BPR Fall 2021 Issue 2 by Brown Political Review

FALL 2021

ISSUE 02

SPECIAL FEATURE

RABBIT HOLES

Listen to BPRadio The highlights of BPR's coverage of policy and political affairs, wherever you get your podcasts.

Issue 02, Fall 2021

Editors’ Note In Lewis Carroll’s 1865 novel Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Alice falls down a rabbit hole into a magical and illogical fantasy world, where she encounters eccentric characters like the Cheshire Cat, the Mad Hatter, and the hookah-smoking Caterpillar. Today, the term has broadly come to mean a bizarre, confusing, or nonsensical situation or environment, typically one from which it is difficult to extricate oneself. Rabbit holes themselves twist and turn, especially in the realm of politics; falling down a political rabbit hole may involve exploring a governmental conspiracy theory, dissecting the specifics of a policy proposal, or untangling a legal issue. No matter how it’s interpreted, though, the term ‘rabbit hole’ prompts us to question how deep a subject really goes, implying that we can never see the whole picture just by looking at the surface. In this issue, our four Special Feature authors fall down their own respective rabbit holes and bring us along for the journey. While each of their rabbit holes is distinct, a common theme runs throughout the political quandaries our authors raise: They may seem small and finite, but they also hold the potential to expand into something immense and seemingly unanswerable. This does not mean these questions should be avoided; in fact, our authors prompt us to dig deep on the issues that they present, lest we miss the real—and potentially dangerous—impacts they have on our world. First, Zachary Braner explains how the US government’s treatment of John F. Kennedy’s assassination has sowed distrust in the government and led a majority of Americans down conspiratorial rabbit holes. Rachel Yan points to Delphi, an artificial intelligence model that makes ethical decrees, as an example of technology’s

The Rabbit Holes Issue

inadequacy as a moral authority, particularly when humans cannot agree on what is moral themselves. David Pinto traces Éric Zemmour’s rise to the vanguard of the French political right, highlighting the unique potential of this inherently contradictory candidate who may be poised to seize control of the Élysée Palace come election season. Finally, Claire Hodges questions US courts’ application of 18th century constitutional law to 21st century technology, describing the slippery slope that results from ruling computer code as protected speech under the First Amendment. Certainly, it would be nice to find a simple answer at the end of each rabbit hole. But rabbit holes, by nature, will always challenge our desire for certainty. And though their unending complexity may be frustrating, we find value in presenting discourse surrounding the hard questions—even when we cannot provide an answer to them ourselves.

— Hannah, Kate, Rachel

Brown Political Review EXECUTIVE BOARD

CONTENT BOARD

EDITORS IN CHIEF Kate Dario Hannah Severyns

SENIOR MANAGING WEB EDITORS Ellie Papapanou Tarana Sable

CHIEFS OF STAFF Eunice Chong Gabe Merkel

MANAGING WEB EDITOR Matthew Walsh

CHIEF OPERATING OFFICER Meghan Murphy SENIOR MANAGING WEB EDITORS Ellie Papapanou Tarana Sable MANAGING WEB EDITOR Matthew Walsh SENIOR MANAGING MAGAZINE EDITOR Rachel Yan CHIEF COPY EDITORS Zeke Hertz Peter Zubiago INTERVIEWS DIRECTORS Haley Joyce Sam Kolitch DATA DIRECTOR Erika Bussmann BUSINESS DIRECTORS Neel Dhavale Tyler Lu CREATIVE DIRECTORS Christine Wang Iris Xie

UNITED STATES SENIOR EDITOR Cartie Werthman UNITED STATES EDITORS Molly Cook Max Pushkin UNITED STATES STAFF WRITERS Sofia Barnett Natalia Ibarra Jeanine Kim Jillian Lederman Kara McAndrew Sarah McGrath Kevin Moclair Amiri Nash Sacha Sloan Peter Swope Jack Tajmajer Shane Tomaino ACTIVISM EDITORS Amanda Page Gabby Smith

CREATIVE ECONOMY SENIOR EDITOR Chaelin Jung ECONOMY EDITORS Milo Douglas Mathilda Silbiger ECONOMY STAFF WRITERS Ben Ackerman John Bellaire William Forys Simon Giordano Ethan Groboski Garrett Johnson Akhil Saxena Jesse Ward WORLD SENIOR EDITOR Daniel Halpert WORLD EDITORS Morgan McCordick Isabella Yepes WORLD STAFF WRITERS Maru Attwood Gabriel Blanc Erik Brown Laura David Nealie Deol Deepak Gupta Charlie Key Alex Lee Zoe Magley Isaac Slevin Ben Youngwood Sally Zhang Dino Zheng

MEDIA DIRECTORS Mina Kao Autumn-Jade Stoner PODCAST DIRECTORS Casey Chan Ellie Thomson LEAD WEB DEVELOPER Nick Young

EDITORIAL BOARD SENIOR MANAGING MAGAZINE EDITOR Rachel Yan MANAGING EDITORS Carmen Bebbington Claire Hodges Sarah Roberts ASSOCIATE EDITORS Emma Blake Zander Blitzer Lauren Griffiths Justen Joffe Annabelle Liu Steven Long Alexandra Mork Cole Powell Joseph Safer-Bakal Ben Singer Nate Swidler

COPY EDITORIAL BOARD

INTERVIEWS BOARD

CHIEF COPY EDITORS Zeke Hertz Peter Zubagio

INTERVIEWS DIRECTORS Haley Joyce Sam Kolitch

COPY EDITORS Rachel Blumenstein Yevin Chung James Dallape Robert Daly Meehir Dixit Elizabeth Duchan Olivia Falkenrath Dante Flores-Demarchi Jacob Gelman Eric Guo Elias Kaul Jeanine Kim Connor Kraska William Lake Caleb Lazar Gene Lu Kevin Masse Jessa Mellea Anna Park Devan Paul Eleanor Peters Bianca Rosen Annabel Roth Namsai Sethpornpong Audrey Taylor Riley Thompson Christopher Wai Claire Zeller Jon Zhang

DEPUTY INTERVIEWS DIRECTORS Alex Fasseas Adriana Lorenzini Miles Munkacy Zachary Stern Sam Trachtenberg Alexandra Vitkin INTERVIEWS ASSOCIATES Lucy Anderson Justin Barlas Ahad Bashir Omri Bergner-Phillips Alisa Caira Louisa Cavicchi Elijah Dahunsi Maya Davis John Fullerton Emerson Goodrich James Hardy Alice Jo Izzy Lazenby Seungje Lee Alexandra Lehman Mira Mehta Alyssa Merritt Lauren Muhs Hai Ning Ng Maya Rackoff Gidget Rosen Noah Rosenfeld Sana Sinha Peter Swope Tucker Wilke Anik Willig

CREATIVE DIRECTORS Christine Wang Iris Xie ART DIRECTORS Georgina Bronheim Jesse Hogan Lucia Li Jocelyn Salim Nina Jun Yuchi GRAPHIC DESIGN DIRECTORS Daniel Navratil Hope Wisor GRAPHIC DESIGNERS Jiahua Chen Jingyu Feng Yu Jung Jung Amy Lim Alina Spatz Mehek Vohra

DATA BOARD DATA DIRECTOR Erika Bussmann DATA ASSOCIATES Ashley Cai Jake Garfinkle Raima Islam Nadeen Kablawi Zoey Katzive Nicole Lugo Aidan Ma Kevin Masse Arthi Ranganathan Francisca Saldivar Palacios

MEDIA BOARD MEDIA DIRECTORS Mina Kao Autumn-Jade Stoner MEDIA ASSOCIATES Christine Baek Dante Flores-Demarchi Mira Gupta Nadeen Kablawi Daniel Ma Alex Sarkissian Salonee Singh

TECH DEVELOPMENT BOARD LEAD WEB DEVELOPER Nick Young WEB DEVELOPERS Rosella Liu Sophia Liu Parker Simon

COVER ARTIST Marlowe Pody CONTRIBUTING ILLUSTRATORS G Bronheim Naya Lee Chang Hannah Chang Maria Hahne Lucia Li Jiayin Liu Anahis Luna Rosalia Mejia Joshua Sun Christine Wang Iris Xie

PODCAST BOARD PODCAST DIRECTORS Casey Chan Ellie Thomson ASSISTANT PODCAST DIRECTOR Tevah Gevelber PODCAST ASSOCIATES Elise Curtin Elijah Dahunsi Stefanie Del Rosario Ethan Drake William Kattrup Kate Kuli Alexandra Ali Martinez Kara McAndrew Caroline Parente Alex Rubinstein Alex Sarkissian Michael Seoane Annika Sharp

BUSINESS BOARD BUSINESS DIRECTORS Neel Dhavale Tyler Lu ASSOCIATE BUSINESS DIRECTORS Steven Long Lucca Paris Riley Thompson BUSINESS ASSOCIATES Grace Chaikan Stefanie Del Rosario Peter Edelstein Jake Garfinkle Nadeen Kablawi Caroline Parente Chris Pool Arthi Ranganathan Gidget Rosen Alex Rubinstein Joseph Safer-Bakal

Issue 02, Fall 2021

Visual Essay When Abigail Roberson was 15, she walked into her local grocery store, saw a poster for flour pasted on the wall, and collapsed to the floor. Unbeknownst to Roberson, private photos she had taken of herself months earlier had made their way to Franklin Mills Flour Co, and 25,000 copies of advertisements featuring Roberson’s profile had been posted across the country. Without her consent, Roberson’s image was made public. Two years later, in 1900, her family sued the companies involved in the advertisements for violating her right to privacy. The case eventually made its way to the New York Supreme Court, which found that there was no such thing as a legal right to privacy, and thus no crime had been committed. Roberson’s image, the majority opinion asserted, “had no inherent value.”

written by Josie Bleakley ’23, an English a nd Modern Culture and Media concentrator illustrated by Iris Xie ’23, a Graphic Design major at RISD

Backlash to this ruling was swift and widespread: In response to public outcry, the New York State Legislature passed the country’s first law “granting citizens a right of privacy.”

In 2017, Tamara Lanier attended a conference hosted by Harvard on the relationship between academia and slavery. Looking up at the university’s president as he gave the keynote address, Lanier was appalled by the image serving as the backdrop to his lecture: a photo of her enslaved ancestor, whom she knew as Papa Renty, projected meters tall.

In 1850, a Harvard professor and zoologist commissioned a series of daguerreotypes of enslaved people to be used as evidence of the genetic inferiority of Black people. The images have been housed and utilized by Harvard ever since. In a 2019 lawsuit, Lanier asserted that Harvard has continuously profited off of her ancestor’s image— photographed as part of this series—with her lawyer bluntly stating: “...it’s been 169 years, and Harvard still won’t free Papa Renty.”

The court, however, didn’t agree—a judge found that “Harvard University is the rightful owner” of the daguerreotypes. After this ruling, there was no great public outcry. The judge didn’t rush to justify his verdict in the Columbia Law Review; the editorial board of the New York Times didn’t write a scathing critique of the finding; the legislature didn’t intercede and pass new laws to prevent such violations moving forward.

The cases of Abigail Roberson and Tamara Lanier highlight the muddied legal relationship between one’s image and one’s property, problematizing the division between the public and private spheres, as evidenced by the trauma of entering a common space only to be confronted by the deeply personal. Technological advancements further transform this divide into something porous and permeable— deepfakes and NFTs are two timely examples of this question of image and ownership. Do you own yourself? Your image? Your likeness? What about that selfie you posted on Instagram last week? Are you sure?

Deserted No More by Robert Daly

NOM NOM NOM-051 by Francisca Saldivar Palacios

UNMIKstakably Complicated by Matthew Walsh

Interview with Courtney Bryan by Hai Ning Ng

Kimchi Wars by Alex Lee

Interview with Rebecca Ballhaus by Maya Davis 19

Interview with Amy Remensnyder by Tucker Wilke

Protection Correction by Madeline Noh

Beyond Paper Genocide by Guarocuya “Frank” Batista-Kunhardt

An Economic Bandaid by Justen Joffe

Pipelines of Mistrust by Jillian Lederman

From Oswald to QAnon by Zachary Braner

Interview with Jeh Johnson by Sam Kolitch

Artificial Ethics by Rachel Yan

Interview with Coleman Hughes by Elijah Dahunsi

France’s Fight for the Right by David Pinto

Decoding Speech by Claire Hodges

WORLD

Deserted No More Aiding Sahrawi refugees requires building improved infrastructure by Robert Daly ’25, an intended Physics or Philosophy concentrator and a Copy Editor for BPR illustrations by Rosalia Mejia ’23, an Industrial Design major at RISD

Outside the city of Tindouf, in the desolate borderlands of Algeria, an estimated 165,000 ethnic Sahrawi live in makeshift refugee camps. Forgotten, poor, and dependent on humanitarian aid for survival, these refugees—many of whom have spent more than 40 years in exile— have little hope. Today, refugee camps that were established in 1975 have become permanent settlements, yet they still lack the infrastructure needed to support the Sahrawi population. Material poverty in Sahrawi refugee camps is unquestionably worth addressing in and of itself, but poor conditions in camps are also fueling renewed violence between the Polisario Front and the Kingdom of Morocco. Therefore, the construction of sustainable infrastructure in Sahrawi refugee camps could also help revive ceasefire negotiations and bring peace to the region. The Western Sahara conflict began in 1975, when the Spanish government signed the Madrid Accords and ended its colonial presence in the Western Sahara. In the accords, Spain ceded the territory occupied by its colonial administration to Morocco and Mauritania rather than to the native Sahrawi population. The Polisario Front—a Sahrawi guerilla group that had fought Spain for self-determination since 1973—began a war against Mauritania and Morocco with the aim of gaining control of the territory. In the following years, the Western Sahara War displaced thousands of Sahrawi and led to the creation of the refugee camps near Tindouf. Although the Polisario Front defeated Mauritania early on, Morocco still laid claim to the entirety of the Western Sahara territory, 8

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“‘You need to know one thing,’ said Salima, a 29-year-old resident of the Laayoune camp, in an Oxfam interview, ‘I don’t like to live here. None of the residents of these camps like to live here.’” so the war continued. The Moroccan military, backed by the United States and France, maintained a consistent upper-hand in the conflict and eventually constructed a massive 2,700-kilometer-long berm, or sand wall, which it frequently patrols and has fortified with minefields. The berm has impeded Polisario fighters’ guerrilla campaign, allowing Morocco to retain nearly 80 percent of the disputed territory and leaving the war in a stalemate. While the 1991 UN-negotiated ceasefire was relatively effective, the Moroccan military obstructed a UN referendum to determine the territory’s status. Over the next 30 years, Algerian refugee camps have become permanent settlements for an entire generation of Sahrawi. Sadly, exile has not been kind to the Sahrawi people. “You need to know one thing,” said Salima, a 29-year-old resident of the Laayoune camp, in an Oxfam interview. “I don’t like to live here. None of the residents of these camps like to live here.” Poor infrastructure in Sahrawi refugee camps has made even basic necessities like water and food scarce. A 2016 study led by the Universidade da Coruña found that, in most locations, the average amount of water supplied to Sahrawi refugees for drinking purposes fell below the minimum 20 liters per day recommended by humanitarian agencies for survival in camp conditions. But the lack of access to water in Sahrawi camps results primarily from poor water production and distribution networks, not from a scarcity of the resource itself. Despite the desert climate, local groundwater reserves near Tindouf are massive: An estimated 10,600 cubic hectometers of groundwater is available in a region that consumes around two cubic hectometers each year. While the limited number of boreholes and purification centers near Sahrawi camps is the main hurdle to water access, flawed distribution systems also inhibit such access. Water distribution pipelines service only 40 percent of Sahrawi camps, with the remaining 60 percent furnished by trucks. Unfortunately, the majority of water trucks used to supply the Sahrawi are more than 20 years old, THE RABBIT HOLES ISSUE

WORLD

“Compared to harvesting groundwater, developing sustainable food sources in refugee camps poses more complicated challenges.”

resulting in frequent breakdowns. Even when the Sahrawi are supplied with drinking water, as one refugee noted, “we have to collect [it] from rusty metal tanks.” Creating sustainable water infrastructure by drilling more boreholes, laying additional pipelines, and updating storage tanks is vital to improving access to drinking water and quality of life in camps. The same is true for food infrastructure. Currently, most of the food that Sahrawi refugees consume comes from rations delivered by humanitarian aid organizations. Even with this assistance, a 2018 study by the World Food Programme found that only 12 percent of Sahrawi families living in the camps are classified as food secure. Furthermore, 7.6 percent of the Sahrawi population suffers from acute malnutrition, and around 50 percent of children and young women suffer from anemia. The availability of foodstuffs in Sahrawi refugee camps is clearly inadequate. While increased humanitarian funding could address shortages, this aid would only provide a temporary solution. Compared to harvesting groundwater, developing sustainable food sources in refugee camps poses more complicated challenges. Nonetheless, the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) has suggested raising livestock, creating community gardens, and starting bakeries as ways to increase community resilience and food production. The UNHRC hopes that by 10

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fostering tighter community bonds and greater economic innovation, these food production strategies will help the Sahrawi learn valuable skills and lay the groundwork for the development of more sustainable food practices in the future. Simply put, the most basic needs of the Sahrawi people are not being met. Poor conditions in camps have brought poverty, malnourishment, thirst, and suffering—all of which should be addressed for their own sake through the creation of sustainable infrastructure. In addition to this humanitarian cause, ameliorating conditions in Sahrawi refugee camps could also mitigate the renewed violence in the region. In early November 2020, on a highway outside the city of Guergarate, years of discontent erupted in violence between Polisario-backed protestors and Moroccan infantry. The conflict that followed destroyed a 29-year-old ceasefire in the region. The Polisario Front then declared war on the Kingdom of Morocco, announcing that it had launched attacks against four Moroccan military positions. Soon after, Algeria, the main supporter of the Polisario Front, severed diplomatic ties with the Kingdom of Morocco. Since then, a series of minor skirmishes, alleged drone strikes, and rocket attacks have claimed an unknown number of lives. Today, the Polisario Front is no more able to threaten Moroccan military supremacy along

the berm than it was in 1991. The notion that the Sahrawi could return to their homeland through a total military victory over the firmly entrenched and better-supplied Moroccan army is simply unrealistic. Yet material desperation in refugee camps and a lack of faith in the UN’s ability to deliver a referendum have left Sahrawi with few other means to improve their circumstances. “If we wait for the UN Security Council to deliver the referendum and the freedom to go back to our land, we will be here for 300 years,” one Sahrawi youth leader named Hamdi told Crisis Group. “If we don’t go back to war, nothing will change.” Ultimately, in negotiating a renewed ceasefire, the UN has to convince refugees like Hamdi that things can change through peaceful means. In this light, a significant commitment to building sustainable infrastructure outside Tindouf would serve not only to alleviate the suffering of 165,000 refugees, but also to provide disillusioned Sahrawi with an alternative to war and an opportunity to once again begin the peace process in a troubled region.

MD Could you briefly explain the investigative process for our readers who might not be aware of what investigative journalism constitutes?

Interview with

Rebecca Ballhaus interview by Maya Davis ’25, an International and Public Affairs and Health and Human biology concentrator and an Interviews Associate for BPR illustrations by Evelyn Tan ’23, an Illustration major at RISD

Rebecca Ballhaus is a journalist and investigative reporter for The Wall Street Journal. After graduating from Brown University in 2013, she has covered areas such as daily news, campaign finance, and the White House under the Trump administration. Notably, she was part of a team that was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for its investigative work “Trump’s Hush Money,” which exposed the payments made to silence women who brought sexual allegations against Donald Trump. Along with this investigation, Ballhaus has done expository work following the 2020 impeachment trial, the 2019 Russian interference scandal, and more. Maya Davis When you first embarked on your journey into the field of journalism, was there anything in particular that you wanted to change? If not, what would you like to see change in the field? Rebecca Ballhaus I don't know that I set out with something I wanted to change. I was interested in being a journalist because I had always been interested in digging into things and investigations. As I've been in this profession for a longer time, I've noticed that the biggest problem that journalism faces is the lack of trust in the media. We've really gotten to a place where people can't agree on a common set of facts, which is a huge problem for our industry and for the country as a whole.

RB The first part of any good investigation is coming up with a target. It is important to spend a lot of time figuring out what you want to spend your time on because any investigation is going to take months to years. You want to make sure that your target is worthy and that there will be something new and important to disclose at the end of the process. After this, you want to identify the players involved. Early on, a big part of our process was figuring out who the main subjects should be, who we cared most about, and how to work our way up towards them. You never want to reach out to the main target of your investigation right away, because you want to be armed with as much information as you can by the time you get to them. Additionally, figuring out who is the most distant relevant person to your topic is crucial. You often need an expert who can give you sort of an overhead view of this area that will help you know what to look for and where to look for it. I always think of it as "starting from the outermost part of the circle and moving inward.” Any time you can have documentation that backs up something you're saying, you're on much more solid footing. Afterwards, you just want to talk to as many people as you possibly can. This is to make sure that there's nothing missing and that you are being fair in your approach. MD Your team’s Pulitzer Prize-winning article, “Trump’s Hush Money,” revealed the payments Donald Trump made to stop women from speaking publicly about his alleged affairs. What was the biggest challenge that you faced during this investigation? RB This was a set of stories that I did with a bigger group at The Wall Street Journal. My colleagues broke some of the earlier stories, and our team grew from there. One of the most challenging parts was answering the questions, "Did Trump know?" and, "Did Trump direct his lawyer to make these payments?" Many people made assumptions, but initially nobody had any proof. Trying to nail down every detail in that narrative was incredibly challenging. In the end, it was very rewarding because we were able to piece together an account that was later backed-up by prosecutors.

“In my eight years reporting, it's become clear how much people talk to the press as a way to advantage themselves.” RB Yes, it was [laughs]. It was always very interesting to see how people went from being incredibly difficult to reach to incredibly easy to reach after they left the administration. This was absolutely helpful to source-citing. In some ways, it meant you had to continually get new sources from the administration, and it was difficult to constantly develop new relationships. On the other hand, if you had a question about something that had happened a year ago, you knew there would be a number of people who you could talk to. MD Do you find that you are more skeptical in your everyday life due to the way in which investigative reporting exposes peoples’ tendencies to deny their stories and lie? RB When I first started out as a reporter, I never really understood why anyone talked to the press. In my eight years reporting, it's become clear how much people talk to the press as a way to advantage themselves. It's not just out of the goodness of their hearts that they're talking to a reporter, but because there's something they're hoping to get out of it. In that sense, it certainly makes you maybe more cynical but also gives you a better understanding of people and how they think and how they work. For example, under Trump, the White House would regularly deny things that we had very solidly confirmed. It makes you want to make sure you are armed with as much information as possible, so you're prepared for whatever comes at you. *This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

MD For that article in particular, was it easier to find reliable sourcing and work up to bigger sources due to the fact that the Trump administration had a lot of turnover in hiring and firing advisors and staff?

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WORLD

NOM NOM NOM-051 by Francisca Saldivar Palacios ’24, an International and Public Affairs concentrator and a Data Associate for BPR infographic by Francisca Saldivar Palacios ’24, Arthi Ranganathan ’24, Nicole Lugo ’25, and Amy Lim ’23

Gone are the days of Tony the Tiger and Cap'n Crunch. In October 2020, the Mexican government implemented the New Mexico Food Law (NOM-051), which requires foods that fail to meet certain nutritional standards to include front-of-package health warnings and prohibits cartoon advertising on unhealthy food products. This law comes in response to a spike in diet-related health conditions: Diabetes and cardiovascular disease account for 14 and 24 percent of total deaths in the nation, respectively. By solely focusing on package labeling and nutritional information, however, the law fails to address systemic factors at the core of food consumption patterns and diet-related conditions in Mexico, particularly income inequality. For much of the 20th century, Mexico relied on agriculture to sustain its population. During the 1990s, a wave of neoliberal reforms washed over the nation, bringing with them the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and opening Mexico’s economy to foreign trade. By 12

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eliminating import tariffs on goods from Canada and the United States, NAFTA led to a period of economic growth and foreign investment in Mexico. This elimination of trade barriers also enabled massive importation of cheap processed foods, which quickly replaced traditional staple ingredients in the Mexican diet such as maize, beans, and rice. Simultaneously, modern agricultural methods were introduced, lowering wages and forcing workers to move to cities, where they adopted more sedentary lifestyles. The rising prevalence of heart disease and diabetes demonstrates the impact of these shifts. This concern is not limited to Mexico: Several other Latin American countries have recently seen spikes in diet-related health conditions. In Chile, the problem prompted the government to enact the 2016 Food Law, which required companies to eliminate caricatures from packaging and properly label nutritional information. The law proved successful: Researchers found that 91.3 percent of citizens surveyed reduced their purchases of supposedly unhealthy products after the law’s enactment. The success of the Chilean law inspired Mexico’s passage of its own similar measure, the aforementioned NOM-051. Like Chile’s law, NOM-051 requires companies to assess and clearly present the health impacts of their products. The health assessment is derived from the Pan American Health Organization’s standards on appropriate levels of sugar, calories, sodium, trans fat, saturated fat, and caffeine. Products failing to meet health standards must include a

A look into the motivations and limitations of Mexico's new food label law

large warning marker on the front of their packaging indicating poor nutritional content. Products that display these seals are also prohibited from having drawings or images on their packaging. Mascots, such as those on cereal boxes, were removed as part of an effort to eliminate advertising directed towards children. Despite positive intentions to improve the nation’s health, NOM-051 fails to address the root cause of poor nutritional choices: poverty. The law focuses on shifting individuals’ behavior rather than targeting the low wages that push them to consume cheap, calorie-rich, and processed foods. Foods that pass the new health standards are often more expensive and, with 42 percent of Mexico’s population living in poverty in 2018, less accessible to much of the population. For many, the choice to purchase cheap processed foods does not always come down to preference, but the inability to pay for healthier options. Inaccurate portrayal of nutritional content is yet another shortcoming of NOM-051. While the government hoped the new labeling procedures would simplify consumers’ interpretation of nutritional content, consumers often erroneously construe the lack of a seal as evidence that a product is healthy. A study of Chile’s law confirmed this to be the case: 68.1 percent of survey respondents viewed the lack of a seal as evidence of the food’s robust nutritional value. For many products, however, this is far from true, as nutritional labels fail to indicate many harmful ingredients. Take, for instance, diet

“Despite positive intentions to improve the nation’s health, NOM-051 fails to address the root cause of poor health choices: poverty.”

sodas. These beverages contain a wide range of chemicals and artificial sweeteners, yet because they lack a warning label, they falsely lead consumers to believe that the drinks do not pose a health risk. Thus, the law fails to comprehensively educate consumers on the dangers of processed foods. With the second phase of NOM-051 set to start October 1, 2023, companies have time to adjust their formulas or else remain subject to nutritional labeling. Unfortunately, the surface-level nature of this public health effort, as opposed to an approach that addresses the social determinants of unhealthy food choices, limits its chance of long-term effectiveness. Going forward, truly sustainable public health initiatives must target the systemic issues in which consumption patterns are rooted.

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raising awareness of the impact of that violence on communities. At our organization we call it Save Our Streets (SOS), and it runs in Brooklyn and the Bronx. There’s promising research that supports that program, so we’re continuing it to respond to the increase in violent crime at this time. HN Can you tell us more about the Cure Violence and SOS initiatives? Interview with

Courtney Bryan by Hai Ning Ng ’23, an Anthropology concentrator and an Interviews Associate and Equity Officer for BPR illustrations by Evelyn Tan ’23, an Illustration major at RISD

Courtney Bryan is the executive director of the Center for Court Innovation, a New York City-based nonprofit that creates new programs, conducts original research, and provides assistance to justice reformers to create a fair, effective, and humane justice system. Over the course of more than a decade at the Center, Bryan has served as the coordinator for domestic violence programs and the director of the Midtown Community Court. She also served as staff director for the Independent Commission on New York City Criminal Justice and Incarceration Reform, which successfully argued for closing the jails on Rikers Island.

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Hai Ning Ng Many cities have seen a seeming spike in violent crime this year. Why might that be happening, and what can we do about it? Courtney Bryan It’s happening here in New York and also across the country. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that it happened with the pandemic. Over the last several years, crime in the United States—including violent crime— has been going down. In New York City, we’ve seen a decline in incarceration as well. But with Covid-19, every city is experiencing a disruption to its social safety net. The pandemic is a significant driver of disruption to the economy, to education, and to access to food and other basic essentials. The timing of this spike in crime tells me that the pandemic has to be an underlying factor. What we can do about it is recognize the disruptions to education, employment, social cohesion, and community that people have experienced. One key strategy is investment in social and economic services to support folks, people who may have been driving some of the uptick in violent crime. Another strategy that the Center for Court Innovation has played a strong role in supporting is “Cure Violence,” a program taking a public health approach to violence prevention and response. People who we call “credible messengers” are a large part of this initiative. They are from the neighborhood that anti-violence programs are located in, and have experience either as victims or perpetrators of violence—often both. They go out in their neighborhoods preventing violence by

CB Our violence interrupters are really the core component of Cure Violence. As people with lived experiences of violence, their role is to keep their ears to the ground to find out where violence may be brewing, then intervene and mediate conflict between parties before it erupts in violence. The role requires them to be in the community, using the relationships and the credibility that they have to persuade and provide support to folks who may be contemplating using violence. Violence interrupters identify people at high risk of committing violence or being a victim of it, then figure out how to get them the individualized support they need to get on a different path. That might be education, employment, or meeting their basic needs like housing and food. Violence interrupters use their skills and relationships to disrupt emerging conflicts, then mentor community members to support them on a different trajectory.

“...Many perpetrators are also survivors of violence. We have to acknowledge and address that foundational trauma contributing to their use of violence.” HN With respect to your experience in domestic violence programs, what does survivor centeredness and perpetrator accountability mean to you? CB I started my career as a public defender, responding to domestic and gender-based violence, working with women who had been accused of or charged with a crime connected to their history of experiencing abuse. I was representing people who were victims of vio-

lence charged with crimes where they acted in self-defense, sometimes while under duress, but I was also representing people charged with committing harm themselves. Similar to the violence interrupters, we have to recognize that most people are not one or the other: People are often survivors of violence who have experienced trauma themselves, and they often go on to become perpetrators. I say this not to mean that every survivor is a perpetrator, but that more often than not, many perpetrators are also survivors of violence. We have to acknowledge and address that foundational trauma contributing to their use of violence. Approaching people who have been accused of committing harm with this mindset will help open our eyes to the kinds of support, services, and interventions that will actually be effective in preventing further harm in future. HN The Center for Court Innovation started from the Midtown Community Court program, which introduced alternatives to incarceration. Could you elaborate on those alternatives and how they work? CB The Midtown Community Court was started in 1996 to disrupt the status quo of large numbers of people being arrested in the city. At the time, we were close to the height of the number of people being incarcerated in New York City—over 20,000, compared to around 6,000 now. The innovation of the Midtown Community Court was recognizing that many of the folks who were coming through the court system for low-level offenses had underlying needs that were not being addressed. What we needed to do, instead of sending them to jail or handing them a fine they could not pay, was to connect them to services as quickly as possible. Over the last 25 years, there has been tremendous innovation in the types of programming and services that the Midtown Community Court offers. For example, there are connections to substance abuse treatment and support, mental health services, employment, crisis management, and medical services. Sometimes it’s not even about social services; sometimes it’s about cultural programming that connects people to culture, art, education, and community. We’ve experimented, finding out what folks need and bringing in new partners to provide those services and programs. Again, this model could serve as a template for other community courts around the country. The work of the original Midtown Community Court has already inspired programs like Bronx Community Solutions and Brooklyn Justice Initiatives, and most recently Manhattan Justice Opportunities. They are taking the ideas and principles of community justice and bringing them into a

centralized courthouse, trying to scale it up and reengineer the entire system. HN In your view, what are the most effective ways to make real and lasting change to the criminal justice system? CB Building relationships. It sounds basic, but it’s so critical both at an individual and at a systemic level. I often describe our work as being “engaged in relentless engagement.” We engage with individuals coming through the justice system by building trust, understanding what their underlying needs are, and tapping into their strengths. That only comes when you take time to get to know people, and you keep at it. I think this strategy is true with communities as well; it’s listening and continuing to be there. If we’re trying to support a neighborhood that’s been impacted by violence, poverty, and racism, we approach it by staying at the table and engaging with all the voices in that community. Finally, to make change at the system level, you also need to build a diverse coalition of folks from different perspectives, like the private sector, law enforcement, prosecutors, defense attorneys, and so on. You’re not going to agree on everything, nor should you. But our approach is to continue engaging even when we’re not seeing the progress we hoped for and when we’re not getting the “yes” we wanted to get. It’s like taking the long view and continuing to build those relationships with system actors and with the system itself in order to create change. *This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

“If we’re trying to support a neighborhood that’s been impacted by violence, poverty, and racism, we approach it by staying at the table and engaging with all the voices in that community.”

THE RABBIT HOLES ISSUE

UNMIKstakably Complicated

WORLD

FALL 2021 | ISSUE 02

Resolving ethnic conflict in Kosovo requires prioritizing both political and economic institutionbuilding by Matthew Walsh '23, a Political Science concentrator, a Managing Web Editor and an Associate Editor for BPR illustrations by Madison Tom ’23, an Illustration major at RISD

Few things symbolize the country of Kosovo better than the Ibar River in the city of Mitrovica. On the south side of the river live ethnic Albanians, most of whom feel strong pride for their young country, which gained independence less than two decades ago. North of the river live ethnic Serbs, many of whom don’t even recognize Kosovo as an independent state. Until 2013, when the European Union-mediated Brussels Agreement between Serbia and Kosovo was crafted, most of the country’s Serbs refused to take part in Kosovo’s court system, hospitals, or schools, instead participating in illegal parallel structures funded by Serbia. While they eventually agreed to dismantle such institutions—and have indeed started to do so—Kosovar officials complain that some remain intact. Serbs’ continued participation in parallel structures means that many of them remain disengaged from Kosovar society, posing a hurdle to multiethnic inclusion in the young country. While ethnic relations in Kosovo remain tense, they are not the only barrier to inclusion. Kosovo’s low standard of living and meager public services are also responsible. Had the Western state-building process in Kosovo in the 2000s used some of its political capital to develop strong economic institutions, particularly through combating corruption—rather than spending most of it on political developing institutions—then there would be greater willingness among Serbs to participate in Kosovar society. Strife between Serbs and Albanians has characterized Kosovo since the beginning of the 20th century, as the two ethnic groups have continuously struggled over the rugged, rural territory in the middle of the Balkans. For almost the entire century, the region—predominantly populated by ethnic Albanian Muslims—was controlled by Yugoslavia, leading to a long-

term repression of Albanian identity. While other ethnically defined territories in Yugoslavia—including Croatia, Slovenia, Macedonia, and Bosnia—were recognized as independent republics and earned greater control over their internal affairs, Kosovo remained part of the Serbian Republic. Persistent agitation by the Albanian majority in Kosovo resulted in the region becoming an autonomous province in 1974. This development granted the country nearly the same rights as a republic, but the ethnic détente was short-lived. Former President Slobodan Milošević’s ascent to power in Yugoslavia in the late 1980s was driven by Serbian nationalism, ethnic and religious bigotry, and a strong belief that Kosovo belonged to Serbia. Tensions quickly flared once again. After the breakup of Yugoslavia in 1991, and the subsequent independence of the Yugoslav republics, Kosovar Albanians saw an opportunity to gain full autonomy from Serbia once and

“Serbs’ continued participation in parallel structures means that many of them remain disengaged from Kosovar society, posing a hurdle to multiethnic inclusion in the young country.”

for all. Throughout the 1990s, there was mutual persecution between the two ethnic groups— the ethnonationalist Serbia repressed Albanians while Kosovar Albanians marginalized Serbs in their new, autonomous institutions. A brutal conflict, marked by copious human rights abuses and war crimes, broke out in 1998 and led to the infamous NATO bombing of Belgrade. Hostilities ended shortly after, but the central question of the war remained unresolved: Who would have sovereignty over Kosovo? Despite Kosovar Serbs and Albanians’ conflicting eagerness to be designated as sovereign, the UN forestalled answering this question in 1999 when it established the United Nations Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK). One of the most ambitious state-building operations to date, UNMIK assumed near-complete control over Kosovo’s government functions and aimed to transform its bureaucracy in a liberal, Western image. The mantra of the international administration of Kosovo was “standards before status”—that is, Kosovo would be required to adopt democratic institutions before the sovereignty question could be resolved. Ensuring multiethnic inclusion in Kosovo’s government became a prerequisite for independence, and, in turn, the republic’s Albanian elite succumbed to pressure from the UN and the EU to create institutions that accommodated the Serbian minority. Kosovo’s constitution, written with significant input from UN advisors, created a decentralized political system and guaranteed Serbs the right to educate their children in their native language. The constitution also slightly overrepresented minority groups in parliament, reserving 10 out of 120 seats for ethnic Serbs who comprise only about 5 percent of the population. Thus, when Kosovo declared independence in 2008, it became, on paper, one of the most ethnically inclusive states in the world. However, Kosovo’s experience since then has shown that even strong constitutional protections for minorities might not be enough to build a resilient, inclusive state. Since the UNMIK mission was a de facto international occupation of Kosovo, it had limited political capital to achieve its goals. The fundamental dilemma facing UNMIK was that, on the one hand, it was compelling Kosovo to become a democracy. On the other, it was an outside occupier and offered few outlets for democratic accountability. Indeed, throughout the 2000s, the Kosovar public became increasingly frustrated with the lack of its self-determination and slow pace at which UNMIK devolved power to local authorities. This frustration reached a fever pitch when ethnic riots and anti-UNMIK agitation broke out in 2004. Any expansion of the mission’s authorities could have stoked the

“Hostilities ended shortly after, but the central question of the war remained unresolved: Who would have sovereignty over Kosovo?”

ire of the Kosovar public once again, and the UN likely understood this. Thus, the emphasis the UN placed on codifying multiethnic institutions in Kosovo—which was already a hard sell given fresh memories of ethnic conflict—probably came at the expense of a more intrusive rejiggering of economic structures. A notable indicator of failed economic institution-building in Kosovo is the rampant corruption plaguing the country. Bureaucrats and elected officials have maintained intricate client-patron relationships with their constituents, transferring state resources in exchange for political loyalty. The large-scale privatization of Kosovo’s state-owned enterprises, for example, did not proceed fairly; instead, the Kosovo Trust, in charge of selling off state-owned enterprise assets, favored political allies in the business community. Public procurement operates similarly: Surveys of Kosovar business owners have revealed widespread tenderomania, an Albanian word referring to the favoritism, nepotism, and bribery dominating the government contracting process. Public employment is also far from meritocratic: A common refrain in Kosovo is that, “If you do not have a connection, you can forget about a job.” By hampering fair THE RABBIT HOLES ISSUE

WORLD

“Thus, the emphasis the UN placed on codifying multiethnic institutions in Kosovo—which was already a hard sell given fresh memories of ethnic conflict—probably came at the expense of a more intrusive rejiggering of economic structures.”

competition, inefficiently allocating resources, and discouraging international investment, corruption has proved a serious obstacle to Kosovo’s economic development. Sclerotic growth has resulted in poorly funded schools and hospitals as well as meager job prospects, thereby incentivizing Kosovo’s Serbs to further withdraw from Kosovar institutions and cozy up to Belgrade. Preventing corruption, unfortunately, would have been a tall order for the international community. Corruption is a defining factor of state-society relations in Kosovo, so constitutional provisions would not be enough to truly eradicate it. Instead, eliminating corruption would require the international community to conduct intrusive oversight of local officials’ activities, especially their business dealings. Such micromanagement of elite behavior, even in the name of democracy, could then exacerbate the democratic legitimacy crisis that the international occupation faced in Kosovo. Likewise, corruption serves the material self-interest of the country’s political and business elite. Getting them to agree to multiethnic democracy was ultimately successful only after negotiation, but convincing them to voluntarily dismantle the very systems that enrich them would have been a gargantuan task. Furthermore, it could have jeopardized the cooperative relationship between Kosovo’s elites and the international state-builders. Thus, given diminishing popular support for the international mission over time, the hands-off approach to corruption was likely intentional. The impotence of the European Union Rule of Law Mission in Kosovo (EULEX), which began in 1999 and operates to this day, embodies the international community’s permissiveness. Even armed with a court system to fight corruption, EULEX has been notoriously ineffective, in part because it has refused to pursue cases that threaten the “leading faction of the political elite.” Perhaps the international community would have been less reluctant to alter the rules of Kosovo’s economy if it had granted locals more political autonomy at the outset of the mission, 18

FALL 2021 | ISSUE 02

rather than creating what opponents called an “UNMIKistan.” That way, even if anti-corruption measures were unpopular among the elite, having substantial political self-determination could temper their discontent with the international occupation. Striking the right balance between political and economic institution-building is undoubtedly tricky, especially when questions of ethnic inclusion are on the table. Paying too much attention to the economy while crafting insufficiently multiethnic political arrangements could raise the overall standard of living but

risk marginalizing the Serbian minority. The international mission in Kosovo, therefore, does not provide a perfect guide for how to execute a state-building project, yet at the very least, it is a case study in the tradeoff between political and economic development. If the UN pursues another state-building project in the future, even in an ethnically divided country like Kosovo, it must recognize that material well-being is often necessary for multiethnic harmony.

Interview with

Amy Remensnyder

by Tucker Wilke ’23, an English and International and Public Affairs concentrator and an Interviews Associate for BPR illustrations by Evelyn Tan ’23, an Illustration major at RISD

Amy Remensnyder is a Professor of History at Brown University. She specializes in the High Middle Ages and is the author of Remembering Kings Past: Monastic Foundation Legends in Medieval Southern France (1995) and La Conquistadora: The Virgin Mary at War and Peace in the Old and New Worlds (2013). She also teaches the course Locked Up: A Global History of Prison and Captivity concurrently at Brown and the Rhode Island Adult Correctional Institute through the Brown History Education Project. Tucker Wilke One feature of your course Locked Up has been the facilitated dialogue between Brown and incarcerated students. How have the Brown students and the incarcerated students responded to the dialogue and their classmates over the years? Amy Remensnyder Especially at the beginning of the class, one of the things incarcerated students ask their Brown classmates is, “What stereotypes do you bring to your experience with us? Are you thinking we're all this set of savage beasts in the way that the media often portrays us?” or, “Are you looking down on us, are we a social experiment, are you just observing us, or are you valuing us as fellow students?” I do think that there are some Brown students who begin the course with a stereotype and lose it by the end. At the end of the semester, I always ask the question, “How was the dialogue for you?” and somebody will always say, “I really entered with this stereotype that they would

be less educated and less smart than us, and I learned it’s totally not true.” I like to imagine that both sides come out with more respect for each other. Some of the incarcerated students have said to me that one of the things that's the most important about Locked Up is that sense of being accepted as peers by Brown students. TW How have incarcerated people responded to the content about the history of captivity? AR I want to make it very clear that I can’t speak for anybody’s experience; I can only speak from my perspective as a teacher and from what students have told me. Sometimes this class gives the incarcerated students a larger framework of analysis for understanding the systems that have produced prisons. Many of them come from backgrounds of utter non-privilege, which is not to excuse committing crimes, but the course helps them understand even more the systems that are operative in and create societies, including a society that creates mass incarceration. Many of them already think very

“Since the incarcerated students have firsthand experience of captivity, they notice things in the text viscerally that the Brown students would pay much less attention to.”

much at that level, and this class, I think, cements that. I think, too, that the incarcerated students, because of their experience, claim a certain kind of authority over the readings that the Brown students simply can't have. Since the incarcerated students have firsthand experience of captivity, they notice things in the text viscerally that the Brown students would pay much less attention to. To give you an example: In Twelve Years A Slave, there's a passage where Solomon Northup says that on plantations you could hear the cracking of the whip everywhere. And I remember, they said, “Oh, yeah, it's just like the cuffs,” and I asked, “What are you talking about?” Well, the Correctional Officers have handcuffs, and you can hear them jingle. That jingle for the incarcerated students produces the same sense of domination that the cracking of the whip would produce for the slave. The Brown students might observe that the crack of the whip must have been traumatic, but they don't have that visceral sense of what a sound does to a captive, a sound that is associated with the instrument of your deprivation of liberty. TW What insights have you gained by thinking about mass incarceration in the US from a historical perspective? AR Mass incarceration is often seen as a negative manifestation of the idea of US exceptionalism. We have a sense that something different is going on in this country. That is true, but what is happening here is not so different from anything that has ever happened before. Other modern Western nations do not have incarceration rates like ours, but we are not the only society to have had mass incarceration. I think that by understanding it in this much, much longer continuum, we can see what a perennial problem this is. Societies have always struggled with how to think about people who break what they consider to be the law. Prison, of course, has not always been the dominant form of traditional punishment, so we can ask, "Why have we come up with this now, and why is it so big here? Why is it that humans feel the need to hold other people captive? How do we struggle with that?" When you put it in this larger continuum, you can see that prison is not inevitable, that mass incarceration is not inevitable, and that it can be fixed. It’s also not just a problem for humans. I really make a plug for seeing nonhumans as captives. Now that I know the research around the effects of captivity, I can’t bear to see anything locked up. I think that people who see captivity in this larger context will become more sensitized to all the other instances of captivity in the world, and they'll understand that mass incarceration is also happening in the form of processes such as human trafficking and animal captivity and that these are all part of this larger problem. *This interview has been edited for length and clarity. THE RABBIT HOLES ISSUE

WORLD

KIMCHI WARS

by Alex Lee '25, an intended International and Public Affairs concentrator and a World Staff Writer for BPR illustration by Joanne Han ’22, a Brown | RISD dual degree student concentrating in Computer Science and Illustration

What a culinary conflict reveals about East Asia's complicated postcolonial nationalism

FALL 2021 | ISSUE 02

In recent years, kimchi—a spicy, fermented cabbage dish ubiquitous in Korea— has found its way into home kitchens and chain restaurants around the world. Yet, even as South Korean kimchi exports reach an all-time high, the dish marks a low point in China-South Korea relations, with the two countries fighting over who invented it. Cultural ministries and mass media platforms in Korea and China regularly argue about international standards for kimchi-making, leading their respective social media users to trade blows via Naver or Weibo. These so-called ‘kimchi wars’ have bubbled over into the eco-

nomic sphere, with Chinese import restrictions and mistrust among Korean consumers leading to drops in trade between the two countries. Interestingly, Japan and Korea were embroiled in a similar conflict during the late 1990s. It may be tempting to ascribe the most recent kimchi wars to a simple mistranslation by the International Organization for Standardization, which conflated kimchi and pao cai, a different pickled vegetable dish from China. Yet, there exists objective evidence that kimchi, at least as we know it today, originated in Korea. In addition, a mere mistranslation does not explain the Japan-Korea feud in the 1990s. One could also describe cultural disputes like the kimchi wars as an offshoot of modern economic tensions; after all, Japan, South Korea, and China are generally well-developed and have stable institutions. But economic development cannot compensate for the full extent of East Asia’s historical legacies. Rather than a translation or trade dispute, the kimchi wars are grounded in the modern national identities of China, Japan, and South Korea, each of whom reinvented their history and culture under a colonial system unique to their region. More than a food fight, the kim-

chi wars reveal how postcolonial identities and power dynamics continue to complicate political affairs in East Asia. East Asian imperial dynamics have their roots in the 1850s, as Western powers like the United States and the United Kingdom forced China, Korea, and Japan to adopt the West’s market-capitalist system, stripping China of its hegemony over mainland Asian politics. Meanwhile, Japan—more distant from continental issues and inspired by the Western model— became an imperial power. From the mid-1900s until the end of World War II, Japan engaged in European-style imperialism across the Asia-Pacific region, exploiting the resources of Korea and parts of China, such as Manchuria, all the while stripping their people of political and cultural legitimacy. Vestiges of Japan’s imperial pursuits still affect the economies of its former colonies and fuel Chinese and Korean resentment towards Japan. With World War II weakening the imperial power of both Japan and the West, Chinese and Korean people sought to forge new national identities—distinct from that of their colonizers—in what is now known as their “postcolonial moment.” China focused on regaining its strength, intending to reclaim hegemony over Asia from the West; like many postcolonial nations, it turned to communism to push back against the inequalities in Western-style capitalist systems. Koreans also sympathized with the idea of defending their homeland against foreign aggressors, but the Cold War’s division of the Korean peninsula led to North and South Korea adopting distinct identities. To justify capitalism in a postcolonial state, the South

“While East Asians are getting older on average, younger generations— those without living memories of colonialism or the Cold War—are starting to exercise their influence in politics and culture.”

Korean government built its national identity around defending Korean culture from outside threats, whether they be communist or colonial. As a former imperial power, Japan did not have a postcolonial moment like Korea or China, but its national identity was nonetheless influenced by colonial and Cold War dynamics. Hoping to restore economic and political ties with the capitalist West, Japan built its postwar identity around international respectability, leading Japan to appeal to Western sensibilities while brushing over its own geographic and historical context, especially its past as a colonial power. Each of these complex national identities inform East Asia’s various claims and conflicts over kimchi. Under China’s perennial quest to reassert its national identity and strength, Chinese leaders claim kimchi—and many other cultures, inventions, and territories—as their own. Meanwhile, after the 1988 Seoul Olympics exposed many Westerners to kimchi, Japan’s desire to be politically and culturally appealing to the West motivated its 1990s push to own and promote the dish. Finally, South Korea views kimchi as central to its cultural—and therefore political—heritage; any foreign claim on kimchi is seen as an attack on the Korean nation itself, fueling South Korea’s vehement responses to China and Japan. Beyond kimchi, each nation’s narrative pits itself against the other two powers, albeit unevenly and for different reasons. The older leaders of these nations, who lived immediately after the colonial period, often link national policy with this history. As a result, past conflicts between the three countries remain open wounds in modern domestic or international policy. Take the issue of comfort women, World War II-era Japanese sex slaves from Korea and China. Japan refuses to fully acknowledge its responsibility in recruiting those women, even starting international diplomatic disputes over memorials for comfort women. This refusal remains a major sticking point in relations between Japan and its East Asian neighbors. Such disputes over historical injustices during the colonial period invariably seep into present diplomatic conflicts across East Asia. The effect of postcolonial identity on policy extends from Taiwan's entry to the Trans-Pacific Partnership and territorial disputes in the Pacific to cultural conflicts and import restrictions like those of the ‘kimchi wars.’ Nevertheless, sweeping demographic changes carry the potential to alter these countries' sense of identity. While East Asians are getting older on average, younger generations— those without living memories of colonialism or the Cold War—are starting to exercise their influence in politics and culture. A mul-

“Rather than a translation or trade dispute, the kimchi wars are grounded in the modern national identities of China, Japan, and South Korea, each of whom reinvented their history and culture under a colonial system unique to their region.”

titude of factors—including globalization, an expanded middle class, and time—contribute to an altered sense of nationalism among youth: maybe stronger or more apathetic, but certainly different from their elders. This demographic and ideological shift presents both opportunities and challenges in East Asian governance, cooperation, and diplomacy—and, of course, challenges to kimchi. For instance, East Asian youth increasingly favor democratic governance, evidenced by the rise of the #MilkTeaAlliance—an online pro-democracy movement—in Hong Kong and Taiwan. Youth in countries like South Korea increasingly disagree with their elders on what that governance should look like, with many criticizing the rampant inequality in South Korea’s capitalist system. As memories of imperial Japan grow more distant with time, younger Koreans are also more likely to take a hardline stance on China. Meanwhile, many young Chinese people—molded by China’s modern identity— are even more nationalist than their elders. Both shifts add fuel to the fire ignited by social media, as Korean and Chinese youth battle over the origins of kimchi. It remains to be seen how leaders in East Asia and around the world will approach these challenges. Yet, cultural spats like the kimchi wars continue to require more attention, lest the underlying national identities ferment into something far more bitter.

THE RABBIT HOLES ISSUE

by Rachel Yan

Problematizing the ethical development of artificial intelligence

Artificial Ethics

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Special Feature

by Zachary Braner

How the CIA & FBI's handling of JFK's murder created modern conspiracy culture

The CIA Doesn't Want You to Know Who Killed JFK

SPECIAL FEATURE | RABBIT HOLES

by Claire Hodges

The implications of giving computer code First Amendment protections

Decoding Speech

28 by David Pinto

An early assessment of the French presidential candidate Éric Zemmour

France's Fight for the Right

In November of this year, QAnon supporters gathered at Dealey Plaza in Dallas, awaiting John F. Kennedy Jr.'s resurrection. Many media outlets portrayed the event as a sign of today’s absurd political climate, but such conspiracies belong to a proud American tradition. This lineage includes the events of November 22, 1963, the day JFK was assassinated. The questionable handling of the events following the killing contributed to a massive decline in trust in the US government—from 77 percent in 1964 to 36 percent just 10 years later. A majority of Americans are conspiracy theorists on this topic, rejecting the official story that Kennedy’s killer acted alone; today, 61 percent of the populace believes others were involved. The only group in the country where a minority hold conspiratorial views on JFK are college-educated white people. The federal government maintains a strategic interest in the assassination: On October 22, 2021, President Biden once again postponed the final release of the JFK assas-

illustrations by Marlowe Pody ’21, an Illustration major at RISD

by Zachary Braner ’23, an English concentrator

THE CIA DOESN'T WANT YOU TO KNOW WHO KILLED JFK

down conspiratorial rabbit holes and have accused their economic competitors of harboring weapons of mass disinformation. But the intelligence community’s ongoing and effective opposition to public will in this case points to an underlying problem. Historian Steven M. Gillon recently argued

“Respectable mainstream outlets have warned against a ‘sickness’ dragging millions of Americans down conspiratorial rabbit holes.”

others, and at least 15,000 remain unpublished, according to the National Archives. The status of these files seems unlikely to change. While President Trump tweeted his intent to release the remaining files days before the 25-year deadline in October 2017, he succumbed to last-minute pressure from the CIA and FBI and issued an executive order approving a six-month delay. In 2018, he extended the delay by four years, citing the JFK Act’s provision for withholding documents that pose an “identifiable threat” to national security. Four years later, President Biden cited the same clause to postpone the release to December 15, 2022, claiming the Covid-19 pandemic disrupted a “final” review which had ostensibly started three years ago. There’s an understandable impulse to shrug. Even assassination researchers think there’s little hope for a bombshell revelation. And given a resurgence of dangerous conspiratorial beliefs nationwide—from vaccine disinformation to claims of election fraud— reopening a half-century old controversy might seem counterproductive. Respectable mainstream outlets have warned against a “sickness” dragging millions of Americans

SPECIAL FEATURE | RABBIT HOLES

FALL 2021 | ISSUE 02

In 1992, Congress passed the JFK Records Collection Act, which ordered all branches of government to provide any assassination-related records to the National Archives for public inspection within 25 years. The move was spurred by Oliver Stone’s 1991 film JFK, an Oscar-winning blockbuster that portrayed the killing as a conspiracy by radical anticommunists in the CIA, FBI, and military. The law aimed to appease renewed controversy, stating that “most of the records...are almost 30 years old, and only in the rarest cases is there any legitimate need for continued protection.” Another 30 years later, roughly 88 percent of the estimated files have been released. However, 11 percent were released with sensitive portions removed, the CIA illegally destroyed

“We may never know if JFK’s death was the act of a lone shooter or a CIA coup d’etat. But we do know that the intelligence community helped manufacture this uncertainty and will continue to suppress information.”

sination records. This decision continues a nearly 60-year-long effort by the CIA and FBI to suppress information relating to JFK's death. Their latest success is a timely reminder of why the United States will never be rid of conspiracy theories so long as the national security state wields unchecked power.

that the assassination’s legacy shows how conspiracy theorists undermine democracy: “Conspiracy advocates have peddled myths distorting Kennedy’s life and death for far too long, thereby fueling cynicism about American institutions that has opened the door for Trump to lie with impunity.” After countless revelations of government crimes and cover-ups—the Pentagon Papers, Watergate, the Church and Pike Committees, Iran-Contra, Chelsea Manning’s Afghanistan Diaries and Iraq War logs, the Snowden Archives, and the Drone Papers, to name the most publicized—it is disingenuous to place the blame for mass disaffection solely on conspiracy theorists rather than American institutions. As we now know, the government, especially the CIA and FBI, did distort Kennedy’s life and death. They destroyed evidence, such as tapes of Lee Harvey Oswald from September 1963; intimidated witnesses like Silvia Duran, who was Oswald’s Cuban embassy contact; and deceived federal investigators, for instance, by concealing Operation Mongoose. Not even Lyndon B. Johnson, who commissioned the Warren Report in 1963, accepted its conclusion that Oswald was the lone assassin. This effort to muddle the truth has created a national conscience, filled by conspiracy theories and bereft of clear information. We may never know if JFK’s death was the act of a lone shooter or a CIA coup d’état. But we do know that the intelligence community helped manufacture this uncertainty and will continue to suppress information. Even our most powerful elected officials—including Trump and Biden—have proven unable or unwilling to challenge intelligence officials, regardless of strong public support for releasing the documents. Legislative response to 9/11 gave the intelligence community extraordinary powers such as rendition, torture, and mass electronic surveillance. Now, as Congress is warming up for a new domestic war on terror in response to the Jan. 6 insurrection, it’s worth asking if the country’s intelligence agencies really need more power.

ARTIFICIAL ETHICS

Since the introduction of the Tin Man in “The Wizard of Oz,” people have envisioned the development of uniquely human traits, such as empathy and morality, in robots. But how can robots be ethical when we as humans fundamentally disagree on what morality is? It may seem absurd to consider an artificial intelligence (AI)—a machine that simulates human consciousness—as a moral authority, but it is not out of the realm of possibility. Researchers at the University of Washington and the Allen Institute for AI have already created an AI model for moral reasoning. Its name is Delphi, and it has been trained to answer any query with an ethical judgment. Delphi can make discernments on a variety of situations, including deliberately tricky ones: Running the blender at 3 a.m. while your family is sleeping is rude, it speculates, and so is ignoring a phone call from your boss during working hours. Delphi even accounts for nuance, at times in ridiculous ways; one user, for example, posed the question “Should I eat babies?,” to which Delphi responded, “It’s wrong.” With the

illustrations by Marlowe Pody ’21, an Illustration major at RISD

by Rachel Yan ’22, a Computer Science and International and Public Affairs concentrator and Senior Managing Magazine Editor for BPR

fitting a model to it. While neural networks were loosely inspired by human neurons, their update process is in fact incompatible with the brain’s anatomy and physiology. If neural networks are unable to accurately represent the brain’s electric symphony, perhaps current artificial intelligence techniques are fundamentally unable to replicate the moral processing abilities of the human brain. Consequently, there are no prescriptive axioms of morality encoded into Delphi’s algorithm. Delphi was trained primarily on answers from Amazon’s crowdsourcing platform Mechanical Turk, where participants were asked to predict how humans would evaluate ethical quandaries harvested from the subreddits r/AmITheAsshole and r/Confessions. Accordingly, it has simply learned to predict how a Mechanical Turk user would respond to a given question or situation. Data gathered from crowdsourcing inevitably reflects societal biases, the most obvious example being facial recognition software that misidentifies members of minority demographic groups, especially women of color, more frequently than members of majority groups. Deriving ethics from crowdsourcing is even more problematic because ethical quandaries often have no clear answer, unlike classification problems such as facial recognition. Delphi’s creators

employed as decision-making tools in a variety of circumstances, such as screening resumes and deciding who should get a loan, often with the justification that they can overcome human subjectivity and prejudice. Delphi is only one of many examples of an AI demonstrating human biases while simultaneously conferring onto its judgments a form of scientific credibility. Delphi’s mistakes may be obvious and absurd now; but, when a more sophisticated version of Delphi emerges and we can no longer spot the issues so easily, many may bestow it with the status of a moral authority that it cannot possibly deserve. Furthermore, even if experts disagree on the imminence of the singularity—the tipping point at which the accelerating pace of superhuman intelligence becomes uncontrollable— AI’s pervasiveness in society will undoubtedly continue to grow. Delphi’s creators are right that our increased reliance on AI systems in important decision-making processes necessitates responsible research on creating socially aware and ethically informed AIs. Attempting

“Delphi is only one of many examples of an AI demonstrating human biases while simultaneously conferring onto its judgments a form of scientific credibility.”

SPECIAL FEATURE | RABBIT HOLES

acknowledge that the model’s divergence from universally recognized principles of morality reflects the inadequacies of today’s society, but they do not concede that their algorithmic approach is inherently flawed. So long as society remains unethical, it will be impossible for AI researchers to develop an ethical AI. AI is often presented as an enigma—a form of intelligence that can easily surpass human capabilities of learning and prediction—but ultimately, even the most sophisticated modern AIs are all trained on human data. Despite this training, Delphi—even while purporting to provide moral advice—seems to disregard basic moral principles, like the obligation to not commit genocide. This begs the question of how its creators can still describe it as "robust" and "outstanding." Part of the answer lies in the fact that Delphi’s authors measured its performance only against other NLP models, even though rational moral reasoning demands a general knowledge base that humans only accumulate through years of encountering real-life ethical dilemmas. While deep learning systems have been successfully created to complete intelligent tasks such as beating the best human chess and Go players, their goals are inherently narrow, rendering their sophistication brittle at best. Paul Allen, co-founder of Microsoft and founder of the Allen Institute, writes of these systems: “Their performance boundaries are rigidly set by their internal assumptions and defining algorithms, they cannot generalize, and they frequently give nonsensical answers outside of their specific focus areas.” But Delphi’s absolutism, as well as its scientific and algorithmic nature, give it a veneer of objectivity. AIs are already being

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blew up on Twitter, its creators released updated versions with enhanced guards against hate speech and prejudice—but the system is still far from perfect. Setting aside the fact that morality itself is ill-defined, if the goal is merely to apply the most universal moral principles to real-world situations, the current technology used to develop AIs is insufficient. Delphi is just the latest in a series of modern natural language processing (NLP) models which navigate nuances in language in a way that would have been unimaginable just 10 years ago. Currently, NLP models 'learn’ through deep learning, the foundation of which is the artificial neural network. Deep learning algorithms claim to mimic behavior in the human brain by finding relationships in a massive amount of training data and then

“Attempting to develop an ethical AI with current deep learning techniques, however, is akin to molding an ideal society, an impossible task that should not be the burden of AI researchers.”

qualifier “if I’m really, really hungry,” however, Delphi changed its answer to “It’s okay.” With responses like these, it is no surprise that this curious AI is so popular, attracting millions of views in the past months. But Delphi has also gone viral for many of the wrong reasons. The first version of Delphi included clearly racist and sexist biases, exemplified by one post which showed that, according to Delphi, being a white man was more morally acceptable than being a Black woman. After some of Delphi’s disturbing responses

to develop an ethical AI with current deep learning techniques, however, is akin to molding an ideal society, an impossible task that should not be the burden of AI researchers. Despite vast challenges, researchers continue to attempt the impossible: reproducing the human brain through AI. Some are doing so by incorporating biologically plausible learning mechanisms in their models, including encoding physical properties of the brain such as pyramidal neurons. Even an accurate imitation of the human brain, though, would not address the most central question: How can researchers create an ethically informed AI when society disagrees on what is ethical? There’s no easy answer, but one thing is certain: The current system wherein each tech company defines its own set of ethical principles is dangerous and unsustainable. The lack of a standard regulatory framework has led many tech corporations to develop their own—even creating their own “Supreme Courts” for a semblance of responsible corporate governance. But oversight boards are only quasi-independent, and, in a world where profit is the motivating factor, there’s no doubt that ethics will be skirted when deemed necessary. Ultimately, AI companies in Silicon Valley shouldn’t be able to use the NASDAQ as a moral barometer.

FRANCE'S FIGHT FOR THE RIGHT

French politics have lurched to the right, and so has President Emmanuel Macron. Amidst national crises and shaky approval ratings, he claims woke leftism is ruining France and presents himself as the law-and-order candidate for the upcoming elections. He now seems a far cry from the young centrist who hijacked the political establishment to win the Élysée in 2017. But to defend the presidency in 2022, Macron will have to employ a different strategy. An upstart has emerged from the far right, threatening the established order: His name is Éric Zemmour. In the coming months, Zemmour will compete with Macron and others for a certain slice of the nation’s electorate. This will be France’s fight for the right. A polemicist and revisionist historian, Zemmour’s forays into television and radio shows have earned him publicity and infamy in equal measure. By November, he had yet to even announce his candidacy, but he was polling higher than right-wing National Rally leader Marine Le Pen. Even before entering the race, a Le Monde poll gave him as much as 17 percent of the first-round vote. Since then, however, cracks have begun to show

illustrations by Marlowe Pody ’21, an Illustration major at RISD

by David Pinto ’24, a History concentrator

“But the desire for security and closed borders remains strong, and Macron may struggle to silence the Zemmour and Le Pen supporters on this matter.”

French Revolution—and is comprised of a comfortably elitist group of moderates. Well-educated and EU-friendly, the Droite Orléaniste has produced two president-kings: Valéry Giscard d’Estaing and his protégé Emmanuel Macron. With the latter now on the throne, this can be considered the reigning establishment of French politics. While Macron presented himself as a centrist in 2017, he has since operated on a largely Orléaniste platform—socially liberal, but latently monarchical in his presidential style and wary of the bureaucratic leviathan that is the French civil service. Moving a little further right, we find the ‘Bonapartist’ or ‘Gaullist’ right. Championed by legendary résistant Charles de Gaulle in the post-war era, it relies on strong leaders and a healthy rural support base. In the Napoleonic tradition, Bonapartism likes to invest maximum power in the president while appealing directly to the masses through plebiscites. It has produced several presidents, but since the uninspired administration of Nicolas Sarkozy, the Bonapartists have been leaderless. And finally, on the furthest reaches of the political

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The French right is complex. While the nation’s political parties are fickle, 200 years of factionalism have produced several longterm ideological traditions. René Rémond’s classic 1982 work “Les Droites en France” identified three major currents which continue to define the French right to this day. The ‘Orléaniste’ faction derives its name from the Duke of Orléans—an aristocrat who famously participated in the

“This weakened state of the left has intensified the rightward slant of French politics. As such, the outcome of the 2022 election will hinge on the right-wing voting electorate.”

in his campaign, and Zemmour has lost some of his momentum. Nonetheless, he is in a unique position to consolidate opposing factions of the French right and is poised to threaten Macron’s incumbency. France has one of the strongest leftist traditions in the West. So, what can account for this drastic shift in its political landscape? Simply put, the country’s left is in shambles: The Mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, currently polls at around 5 percent, and longstanding socialist leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon isn’t doing much better. The far left has failed to evolve past the Trotskyist discourse of the ’70s, and, unlike in Germany, the Green Party has never been a dominant presence in France. This weakened state of the left has intensified the rightward slant of French politics. As such, the outcome of the 2022 election will hinge on the right-wing voting electorate. spectrum, we find the extreme right. Despite its fringe status, this is one of the oldest ideological currents. The Extrême Droite is a reactionary movement that longs for a return to the France that existed before socialists skewed discourse left in the ’60s. Since Marshall Pétain’s Vichy régime of the ’40s, it has sought to replace the Republic’s tripartite national motto ‘liberté, égalité, fraternité’ with ‘travail, famille, patrie’ (work, family, fatherland). Jean-Marie Le Pen and his daughter Marine have kept the movement simmering over the last 50 years. But the French far-right has experienced a somewhat painful afterlife, and the Élysée has so far eluded them. So to which right does Zemmour truly belong? He would self-identify as Bonapartist, but as a student of nationalist and proto-fascist theorist Charles Maurras, he is evidently a product of the far-right. He does not like to be characterized as a man of the Extrême Droite, retorting that “it is an old Stalinist method [to] call your opponents fascists.” But why would an advocate of the Great Replacement theory reject the far-right label? Because Zemmour wants to keep his support base broad and socially acceptable. For a decade, he has quietly watched Marine Le Pen repent for the overt racism of her father. He cannot afford to become the social pariah that was Jean-Marie, nor the compromising apologist that is Marine.

FRANCE'S FIGHT FOR THE RIGHT

Boris Johnson over a row concerning migrants helped his numbers, and Le Pen also gained back a few points. It is hard to say whether these setbacks will truly hinder Zemmour’s campaign or only generate more conversation; his stunts have, at a minimum, propelled his candidacy into the mainstream. French politics have fundamentally changed since Macron won the Élysée five long years ago. Mass public protests and a doleful pandemic response have stained Macron’s record. And the enduring psychological effects of terrorism cannot be overstated. Though they didn’t occur under Macron, events such as the Charlie Hebdo shooting and the Nov. 13 Paris attacks have inflicted major cultural trauma. As the incumbent, he naturally dominates by a fair

Instead, Zemmour will try to co-opt the traditional right while feeding on the underlying sentiments of the far-right. In the 60 year history of France’s Fifth Republic, no politician has succeeded in uniting these two factions under one banner. The self-respecting Bonapartists have looked down on the far-right insists that French and Islamic cultures as a madhouse, while the far-right are incompatible—a contentious claim has defined itself in opposition to the in a country where Muslims number 4 mainstream currents of French society. million. He was even convicted in 2011 If Zemmour can pull off this elusive for inciting racial hatred on national union of interests, he solidifies his bid television. Yes, Zemmour is something for the presidency. of an enigma. It is Zemmour’s propensity He is, above all else, a provocato dominate headlines that has teur, and his stunts have generated propelled him to political notoriety massive online traffic. He broke the in the post-Trump era. He is a man of internet in October for pointing an contradictions: Despite his North Afriunloaded sniper rifle at journalists on can Jewish roots, he is a Dreyfus Affair the trail. At his raucous rallies, he’s and Vichy Régime apologist, earning been pictured giving a critic the finger him the widespread condemnation and put in a headlock by a protestor. of the nation’s Jewish community. He also supposedly got his top politZemmour’s parents immigrated to ical aide pregnant. Concurrent with France from Algeria in the ’50s, yet he these scandals, some of his rivals have is fiercely opposed to immigration. He gained in the polls. Macron’s perceived claims religion is a private matter but strong-arm of British Prime Minister

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margin in the polls at this early stage, but the desire for security and closed borders remains strong, and Macron may struggle to silence the Zemmour and Le Pen supporters on this matter. If Zemmour succeeds in uniting the right between now and the April primary, he will likely steal Le Pen’s de facto position as Macron’s challenger. Could France be the next European nation to embrace right-wing nationalism? It’s too early to confidently predict an outcome, but Zemmour’s right seems poised to cause an upset. “If I don’t run, it will be seen as desertion, as treason,” said Zemmour. “I will choose the moment myself, and it will be there soon.”

“He claims religion is a private matter but insists that French and Islamic cultures are incompatible—a contentious claim in a country where Muslims number 4 million.”

DECODING SPEECH

Today in the United States, anyone equipped with the right string of 0s and 1s can 3D print an unregistered and untraceable by Claire Hodges ’22, a Public Policy concentrator and a Managing Magazine assault rifle. That is thanks to Cody Wilson, Editor for BPR a self-proclaimed anarchist who reached a illustrations by Marlowe Pody ’21, an settlement in 2018 with the US Department of Illustration major at RISD State that allowed him to share downloadable, open-source code for 3D-printed guns. While this may seem like an archetypal Second Amendment issue, the printing of such weapons has instead been made possible by recent interpretations of the First Amendment. It's clear that guns do not qualify as speech. Instead, the settlement was reached on the grounds that prohibiting the publication of this computer code infringed upon Wilson’s First Amendment rights. Code makes the world go round: It allows people to communicate with friends, access digital bank records, send Venmo requests, watch movies, and much more. Code also directs critical infrastructure, from flight control systems to electronic medical records to entire power grids. Despite being unintelligible to most Americans, computer code is its own language with many unique dialects. Code looks and acts like speech, but whether programming languages are protected by the First Amendment is another question entirely. The question may seem innocuous, but the ramifications of granting First Amendment protections to computer code would be immense. If classified as free speech, it would be all but impossible to regulate the internet, and the consequences could even extend into public safety. Despite the appeal of the argument that computer code—like any other form

“The question may seem innocuous, but the ramifications of granting First Amendment protections to computer code would be immense.”

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poses an increasingly pressing and unsettled legal quandary. The question was first considered by a US Court of Appeals in Bernstein v. US Department of Justice (1996). The case examined whether the government could prevent UC Berkeley graduate student Daniel Bernstein from exporting his code for “Snuffle,” an end-to-end encryption algorithm he created. In an unprecedented ruling, the Court decided of computer programs may seem like a that Bernstein’s code could be exported without dull legal question, it has recently been regulation, as his code was protected speech raised in relation to both gun manufacunder the First Amendment. The opinion stated: turing and terrorist attacks, signaling its “This court can find no meaningful difference real-world importance. between computer language...and German or The 2015 San Bernardino shooting French...computer language is just that, lanplaced the question of code and its outguage, and it communicates information either puts as protected speech at the forefront to a computer or to those of US legal scholarship. In an attempt to who can read it.” access the deceased shooter’s communiThe precedent set in Bercations, the FBI issued an order compelnstein was further developed ling Apple to create a “backdoor” to the in Universal City Studios, iPhone, which would covertly bypass the Inc. v. Corley (2001), when phone’s security encryption system. The a US District Court ruled FBI also sought Apple’s cooperation in that communication does designing a software update that would not lose speech protections remove a security feature that deleted simply because it is written the phone’s data after 10 unsuccessful in computer code. The password attempts. The government ability of a broad audience claimed that law enforcement agencies to understand the speech is have the legal right to obtain commuunrelated to constitutional nications through a warrant, but they inquiry. By the turn of the often lack the technical ability to do century, there was no longer so. Therefore, companies like Apple any doubt: Computer code should furnish user data to the is speech, at least according government upon request. Apple, to US courts. But what of on the other hand, maintained that the product of that code? acquiescing to the order would Indeed, whether or not the create privacy vulnerabilities that outputs of code—websites, could be exploited by criminals and video games, algorithms, and so forth—are conforeign agents. sidered protected speech is far murkier. Among other claims, Apple’s Theoretically, code constitutes pure speech lawyers argued that requiring whereas its outputs could be considered expresthe company to code software to sive speech. Although the distinction between perform functions for the government the First Amendment protections of code and

“Today in the United States, anyone equipped with the right string of 0s and 1s can 3D print an unregistered and untraceable assault rifle.”

of writing—constitutes free speech under the First Amendment, courts must be careful not to legitimize wholly unregulated code. To do so would open the door to dangers ranging from a proliferation of 3D-printed weapons to the deregulation of content available on the internet. Before assessing whether code should be protected speech under the First Amendment, it is essential to first define what constitutes speech. The Supreme Court has established two types of speech: ‘pure speech,’ which is written and verbal, and ‘symbolic speech,’ which comprises expressive actions such as clothing choice, flag desecration, and cross burning. Where lower courts have disagreed on the regulation of speech, the Supreme Court has upheld that governments may not restrict the content or message of speech, with a few exceptions. It is not the state’s role, the Court opined, to determine what the public should see or hear. Rather, the government’s duty is to ensure that all speech may be heard, regardless of whether it offends. When actions affect the interest of the public good, however, governments possess the ability to infringe upon most constitutionally guaranteed rights. Speech is no exception: Governments can pass regulations with incidental effects on speech so long as those regulations are content-neutral. Cities have noise ordinances that prevent individuals from yelling after certain hours, political protests cannot occur without a permit, and libel is unlawful. Whether or not First Amendment protections should be imputed to computer code “amounts to compelled speech and viewpoint discrimination in violation of the First Amendment.” Apple correctly stated that anytime the government seeks to compel speech, First Amendment protections are triggered under the “State Action” doctrine. However, the Supreme Court allows government action that infringes upon protected speech if said action is the most narrowly tailored means of serving a compelling state interest; there is a persuasive argument to be made that in this case it was. Ultimately, the government managed to access the encrypted communications before the California Magistrate issued its ruling. The case was then dismissed. While Apple’s argument that code is speech is tantalizing, Cody Wilson proves that it is also incredibly dangerous. If the Supreme Court accepts the argument that code is speech outright, the ruling could render institutions unable to regulate content shared on the internet, even in the interest of public safety. Despite lower court precedent establishing code as free speech under the First Amendment, the Supreme Court must not open the door for the entirely unregulated distribution of code.

UNITED STATES

Protection Correction

How involuntary solitary confinement infringes upon the rights of incarcerated LGBTQ+ individuals

by Madeline Noh '22, an Anthropology and Public Health concentrator illustration by Nicholas Edwards ’22, an Illustration major at RISD

With homophobia and transphobia deeply entrenched in the United States and its institutions, it is unsurprising that the LGBTQ+ community is vulnerable not only in society at large, but behind bars too. LGBTQ+ individuals are disproportionately criminalized, jailed, and prosecuted, with an overall likelihood of incarceration three times higher than that of heterosexual people. Reports of homophobic and transphobic abuse against LGBTQ+ individuals while incarcerated are also well-documented. Solitary confinement, reported to have been experienced by up to 85 percent of incarcerated LGBTQ+ people, is frequently offered as a “solution” to protect these individuals from abuse. However, this solution is often applied to incarcerated LGBTQ+ people against their own will. In fact, this is a practice that nearly half of incarcerated LGBTQ+ people have experienced and that must be banned in the US prison system. Solitary confinement, which typically involves spending 23 hours a day isolated in a cell, has long been denounced as inhumane by organizations such as the United Nations Committee Against Torture. Situating this harrowing practice in the context of broader discrimination against the LGBTQ+ community, however, may help explain why 38 percent of incarcerated LGBTQ+ people have been placed in solitary at their own request. Incidents of abuse against LGBTQ+ individuals, committed by both fellow incarcerated people and corrections staff, have been consistently reported in general prison environments. LGBTQ+ individuals are considered some of the most at-risk within the prison population, vulnerable to various forms of physical, emotional, and sexual abuse. Compared to 34

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“It is also critical that US prison systems produce uniform and consistent protocol and reporting systems through which prison staff could document reasons for solitary confinement.”

incarcerated heterosexual people, women who have sex with women are 2.6 times more likely to be sexually victimized than straight women by other incarcerated people and correctional staff. For men who have sex with men, this number jumps to 10 times more likely than straight men. A case study examining California correctional facilities found that these rates are even worse for transgender women who, when placed in men’s prisons, are 13 times more likely than their cisgender counterparts to be sexually assaulted. Findings like these illustrate how LGBTQ+ people in correctional systems experience intersecting, multiplied experiences of marginalization based on sexual or gender identity. Beyond the abuse that LGBTQ+ individuals face behind bars, wider LGBTQ+ discrimination lends insight into the factors that disproportionately lead LGBTQ+ people into contact with the criminal justice system in the first place. LGBTQ+ people are overrepresented at every level of the justice system, including arrest, probation, sentencing, and parole. Strikingly, a third of women in prison and nearly a quarter of women in jail identify as lesbian or bisexual, compared to the 6.4 percent of self-identified lesbian or bisexual women in the general US population. These rates can largely be attributed to the fact that LGBTQ+ people have been historically overpoliced and criminalized, notably for practices such as sex work and illicit substance use. Behavioral models from perspectives in clinical psychology and public health help to explain this phenomenon. One of these models, minority stress theory, posits that LGBTQ+

“LGBTQ+ individuals are considered some of the most atrisk within the prison population, vulnerable to various forms of physical, emotional, and sexual abuse.”

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people experience unique, chronic, and socially-based stress and stigma due to institutional and interpersonal forces. As a result, LGBTQ+ people are disproportionately vulnerable and at greater risk of harmful behaviors like substance abuse. This theory demonstrates that compounded discrimination against the LGBTQ+ community has a direct and tangible impact on these individuals’ interactions with the criminal justice system. Identity-based discrimination tends to be even more acute for LGBTQ+ people of color, who are more likely than their white counterparts to be placed in solitary confinement. LGBTQ+ prisoner advocacy group Black & Pink attributes this tendency to the attitude that “even in prison, white life is more valuable or worthy of protection.” The added dimension of racial or ethnic minority status, then, can exacerbate an intersectional vulnerability within a larger carceral state rooted in white supremacy. The LGBTQ+ inmate population is clearly an already-vulnerable group experiencing even more pronounced victimization in the legal system and carceral state apparatuses. Thus, incarcerated LGBTQ+ people's experiences of solitary confinement must be critically assessed to evaluate the practices that supposedly seek to protect these individuals. While the Prison Rape Elimination Act ratifies that solitary confinement should be considered a last resort to other alternatives of protection, Black & Pink reports that incarcerated LGBTQ+ people are nonetheless commonly subjected to this practice. These issues indicate a clear need for policy solutions to ensure that incarcerated LGBTQ+ individuals’ rights are protected. As a first step, US prisons must ratify protocols that ban placing LGBTQ+ incarcerated people in solitary confinement for their own “protection” if such placement goes against their will. To institution36

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“Thus, incarcerated LGBTQ+ people's experiences of solitary confinement must be critically assessed to evaluate the practices that supposedly seek to protect these individuals.”

alize and validate an inmate’s agency, the choice to be placed in solitary confinement should be formally requested and documented in the presence of prisoner advocates and witnesses. This kind of uniform protocol documenting the expressed willingness of LGBTQ+ incarcerated people could help reduce instances of forced solitary confinement. It is also critical that US prison systems produce uniform and consistent protocol and reporting systems through which prison staff could document reasons for solitary confinement. Solitary confinement is technically only permitted in the absence of other alternatives. As such, prison staff must explicitly and meticulously detail why they believe solitary confinement is justified in each instance of its use. Establishing such uniform forms of documentation would be a step toward accountability. Relevant advocates, including attorneys and researchers, should have access to such records, from which they can glean data on the contexts in which solitary confinement may be unrightfully forced upon incarcerated people. Hopefully, this practice could also pave the way for future advocacy surrounding the rights of incarcerated individuals and more accountability regarding their protection. At the end of the day, solitary confinement is an inhumane practice that must ultimately be banned. In the meantime, however, with input and feedback from incarcerated people, formal documentation of choices and transparent reporting systems might begin to challenge such a systemic violation of incarcerated LGBTQ+ people’s rights and agency.

Beyond Paper Genocide

Taíno Recognition in Puerto Rico by Guarocuya "Frank" Batista-Kunhardt ’22, a Master of Public Affairs candidate illustration by Maria Hahne ’24, an Illustration major at RISD

The name of the influential ’90s Latin American metal band ANIMAL stands for Acosados Nuestros Indios Murieron Al Luchar, which roughly translates to “Harassed, Our Indians Died While Fighting.” That our indios, or Native populations, were mostly exterminated except for a few extant pockets of survival, has become a fixture of contemporary Latin American discourse. In North America, US history books teach students that within 100 years of Columbus’s arrival, the Natives of Puerto Rico had been assimilated, perished from disease, or massacred to the point of nonexistence. However, the story these books tell is incomplete. Their text perpetrates paper genocide, or the disappearance of entire civilizations in official paper reports, data, and other records. This crime has been committed against several mainland-US Native populations, from the Native American tribes of Virginia, which eugenicist and physician Walter Plecker reclassified as “colored” in Virginia’s 1924 Act to Preserve Racial Integrity, to Rhode Island’s own Narragansett people, who engaged in a centuries-long

struggle to achieve federal recognition, which was finally attained in 1983. Despite this dominant narrative, I grew up hearing from my paternal family that we were, and are, Taínos—the longstanding Indigenous people of the Caribbean with whom Columbus infamously first made contact. My namesake, Guarocuya, comes from a former Taíno cacique, or prince. In the Caribbean, from Borinquen (Puerto Rico) to Xaymaca (Jamaica), there has always been a collective cry seeking to fight the notion that our communities were erased from history. And, although the circumstances of US mainland Native Americans today garners much attention, the parallel experience of Native Americans outside of the 50 states is often forgotten. Terms that include Natives of Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands, such as “Indigenous of the Americas,” have recently come into use. However, the identity of modern Puerto Ricans differs drastically from mainland Native Americans—it represents a fusion of Taíno, African, and Spanish cultures, with American influence that stems from the territory’s 1898 THE RABBIT HOLES ISSUE

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“The Taíno people were—and continue to be—trampled on by a set of legal, political, economic, and social mechanisms that systematically keep Indigenous people out of positions of political power.”

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incorporation. Modern census practices perpetuate the paper genocide of Taínos, feeding into the false settler colonial narrative of our erasure. These practices must be amended to promote interculturalism and allow for self-identification. The traditional historical discourse maintained by paper genocide is that Puerto Rican Taínos all disappeared through mass suicides and mestizaje (miscegenation), and such mestizaje supplanted any native identity. Terms such as mulatto and mestizo granted Spanish Catholic priests who registered births the power to greatly diminish the official numbers of Taínos. Under US rule, this treatment continued: The US Census limited its race and ethnicity categories to Hispanic, white, Black, or mixed. According to data collected by Spanish authorities, the Taíno population plummeted from an estimated one million at the time of Spanish arrival in 1493 to just 2,300 in 1787. Not one was documented in 1802. To systematically prevent the formation of more federally recog-

nized tribes, the 1802 US Census reclassified any Puerto Rican who identified as “Indian” as “mixed.” Yet, in the 2020 US Census, over 92,000 Puerto Ricans self-identified as Indigenous. According to a 2016 National Geographic report, the latest genetic research showed that 61 percent of all Puerto Ricans have Native American mitochondrial DNA, revealing “a high number of genetic markers for a supposedly extinct people.” In 2018, a team from the Center for Geogenetics at the University of Copenhagen managed to reconstruct the complete Taíno genome using an 8th to 10th century Taíno skeleton. The researchers were able to establish “clear similarities” between modern Puerto Ricans and Taíno genetic ancestry. Historians such as Antonio Sotomayor from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign argue that Taíno culture, even more so than African or Spanish culture, had the largest contribution to the formation of a Puerto Rican identity. This is for a very simple reason: It is our mother culture, whereas the other two are overseas cul-

tures. Evidence of Taíno influence abounds, illustrated by the simple example of someone attending a “barbeque” to try some “Caribbean” cuisine, which is infused with a taste of “guava,” going off to smoke “tobacco” while resting in a “hammock” and ending the day by sailing in a “canoe” before the “hurricane” comes. All of these words are of Taíno origin. The Census Bureau and the Bureau of Indian Affairs’s refusal to acknowledge this evidence perpetuates a paper genocide that has occurred for centuries and clearly indicates the US government’s systematic opposition to Native and Indigenous recognition. At the root of the problem is the issue that in Puerto Rico, a territory that has been under external rule for 528 years, foreign occupiers have always prioritized colonial interests over the diversity of peoples or nations. The Taíno people were—and continue to be—trampled on by a set of legal, political, economic, and social mechanisms that systematically keep Indigenous people out of positions of political power. In the hands of foreign elite, Puerto Rico has institutionalized colonialist systems and policies that maintain the status of the Taíno people as third-class citizens, or even non-citizens. Oppressive systems have resulted in an American society in which Indigenous peoples are generally the most impoverished populations. Similarly punitive structures have not spared Puerto Ricans. Indigenous people in Puerto Rico suffer from myriad injustices, including, but not limited to, economic depression, poor education, and inadequate healthcare. Colonization has not ended: It may have transformed, disguised, and concealed itself, but it maintains its brutality against the poor. Unlike colonialism, interculturalism recognizes the reality of a multicultural human family, and it promotes processes that value all cultures in an environment of mutual respect. It seeks to eradicate the historical positioning of dominant and subordinate cultures, instead focusing on appreciating and celebrating human diversity. The goal of interculturalism is the full integration of populations and cultures with their own identities, rather than their assimilation into a dominant national identity. Through intercultural dialogues, the swift judgment of casting out what is different from one's own culture gives way to considerations of the complexity of human society and diverse forms of human organization. Along with generally promoting an intercultural perspective, the US Census Bureau and the Department of Interior’s Bureau of Indian Affairs should allow for self-identification on the basis of parentage, family descent, or genetic ancestry. Proposals to implement self-identification have thus far fallen on deaf

ears, largely due to the government’s selfish fear that they would cause many new tribes to spring up and claim reparations or gambling licenses. In the meantime, modern personal genomics technologies, such as those sold by Ancestry.com, 23andMe, or MyHeritage, allow Taíno descendants to research our ancestry. These genetic tests tell me that I am nearly 8 percent Indigenous American and that my Indigenous composition comes entirely from the Caribbean. This evidence clearly demonstrates the paper genocide committed by federal Native American policies: I carry a Taíno name, speak the Taíno language, and 8 percent of my DNA is entirely Taíno—yet Taínos are extinct? No one dares to deny my African, European, and Jewish roots, yet my Native ones face constant rejection. Fortunately, hope is not lost: Many modern heritage rescue groups, such as the Taíno Jatibonicu Tribe of Boriken, the Taíno Nation of the Antilles, the United Confederation of the Taíno People, the Guatu Ma-Cu A Boriken Puerto Rico People, and Higuayagua, are actively working to foster and protect the Taíno culture. While many aspects of Taíno culture have been lost over time or mixed with Spanish and African cultures, our heritage remains unique, and we all want to be heard and recognized for who we are.

“And, although the circumstances of US mainland Native Americans today garners much attention, the parallel experience of Native Americans outside of the 50 states is often forgotten.”

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Interview with

Coleman Hughes by Elijah Dahunsi ’25, a History concentrator and an Interviews and Podcast Associate for BPR illustrations by Evelyn Tan ’23, an Illustration major at RISD

Coleman Hughes is a writer, podcaster, and opinion columnist who focuses on issues of race, public policy, and applied ethics. In June 2019, Hughes testified before the US Congress on the subject of reparations to descendents of enslaved African Americans. Hughes received a BA in Philosophy from Columbia University in 2020. In December 2020, Hughes was named one of Forbes’s 30 Under 30. He has been featured on numerous podcasts and television shows and has been published in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Quillette, City Journal, The National Review, and The Spectator. Hughes has hosted many influential guests on his podcast, Conversations with Coleman, among them Ezra Klein, Steven Pinker, and Noam Chomsky. Elijah Dahunsi In recent years, there’s been an intensification of political debates around free speech, particularly as it relates to race and gender. How would you define free speech? Coleman Hughes I guess there are two separate facets of it. One is the strictly legal aspect of the conversation relating to the First Amendment and what the government can and can't do. Strictly speaking, this is what separates America from places like China and Russia, and even, to a lesser extent, from places like Britain, where different libel and slander laws make it easier to take someone to court over lying about you. There's also the more abstract, cultural aspect of free speech. Specifically, it’s about having a culture where people understand and agree that individuals are allowed to think and say things that others may not like and that we can dispute these ideas and statements with words instead of violence, intimidation, the threat of getting fired, and so forth. ED Why do you think free speech is important in a democratic society? CH Firstly, while you can pressure people to not say things out loud, you can never stop people from thinking things in the privacy of their minds. The only thing such pressure does is 40

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drive taboo ideas—both good and bad—underground and send people down rabbit holes. This is especially true in the age of the internet, when ideas are not being refuted in the mainstream. A person who is exposed to white supremacist content, for example, can get radicalized on YouTube and still access dangerous content on 4chan when YouTube bans the content. Because such ideas are never talked about in the mainstream, that ease of access can actually make dangerous ideas seem more compelling to people who find themselves in these rabbit holes. When good ideas go underground, this makes it difficult to solve complex problems in society; solving them requires many minds to engage in conversation. There may be some examples where suppressing speech was good for society, but, overall, considering what happens when ideas go underground, the harm caused by stifling speech is large. ED Should society’s definition of free speech take into account intangible harms? CH I don't think it is wise to broaden the definition of speech to suggest speech can directly cause harm. That's not a recipe for raising healthy adults in a fairly unforgiving world. Part of what it means to be a well-adjusted adult is to be able to hear another adult say something you don't like and not break into a million

pieces. I worry for the mental health of kids who are raised to believe that “if anyone says something you don't like, you can cry, and they will have to shut up because you're hurt.” There’s this Buddhist parable which states, and I’m paraphrasing here, that the only way to make the entire Earth smooth to walk on is to wear shoes. The essence of the parable is that you have to develop the tools within yourself to deal with a reality that does not always cater to your specific emotions. You can't expect the Earth to be paved over and child-proofed; that just has never been true and never will be true in a world where people disagree about stuff. So inculcating university students or children with the expectation that they can limit offensive speech is doing a disservice to them. ED Do you think this expectation of coddling is only among younger generations, or do you think it’s present among all participants in American political discourse? CH That’s a good question. I don't really know what's going on with Gen Z. I can only use my experience as a reference. I was in high school between 2010 and 2014 and in college between 2015 and 2020, and for most of that decade, definitely the second half of it, there were large sub cultures at Ivy League schools and elite high schools which very much encouraged this kind of coddling. The coddling was not done so much at bigger state schools and other places. I don't exactly know what the current trend is like at places like Brown and Columbia—which I attended—so I can't really say, but I know this

“The only thing such pressure does is drive taboo ideas— both good and bad— underground and send people down rabbit holes.”

ED Would you say cancellations occur based on a discernible pattern?

“So inculcating university students or children with the expectation that they can limit offensive speech is doing a disservice to them.” sort of coddling was not present to the extent that it is today for anyone probably born before 1990. There was the notion of ‘political correctness’ and debates over ‘political correctness’ in the '90s, but there was no robust, widespread culture of censorship and cancellation like we see now. ED Do you think there’s a division between elite spaces and general society as a whole when it comes to this coddling? CH Yes, this coddling does not exist at all in working-class America. It doesn't exist at all in first-generation immigrant America. It is exclusively a phenomenon of privileged, elite, progressive spaces. The people who operate in these spaces make up a very small proportion of the population, but they have outsize influence in the media, in politics, and in the culture at large.

CH I guess they’re not random. They follow a pattern of who gets canceled and for what. However, it’s not a logical or consistent pattern, meaning there are lots of internal contradictions in who gets canceled. This is one of the reasons societies create laws and dole out punishments through a bureaucratic system, which also has its flaws. The reason we do this is partly because mob justice is always hypocritical and extremely inconsistent. Of all the inconsistencies you could find, none would be as inconsistent and hypocritical as mob justice. ‘Cancel culture’ punishes someone who says something and doesn’t punish another person who says the exact same thing because that other person has some distinctive attribute: a different gender, a different color, or another inconsistent reason for which they may be admired by the general public.

“If you are in a good place as a person, it becomes easier to have constructive disagreements with people and have a minority viewpoint.”

ED Lastly, what advice would you give to college students who want to combat illiberalism, share new ideas, and broaden their political understanding? CH One tip is always to prioritize your own mental health and well-being. If you are in a good place as a person, it becomes easier to have constructive disagreements with people and have a minority viewpoint. *This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

ED Why do you think this ‘cancel culture’ is particular to elite spaces? CH I think cancel culture is not really scalable to the rest of America because there are too many aspects of it that violate what most human beings would see as common sense. So for example, irrespective of whether they’re right or wrong, most people in America think it's common sense that there are two genders and that boys are different from girls on the whole. That is not a controversial statement anywhere in America, except in elite spaces. Most Americans would disagree with the position that there's no such thing as gender differences and gender is a function of cultural indoctrination and parenting. There are many more issues like this, where positions held by the elite seem to violate common sense and are therefore not scalable to the population at large.

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UNITED STATES

AN ECONOMIC BAND-AID How a cost-of-living adjustment to the federal minmum wage could help solve inflation by Justen Joffe ’23, an Economics and Computer Science concentrator and an Associate Editor for BPR infographic by Kevin Masse ’25, Aidan Ma ’22, Zoey Katzive ’24, Anna Jung ’23, and Jiahua Chen ’24

Inflation: We hear about it all the time, but what does it actually mean for our daily lives? This economic phenomenon—which refers to a decrease in the purchasing power of money due to increased prices of goods and services— is wreaking havoc on the US economy owing to a combination of supply-chain difficulties, large stimulus packages, and record-low interest rates. If economists’ projections hold true, inflation will likely hover between 5.5 and 6.2 percent for at least the next year. This is in stark contrast to inflation rates from the past two decades, which have stayed around 2 percent. Though inflation makes it harder for everyone to afford goods and services, wealthy Americans will largely be fine, as many possess stronger financial literacy, have access to financial planners, and hold greater savings. By contrast, those living paycheck-to-paycheck will suffer disproportionately. As prices rise and wages stagnate, poorer Americans will have to reduce their spending on essential goods—such as health care, nutritious foods, and utilities— thereby reducing their quality of life far more than their wealthy counterparts. So, what solutions exist? Classic macroeconomic theory instructs that, to reduce inflation, the Federal Reserve must raise interest rates and the federal government must reduce fiscal spending. In normal times, these solutions would make sense. Given the precarious state of 42

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the US economy due to the Covid-19 pandemic, however, these policies will only further harm low-income Americans in the short-term. Fortunately, there is another option: cost-ofliving adjustments (COLAs). Just 11 percent of companies in the United States provide COLAs— or salaries that adjust for increases in prices— despite the fact that consumer price levels are at a 30-year high, with projections indicating that the cost of basic necessities will continue to rise. While Democratic lawmakers often choose to focus on broader, long-term solutions, such as a universal basic income (UBI) and a $15 federal minimum wage, these initiatives are not politically viable in the immediate future. COLAs, by contrast, could be passed by the current Congress. As such, legislators must act now and add an amendment to the federal minimum wage law that mandates COLAs to address the devas-

tating effect of inflation on low-income Americans. The federal minimum wage today is worth 48 percent less in real terms than what it was in 1968. This means that minimum wage earners today can buy about half of the goods and services that minimum wage earners in 1968 were able to purchase. This devaluation will only continue to grow rapidly as inflation rates rise. Amending the Fair Labor Standards Act to index the federal minimum wage to yearly inflation would help solve this pressing issue. Each year, the cost of inflation would be calculated and then added to the base level wage. This would keep already low wages at the same levels that they were prior to the pandemic. In effect, this means that Americans would be able to purchase the same quantity of goods, even as prices

“A GOP-commissioned study recently highlighted how inflation affects low-income Americans, signaling that Republican lawmakers may be feeling pressure to take action.”

Minimum Wage versus Inflation-Adjusted Minimum Wage in 2018 Dollars

Minimum Wage Inflation Adjusted Minimum Wage in 2018 Dollars

In 1970, the purchasing power of the $2 minimum wage was equivalent to $10.35 in 2018 dollars

2020

2005

1990

1975

1960

Today and in 2020, a minimum wage paycheck is worth $3 less in purchasing power than it was 40 years ago

Year

rise. This solution would help individuals afford their basic needs. What’s more, this COLA legislation may even have a chance of being passed in Congress without strong opposition. As of November 2021, 19 states have minimum wages that adjust for inflation each year. Several of these states— including Missouri, Montana, Nevada, Ohio, and South Dakota—lean right. Given that less progressive states are already seeing the utility of COLAs, Republican lawmakers in Congress would likely consider supporting this measure. In fact, a GOP-commissioned study recently highlighted how inflation affects low-income Americans, signaling that Republican lawmakers may be feeling pressure to take action. And for Democrats striving to permanently increase the minimum wage, this amendment will only further their cause by effectively increasing the

“If economists’ projections hold true, inflation will likely hover between 5.5 and 6.2 percent for at least the next year. This is in stark contrast to inflation rates from the past two decades, which have stayed around 2 percent.” minimum wage each year, which would be a victory in and of itself. With record-high inflation and the limited current feasibility of a $15 federal minimum wage, Congress ought to find tangible ways of increasing the purchasing power of lower-income Americans. Increasing interest rates and cutting government spending goes against Democrats’ credo, but inaction will

leave few other options. Indexing the federal minimum wage to yearly inflation is both effective and reasonable, with even right-leaning states already writing these provisions in their minimum wage laws. Congress must act now to ensure that low-income Americans can purchase basic necessities and survive this period of higher inflation.

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one like me, who can introduce you to avenues into public service and into national security that are not apparent to you, that are not obvious. I've mentored young lawyers for 30 years who are now in public life. A lot of people come to me and say, "How do I get into public service? How do I get into national security?" And I basically say, "Follow me, kid." It's the phrase, “It's who you know,” that is often used in a negative way. But the reality is that if there are a thousand people and a thousand resumes of people interested in getting into public service, it will often require someone to call the right people's attention to somebody in that stack of a thousand resumes. The other point I'd offer is that two out of the four jobs I've had in public life were totally unanticipated. I was offered the job of General Counsel of the Air Force by the Clinton White House in 1998. I had no idea what that job was. When President Obama asked me to be Secretary of Homeland Security, I was totally shocked. I did not have any ambition to be in that position. The point of that is: For someone interested in getting into public service, very often you have to be prepared to seriously contemplate the unanticipated.

Interview with

Jeh Johnson

SK The Secretary of Homeland Security leads the third-largest cabinet department of the US government, consisting of 230,000 personnel and 22 incorporated agencies. What are some lessons you took away from managing such a vast portfolio of responsibilities?

by Sam Kolitch '23, a Political Science concentrator and an Interviews Director for BPR illustrations by Evelyn Tan ’23, an illustration major at RISD

Jeh Johnson served as Secretary of Homeland Security from 2013 to 2017 and General Counsel of the Department of Defense from 2009 to 2012. He was appointed to both positions by President Barack Obama. Earlier in his career, Johnson was General Counsel of the Department of the Air Force from 1998 to 2001, as well as Assistant United States Attorney in the Southern District of New York from 1989 to 1991. In private life, he has worked at the law firm of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, LLP, on and off since 1984. He became the firm’s first African American partner in 1994. Johnson is a trustee of Columbia University and is a graduate of Morehouse College and Columbia Law School.

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Sam Kolitch A lot of young people, including myself, want to pursue a career in public service but hesitate because of the financial rewards of the private sector. In fact, this was an issue you faced as Secretary of Homeland Security, when you had trouble recruiting cybertalent because of the higher pay in the tech sector than in government. How do we make public service more attractive—and accessible—to young people? Jeh Johnson My public service has been, by far, the most consequential part of my professional life and the most gratifying and the most satisfying. I know a lot of lawyers who have spent a career in public service who make a fraction of what a successful lawyer in private life can make, but their level of job satisfaction is high because they are doing things that are consequential. In terms of the answer to your immediate question, I think that mentorship is very important—someone like you getting to know some-

JJ Leadership comes from good instincts about how to be a leader—being transparent, showing your workforce that you are a champion for them, that you are their representative to the outside world. It's also crucial, in my opinion, to have a small set of trusted advisors who you're prepared to listen to, who have a range of views about things. It's good to have an advisor who is more conservative and one who is more

“...when you work on homeland security, you're always on defense. One failure equals a thousand successes, and there are very few opportunities to spike the ball.”

“It is very, very important that lawyers not masquerade their policy and political preferences as a legal opinion— because when the lawyer says you can't do something, that’s a red light.” progressive; it's good to have an advisor who is more of a risk-taker and an advisor who is riskaverse. If you're prepared to listen, out of that deliberation can come really smart policy and really smart leadership. Sometimes, it comes down to just plain old, good instincts. One of the best things I ever did as Secretary was play undercover boss. I dressed up in a TSA uniform at BWI Airport, and I passed the bins and screened the passengers. The TSA workforce loved it. They just loved the fact the boss put on a TSA uniform. And it helped, I think, with their attitudes toward their leadership. I was determined to improve morale in the Department of Homeland Security. The department was always at the bottom of the list in terms of morale—in part because it's a new department with growing pains, in part because when you work on homeland security, you're always on defense. One failure equals a thousand successes, and there are very few opportunities to spike the ball.

lawyers don't mix their political policy preferences with their legal advice. There have been times when I have signed off on something by saying, “legally available, but politically stupid.” The job of a lawyer is to establish the legal lanes in which the policymakers and the commanders can operate. Some lawyers I've worked with are less good at this, and they cannot help but express their policy preferences in terms of a legal opinion. The law is the law whether you're a Democrat or a Republican. SK You’ve described yourself as being a “big underachiever” who received C’s and D’s in high school and early in college. What flipped the switch for you academically? JJ Morehouse College. I was a sophomore, and I became inspired there. The inspiration for Morehouse men is Martin Luther King and also Dr. Benjamin E. Mays, President Emeritus of Morehouse College, who was a guiding light for a lot of Morehouse men. It was just impossible not to be inspired at Morehouse College. My freshman year, I had a 1.8 GPA. My last two years, I had a 4.0 GPA. I was just inspired by the lectures, the sermons, the teaching, and other students who were determined to succeed and who had goals and ambitions. It was an inspirational environment; it was in the air at Morehouse.

JJ That was the conundrum I was faced with when I went into national security. I became an imperfect vessel of Dr. King’s message, like just about anybody who goes into national security. He believed that all wars were inherently insane, and therefore I was never going to be in a position to be the perfect example of his legacy. When I went into my first job in the Pentagon, I didn't consciously think to myself, “I’m compromising myself as a Morehouse man.” But it was only after giving speeches and so forth that I fully came to appreciate that. We have our own personal moral convictions, but in public life, in national security, in foreign policy, you rarely have the opportunity to act solely on your personal, moral convictions. It is a unique, multidimensional decision-making process to devise good government policy. Your moral convictions can play a part in that, but they're not the only consideration. *This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

SK How do you reconcile Dr. King’s anti-war philosophy with your job as General Counsel of the Department of Defense, in which you helped advance the military’s agenda?

SK Switching gears to your time as General Counsel of the Department of Defense, how did you weigh the merits of signing off on an operation versus the legality of it? It seems to me like there might be a tension between something you think is the right thing to do and what the law actually allows. JJ Let me give you the inverse. It is very, very important that lawyers not masquerade their policy and political preferences as a legal opinion—because when the lawyer says you can't do something, that’s a red light. This is opposed to what a policy advisor can say. When a lawyer says you can't do something, then the President, the Secretary of Defense, and the commander have to stop. So it's important that

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UNITED STATES

Pipelines of Mistrust The complexity of lead pipe removal programs lies not in funding challenges but in citizens' wariness of the government by Jillian Lederman '24, a Political Science and Economics concentrator and a US Staff Writer for BPR illustration by Rosie Dinsmore ’24, an Illustration major at RISD

As many as 12.8 million lead pipes wind through homes, businesses, and schools in the United States, making lead poisoning a reality for broad swaths of the American population. The effects of lead poisoning can be irreversible, ranging from high blood pressure to impaired brain function. Children are especially at risk, as they absorb more lead than adults, and lead can permanently derail the development of their brains. Low-income communities of color, where lead water pipes are particularly prevalent, are also disproportionately vulnerable. Yet, despite common perceptions, the fundamental source of this crisis is not simply a lack of government funding. Even after funding has been allocated, many Americans remain unwilling to grant the government access to remove lead pipes due to justifiable concerns about bureaucratic efficacy. Top-down federal efforts that ignore this mistrust limit their own potential. Successfully eliminating all lead pipes in the United States will require an individualized and educational approach that resolves, rather than ignores, residents’ political and economic concerns. Many Americans’ understanding of lead poisoning springs from news coverage of the crisis in Flint, Michigan. In 2014, a desire to save money led the Flint government to switch its drinking water supply to the Flint River, causing toxic water to corrode the lead pipes 46

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“In 2015, about 18,000 water systems across the country violated the Safe Drinking Water Act. These systems served 77 million Americans, each of whom faced constant risks with each sip of water.”

“...Despite extensive funding—the factor many may assume to be key to solving this problem—Chicago’s lead pipe removal program has stalled at several stages due to residents’ wariness of the program.”

in residents’ homes for a year and a half. The government’s botched response ultimately devastated the health of Flint’s youngest generation, elevating lead levels in children by two to three times. While the crisis increased national awareness of the dangers of lead poisoning, many Americans remain oblivious to how widespread the problem is. In 2015, about 18,000 water systems across the country violated the Safe Drinking Water Act. These systems served 77 million Americans, each of whom faced constant risks with each sip of water. Multiple levels of the US government have recently initiated efforts to mitigate the drinking water crisis. The situation in Flint spurred 180 towns and several states into action, helping fund efforts to remove lead service lines. Additionally, the bipartisan infrastructure bill, signed in November 2021, will dedicate $15 billion over five years to eliminate all known lead pipes and service lines in the country. These funding programs, however, will inadequately address the problem if they do not also tend to the population’s underlying mistrust of government intervention in their communities. Chicago provides an illuminating example of this. From 2015 to 2020, researchers found that lead water levels in some areas of Illinois mirrored those in Flint at the peak of its water crisis. In response, Chicago dedicated $8.5 billion in 2020 to removing and replacing its lead pipes, the highest city-wide investment in the country. However, despite extensive funding— the factor many may assume to be key to solving this problem—Chicago’s lead pipe removal program has stalled at several stages due to residents’ wariness of the program. Many Chicagoans may prioritize immediate economic concerns and thus oppose the program, believing that the lead pipe removal will include hidden costs or increase their long-term household water expenses. These convictions, although misguided, understandably push residents to prohibit government officials from coming into their homes to remove the lead pipes. Language barriers and historic mistrust of the government only increase resistance to lead pipe removal in Chicago, where many res-

idents are members of immigrant communities. Undocumented immigrants often fear that accepting government assistance—through the pipe removal program, for example—will derail their chances of getting a green card. This worry springs from a 2019 Trump administration policy that made green card eligibility partially contingent on immigrants’ financial independence from the government. This policy is no longer in effect, yet the fear it entrenched remains. Additionally, both documented and undocumented immigrants are disproportionately likely to face language barriers, making it difficult for them to get detailed information on the importance of lead pipe removal. Historical precedents also create a wariness of the government entering residents’ homes. During the abusive 1932 Tuskegee Experiments, for example, the government used Black Americans with untreated syphilis as experimental test subjects, causing the deaths of over 100 men. This history prompts some minority communities—particularly Black individuals—to be wary of government intervention. Citizens’ justified mistrust of the federal government is a reality for which invasive policies must account, especially when implementing them in low-income, minority communities. Chicago’s lead pipe removal program is one example of how policymakers might begin to confront challenges, like the historical mistrust of government, head-on. When a pilot version of the program was implemented in 2021, city staffers encouraged participation by posting flyers, organizing block meetings, engaging with individual residents, and reaching out to Spanish-speaking residents via a bilingual community coordinator. Progress, however, was slow: The pilot program, which only covered one city block, attracted just half of the 40 or 50 homeowners to the program. Citywide efforts were similarly unavailing. This demonstrates that solving the lead pipe crisis, as with all environmental justice initiatives, can be far more complex than anticipated. Successful policies require not just federal funding but also intimate, specialized efforts to foster trust among individuals at the local level.

Even with these efforts, it may take time to fully eliminate lead pipes on a national scale. Policymakers must reckon with problematic racist histories and craft extensive, long-term educational campaigns to help combat communities’ hesitancies. And beyond allocating funding to remove the pipes, legislation must contain explicit clauses that prohibit hidden costs and grant immunity to immigrant populations. To maximize success, funding bills should give local governments both the money and the discretion to handle the removal of lead pipe systems in their own communities, as they better understand the unique needs of their constituents. It may be easier for politicians to win votes by simply waving around the “$15 billion” number, but the amount of money is irrelevant if those at the center of the crisis do not wish to accept the aid it can provide. Any effective government policy, particularly one dealing with such a pressing crisis, must understand and respect this reality.

“Successful policies require not just federal funding but also intimate, specialized efforts to foster trust among individuals at the local level.” THE RABBIT HOLES ISSUE

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