refugees, as they tend to work for lower wages than American citizens and accept jobs that Americans refuse. The constant fear of deportation also restricts undocumented refugees in both their daily activities and in their ability to fully contribute to the US economy. In fact, the average adult refugee pays about $128,689 in taxes over their first 20 years in the United States—$21,324 more than the US government’s average per-refugee spending over the same time period. Because the current categorization of Venezuelans as economic refugees makes it nearly impossible for them to obtain refugee status in the United States, the country is largely missing out on such contributions. Despite the moral and economic imperatives of addressing one of the worst displacement crises in modern history, the US response has been inadequate. So far, the bulk of hosting responsibilities has fallen on regional neighbors, with the three largest recipients being Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru. Despite the extent of humanitarian need, these countries have received little support from the international community or from the US government. In recent years, other South and Central American countries like Panama, Costa Rica, and Argentina have become some of the primary receivers of Venezuelan refugees. Although the US has taken in about three times as many Venezuelans as Panama, its population is 75 times Panama’s. Part of this discrepancy is due to Panama’s cultural and geographic proximity to Venezuela, but that does not even come close to rationalizing the disproportionately low number of Venezuelans allowed into the United States.
“Today, US asylum policy is a far cry from the open approach described in Emma Lazarus’s poem inscribed on the bottom of the Statue of Liberty, a universal symbol of justice and freedom.” Although US refugee legislation would improve if measures such as Temporary Protected Status and Extended Voluntary Departure were extended to Venezuelans, these laws would nevertheless fail to provide an adequate remedy for asylum seekers. Most economic refugees, such as those fleeing Venezuela, cannot prove that they have a legitimate fear of persecution. The label “economic refugee” is often inaccurate and does not adequately describe the struggles these groups face. Venezuelans, and other groups like them, must be protected just as much as individuals who can prove political persecution. In order to effectively achieve these long-term protective measures, the United States must broaden the definition of a refugee to include those who are fleeing from destroyed economies but who cannot meet the criteria for persecution under its current interpretation. Because of the existing legal distinction between economic and political refugees, those fleeing Venezuela seldom fall within the scope of existing asylum statutes. Ordinarily, if a person flees their country for economic reasons, they are not considered to be a de jure refugee, or a person unable to return to their homeland. However, this approach lacks rationality. A person may be deprived of basic living necessities in their home country at levels comparable to war, yet still not qualify for asylum status. Therefore, the United States must alter the eligibility for asylum seekers to include those escaping economic oppression to better aid and accommodate those fleeing Venezuela and other future economic collapses. This change in legislation would likely be accompanied by a large uptick in refugees. However, it would certainly be worthwhile in establishing the United States as a leader in ethical asylum reform while addressing the problems facing economic refugees that have been ignored for far too long.
Total number of Venezuelan asylum seekers vs. number granted asylum in the US
800,000
600,000
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Total number of Venezuelan asylum seekers Venezuelans granted asylum in the US
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SPECIAL FEATURE | JUSTICE
Twitter, Don't Do Your Thing Anti-Doxxing legislation is urgently needed to stop this out-of-control practice by Chaelin Jung ’23, an Economics and International and Public Affairs Concentrator and a Staff Writer for BPR illustrations by Brenda Rodriguez ’21
“As a defining privacy concern of the internet era, doxxing poses a unique threat to women and minority communities and warrants the adoption of targeted legislation.”
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On a sleepy Monday night right after Christmas, a post surfaced in a Facebook group frequented by conservatives in the town of Parker, Colorado: “Every day in our group I’ll be posting the name and address of unelected, non-law enforcement officers who think they can flex muscles in business. We’ll see how strong they are at their homes.” The post, referencing the two officials at the state’s Department of Public Health and Environment who were largely responsible for Covid-19related business closures, was written by Mark Hall, co-chair of the Parker Republicans. Alongside a disclaimer that he was not advocating for violence, he wrote: “Take this information and make your own decisions.” Following a deluge of backlash, he apologized the next day. Hall’s publication of specific individuals’ private information is an example of a digital practice known as “doxxing,” which originated in the 1990s with the rise of hacker culture. Doxxing became lingo for publicly dropping “docs,” or
documents with personal information, as a form of revenge. In a year consumed by a raging pandemic, a boiling summer of long overdue action on racial injustice, and a seditious storming of the US Capitol, social media platforms cemented themselves as centers of discourse and information. In our political and cultural zeitgeist, terms like “deplatforming,” “cancel culture,” and “doxxing” have come to the forefront. While doxxing has mostly remained on the fringes of mainstream digital practice, it has become oddly bipartisan in its use. Just as a public health official’s home address might be disseminated by a conservative flaying mask mandates, an incoming college student might have her admission offer revoked after an old video full of derogatory slurs is circulated online. At face value, this may seem like a flawed comparison: Of course, people should be held accountable for past racist statements, while public health officials trying to curb a deadly pandemic should be protected. If doxxing becomes increasingly popular as a form
of digital engagement, however, no one stands to gain. As a defining privacy concern of the internet era, doxxing poses a unique threat to women and minority communities and warrants the adoption of targeted legislation. Doxxing as a digital practice is not limited to Facebook posts in private groups or tweets seen by a limited audience. The same month that Hall exhorted his followers to “make [their] own decisions,” a New York Post article was published profiling a paramedic who was selling content on OnlyFans, a popular subscription platform for sex workers, to supplement her income during the pandemic. The article included her name and EMS company, despite her request for anonymity. The Post’s article was lambasted online, notably by Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY14), who has been doxxed herself. By digitally linking the paramedic’s name, photos, social media handles, and workplace, the Post article not only violated journalistic standards of ethics, but also infringed on her explicit requests for privacy. While liberals and conservatives alike might be victimized by doxxing, individuals from historically marginalized backgrounds bear the brunt of the security concern. Thirty-five percent of Americans who report online harassment attribute it to their race, religion, gender, or sexual identity. In “Gamergate,” a watershed moment of gender-based cyberharassment, several women in the video game industry were doxxed, hacked, and threatened with rape and murder, forcing them to flee their homes. In another devastating example, online vigilantes on Reddit speculated that a missing Indian-American student at Brown University, Sunil Tripathi, was one of the Boston Marathon bombers after the FBI released grainy surveillance video of the attack. His information was doxxed, his home was flanked by news vans, and his family members’ cell phones were barraged with calls from strangers demanding justice. A week later, police found Tripathi’s body near India Point Park in the Seekonk River. Unbeknownst to both his family and Reddit users, Tripathi had committed suicide prior to the accusations. Doxxing, however, is not to be conflated with using the internet as a measure of accountability. The sleuthing prowess of the internet can undoubtedly be harnessed for good: After domestic terrorists besieged the US Capitol in January, the FBI relied on the public to help identify individuals who participated. The unprecedented connectivity of users on social media allowed for the rapid collection of rioters, names, hometowns, and workplaces. Several individuals lost their jobs, with employers quick to release statements condemning the violence and distancing themselves from the mire. Anti-doxxing initiatives do not have to sacrifice this potential.
Indeed, the goal of anti-doxxing legislation should not be to “cancel” cancel culture, but rather to implement legal safeguards that distinguish between information shared for transparency or accountability reasons and information shared as a result of malicious intent. Congress has been slow to consider legislation banning doxxing, consistent with its general pace and approach to issues of online policy. Given the limited purview of Congress’s authority on state matters, the push for anti-doxxing laws will likely need to come from state legislatures. In January 2021, Nebraska State Senator Adam Morfeld introduced legislation that would criminalize the posting of identifying information with the intent of promoting or participating in the bodily injury, stalking, or death of the victim, or that which is perpetrated with “reckless disregard” for such potential harm. In addition to the provisions included in the Nebraska bill, prospective laws should distinguish between the release of public versus private information. For example, the law should not protect someone who posts racist epithets on a public Twitter
account from having his or her name reposted. However, the law might prohibit the publication of his children’s names, schools, and addresses, which are likely to have been obtained illicitly. Such boundaries are admittedly nebulous, especially when the resulting harm is economic or psychological in nature. However, such laws would make doxxing akin to free speech or libel matters, allowing courts to adjudicate disputes that arise over intent and method. The cancel culture war, waged most fiercely in the trenches of the internet, is only just beginning. Amidst a national reckoning on anti-Black racism, a misinformation maelstrom that brought the US Capitol to its knees, and a deepening partisan rift, the desire to hold people accountable will and should be part of our discourse. Nevertheless, we must seriously pause and evaluate what it would mean to unleash digital detectives to hunt for the most private and vulnerable pieces of people’s lives in an effort to punish perceived wrongs—and consider whether such retributive “justice” is even justice at all.
“…social media platforms [have] cemented themselves as centers of discourse and information. In our political and cultural zeitgeist, terms like “deplatforming,” “cancel culture,” and “doxxing” have come to the forefront.”
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OVER THE RAINBOW The future of no promo homo laws in public education
by Andrew Steinberg ’22, an International and Public Affairs concentrator and a Staff Writer for BPR illustration by Katie Fliegel ’21
“Queer people exist in the rural South,” Annabeth Mellon told NBC News while describing her experience as a bisexual student in the Alabama public school system. “The rest of the world wants to forget about that fact, because [the South is] a ‘lost cause,’ but that thinking is what allows ‘no promo homo’ laws to remain in existence.” As of March 2021, six states have “no promo homo” laws, which limit discussions of homosexuality in public schools. For example, Texas and Alabama require teachers to tell students that homosexuality “is not a lifestyle acceptable to the general public” during sexual education classes. While these laws—which also exist in Mississippi, Louisiana, South Carolina, and Oklahoma—mostly apply to sexual education, many teachers and administrators misinterpret them to justify banning Gay-Straight Alliances (GSAs) and LGBTQ+ inclusive curricula. Although no promo homo laws do not explicitly target transgender students, muddled understandings can cause educators to believe the statutes apply to them as well. However, hope is on the horizon. Despite no promo homo laws’ decades-long reign, they have become increasingly vulnerable due to changing legal precedent and statewide litigation. Therefore, organized legal suits and threats to withdraw federal education funds from states with no promo homo laws could maximize pressure to repeal these unjust policies. No promo homo laws proliferated in two distinct eras. First, in the 1980s, fears over HIV/AIDS led to the expansion of sexual education in public schools. In response to this trend, religious conservatives lobbied for anti-gay provisions in the curricula. Second, the 1990s ushered in a new era of state-sanctioned homophobia, namely through the Defense of Marriage Act, which established the federal definition of marriage as a union between a man and a woman, further legitimizing no promo homo laws. Today, across the United States, conservative Christian 36
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organizations defend these laws as necessary to uphold “family values,” arguing that if schools discuss homosexuality, they will “indoctrinate” children to think it is acceptable. The popularity of these beliefs among legislators’ constituents has incentivized them to support these laws. Since their inception, no promo homo laws have wreaked havoc on the lives of LGBTQ+ students. In 2018, the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN), a LGBTQ+ rights advocacy group, conducted a survey which demonstrated that LGBTQ+ students in states with these laws face “more hostile school environments and have less access to the resources and support [that are] crucial to their safety, well-being, and academic success.” Not only do LGBTQ+ youth in states with no promo homo laws experience more harassment and assault than their peers in other states, but students that harm LGBTQ+ students are also less likely to face punishment. This lower likelihood can be attributed to a disconnect between school faculty and LGBTQ+ students that makes both groups less likely to report bullying. This rift also means that in no promo homo states, students are less likely to have access to GSAs. These clubs create safe and supportive environments for LGBTQ+ students, yet they often cannot exist without school support. Finally, the negative effects of these laws manifest in students’ academic outcomes, as LGBTQ+ students’ grades suffer when they are in toxic environments and cannot see themselves positively reflected in school curricula.
“By requiring states to abolish no promo homo laws to continue receiving federal education funds, state legislators would be forced to choose between substandard education for their constituents and compromising their anti-LGBTQ+ views, pressuring them to choose the latter.”
“...in addition to enacting laws that ban discrimination and bullying based on sexual orientation and gender identity, civil rights organizations should pressure state governments to embrace LGBTQ+ inclusive curricula in public schools.” Despite the persistence of no promo homo laws, changing legal precedent has left them more vulnerable than ever before. State legislatures have ceded to lawsuits challenging the constitutionality of these laws since the Supreme Court ruled in Lawrence v. Texas (2003) and Obergefell v. Hodges (2015) that most explicit anti-gay laws are unconstitutional under the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause. For example, in 2016, the civil rights organization Equality Utah filed a lawsuit against the Utah State Board of Education to overturn a statute banning public school teachers from engaging in the “advocacy of homosexuality.” A year later, the legislature and governor proactively nixed the law, knowing that they would lose in court. In Arizona, a similar suit compelled the legislature to invalidate a law that prohibited HIV/AIDS-related “instruction which…[promoted] a homosexual lifestyle.” When civil rights groups sued the South Carolina state government over a 1988 law making it illegal for teachers to discuss “alternate sexual lifestyles from heterosexual relationships,” a US District Court found the law unconstitutional under the 14th Amendment. These lawsuits remain a low risk, high reward strategy; the courts are the most efficient way to undo such statutes and prevent their reinstatement. A national campaign to pass a hybrid version of the Safe Schools Improvement Act (SSIA) and Student Non-Discrimination Act (SNDA) should accompany this legal strategy. The SSIA would amend the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) to require school districts in states receiving federal ESEA funds to adopt anti-bullying policies covering sexual orientation and gender identity. The SNDA would explicitly bar public schools from discriminating against LGBTQ+ students, prohibit retaliation for filing a civil rights complaint, and allow federal authorities to address discrimination. By requiring states to abolish no promo homo laws to continue receiving federal education funds, state legislators would be forced to choose between substandard education for their constituents and compromising their anti-LGBTQ+ views, pressuring them to choose the latter. Analogous tactics have succeeded in influencing state governments to raise alcohol consumption ages and implement
seatbelt legislation, and they would likely be similarly effective in defeating no promo homo laws. The repeal of no promo homo laws, however, will not immediately create a positive environment for LGBTQ+ students. Policymakers must not only ensure the absence of harm, but also the presence of a culture that affirms LGBTQ+ identities. Therefore, in addition to enacting laws that ban discrimination and bullying based on sexual orientation and gender identity, civil rights organizations should pressure state governments to embrace LGBTQ+ inclusive curricula in public schools. For example, in 2011, California required public schools to use textbooks that were “inclusive of, and affirm, the contributions of LGBTQ+ people.” While these policies cannot occur until no promo homo laws are repealed, they are necessary to address the “culture of violence and degradation” that contributes to these laws in the first place. The era of no promo homo laws must come to an end. Although the nation has made immense progress, we must heed Mellon’s words, never consider any part of the country a “lost cause,” and use every option at our disposal to dismantle these unjust policies. Such laws prevent schools from serving as welcoming environments in which LGBTQ+ youth can learn and grow. We must, however, do more than return to the norm before the existence of no promo homo laws. Once state lawsuits and national campaigns succeed in abolishing these laws, we must demand that schools take proactive steps to support LGBTQ+ students. It is up to all of us to build back better.
This article was written before the passage of the Equality Act through the US House of Representatives, which occurred on February 25, 2021. The Equality Act prohibits discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity in programs that receive federal funding, such as public schools. It would therefore undermine states' ability to keep their no promo homo laws by attaching federal funds to compliance with a revised Civil Rights Act of 1964. However, if it cannot pass through the Senate, Congress should pass the hybrid bill described above. THE JUSTICE ISSUE
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WORLD
THE WITCHING HOUR Accusations of witchcraft are a source of torture and terror for women and children in India, the DRC, and beyond by Hannah Severyns ’23, an English concentrator and Senior Managing Magazine Editor for BPR illustrations by Hannah Chang '23
Beds are running out at Ek’Abana, a shelter for abandoned children Nestléd in Bukavu, the capital city of the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s (DRC) South Kivu Province. In 2018, an Ek’Abana representative attributed the orphanage’s dwindling capacity to an influx of young South Kivu residents banished from their homes
“In Tanzania, between 1960 and 2000, around 40,000 people were accused of witchcraft and killed.” 38
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following accusations of witchcraft. One resident, 16-year-old Aline Veronica, sought refuge at Ek’Abana after a witch doctor convicted her of casting a deadly spell on her neighbor’s son and she was forced to flee for her life. Thousands of miles away, a similar phenomenon is devastating another community. In Gujarat, a state in India, approximately a dozen women gather at ANANDI, a nonprofit working to support and empower rural Indian women— especially those branded as dakan (the Gujarati word for witch). In one notable instance, three Gujarati women accused of eating the souls of their male relatives were subsequently beaten nearly to death, forced to give up their land, and made to live with their abusers. In the wake of horrific events like these, home is no longer a safe place to live for the Gujarati women, nor is it safe for witch hunt survivors in other parts of India, the DRC, and beyond. Thus, local and federal governments must take immediate action to protect the women and children whose lives are threatened by these deadly witch hunts. While implementing nation-specific laws both banning witch hunts and declaring witch hunting a motive for murder are worthwhile preliminary steps toward ending witch hunts, these efforts must be paired with education programs built by and for communities where witch hunts run rampant. Witch hunts are not isolated incidents, nor are they localized: They affect people—most often women—in many regions of the world, from Southeast Asia to Africa to Latin America. In India, for instance, more than 2,500 people were murdered in witch hunts between 2000 and 2016, most of them women from a low caste. In Tanzania, between 1960 and 2000, around 40,000 people were accused of witchcraft and killed. In Ghana, about 1,000 women live in “witch camps,” settlements where women accused of witchcraft can flee for safety. And in the DRC, as of 2015, a staggering 20,000 Congolese children were living on the streets, an estimated 80 percent of whom were doing so because accusations of witchcraft forced them out of their homes. Though these numbers are horrifying already, experts warn that witch hunt-related murders are grossly underreported, especially in countries like India and Tanzania where witch hunting is not nationally outlawed.
While witch hunts are clearly a widespread phenomenon, the motivations behind this brutality vary drastically from country to country. One of the most common explanations, however, points to witch hunts as a form of gender-based violence. In India, for example, not only do women make up the majority of victims of witch hunts, but witch hunt survivors also draw a clear connection between witch hunts and gender violence. Many accused women recall being branded as a witch not because they caused harm to others, but because they broke gender norms by inheriting land or refusing a sexual advance. Witch hunts must be confronted as an issue of gender-based violence against typically older women in places like India but this is not the case everywhere. In fact, the DRC is facing a crisis with entirely different victims: children. The rise in reports of child witches began in the early 1990s, paralleling a similar increase in overall violence toward children. Even in recent years, young survivors recount being condemned to death by their own families or tortured through “exorcisms” meant to drive out the devil. According to researchers, this abhorrent violence against children in the DRC can typically be attributed not to gender violence, but to economic hardship and rapid urbanization. As the poorest country
in the world, the DRC struggles with prolific poverty, and children—especially those who have lost one or both parents and live with extended family members—are often seen as a costly burden for already struggling families. Issues like death, illness, or unemployment, all of which are exacerbated by a sudden shift to urban life, also tend to be blamed on children. Thus, the persecution of children through witch hunts can be attributed to larger socio-economic problems in the DRC. Even as gender-based violence and economic struggles are the sources of many witchcraft accusations, superstition is another factor motivating witch hunts in many countries. Often, women and children serve as scapegoats for problems like droughts and crop failures, and people see witchcraft as an explanation for the misfortune befalling their communities. Disease and disabilities are often attributed to witchcraft too, especially in nations that lack strong healthcare infrastructures. In Tanzania, for example, people with albinism are frequent victims of witch hunts, and in Ghana, witchcraft is a common explanation for the birth of children with disabilities. These superstitions must also be acknowledged in the fight to protect women and children from witch hunts. Undoubtedly, the violence and terror caused by witchcraft accusations need to be addressed. Especially in places like India, where bans on witch hunts are determined by individual states,
it is imperative that a national law is implemented that recognizes witch hunts as an illegal form of abuse in order to hold attackers accountable in a court of law. In places like the DRC, where a similar law already exists banning witchcraft allegations against children, law enforcement officials must stop turning a blind eye to abuse committed by families and churches as they usually do. Instead, they should take responsibility for the protection of women and children and the punishment of abusers. Although establishing and enforcing these laws is an essential first step toward curbing witch hunt-related crimes, legislation alone is not enough. In India, some states that have outlawed witch hunts still see dozens of related murders each year, and the DRC is no different. This is partially because witch hunts are a deeply entrenched cultural practice, built upon gender-based violence, economic troubles, and superstition. When nonlocal groups work toward solutions to end witch hunts, they might do so with the conviction that supernatural beliefs are inherently false, while ignoring the fact that these superstitions are still an essential part of other cultures. Thus, local leaders must spearhead efforts to educate their communities on the harmful impacts of witch hunts, reunite accused women and children with their families, and outlaw witch hunts in totality. With a full grasp of their region’s cultural practices, community leaders can create lasting change that prioritizes the safety of the victims of witch hunts in India, the DRC, and beyond.
“This is partially because witch hunts are a deeply entrenched cultural practice, built upon gender violence, economic troubles, and superstition.” THE JUSTICE ISSUE
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Welcome to the Big Top How celebrities, the media, and unbridled corruption have impacted Brazil's democracy by Steven Long ’24, an intended Classics concentrator and an Associate Editor for BPR illustration by Evelyn Tan ’23
Flordelis dos Santos de Souza’s life sounds like something out of a daytime soap opera. The Brazilian gospel singer, who first rose to fame as a pop star, expanded her brand into philanthropy, hoping to run for office. On these credentials, de Souza ran for and was elected as a Federal Deputy of Brazil in 2018. At this point, this story may not seem shocking; plenty of entertainers have made the leap into politics. For de Souza, however, everything changed in 2020; her untainted public image was shattered after she was accused of ordering the murder of her husband, who also happened to be her adopted son. The fact that de Souza could be involved in this murder scandal was a shock to many, but it was not completely unheard of. After all, she is just another instigator of scandal in Brazil’s political tradition of corruption, cronyism, and, most notably, celebrity. Along with de Souza, several public figures have made their way into Brazil’s Chamber of Deputies over the years, including singer Agnaldo Timóteo, soccer player Romário de Souza Faria Lima, and professional clown Tiririca. Though celebrities like these may not have governmental experience, they have likely been aided in their quest for high office by the Brazilian media’s tendency to contextualize national politics as a form of entertainment. The prevalence of celebrities in Brazilian politics elucidates a pattern: In Brazil, politics and entertainment are unmistakably intertwined. To understand why scandal-ridden celebrities often go hand-in-hand with Brazilian politics, it is essential to examine the primary mechanism that has turned public office into a space for public entertainment: the media. In Brazil, the media has a long history of using flashy and shocking politics to attract viewers, a phenomenon led by Brazil’s largest news agency, Globo. For decades now, Globo has worked to 40
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perfect the art of politics as entertainment. This began in the 1960s, when O Globo—Globo’s main newspaper—first started acting as a propaganda machine for Brazil’s ruling military junta. Eventually, fueled by the support of the ultra-conservative dictators of the military era and capitalizing on the sweeping censorship of all other outlets, Globo established itself as the dominant force in Brazilian mass media. This meant that Brazil’s citizens, with no other meaningful way to participate in politics, would largely look towards Globo to provide them with an entertaining political spectacle. While in 2013 O Globo issued a lengthy apology for its actions and support of Brazil’s past military dictatorship, it continues to act as a media powerhouse that blurs the line between politics and entertainment. Even when the suppressed market of the military regime gave way to free competition, O Globo found a new way to maintain its iron grip over entertainment politics by providing a platform for celebrities entering the political field. In recent years, O Globo has turned towards politicians like the humorous Tiririca to up its viewership, even if doing so comes at the cost of undermining serious politics. Tiririca, for example, graced the screens of many while dressed in a clown costume, touting satirical slogans and claiming to have no policy positions at all. It might seem that Tiririca’s sheer power as an entertainer earned him a spot in the Chamber of Deputies, but his rise to political stardom would not have been possible without the platform provided to him by a willing media. In an election
that begged for discussion of pressing issues, like the corruption running rampant in Brazil’s public offices, the people’s attention was diverted by a literal clown. The media did not just stand idly by while this happened; instead, they encouraged it. What lies at the heart of the issue is the fact that O Globo, along with a handful of entertainment billionaires, have a stranglehold over Brazilian media. When the primary curators of public information value viewership over substantial political discourse, it is not surprising that political news has become intertwined with entertainment. Even more troubling is the fact that the media alters people’s perceptions of their own country, and in Brazil, this means that public office has become a space that neither its citizens nor its politicians can take seriously. Corruption, scandal, and political ineptitude are not unheard of in politics. But by giving a platform to celebrities and others who value showiness over policy, Brazil’s media has manufactured a unique space wherein these harmful practices don’t just exist: They thrive. Using colorful distractions and mainly leftist bogeymen, O Globo has painted a picture of Brazilian politics that is completely disconnected from reality. But while Brazil’s political parties and TV networks believe that people can be distracted by sex, singers, and clowns, there are real issues in Brazil’s political atmosphere that need to be addressed. It is up to the media to finally point national attention in a different direction and take the spectacle out of politics.
farm yields by twenty to thirty percent, which would feed an additional 150 million people. So, increasing women’s access to resources has benefits for everyone, and not just for women. You were appointed to Liberia as an Elections Officer for the United Nations. How did this appointment come about?
INTERVIEW WITH
Pamela Reeves
I was assigned to Liberia as an elections officer and then later as a human rights officer due to my expertise and skill set. After applying, I didn’t hear back from the UN for at least a month, and then one day I got the call that I should prepare to travel to Liberia. I thought that this must have been a mistake because Liberia was in the midst of a civil war at the time and there was no way that there was going to be an election. But a couple of months later, I was on a plane heading there. You helped to establish the Girl Declaration program, a manifesto of goals collectively developed by adolescent girls around the world in partnership with non-profit organiza-
Pamela Reeves ’87 is a Senior Fellow at the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs, where she teaches courses on global women’s issues and national security. As a senior advisor to the Nike Foundation, she built international support for adolescent girls’ development. Reeves also served as the director of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s International Fund for Women and Girls at the US Department of State, and has worked as an advisor to election commissions from Panama, Haiti, Curacao, and Tanzania, among other countries. She earned an MA from Yale University and a BA from Brown University.
interview by Haley Joyce ’23 illustration by Aliyah Nadal ’23 Haley Joyce: What motivated you to advocate on behalf of women’s political participation throughout the world? Pamela Reeves: I believe that everybody should have a say in how they are governed. Every person should be able to cast a ballot that counts equally. There are so many systemic barriers—such as corruption, bias, and even a lack of procedural competence— that weaken democratic processes. What specifically motivated me were the massive systemic barriers to women’s participation in all sectors of life—socio-economic, political, and health, among others. So my passion isn’t just limited to women’s participation in political processes or women’s leadership. It is so much more far-reaching than that. There is virtually no sector that wouldn’t benefit from women's increased participation. For instance, if female farmers had the same productive resources as male farmers, they could increase their 41
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tions, to elevate the needs of adolescent girls on the global agenda. How did this program come to be adopted by the Nike Foundation and its partners? When I went to Nike, the Girl Declaration program hadn't been created yet. The Nike Foundation, through The Girl Effect, wanted to make sure girls’ voices were heard and that their needs were included on the global development agenda. I recommended that the first thing they do is find out what girls actually had on their minds, and what they were thinking right at that moment, as the United Nations was about to create the Sustainable Development Goals. When we went around the world and asked girls what they wanted and what they worried about, some of their responses were not that surprising: They wanted clean water, education, and sexual and reproductive health. Some of their responses, though, were unexpected. They had significant concerns about the environment. We didn’t expect girls’ anxiety levels about the climate to be so high, and we also didn’t expect so many financial concerns and a clear desire for financial literacy. We could not develop an effective advocacy program that didn’t address the issues on the ground. We always need to find solutions, in partnership with the communities,
that are specific to the communities which we are trying to support. You write about how the inclusion of women in all aspects of life facilitates “social, political, and economic productivity.” How has the pandemic affected this? Women are suffering from this pandemic more than men, and the data that has been collected clearly demonstrates this. Often, women are not salaried—many women work at jobs that are paid hourly, with no insurance or job security—so they have not had financial protection during the pandemic. Additionally, we know that women take care of their children and elderly family members more often than men, which contributes to the disproportionate burden that has been placed on them during this pandemic. There are also social norms—expectations wired into us that we cannot overcome—that impact this. For example, a mother will often be the one expected to stop working in order to provide for her family and help her children before her husband would do this. Unfortunately, the work that had been done to address these things before the pandemic has regressed because we are in a situation of unrecognizable urgency. How do we combat norms upheld by corporate structures that hinder women’s ability to enter the workforce? There are structural changes one can make to their workplace to address bias. Specifically, there are policies that a company can put in place in order to eradicate bias in hiring and confront prejudiced performance reviews. If we redesign the systems of the workplace, and design around the biases, it will be harder for those biases to materialize. When you reflect on your time at the International Fund for Women and Girls, has your perspective changed? What I have come to increasingly appreciate over time is the incredible power of the US government to make policies in a very powerful way to help those in need across the globe. This is because policy can create systemic change in a way that non-governmental programs cannot. The other thing I have learned—and have been a proponent for ever since—is that when the government, civil society, the private sector, and philanthropic groups work together, that is the golden ticket. The International Fund for Women and Girls was a public-private partnership, which meant that we could use private funding for this governmental program.We still followed government regulations and treated contributions as if they are taxpayer dollars. Ultimately, I realized the potential of the private sector to make positive change, and I understood that capitalism can be a force for good. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. THE JUSTICE ISSUE
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EVICTION AFFLICTION Private security companies and demolitions in South Africa by Maru Attwood ’24, an intended History or Political Science concentrator illustration by Joanne Kim ’23
Amid calls to stay home during the early weeks of the Covid-19 pandemic, Rodgers Mathebulo’s house was demolished, his belongings looted, and the small shack from which he sold fruit, sweets, and snacks flattened. Unfortunately, Mathebulo’s experience is not unique. In fact, he is just one of hundreds of people who were evicted over two days in April 2020 by a brutally efficient South African private security company: Red Ant Security Relocation and Eviction Services. The Red Ants are the most infamous of several companies contracted by municipalities to demolish the homes of people who often have no choice but to illegally occupy land in informal
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settlements in South Africa. Acting with impunity, the Red Ants are a private sector proxy who shield local governments from facing accountability for unjustly and violently forcing evictions that frequently lack court orders. These informal settlements and the hiring of private companies to demolish them draw attention to broader issues of homelessness, lack of government accountability, and disregard for marginalized communities. Justice and accountability on these fronts are long overdue. Home demolitions and forced removals are a vestige of South Africa’s apartheid past. For decades, the white supremacist regime uprooted and relocated millions of Black South Africans to rural, economically stagnant “homelands.” This segregation has left deep and lasting scars— resources, services, opportunities, and wealth remain mostly concentrated in what were white areas under apartheid. In South Africa today,
evictions and demolitions persist even though the state no longer enforces apartheid-era policies. In January 2021, for example, the violent demolition of an informal community center near Cape Town made headlines. Similarly, mass evictions on these settlements were reported in 5 of 12 months last year. Today, upwards of four million people live in South Africa’s informal settlements, which are common but illegal as they exist on stateowned land. Lakeview, the community near Johannesburg that Mathebulo called home, is one of thousands of such informal settlements. The mere existence of these settlements is telling of deeply entrenched issues in South African society, namely inequalities in land ownership and housing access. Despite nearly 27 years of land reform, 72 percent of agricultural land still belongs to white people (who make up a mere nine percent of South Africa’s population) while millions of Black South Africans remain landless. Under the South African Constitution, the state must ensure that all citizens are able to realize the right to housing. There exists a mixed record on this account. Impressively, the state has provided citizens with upwards of three million free houses since the end of apartheid. However, housing provisions are riddled with corruption and poor service delivery. Additionally, there is currently an estimated backlog of 2.3 million homes. For three days of eviction activities in 2019, the Red Ants charged the Johannesburg municipality R10.6 million ($720,000 USD). This is equivalent to the expenses for land and construction of 100 government-issued houses. When state resources are spent on destroying
“When state resources are spent on destroying homes rather than building them in places where they are desperately needed, people are left with little alternative but to illegally occupy land until the Red Ants arrive to evict them.” homes rather than building them in places where they are desperately needed, people are left with little alternative but to illegally occupy land until the Red Ants arrive to evict them. The demolition of Rodgers Mathebulo’s community was illegal. According to the South African Bill of Rights, evictions are unlawful without a court order. The Red Ants claim that they always carry out evictions with the necessary legal permissions, but representatives from a provincial human rights commission maintain that a court order was glaringly absent. Furthermore, weeks before the demolitions, President Cyril Ramaphosa issued a ban on all evictions during the Covid-19 lockdown, meaning that even if the Red Ants had a court order, these evictions still would have been illegal. Finally, according to residents, the evictions were accompanied by looting and assault, brutality that is by no means justified by the illegality of living in an informal settlement. Because of their immoral and illegal actions, the Red Ants face widespread denunciation. But the condemnation of the Red Ants by human rights groups and local communities alike has done little to curtail evictions or achieve justice. In 2019, the Red Ants’s right to operate was briefly
suspended by a private security regulatory body after an especially violent spate of evictions in which community members were killed. After legal appeals, however, the suspension was lifted and the Red Ants were back in informal settlements, operating with the same impunity and violence. A Red Ants press release contends that “the persistent media attention is at times born out of a sheer misunderstanding and sensationalism of lawful evictions, which are part of the South African law, especially those happening in our townships and previously disadvantaged areas.” Additionally, they explain that they are committed to corporate social responsibility: They hand out food parcels to orphanages, childheaded households, and others in need. Behind this front, however, the company profits from its reputation for brutality. Paradoxically, the people who carry out the physical demolitions are themselves often from the kinds of communities they end up destroying. Certainly, the Red Ants must be held accountable. At the same time, the real outrage for these abuses must be directed towards the government officials who order the demolitions, disregard the Constitution, fail in their duty to
provide access to adequate housing, and endow upon a private company the blame for faults of its own. Unsurprisingly though, both the Red Ants and the South African government have yet to accept responsibility for this issue. In fact, Red Ants's CEO Johan Bosch blames the press and argues that “our work is only evictions. We do the ones that nobody else wants to do—that is why we end up in the hot seat all the time.” Former Johannesburg mayor Herman Mashaba alleged that Red Ant demolitions in 2019 took place without authorization from the city, placing blame on the company alone. In the aftermath of the demolitions that rendered Mathebulo and his community homeless, current Johannesburg mayor Geoff Makhubo maintains that the fault lies with criminal syndicates who illegally invade land and sell plots to residents. He insists that the houses were unoccupied, claiming that “there were no evictions. We were doing a counter land invasion operation.” The subcontracting of a private company to carry out brutal evictions against a vulnerable population raises troubling questions about the morality and legitimacy of the South African government. Mass evictions, especially those that are unlawful, undermine human dignity and achieve little. Meanwhile, their underlying causes, like land and housing inequalities, persist. Considering the historical context of demolitions, South Africa’s government needs to reckon with the way they treat the nation’s most vulnerable population. Until then, the state will continue to direct the Red Ants to flatten the homes of Rogers Mathebulo's innocent counterparts.
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INTERVIEW WITH
Thomas Pogge Thomas Pogge is the Director of the Global Justice Program and the Leitner Professor of Philosophy and International Affairs at Yale University. Pogge received his PhD from Harvard University under the supervision of John Rawls. His widely published work has advanced the theory of global justice in the political theory community.
interview by Alex Fasseas , 23 and Ryan Frant , 23 illustration by Aliyah Nadal ’23
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Alex Fasseas/Ryan Frant: You had John Rawls as your doctoral advisor. How has Rawls influenced you? Thomas Pogge: I would say profoundly. I have always been very eager to theorize on global justice. I came to America because I could not understand why a nation as interesting as America could engage in the Vietnam War. I thought if Americans could understand their own values better, they would not be doing this. Rawls wanted to avoid that conclusion in the The Law of Peoples, where he tried to sketch an alternative way of thinking about international relations. For me, it seems obvious that Rawls’s theory of justice has international implications—that international institutions should be designed for the benefit of the least advantaged. Can a theory of global justice account for the diversity of cultural practices and historical beliefs found around the world? First of all, one very important thought here is that we have to live together in the same world, so the idea that everybody can have their own rules is a nonstarter. We have to find common solutions to common problems, whether it’s Covid-19 or ecological issues. There has to be one global order—which some people will not like. Also, we have, as one starting point, the conception of human rights, which is enshrined to some extent in Rawls’s first principle of justice. That is, all cultures agree and have within their horizon of moral theorizing the idea that institutions should take into account the fundamental needs of human beings. We want to shape institutions in such a way that human beings can lead reasonably worthwhile lives under those institutions. That should be a minimum requirement for institutions. But we are living in a world in which, for a very large proportion of the human population, these basic rights and needs are not fulfilled. It is imperative that we have a world where there is no longer any hunger, torture, or unjust imprisonment.
To clarify, I do not want to say that human rights are part of the furniture of the universe. But I want to say human rights are a plausible proposition that is widely accepted across all different cultures. Under the notion of sovereignty, states should not interfere with the affairs of other states— which presumably poses a problem for global justice. How do you argue against or redefine sovereignty? Sovereignty is not a rock-bottom commitment. We are committed first and foremost to the well-being of individuals, and sovereignty is one instrument for that. We want communities to have a certain amount of cultural autonomy— we do not want that to be interfered with. But because sovereignty is an instrumental commitment, it is subject to various constraints, and we fine-tune it in such a way that it serves the purpose of protecting communal autonomy. Indeed, I want a world in which there is protection of communal life but if and insofar as that protects important interests of individuals. What I would advocate is protection not just at the level of the state but also on the level of smaller communities. We want, for example, communities within the state—say ethnic minorities in the US or religious communities like the Mormons—to have a certain autonomy and to be protected against the state. Do you think that whichever country is the hegemon within the global order—the US or otherwise—will always be the greatest threat to democracy? There are certainly forces that push in that direction, but to say that this is an iron law of history would be too defeatist and deny human freedom. There are two scenarios. First, it is possible that a leader emerges who understands the basic thinking that I just outlined. Gorbachev was such a leader. He understood that if we go on with the present system, it must lead to disaster—if not in this century, then in the next century. Second, the people could understand this predicament and demand a different foreign policy. Whether this is possible in the United States, I do not know, but there could be mass movements of people that will make certain aggressive, power-seeking policies impossible. We got a taste of that with the anti-war movement in the United States; the government would have continued the Vietnam War had it not been protested. And that shows that change is at least possible. So it is possible to escape power politics. If I had to bet on it as an outside investor, so to speak, I would say the chances of it happening are low. We will probably have a big nuclear war before we move to a more morally-based world order. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Can there be a global state, and would such a state be desirable? Yes, there can be something like that and I think it would be very desirable. One very important element of a world government would be that it has dedicated officials whose loyalty and dedication is to the world at large. Even though we have “international organizations,” its delegates come from many different countries who, inevitably, still see themselves as loyal to their home country, pushing for solutions that are good for their state rather than for global solutions. That contrasts with what we have within countries like the United States, where a president is supposed to forget their home state and be loyal to the whole country. You recently proposed the Health Impact Fund (HIF) as a solution to the current research vacuum on diseases that predominantly affect the poor. How would the Fund work? It would work on a voluntary basis to make it more politically palatable. We would not destroy or disturb the patent system; rather, we would simply offer pharmaceutical innovators an alternative path. They would have to be willing to sell their product at the cost of production or let other people produce said product without a licensing fee; in exchange, member companies would receive annual premiums that are conditional on the health impact that their product achieves in the world. Such an incentive structure would make diseases that affect the poor very lucrative and would allow for medicine to be immediately available to affected populations. If the Health Impact Fund (HIF) had been in existence pre-Covid-19, member pharmaceutical companies would have deployed the vac-
cines strategically, bought up any vaccine production capacity worldwide, manufactured as many vaccines as possible, vaccinated billions of people, and reduced the incidence as quickly as possible. These companies would then get paid on the basis of how much less damage Covid-19 does in the world in reality, compared to how much it would have done if the vaccines hadn’t gone on the market. Does the rebuilding of society in the wake of Covid-19 present an opportunity to redesign our institutions to better achieve justice? What might these improvements be? I think we can learn from the idea of the HIF, broaden it, and apply that idea, for example, to green technology. We could give inventors of green technologies the option to be paid by impact. So instead of having a patent, which allows you to charge an arm and a leg to anyone who wants to use your green technology, you would be allowed to be paid according to how much pollution your innovation keeps out of the atmosphere. We would have a meta-innovation about how we reward innovations, and thereby make the whole business of innovation much more pro-poor. Beyond innovation, however, we should focus on democracy—on making our societies more democratic. Creating a genuine democracy that is not captured by special interests, lobbying, and big money is equally important to innovation. And the two are of course related because what keeps the patent system in existence is precisely this pseudo-democratic system that allows very small, but well-organized and well-funded, interests to dominate the rule-making in our country.
“Sovereignty is not a rock-bottom commitment. We are committed first and foremost to the well-being of individuals, and sovereignty is one instrument for that.” THE JUSTICE ISSUE
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MAD COW How bride-price inflation is stoking ethnic violence in South Sudan
by Laila Rodenbeck ’22, a Philosophy, Politics, and Economics (PPE) concentrator illustrations by Joshua Sun ’22
“After the 2011 referendum in which South Sudan voted to become independent from Sudan, the typical price of an educated bride rose from 12 to 50 cows, an inflation of over 300 percent. By 2012, a single marriage could cost a family 100 cattle.”
Inter-tribal clashes are a major contributing factor to instability in South Sudan, so it is no surprise that an increase in violent cattle raiding has largely been attributed to the current conflict between the Dinka-dominated Sudanese People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) and the Nuer Sudanese People’s Liberation Army In Opposition (SPLA-IO). Yet these raids, which have led to over 50,000 deaths since the start of the South Sudanese Civil War in December 2013, are not motivated by inter-ethnic animosity alone. In pastoral regions such as Jonglei State, they are also driven by economic factors. Specifically, enormous inflation in bride prices—the payment, in heads of cattle, given by a groom to their bride’s family—has rendered cattle raiding more frequent and more deadly than ever before. Cattle serve as de facto currency in many parts of South Sudan. With over 70 percent of South Sudanese people engaged in pastoral farming, cows are used to settle disputes, to serve as trusted, mobile assets in an atmosphere of frequent displacement, and, importantly, to pay bride prices. In South Sudan, where a man’s number of wives
(and by extension, their number of cattle) determines their social status, cattle are invaluable. As one Dinka elder explained in a United States Institute of Peace Special Report, “One of the reasons for polygamy is that when you have ten daughters, each one will give you thirty cows…so then you have three hundred cows. That is why one marries very many wives: so that you can have very many daughters.” However, rampant inflation in bride price has disrupted this tradition since South Sudanese independence. After the 2011 referendum in which South Sudan voted to become independent from Sudan, the typical price of an educated bride rose from 12 to 50 cows, an inflation of over 300 percent. By 2012, a single marriage could cost a family 100 cattle. That same year, the estimated cost of a marriage in the region was between $10,000 and $60,000 USD, making “South Sudanese marriages…no doubt some of the most expensive marriages in the world.” This new economic pressure, driven by bride price inflation, falls predominantly on young men. Aside from the economic advantages of a large stock of cattle,
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amount of restitution in blood-wealth cattle.” These negotiations extended to Dinka deaths as well, with blood-wealth compensation acting to restore order and prevent revenge violence. Dinka youth were similarly trained by their elders to use violence only as a last resort. Nevertheless, political co-option of pastoralist herders, as well as technological changes, have dismantled the former checks on violence. With cowherders today exchanging their traditional spears for assault rifles, cattle raids have become military-style attacks involving massive herds and resulting in thousands of deaths. The increasing accessibility of small arms and light weapons, which make these attacks more lethal, galvanized this rise in violence. Young men have also become increasingly susceptible to elite patronage and recruitment, with “cattle protection and military loyalty [being] exchanged for guns and ammunition.” In this way, cattle-related violence is driven by both economic desperation and increased access to arms. Despite these factors, the recent increase in cattle raiding is often simply attributed to South Sudan’s tribal differences. In many ways, this
“With cowherds today exchanging their traditional spears for assault rifles, cattle raids have become military-style attacks involving massive herds and resulting in thousands of deaths.”
assumption is reasonable. Cattle raids intensified even after South Sudan's elites signed a truce in September 2018. According to the United Nations Mission in South Sudan, 218 members of herder communities were killed in January 2019 raids alone—a figure almost three times the 73 lives lost in the four months between October 2017 and January 2018. Ethnic grievances, intermittent cattle raids, and revenge-based disputes between the Dinka and Nuer tribes predate Sudan’s 1956 independence from the Anglo-Egyptian Condominium. Historical sources suggest that the names ‘Dinka’ and ‘Nuer’ may even be synonymous with ‘raided’ and ‘raider,’ lending credence to the claim that tribal identity is intertwined with cattle raiding. Colonial practices further served to pit groups against one another. For example, when the British divided Sudan between the predominantly Arab North and the predominantly Black South in 1889, they also created a “Southern Policy” which aimed to “build up self-contained tribal units.” This allowed certain tribes to pursue economic development at the expense of others, generating ethnically charged power imbalances in the region. The Dinka’s political and economic dominance in several regions within South Sudan is evidence of the colonial policy’s lasting impact. This argument, however, obscures many of the nuances of the conflict in South Sudan. It fails to explain, for example, the alliances between Nuer and Dinka groups that continue in several areas. In November 2015, the Lou Nuer requested and received access to Dinka pastures, even in the midst of the greater conflict. According to a 2017 study by Safer World, “ethnic identity remains fluid and contextual among many Dinka and Nuer communities” with members tending to ally more closely with kinship groups than with their ethnic group. Intermarriage between groups is also frequently reported as many young men “seek wives from different ethnic groups” in which bride prices may be cheaper.
These findings are consistent with the broader literature on ethnicity and civil war. Political scientists Paul Collier and Anke Hoeffler point out that only when a group is ethnically dominant do ethnic differences make societies prone to civil war. In South Sudan, neither the Dinka nor the Nuer are numerous enough to constitute a majority. Additionally, a global study of over 200 ethnic minorities conducted by James Fearon and David Laitin found that when considering ethnic conflicts, the independent effect of ethnic diversity is “surprisingly weak” relative to the impact of low per-capita income on conflict risk. Thus, the taking up of arms by the Dinka and the Nuer may be a symptom of their shared economic desperation—and the consequence of rampant bride price inflation—rather than simply the result of ethnic grievances. Bride price inflation, which has spurred increasingly violent cattle raids and the growth of militia groups threatens to further destabilize South Sudan. By fostering new economic tensions, bride price inflation has narrowed the economic opportunities available to men of a marriageable age and incited new ethnic clashes. If South Sudan is to break from its pattern of inter-ethnic violence, South Sudanese leaders must commit to ending the militarization of pastoral groups and to regulating the cattle and marriage market. Moving forward, one option could involve engaging in regional cooperation with other East African nations that face similar cattle raiding violence, such as Uganda. Furthermore, South Sudanese communities could adopt livestock identification systems and records. However, without addressing the inter-ethnic violence and the economic desperation that so many South Sudanese families face, instability is bound to persist.
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Radio dramas were the way that a massive number of Americans were entertained before television existed, and I don’t think the fact that it died out means it wasn't popular or that it was broken, but just because something is effective does not mean that commercially it will always remain the number one thing. Given the financial strain facing many publications, do you think the worker owned model that is being tried out at Defector magazine will pick up steam?
INTERVIEW WITH
Josh Levin
The worker owned model is really interesting. I don't know if that's going to work out or be something that grows, but I'm sure that a lot of journalists are going to be looking to see how it plays out. Given the enormous headwinds that so many places are facing right now, we’ve got to be trying different stuff and experimenting with new ways to do our jobs. It’s a weird situation where journalism has never been more important, and is constantly being validated, yet at the same time is getting the opposite feedback from a financial perspective. It’s a product that’s essential yet doesn’t always seem viable. It feels kind of nonsensical, but that's the reality. When telling the story of David Duke’s political rise, you chose not to interview Duke for
Josh Levin is Slate’s national editor, author of the book The Queen: The Forgotten Life Behind an American Myth, and the host of Slate’s sports podcast Hang Up and Listen. Last year, Levin hosted Slow Burn Season 4, a podcast series examining the story of David Duke and his political rise in Louisiana in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
interview by Tucker Wilke ’23 illustration by Aliyah Nadal ’23 Tucker Wilke: Slate has clearly made journalistic podcasts a center of their enterprise. Do you expect the current popular and commercial viability of podcasts to continue? Josh Levin: There's a lot of interest from both a commercial perspective and an audience perspective right now. But these things can shift—the various places that are investing heavily in podcasting could consolidate in some way. We have very limited ability in this field to be able to predict the future. That is something I am keenly aware of, after being in it for as long as I have been. It does seem true that the experience of podcasts, of having somebody talk to you every day or week or just in a narrative series, is very intimate, and is not replicable in print. So however the commercial stuff shakes out, I don’t think that the way the medium works will change. 50
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the podcast series about him.What went into that decision? It was something that we grappled with. The show itself is a large collaborative effort across Slate, and the decision not to interview Duke was the product of a bunch of different conversations as we went along making the show. Importantly, the fact that I made this decision does not necessarily mean that it would have been the right decision for someone else. First, we gave an extremely, extremely thorough accounting of what David Duke believed and who he was, in his own words, through archival audio and video. I don't think there is any lack of explanation, contextualization or refusal to grapple with his views or beliefs. Second, as we documented pretty thoroughly in the podcast, he is someone who is a known and confirmed liar, and who very consistently distorts his record and beliefs for his own personal and political gain. There's reason to believe that if interviewed by us, he would not tell us the truth. And finally, this is not 1991, it's 2020, and it's a time when David Duke, despite
“But I think it's important for journalists to question received wisdom like that and not just follow the rules because they're the rules.” his influence in helping to shape contemporary rhetoric and politics, is not personally a figure of any consequence. Today, he's not running for political office. So giving him the platform of a present day interview felt like it would be elevating him at a time in which he really desperately needs those platforms to stay relevant. The confluence of all three of those factors made me decide that I was not going to interview him for the series. Does that decision break with traditional journalistic principles? Yeah, I mean, it’s standard journalistic practice to interview someone when you’re reporting on them, so I understood that this was not the normative move here. But I think it's important for journalists to question received wisdom like that and not just follow the rules because they're the rules. When we actually had these conversations and thought about, okay, why would we do this, the only reason I could think of was because well, that's just how it's done. And that's actually not a reason at all. Is that decision becoming more common? To be more conscious about who journalists are giving a platform? While different outlets have very different conventions, I do think there is more willingness to question the baseline assumption that we should hear from everyone and everyone should get a platform. We actually got into this to some degree in the podcast. Duke came of age in the late 60s, early 70s, in a moment in American history, when, particularly around the Vietnam War and the Free Speech Movement at Berkeley, there was a very strong sense that open platforms for everyone was an extremely important value to uphold. You saw that free speech at LSU, where Duke spoke, the idea that if somebody is a Nazi, that doesn't mean that they shouldn't be given a platform to speak, and that we should air all views and have robust counter speech as well. That was the prevailing attitude in America at that time, and I don't think that it's the same anymore. It probably requires a dissertation or 12 to explain all the changes that have happened since then, but I think it's inarguable that we're in a different time now as far as that stuff goes. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
An Unraveling Industry Unjust compensation is taking a toll on Persian rug makers by Annabelle Liu ’22, an International and Public Affairs and Behavioral Decision Sciences concentrator and an Associate Editor for BPR illustration by Grace Chen ’22
Persian rugs have long been seen as an international symbol of luxury, beauty, and ancient culture. In fact, the earliest-known Persian carpet dates back to the fifth century BC, but the process of their creation has remained relatively unchanged over time. Even today, traditional hand-woven carpets require months—sometimes years—of back-breaking labor over looms, and the preparation of materials required for the process is just as meticulous. In fact, nomadic shepherds from the Qashqai tribe and the Bakhtiari tribe herd over a million sheep to source the raw material. The subsequent dyeing process has been lauded as sustainable and natural; the yarns are colored using pigment from insects and plants, such as eucalyptus leaves, indigo, turmeric, and pomegranate peels. Still using no machinery, the wool is then boiled for several days and left to air dry in the cool Iranian winds. Only a select group of nomadic tribal peoples retain the rare skills required in the next step: turning the tough, fibrous wool into thread that will eventually form the thousands of knots needed to weave a traditional Persian rug. This complex and labor-intensive practice of Persian rug-making is mainly performed by tribal women, oftentimes in their own homes. However, the money that comes out of this lucrative industry often falls into the hands of middle-men instead of those of the original artists. These Persian rug-makers are not simply farmers or factory workers easily replaced with machines; rather, they are artists with intergenerational indigenous knowledge and creativity. They must be compensated as such. Though the immoral practice of underpaying rural workers is common around the world, initiatives to protect farmers and factory-workers have been on the rise in recent years. Consumers are increasingly turning away from fast fashion, looking for "Fair Trade Certified" produce, and valuing
the "conflict-free" verification in diamonds and gemstones. Yet movements like these do not include Iranian indigenous women, despite the intensive labor and creative skill required to produce their product. Traditional Gabbeh rugs from the Fars province of Iran are often designed without any premeditated specifications, as the rug-makers are trusted to improvise new versions of traditional motifs. Only those growing up with the art form can develop the keen eye and skilled hands needed for this practice. Nonetheless, market forces allow these artists to be treated as unskilled workers, and rug prices are determined according to the size and material of a rug, rather than the complexity of its design or the hours of labor required to make it. In other fields, like the gemstone or food industries, this logic makes sense; the bigger the diamond, or the larger net weight of produce picked, the higher the price. With rug-making, however, it is not the size or material of the carpet, but the artist’s time, creative intuition, and expert hand that are most special. An analogous situation would be pricing the Mona Lisa based on its materials or the size of its canvas, rather than by the value of the time and expertise that da Vinci dedicated to the piece. Though clearly unjust, this devaluation of artisanship is a real, pressing issue for Iranian rug-makers. If artisanal skills continue to be undervalued and rugs continue to be priced based on this flawed metric, the industry may soon die out. The Persian rug industry is already dwindling as younger generations, having witnessed the low returns of such high-cost labor, are deterred from learning the art. Moreover, the demand for handmade rugs is decreasing as buyers turn to purchasing cheaper, factory-made rugs from China and India. Demand has also decreased because of the crippling sanctions introduced following the Trump administration’s withdrawal from Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran. Now, with international financial transactions limited by banks, tourists who visit hoping to purchase a fine rug are required to pay only in cash, making them less likely to buy at all. This issue is only exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic, which has halted most leisure-related travel and makes relying on in-person purchases from tourists all the more risky. An estimated five million Iranians are connected to the production and distribution of the some 400 tons of homemade rugs produced
per year in Iran, around 80 percent of which are exported. Given the importance of the rug industry to Iran’s economy and the timeless beauty of the art form, the rug-makers at the center of production should be protected with a measure similar to the aforementioned “Fair Trade” and “conflict-free” movements. Due to the rug-makers’ special position as artists, they can leverage their work in a way that farmers and factory-workers in other industries cannot: Their creative intuition and artistic eye is irreplicable by a machine. Instead of allowing middle-men to arbitrarily mark up the prices of rugs and hold onto the profits, a new protection should guarantee that the creator is recognized for her labor and for her artistic ability. A new metric must be introduced to accomplish this goal, wherein the time and artistic complexity required of the worker is what counts, rather than only the material or size of the rug. If the artists are allowed to indicate how long their piece took them and how difficult the design was to make, they can begin to receive fair compensation for their labor and skill. THE JUSTICE ISSUE
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