Duke Political Review Spring 2015 Vol. 2 Issue 2 by Duke Political Review

Duke Political Review

Institutionalizing Health Diplomacy By Nicole Savage

A Death in Argentina By Ishan Thakore

The Rules of the Internet Game By Gautam Hathi

THE HEALTH ISSUE SPRING 2015 / VOLUME II / ISSUE II DUKEPOLITICALREVIEW.ORG

FROM THE EDITOR’S DESK

Duke Political Review Editors-in-Chief Ray Li and Jacob Zionce Senior Online Managing Editor Jeff Daye Chief-of-Staff Sam Skinner

Dear Reader, What a ride it has been. When we started the Duke Political Review two years ago, we could not have imagined that it would grow into the organization it is today. A conversation between friends during a midnight study session has turned into one of the most fun, engaged, and recognized groups on Duke’s campus. Through the Duke Political Review, a staff of over 70 students has had the opportunity to develop their political voices, meet influential policymakers and politicians, and make friends with other politically active students. We would not have gotten here without some help from some amazing friends, colleagues, and mentors. We do not have enough space on this page to thank everyone, but you all certainly know who you are. While DPR has come a long way the organization continues to change and evolve, and we think that this print edition is a great example of that. This semester we’ve decided to try out something new, and bring to you a collection of articles centered around a specific political theme – health and health policy. By taking a topic that seems to be in the news so often and diving into it from a variety of viewpoints, we hope this print edition brings our readers deeper insight into a number of topics related to the health sphere. At the same time, this semester’s edition marks the first time we have included exclusive DPR interviews with some of the world’s most important political figures in the print edition, and we are thrilled to be able to highlight the amazing work that our interviews team has done this year. Although it is tough to graduate and leave the Duke Political Review, we could not be more confident in those that will be here to carry on the tradition. Michael Pelle and Natalie Ritchie have both been with the Duke Political Review since its beginning, and we could not imagine two more competent and passionate people to take over as editors-in-chief. Next year they hope to expand the Duke Political Review even further with ventures into multimedia, speaking events, online features, and more. The organization will continue to bring political conversation to Duke’s campus in any way that it can. We cannot wait to watch it grow from afar.

60 Seconds Managing Editor Natalie Ritchie Business, Marketing, and Programming Director Russell Crock Multimedia Managing Editor Zach Gorwitz Interviews Managing Editor Megan Steinkirchner Art and Layout Director Natasia Leung Web Director Rajan Patel Associate Online Managing Editors Adam Beyer, Anna Kaul, Anna Lamb, Jay Sullivan Editors-at-Large Kari Barclay, Steven Brenner, Daniel Dorchuck, Gautam Hathi, Vignesh Krishnaswamy, Anand Raghuraman, Jay Ruckelshaus, Matthew Pun Columnists Maya Durvasula, Emily Feng, Maxime FischerZernin, Beatriz Gorostiaga, Andrew Kragie, Jack Minchew, Terrence Neal, Connor Phillips, Eric Ramoutar, Dana Raphael, Matthew Rock, Alena Sadiq, Colleen Sharp, Shobana Subramanian 60 Seconds Associate Editor Steven Brenner and Elizabeth McGlamry 60 Seconds Staff Writers Annie Adair, Connor Gundersen, Lisa Guraya, Aakash Jain, Izzy Jensen, Julian Keeley, Michael Kiffel, Charlie Miller, Henry Miller, Jesse Remedios, Sydney Smith Interviews Associate Managing Editor Charlotte Hall Interviews Associates Liz Brown, James Ferencsik, Tanner Lockhead Layout Editor Adam Beyer

One final time, thank you for reading,

Multimedia Designers Lisa Guraya, Izzy Jensen, Aditya Joshi, Kyra Noonan, Ashlyn Nuckols, Sydney Smith, Wendy Zeng Business, Communications, and Marketing Director Momin Ghaffar

Ray Li Editor-in-Chief

Jacob Zionce Editor-in-Chief

Business Marketing Associates Whitney Hazard, Alexa Lazarus, Emilie Padgett, Amy Wang Programming Director Brigitte Alanis Programming Associates Natasha Parekh and David Soled On the cover: Photo by Tom Varco. / Opposite page, from top: Photo by Victor Grigas; Photo by Abbie Rowe; Photo by Duke Photography.

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Contents

HEALTH

Q&A

LEADERS

DISPATCHES

Spring 2015 / Volume II / Issue II

UNITY IN RESPONSE TO TERROR

MCLOBBYING: THE OTHER NRA

REINING IN MORAL HAZARD ON WALL STREET

THE RULES OF THE INTERNET GAME

By Emma Campbell-Mohn

By Maya Durvasula

By Eric Ramoutar

The Fight for the Future of the Internet By Gautam Hathi

A DEATH IN ARGENTINA

STADIUM ANARCHADIUM

INSTITUTIONALIZING HEALTH DIPLOMACY

PANIC IN THE PRESS

SEXUAL ASSAULT ON THE RISE

AN INTERVIEW WITH NATE SILVER

AN INTERVIEW WITH STEPHEN HADLEY

The Curious Case of Alberto Nisman By Ishan Thakore

America’s Unhealthy Obsession with Stadiums By Shaker Samman

New Domains of Diplomacy By Nicole Savage

How the News Fails the Public on Health and Science By Natalie Ritchie

Elite Universities’ Dirty Little Secret By Tara Bansal

Standing at the Intersection of Data and Journalism By Jacob Zionce

Refocusing American Grand Strategy in Challenging Times By Megan Steinkirchner and Zach Gorwitz

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Dispatches

Dispatches Highlights from dukepoliticalreview.org

Unity in Response to Terror: Protecting Minorities after the Charlie Hebdo Attack The terrorist attacks that began the year in France not only targeted freedom of speech but also the very fabric of French multiethnic society. By Emma Campbell-Mohn

n response to the January terrorist attacks in France, European leaders issued a robust defense of free speech and condemnation of terrorism. The attacks strengthened defiance against terrorists who seek to destroy the fundamental freedoms inher-

January 11th Paris rally in support of the victims of the 2015 Charlie Hebdo shooting. Sébastien Amiet. 4 Photo DUKEbyPOLITICAL REVIEW

ent in European society. Yet, in addition to concerns about a free speech, there exists a less obvious issue. The terrorist attacks targeted France’s multiethnic society. In addition to the attack on the Charlie Hebdo, four French Jews died days later after Amedy Coulibaly opened fire on a kosher

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supermarket in Porte de Vincennes. The attacks shocked the French Jewish population causing fears of further terrorist attacks and hate crimes. Jews increasingly feel surrounded by a hostile environment where not even a kosher market is safe. While the Porte de Vincennes attack highlighted French Jew’s vulnerability, their recent safety concerns began two years ago. In 2012, Mohammed Merah shot a teacher and three students in a Jewish school in Toulouse, France. As justification for this carnage, Merah claimed that the Jews killed Palestinians and therefore deserved to die. In response to the attack, many French Jews considered emigrating, but fewer than 2,000 Jews migrated to Israel in 2012. While the attack vividly illustrated anti-Semitism, French Jews were not deterred from living their daily lives and remained an active part of the French society. However, increasing anti-Semitism during the summer of 2014 led many to reconsider. In 2014, 7,086 French Jews

Dispatches moved to Israel – triple the number in 2012. Anti-Semitic rallies occurred in France as part of a wave of protests throughout Europe. The rallies occurred in response to the Israel-Gaza conflict. Some protests led to mob violence like that in Sarcelles, where a Molotov cocktail was thrown at a synagogue and a kosher shop was sent on fire. In response to the anti-Semitic sentiments, President Hollande called a meeting among religious leaders to stem the growing tide of violence. However, these calls for peace were met with violence as anti-Jewish threats continued: there was a plot to blow up a synagogue in September and a robbery and rape of a Jewish couple in December. With one of the largest Jewish populations in Europe, France has approximately 500,000 Jewish citizens. After the Porte de Vincennes attack, the French government sought to ensure the security of its Jewish population by deploying 10,000 soldiers to “sensitive sites” such as Jewish schools. Rabbi Tom Cohen tells how soldiers guard

his synagogue day and night. With the protection of the government, he says there is no cause for Jews to leave for Israel. Yet, some French Jews long for the safety and comfort of Israel, where they can live under the protection of Israeli counterterrorism efforts and the “Iron Dome.” Israel, known for extreme counterterrorism measures, presents a vision of security as opposed to European states that struggle to balance draconian counterterrorism measures against freedoms for their citizens. The sad truth is that the French multiethnic society is under attack. While the Hebdo attack undoubtedly demonstrated opposition to free speech, the Porte De Vincennes attack showed the dangers of anti-Semitism. In response to fears raised by the French Jewish community, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu offered French Jews refuge in Israel. The simple fact that Netanyahu felt that this offer was needed illustrates the damaging consequences of these attacks on French national

cohesion. Can France no longer provide for its multiethnic population’s safety? These fears are not only localized to the Jewish population but also prevalent among the French Muslim population. From January 7th through January 20th, there were 133 recorded anti-Muslims attacks or threats in France, not including Paris. Attacks ranged from gunshots to training grenades aimed at mosques. These attacks illustrate a dangerous cultural divide creating disunity and division with French society. Beyond protecting free speech, the French must also protect its minority populations. Making France a Jew-less or Muslim-less state only further damages the delicate fabric of pluralism. In the wake of these attacks, France must not only look towards its enemies – terrorists who threaten its population – but also towards protecting its minority communities. Emma Campbell-Mohn is a Trinity junior. She is a columnist for DPR.

McLobbying: The Other NRA How the National Restaurant Association lobbies at the taxpayer’s expense. By Maya Durvasula

ven a simple survey of the fast food industry would reveal enough injustices to keep legions of activists and advocates busy for years: large-scale cultural degradation, grotesque animal cruelty, an overwhelming contribution to epidemic obesity, and large-scale worker exploitation. None of these problems are particularly well-kept secrets; from the McDonald’s chicken nuggets video that made the rounds several years back to long-form analyses of what, precisely, a tipped minimum wage of only $2.13 means for workers across the country, it is difficult to plead ignorance about the nature of the industry. It’s a bit more challenging to fault consumers for succumbing to what is, in essence, the scientifically determined perfect com-

bination of salt, sugar, and fat, which is far more easily accessed than its healthy counterparts, than it is to wonder where the government is in all of this. How can factory farming’s biggest champion be allowed to continue peddling its product, stomping on the backs of nutritionists and workers alike in the process, without meaningful regulation? The answer is unsurprisingly the same abbreviation that we arrive at when we consider another issue that encountered an irrationally small amount of progress: The NRA. This NRA, of course, is the National Restaurant Association, which uses successful tactics and operates with a budget large enough to earn itself the moniker of the “other NRA” (in reference to the Na-

tional Rifle Association). It isn’t surprising that, when it comes to the business of food, there is a formidable lobby in Washington that represents 500,000 restaurants in the $600 billion restaurant industry. After all, nearly every industry spends money on partisan politics and employs enough lobbyists to quash potentially problematic bills. While working in New Mexico, I was told again and again of the years during which an apparently formidable fireworks lobby made sure that every effort to regulate (and potentially ban) the sale of fireworks during peak season for forest fires, in a state known for its tendency to host massive, roaring blazes during the month of July, died in committee. While the topics of access to healthy and unhealthy food, food deserts, and relative

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Dispatches price of nutritious food are a policy-making and political jungle well-worth exploring, let us consider for the moment just the issues of lobbying-power and worker’s rights. (In the meantime, Dean of the Sanford School of Public Policy Kelly Brownell has published extensively on the relationships between environment, health, food, and obesity.) Since the 1990s, due in large part to considerable NRA lobbying, Congress set the minimum wage for tipped workers at just $2.13 per hour. While many states have raised this over the past two decades, the wages taken home by tipped workers often fail to equal those earned by their counterparts who receive standard minimum wage and do not come close to approaching a true living wage. New York, as of February, has deviated from this pattern by raising the minimum wage for tipped workers, the “the state’s lowest paid workers” to $7.50 per hour. The Restaurant Opportunities Center United estimates that the NRA has spent nearly $13 million on federal campaigns since 1989, with organizations represented by the NRA spending more than $50 million more since that time. In particular, this report notes that the NRA employed almost twice as many “revolving door lobbyists” – former chiefs of staff and legislative directors to members of Congress who take positions on the lobbying group’s payroll – as the National Rifle Organization in 2013.

With millions of dollars flowing into campaign coffers, the NRA has had no shortage of results. It has opposed any changes to the federal tipped worker minimum wage, “played an active role” in blocking state-bystate wage laws, crushed efforts to require paid sick leave for employees, and shepherded legislation to change the threshold for employer-provided healthcare coverage under the Affordable Care Act, effectively excluding employees who work under 30 hours per week. Additionally, the NRA has opposed important public health measures, like nutritional menu labeling, limitations on junk food marketing to children, and regulation of trans-fat, sugar, and salt in processed food. It is easy enough to write off the actions of the NRA as examples of the proper functioning of our economic system; in order to protect their interests, restaurants use their hard-earned profits to pay representatives who will ensure that their interests are appropriately represented in D.C. and in state capitols across the country. If this were true, then we would have to weigh more carefully our interests in protecting our systems of governance and business against consumer safety and public health concerns. However, as long as taxpayers are subsidizing the restaurant industry, we ought to consider the actions of its constituent businesses subject to scrutiny and regulation. The Institute for Policy Studies refers to the issue of taxpayer subsidization of this

industry as “Taxpayers’ Double Burden.” According to the Restaurant Opportunities Centers United, a loophole in tax law “allows corporations to deduct an unlimited amount of the cost of performance pay options” from income tax filings, meaning that taxpayers have subsidized more than $230 million in CEO compensation for the top 20 NRA restaurant chains. Public policy and advocacy group Demos writes that, in 2012, “the compensation of fast food CEOs was more than 1,200 times the earnings of the average fast food worker.” The National Employment Law Project estimates that public assistance given to fast-food workers, who are twice as likely to be on public assistance compared to the rest of the population, costs at least $3.8 billion per year. The report suggests that taxpayers fund McDonald’s employees with upwards of $1.2 billion annually in public assistance. This taxpayer assistance to NRA members comes even as the industry reports record-breaking growth. A NRA report noted that the industry was expected to increase sales to $683 billion in the 2014 fiscal year, with a $24 billion increase in profits. As long as NRA members continue to benefit from taxpayer assistance, taxpayers ought to demand that that money be put to a much better use. Maya Durvasula is a Trinity freshman. She is a columnist for DPR.

Reining In Moral Hazard on Wall Street A conflict of interest among Wall Street’s most powerful financial institutions is now the norm, and it is the ordinary investor that is at risk. By Eric Ramoutar

etting a company to willingly admit wrongdoing is a tall order. Getting a Wall Street mainstay to do so is nearly impossible. That is what makes January’s settlement between Standard and Poor’s (S&P), a massive credit rating agen-

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cy, and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) all the more impressive. S&P agreed to pay $77 million in fines and stop rating certain assets for a year as compensation for what the SEC alleges was intentional misinformation about how the firm rates certain investments.

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The services of S&P and other rating agencies are as integral to Wall Street as investment banks or insurance companies. S&P provides a credit rating on the debt of companies and governments, essentially telling investors how safe a certain investment is on a scale from D (likely to default)

Dispatches to AAA (very safe). S&P and its two largest competitors, Moody’s and Fitch, account for about 95% of all credit ratings worldwide, and their predictions are used by ordinary investors and huge investment banks alike. The problem, the government claims, is that S&P’s business model creates an unavoidable conflict of interest. Instead of charging users to access its ratings, S&P charges businesses to have their debts rated. That provides a powerful incentive for S&P to relax some of its more rigid evaluation standards to produce more optimistic outcomes. If everyone gets a AAA, everyone wins. The company has an investment that now looks attractive, and the rating agency has pleased its client. But when S&P gives out AAA ratings to increase its own profits rather than recognize stable companies, the duped investor shoulders all of the risk. Certainly nobody will shed a tear for Goldman Sachs, but as New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, put it, S&P has been “lying to investors.” S&P’s response to the accusations was to cry free speech. According to the firm, credit ratings are merely public commentary akin to political critique, and therefore immune to standards of criminal fraud. They were also quick to point out that rating agencies are just one side of the equation, and that buyers are the ones who ultimately make the decision to invest. Even those who harbor strong disdain for financial institutions after the 2008 collapse should concede that S&P’s free speech argument makes some sense. After all, rating investments on their future stability is an inherently predictive exercise, and few would suggest that S&P should be dragged into court every time their model turns out to be inaccurate. But arguing that free speech protects the work of S&P does not make that work any more savory, and in many ways, credit rating is the poster child for moral hazard on Wall Street. For years, the corrupted ratings process was ignored because we had yet to be burned. But in 2008, S&P issued highly favorable ratings for the same insolvent, mortgage-backed investments that brought our financial system to its knees. One obvious way to temper this corruption is to simply stop trusting ratings agencies, but some instructive history makes that seem very unlikely. After the

A view of the floor of the NYSE. Photo by Chronus.

financial crisis, S&P barely missed a beat. Since 2009, McGraw Hill Financial, S&P’s owner, has seen revenue increase by $1.4 billion and year-end share prices grow by 133%. The public may be more conscious of the cozy relationship between rating firms and debt sellers than they were before the collapse, but that has hardly affected their reliance on these firms. We may hate it, but continuing to use these rating agencies is completely rational. Neither large investment organs nor individuals investors have the resources or technical expertise to rate these investments themselves. In the absence of some third-party service, investors can either stop investing or start taking random guesses about which ventures are likely to profit. Nobody has any desire to go back to the days when smart investing required heaps of research or decades of experience, so, for now, most are content to accept a crooked model when the alternative is no model at all. Ideally, S&P would recognize their own ubiquity in our financial system and purify their ratings process for the greater good. But the current model has been enormously profitable, and there are few tasks more difficult than convincing a financial institution that there are worthy goals other

than profit margin. Even if S&P’s legal team is ultimately able to prove that their work is safeguarded by free speech protections, it does not mean that we should accept a monopoly of the corrupt. Instead, we should start asking governments to fill the void. To inform investors which ratings are likely to be the most tainted, regulators should force rating agencies to disclose which companies pay the heftiest sums for their rating. Perhaps then investors will become wary of investing in companies that paid handsomely for ratings, incentivizing companies to stop implicitly paying for AAAs. In cases when the conflict of interest is particularly pernicious, governments should provide an objective rating that cannot be bought. If corrupted ratings are all that is available, then it is corrupted ratings that will be used by investors. Offering some diversity of opinion will certainly shrink the influence of improper ratings. Rating agencies are severely flawed institutions, but they are here to stay. The task now is to deal with their imperfections. Checks on their incredible influence can and should be erected, and inaction may just set the stage for another 2008. Eric Ramoutar is a Trinity sophomore. He is a columnist for DPR.

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A map of the internet. Image by Matt Britt.

THE RULES OF THE INTERNET GAME How the government and tech companies are determining the regulations that will shape the future of the internet By Gautam Hathi

Leaders

t’s hard to think of two places more outwardly different than Washington DC and Silicon Valley. One is on the east coast, full of whitewashed edifices, and built on a swamp. The other is on the Pacific Ocean and enjoys sunny California weather. While Washington is synonymous with influence, stuffiness, inefficiency, and gridlock, the Bay Area is known for high tech startups that have revolutionized the way we live. Although Silicon Valley has its fair share of problems, few people would point to it as a major drag on the country in the way that many feel that Washington is.

and around the world. Computers became conduits that connect people to more information and services than humanity had ever had access to. It quickly became clear that the internet, as well as people and companies that leveraged it, were in a position to have a major impact on the daily lives of millions. What exactly the internet looked like, and what the rules governing it were, would therefore be of critical importance. Even the most technologically illiterate legislator or bureaucrat on Capitol Hill could understand that, but could the technology industry? And could the billions of people to whom the internet was a newly integral part of life?

ternet technology grew increasingly out of sync with the theoretical world envisioned by 1990s regulation. Internet companies didn’t help the situation either. The new technology giants such as Google and Amazon grew from one-room startups to multibillion dollar companies so quickly that they had very little chance to even think about government regulation. And with a certain smugness particular to the technology industry, many assumed that regulation was unnecessary or trivial. The internet had been built on a consensus of open standards, and the market had generally proved able to create broadly acceptable rules within the indus-

According to the Washington Post, Google didn’t even have a presence in Washington until 2005, when it hired a single lobbyist to operate in DC. One might assume then that the tech industry in Silicon Valley would want to stay as far away as it possibly could from the industry of government that exists in Washington. After all, if Google and Facebook truly believe that they have tools powerful enough to change the world, what use would they have for bureaucrats and politicians? Indeed, it wasn’t so long ago that companies like Microsoft and Google were disdainful of the Beltway, and before the advent of internet fundraising most congressmen and senators didn’t know an email from a text message (many still don’t). According to the Washington Post, Google didn’t even have a presence in Washington until 2005, when it hired a single lobbyist to operate in DC. And yet, like an unstoppable force and an immovable object, it was inevitable that the tech industry and the government would collide. When the internet became the fastest growing phenomenon the world had ever seen, it was clear that the technology industry would be able to touch the vast majority of the people across the country

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THE INTERNET TITANS

After the dot-com bubble and bust, a few companies emerged in the early 2000s as dominant players in the field of internet services and technology. Companies such as Google, Amazon, Facebook, and eventually Twitter became household names and gained millions of customers. But there was a problem that these companies would encounter and which they are still grappling with. It quickly became clear that the internet was growing faster than the scope of any regulations that existed or that could be created in short order. Congress attempted to provide the beginnings of a regulatory framework for the internet in the late 1990s when it updated the Communications Act and passed the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. These regulatory updates were highly premature though. It was impossible for Congress at that time to envision the impact that the internet would have on the world as well as the massive infrastructure, which has been built around the World Wide Web. As a result, the realities of in-

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try up to that point, so many reasoned that legal issues would not be a problem.

THE COPYRIGHT DILEMMA

But any company that touches billions of people will eventually make enemies. During the early 2000s, the internet found its first enemies in, of all people, creative artists. When the startup Napster created software to facilitate internet music sharing, it found itself in the crosshairs of the music recording industry and on the wrong side of the DMCA. The recording industry moved swiftly to sue Napster, arguing that it was allowing people to share what was essentially stolen music. The Napster case was clear cut, and resulted in the company being shut down by a federal court within two years of its inception (though even that couldn’t save the recording industry from a rapid downward spiral). But the next iterations of the copyright problem would not be so simple. In 2005, three former employees of the internet payment company PayPal created a

Leaders small video sharing site called “YouTube.” This site soon became the most popular video sharing site in existence and was bought by Google in 2006 for $1.65 billion. YouTube also quickly became a haven for pirated music and video and, like Napster, caught the attention of content publishing associations. This time the solution wasn’t so simple, however. Although YouTube had lots of pirated content on its site, its official policy was that YouTube users weren’t supposed to upload videos that they didn’t have the rights to. The problem was that YouTube had no good way of enforcing this policy. While the DMCA had a provision protecting websites such as YouTube from responsibility for pirated content uploaded by users, it also required websites to take down such content if they were aware of it. YouTube was certainly aware that it had pirated content on its site, but with thousands of new hours of video being uploaded every day, sorting through what was legal and what wasn’t proved to be a task that YouTube could not or would not handle. This was a situation that wasn’t foreseen when the DMCA was passed into law. Even the idea of thousands of hours of internet video was hard to think about in late 1990s. So the question remained: how much responsibility did YouTube bear for the wealth of pirated content on its site? Content creators, movie companies, record labels, and television studios thought that YouTube bore a great deal of responsibility for harboring illegally uploaded content. In 2007, Viacom launched a civil lawsuit in federal court against YouTube and its parent company, Google, seeking $1 billion in damages. Viacom claimed that YouTube was not only aware of copyright-infringing videos on its sight, but was also encouraging users to upload infringing videos in order to increase website traffic. YouTube eventually won the case, but Viacom didn’t give up easily. It was only in 2014 that Viacom

President Obama meets with Mark Zuckerberg and other technology leaders. Photo by Nightscream.

ended its years-long appeals process. And companies like Viacom weren’t done once they lost in court. Unlike technology companies, studios and record labels had a longstanding presence in the nation’s capital. They have distributed millions of dollars over decades to the campaign funds of legislators. Once it became clear that existing law wasn’t enough to protect their interests, content production companies began an effort to change the law. They proposed legislation that would make it easier for copyright holders to get pirated content removed from the internet. The most infamous of these bills were the Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA, and the Protect Intellectual Property Act, or PIPA. Unlike previous legislation, which mandated that websites take down illegally uploaded copyrighted works displayed on their site, these bills would have essentially allowed copyright holders to take down the websites themselves. Under SOPA and PIPA, copyright holders would have been allowed to get a court order cutting off an

infringing site from the internet, something that was unheard of before. The legislation had the potential to radically change the internet from a network where content circulated freely to a place where the legal rights of copyright holders were paramount. Organizations such as the MPAA and the RIAA poured millions into the effort to pass SOPA and PIPA, but a large coalition of internet companies and internet users mobilized to oppose the proposed legislation. Companies such as Google and Facebook relied on their ability to host and deliver music, videos, and other content to users, and users wanted free access to content on the web. After a web campaign led by Google, Facebook, and others that involved full page New York Times ads and a Wikipedia blackout, the SOPA and PIPA died in Congress. As a result of the piracy fights, the new generation of web companies learned that Washington was not something that could not be ignored. Although the internet would remain the largely unregulated

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Leaders space that it had been, SOPA and PIPA had come very close to changing the nature of the playing field on the web. Internet companies realized that they needed to establish a presence in Washington and ramp up their operations. Google, for example, went from spending just over $250,000 on lobbying in 2005 to spending almost $10 million in 2011 according to OpenSecrets. org. When the next battle came, the technology industry would be ready.

THE NET NEUTRALITY WARS

The next battle came soon enough. It wasn’t just copyright holders who wanted to change the rules of the internet game. Others wanted to change the underlying structure of the internet itself. Since its beginnings, the internet has been seen by the technology industry as an open resource, almost like a utility. Anyone can put whatever they want on the internet, and anyone can access whatever they want on the internet without disruptions or slowdowns. This is what has allowed new entrants into the internet marketplace to gain a foothold and disrupt existing players. Within the space of just a few years, Google was able to take over the search market even though there were already a number of established search engines. YouTube was in turn able to leapfrog Google in the internet video market. Neither of these events would have happened if Google wasn’t able to access the internet in the same way Yahoo was, or if users could access Google videos faster than YouTube videos. This principle of equality on the internet is known as net neutrality, and the idea has been around a long time. In the age of telephones and even before in the age of telegraphs, the federal government mandated that all messages on telephone and telegraph lines should be treated equally. AT&T was barred from reducing call quality if customers did not pay more for phone service. When the infrastructure for the internet was being developed in the 1990s, a number of internet activists in government and academia, including Vice President Al Gore, pushed for the application of similar rules to the internet. But the companies that built and owned the internet’s wires and cables felt that the government shouldn’t get to decide

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the best way to use internet infrastructure. Many people, especially free market conservatives, agreed. After all, wouldn’t controlling how internet companies used their private infrastructure potentially limit innovation as well? Especially as the need for increased internet capacity kept growing, many believed that internet companies, also known as Internet Service Providers, or ISPs should be able to adopt whatever business model allowed them to keep up with rising demand. As with copyright, technology companies would find that the only resolution of the net neutrality issue involved the government. In the early to mid-2000s, under pressure from internet companies such as Comcast and Verizon, the Federal Communications Commission tried to create rules that charted a middle path on the issue. While the FCC refused to classify internet providers as utilities similar to phone companies, they did attempt to enforce net neutrality rules. This was a solution that left no one satisfied. ISPs wanted full control over their networks, and internet activists wanted the internet to be a public utility. Major technology companies like Google and Facebook were a little more ambiguous on the issue, since they potentially stood to gain by making deals with ISPs for faster access but could also lose out if their competitors made better deals. In the end, though Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and Twitter all decided to come out in support of net neutrality, mostly because their most vocal customers wanted them to. They turned their newly found lobbying powers towards the issue. Once again, the internet was back in court, and this time it was the ISPs suing the FCC. In 2008, Comcast filed a lawsuit against the FCC, arguing that the FCC couldn’t impose rules on ISPs if it didn’t classify the internet as a utility. In 2011, Comcast won the lawsuit. Although the FCC tried to rewrite its rules to stay on the right side of the courts, they were once again stopped by a lawsuit from Verizon in 2014. Internet activists immediately went into a panic. Prominent technologists claimed that the internet as we knew it was going to go away. A feature story was published on the major tech news site The Verge

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right after the ruled titled “The Internet is F**ked’.” But internet activists still had a couple more cards up their sleeve. Within weeks of the ruling, a large scale popular campaign backed by activist groups and tech companies emerged. Its goal was to pressure the FCC into reclassifying the internet as a utility. In a widely viewed segment, the comedy television host John Oliver called on viewers to write letters to the FCC demanding that the commission stop “cable company f**kery.” Within days, the FCC’s website was bombarded with more comments than it could handle. There was also one more thing. In what might be seen as either a lucky coincidence or the result of tech companies’ growing political operations, President Barack Obama worked during his 2008 campaign to court support from the technology industry. He had come out in support of net neutrality during the campaign and reiterated his support in 2014. The newly appointed chairman of the FCC, Tom Wheeler, was facing pressure from the public as well as from the President who appointed him. It wasn’t a surprise, then, when the FCC moved to reclassify ISPs as utility companies in February 2015. Once again, the battle for the future of the internet had been fought and won in government.

INTO THE REAL WORLD

More recently, the internet wars have transcended from the virtual realm into the real world. The newest generation of internet startups is leveraging the power of the web to enter markets that were previously not thought of as part of the technology industry. Companies such as Tesla Motors, Airbnb, Uber, and Lyft have used the internet to disrupt previously established industries ranging from car manufacturing to lodging rental. While all of these companies have seen major success, it’s not surprising that they’ve run into opposition as well from within the industries being disrupted. Once again, most of the pushback has come through the courts and the government. Unlike the big internet companies, though, the new wave of startups has had much less time to shift its attention from Silicon Valley to Washington. Electric car maker Tesla, for example, has been hit hard by the National Automobile Dealers As-

Leaders sociation, which claims that Tesla’s model of selling cars on the internet directly to consumers rather than going through dealerships is illegal. NADA has lobbied dozens of state legislatures across the country to ban Tesla from selling cars in their state. While Tesla has been able to stop these efforts in a few states, up until this point it has lost more battles than it has won. This isn’t a surprise, given that Tesla’s lobbying effort is quite small compared Google’s or Microsoft’s, according to OpenSecrets.org

has often found itself on the opposite side of ISPs, it may soon become one. The company is hard at work building super high speed fiber optic internet infrastructure as part of its Google Fiber project and is also working to make internet access universal with its Project Loon initiative. How Google will handle being both a major provider and a major user of the internet remains to be seen. It might be tempting for the company to use its new status as an ISP to boost its own products, but Google has been argu-

has as much power to shape the internet as they do. Major tech giants (as well as smaller startups) are spending more time, effort and money trying to influence policy in a way favorable to them. For these companies, billions of dollars are at stake in outcome of decisions being made as to exactly how the internet and internet technologies will be regulated. There’s also a lot at stake for the rest of us in these decisions. The world has become inexorably tied to the internet over the past

It seems, then, that the internet companies that are breaching the divide between the virtual and the real will have to focus their efforts on both Washington DC and state capitals. and FollowTheMoney.org. The internet taxi company Uber has also run into trouble in state governments across the country. Taxi companies and associations have tried to stop Uber from expanding into new cities, claiming that the startup would not be subject to the same regulations as traditional taxi operators. Uber has aggressively responded to the opposition, though. A Washington Post article in December detailed how the company has mobilized its customer base and rapidly hired an army of high profile lobbyists, including former Obama campaign chief David Plouffe, in order to win legislative battles. The strategy seems to be paying off, with Uber winning the right to operate in a number of states, including Virginia, California, and the District of Columbia, where various groups have shut them down. Even the bigger and older internet companies, which have core businesses that are based purely in the virtual world, are attempting to use the leverage of the internet to disrupt other industries. Google is taking the lead in this area, with forays into self-driving cars and, perhaps most interestingly, internet service. Although Google

ing that ISPs should not be able to promote or block any internet product at all. Under increasing pressure from shareholders to build new businesses beyond search, Google will have to move carefully lest it finds itself in the crosshairs of regulators. It seems, then, that the internet companies which are breaching the divide between the virtual and the real will have to focus their efforts on both Washington DC and state capitals. Most technology companies are used to working in the virtual world, where there’s a lot of room to roam around. Entering a physical industry requires interacting with a whole slew of people, organizations, and, most importantly, laws that simply don’t matter in the real world. If the tech industry isn’t careful, those people, organizations, and laws may end up circumscribing the internet, which the technology industry depends on so dearly.

LOOKING AHEAD

In 2014, the two companies that spent that most on federal lobbying were Comcast Corporation and Google, Inc. After a number of hard fought battles, the technology industry has realized that the government

few years. How billions of people around the world interact with, profit from, or get damaged by the internet will be determined by the interactions between the lobbying dollars in Silicon Valley and the egos in Washington DC. But there’s also a role for everyone else. Right now, the internet is taken for granted by billions of people around the world. All of those people may wake up one day and find out that the internet they once knew isn’t the same any more. However, one of the amazing things about the internet is that it allows anyone with a laptop or cell phone to have voice. The fights over net neutrality and copyright laws drew a great deal of public attention, but most of that attention has blown away. Before it’s too late, it might be worth our collective while to click away from Facebook and pay attention to how the law is changing the future of our internet. Gautam Hathi is a Trinity sophomore studying Computer Science. He is an Editor at Large for DPR.

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By Ishan Thakore

A Death in Argentina A locked door, a gun, a spent shell and a dead Argentine prosecutor. Alberto Nisman’s untimely death is the latest development in the investigation of a 1994 bombing on a Jewish landmark. Two-decades later, will there ever be justice?

his spy thriller trope sounded familiar. An investigator, on the cusp of disclosing scandalous details of the current administration, is found dead. His door is locked from the inside, and the weapon, a .22 caliber pistol, is found in his hands. Although initially ruled a suicide, investigators later believe it to be murder, opening a litany of possibilities from an administration-backed hit or one framed to look that way. Sadly, this story is real. 51-year-old Argentine prosecutor Alberto Nisman was found dead in his Buenos Aires home by his mother and police officers on January 18th, 2015. The night before death, Nisman requested a gun from an employee, fearing for his life because a 290-page criminal complaint he filed on January 14th brazenly accused sitting president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner and Foreign Minister Héctor Timerman of covering up a 1994 bombing. Nisman was slated to testify in front of Argentina’s Congress on his claims the day after his death. Complicating matters, forensic teams found a crumpled arrest warrant for Timerman and Fernández in the trash. But making sense of Nisman’s death requires a deeper dive into Argentine history and the 1994 bombing, a past marred by many skeletons. Nearly everyone who has touched this case – be they former presidents, judges, witnesses, prosecutors, or intelligence officers–has been embroiled in scandal or faced criminal charges. No one escapes untainted. In 2006, then-President Nestor Kirchner called the investigation into the bombing “a national disgrace.” And now, just over two decades since the bombing, those responsible are well known but still at large. How could it go so wrong?

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n July 18th, 1994, a car bomb leveled the Argentine Jewish Mutual Aid Association (AMIA) building in downtown Buenos Aires, killing 85 people and maiming hundreds in Argentina’s deadliest terrorist attack. It destroyed the archives and cultural records of one of the largest Jewish diasporas in the world, as well as the headquarters of the DAIA, an influential political group advocating for Argentine Jews. The early Monday morning explosion caught everyone from young people registering at a job bank to elderly citizens receiving their pensions. The attack echoed back to Hezbollah’s 1992 car bombing of the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires, which killed 23 and injured over 240. Both attacks are startlingly similar–attackers used car bombs, both buildings were undergoing repairs, and police officers guarding both sites disappeared at the time of the bombings. Hopes for justice soon faded after the embassy bombing. Argentine President Carlos Menem organized the Supreme Court to lead the investigation, which yielded no arrests and no trials even though a Hezbollah-connected group took credit for the attack. Sergio Widder, the South American representative of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, noted in a New York Times article that the sub-standard investigation emboldened terrorists to carry out attacks with little fear of reprisal.

A History of Violence

Menem placed Judge Juan José Galeano in charge of the AMIA investigation, and Nisman joined the team as an investigator in 1997. Galeano’s fall from grace, like his investigation, unraveled slowly. In August, a few weeks after the attacks, Galeano issued four arrest warrants for Iranian diplomats based on shoddy evidence and hearsay that was later discounted. Two weeks after the bombing, car salesman Carlos Telleldín was arrested for selling the Renault van used in the bomb. His testimony eventually implicated Buenos Aires police chief Juan José Ribelli, who was arrested along with 13 other policemen for coordinating the van’s sale. The trial was bungled- a videotape, stolen from Galeano’s office and broadcast on national TV, showed the judge offering Telleldín a $400,000 bribe to implicate police officers. A full 10 years after the attack, all defendants were found not guilty. A grand jury impeached Galeano in 2003 for misconduct as a result of his attempted bribe. Galeano pursued corrupt Argentine officers as the principal part of the investigation, at the expense of other credible information linking Iran and President Menem to the attack. A key part of the investigation was ‘Witness C’, identified later as senior Iranian intelligence defector Abdolghassem Mesbahi. Mesbahi revealed that Menem forged a lucrative partnership with Iranian officials, who contributed to his political campaign. Menem, who is of Syrian descent, had met with former Syrian President Hafez al-Assad and was suspected of receiving campaign contributions from both Syria and Libya, strategic Iranian allies. In 1984, former Argentine President Raúl Alfonsín signed a deal to develop a mid-range ballistic missile, the Condor II, with Egypt and Iraq. But following Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait and its international condemnation, Argentina renegotiated the deal with Syria. Before missiles and technical assistance changed hands, US diplomatic pressure led Argentina to renege on the

deal and instead sign a nuclear non-proliferation treaty. Some scholars hypothesize that Assad, angered by Argentina’s reversal, greenlit Hezbollah attacks in the country. US and Argentine officials believe Iran provided technical support for the attacks. Yet despite evidence pointing to Assad and Syria, the nation was never implicated in the case. Syria was viewed by the US as a potential ally in conducting peace-talks in the Middle East, and US diplomats encouraged the Argentine government to shy away from a Syrian connection. Interestingly, declassified documents in 2003 showed that even former Israeli President Yitzhak Rabin sent an envoy to Argentina after the 1994 attack to agree on an “official” version of events (at the time, Israel was conducting peace talks with Palestinians with Syrian approval). Galeano’s unwillingness to follow up on international leads hints at a larger, more sinister problem in Argentina. There seems to be troubling ties between Argentina’s executive branch, judges, the state intelligence service (SIDE) and prosecutors. The problem starts with a history of Argentine instability – between 1930 and1983 Argentina witnessed multiple coups, was led by 25 heads of state, and had 22 years of military rule. The polarizing former president Juan Perón, who espoused his own brand of populism known as Peronism, built a formidable political party that continues today (President Fernández’s Justicialista Party is Peronist). After Perón was deposed and exiled in 1955, a series of military and civilian governments assumed the presidency until 1973, when Perón returned from exile and was re-elected. His wife, Isabel Perón, would take over the presidency after his 1974 death, but she too would be deposed in a military take-over. This period of military rule is infamously known as the “Dirty War,” and was a violent chapter in Argentine history. Thousands of Argentines would be “disappeared” by autonomous military and police gangs, and this state-sponsored violence fueled corruption. According to Sergio Berensztein, an Argentine political analyst, in the 1980s and 1990s “corruption was so bad among federal police that judges–particularly federal judges–began working with SIDE because they couldn’t work with police.” This dependency emboldened the intelligence agency, who would feed investigative judges information as a result. At the same time, the executive branch leaned on SIDE during the Dirty War and still does today –Foreign Policy notes that intelligence officials claim that President Fernández listened in on opposition leader wiretaps. A cozy relationship between the executive branch and intelligence agency in turn creates a conflict of interest whenever judges investigate executive members with SIDE information. Which brings us back to Judge Galeano and ‘Witness C,’ who began implicating then-President Menem as tied to the cover-up. Claudio Lifschitz, an investigator under Galeano, said Galeano destroyed evidence to protect his SIDE sources from retribution from Menem.

Nisman Seeks Justice

The head of the Argentine prosecutor’s association, Donoso Castex, told the Washington Post: “The case, for [Nisman], was his life.” Amazingly, Nisman managed to escape ignominy and indictment during the first investigation, and was tapped by Judge Rodolfo Canicoba Corral to lead the re-investigation after Galeano’s 2003 dismissal. Nisman was doggedly determined - his team SPRING 2015

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Leaders consisted of up to 80 people and produced an exhaustive 2006 report that firmly pointed to top Iranian officials, including former President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, as responsible for the 1994 bombing. Nisman received Interpol Red Notices, its version of arrest warrants, for a few suspects in 2007. Near the same time, Fernández was elected on the coattails of her husband’s, Nestor Kirchner’s, presidency. She inherited an Argentina with a rebounding economy after its 2001 economic collapse, the result of defaulting nearly $100 billion in loans. Her first term wasn’t always steady–the BBC noted her approval rating sunk to 20% due to high profile disputes– though a steady economy carried her through to reelection in 2011. In 2013, Argentina and Iran signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) regarding the attack, and agreed to set up a truth commission and allow a judge to interrogate accused Iranians. Fernández praised it as a breakthrough, but Nisman was furious that the government struck a deal with the country he implicated. The deal stalled, since the Iranian Parliament never ratified the agreement, and an Argentinian appeals court blocked it from taking effect. What followed for Nisman was months of additional investigation until January 2014. Then, he accused President Fernández and Foreign Minister Timerman of secretly negotiating with the Iranians to trade Argentine grain for Iranian oil in exchange for dropping the Red Notices. The MOU, Nisman alleged, was just a cover. Four days later, Nisman was dead, and for a while it seemed like he escaped untainted from the case. But even Nisman did not avoid impropriety, and there are serious holes in his allegations. The former secretary general of Interpol, Ronald Noble, openly repudiated Nisman’s claims that Foreign Minister Timerman tried to revoke the Red Notices. A punishing op-ed in the New York Times by Horacio Verbitsky, whose Center for Legal and Social Studies represents some AMIA victims, noted inaccuracies and a lack of legal violations in Nisman’s complaint. “Of the 290 pages,” he wrote, “only two mentioned possible violations of the law, and there was no reference at all to legal doctrine or jurisprudence” (emphasis added). Wikileaks cables reveal Nisman frequently contacted the American embassy during his investigations, running major findings and his 2006 report by the embassy’s staff before publicly disclosing the information. His close contact with Americans left him with few allies within

the Fernández administration, but Nisman was close to Antonio Stiuso, the former head of SIDE. Fernández ousted Stiuso in December 2014, the beginning of her efforts to reform the errant spy organization. Verbitsky notes that some think Stiuso fed Nisman information for his criminal complaint, and might have been involved in his death. Even claims of an oil-for-grain deal seem dubious - Iranian oil has a much higher sulfur content than legally allowed in Argentine refineries.

No answers in sight

Fernández has categorically denied all involvement, at times unprofessionally, in Nisman’s death. She posted lengthy Facebook letters, vacillated between calling Nisman’s death a suicide and then opting for murder, and televised speeches defending herself while publicly and posthumously attacking Nisman. While Nisman’s predecessor vowed to take up the fight, Judge Daniel Rafecas dismissed Nisman’s allegations on February 26th, 2015, claiming there was “not even circumstantial evidence” pointing to Fernández. On the same day, Fernández pushed a bill through Argentina’s congress dissolving SIDE and opting to replace it with a much more limited intelligence apparatus – a move that critics claim is meant to shift attention away from Nisman. In early March, a forensics team convened by Nisman’s family and exwife claimed Nisman was surely murdered. Fernández can’t run for another term during this October’s presidential elections, and Argentina is still dealing with high inflation and limited access to international cash – the country defaulted on loan interest payments for the 8th time in July 2014. Yet while economic concerns loom large, the killings have embroiled her administration and taken attention away from both Nisman and the families of the victims. The human tragedy of their deaths remains shrouded behind dirty politics and corrupt officials, while the real culprits remain at large. In order to get to the bottom of this case, Argentina might just need another, and perhaps a better, Alberto Nisman.

There seem to be troubling ties between Argentina’s executive branch, judges, the state intelligence service (SIDE) and prosecutors.

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Ishan Thakore is a senior at Duke University, studying Public Policy with strong interests in journalism and global health. This is his second article for DPR.

The demolition of Yankee Stadium in 2010. Photo by Richiek.

STADIUM ANARCHADIUM By Shaker Samman

Building a new stadium is an unnecessary expenditure, so why do struggling cities keep bankrolling them?

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or generations, Americans have spent their afternoons, nights, and weekends packed into mammoth arenas, mindlessly cheering for their local teams. This act is omnipresent, as nearly every major American city plays host to a major league sports franchise. Watching ballgames with friends and family has become a pastime, but at what cost? Cities around the nation spend their money on similar things – transportation, utilities, education, etc. These expenditures are necessary for a functioning society to thrive. However, 44 cities have an extra cost – stadiums. For decades, professional sports franchises have bullied their hosts into donating city funds to finance colossal arenas. These stadiums almost never give

untrue in practice, as a study conducted by the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City showed that there was almost no difference between economic growth in cities with professional sports franchises and those without. Though new stadiums are necessary at times due to safety precautions, owners often request city funding for upgrades to their existing parks for no reason other than turning a greater profit. Following the Great Recession, American cities have struggled, but despite these shortcomings, the construction of new arenas has not stagnated. Since 2010, 19 franchises – 16.3% of all teams – have either erected, or plan to erect new venues, subsidized in large part by community funds. This raises the question – how are teams able to fleece cities for millions without any guarantee of ever returning the favor?

Teams that see the opportunity to gain from the relationship become extortionists, shopping their clubs around to find municipalities willing to bankroll new digs. any tangible monetary return to the city, and are essentially half-billion dollar taxbreaks for the teams’ magnate owners. The easiest way to describe the partnership between cities and teams is a broken relationship, with one side – the teams – consistently looking for the next best companion. The cities are helplessly in love with their clubs, offering hundreds of millions in taxpayer dollars for new stadiums to quell the threat of franchises packing up and moving to greener pastures. Teams that see the opportunity to gain from the relationship become extortionists, shopping their clubs around to find municipalities willing to bankroll new digs. The franchises are often able to convince the public that contributing these funds is beneficial to the community, as the increased traffic to areas surrounding the venue could boost the city’s economy. While attractive on paper, this has proved to be

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CALIFORNIA HERE WE COME In the spirit of patriotism, and the American dream, the NFL has embarked on a path it has failed on before. Following the theory of manifest destiny, the league has inched closer to claiming Los Angeles as its own. The allure of capitalizing on the untapped market has teams salivating at the titanic earning potentials. For some, this means making plans to move to the City of Angels, while for others, it presents an opening to bleed their host cities dry. The most recent franchise to take advantage of this opportunity is the St. Louis Rams. The Rams moved to Missouri in 1995, after St. Louis sank over $300 million into building the Edward Jones Dome. In exchange for a 30-year tenure, the city agreed to cover the cost of stadium upkeep for the franchise. However, the deal included a clause that is haunting local leaders. The Rams can opt-out of their contract if

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the Edward Jones Dome does not rank in the top quarter of NFL stadiums in terms of quality, and have stated that they wish to do so. Over the past year, rumors of disloyalty surfaced due to reports that the Rams’ owner Stan Kroenke was looking to move the team to Los Angeles, their former home. Those rumors were confirmed when Kroenke announced his plans to build an 80,000 person monolith in the heart of LA. In an attempt to keep the Rams in St. Louis, Vox reported that the city unveiled plans for a state-of-the-art, $985 million stadium on the Mississippi River, funded in large part by taxpayers dollars. This donation to a man worth nearly $6 billion could financially cripple a city already burdened by paying off the cost of the old stadium until 2021. In the eyes of the city, however, it is a required liability. Local leaders do not want to be remembered as the group who sent the Rams back to Los Angeles, even if its better for the city if they leave. In short, new stadiums are boondoggles that place an unfair financial burden on cities. The money allocated to build the new arenas would be better served funding vital infrastructure, such as schools, and hospitals. This problem is not exclusive to teams looking to relocate to Tinsletown, either. From 1909-2012, 186 stadiums were built for franchises in the four major American sports leagues (NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL). A Deadspin study in 2012 showed that of the $53 billion spent on new stadiums in the last century, $32.2 billion (61%) was publicly funded. From 1991 to 2004, 78 arenas were constructed, or renovated, for a total cost of $26 billion. Financing these stadiums is akin to billion dollar tax breaks, as the city feels the burden of the monstrosity while the billionaire owners of the teams suffer only minor losses. This is especially true in Detroit, where Mike Ilitch, the owner of the Detroit Red Wings, recently secured $284.5 million (58% of the total cost of the stadium) in municipal funds to build a new arena for the Red Wings in downtown Detroit. Ilitch plans to use the Hockeytown rink to tie together his “Sports and Entertainment District,” which he claims would help boost the local economy. While this may be an enticing prospect for the city, it is Ilitch who gains the most from this deal. As the owner of the neighboring Comerica Park (home

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The design concept for Detroit’s new downtown hockey arena. Photo by Olympia Development of Michigan.

of MLB’s Detroit Tigers), and many of the surrounding restaurants, Ilitch would be taking home millions in return for the city’s investment. Detroit, for all of its majesty and charm, is a city in decline. In 2013, it declared bankruptcy, and toyed with the possibility of auctioning off its non-essential properties (like the Detroit Institute of Art) to remain solvent. Somehow, with countless financial liabilities still to pay, Detroit managed to find almost $300 million in public assets to donate to a man worth $4.2 billion so that he could increase his private profit. But why? The answer is illogical, but simple – tradition. Detroit sports lore is woven into the city’s history. For years, the Motor City has relied on its franchises for support, and distraction from the crumbling metropolis they inhabit. The entire state of Michigan rallies around Detroit’s teams, flooding the city with hope each summer, and each fall. No city politician wants to be the tagged with the stigma of pushing away Detroit’s favorite sons. No one hungers for the chance to kill Detroit sports. The owners know this, so they keep pushing. They know they can finance stadiums on their own, but why would they if they have a desperate partner

who will do it for them. They cry poverty, and manipulate their host cities into paying half of a billion dollars. This is Detroit’s burden. This is every city’s burden. This disturbing trend has continued nationwide. Washington D.C. recently agreed to finance half of D.C. United’s (MLS) new $300 million soccer pitch – a $150 million investment for a team Forbes values at $75 million. In 2009, Miami donated $500 million to the Marlins to build their new park. To finance this, the city took out a $91 million loan, which a Deadspin study found will cost the city nearly $1.2 billion to repay. In total, the city will foot a $2.4 billion bill, making Marlins stadium the most expensive sports complex ever built.

IT ALL FALLS DOWN Stadiums do not make sense economically. They drag down cities for private profit and have minimal usage while occupied. A study conducted by The Atlantic found that the only stadium in America that isn’t a financial burden to its city is the Staples Center, in Los Angeles. This is likely because it hosts two NBA teams (Clippers and Lakers), a WNBA team (Sparks), and an NHL team (Kings), and is in-use 250 days per year. In comparison, an NFL stadium is

used 10 times per season, including preseason games. While there is undeniable value for business within a few blocks of the arena, the economic growth does not extend to the entire metropolitan area, suggesting that the commercial benefit to the city is far less than the initial public investment. After the team spends a decade or two on the field, they demand city financing for a new home, and leave their old coliseums in the dust to start the cycle over once more. What happens when a city no longer has use for a stadium? These monstrosities have no purpose outside of hosting events, so when their tenants leave for greener pastures, they’re either demolished, or left to rot as toxic concrete wastelands. These abandoned arenas (there are currently 66 of them), or “ghost stadiums” account for $6.6 billion in public funds, and now serve as some of the world’s largest horror film backdrops. Since the turn of the new millennia, cities have financed the demolition of nearly two-dozen major American stadiums on behalf of the teams who served as tenants, only for the teams to then request that the cities bankroll their new homes as well. For the better part of a century, the cycle has been never-ending. Teams constantly make

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The Angels are looking to move to a new home. Photo by Arnold C.

moves that help their business thrive, and cities bend at the will of the franchise to appease their respective owners. There are, however, exceptions to this rule. In 2014, Anaheim opened negotiations with its MLB club, the Angels on financing renovations to its current field in return for a guarantee that the team would remain in the city. The two sides nearly struck an agreement in which Angels owner Ante Moreno would spend $150 million of his private finances to refurbish the 47-year old diamond, and in return, Anaheim would gift him 150 acres of city land to develop however he wished. This deal was stopped, in part, by Anaheim mayor Tom Tait, who wanted to have the land appraised before handing it over for virtually nothing. As it turns out, Tait made a smart decision. Vice Sports reported that the land originally slated to be given to Moreno was worth upwards of $325 million – far more than the city was anticipating. After discovering the value of the land to the city, Tait had a modest counteroffer: Anaheim wanted some of the revenue from the development of the gifted land. In disbelief of this request, Moreno began

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shopping the Angels to neighboring towns, hoping one would pounce on the opportunity to host a successful franchise. He found his match in nearby Tustin. Moreno’s high hopes for this partnership were dashed, as Tustin also had its property appraised for over $200 million, and requested that the Angels give the same share of development profit that Anaheim demanded. Anaheim and Tustin are not alone in defending their citizens’ tax dollars. When negotiating financing for new stadium for an MLS expansion team in Orlando, Orange County Commissioner Pete Clark suggested that in return for the $20 million necessary to construct the club’s soccer pitch, the taxpayers receive a stake in the team. Though Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer rejected this approach, it was one of the few times in the history of arena financing that a city chose not to immediately acquiesce to a franchise making demands. The largest strives for fair negotiation, however, comes from the Motor City, which, as mentioned, recently agreed to cover more than half of the cost of a new hockey rink. A number of Detroit City Council members proposed that developers requesting

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municipal funding for private venues like stadiums must first sign a “community benefits agreement,” or CBA. These agreements would force developers to provide specific benefits to local residents and communities in return for public funds, such as housing, and employment. Detroit would not be the first city to use a CBA, but would be the first to legally require it. This sort of agreement would help the city get desired yields on the money gifted to franchises, and would stimulate economic growth. If the bill passes, it could open the door for dozens of cities to ratify similar proposals, ensuring that the cycle of blatant theft of city funds is not without reassurance of equal, or near equal metropolitan growth. Until then, however, cities will continue to act as an open checkbook, giving billions to those who already have them. Shaker Samman is a sophomore at Duke University, studying Public Policy and Journalism. This is his second piece for Duke Political Review.

INSIDE: Institutionalizing Health Diplomacy By Nicole Savage

Panic in the Press: How the News Fails the Public on Health and Science By Natalie Ritchie

Sexual Assault on the Rise: Elite Universitiesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; Dirty Little Secret By Tara Bansal

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THE POLITICS OF HEALTH Photo by Adrian Clark.

THE POLITICS OF HEALTH

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INSTITUTIONALIZING HEALTH DIPLOMACY

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Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton delivers a speech on HIV/AIDS at the National Institutes of Health in 2011. 22 DUKE POLITICAL REVIEW SPRING 2015

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In an international political system plagued by civil wars and terrorist threats, medical issues are seldom high priorities. Global health must play a larger role in U.S. foreign policy.

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he month is December, the year 2013. A young boy from Guinea has rapidly fallen ill and passed away. Within a week, three members of the boy’s family have died of the same disease, an unidentified hemorrhagic fever. In the span of a few months, the number of diagnoses has increased by over 100. It is official—Guinea has seen an outbreak of Ebola, and the WHO correctly suspects that it has spread to Liberia and Sierra Leone. At this point, the Ebola story is undoubtedly well known, having dominated international headlines for much of the last year. Until the time of the outbreak, it had never reached West Africa, and health workers lacked the training and equipment necessary to prevent or cure it. The virus spread rapidly, reaching Senegal and Nigeria by August 2014. Thousands lost their lives and the afflicted countries struggled to cope with the damages. Despite the efforts of many countries and multilateral organizations, the international community “failed to meet the challenges of this disease,” according to World Bank President Jim Yong Kim. By the end of October, four cases had been diagnosed in the United States. That month, President Obama committed to the deployment of 2,800 American troops to join the fight against the disease in West Africa. With the help of USAID and other U.S. agencies, the number of Ebola cases declined by 80 percent, prompting the removal of those troops in February of this year. Many other countries hesitated to act, fearing the infection of their own people. Suddenly, a virus that was once regarded as being confined to the borders of West Africa had become a global crisis. The rapid spread of Ebola is a relevant and timely example of the growing importance of global health as a priority on the United States’ foreign policy agenda.

THE VALUE OF HEALTH DIPLOMACY The Ebola crisis brought international attention to public health, an issue commonly disregarded in the absence of an emergency. However, in an increasingly interdependent world, it is in the longterm interest of the United States to support efforts that promote healthy, safe, and prosperous populations in partner countries. Investment in global health represents an intersection of humanitarianism and national interest. Health issues are vital in supporting the core functions of foreign policy, such as achieving economic growth, fostering development, and supporting human rights. Researchers and policymakers have adopted the phrase “global health diplomacy” in recent years to refer to this growing intersection of health, diplomacy, and foreign policy. A recent report by the Council on Foreign Relations outlined three key justifications for this new emphasis on health as a foreign policy concern: protecting the health of the American people, strengthening the global system, and humanitarian concerns. Modern forms of communication and transportation have given rise to an era of globalization and increasing interconnectedness. As a result of growing immigration, tourism, and global movements of goods and services, borders are now more porous than ever. The rapid spread of viruses such as Ebola and HIV highlight the dangers that accompany the increasing connections between countries, as diseases do not respect national boundaries. According to a 2014 report by the Kaiser Family Foundation, roughly one to three new human infectious diseases have been identified each year with even more re-emerging in new populations. This has elicited response SPRING 2015

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from governments and multilateral institutions, which perceive these diseases as threats to national security and foreign policy interests. In accordance with the primary goal of protecting the American people from deadly diseases, the U.S. government has an obligation to join the efforts to tackle global health challenges. Improving the health of citizens in foreign countries saves lives and protects the health of the American people while strengthening the entire global system. Studies have shown that good health correlates strongly with many social and political factors including economic growth and productivity, trust in local government, and level of crime. On the other hand, poor health status has been found to exacerbate political instability and make countries more vulnerable to violence and war. Thus, investment in health contributes to social and economic progress and security. According to a 2012 report from the WHO, improvements in health may ac-

gotiations can pave the way to cooperation in other critical foreign policy areas. The third argument for engaging in global health diplomacy is humanitarian. In a 2013 poll administered by the Kaiser Family Foundation, nearly half of Americans interviewed said that the most important reason for the U.S. to fund health improvements in developing countries is “because it’s the right thing to do.” The humanitarian argument emphasizes the link between health and human rights, as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights acknowledges that all humans are entitled to “a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and his family.” Given such a strong normative argument, the United States has a unique opportunity to serve as a leader in cooperative international engagement and human rights protection by emphasizing health in its foreign policy agenda.

U.S. ENGAGEMENT IN GLOBAL HEALTH

count for more than ten percent of economic growth in low and middle-income countries. Moreover, health can be used as a tool for diplomacy in other areas. Global health is interdisciplinary, with important links to trade, intellectual property rights, education, and environmental issues, all relevant topics in their own right on an international level. As a report released by the Carter administration in 1978 stated, U.S. support for international health “can be a basis for establishing dialogue and bridging diplomatic barriers.” Similarly, former Secretary of Health and Human Services Tommy Thompson, in a 2005 editorial, argued that, “America’s best chance of winning the war on terror is by enhancing our medical and humanitarian assistance to vulnerable countries.” Although foreign leaders may disagree with U.S. trade policies, most will stand behind the effort to eradicate HIV/AIDS or improve maternal and child health. Global health ne-

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To determine how the United States might confront global health issues in the future, it is important to understand how it has done so in the past. Health in American foreign policy first emerged in 1961, when President Kennedy argued that cooperation with other countries on health assistance would allow the U.S. to further its foreign policy interests. However, its use of global health as a tool of diplomacy is a recent phenomenon, predominantly sparked by the outbreak of HIV/ AIDS and SARS, which were clear threats to national security. In the past decade, global health diplomacy has gained prominence in academic literature and policy reports. As indicated in a WHO column on health and foreign policy, health challenges are key components of national security strategies, appear regularly in the meetings of leading world powers, and affect bilateral and multilateral relationships between developed and developing countries. The U.S. government has demonstrated its commitment to global health diplomacy on multiple fronts. Global health is the largest component of U.S. foreign assistance, with Congress having appropriated more than $50 billion over the past seven years to global health programs and research. The U.S. is the world’s leading contributor to global health programs and is active in promoting health issues on an international scale, as indicated by its contribution to the World Health Assembly, G-8 and OECD summits, GAVI (the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunizations) and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria. The U.S. has also shown its commitment to global health through bilateral interactions, as evidenced by USAID staff advocating the inclusion of family planning services in Ghana’s national health insurance program

/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// and the addition of health as a pillar in the annual U.S.-China People-to-People Exchange (CPE). The growing importance of global health diplomacy can also be seen in the expansion of U.S. agencies and initiatives dedicated to global health causes such as USAID, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the National Institute of Health (NIH), the President’s Plan for Emergency AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), as well as the creation of an entire office at the State Department – the Secretary’s Office of Global Health Diplomacy (S/GHD). Secretary Hillary Clinton established S/GHD in 2013 in an effort to elevate the role of diplomacy in U.S. global health efforts. Its mission is to work with Ambassadors and Foreign Service Officers to incorporate health objectives in their efforts at their posts and to encourage partner governments to make health a priority in their actions (either by committing resources to the health of their own people or increasing health support to other countries). S/GHD is the successor to the Global Health Initiative (GHI), established by the Obama Administration in 2009 to strive for an AIDS-free generation, to end preventable child and maternal deaths, and to enhance global health security by protecting communities from infectious disease. The main task of the Office of Global Health Diplomacy is to work towards the achievement of these goals by promoting the role of Ambassadors and diplomats in the field.

CHALLENGES FOR THE FUTURE

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programs include the State Department (primarily through PEPFAR), USAID, the Department of Health and Human Services, CDC, FDA, NIH, the Department of Defense, and the Peace Corps. Many of the roles and responsibilities of these offices overlap, often causing a scramble for resources and turf and making it difficult for each agency to clearly define its role in the field of international health aid. Moreover, as the health budget has plateaued, competition for scarce dollars has intensified. In 2012, the administration announced the discontinuation of GHI. The Initiative ended due to unclear leadership, political infighting, and the lack of a clear mandate. An article from the Center for Global Development examining the fall of GHI emphasizes the office’s inability to integrate, “especially with separate earmarked funding streams and parallel, competing institutions with the U.S. government that had different strategies and relationships with recipient country governments.” The Office of Global Health Diplomacy, established just a year later, hopes to “champion the priorities and politics of the GHI in the diplomatic arena.” It is difficult to predict whether S/GHD will fall victim to the same obstacles. There is also the question of country transitions and “graduation” from U.S. assistance. According to a Kaiser Family Foundation report, in the past decade alone more than 30 countries have transitioned from low to middle income status. As previously poor countries achieve rising incomes and greater resource capacities, they have an increasing desire to be seen as equal partners and not simply aid recipients. For example, South Korea, once a major target for U.S. foreign assistance, recently joined the OECD Development Assistance Committee as a donor country. Many global health donors, including the U.S., face the challenge of determining the appropriate time to transfer technical and financial oversight of health programs to partner nations. Last but not least, global health diplomacy is limited by the fact that health competes poorly with other priorities in the absence of a crisis. With civil wars raging and ongoing terrorist threats, issues like tuberculosis and maternal mortality are seldom high on an Ambassador’s list of priorities. Because a majority of health engagement currently lies in the hands of the State Department, there is pressure on the Secretary of State to support these efforts. While Secretaries Kerry and Clinton were extremely enthusiastic about health engagement, this may not hold true for the next Secretary of State. Perhaps as the link between global health and foreign policy continues to strengthen, more and more U.S. diplomats and foreign governments will recognize that every country has a personal stake in the health of populations around the world.

THE UNITED STATES HAS A UNIQUE OPPORTUNITY TO SERVE AS A LEADER IN COOPERATIVE INTERNATIONAL ENGAGEMENT AND HUMAN RIGHTS PROTECTION.

Despite recent progress, investment in global health has plateaued. As indicated in a chart from the Kaiser Family Foundation, follow//////////////////////////////// ing a decade of extraordinary growth, U.S. health funding has leveled off in the wake of the economic crisis. Moreover, the budget for health is fixed, as funds that are allocated by Congress are earmarked for specific purposes – of the approximately $9 billion annual health budget, roughly $6.7 billion is provided for PEPFAR and thus cannot be spent on anything other than HIV/AIDS relief. This fact alone causes agencies and programs to compete for limited funding for current priorities. Offices like S/GHD do not have the freedom to allocate more resources toward other critical health-related issues such as non-communicable diseases, hygiene and sanitation, and nutrition. A critical examination of the rise and fall of the Global Health Initiative (GHI) sheds light on some of the other challenges for global health diplomacy. Created by President Obama in 2009 as an effort to launch a “new, comprehensive global health strategy” for the U.S. government, GHI was led by the heads of USAID, CDC, and the Office of the Global AIDS Coordinator. However, because health is an extremely complex issue, a wide variety of governmental players must work together to influence policy and direct programs. Funding is primarily appropriated to the State Department and USAID, while the U.S. agencies that implement global health

Nicole Savage is a Trinity senior majoring in Public Policy and Global Health. SPRING 2015

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March Against Monsanto, Vancouver. Photo by Rosalee Yagihara.

THE PRESS //////////////////////////////// HOW THE NEWS FAILS THE PUBLIC ON HEALTH AND SCIENCE

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As the information gap between scientists and the public widens, the media should emerge as a mediator, clarifying any miscommunications and misunderstandings. Instead, it actively perpetuates them in order to boost ratings and fill a 24/7 news cycle.

January Pew survey made one thing abundantly clear – American scientists and American adults do not see eye to eye. For instance, while 98 percent of polled scientists from the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) are sure that humans have evolved over time, only 65 percent of U.S. adults agree. Eighty-seven percent of scientists believe climate change is due to human activity, compared with only half of the public. These gaping disparities are staggering. They allow for two conclusions: either scientists are incorrect and do not deserve the broad deference and authority afforded their profession, or Americans are grossly misinformed about accepted truths within the scientific community. As in most cases, the answer lies somewhere in the middle. Scientists are not infallible—the world is not flat nor are leeches the best cure for pneumonia—but what the public may consider measured skepticism often descends into irresponsible denial of clear, empirical evidence. This knowledge gap stems in part from the scientific community’s inability to communicate in words that the public can understand. Theoretically, the media should work as a translator, reporting on scientific developments in language that the public can easily digest and intervening to clarify any misunderstandings that arise from the use of technical language or complex findings. In reality, however, the media not only fails to inform its readers and viewers properly and accurately, but actually further distorts the truth. Although this undoubtedly occurs regardless of the subject matter, sensationalizing or misrepresenting stories on health and science has particularly detrimental consequences.

EXAGGERATING THE THREAT OF EBOLA The role of the media in perpetuating the vast disparities between scientists and the public became especially evident during health crises in the last year. News organizations repeatedly failed to be responsible go-betweens, preferring instead to exacerbate the problem by disregarding experts’ opinions and fueling irrational public panic. The coverage of the Ebola epidemic comes to mind as a striking example of inflated and inflammatory reporting. In an article that begins “We have to get a grip,” political economist and author Robert Reich discusses parents in Mississippi who pulled their children out of school because the principal had travelled to Zambia. Ignoring the fact that Zambia is 5000 miles away from the Ebola outbreak—American ignorance of African geography warrants an entirely separate article—this example indicates a trend of panic and irrationality that was only spurred on by the media’s tendency to exaggerate and re-print misinformation. Headlines at the time read “CDC Chief: Intensity of Ebola Spread Unseen Since AIDS” and “New Jersey Customs Agent: We’re Not Prepared for Ebola.” CNN hosted one guest, Dr. Robin Cook, who supposedly “wrote the book on Ebola.” As it turns out, Cook is actually an eye doctor, and the book was a work of fiction, a mystery

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novel that used an Ebola pandemic as a plot device. Not only did he declare Ebola “probably the scariest thing we can deal with,” but he also went on to suggest that it could “change and suddenly become aerosol,” spreading through the air. His claims were entirely unsubstantiated, and he was in no way qualified to offer any opinions in the first place, but that was unimportant compared to the value of his provocative claims to CNN. From a business standpoint, this exaggerated analysis was a brilliant strategy. News organizations must produce compelling 24/7 coverage in order to keep viewership—and their profits—high. Ebola, an extremely dangerous, highly contagious foreign disease, provided the perfect subject for such overblown reporting. Media outlets reported on the risks of an Ebola outbreak, hyped the ensuing national alarm, covered the inevitable conflicts such as quarantines and travel bans, and eventually got to step back and describe the sensational and unwarranted hysteria. It is an incredibly smart tactic to ensure viewership—a rotating cycle of stories guaranteed to generate buzz —but at what cost? Endless talk of the “imminent threat” of Ebola on U.S. soil shut out discussion of more pressing and legitimate health concerns affecting the American population. The media reliably fails to discuss the real killers: cardiovascular diseases, respiratory infections, and

/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// even diarrheal illnesses. These maladies are not inherently exciting or appealing and, perhaps understandably, lose out to Ebola in a media contest. It is more difficult for media outlets to justify the excessive coverage of a potential outbreak in the U.S. compared to the minimal attention Ebola received while contained in Western Africa. In their sensational reporting on the potential risk to Americans, news organizations ignored the rest of the story—the nearly 24,000 cases and 9,792 deaths to the virus. The U.S. saw only ten cases by comparison. With such devoted coverage of the potential outbreak in the U.S., Americans were allowed to forget about the actual suffering occurring in Sierra Leone, Guinea, and Liberia. The media veered its focus not only away from more dangerous diseases, but also from non-American crises. As the attention shifted, so did the aid and public support.

GIVING VOICE TO ANTI-VAXXERS More recently, vaccinations have taken center stage in the wake of the so-called Disneyland measles outbreak. At least 156 cases have been documented so far, 130 of which were confirmed in California. While laws in all 50 states requires children to be vaccinated before entering school, parents in California and nineteen other states can get exemptions for their children based on philosophical or religious conflicts. Of the 130 measles patients in California, 55 were completely unvaccinated. The “anti-vaxxer” movement began in 1998 after The Lancet published a now-retracted article linking the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine to autism. The theory was never taken seriously by the majority of the medical community and has since been thoroughly debunked. Despite this repeated and widespread denunciation by medical authorities, the mythical link between vaccines and autism not only lives on, but is also frequently confirmed by leading media outlets. Many blame the media for the latest measles outbreak. The Columbia Journalism Review’s Curtis Brainard writes, “There is an evidence that a fear of a link between vaccines and autism, stoked by press coverage, caused some parents to either delay vaccinations for their children or deny them altogether.” Brainard documents the media coverage of the debate, highlighting instances in which various news organizations perpetuated the theory even after it had been discredited. According to Brainard and others, the media continues to give significant attention to “anti-vaxxers” in a well-intentioned, if misguided, attempt to “show both sides of the story.” A more cynical analyst might also point out that treating it as a debate drives up readership and click counts, especially since the conversation has taken on a political tenor. This is problematic for the same reason Bill Nye the Science Guy should never have debated Ken Ham over evolution—when the science is clear, dissenting voices cannot be given an equal platform. This is especially true when those voices spread myths with potentially fatal effects. Brainard writes, “The consequences of this coverage go beyond squandering journalistic coverage on a bogus story.” The Washington Post has found that covering the controversy in any capacity, even when the article does not favor anti-vaxxers, decreases trust in doctors and vaccines. In the wake of yet another

THE POLITICS OF HEALTH

outbreak of a vaccine-preventable illness, the consequences of such articles become increasingly clear.

CREATING A TWO-SIDED GMO DEBATE The widest disparity in the Pew Forum study was on the topic of genetically modified food. While 88 percent of scientists say it is safe, only 37 percent of U.S. adults believe the same, a startling 51 percent gap. This is less an issue of media exaggeration or sensationalism— although that is certainly a key component—and more a problem of scientific literacy. In other words, the media cannot accurately report on study results it does not understand. All too often articles feature studies declaring a new way to lose weight or linking a particular behavior to cancer without any real analysis or critique of the findings. Not only do the articles rarely state where the research funding came from—for instance, Kellogg’s has funded several re-

News organizations repeatedly failed to be responsible go-betweens, preferring instead to exacerbate the problem by disregarding experts’ opinions and fueling irrational public panic ports on the importance of eating breakfast—but they also take the conclusion at face value without fully explaining the studies’ limitations, scope, and biases. In addition to suffering from scientific illiteracy, news organizations consistently revert to binary reporting. The vaccination debate is a clear example—the media loves creating the illusion of two clear sides whose battles make for interesting news. Contrary to what the news portrays, however, the GMO debate is neither simple nor two-sided. Even the Pew Forum poll fails to capture the issue’s nuance. A question on GMOs should not yield a definitive yes-no answer. Instead, any discussion of GMOs must take into account the spectrum of what that label can entail—from Mendel’s hybrid pea plants to glow-in-the-dark pigs—and the range of motivations for altering the food in the first place. GMOs can be herbicide-laced, monoculture Monsanto cash crops or they can be like golden rice, which was created for Vitamin A-deficient populations. But they cannot be purely good or bad, and they cannot be labeled “Democrat” or “Republican.” Reducing the issue to two distinct, conveniently partisan sides feeds into the media’s goal of creating newsworthy controversy. At the same time, it stifles any real conversation about food safety. Their coverage leaves people to make their decisions based on incomplete understandings of the debate. For a profession whose mission is ostensibly to increase public awareness and coverage of the “truth,” this widespread misinformation reflects a gross and utter failure. Natalie Ritchie is a junior from Knoxville, TN majoring in Public Policy with Global Health and Arabic Literature minors. She is the managing editor of DPR’s 60 Seconds. SPRING 2015

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Students protest the treatment of sexual assault on THE POLITICS OF HEALTH campus at Columbia University. Photo by Erin Vaughn, Columbia University Class of 2018.

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SEXUAL ASSAULT ON THE RISE

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ELITE UNIVERSITIESâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; DIRTY LITTLE SECRET While the media attention is new, sexual assault on college campuses is not. Some of the top universities in the world are repeatedly failing their students when it comes to handling sexual assault. Students are fighting back.

BY TARA BANSAL

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NATIONAL NARRATIVES “That image should haunt all of us.” This was Hilary Clinton’s response to the harrowing photo of Emma Sulkowicz, junior at Columbia University, standing beside her mattress on the cover of New York Magazine. The mattress in question has gained as much celebrity as she has— Emma has taken to carrying it to class with her. Part performance art and part activism, “Carry This Weight” is a visual and physical manifestation of the emotional trauma that sexual assault, and the subsequent dismissal of such an assault, has on its victim. By carrying the mattress she claims to have been raped on her freshman year, Emma is protesting the fact that her rapist still attends her university despite three unique accusations of sexual assault brought against him. Emma’s story inspired campus-wide, and eventually nation-wide, protests while students, parents, and alumni wrote their universities in overwhelming numbers and called for an end to the mishandling of sexual assault cases. Emma’s story was followed by an upsurge of similarly horrifying stories- ranging from the UVA gang rape expose printed in Rolling Stone Magazine to a dizzying story of predatory rape at Stanford chronicled by the New York Times. Simultaneously, the Department of Education made national waves this past year as they moved forward on their investigation of 55 universities including Harvard, Dartmouth, and UC Berkley, for mishandling sexual assault cases. Much of the media has been drawn due to the shockingly elite nature of the universities at which rape is prevalent in such large numbers. Despite the attention campus sexual assault has received this past year, recent conversation still does not do justice to the vast number of women that are victims each year across college campuses. Emma is a symbol for nearly one in five collegiate women that will be sexual assaulted before they graduate. Studies have indicated that this number increases at private universities. While the media coverage regarding sexual assault is recent, the issue itself is not. Sexual misconduct has been widespread across campuses for decades and has seen an increase in recent years. A main contributor is the proliferation of alcohol and drug use on college campuses that remains insufficiently monitored by universities. This is coupled with greater numbers of mixed-gender residence halls and a low focus on teaching students about consent and sexual misconduct upon entrance. As sexual assault has increased, the issue has remained low profile for two main reasons. Firstly, women only report their sexual assaults roughly 20% of the time according to the U.S. Department of Justice. This can often be due to shock or shame of the event, compounded by fear of judgment. Of course there are also hundreds of cases such as Emma’s in which women are not believed because they waited to report the assault or lack sufficient hard evidence which can be nearly impossible to gain unless the victim received a sexual assault examination right away. Victim-blaming is

also used to silence women by holding them to absurd cultural constructs; the claim that a woman must have consented for simply allowing herself in that situation, that she should have dressed more conservatively or ensured she was less inebriated. These beliefs only serve to remove male accountability and responsibility and restrict women from partaking in the same experiences as their male counterparts. Claiming that the solution is for women to no longer fraternize with those of the opposite sex in potentially vulnerable settings is a miscalculation of human nature across both genders. The second reason the magnitude of this issue has remained discreet is because far too often, the punishment for a convicted sexual assault is incredibly lenient. A study of 32 universities, both public and private, by the Huffington Post found that only 30% of sexual assaults resulted in expulsion, 47% in suspension, and the rest in probations, reprimands, community service, counseling or other. Compare this with how the law treats rape that does not occur on a college campuses—in North Carolina a convicted rapist is sentenced on average to 10 years in jail for those 18 and older.

THE INTERNAL POLITICS THAT GOVERN Most universities- particularly the more elite- are a reflection of both their present brand and- perhaps more importantly- their past reputation. The dangerous aspect of this brand conception is that universities are incentivized to quiet negative press to maintain overall status. This problem is compounded within elite universities where reputation is often considered more integral to the university’s identity, and the high-stake nature of academia creates a climate of intense posturing. Moreover, private institutions, above public ones, have a greater ability to choose which information is publicized, heightening the bar for criticism. When a university such as Columbia is broadcasted across the world for their mishandling of sexual assault cases, this media eclipses their academic reputation and centuries-old history of excellence. Other universities, for fear of the same story, conduct hushed hearings, often prolonged for months and then hastily done. Files are kept sealed, names are omitted, students are dealt with quietly, and often times, true justice is not found- the ugly justice of expulsions and noisy campus conversation that makes known that this is an issue that deserves attention. The Penn State Scandal in 2011 is a key example of this hushing mentality. Jerry Sandusky, an assistant coach of the acclaimed football program, was charged and convicted for several counts of sexual abuse of children. But throughout the investigation, it was found that multiple high-level administrators at Penn State knew about the assault but had remained quiet in an attempt to keep the football program, and Penn State as a whole, in good standing. Three officials were charged with perjury, including the President of the university who later resigned. This attitude permeates from administration to the student body

FEDERAL PRESSURE AND INCREASED MEDIA ATTENTION ARE SHIFTING THE WAY THAT UNIVERSITIES HANDLE SEXUAL ASSAULT

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A rally in Toronto against sexual assaults on college campuses. Photo by Anton Bielousov.

and many victims are not encouraged to come forward with reports of their assault. Many schools have yet to create safe channels through which these reports can be made and handled swiftly. But a by-product of the intense closed-door nature of dealing with these abuses is that even when a student is brought to administration about a sexual assault, the university lacks the ability to conduct legitimate and fair hearings. Emma Sulkowicz has spoken openly about the ways in which the Columbia University hearings regarding her rape case were erred- postponement of her hearing for over six months and the lack of a true appeal process among them. Recently, a student filed a lawsuit against Stony Brook University as their method for adjudicating sexual assault cases is forcing the victim and their alleged attacker to cross-examine and then prosecute their own cases. Several students are suing UCSB for discouraging reporting, creating a hostile environment, going over the promised 60-day time frame for adjudication, among other violations. This problem is not unique- it spans far and wide to many universities, some of which are included in the 55 universities under investigation from the Department of Education for potentially being in violation of gender equity law Title IX to investigate and respond appropriately to cases of sexual assault.

EXTERNAL PRESSURE FOR CHANGE The media release regarding this investigation was surprising but has been part of a long running push for greater transparency to the federal government’s enforcement regarding sexual assault. The White House Task Force to Protect Students from Sexual Assault has released a variety of reports on their push for greater training for school officials, creating new models for adjudicative protocols, connecting universities with rape crisis centers and other support networks, and funding research teams from universities to test effectiveness of new enforcement mechanisms. The Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights, in conjunction with the Task Force, is working to increase universities understanding of Title

IX and recently released a website entitled “notalone.gov” to help streamline resources available to victims of sexual assault. Another byproduct of this upsurge in White House activism has been the “It’s On Us” social media campaign featuring President Obama that prompts viewers to pledge to help prevent campus sexual assault. A greater manifestation of tangible sexual assault policy has been the Campus Accountability and Safety Act, bipartisan legislation introduced by Senator Claire McCaskill. It aims to create minimum training standards for staff that address cases, require a uniform disciplinary requirement in coordination with law enforcement, establish campus services for survivors, create transparency requirements, and incentivize universities to better address sexual assault through enforceable penalties to Title IX violations. It is currently pending in the House of Representative and Senate but, if passed, could result in a dramatic shift in how sexual assault is managed at both public and private universities. However, many policymakers believe that federal pressure and increased media attention are shifting the way that universities handle sexual assault. Emily Renda, the UVA campus sexual assault awareness project coordinator, elaborated, “We’re seeing a lot of responses from universities, mostly procedural changes: prevention programming, awareness, transparency in what the universities are doing, increased enforcement. These types of changes are really responsive to student pressure and media attention.” Over the next few months, a mixture of federal and university-level policies are anticipated to address greater regulation in trial procedures as well as more stringent sanctions towards convicted students. Although the problem of campus sexual has been around for far too long, new media coverage and interventions by the government may finally make college that much safer for students on campus. Tara Bansal is a Trinity sophomore from New York double majoring in Public Policy and Global Health with a minor in Economics. Tara is a three-time featured writer for the DPR Print publication. SPRING 2015

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Q&A

Interviews STANDING AT THE INTERSECTION OF DATA AND JOURNALISM

AN INTERVIEW WITH

Nate Silver In November, FiveThirtyEight founder and editor-in-chief Nate Silver came to Duke’s campus for the 22nd John Fisher Zeidman Memorial Colloquium on Politics and the Press. Prior to the colloquium, Silver sat down with DPR’s Jacob Zionce to talk about new media, FiveThirtyEight’s relaunch and move to ESPN, and the 2014 midterm elections. Questions

By Jacob Zionce DPR: You came from an untraditional background for someone who’s doing journalism, between your history in online poker and baseball analysis. Could you talk about how you think new journalism works as an emerging field? FiveThirtyEight and other organizations are so different from one another – do you think there’s a secret sauce that makes them all work? Or is there really a different blend for different groups? Silver: The people we’re trying to hire [at FiveThirtyEight]

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were edited for brevity.

might have a different background than so-called ‘traditional journalism’, in the sense that we are competing with people that have good math and science skills, ideally, and they have lucrative opportunities in technology, space, the private sector, finance, science, and whatever else. With that said, the majority of our staff did come from places like The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, and journalists are good at knowing where the news is, knowing where the story is, and those things are real important, too. We do not want to write a site to please ourselves.

Q&A Journalism by definition is kind of a mass-market product, and it’s for the audience, it is not for [the writer], and so we hope to blend both those things. DPR: Do you think there have been any substantive changes in that blend, either in terms of the content, the mix of the content, the readership, or the style of the writing since you have moved from The New York Times to ESPN? Silver: The main substantive thing is that we [have grown] and are trying to cover a lot more than just politics. For the first five months of the site…only about 20% of our stories and our traffic came from politics. That changed a bit with the election, obviously. But that’s good… because the politics traffic is the same as it was at The New York Times. So now we get five times, seven times, depending on the month, more people reading us than we did before because we are covering a broader range of topics. DPR: Regarding the management of FiveThirtyEight and the move to ESPN, I was wondering if it has changed your chain of command, or how you have to operate. Do you feel like you have more freedom or less freedom to write different types of stories, or that the organization limits you in some way? Silver: As compared to The New York Times, I think we have more freedom [at ESPN]. In part because we were kind of weirdly compartmentalized at The Times, and at ESPN we benefit from that relationship but set our own editorial standards. We are responsible for what we choose to cover. Also, ESPN and the Disney Corporation… believe in looking toward the long-term. So we are not desperate to hit x and y revenue goal, or traffic goal, or whatever else. They told us go and build something high quality, which is challenging enough. We hired a lot of people who were pretty young and doing something new... We’ve been publishing for eight months and in the first two or three months we spent a lot of time just putting out fires. But yes, certainly I’m doing more management now and that uses a really different part of your brain and skillset than when you’re writing—and certainly a different part than when you’re crunching some data. Management is more about… presence and being available. If you’re managing people, the buck gets passed to you instead of you being able to pass it yourself, and

Photo by JD Lasica.

that requires some presence, so I go in to the office almost every day. But now and then if I really have to grind on something and get in my own headspace, [I work from home], which is sometimes something that you don’t want to do [as a manager]. DPR: You mentioned web traffic. There’s been some negative press for the new FiveThirtyEight from a USA Today article, which got play from The Huffington Post, and Politico’s Dylan Byers. Do you think the new FiveThirtyEight’s first year has been successful, in terms of reaching ESPN’s goals or your own? Silver: We’re really happy. Like I said, we’re getting five or six times more traffic than we got at The New York Times, which is proportional to the scale-up in the amount of journalists that we have hired and stories that we are publishing. Certainly early in the life of any website there is a lot to legitimately criticize. I think there’s also a category of things where people might have their personal hobbyhorses. When you become an incumbent, a big name … people can and should have higher expectations, but there is also a category of people who are just going to take shots at you because they see you as a competitor. Like those stories in USA Today, it was based on one… unnamed source. [USA Today] could have actually interviewed us and we could have given [them] a lot of data… Or [they could have] talked to my boss, SPRING 2015

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Q&A who’s boss runs ESPN. But people aren’t interested in doing a story that would meet a high editorial standard. DPR: So from a polling perspective, what do you think are the takeaways from midterm elections? Do you think we just need more of a focus on state fundamentals? Silver: If we were redesigning the model…we [would] have dozens of cycles of input, but this would marginally increase the weight you would put on state fundamentals and increase the correlation between different states. We already have that [correlation] as fairly high, maybe it’s not high enough. I think of the competitive Senate races, only [in] New Hampshire, [Senator Jeanne] Shaheen did half a point better than her polls. Everywhere else it was right on, or had a Republican outperformance. We have known that was going to be true, and we said ‘hey Democrats, there could be a polling error but it might not work in your favor’. Pollsters tend to herd toward certain results and suppress other results. I think that is really important, especially because a site like FiveThirtyEight can potentially make that tendency

Courtesy of Bill Adair.

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worse. Now you can go to FiveThirtyEight or Real Clear Politics or whatever else and say ‘boy, here is what the average is, these guys usually do pretty well, so I’m going to publish [and] regurgitate that average. But the whole idea of the wisdom of the crowd is that you are gathering independent information. The crowd is not wise when it starts to think as a crowd, that is a different type of problem. And when polling is behaving more that way, then it could become more like the patterns you see in the stock market, where it’s partly fundamentals-based, the price of a stock, and also partly based on sentiment, and conventional wisdom, and when it fails it often fails catastrophically. DPR: So do you think that you and FiveThirtyEight have a responsibility, to stop all these pollsters from putting their thumbs on the scale? Do you feel like by bringing them to the light and holding their feet to the fire you give them the negative press to change their actions? Silver: One reason we’ve always looked at the last three weeks of polls and calibrated our pollster ratings is because pollsters often do funny things in the very last poll. And they used to protest about that, but it’s like, ‘well, sorry, this was in the public record, it affected the expectations and the discourse about the election. It affected the press coverage, it affected the models.’ But we’ve moved further away from just [judging]… pollsters based on past results because you can kind of cheat by that standard, by saying ‘let’s look at the things that are methodologically correlated in the long run with good polling practice’. We think about that a lot, and conducted a survey of pollsters about many things, [including] where they thought the industry was and how they felt about FiveThirtyEight. And, unsurprisingly, how they feel about us is very correlated with how we rate them. But I think there is some responsibility to, like I say, go beyond the simple story of ‘oh, just take the polling average and it’s a right’. It’s not a bad approximation, but you’ve seen in this last election, and I’d argue 2012 too, that it is an approximation, and if you’re covering this comprehensively then you need a bit more subtlety in how you describe the polls.

Q&A

REFOCUSING AMERICAN GRAND STRATEGY IN CHALLENGING TIMES

AN INTERVIEW WITH

Stephen Hadley In December, the American Grand Strategy Program hosted Stephen Hadley, former National Security Advisor to President George W. Bush, through the Ambassador Dave and Kay Phillips Family International Lecture Series. A Yale Law graduate and former Navy officer, Hadley served as National Security Advisor from 2005 to 2009, some of the most

By Megan Steinkirchner and Zach Gorwitz When asked what makes a person effective at this particular position, Hadley says it is important for the National Security Advisor to be “self-limiting” in their power and “stay out of the chain of command.” After succeeding Condoleezza Rice, he soon realized that in his position, “The President is your only real boss” and that his essential role was to act as a trusted and well-tempered counselor to the President. When discussing the United States’ grand strategy and its evolution across time and administrations, Hadley is adamant that the world now operates in a different framework than it did even five years ago. In 2014 alone, global threats have shifted and traditional American values that the world used to embrace are endangered. He posits that there are currently two ideologies competing with American principles — the Islamic State/ Islamic extremism and the conversation going on between President Vladimir Putin of Russia and President Xi Jinping of China. Russia and China believe the United States does not respect the legitimacy of their governing styles and consequently works to undermine their countries’ successes. Hadley believes that this might turn from conversations of complaint to ones of confrontation, where these countries could begin to show resistance to the US at any place we are perceived to threaten their borders. The post-Cold War ideology of United States is a little “beat up” at this point in history and people around the world are more

difficult years of the Bush Presidency.

susceptible to belief systems promoted by nations such as Russia and China that boast stability amidst global insecurity. At the end of the day, Hadley says, people “will accept authoritarianism in place of chaos” and are willing to live under the ideals of a new set of leaders in this world. Hadley described four realities that structure our new global climate—we must realize that President Putin is here to stay, China is now being led by a “self-confident” leader that wants the rest of the world to recognize China’s power, the Islamic State has a strong and expansive hold over territory in the Middle East, and if the United States is to reach a nuclear deal with Iran, it will not be the deal for which we originally asked. A comprehensive challenge that is unique to US grand strategy is that when you are the United States, “you don’t have the alternative to choose. You’ve got to do it all.” Given these circumstances, Hadley says that everyone in Washington, DC needs to be thinking more about strategy than policy. When pressed on what exactly strategy is and how it differs from policy, he responds that it is “a process…of putting one’s mind in a place where it can effectively solve problems.” Hadley emphasized that we need to spend more time considering the context of the crises we are dealing with, what our real objectives are, and what assumptions we are making about achieving those objectives. SPRING 2015

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Q&A When asked what he believes to be the legacy of the Bush Administration, most of the instances Hadley cited took place during Bush’s second term, which gives him hope for the last two years of Obama’s presidency despite his “lame duck” status. After 9/11, the intelligence community forecasted “a wave of mass casualties” to hit the United States and significantly damage the safety and well being of our citizens. Hadley considers the fact that this “wave” never really occurred to be one of the great achievements of the Bush Administration. 9/11 did not spiral the country out of our control and into the hands of terrorists. Notably, PEPFAR and President Bush’s partnership-based development strategies in Africa were also mentioned as lasting achievements. And finally, Hadley believes that the Bush Administration took significant measures to mitigate the damaging economic downturn of 2008 to keep it from completely devastating the United States and the global economy. Hadley credits this to the professional attitude that President Bush fostered among his staff and the fact that there was a seasoned administration to deal with the crisis. He describes President Bush as “a terrific judge of people” and “the right President for after 9/11.” One of Hadley’s frustrations was that the administration “could never get a setting where [the public] could see him like we could.” He portrayed President Bush as an active man filled with “vitality and humor” and wished there had been a way for that personality to transcend to the American public. A final reflection from this former National Security Advisor concerned the future of policy making in America and how we can improve our intelligence forces. Hadley asserts that we need to “look at the counterfactuals” of the events we deal with in national security and foreign policy. Presidents need someone in the administration to ask the tough “what if ” questions that force them to “not look outside the box, but look as if there’s no box at all.”

aggressive actions. There are things that make a lot of sense in building a prosperous Europe. President Putin and Russia will not like some things [that may occur]. Remember that Russia is simultaneously cooperating with us on a number of issues like Iraq—not as an act of charity toward the US, but because it is in Russia’s own interest to get those problems handled. I think it is our common interest that allows us to stand up for our principles in the instances where they are being threatened by Russian action.

DPR: In dealing with Russia, and specifically in terms of Ukraine, you wrote in The Washington Post that the United States needs to “deny Russia targets of opportunity by eliminating or hardening Europe’s vulnerabilities against Russian exploitation.” How can the US do that while maintaining a working relationship with President Putin?

Hadley: It’s very hard to say. But I think what we can say is that once the situation in Syria turned violent—remember it started out as a very peaceful protest and remained a peaceful protest for over six months—what turned it violent was the response of the Assad regime. Basically every Friday, they would crack down on those protestors leaving the mosque and kill a couple dozen of them. It was Assad’s actions that turned peaceful protests into a brutal civil war. I think it was clear that once that happens—and a number of us said that the longer it goes on, the more people will die, the more sectarian the violence will become—the more it will destabilize neighbors Iraq and Lebanon and the more it will open the door for al-Qaeda. That is exactly what has happened. The concern is that, while I support what the President has done, my regret is it might have been an easier challenge for us if we had started it a couple years ago rather than starting now. But the President has now changed the policy of the country and is engaged to try to deal with that problem and I’ve tried to be active in my support of him.

Hadley: I think we can do it in a pretty sensible way because the things we need to do make sense in their own right. There’s an ongoing negotiation for transatlantic trade and investment partnership between the US and Europe. That’s a very good thing and a very strategic thing—it will knit the US and Europe together in a prosperous economic zone. There’s been talk of policies trying to reduce Europe’s dependence on Russian oil and gas. That’s a very important thing to reduce President Putin’s leverage over the long term. We obviously have to take some steps that Russia is not going to like—I think we need to put some troops in the Baltic States and Romania to make it clear that if Russia tries what it tried in Ukraine in those areas, there’s a risk of confrontation with American and NATO troops. Hopefully that will deter them from these

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DPR: In light of the falling global oil prices, Russia’s economy is growing at an anemic rate. Can it afford to continue to alienate world powers like the United States if it wants to remain a geopolitical powerhouse? Hadley: It’s a challenge. A lot of the economic problems Russia faces are not just as a response to the sanctions—the drop in the price of oil has to do a lot with shale oil and shale gas coming online and bringing new resources to market. That’s a real problem for Russia. Oil is now down to $69 a barrel; their budget is based on an annual inflow based on $80 or $90 a barrel. Their stock market has been punished by free market forces, in response to the actions they have taken. I think the message for President Putin is that his own actions are hurting his country and hurting the economy of his country. Hopefully that will convince him there is an alternative way rather than punishing Ukraine. Our goal ought to be a Ukraine which is able, as its people seem to want, to move West, but to do so in a way that respects the traditional economic ties between Ukraine and Russia. And it shouldn’t be beyond the mind of intelligent men and women to come up with a solution. DPR: You’ve been vocal about the fact that the United States should have done more to intervene in Syria. Do you think boots on the ground in Syria or keeping a larger military presence in Iraq would have prevented the rise of the Islamic State?

DPR: We talk a lot about American Grand Strategy here at

Q&A Duke. As someone who has studied it, lived it, and implemented it, what does it mean to you and what do you see as the United States’ current grand strategy? Hadley: It’s difficult to have a grand strategy in the kind of environment that we’re in. During the Cold War, we had one big existential threat in the form of the Soviet Union. Blessedly, that is now gone, but it means the environment is very different. We have a whole series of threats, challenges, and opportunities we have to face. At any point in time, the National Security Adviser is dealing with eight or nine issues. In that kind of world of proliferated challenges, it is questionable in some sense whether we can have a single grand strategy. But I think that environment makes all the more important what I call “strategic thinking”—which is to try to get an understanding of the context in which you’re operating, to articulate clearly what is your objective, what are you trying to accomplish—which is the starting point for strategy. The next step is gaining an understanding of the assumptions govern your actions and then [developing] a strategy for using all elements of American influence in order to achieve the objective in the context which we find ourselves. That kind of discipline of strategic thinking, that kind of stepping back—figuring out what is smart to do before acting—I think sometimes gets lost. There are so many crises going on simultaneously. I think there is a tendency for the White House and the government to be very reactive rather than strategic in their approach. Figuring out the context, objectives, and strategies for achieving those objectives is required, and that is what so important about courses and programs like Professor Feaver’s, to do that kind of strategic thinking. DPR: Your successor as Assistant Secretary of Defense, Ashton Carter, is rumored to be President Obama’s nominee for Secretary of Defense. How do you feel that Mr. Carter is prepared to implement that strategic thinking and use all elements of American influence? Hadley: Well, we’ll see. He is of course, going to be given—if the rumors are true—an important element of American power and influence, and it will mean he will have a seat at the table in the Situation Room. At the White House, [he will be able] to participate in the administration and in the President’s effort to develop strategy. Ash is very well positioned to do both of those

things. He’s had a series of positions within in the US Government; while he was at Harvard he was a very well respected academic and thinker. He’s familiar with the policy issues and having been Deputy Secretary of Defense, he is very familiar with the nuts and bolts of structure and acquisition, so I think he would be a very strong choice. DPR: What is the greatest security threat facing our generation and how can we address it? Hadley: Obviously the first responsibility of any government is to keep its people safe. First and foremost, the ongoing challenge

Photo by Duke Photography.

is terrorism. I think the challenge is not just how to stop the terrorists, but really— how can we act in the world in such a way that societies in the Middle East that are now riven by sectarian tension in the wake of the Arab Awakening in 2011— how can we help those societies transform themselves to come up with legitimate, non-corrupt governments that can provide services towards their people and economies that offer jobs and hopes for their young people. Because if we cannot do that, then the risk is that the Middle East will be a source of terrorism for decade after decade. And I think the real challenge for the Duke students here is to engage in this very challenging task of not just how do we confront the terrorists, but what can we do to help put these societies in a place where they do not become a source of terror in the future. That’s a huge challenge—but a huge opportunity. It’s going to require some creative thinking and it’s a good project for our Duke students here. SPRING 2015

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