Spring 2014

HARVARD POLITICAL REVIEW

GROWING UP WITH GREEN DAY

STILL A LONG WALK TO FREEDOM

INTERVIEW: YO-YO MA

VOLUME XLI NO. 1, SPRING 2014 HARVARDPOLITICS.COM

THE POLITICS, PRACTICE, AND BUSINESS OF MUSIC

BEAT OF THE DRUM

THE SHORT LIST Your one-stop source to the most scintillating and dynamic political content.

HARVARDPOLITICS.COM/THE-SHORT-LIST

BEAT OF THE DRUM

8 Growing up with Green Day Emily Wang

12 Tyga Revisited Tori Wenger

10 Anthems of the Brazilian Protests Nicolas Rossenblum

14 A Brave New World David Freed

24 The Schism Gavin Sullivan

FUNNY PAGES

WORLD

3 NSA Agent and Gamer Wins Big Aaron Henricks

30 Ancient Causes of a Modern Conflict Shahrukh Khan

3 Obama’s Year in Review William Keith

32 Lessons from Paradise Inesha Premaratne

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34 Al-Qaeda in Anbar Wright Smith

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27 Still a Long Walk to Freedom Rachael Hanna

16 Rise of the YouTube Star Advik Shreekumar

The Silent Treatment Joy Wang

BOOKS & ARTS

6 A Dream Deferred Andrea Ortiz

36 Politics and Poetics in Fiction Julia Cohn

UNITED STATES

INTERVIEWS

18 The War on Irreligion Zak Lutz

41 Hilda Solis Avika Dua

20 How BuzzFeed is Like a Parisian Café

42 Yo-Yo Ma Priyanka Menon

22 Currency Wars John Acton

ENDPAPER

Joe Choe

44 Opening the Dining Hall Olivia Zhu

38 Judging a Movie by Its Trailer Valentina Perez Email: president@harvardpolitics.com. ISSN 0090-1032. Copyright 2014 Harvard Political Review. All rights reserved. Image credits: Flickr: 3- Piotr Drabik; 8- Alex Bellink; 10- Semilla Luz; 11- Tamy Fernandes; 26- Christus Vincit; 31- Daniel Norwood; 40- Michelle O’Connell; 41- U.S. Department of Labor. Wikimedia: 4- Takver; 22- Victor David Brenner.

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FROM THE PRESIDENT

HARVARD POLITICAL REVIEW

Politics and the Academy

A Nonpartisan Journal of Politics Established 1969—Vol. XLI, No. 1

EDITORIAL BOARD PRESIDENT: Daniel Backman PUBLISHER: Olivia Zhu MANAGING EDITOR: Matt Shuham ASSOCIATE MANAGING EDITOR: Daniel Lynch ASSOCIATE MANAGING EDITOR: Gram Slattery STAFF DIRECTOR: Holly Flynn CAMPUS SENIOR EDITOR: Jenny Choi CAMPUS ASSOCIATE EDITOR: Taonga Leslie COVERS SENIOR EDITOR: Priyanka Menon COVERS ASSOCIATE EDITOR: Zak Lutz U.S. SENIOR EDITOR: Colin Diersing U.S. ASSOCIATE EDITOR: Harry Hild U.S. ASSOCIATE EDITOR: Emily Wang WORLD SENIOR EDITOR: Matthew Disler WORLD ASSOCIATE EDITOR: Rachael Hanna WORLD ASSOCIATE EDITOR: Pooja Podugu B&A SENIOR EDITOR: Rachel Wong B&A ASSOCIATE EDITOR: Samir Durrani B&A ASSOCIATE EDITOR: Nancy Ko INTERVIEWS EDITOR: Gavin Sullivan HUMOR EDITOR: Jay Alver BUSINESS MANAGER: John Acton CIRCULATION MANAGER: Colin Criss DESIGN EDITOR: Ashley Chen MULTIMEDIA EDITOR: Johanna Lee ASSOCIATE MULTIMEDIA EDITOR: Joe Choe ASSOCIATE MULTIMEDIA EDITOR: Avika Dua WEBMASTER: Paul Lisker WEBMASTER: Tom Silver

SENIOR WRITERS Naji Filali, Sam Finegold, Zeenia Framroze, Medha Gargeya, Tom Gaudett, Krister Koskelo, Eli Kozminsky, Joshua Lipson, Frank Mace, Arjun Mody, Max Novendstern, Andrew Seo, Ben Shyrock, Sarah Siskind, Ross Svenson, Simon Thompson, Beatrice Walton

STAFF Daniel Abarca, Francesca Annicchiarico, Humza Bokhari, Nicholas Bonstow, Rebecca Brooks, Olivia Campbell, Jaime Cobham, Samuel Coffin, Cansu Colakoglu, Tim Devine, Jacob Drucker, David Freed, Caleb Galoozis, Harleen Gambhir, Jonah Hahn, Barbara Halla, Richard He, Elsa Kania, Brooke Kantor, Arjun Kapur, Shahrukh Khan, Ian Kohnle, Sandra Korn, Tyrik LaCruise, Andrew Ma, Blake McGhghy, Clara McNulty-Finn, Jacob Meisel, Jacob Morello, Osaremen Okolo, Andrea Ortiz, Meg Panetta, Valentina Perez, Anthony Pietra, Cory Pletan, Bryan Poellot, Ivel Posada, John Pulice, Ellen Robo, William Scopa, Erin Shortell, Wright Smith, Austin Tymins, Alec Villalpando, Celena Wang, Joy Wang, Matthew Weinstein, Carlos Xu, Carolyn Ye, Amy Zhan, Benjamin Zhou

ADVISORY BOARD Jonathan Alter Richard L. Berke Carl Cannon E.J. Dionne, Jr.

Walter Isaacson Whitney Patton Maralee Schwartz

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In a recent New York Times column, Nicholas Kristof called on scholars, particularly social scientists, to decode their cryptic disciplinary tongues and reenter the political debate. Where in the Kennedy era stood a “brain trust” of Harvard faculty at the center of policymaking, he argues, one now finds some economists and virtually no other academics. Meanwhile, academia at large has become more arcane and less engaged with practical questions.

As a former economics geek who has since come to see the discipline’s limits for understanding social life, I find a lot to like in Kristof’s piece. He’s right that, as behavioral scientist Richard Thaler once put it, “the United States government is run by lawyers who occasionally take advice from economists.” Economists remain in policy posts as sociology, anthropology, and political science largely fade from the picture. Further, even economists’ findings matter little in our polarized political environment. Just look at the five-year, ongoing debate over the stimulus, where the numerous econometric studies on jobs created have, I would wager, swayed few if any politicians on the issue.

Perhaps Kristof is right, then, that our political discourse lacks sufficient academic grounding. Maybe the lack of political agreement on how the Federal Reserve’s bond-buying measures or a minimum wage increase impact the economy stems from insufficient scholarly engagement with these popular debates. But the key feature of these questions is that the economics discipline itself has not definitively answered them either.

Science, very much including the social sciences, requires a degree of skepticism and humility that our polarized politics militates against. Though we might like to think that we Americans approach political debates as research questions and our deepest ideals as falsifiable theories, the realm of the political and the realm of the scientific rarely coincide so neatly. And too eagerly integrating the two holds risks for the academy.

In keeping with Kristof’s brain trust model, I point to the example of Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s 1965 report The Negro Family: A Call for National Action. Moynihan, a Ph.D. in sociology and, later, U.S. senator, worked in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations as assistant secretary of labor. His 1965 report on the growing rate of single-parent households in inner-city

black communities, intended for a close audience of policymakers, got leaked in small segments to the media. A firestorm ensued.

Although the report primarily attributed African Americans’ challenges to racism and economic marginality, Moynihan’s critics latched onto a few of his phrases to call him a racist. Few remarked that, despite his moralistic language, his call for major jobs programs for the urban poor lay to even President Johnson’s left.

Indeed, for decades after the infamous “Moynihan Report” debacle, most sociologists refused to entertain the notion of unique, disadvantageous cultural adaptations in the inner city. Not until 1987, when sociologist William Julius Wilson wrote The Truly Disadvantaged, did some in the field begin to engage cultural questions again. Cultural sociologists have since added important perspectives to urban policymaking. But the field still operates under the specter of that fateful 1965 report and the politicized debate that ensued.

Now, I am the last one to claim that social science is, or can be, wholly objective.

As Max Weber, one of the founders of sociology, correctly argued, all scientific inquiry conducted by humans, beings with values and ideals, is inherently subjective.

Empirical social science cannot tell us what to believe, but it can tell us how to evaluate our beliefs against the facts and against each other. Indeed, it commands us to subject our deepest ideals to scrutiny in order to fully understand their consequences. This science, Weber insists, offers “nothing to those persons to whom this truth is of no value.”

Surely more rigorous attention to evidence and evaluation of alternatives would make for a better politics. I remain more skeptical than Kristof, however, that the way to this goal is through subjecting the academic disciplines to the whims of our polarized political discourse, one where Weber’s truth of critical scrutiny clearly is “of no value.” Academia, including the social sciences, has a lot to offer politics, but I’m not so sure it’s mutual.

Daniel Backman President

FUNNY PAGES NSA Agent and Gamer Wins Big

OBAMA’S YEAR IN REVIEW TOP 10 STORIES THAT MAY OR MAY NOT HAVE HAPPENED

By WILLIAM KEITH 10. The 5-Second Rule is Now the Only Legitimate Form of Health Insurance 9. PRISM Has Become Self-Aware

By AARON HENRICKS What began as simple data collection from various gaming communities turned into a competitive passion for NSA Agent Nelson Johnson, whose sudden rise in the world of professional gaming has stunned and inspired fans and fellow competitors alike.

Armed with nothing but his laptop, a nice mouse, and the full, unchecked power of government surveillance, Johnson has been competing in professional StarCraft competitions, often winning large cash prizes. “At first, I was just excited to get paid to play video games at work,” said Johnson, “but I started to enjoy the thrill of violating my opponents’ privacy so much, I decided to compete professionally.”

Johnson is known in the gaming world for his unique style of play. Splitting his computer monitor screen in half, he plays the popular RTS strategy game on one side and sifts through the personal phone calls, emails, and Internet activity of his opponent on the other.

Other gamers who have played against Johnson—or, as he’s known online, PR0tection—say that he’s a formidable opponent with fast reflexes and cruel tactics.

David Simmons, who recently played against Johnson in the preliminary round of the American StarCraft 2 Championships, recalled his loss: “I don’t know how he knew my mom was in the ICU, but once he brought it up ... I just broke down.” Simmons forfeited

the round, leaving the conference room of the Houston Galleria Marriott in tears.

Fans of the professional gaming scene give the newcomer mixed reviews. One such fan, George Franklin, conveyed his confusion: “It’s very exciting to watch him play, but something seems unfair about one player having seemingly unlimited access to the information of the other. I sort of wish he would just stop gaming and go back to collecting massive amounts of our personal data without a warrant.”

While there is criticism of the young gamer and government employee’s strategy, Johnson assures the gaming community that his “work has prevented hundreds of devastating enemy attacks on American soil—and on my main base in StarCraft 2.” Johnson added that “everything I do is technically sanctioned by the E-sports rules commission and the U.S. government.”

He has, however, proposed possible limits on his tactics during professional tournaments. Realizing that fellow members of the gaming community were uncomfortable with his style of play, he stated that he would enact new restrictions on his surveillance. “Naturally,” Johnson assured his competitors, “this oversight will be administered by myself.”

The gaming community overwhelmingly agreed that the proposed changes are totally legitimate.

8. Edward Snowden Lands Safely on Mars 7. The U.S. and Overly-Attached NSA Decide to Separate 6. U.S. Drones Stationed in the Middle East Break Out in Civil War 5. Healthcare.gov Literally Takes the Internet Down with It… 4. …But Not Before Downloading a Video of Miley Cyrus’ VMA Performance to Every Computer in Existence 3. Like Everything Else, After Turning It Off then On Again, the Government Works Just Fine Now 2. Engineers Dam President Obama’s Approval Ratings, Generating Enough Electricity to Power a Small Town in Rural Indiana 1. Republicans Are Actually Right About Some Stuff

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THE SILENT TREATMENT The Real Stakes in the Israel Academic Boycott Debate Joy Wang

O

n December 14, members of the American Studies Association (ASA) voted to endorse a boycott of Israeli academic institutions. The boycott resolution, which passed with twothirds of the 1,200 participating members voting in favor, forbids the ASA from engaging in institutional collaborations with Israeli universities or the Israeli government, although it has no legislative authority over its members or member institutions.

The backlash was immediate and surprising in its scope and intensity. The American Association of University Professors (AAUP) condemned it as a violation of the academic freedom of American and Israeli scholars. Brandeis University, Indiana University, Kenyon College, and Penn State Harrisburg withdrew institutional membership in the ASA in protest, and presidents of over a hundred American universities issued statements in condemnation of the boycott. Harvard University President Drew Gilpin Faust characterized the boycott as a “[subversion of ] the academic freedoms and values necessary to the free flow of ideas, which is the lifeblood of the worldwide community of scholars.”

The resolution was celebrated in Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) circles as a turning point in public debate on Israel and an indicator of growing skepticism towards Israeli state policy.

Whether or not the boycott is a harbinger of things to come, the ensuing debate has exposed, perhaps unwittingly, some of the central issues at stake in the debate about Israel in the United States.

A QUESTION OF ACADEMIC FREEDOM? Though supporters of the boycott have

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A protester supports the BDS movement in Melbourne, Austalia. been unabashed in their critique of Israeli state policy, much of the debate over the ASA boycott has been couched in the language of academic freedom. The ASA resolution, for example, cites violations of free academic exchange as the driving force behind the boycott.

Professor Ashley Dawson, editor of the AAUP’s Journal of Academic Freedom and a supporter of the ASA boycott, told the HPR, “The academic freedom of Palestinians has been systematically infringed upon, and if we don’t think about the various material and institutional ways in which that’s taking place ... academic freedom becomes hollowed out as a concept.”

In the same vein, a delegate assembly at the meeting of the Modern Language Association this January voted to censure Israel for “denials of entry to the West Bank by U.S. academics who have been invited to teach, confer, or do research at

Palestinian universities.” The full MLA membership plans to vote on the resolution this spring.

Opponents of the boycott have protested its chilling effects on academic speech. David Hirsh, founder of Engage, a campaign against academic boycotts of Israel, wrote earlier this year that boycotts imply “that Israeli institutions are guilty [and] Israeli intellectuals are guilty ... The danger is that Israelis will be asked not to disavow Israel politically, but to disavow their university ‘institutionally’ as a precondition for recognition as legitimate members of the academic community.”

Henry Reichman, chair of the AAUP’s Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure, echoed this sentiment, telling the HPR that, in effect, “a message has been sent to Israeli scholars that unless they themselves have a particular point of view that is dissenting from their institution, they are not welcome.” While the ASA has

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Though supporters of the boycott have been unabashed in their critique of Israeli state policy, much of the debate over the ASA boycott has been couched in the language of academic freedom.

noted that the boycott only applies to Israeli academic institutions and not individual scholars, many remain skeptical that the distinction will prove meaningful.

While travel restrictions on residents of the Palestinian Territories have certainly hampered the ability of Palestinian academics to undertake academic collaborations, the potential impact of a boycott on academic exchange between the United States and Israel is likewise difficult to ignore. Upon further inspection, however, while debates over academic freedom have dominated public disagreement about the boycott, even deeper convictions are at stake.

OF ACADEMIC BOYCOTTS It has gone largely unsaid how unusual academic boycotts are as a form of nonviolent protest. While economic boycotts rely in principle on market forces and economic self-interest to bring wayward actors in line with acceptable norms of behavior, academic and other cultural boycotts seek to isolate institutions that are ostensibly complicit in unjust state policy. Yet the academy is not a market except in the crudest sense, nor is the common currency of academic exchange—ideas—typically conceived of as a good to be traded freely or withheld on principle.

The history of academic boycotts is a sparse one; the BDS movement is keen to draw a historical analogy to the academic and cultural boycott that was part of the international campaign to end apartheid in South Africa. The effectiveness of the boycott is still a matter of historical dispute, and critics of the ASA resolution are skeptical that the academic aspect of the boycott of South Africa had much of an impact in comparison with the more materially damaging economic measures.

“There was a comprehensive economic boycott [in South Africa],” Cary Nelson, professor of English at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and a member of the AAUP’s Committee A, told the HPR. “That ... affected universities just as it did any other sphere of life in South Africa, [but] there was no separate academic boycott.”

Yet, the connection with South Africa may be stronger than its critics would like to admit. Perhaps tellingly, unlike Iran or Cuba or the Soviet Union, Israel—as South Africa before it—is a democratic state. Economic boycotts of countries and corporations alike have a long legacy, but academic and cultural boycotts

are far rarer, perhaps because the act of boycott assumes that cultural exchange between the parties is valued and valuable.

THEIR FAULT, OUR FAULTS For Reichman, it is clear that academic freedom, however cherished, serves only as a proxy for other political agendas.

“There are strong advocates on both sides of this issue for whom academic freedom is something that, where it’s convenient to them, they evoke it, but that’s not their principal concern.”

Nor is it immediately clear what changes the boycott movement expects from the recent resolution. “It remains to be seen what practical effect the boycott will have,” Samer Ali, chair of the session on Palestine at the recent MLA conference, told the HPR, “but it’s a way of getting the conversation going so that we’re not so passive and complicit [in the occupation of Palestine].” Nevertheless, it is unclear how disengagement from the Israeli academic establishment will ensure greater academic freedom for Palestinians, especially as the academy in Israel is home to many vocal critics of Israeli state policy.

Calling the resolution an “attack on academic freedom in the name of phony progressivism,” Wesleyan University President Michael S. Roth wrote in the Los Angeles Times, “The ASA has not gone on record against universities in any other country: not against those that enforce laws against homosexuality, not against those that have rejected freedom of speech, not against those that systematically restrict access to higher education by race, religion or gender. No, the ASA listens to civil society only when it speaks against Israel.”

Implicit in the objections of Roth and others is the notion that Israel has been unfairly singled out by this boycott measure, which in a sense, it has. Israel is a liberal democracy in the style of Western liberal democracies, and the flaws plaguing Israel, are perhaps in some deeper sense, ours.

Far from a mere contest over academic freedom in a contentious region of the Middle East, the arguments for and against the academic boycott of Israel seem to suggest that, as with South Africa before it, the stakes are different. Troubling as it may be, perhaps it is that our moral commitments to the ideals of democratic societies, whether in theory or in practice, are what truly demand closer scrutiny.

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UNDOCUMENTED ON CAMPUS

A DREAM DEFERRED Andrea Ortiz

T

he college application process is a labyrinth of forms, letters, and essays: a puzzle just as complicated as a Rubik’s Cube. Now, imagine seeing everyone around you receiving personalized instructions on how to solve the puzzle, except you. This was the experience of three recent college applicants.

They were all undocumented immigrants at the time.

For many undocumented students, successful enrollment in college is determined by the information given to them when they are going through the application process. However, the information gap that currently exists for undocumented students means that many opportunities for acceptance as well as financial aid are slipping though their fingers, unnoticed by college administrators. Navigating inconsistencies among schools’ admissions policies, without many advisory or informational resources, sets up yet another obstacle in an already intricate system.

For Matias Delgado, a sophomore at Miami-Dade Community College, Eric Balderas, a junior at Harvard College, and Enrique Ramirez, a sophomore at Harvard College, this situation has now changed. On June 15, 2012, the Obama administration announced the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which ordered the U.S. Immigration and Citizenship Services to exercise prosecutorial discretion for immigrants who were brought to the United States as children, and who met other requirements. These students, widely known as “DREAM-

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ers,” after the immigration bill that was first introduced in 2001 known as the DREAM Act, have all been granted DACA status and are now lawfully present in the United States. However, their stories of applying to college as undocumented students speak to the experiences many other high school students may be going through today, primarily those students who are still ineligible for DACA.

“IS COLLEGE EVEN AN OPTION?” To many undocumented, non-DACA eligible students, college seems a very far reach. Delgado first explained to the HPR “how vague and nebulous the rules and policies around undocumented [students] were. You never knew what you could or could not do. You end up getting scared. You suck in all this negativity of things that could possibly happen to you.” Despite his stellar grades, he was told by a college counselor that his only option was community college. He based his decision on that advice, even though a variety of private scholarships and need-blind schools would have provided him with the assistance necessary to attend a four-year university.

About 30 percent of undocumented families live below the poverty line. Lack of work authorization makes finding employment especially hard for undocumented people. As a result, many undocumented immigrants work in the service sector or in

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“under the table” jobs, as house cleaners or construction workers, making the prospect of paying for college almost impossible.

For students, the lack of a lawful immigration status before DACA (or today, for those ineligible for DACA) means having to pay international fees at community colleges and state schools.

In some states, such as South Carolina, it means not even being granted acceptance to public institutions of higher learning.

Balderas and Ramirez received support from caring adults who guided them through the process. Balderas explained to the HPR that “the biggest difference in my experience has really been how informed our [high school] teachers and counselors had been, and it’s only made a difference in my case because otherwise I wouldn’t have taken the initiative to find out what my options really [were].”

For Ramirez, his college opportunity came down to a conversation he had at a college fair with a recent Yale graduate who was spearheading a college admission program for minorities and low-income students. Need-blind schools such as Harvard, Yale, and other top universities do not take financial necessity into account during the admissions process. For many of the undocumented students at Harvard, this meant full financial aid and a college acceptance. “I didn’t know that there was a chance for me to go to college, because of the things it entailed: not working, not being able to have a job. Even if I went to college, I wasn’t going to be able to study abroad, [or] do lots of other things. It just wasn’t an option. It wasn’t something I thought about until my sister went to college,” Ramirez told the HPR.

TROUBLE ON CAMPUS The University of Chicago has publicly stated it will accept qualified students regardless of immigration status. Harvard has not made a public statement, but it does provide resources to the undocumented students that are accepted, on average nine per graduating class. Deborah Anker, head of the Immigration Clinic at Harvard Law School, provides one-on-one consultations to undocumented students at Harvard in order for them to explore immigration options such as DACA and other forms of gaining lawful presence in the states.

Meanwhile, Harvard’s public stance on DACA and comprehensive immigration reform remains hazy at best. Balderas explained, “I guess we can’t blame them too much for not being too open about it, because they do accept undocumented immigrants and have very generous policies towards us. But, at the end of the day, they have one way they present themselves to the public, which is very political. I guess that’s really the world we’re in.”

Anker told the HPR that private institutions should take more care in helping students with pending immigration statuses, similar to the way that she and her clinic have been providing consultations. “Private institutions [don’t have to make] immigration status a criteria of admission, which many of them still are doing. They can provide some high quality reputable legal counseling to students, not necessarily representation, but at least a consultation with a good immigration lawyer as to what the individual person’s options are, because they vary a lot.”

Professor Anker’s suggestions address the information gap that exists not only during the college application process but also in

understanding the broken immigration system once students are in college. According to her, private institutions with large endowments and independence from state policy, such as Harvard, can set a standard in providing resources to students regardless of immigration status.

Meanwhile, beyond being accepted into college, attending university can be challenging for many undocumented students or DACA recipients for a variety of other reasons. Some students are not comfortable with sharing their immigration status and may feel disconnected from others for this reason. For Ramirez, leaving his parents in a difficult economic situation while attending a prestigious institution led to pangs of guilt. He shared how “[during] the first couple of weeks [of freshman year], I was at the dining hall like ‘Oh my gosh, is there anyway I could just send some of this food home, because I can eat as much as I want.’ We never had food at home. We just had our next meal in the refrigerator. There was never an abundance.”

WHAT NOW? After the rollout of DACA, many students who chose to attend college rather than earn money and contribute directly to family income have been able to find on-campus jobs. Delgado works as a physics and science tutor while Ramirez has been working for Harvard. DACA has also provided undocumented students with lawful presence and authority of employment.

“Lawful presence,” according to Michael Olivas at the University of Texas, should grant DACA students with the same rights as residents relative to receiving in-state tuition, the right to a driver’s license, and acceptance into public institutions. However, state policies have not made this clear, and many states have passed statutes restricting the benefits DACA recipients are granted.

Such ambiguities in the implementation of the DACA program have kept many DACA-eligible students from seeking protection under the program, despite the fact that many more opportunities for college acceptance and financial aid will open up to DACA recipients. Olivas told the HPR, “DACA recipients should not be pitted against the undocumented ones like students who’ve aged out or who haven’t been here for five years, because the line was drawn this way or that way … A lot of them don’t sign up because they are afraid for their parents, others just don’t trust the government where they are from and it’s hard for them to get their mind around an actually useful and benevolent government program.”

For students like Balderas, Delgado, and Ramirez, lawful immigrant status in the United States is far from guaranteed despite their DACA approvals. While the noisy congressional debates on comprehensive immigration reform have polarized and scandalized American politics, the information gap that currently exists for undocumented students regarding college admissions and DACA benefits goes mostly unnoticed. Despite this, students like Delgado are not going anywhere: “There’s always that feeling that everybody gets when somebody tells you you can’t do this. To the person that told me that I couldn’t, I’d like to go back and show him what I’m doing now. I’m still not done here. I still want to keep studying and see where I go.”

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POLITICS OF MUSIC

GROWING UP WITH GREEN DAY

Emily Wang

ONE GENERATION UNDER AMERICAN IDIOT

A

wall of televisions occupies the stage. Each screen plays its own clip, from Hurricane Katrina news coverage to Survivor episode segments. Then, the screens synchronize to play a single video. George W. Bush, in his 2001 address to a joint session of Congress, steps up to the podium and proclaims, “Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists.”

The television sets turn off. The lights dim. American Idiot: The Musical begins.

Within the first minute of the show, which ran on Broadway for one year and is currently on a national tour, the musical grounds itself in a specific sociopolitical context. The media montage, drawing content from television shows long discontinued and national crises embedded in the past, creates the eerie sense that America has entered a new era. Flickering onstage, the mosaic of moments invites viewers to reflect on the recent past, at once so immediate to us and so far removed.

The decade following the release of Green Day’s 2004 album

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American Idiot has been far from quiet, and the overwhelming visual cacophony of the production’s first few moments offers a novel synthesis and retrospection. The musical, as it brings to life the album’s storyline, narrates the triumphs and tribulations of a generation coming of age in the post-9/11 era. Perhaps American Idiot’s themes of political discontent and a desire for change drive its continued success. Such discussions resonate with millennials, whose experiences in the decade following 9/11 continue to inform their political and social views. Rather than offering a point-in-time snapshot of a political moment long past, American Idiot traces the evolution of the millennial generation and canonizes the generation’s journey to understand how to engage in our nation’s political system.

AMERICA IN TRANSITION Millennials are familiar with the era of political tension

POLITICS OF MUSIC

explored by American Idiot; after all, they lived through it. Billie Joe Armstrong, lead singer of Green Day, told the HPR that “[w]hen I wrote the song ‘American Idiot,’ I was responding to a feeling of total confusion. It seemed like we were going in reverse … we were in this war, and there was no reason for it, no just cause.” The title track criticizes the “American idiots” ignorant of the media’s political agenda. Meanwhile, “Holiday” attacks the aggressiveness of American international policy following French opposition to military involvement in Iraq, claiming that we “pulverize the Eiffel Towers / who criticize our government.”

But American Idiot is driven by more than unbridled anger or frustration. “Wake Me Up When September Ends” expresses a sense of collective disillusionment. “I initially wrote the song about the death of my dad,” Armstrong said. “But when we played it, you could see it in people’s faces. It meant something more: it was everyone’s loss; it was the loss of the ’90s American innocence. 9/11 changed everyone’s world. My kids grew up with war on television.”

The political environment captured in American Idiot continues to guide millennial political engagement today. In a conversation with the HPR, Kristen Soltis Anderson, vice president of the Winston Group and a leading expert on the politics of the millennial generation, noted that even the oldest millennials came of age as the nation was “engaged in armed conflict overseas” and “battling an economic recession.”

“The millennial generation has had a rude [awakening] into its political consciousness,” she continued, “and it has led [them] to be very frustrated and distrustful of the political process.”

A GENERATION’S COMING OF AGE The plot arc of American Idiot, in both its Broadway and rock album forms, reads as political allegory, featuring characters— The Jesus of Suburbia, St. Jimmy, and Whatsername—who embody differing attitudes towards the political present. The Jesus of Suburbia, frustrated with the stagnancy of suburbia, chooses to leave home and venture to the city, where he meets St. Jimmy and Whatsername. St. Jimmy emerges from the city’s underbelly, while Whatsername acts as the Jesus of Suburbia’s love interest.

When St. Jimmy sneers that “we’re f-cked up but we’re not the same / and mom and dad are the ones you can blame,” Whatsername “sings of revolution / the dawning of our lives.” Armstrong explained that “St. Jimmy is toxic, he is flamboyant, and he is one of those individuals that just wants to watch the world burn.

Whatsername is someone that’s truly empowered. She wants more out of her life; she sees the world as bigger than the small space she’s trapped in. She cares about the world a little more.

She has eyes that see beyond herself. ” Here, the story presents the protagonist—and the listener— with two mutually exclusive choices. The Jesus of Suburbia, who introduced himself as the “son of rage and love,” must now choose between the embodiments of the two ideals. St. Jimmy’s “rage,” and his ability to blame everybody but himself for social issues, offers a rebellion characterized by the rejection of everything and the embrace of nothing. In contrast, “love” motivates Whatsername’s rebellion, suggesting that rejecting the norm must be followed by the active construction of a newer, more fulfilling reality.

Millennials today face this exact choice. Anderson notes that “[t]here are two simultaneous narratives for the millennial generation. The first is that they are cynical and disappointed. Polls show a high level of frustration. On the other hand, millennials are also very focused on problem solving and really believe they can make the world a better place. We see a lot of millennials going into nonprofits [and] Teach for America.”

So the Jesus of Suburbia’s journey is this generation’s journey.

Just as he must choose between St. Jimmy and Whatsername, today’s young people must decide how to participate in a political system whose hypocrisies had alienated them as they came of age.

TEN YEARS LATER: WHAT’S IN STORE FOR JESUS? Perhaps American Idiot, then, can also serve as a cautionary tale. The Jesus of Suburbia chooses St. Jimmy’s lifestyle of blind rebellion, but St. Jimmy commits suicide. The album concludes with the Jesus of Suburbia returning to the suburbs isolated and resigned.

In the wake of Occupy Wall Street’s inability to identity any specific political platform, one wonders if the millennial generation is following a similar path. Sensationalist news aggregators like Upworthy are more popular than ever. Critics argue that youth today would rather “Like” a page than volunteer for the cause it represents. However, such arguments trivialize the methods of millennial political engagement. John Della Volpe, director of the Harvard Public Opinion Project, the largest survey of the politics of Americans ages 18 to 29, acknowledges that the generation’s political participation challenges norms and is difficult to characterize. “Frankly, many times, their community efforts aren’t measured well. When I ask a young person in a focus group if they are involved in community service, they have difficulty responding,” he told the HPR. But while the nature of their activism is more complex, it is not necessarily less meaningful. Della Volpe continued, “So much of their lives are integrated with work, family, friends, and service. What is service, and what isn’t? A young person who donates her hair to kids with cancer makes the community better, but this isn’t typically categorized as community service.”

Millennials are making a difference, however unconventionally.

Moreover, Jeff Fromm, vice president of the advertising agency Barkley and co-author of Marketing to Millennials, told the HPR that millennials respond strongly to ideals and causes. He predicted that millennials will usher in “a whole new political culture of ideas that engage people, that have a purpose and a soul. These ideas can win.”

Nearly a decade after the release of American Idiot, millennial political engagement looks dramatically different than it did in 2004. They’ve grown up. The generation has experienced more milestone moments, from the Great Recession to Edward Snowden, that have transformed its views. However, as millennials continue to navigate their political roles, the lessons of American Idiot—and the choice between rage and love—will likely remain relevant. As Armstrong remarked, “Nobody can forget about that decade. That time period will always have that feeling that it could happen again, whenever we hear about the conflict in Syria or our troops in Afghanistan.”

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ANTHEMS OF THE BRAZILIAN PROTESTS Nicolas Rossenblum

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emonstrations are the physical representation of the will of a group of people, a show of force by those whom the world might see as peripheral. Yet, for all the muscle that a protest may exhibit, lasting impact comes from something more intangible, something that strikes a chord and resonates with all those involved. This space can be filled by a speech or slogan, yet few things work better than song.

“VEM VAMOS PRA RUA” Music plays a vital role in Brazilian culture. Suzel Reilly, senior lecturer at Queen’s University Belfast, told the HPR, “Music was believed to be the key to Brazilian exceptionalism, utilizing its unique diversity in order to separate itself from the European model.” Through song, Brazil shows its true nature, that of a burgeoning world power unlike all the others, eager to impress, yet conscious of and restrained by its domestic problems.

Last summer, these domestic problems exposed themselves to the world. While many consider the protests a call to question Brazil’s viability as a global player, it is worthwhile to consider the dissent through the lens of Brazil’s distinct nature and history. Brazilians are no strangers to protest, having taken to the streets to bring about a republic in the 1930s and during the military government of the 1970s and ’80s. Interspersed with music that showcased the complexity of the Brazilian condition, the recent Confederations Cup protests exposed the conflict that

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comes when the dust pushed under the rug fights back.

“QUE O BRASIL VAI TÁ GIGANTE” Perennially on the cusp of global potency yet in a perpetual battle with internal inequity, Brazil faces divergent realities.

President Dilma Rousseff’s national approval ratings constantly fluctuate, precipitously dropping as low as 30 percent in June, parallel to the protests. Indeed, Brazil’s push toward global competitiveness—as shown by the country’s upcoming international sporting events, its status as the world’s sixth largest economy, and its increasing diplomatic capacities—seems to be deepening the divide between haves and have-nots.

Despite the foreign policy improvements and gains in international standing, Brazilians remain disillusioned by a system that fails to address internal inequality. This search for equilibrium manifested itself after a 20-cent increase to public transportation costs in São Paulo, which instigated countrywide protests.

Thousands of Brazilians have taken to the streets to protest price hikes and corruption, waking a dormant sentiment that lies at the center of Brazil’s history of political protest and activism.

“PODE VIR QUE A FESTA É SUA” The views that international media takes towards the Brazilian protests aren’t maliciously narrow, but rather a casualty of

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cultural misunderstanding—a product of fetishizing Brazil and its people, stripping them down to happy, over-sexed, partyhard alternatives to the grim denizens of “developed” nations.

This, in turn, does no justice to the gravity of Brazilians’ ongoing struggle: taking away people’s tragedies dilutes the depth of their victories.

“Brazilian melancholy—and how deeply it’s been misunderstood—is on full display in the country’s music,” says Jasmine Garsd of the NPR Alt.Latino program. Indeed, protest songs speak to the deep conflicts between Brazilian society and the state, inspiring involvement rather than passivity.

A variety of songs fueled this activist narrative during the demonstrations, but the rallying cry of the movement was O Rappa’s “Vem Pra Rua.” The lyrics, which open “Come, let’s go to the streets / Come, this is your party / Brazil is going to be a giant / big like you’ve never seen before,” were meant to create support for La Seleçao, the Brazilian national soccer team, and through a slick nationwide advertising campaign, get people into new Fiats.

In an ironic twist for Fiat, the lyrics resonated with protestors who were flooding into the streets not by car, but on foot.

The thought of going out to the streets en masse appealed to the growing number of protesters who utilized the chant to draw more people to their demonstrations. The song’s promise of a “giant Brazil” and its declaration that “the country’s biggest stand is the street” linked to the communitarian appeal of the protests, building a stage conducive to broadcasting the plight of the poor.

“GRANDE COMO NUNCA SE VIU” While this new jingle became the voice of the contemporary movement, rapper Criolo’s cover of Chico Buarque’s “Cálice” spoke to the deeper Brazilian condition. “Cálice” cryptically protests censorship against freedom of speech by the government, becoming an anthem for repressed people. Criolo’s edition masterfully mimics the distinctive pace and beat of Buarque’s song but with a message felt by today’s Brazilians: “How to go home without getting shot/ How to go to work without getting shot … Prejudice for all / unless one has a rich father.” The constant fear, pressing inequality, and nonexistent upward mobility expressed by Criolo’s lyrics resonate with Brazil’s youth.

At the same time, the nature of the song brings the plight of

the younger generation to the established one; by harkening to the revolutionary spirit of their youth, Criolo’s “Cálice” incited involvement by older Brazilians in the demonstrations. This link in song brings about a communal spirit that validates the protests, particularly in the group that can most produce institutional change. The voices of other established musicians have served to reinforce this connection.

Then, a veteran of the country’s ’80s rock and roll revolution, often known as B-Rock, vocalized the “get involved” aspect of the protests. On June 16, a song appeared on YouTube called “As coisas não caem do céu” by an artist named Leoni. Over a gentle guitar strum, a voice sings longingly, “Why does everybody complain about what they read in the morning newspaper? / Forget about wishing, and enter the dance/ Things don’t fall from the sky.” A video comprised of clips from the early days of the protest—young Brazilians with signs moving through the nighttime streets—accompanied the song.

“I wrote it about being stuck and not participating in the political life of the country, and suddenly there was this movement,” Leoni told the press. “I don’t think artists can lead the people and tell them what to think—it’s more a question of listening, of giving people the poetic weapons to communicate what they are trying to say.”

“TERRA ADORADA, ENTRE OUTRAS MIL” The music of the protests served to touch the core of the Brazilian condition and embody the beliefs of an upcoming generation, a people who would not remain silent while inequality and apathy engulfed them. The songs were not used to instill divisions between classes of Brazilians. Rather, they were unifying forces, bringing together the breadth of the Brazilian community. While the people of Brazil face looming challenges, there is an indomitable spirit within them, a spirit in tune with their national character.

The power of Brazilian identity was best seen in the final of the Confederations Cup, in the midst of the protests. With the first bars of the “Hino Nacional Brasileiro,” the crowd rose and delivered a deafening rendition of the anthem. In the voices of the 96,000 within the Maracana, the emotion felt by an entire country in its turmoil was let out, with a passion that words alone cannot describe. That’s why they used a song.

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POLITICS OF MUSIC

TYGA REVISITED Tori Wenger

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n March 28, 2013, the Harvard College Events Board announced that the rapper Tyga would be the headline performer for the College’s annual Yard Fest concert. Within days a petition was posted on the grassroots organizing website change.org, demanding that the Events Board rescind the offer to Tyga, contending that his music “promotes sexism and rape culture” and that as a performer he “amplifies misogyny and violence.” The petition garnered hundreds of signatures within a few hours and over 1,000 by morning, triggering a storm of debate across campus and coverage from college and external media outlets. Students quickly took sides across a spectrum of articles and op-eds, heated conversations in dining halls, and proclamations posted on social media.

The petition failed, and not simply because Tyga remained the Yard Fest headliner. At first draft, it failed to acknowledge the historical, cultural, and musical nuances of hiphop as a genre, and Tyga as an artist. A year in retrospect, it failed to galvanize a lasting conversation about structural changes to combat rape culture within Harvard’s community. These failures implicate more than a concert. The petition, though controversial, presented a moment around which our student body could have constructively reflected upon issues more deeply embedded within our own community—from implicit racial biases to explicit gender subjugation. Instead, the performance ended, and our conversation died. A year later, it’s time to talk.

THE PETITION IN CONTEXT Debates regarding hiphop and misogyny or rape culture— particularly the Tyga incident—rest within the intersection of simultaneous histories of oppression. These are histories wherein women have been victimized, wherein Black men have been ostracized, and wherein harsh stereotypes, social

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norms, and American pathologies have tarnished the political agency, social capital, and psychological well-being of both groups.

We are forced to reconcile these histories and contemporary realities when we engage in a debate about rape culture and choose a Black male artist as the target of critique. As Harvard Kennedy School professor Timothy McCarthy explained to the HPR, “the historical baggage of race and gender debates go back to the founding of the republic.” The historical disenfranchisement of both women and African Americans has predicated lasting vulnerability for both communities within political and economic spheres, and often, unfortunately, dichotomized the interests of each group in efforts ranging from the battles for suffrage, through the civil rights and feminist movements, to our modern day agenda-setting. “These are historical divisions that carry a lot of weight that we drag into debates whenever we have them in a contemporary moment,” McCarthy explained. “Sometimes we are re-litigating the past whenever we are debating in the present.”

CHOOSING OUR BATTLES, CHOOSING OUR TARGETS As students, we choose the debates with which we engage.

We choose when they begin and when they end. We choose our tactics of protest and where we point fingers. “On every level, from the most global to the most local, it’s easier to project than to look in the mirror and shine a light, and that’s certainly true of Harvard, on a whole range of issues,” McCarthy said. “I think it’s much easier to choose Tyga as a kind of screen to project all of our stuff, than it is to deal with all of our baggage before, during, and after he is on campus.” It is easier to scapegoat Tyga than to look within ourselves. It is easier to criticize lyrics than challenge pathologies. “We want to be able to identify what the issues really are, and how we might address them,” Professor Marcyliena Morgan, director of Harvard’s Hiphop Archive and Research Institute, shared with the HPR, “But that the issue is never about us but about them, is always going to be problematic.”

While it is certainly a problem if our community stays silent on issues regarding violence, misogyny, and sexual assault, it is also a problem if activism regarding rape culture at Harvard begins and ends by accosting a rapper’s lyrics instead of introspecting about our own cultures of misogyny. It is a problem rooted in the implicit endorsement of the stigmas of threat manufactured about the Black male body. It is a problem rooted in neglecting hiphop as art. These are problems we need to address.

HIPHOP’S WOMAN PROBLEM Hiphop is multidimensional, yet critics often target one singular dimension—lyrics. This was case in point in the student protests against Tyga and has been intrinsic in a long history of hiphop critique. For decades, individuals and institutional actors, primarily from outside of the Black community, have attempted to censor hiphop music and have admonished hiphop artists for the provocative lyrical elements of the music. As Professor Laurence Ralph of Harvard’s Departments of Anthropology and African and African American’s Studies described, “Oftentimes rappers aren’t given credit for being metaphorical

or artistic in the same way that other artists are. People are not reading hiphop lyrics as art or poetry, they’re reading them as an indictment of what that particular rapper thinks about women.”

When hiphop is reinterpreted within the same standards that we afford other art forms, the lyrical elements that are seemingly misogynistic speak more thoroughly to the complexity of art, and quite explicitly to the salience of cultural “–isms” in the United States, from sexism to racism and so on. From Shakespeare to contemporary crime dramas, these realties exist quite palpably in other art forms without incurring the same indictments that hiphop so often faces. It is hiphop alone that has been criticized like this—from the stage of Yard Fest to the halls of Congress.

In 2007, hiphop was literally called to testify as Congress ordered hearings regarding the explicit content and degrading imagery propagated throughout the industry. During his testimony, the rapper David Banner contended, “Traditional multibillion dollar industries have thrived on the premise of violence, sexuality and derogatory content. This capitalistic trend was not created nor introduced by hiphop. It has been here. It is the American way.” Georgetown University professor Michael Eric Dyson extended Banner’s argument in his testimony: “There are deep roots in American culture when it comes to demonizing women. It didn’t start with Snoop Dogg. It didn’t start with anybody who has been associated with hiphop culture. That is white supremacist ideology predicated upon capitalist expansion of opportunity.”

These logics extend to our own debate. Rape culture at Harvard did not start when Tyga took the stage, nor has it vanished since the lights of Yard Fest faded. “I can admit that there are some problems in hiphop,” Banner testified, “but it is only a reflection of what is taking place in our society. Hiphop is sick because America is sick.”

OUR PROBLEM Hiphop is sick; so too is America. Hiphop is misogynistic, so too Harvard, from our forefathers to our final clubs. Yet these are bigger targets than Tyga. These are harder conversations.

While rape culture didn’t start with Tyga, the protest did. “Tyga becomes this spark for us to have this larger conversation. It’s the trigger or the catalyst, the push that opens up or activates a whole set of conversations that were longing to be had,” McCarthy said. “We have deeper issues here around rape culture at Harvard, around patriarchy and misogyny that we have to deal with and that we should deal with.”

A year later, it remains a problem that we so easily scapegoated a Black male artist for depicting through lyrics the realities we perpetrate as a student body through apathy, inaction, or silence. As McCarthy explained, “A critique that a number of students of color—women of color—were making was ‘where is this outrage more broadly, more systematically, and more regularly?

Why aren’t we having petitions to challenge all sorts of things at Harvard?’ In many ways, that’s a legitimate question.” It is a question that remains.

If we want to have a conversation about rape at Harvard, let’s have one. If we want to have a conversation about misogyny at Harvard, let’s have one. If all we are going to do is sign a petition, boycott a concert, and then fall silent for a year, we’ve perpetuated more problems than we have solved.

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POLITICS OF MUSIC

A BRAVE NEW WORLD How Spotify's streaming technology finally filled the Napster void David Freed

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or most of the 20th century, changes in the music industry were limited to hardware. The gramophone became the record player, which eventually became the hi-fi and later, the at-the-time revolutionary CD. The biggest labels dominated the industry, supervising the mass dissemination and release of albums in an age of limited media. Like a venture capital firm, labels would invest in ten new artists in hopes of hitting it big with one.

The old-school business model peaked in 1999, with global music sales just shy of $28 billion. Thirteen years later, revenue was nearly cut in half—the result of a music revolution that began with Napster and became the rise of Generation Y, consumers endowed with a sense of righteousness that was anathema to paying for music. These changes necessitate that an industry historically slow to adapt make drastic changes; to serve this new generation, the music industry is catering to the Napster mantra it once fought hard to suppress.

IN THE BEGINNING Like Facebook, Napster began in a Boston-area dorm room.

Creator Shawn Fanning thought of the program as a music search engine, underestimating a project that first harnessed the power of the Internet and peer-to-peer (P2P) sharing. Launched in May 1999, the site had four million songs by October and 26 million users by February—a catastrophic blow to an industry at its peak. The invention of the MP3 file format in the late ‘90s had enabled the music industry to compress large audio files to a fractional size and had led to the rise of the palm-sized CD, then the primary industry revenue driver.

Napster turned the boom of the ’90s into the recession of the 2000s. “MP3” overtook “sex” as the Internet’s top search term

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in 2001; unauthorized downloads became 90 percent of the market. Unable to compete, scrambling labels turned to the courts to rebalance a permanently tilted field. The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) sued over 35,000 individuals in the early 2000s, creating an expensive toll for P2P sharing. As Napster and Fanning fell under a barrage of litigation, iTunes rose to fill the void, co-opting Napster’s technology and offering the labels a solution with one big concession: the contemporary album.

The iTunes store was initially a compromise between Napster’s unregulated freedom and the old business model. Consumers had unlimited, but not free, access to music. As the music industry’s only lifeline, the five major record companies acceded to all of Steve Jobs’ demands. All albums became available on a track-by-track basis. iTunes sold tracks for ninety-nine cents, two dollars less than Sony Music. The new program allowed consumers to buy individual tracks, forcing the industry away from the filler tracks off which it had previously made large profits.

Larry Miller, professor of music business at New York University, noted that Apple’s streaming services were a way of pushing forward its hardware business. “One thing to note here with respect to Apple and Samsung … they are device companies first and service companies second,” Miller told the HPR. “So music has, in a way, incentivized dramatic growth of their device business.” iTunes was remarkably successful at driving business, but it left the Napster generation unsatisfied; once consumers had tasted free music, letting go proved difficult. Artists who had flourished under the previous model struggled under iTunes, creating a void. Garth Brooks, AC/DC, Metallica, Madonna, and The Beatles refused to sell their music to the service. Consumers

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To serve this new generation, the music industry is catering to the Napster mantra it once fought hard to suppress.

grew frustrated with Jobs’ vertical integration of the store, first with his initial decision to open it only to Apple users and later with his digital-rights management (DRM) software—copy-protecting software that made iPods the only compatible hardware to play iTunes music.

HEADING DOWNSTREAM Enter streaming services. Online music players Pandora and Spotify launched in the latter half of the aughts. The new applications allowed users to listen to unlimited free music at the expense of audio advertisements, at the same time promoting their platform to artists by offering compensation per play.

Pandora was an assault on the modern radio network, Spotify a substitute for the iTunes store.

The new streaming services are the future of the industry, both a response to illegal downloading and to the iTunes pay-for-play model. The two leaders channel the attitudes of a generation that feels entitled to free music. Over the past year, streaming—divided into interactive (Spotify, Rdio, etc.) and noninteractive (Pandora, Google Play, iTunes Radio) sectors—is up 32 percent and digital download sales are down six percent.

“It used to be the case that if you wanted to listen to what you wanted when you wanted, you had to own it,” Selena Elton, a professor of music business at the University of Miami, told the HPR. Elton said that interactive and noninteractive services, while both substitutes to owning music, are not direct competitors.

However, Spotify, in particular, has presented itself as the next decade’s Napster. Swedish founder Daniel Ek is a Fanning acolyte, co-opting both his software and his ideas. Ek, who has stated the company’s mission is to pay musicians their fair share, has put $500 million back into the pockets of artists, labels, and publishers.

“Spotify was really created to combat piracy,” Graham James, Spotify head of U.S. communications, told the HPR. “The record business was in serious danger because people could steal music and nobody felt like they had to buy. We had to set up a legal alternative to piracy that was better [so that] we could fairly compensate artists for their work.”

So far, the company has enjoyed substantial growth despite not yet turning a profit. Company revenues are up 128 percent in the past year, meaning more and more money is funneled to

artists, many of whom already receive more from Spotify than iTunes thanks to the sheer number of users on the service.

Berklee College professor of music business Peter Alhadeff said that Spotify, like Napster, has changed the way that people consume music. “It is changing the way that people think about access,” Alhadeff told the HPR. “At last I think it is triumphing over ownership.” In this way, Spotify is the next step in the P2P sharing process Fanning pioneered, in which people share music rather than take home copies of their own.

These services benefit artists as much as they help consumers. Monitoring software allows users to follow the artists their friends are listening to, providing a crowdsourced means of evaluation that ensures artists will receive exposure under the new platform. Spotify, without the burden of one-time payment, provides a simple alternative to illegal downloads. Ek, the former founder of P2P sharing site uTorrent—which has since evolved, beyond his control, into a hub for illegal downloading—understands how to harness the unlimited exposure of free music into profitability for artists.

“We recognized you have to have a free tier to be successful,” James said. “If people can create any song they want through pirate sites, you need to offer them a free experience.”

The streaming access model favors timeless over rhyme-less.

With profits based on aggregate clicks, timeless music becomes much more profitable than songs with ephemeral appeal. The result is an ostensible meritocracy and a template for musicians to adapt to the streaming age.

WEAK STREAMS Ultimately, Ek’s success is a product of effectively embracing the intentions of Generation Y, imbedded with the Napster presumption that music should be free and they should have full choice at their fingertips. Sean Parker, who went to court on his conviction that music should be free, was an initial investor in Spotify. Napster was the first place where consumers could listen to the music of any artist they desired, but Spotify is the first to monetize that for artists, giving record labels (and the artists they control) a fair shake in the battle against piracy. In a new era, it isn’t the CD model or the iTunes model that characterizes the outlook for the music industry. Instead, interactive services like Spotify are leading the industry into a new age.

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RISE OF THE YOUTUBE STAR GEORGE WATSKY’S EXPERIMENT IN SUSTAINABLE ART

Advik Shreekumar

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eorge Watsky goes all in. Though far from a household name, he sells his music, tours the nation, and is surviving on his art. The 27-year-old California native is part of a generation of YouTube stars who use the website as a platform to spread their messages. Google’s partnership with AdSense, and the creation of the YouTube Partners program, has allowed performers with large audiences to monetize their channels, making YouTube stardom a viable career for those with the most views.

Though he follows the basic formula, Watsky deviates from the norm both as a YouTube performer and a musician: his videos run without ads, his music is available for free download, and he shies away from lucrative endorsements for the sake of integrity. Yet his continued success as a musician presents an alternative, engagement-based model for Internet artistry.

A GENERIC YOUTUBE STAR? Watsky does most of what one would expect from the owner of a successful YouTube channel. His content is diverse, ranging from a whimsical rap about a child raised by Tasmanian devils to spoken word poetry that is deeply critical of social norms and practices. Regardless of the subject matter, Watsky puts painstaking effort into producing his music and videos, reinvesting his

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profits from touring into the creative pipeline. As a result, almost every song from his most recent album is accompanied by a music video, and his channel sports over 60 uploads. To further grow his following, Watsky is also active on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. A secondary vlog-based YouTube channel offers a more intimate view into his life and philosophy, allowing ardent fans to connect with him more deeply. His main channel is now pushing 560,000 followers.

A handful of videos on the channel feature cameos by artists with whom he has collaborated. Watsky himself appears on several other channels, notably on the rapper Dumbfoundead’s and twice in the popular series Epic Rap Battles of History. Collaboration is at the heart of YouTube, as it allows artists to crosspollinate their subscriber pools and explore new artistic directions. The YouTube Playbook, an online tool published by the website, contains a full entry on collaboration, advising content creators that, “Collaborating … can be one of the most powerful ways to reach new audiences. Other YouTube creators are a critical part of your community on YouTube.” Several YouTube channels have even arisen with the purpose of uniting high-profile performers, notably The YOMYOMF Network and LOUD. The growing importance of collaborations on YouTube is hardly surprising; guest features have been a common occurrence in the music recording industry for these same reasons.

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CHANGING THE GAME Many of Watsky’s maneuvers, however, seem counterintuitive. His most widely viewed video, originally titled “Pale Kid Raps Fast,” features the artist speeding through a 90-second rap and amassed over 24 million views at its peak. The video went viral in early 2011, eventually earning him two appearances on The Ellen DeGeneres Show.

Despite this success, Watsky decided to take it down. In an interview with the HPR, he explained that “the first paragraph of every article about me was about that video. … I’m not hoping to establish myself as the pale kid who raps fast because I’m much more interested in content that actually means something to people.” For Watsky, maintaining a balanced artistic profile was far more important than raking in views on a viral hit. The decision makes sense in the context of Watsky’s larger strategy; his performances extend beyond YouTube, into music tours, poetry performances, and other appearances. When one aspect of his art threatened to overshadow the others, he made a necessary adjustment to preserve his broader image.

Even the core of his business, music sales, is atypical. Most of Watsky’s projects are available as name-your-price downloads on Bandcamp, a web music store that allows artists to sell and promote their music independently. The name-your-price scheme allows listeners to obtain music without paying a cent, which may be useful for growing a fan base, but could be financially unsustainable over the long term.

This pricing strategy is a result of the burgeoning amount of art available online. When confronted with such a huge diversity of material, the casual consumer may simply lack the means or interest to pay for new content, especially when other music can be found free just a few clicks away. Watsky himself acknowledges that now, “people need to hear what they’re getting into before they know that they want to support it.” Freely distributing his music cuts down a major barrier separating him from potential fans, giving them the same try-before-you-buy experience they may find in other markets. Likewise, Watsky’s decision to keep his videos advertisement-free gives him a direct link to viewers, allowing them to move from song to song without his message being diluted.

MAKING THE WATSKY MODEL PROFITABLE So where does Watsky earn his money? His 2013 release of the album Cardboard Castles was an unprecedented success, peaking at #10 on the iTunes store. Surprisingly, even his music on Bandcamp turns a profit, fueled by fans who are willing to open their pockets to support an artist they believe in. Referring to two of his free mix tapes, Watsky explains, “Every time I put out a project people voluntarily give me more money. I think I made three times as much on Nothing Like the First Time as I did on New Kind Of Sexy, a year later, even though they were both downloaded the same amount of times.” The honesty and integrity behind Watsky’s work reach his listeners, allowing the long-term dedication to his art to offset short-term sacrifices on ad revenue and music sales.

Touring is another major part of the equation. Building off this album and other releases, Watsky has been on three separate international tours in the last two years. Sustaining this tourcentric model is clearly on Watsky’s mind: three of the tracks on Cardboard Castles are written with live audiences in mind, featuring call-and-response sections for audiences to jump in.

His tours feature other artists he’s collaborated with in the past, leading to the same cross-pollination that an online venture would. Watsky also makes a habit of joining the crowd after his concerts, chatting with fans long after the show itself has ended.

AN EVOLVING PLATFORM Watsky’s model is not easy to replicate, but thanks to the dynamic nature of the Internet, emerging artists don’t have to. For its part, YouTube is working hard to cultivate new and exciting content. The advice provided in the YouTube Playbook is just the start; Google has already remodeled an aircraft hangar in Los Angeles, transforming it into a massive video production studio called the YouTube Space. The Space makes filming equipment and locations available to content creators who demonstrate significant viewership on their channels, and holds workshops open to the general public. Since the creation of this Space, YouTube has constructed two more, one in London and the other in Tokyo. That YouTube is investing so heavily in open infrastructure suggests that the company sees tremendous potential in putting professional tools in the hands of promising artists.

On a smaller scale, YouTube provides uploaders with detailed analytics to help them understand their audiences. Past a certain threshold of fame, artists may be able to rely on their fans to spread their music, but until that point releasing the right kinds of content can involve tactical as well as artistic thinking. Kristina Hu ’16, owner of the YouTube channel TheUnsungHeroine, explains in an interview with the HPR that this data “gives great insight into viewership demographics, and I certainly use this information in making my cover choices.” Like Watsky, Hu also benefited from the success of a viral video, experiencing a surge in subscribers when her piano cover of Skrillex’s “Scary Monsters And Nice Sprites” made the front page of the popular website Reddit. This growth in popularity changed the way Hu approached her channel. As demand for her music grew, Hu began selling recordings on iTunes, replicating the Watsky model in part: ad-free videos for viewers to enjoy and music sales elsewhere for fans to support.

The growing infrastructure and ever-present possibility of going viral have created opportunities previously unheard of.

YouTube has evolved from a simple video-sharing website into a powerful platform for emerging performers to spread their work. The medium is at its most powerful when used as Watsky does: as one part of a multi-pronged strategy for spreading a message. Achieving celebrity through YouTube is still far from a guarantee, but in that sense, it is no different from traditional roads to stardom, or even sustainability. But where best-practice norms are slowly emerging for attaining that goal, George Watsky illuminates a less-traveled path, one from which hopeful artists can learn.

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UNITED STATES

THE WAR ON IRRELIGION Why Americans consider it politically correct to discriminate against atheists Zak Lutz

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n 2007, Pete Stark (D-Calif.) came out as America’s first-ever congressional nonbeliever—accidentally.

When the Secular Coalition of America (SCA) sent out a form asking members of Congress about their views on various issues related to the separation of church and state, Stark checked the wrong box in haste and labeled himself an atheist.

Instead of totally walking back, however, Stark announced that he was a “Unitarian who does not believe in a Supreme Being,” pointedly rejecting the “atheist” label and instead branding himself as merely secular.

Just a few years later, fellow Democrat Eric Swalwell—a novice politician recently transplanted from Maryland, previously most famous for impersonating an MTV crew and hosting a fake bikini contest in Cancun—challenged Stark, a powerful 40-year representative who regularly garnered over 70 percent of the vote. Both of California’s senators, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), President Obama, the district’s labor unions, and all of Greater San Francisco’s major newspapers endorsed Stark. Nevertheless, after months of giddily reminding the district’s progressive constituency that Stark opposed the national motto of “In God We Trust,” Swalwell won the election.

Perhaps, then, SCA isn’t lying when it says that some 28 members of Congress privately tell the group that they don’t believe in God. Former Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), for example, claims to have rejected belief in God for years, but he didn’t publicly reveal his atheism until after he left Congress. Simply put, nonbelief is political suicide. Roughly 15-20 percent of Americans don’t believe in God; if any other religious or ethnic group that large had no representation in Congress, out-

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Kyrsten Sinema was sworn in to Congress with the U.S. Constitution instead of the Bible. rage would ensue.

This prominent closet-atheism and lack of representation reveals a sad truth: nonbelievers may be the last group against which Americans can discriminate without offending norms of political correctness. This doesn’t mean that the average voter thinks atheists cannot effectively legislate or that they lack the intellectual chops. Instead, Americans view atheists as “different” from them, struggling to connect with their values and lacking the morality needed to manage government affairs. Empirical evidence largely proves this false, but for atheists, the foreseeable future is bleak. Even as American culture becomes increasingly accepting of the irreligious, there’s little hope of a breakthrough moment. Indeed, even atheists seem to have little impetus to work their way into the political mainstream.

HISTORY OF ATHEISM IN POLITICS Since America’s first competitive presidential election, “atheist” has been a politically dangerous label; Thomas Jefferson’s 1796 loss to John Adams was, in part, due to claims that he was a godless man. Going forward, suspicion of nonbelief continued to hurt candidates, though never entirely destroying careers. Many atheists, later identified as such through private letters, successfully continued their careers by simply avoiding the issue and lying when necessary. With no more than a few percent of Americans rejecting belief in God, no open atheist ever served in Congress or as governor, much less in the White House. Still, public attitudes were relatively tolerant of irreligion through the early 20th century: antireligious scholar Bertrand Russell was

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a bestselling writer, and rumored atheist William Howard Taft won the 1908 election with two-thirds of the Electoral College.

During the Cold War, however, views toward irreligion shifted. As in any war, anything associated with the enemy became socially treasonous. As August Brunsman of Secular Students for America told the HPR, “[Anti-atheist sentiment] goes back to the McCarthy days when our leaders set up ‘godless communism’ as the direct opposite of what it meant to be a good American.”

Cold War propaganda reinforced negative public perceptions of atheism, positioning religion as a prerequisite to patriotism.

Moreover, as Brunsman explained, “the huge push by conservative Christian churches didn’t help.” These churches grew in numbers by capitalizing on public sentiment—holding open disdain for atheists and fueling religious tensions that still exist today. Society came to view atheists as unable to make worthy moral judgments without the guidance of God. To this day, the trend continues: atheists, according to polls, are the least “trusted” and “liked” demographic in the country.

Why? The leading theory suggests that Americans regard atheists as unwatched, with no godlike figure judging their every action and enforcing morality. Thus, atheists’ behavior might reflect a selfish human instinct, whereas theists’ behavior is guided by the desire to attain salvation and avoid eternal damnation. As atheist historian Jennifer Michael Hecht stated simply to the HPR, “There are lots of folks who think that without God, there would be no morality.”

Most of these value judgments are empirically false. Among the different levels of religiosity, neurological studies prove atheists are the least racist, sexist, and homophobic, and they commit the fewest crimes. Ironically, the self-described “very religious” score worst on all these categories. Moreover, atheists are the most intelligent and educated religious group. Atheists, fully ethical and able, could represent society in Congress. Yet continuing bias prevents this; only 45 percent of Americans would even consider voting for an atheist candidate.

THE FUTURE When Pete Stark’s reelection chances appeared small and shrinking, atheists thought they had another hope: Kyrsten Sinema, the Democratic candidate for Arizona’s 9th Congressional District. During her campaign, Sinema had openly rejected theism and advocated secular principles. Though her opponent labeled her a pagan—a charge she did not deny—she won a close race.

However, Sinema quickly dashed any hope for an atheist breakthrough. She’s no wimp—she’s both the first member of Congress to complete an Ironman Triathlon and the first to openly identify as bisexual. But with her office constantly facing inquiries regarding her religious beliefs, Sinema ran away from the “atheist” label; her campaign declared it “not befitting of her life’s work or personal character.” Sinema did not just deny atheism; she degraded atheists’ morality, proudly elevating her own

character over theirs.

Sinema’s case reveals the ultimate problem for atheist acceptance: one’s religion is easy to keep private. Other formerly persecuted groups—including the black, gay, and Jewish communities—struggled to hide their identity and avoid discrimination, but ultimately this helped them integrate into society. For example, gays, the most recent group to make social strides, hid publicly for a long time. Yet as people came to realize they had gay friends, colleagues, and family, they began to accept homosexuality. Thus, even though America has five times more nonbelievers than homosexuals, most Americans claim to know more homosexuals than nonbelievers. As a result, atheists remain different and unknown to many Americans; they may walk among us, but without the identification necessary to reform preconceived notions.

The problem becomes self-perpetuating: atheists don’t wish to come out because it’s difficult, and it’s difficult to come out because few atheists have before. Even courageous politicians in safe districts, like Barney Frank and Kyrsten Sinema, choose not to reveal their lack of religious belief; the at least 28 closeted atheist members of Congress no doubt witnessed the demise of Pete Stark. For any atheist, the smart political decision might be to remain silent.

THE LAST HOPE Despite low public approval and little cause for optimism, pro-atheist organizations may be able to ride the more accepting attitudes of younger generations. As Herb Silverman, founder and president emeritus of SCA told the HPR, “Just as gays were unable to serve [in Congress] openly several years ago, atheists today are afraid to do so. Things changed for gays, and I’m optimistic they will also change for atheists as more come out of the closet. Fortunately, younger people are more likely to look at the character of individuals than their professed religious beliefs.” However, convincing the first wave of atheists to come out of that closet poses a challenge, especially in politics. If well-funded atheist organizations can promote secular candidates—just as EMILY’s List and the Gay & Lesbian Victory Fund promote female and gay candidates, respectively—then the irreligious might have a future in American politics. First, though, that funding needs to come, and candidates need to consider the gamble worth it.

The bigger question might be whether atheists care. A number of atheists have formed organizations to promote secular values, both culturally and politically. Yet, as a matter of identity, atheists don’t consider their lack of religion as essential to their identity as theists consider their religion. This apathy, combined with the virulent energy of the anti-atheist Christian right, seems to guarantee long-term stagnation for atheists in politics.

People simply don’t like atheists, atheists don’t care, and politicians get elected by bashing them. It’s a situation with few losers that no one cares to change.

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HOW BUZZFeeD IS LIKE A PARISIAN CAFÉ The future of journalism will look a lot like your news feed.

Joe Choe

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uzzFeed is gaining traction as a news site. In fact, it had 130 million unique visitors last November. It is projected to make $120 million this year, and referrals from Facebook increased by 855 percent in 2013.

The sudden rise of BuzzFeed is a signal that we are entering a new era in journalism, in which social media is used to diffuse easily-digestible news. Although BuzzFeed is largely known for its trivial memes and lists, it has recently expanded into news coverage and investigative reporting. BuzzFeed has realized that this diverse and varied model is necessary to remain viable in the 21st century, where even a nanosecond is too much to spare catching up on news.

NOT JUST LOLCATS AND TOP 10 LISTS Provocative, sensationalist, and even cryptic headlines have helped sites like BuzzFeed maximize web traffic and revenue.

To create virality, these sites optimize content to be easily shared on social networks. Owen Youngman, professor of digital media strategy at Northwestern University, told the HPR that “BuzzFeed does a remarkable job of paying attention to its users’ interests and leverages that to create additional content that is in sync with those demonstrated interests.” This content comes in the form of the top 10 lists, gossip, trivia, and memes that have now become ubiquitous on Facebook and Twitter.

However, BuzzFeed is not limited to these seemingly trivial posts. In an interview with the HPR, New York Times contributor and Columbia University professor Thomas Edsall said, “I am sure what BuzzFeed wants to do is start with a good base of readership and then expand into real news coverage. They want to develop a commercially viable website first and then use the revenue to invest in more substantive news coverage.”

In the past year, BuzzFeed has expanded internationally into cities such as Istanbul, Cairo, Nairobi, and Moscow by hiring correspondents in those key regions. Today, BuzzFeed boasts an extensive news section that includes everything from breaking

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American and world news to long-form pieces. According to Edsall, “BuzzFeed has advanced the notion of journalism. Insofar as they are expanding into covering national and international affairs, I think they will be doing a great service for journalism.”

What distinguishes BuzzFeed from more traditional news outlets, however, is its unique approach to journalism. Sheera Frenkel, BuzzFeed’s Middle East Correspondent, told the HPR, “when it comes to journalism, we take conversations forward in a new way. We not only put out timely news; we also think, ‘how can we make it more interesting and more relevant?’” For example, BuzzFeed extensively covered the issue of LGBT rights in Russia in advance of the Sochi Olympics. In tune with its unique style, BuzzFeed recently compiled a “listicle” with quotes of Olympians speaking out against Putin’s anti-LGBT legislation.

Indeed, BuzzFeed news stories are famous for incorporating visuals and condensing heavy news topics into articles or lists that are easily accessible and digestible. However, Frenkel argues that this does not necessarily detract from the actual analysis. She constructed one of her first lists on the top seven reasons dismantling Syrian weapons will be difficult. The list had exactly the same content she would have included in a traditional news article, except that the content was divided into seven points. This allowed people who had never read about the crisis in Syria—let alone the chemical weapons issue—to click on the list, read it, and understand it. Frenkel concludes, “I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. I think finding a new way of writing should be what journalism is about.”

THE PARISIAN CAFÉ: WHERE BREAKING NEWS MEETS CUTE PUPPIES Although BuzzFeed’s critics may balk at having investigative long-form articles on a website famous for memes and listicles, this unease is unwarranted. As Youngman observed, “This model is not a startling change. People have different thresholds of interest BuzzFeed has recognized that and has varied the diet of

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information that is presented.”

In fact, different forms of content have lived side by side in a variety of news formats throughout the years. For example, a TV channel might feature, in succession, a news broadcast, a sitcom, and a cooking competition. Even in newspapers, one can find comics and an arts section next to news and op-eds. In particular, such juxtapositions are not unusual to younger people, who are used to seeing unrelated items next to each other in their multifaceted social media news feeds.

At a South by Southwest talk in 2012, Jonah Peretti, founder and CEO of BuzzFeed, compared this experience to sitting at a street café in Paris where “you have a copy of Sartre’s Being and Nothingness, a copy of Le Monde, the newspaper, and next to you, as is often the case in Paris, is a cute dog. You read philosophy; you read the news; you pet the dog. You don’t become stupid when you are petting the dog. You are just being human!”

Similarly, a reader of BuzzFeed can click on an article about the cutest couples at the Golden Globes and then stumble across an article about the police state in Egypt. As Edsall observes, “looking at something cute and smiling does not preclude also being interested in world events, domestic policy, and everything else BuzzFeed covers.” This model may not be unique as a concept, but it is a testament to BuzzFeed’s mission to expose readers to both the trivial and serious aspects of life.

EXPANSION AND VIABILITY BuzzFeed’s social media savvy has undoubtedly helped fuel its expansion. As Miriam Elder, BuzzFeed’s foreign editor, described to the HPR, “we have really tapped into speaking to a new generation … BuzzFeed is all about living on the social web so that everybody is really connected to the conversations that are happening online. Rather than treating social media as something parallel to real life, we understand that it is a part of real life.” According to Edsall, BuzzFeed’s use of social media to connect with its readers exemplifies how the media “has been democratized in many ways. That may have its pluses and minuses, but overall it’s a benefit.” Today, more traditional news outlets are also tapping into the potential of the social web as a place to get inspiration and information for stories. Social media also provides an ideal forum to share stories and increase readership.

However, contrary to common criticisms, BuzzFeed does not solely care about clicks, likes, and shares. Often, catchy, “clickbait” headlines promise more than they can deliver, leading

readers to grow disappointed and frustrated. Frenkel notes that during her time at BuzzFeed, no one has ever asked her how many clicks she has gotten. Instead, they ask her whether she reached the right audience: “It’s not about getting 15,000 seeing your story. It’s [getting] the right 15,000.”

With an exponential expansion in readership and traffic, it is no surprise that BuzzFeed has been extremely profitable. One reason for this is BuzzFeed’s unique way of advertising. Traditionally, online advertising consisted of banners and squares acting as annoying interruptions. However, BuzzFeed uses “native advertising,” which presents the ads as though they are part of the site’s editorial content. For example, the article “10 Airplane Seat-to-Seat Chat Pickup Lines” blends in perfectly with all of BuzzFeed’s other listicles. The only difference is that this one is sponsored by Virgin America. These ads are just as creative and shareable as the original content, making them even more effective. This viable advertising strategy has allowed BuzzFeed to hire more investigative journalists, to position correspondents all over the world, and to produce more in-depth original content with minimal financial constraints.

Critics point out that native advertising and sponsored content can be misleading. However, Heidi Tworek, a Harvard lecturer who teaches the course “The History of News,” argued in an interview with the HPR that every advertisement is essentially a form of sponsored content. Some just happen to be clearly separated from the original content, while others, like the advertisements on BuzzFeed, are integrated with it. In a way, native advertising can also be a boon for readers. According to Tworek, news organizations in the past often packaged press releases and official statements and presented them as investigative journalism or original reporting. However, native advertising actually acknowledges its original sources. This transparency is consistent with the “Parisian café” paradigm of consuming a varied selection of content, including advertisements that are just as entertaining and informative as everything else presented.

Tworek believes that “BuzzFeed is in many ways the litmus test of the future of journalism.” There is no doubt that BuzzFeed’s model for journalism allows it to present news in a way that attracts a diverse selection of readers while also making money. In addition, it satisfies both our intellectual and trivial needs. BuzzFeed may be just starting to shape how we obtain news and entertain ourselves, but it will undoubtedly continue to have a far-reaching influence on how journalism and the Internet coexist in the future.

“Looking at something cute and smiling does not preclude also being interested in world events, domestic policy, and everything else BuzzFeed covers.”

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CURRENCY WARS OF PENNIES, DOLLARS, AND MONEYED INTERESTS

John Acton

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ne hundred and sixty years ago, the United States made a bold and fundamental alteration to the structure of its currency by eliminating the half-cent. Ever since, the basic denominations with which we exchange goods and services have been more or less constant. Meanwhile, inflation has drastically altered purchasing power to the point that today’s dime has the same purchasing power that the half-cent did at the time of its elimination. The time has come to change America’s currency once again, this time by eliminating the penny and replacing the dollar bill with a dollar coin. However, there is a discrepancy between what is economically advisable and what is politically feasible. Due to powerful special interests and general apathy regarding currency reform, it may be a long time before any true change occurs.

A PRETTY PENNY: THE ECONOMICS OF THE ONE CENT COIN It costs 2.4 cents to manufacture each penny. The cost of manufacturing pennies is compounded by the costs associated with their use. Jeff Gore, assistant professor of physics at MIT and founder of Americans to Retire the Penny, told the HPR, “the amount of time we spend handling pennies is a much more significant issue—two and a half seconds on average per cash transaction. It’s more than a billion dollars wasted.” Indeed, various economic analyses have demonstrated that the time wasted handling, counting, and transporting pennies creates enough cumulative inefficiencies to have a tangible economic impact. While this effect is very small relative to the United States’ Gavin Sullivan $14 trillion economy, that does not dissuade activists like Gore. As he explained, “it’s not that it’s the most important problem in the world, but it’s one of the easiest problems to solve. Most problems are hard.

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… All we have to do [to eliminate the penny] is pass an Act of Congress.”

The only notable pro-penny organization, Americans for Common Cents, details three core economic arguments in favor of the penny: that eliminating the penny will increase government spending by increasing production of the even more wasteful nickel, that eliminating the penny would hurt charities, and that price rounding would hurt consumers. None of these arguments stand up to extensive scrutiny. There is no reason to assume that more nickels would be needed to replace the penny.

Furthermore, the fact that the nickel is even more inefficient than the penny suggests that the inefficiencies of the nickel should also be addressed. It certainly does not mean that both problems should be ignored.

Meanwhile, in countries such as Canada that have eliminated the penny, government initiatives encouraging the donation of the remaining pennies in the economy actually increased many charities’ profits substantially. Moreover, some charity CEOs are optimistic that a transition to nickels as the lowest value currency denomination would increase total donations and decrease some of the hassle of transportation. Lastly, price rounding, which would occur after the calculation of sales taxes, would increase prices about half the time and decrease them about half the time. Consumers would see little or no change in their total expenditures.

THE ECONOMICS OF THE DOLLAR BILL Unlike the penny, the dollar bill costs far less to make than it is actually worth: a mere 5.4 cents per bill. Yet the dollar bill also poses serious economic issues. Smaller denominations change hands far more frequently than their larger counterparts, so the typical dollar bill undergoes massive wear and tear. This means that dollar bills fall out of circulation very quickly and therefore have to be printed in large quantities every year. Dollar coins, while more expensive to mint, more than make up for their cost through their durability. As of 2013, the Government Accountability Office estimates that switching to dollar coins would save $4.3 billion over the next 30 years. Calculations from earlier years, which currency-reform advocates suggest are more accurate, report that the switch would save as much as half a billion dollars per year.

As with the penny, some dispute the economics behind eliminating the dollar bill, arguing that people would lose the coins frequently and simply refuse to use them. Yet again, the historical record suggests opponents of reform are wrong. Canada and much of Europe stopped printing their lowest denominations of paper currency in the 1980s and replaced them with coins, without any tangible backlash. The coins are physically larger than smaller denominations, and since they are more valuable, people treat them with more care.

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potential for bipartisan agreement. The Tea Party is always looking for ways to cut spending, while President Obama has explicitly criticized the penny: “Anytime we’re spending money on something that people don’t actually use … we should probably change.” Nevertheless, there has been no serious effort to modernize our currency since 2006, and previous efforts gained little traction in Congress. The political reason for this is clear: vigorous lobbying on the part of those who would stand to suffer from currency reform.

Major zinc mining companies fund groups that defend the penny’s usefulness to society. Interestingly, Americans for Common Cents’ Executive Director, Mark Weller, is also a partner at the lobbying firm SNR Denton. One of Weller’s clients is Jarden Zinc, which has paid Denton between $140,000 and $340,000 every year since 2010. Similarly, Michael J. Brown, former spokesman for Americans for Common Cents, informed a congressional committee that his work with Americans for Common Cents had been “for the zinc industry.”

Meanwhile, the principal opponent of the dollar coin is the Federal Reserve. The Fed sells all of the currency that it prints to banks, generating 94.6 cents of profit for every dollar bill entered into circulation. By contrast, buying and selling coins generates no profit for the Fed. Thus, the elimination of the dollar bill would cost the Fed dearly.

However, there is a second problem that transcends lobbyists: general apathy and resistance to change. Former Rep. Jim Kolbe (R-Ariz.), a champion of currency reform for two decades in Congress and current chair of the Dollar Coin Alliance, told the HPR that opposition from the Federal Reserve and the zinc industry was rivaled by “inertia,” because “people just don’t like changing their currency.” Still, while advocates for reform remain concerned about apathy, recent polling suggests Americans are at least open to the idea of currency reform. Rasmussen Reports recently found that only 31 percent of Americans oppose the elimination of the penny, while 49 percent support it.

WHAT’S NEXT? Currency reform activists like Gore and Kolbe seem to acknowledge that the short-term prospects for reform look bleak.

Gore noted that it will take “something concrete” to inspire change, and Kolbe bluntly acknowledged that “there doesn’t seem to be enough momentum yet [to implement currency reform].” Yet they remain hopeful for the future. Kolbe predicted that “it will happen eventually, as the inevitable march of inflation makes the penny more and more worthless and the paper dollar less and less valuable.”

It has been 160 years since the United States ended production of the half-cent, and it would be foolish to speculate as to exactly when another such change will occur. However, one thing is certain: with so many powerful interests profiting off the status quo and so many Americans indifferent to the issue, it will take a legitimate, new movement for anything to change.

At first, one might think that the strong economic case for currency reform would intersect conveniently with political

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THE SCHISM POPE FRANCIS AND THE VATICAN’S NEW MESSAGE

Gavin Sullivan

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ince taking the helm of the Catholic Church in March 2013, Pope Francis has shown a clear willingness to make waves in the sea of the faithful. While American Catholics have historically been divided between liberal and conservative factions, Francis has introduced a new perspective that, in theory, could reshape existing Catholic political alignments.

Without proposing any changes to Church doctrine, Francis has de-emphasized gay marriage and abortion and refocused attention on economic issues. When asked about gay members of the clergy, Francis notably responded, “If someone is gay and he searches for the Lord and has good will, who am I to judge?”

Meanwhile, his first Apostolic Exhortation, Evangelii Gaudium (The Joy of the Gospel), labels “the socioeconomic system ... unjust at its root.” At a meeting of the World Economic Forum in January, Francis asked global leaders “to ensure that humanity is served by wealth and not ruled by it.”

Francis is by no means the first pope to address economic issues, but he has been unique in the emphasis he has placed on the Church’s economic message. How this new focus will impact the political choices of American Catholics, a group that tends to split nearly evenly between Democratic and Republican presidential candidates, remains to be seen. According to Gallup figures compiled by the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate, no candidate has taken a substantial majority of Catholic voters since Ronald Reagan won 61 percent in 1984.

Despite Francis’ impassioned calls for action, subtle indicators from both priests and politicians suggest that this political division is likely to persist.

A CHURCH DIVIDED? A church of over one billion worldwide members—including 75 million in the United States—is destined to have a wide range of opinions. Although Pope Francis has ushered in a new era of public fascination with Catholicism, his papacy has also highlighted persistent ideological dissent among its believers: on certain issues, a majority of American Catholics actually hold opinions that directly counter official Church teaching.

An October 2013 poll from Quinnipiac University found that among American Catholics who attend mass weekly, 53 percent said they would support legislation in their state allowing samesex couples to marry, with 40 percent in opposition. Catholics who attend services less frequently were even more likely to support such legislation, with 65 percent in favor and 26 percent opposed. The same poll also showed that many Catholics break from Church teaching against abortion. Fifty-two percent of Catholic respondents indicated that they thought abortion should be legal in most or all cases. Only 21 percent took the position of official Church doctrine, which prohibits abortion in all cases.

Political divisions are also evident among Catholic advocacy groups. Although they tend to align on core beliefs, various organizations offer highly different priorities for action. In an interview with the HPR, Sister Simone Campbell, executive director of the progressive Catholic lobby group NETWORK, emphasized her group’s promotion of economic justice, immigra-

tion reform, and the implementation of the Affordable Care Act. When asked if “pro-life” or “pro-marriage” concerns had any place in NETWORK’s work, she answered with a direct “No.” These comments are a far cry from those of Dennis Poust, communications director of the New York State Catholic Conference, the official branch of the Church dedicated to shaping public policy in New York. “There are some issues that are more important than others,” he told the HPR, stressing that “first and foremost, of course, is the right to life, because that’s the right through which all other rights flow.” Poust, however, also highlighted his group’s other policy objectives, ranging from “care for the poor and vulnerable” to “issues of criminal justice.”

In an interview with the HPR, Robert Gilligan, executive director of the Catholic Conference of Illinois (CCI), echoed Poust’s sentiments on controversial social issues. Indeed, the CCI website hosts a page for its Defense of Marriage Department, which “opposes policies that undermine marriage as a sacred union between one man and one woman.” Yet, like Poust, Gilligan also stressed the conference’s dedication to a variety of economic and social justice issues—work which often receives considerably less public attention than the group’s stances against gay marriage and abortion. As Gilligan observed, “Our involvement with [ justice issues] doesn’t sell newspapers, doesn’t get people to watch television.” He argued that “the media is obsessed with [gay marriage and abortion] more than we are. It doesn’t take much for us to make the newspapers when we talk about those two subjects.”

IT’S THE ECONOMY Thus, it is not surprising that Francis’ apparent change of tone towards the gay community has sparked a flurry of public attention, perhaps capped by The Advocate, America’s oldest gay-rights magazine, naming him its “Person of the Year” in 2013. Yet Francis’ economic messages have also generated a surprising amount of public attention. A wide arena has weighed in on his exhortations, with several strident voices punctuating the crowded discourse. Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin said Francis offered “some statements that to me sound kind of liberal.”

Meanwhile, conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh remarked, “This is just pure Marxism coming out of the mouth of the pope.” However, American Catholics seem generally receptive to Francis’ economic outlook. A CNN/ORC International poll released in December found that nearly two-thirds agree with his stance on capitalism. Yet it is uncertain whether the sentiments of this majority will push a solid Catholic segment towards one party.

Members of both sides of the aisle have been quick to claim that their agenda aligns with the Vatican’s message. As reported by the New York Times, Senate majority leader Harry Reid (DNev.) hosted a meeting of Senate Democrats before the holiday recess to discuss income inequality. Sen. Bernard Sanders, a Vermont independent who caucuses with the Democrats, said, “You know, we have a strong ally on our side in this issue—and that is the pope.” Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) later added, “He has given a number of us in the political ranks encouragement, and

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Francis has introduced a new perspective that could reshape Catholic political alignments.

really a challenge, to step up and remember many of the values that brought us to public life.”

Some Republicans have also claimed that Francis’ messages resonate with their party. The New York Times notes that Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin said the pope is “breathing new life into the fight against poverty.” Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich was more blunt: “I think every Republican should embrace the pope’s core critique that you do not want to live on a planet with billionaires and people who do not have any food.”

Until one party more clearly embraces the teachings of Francis, Catholic voters may continue to vacillate between the two parties. With virtually no politician aligning with the Church on every social and economic issue, Catholic voters will continue to encounter ballots of imperfect candidates. Gilligan said Catholics must rely on “formation of conscience” when confronted with such decisions. However, voting data suggests that this may lead Catholics down vastly different paths.

YOUNGER PERSPECTIVES Some of the United States’ youngest Catholics, those just entering voting age, might offer a vision of the Church’s future political direction. In interviews with the HPR, Matthew Colford, co-president of Stanford’s ESTEEM Catholic student group, and Father Bernard Campbell, pastor of Newman Hall-Holy Spirit Parish at the University of California-Berkeley, agreed that many college-aged Catholics appreciate the renewed interest in the

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faith furnished by Francis—including among their non-Catholic peers. Yet it remains uncertain how this pope-of-good-feelings could indirectly nudge young Catholics to a particular political identity. Father Peter Rocca, rector of the Basilica of the Sacred Heart at Notre Dame, said Francis is showing “how we can be a more compassionate, more loving, more forgiving Church.”

Students, he claims, admire that Francis “is not a theologian so much as a pastor.” However, Rocca added that Francis has called attention to a broad band of issues that should bear importance for the Church. His message cannot be neatly categorized along American political lines.

Indeed, Francis’ holistic mission is a blend of elements that in American politics may be considered mutually exclusive: he oversees a Church that is staunchly against abortion and gay marriage, but he assigns special significance to issues of economic and social justice. This platform integrates elements of both social conservatism and economic progressivism, emerging as an outlier in the crowded field of American politics. To characterize Francis as turning “left” or “right” would oversimplify a mission rooted in faith and service, not politics. The immense symbolic importance of a changing papal message should not be denied.

Nevertheless, Francis and his Church seek no political office; alliances with Democrats and Republicans seem to occur coincidentally and on a topic-specific level. To American voters, the pope is a paradox. Despite the changing message, no Catholic coalition will emerge from this complicated Church to become a serious new force in the electorate.

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STILL A LONG WALK TO FREEDOM Rachael Hanna

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n the spring of 1994, South Africa overcame mountainous obstacles to end apartheid and elect Nelson Mandela as its first black president. Ten years later, it’s facing many more challenges, this time without the leadership of the man who united and healed a nation bitterly divided. Mandela left behind a legacy of democracy that in a generation transformed South Africa from a country of institutionalized racism and oppression to one of universal suffrage, free speech, and equality under the law. His African National Congress (ANC) party has been the symbol of democratic South Africa since its first sweeping victory in 1994, but without Mandela, its status as the party of political, social, and economic progress faces competition from the country’s growing opposition groups.

Since Mandela’s triumph in 1994, the ANC has consistently held a majority of seats in Parliament, ushering a string of party leaders into the presidency. During these two decades, major welfare expansions have reduced the poverty rate, delivery of utilities has become more widespread and reliable, and political institutions have proven relatively effective in upholding constitutional freedoms. Yet while the ANC remains synonymous with

the anti-apartheid movement, one-party rule is hardly synonymous with democracy, and a growing number of South Africans appear to believe that a strong opposition party or united coalition is exactly what the country needs to preserve and expand Mandela’s legacy.

“DON’T LEAVE YOUR BASE BEHIND” President Mandela championed South Africa’s working class, and the country’s major unions have supported the ANC in election after election. However, according to Harvard anthropology professor John Comaroff, “While Mandela was the spirit of the anti-apartheid movement and of the ANC’s golden era … heroic struggle movements very rarely make heroic political parties.”

With 36 percent of South Africans unemployed, ten percent of whom are discouraged job seekers, the ANC may no longer possess the leadership needed to move the country forward.

In 2012, rather than compromise with long-time supporters, President Jacob Zuma’s government ordered police to break up a mining strike in Marikana, resulting in the deaths of 34 miners.

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And only 10 days after President Mandela’s death, the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA), the country’s largest union, pulled its support for the ANC, stating that it no longer believed the party was truly advocating for the working class.

The ANC has long been in a political coalition with the South African Communist Party and the Congress of South African Trade Unions, which has allowed it to control the presidency.

But discord between major unions and the government, including the loss of NUMSA’s support before elections in May, suggests that the union-backed coalition—and the ANC’s parliamentary majority—may be unstable. Ironically, if a lot of voters now stay home this election cycle, Comaroff predicts, it “will play to the ANC’s favor. Fewer voters translates to a larger ANC majority in Parliament.”

“I AM FUNDAMENTALLY AN OPTIMIST” As the ANC faces declining support, more South Africans are turning to the opposition Democratic Alliance (DA). The DA has its stronghold in the Western Cape, where party leader Helen Zille is the current premier and where the party has also experienced significant national growth in the last three election cycles, with a 50 percent increase in votes in the 2009 elections.

This growing support seems connected to the party’s platform on several issues Mandela and the ANC once championed.

The DA supports expanding local police units to fight crime; it has developed models for training new teachers and securing resources for poor school districts; and it seeks to make quality healthcare more readily accessible to all, with an emphasis on increasing HIV/AIDS testing and medication availability.

South Africa’s ambassador to the United States, Ebrahim Rasool, defended the ANC’s approach to these issues to the HPR: “Mandela knew reconciliation had to happen before economic equality. Now we have to transition our focus from political to economic rights and shift from quantitative to qualitative goals.”

There is in fact some agreement between the ANC and the DA on economic policy, as MP Sejamothopo Motau, Shadow Minister of Economic Development for the DA, told the HPR, “The [government’s] 2012 National Development Plan [states]: ‘The long-term solution to skewed ownership and control is to grow the economy rapidly and spread opportunities for black people.

Improving standards of education, providing better support for entrepreneurs, and focusing on career mobility and work place training are ways to deal with these structural weaknesses.’ The DA concurs fully with these goals, and we will work very hard to turn them into reality.”

However, the DA’s proposal to change the presidential electoral process is not receiving bipartisan support. The party supports changing the constitution so that the president is directly elected by voters, rather than by the majority coalition of the newly elected National Assembly. Comaroff explained, “The DA’s call for direct presidential elections is [meant] to create a fissure between the executive and the legislature. A direct election is dangerous for the ANC. Why give up control over an institution when you have it completely locked?”

Mr. Rasool supported this analysis: “The DA’s proposal is premised on what they perceive to be weaknesses in the incum-

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bents. There is still a groundswell of support for the ANC, just not necessarily for its president. But, I do not think the system will change, and I do not think Mandela would encourage the personality politics motivating this proposal.”

Still, holding the national government more accountable to the people will be critical in fortifying the strength of South Africa’s democracy, especially with the ANC swimming in allegations of corruption, cronyism, and labor disputes during a period of slow economic growth. President Zuma has come under fire regarding $20.8 million in state funds spent on security upgrades to his personal residence, and other high-ranking ANC officials have been implicated in misappropriating state funds. Despite these allegations, the DA and other opposition parties face an uphill battle in a post-Mandela South Africa. Comaroff quipped, “In remote villages, people still hang Zuma pictures on trees.”

MP Dr. Wilmot James, Shadow Minister of Trade and Industry for the DA, also acknowledged this point to the HPR: “Many disillusioned ANC voters are not ready to move their support to another party.” Indeed, voter registration and turnout for national elections has dropped significantly—by almost 30 percent since 1994—but the ANC majority has persisted.

Thus, Mandela remains important to the DA’s political message. Dr. James iterated, “We have made it a core part of our election message to tell voters that we share Mandela’s vision for a better life for all South Africans, but that the ANC is no longer the best vehicle to realize this vision. The DA is working hard to win the trust of such voters by demonstrating how we have improved the lives of ordinary South Africans … where we govern.” This is, in fact, “a good selling point for the DA,” as Mr. Motau put it. “Most South Africans, including many in the national government, readily admit things are working in the [DA-controlled] Western Cape.”

“SOMETIMES IT FALLS UPON A GENERATION TO BE GREAT” The political trajectory of South Africa in a post-Mandela world remains uncertain. What is clear is that his legacy belongs not to the ANC, but to each individual South African. Barring extraordinary campaigning by the DA, the ANC will remain a dominant force in the country’s political landscape for many elections to come. But it must face its own internal issues before it can carry on Mandela’s legacy, which, Mr. Rasool emphasized, “is not simply a set of laws or policies. Rather, it is the constitutional balance he struck between political, social, and economic rights, premised on a society that takes responsibility for its most vulnerable.” Comaroff went further, saying, “Mandela stood for a particular combination of nationalism, liberalism, and Marxism, and he transcended the contradiction of fusing those views together.” Indeed, the idea of containing President Mandela’s life’s work within a single political party contradicts his efforts to make South Africa a better country for all its citizens. Right now, South Africa needs leaders who will tackle unemployment, healthcare, education, and land reform. Where these people come from is not important; Mandela’s legacy is open to anyone who wants to help move South Africa forward. It will certainly be an uphill battle, but, as Mandela himself remarked, “It always seems impossible until it is done.”

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Ancient Causes of a Modern Conflict Explaining the Tuareg Rebellion in Mali

Shahrukh Khan

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he unrest that dethroned Malian President Amadou Toumani Toure and his administration in 2012 has marred the country for the past two years, generating a stream of conflicts involving the military, the Tuareg National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA), and Islamic fundamentalist groups. Several towns have been taken over by combatants, who in turn have reduced the Malian state to little more than a nameplate in much of the North. And although the Tuareg separatists signed a peace deal with the government in the summer of 2013, it was suspended in September, leaving the conflict unresolved in many areas.

This disastrous campaign in Mali is a recent ordeal, but it originates in longstanding conflicts and injustices. The clash between traditional and modern ways of life, encapsulated in the Tuareg community’s relationship with the government, has combined with other grievances to ignite this recent escalation in violence. Tensions arose from an imbalance between the authority of the presidency and that of the Tuareg tribal chiefs, as well as the legacy of a European colonialism, which mishandled Mali’s delicate multicultural atmosphere by geographically displacing the Tuareg and threatening their political autonomy. The Tuareg assert essentially one major grievance to justify their uprising: decades of exclusion and discrimination from political and economic spheres by the Bamakobased government.

EUROPE’S FOLLY To understand the ethnic roots of the

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conflict, “it’s useful to go back to the colonial period,” Amadou Sy, a senior fellow in the Africa Growth Initiative at the Brookings Institution, told the HPR. At the Berlin Conference of 1884-5, imperialist European powers carved up north African territory, creating a variety of artificial territories before forcing the indigenous populations into labor. When the Europeans departed in the mid 20th century, they left certain families or ethnic groups in charge of the governments. Tensions between different peoples as a result of colonialism were an important cause of bloody conflicts like the Rwandan genocide and the present-day Mali conflict.

“For societies where there is a great deal [of ethnic diversity], there is no threat of dominance. But in places where there are a few groups that rival each other, the threats they pose to each other or at least one to the others can be severe,” writes Steve Saideman, a professor of international affairs at Carleton University, regarding the conflict.

Additionally, the borders created by the Europeans were left intact, too.

Whereas pre-1880s tribes would freely migrate from region to region, due to war or famine, post-European imperialism tribes could not. “When Mali became independent, you had nomadic tribes [namely the Tuareg] who were really by nature not residents of one particular region; they were migrating from one country to another,” adds Sy. Thus, in Mali, the Tuareg were politically excluded, and their nomadic lifestyle was threatened by the dictates of the post-imperialist borders.

“The current Tuareg rebellion against the government of Mali has its roots in

the decades of fundamental grievances felt by the Tuareg minority group,” David J. Francis, a professor of African Studies at the University of Bradford, explained to the HPR. The Tuareg represent the largest single ethnicity in northern Mali, but the rule of the national government from the South challenges the paradigm of their chief-led, clan-based society. The Tuaregs have not retaliated or rebelled as much as they have defended their way of life in a nation where they feel unrepresented and mistreated. More than 90 percent of Mali’s population lives in the southern part of the country. The proximity of the capital and Malian central command makes it easier for the government to provide services such as healthcare, financial support, and energy subsidies to the South, albeit all in a limited fashion.

“At some point some Tuareg people were complaining that they were not getting a fair share of the country’s wealth and services,” Sy said.

THE BASICS OF MUTINY The Tuareg’s rebellion was successful, not so much due to the strength of the rebels as to the weakness of the presiding government. But in order for the rebellion to be a sustained effort, the Tuareg, like any recalcitrant group, “need[ed] a civilian population in order to obtain operational assets such as manpower, combat service support and, most importantly, the freedom and willingness to act,” JuanCamilo Castillo of Toronto-based geopolitical analysis firm Global Power told the HPR. Conflicts gain momentum once the population starts to support a militant

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group, which can then obtain the operational and political momentum needed to achieve its desired goals. Because the Tuareg were initially successful in rebelling against the government, they gained the confidence of more people, fueling further success. This human “battlespace,” as Castillo called it, is necessary for the achievement of a group’s goals, but also imperative for its survival as a unit. For the Tuareg, the battlespace is the vast desert of northern Mali.

“Distances are very large, and this is why Mali is a state that has never been able to call its citizens [together],” stated Sy. The vastness of the North, combined with community support and a weak government, has helped the Tuareg succeed in at least prolonging the rebellion. The conflict shows that “the tension has always been there,” added Sy. The bubble finally burst; however, the Tuareg’s fight attracted new groups—including Islamist fighters linked to Al-Qaeda—that have made the situation worse.

WHAT ABOUT THE OTHERS? Although it is true that ethnic groups have an obvious presence in the Malian conflict, a common explanation for the instability is the involvement of extremists. Religious groups have merely complicated the situation between the Tuareg and

the weakened state. But what exactly attracted and allowed these newer extremist groups to thrive? “An unstable post-independence period led to the informalization of state institutions by corrupt elites to serve their vested interests,” said Francis.

The influx of extremist groups is in many ways a product of the power vacuum produced by the conflict between the Tuareg and the Malian government in the North, which in turn is largely a result of post-colonial instability. In fact, the Tuareg have previously taken up arms against the government in rebellions during the 1960s, 1990s, and 2000s. Although the government signed many treaties and ceasefire agreements after each one, it made the mistake of dismissing the long-term issues that the Tuareg had, which included more political power and autonomy.

What will happen next is dependent on a variety of factors, especially whether or not the restored Malian government agrees to or at least compromises with the demands of ethnic tribes. Making the same mistakes and ignoring these demands may send Mali into a vicious cycle of chronic violence and instability. The end of 2013 saw parliamentary elections, with an alliance of parties supporting President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita winning most seats. His nation’s stability will depend on how he responds to the grievances of different ethnic groups, especially the Tuareg.

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Lessons from Paradise On the tenuous post-conflict future of Sri Lanka

Inesha Premaratne

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T

here are two very different narratives about Sri Lanka.

There’s the kind you read in the New York Times, the story about how now, even four years after the civil war has ended, the international community persistently demands that the Sri Lankan government more effectively investigate and prosecute alleged war crimes that took place at the end of the conflict. It’s a narrative about creeping authoritarianism in a country that, having emerged from decades of violence, seems to stand once again on the precipice of trouble.

It’s a story corroborated by some inside the country: pointing to the recent passage of a bill that eliminated presidential term limits and led to the appointment of several of the president’s family members to positions in government, one University of Colombo professor put it this way: “We have a strong democratic tradition in this country; [however,] if anything, we’re moving backwards.”

But then there’s the story that emerges when you drive down the A9 highway that connects the predominately Tamil North to the mostly Sinhalese South—a journey that would have been impossible to make just four years ago, not only because the two sides were at war, but also because back then, the highway didn’t even exist. Now it stretches between two alien communities, a physical symbol of the reconciliation that Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa and his regime are trying to forge. The signs that warn of landmines have long since disappeared, and the camps that used to shelter those who were displaced during the war have long been boarded up. Child soldiers and terrorists have been rehabilitated. “I’m just glad that I can drive behind a bus with my two kids in the back seat and not worry about being blown up,” a mother in Colombo told the HPR. The contrast between these narratives—one grim, the other hopeful—has important ramifications. The United States is set to sponsor its third consecutive resolution against the Sri Lankan government at the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva.

There, the international community intends to demand that the Rajapaksa administration conduct an independent investigation into alleged atrocities at the end of the war, properly prosecute military officials, and expedite its implementation of the recommendations set forth by the country’s own truth and reconciliation commission. The legitimacy of these requests is not a matter of debate. Rather, the concern is how the international community will proceed with the precarious art of international pressure. If it is to be successful, it will have to do so by maintaining a complicated balance between too much pressure and too little, by negotiating with the Rajapaksa regime (instead of alienating it), and by offering economic concessions to recognize the progress that has already been made.

THE GOLDILOCKS RULE OF INTERNATIONAL PRESSURE International pressure’s influence in postwar Sri Lanka is unquestionable. “The only reason we had the Lessons Learned and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC),” Dr. Suvitri Mallawarachi, a prominent scholar at the University of Colombo, told the HPR, “is because the international pressure got to be too much. It kept the focus alive.” Dismayed, she continues, “It’s prevented another Rwanda-like scenario, but that’s about it.” On the reverse

side, one foreign ministry official explained to the HPR that international pressure has had the unintended effect of helping to consolidate the Rajapaksa regime because, as he puts it, “there is a sense that international pressure is not genuine—it is a product not of good will but of the diaspora’s deep pockets and the political ambitions of its purveyors.”

Supporting this claim, newspapers all over Sri Lanka refer to a neo-imperialist West that seeks to trample upon the national pride of the island country, of an international community that has double-standards, that allows superpowers to commit war crimes, but won’t leave a recovering peripheral nation alone. As a result of this sentiment, adds the foreign ministry official, if the Rajapaska government is to be moved by international pressure, this pressure must be levied at just the right dosage.

Foreign ministry officials concede that Rajapaksa is not an exemplar statesman or diplomat. Still, Dr. Charitha Gunasiri, a doctoral student at the University of Jaffna, explaied to the HPR, “Sri Lanka is a top-down society. Any change must be catalyzed by the leadership.” If the West is to be successful, it must engage Rajapaksa, not alienate him. It would seem the West in part realizes this, as the same foreign ministry official explains, “They [the international community] may not like him, but they also know that if Sri Lanka is to have a chance at reconciliation, it will have to be under Rajapaksa. No other politician enjoys enough political support to make this happen except him.”

PLAYING THE LONG GAME Ultimately, if the West is to really engage Rajapaksa, it is going to have to respond to his model of reconciliation, which emphasizes economic and infrastructure development first with a view towards a political settlement later. “It doesn’t have to be either/or,” Dr. Mallawarchi argues. “They shouldn’t say we’ll do all the economic development now and then we’ll do the political settlement later; they should be working on both simultaneously.” But for now, if the international community is to convince the Rajapaksa government to adopt this strategy, it is first going to have to prove that its intentions are genuine. A creative means for doing that might mean encouraging investors at home to invest in the country’s northern economy. If the outside world can help Sri Lanka give basic necessities and support to those who were most affected by the war, it will have a firmer basis for demanding a political settlement.

Contrary to the headlines, the people of Sri Lanka are cautiously optimistic; they don’t believe their country to be the basket case some academics warn it to be—at least not yet. Many scholars point to the lessons of Professor John Paul Lederach, who argues that post-conflict reconciliation requires “an encounter” that forces conflicting parties to focus on their relationship after a period of turmoil. If international pressure is to be effective, the international community too must find a way to build anew its relationship with the regime in Colombo. The fate of paradise depends on it.

Names have been changed to protect the identity of some sources.

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AL-QAEDA IN ANBAR Why Iraq’s Sunni-Shia Conflict Isn’t Over

Wright Smith

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n early January, Iraq saw days of intense violence and conflict, culminating in the capture of the city of Fallujah by forces linked to Al-Qaeda. Fighting has raged around Fallujah and other cities in Iraq’s restive western Anbar Province since then and has become a three-way struggle between army forces loyal to the Shia-dominated government in Baghdad, Sunni tribesmen living in Anbar, and fighters from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS), which has a strong affiliation with Al-Qaeda.

Anbar Province borders Syria, and the breakdown of authority as a result of the Syrian Civil War has allowed fighters and weapons to move across the border with relative ease. Many of the fighters who have moved in Iraq are from ISIS, which has recently faced challenges to its authority in parts of Syria both from government forces and from other rebel groups. Al-Qaeda affiliates like ISIS have taken advantage of lawlessness around the Syria-Iraq border and elsewhere in Anbar Province to train and shelter militants. “We lost control in the rural areas of the Anbar Province a couple of years ago, really when the United

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States left. When the wide area surveillance [surveillance produced using satellites and aircraft that could cover large areas of the region] left, we didn’t know what was going on in the deep desert, and Al-Qaeda used those areas to shelter,” said Dr. Michael Knights, an expert on Iraq at the Washington Institute of Near East Policy, in an interview with the HPR.

CULTURE CLASH The presence of Al-Qaeda and the instability in Syria were not, however, the catalysts for the collapse of government control in the cities of Anbar. A crucial reason for the fighting is lingering ethnic tensions leftover from the creation of the postSaddam Hussein Iraqi government. After the American invasion of Iraq in 2003, Saddam’s Sunni-dominated government was toppled and a new government composed of the majority Shia came to power. The current government under Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has been accused by Sunnis of discriminating against the Sunnis, thus fostering resentment and distrust

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“The ideal response to this situation would be what we were doing in 2006-2007, getting the Iraqi government to work with the tribes and to separate Al-Qaeda from the population.”

between the two groups.

On December 29-30, Iraqi Police in the city of Ramadi moved to remove a Sunni protest camp, which was set up to protest the perceived discrimination of the Baghdad administration. This crackdown prompted a massive backlash by Sunni residents and lawmakers, leading the government to withdraw its police and soldiers. After the withdrawal, Sunni tribesmen asserted control over Ramadi, while ISIS forces, allied with some of the local tribes, took power in nearby Fallujah and repulsed government attempts to eject them.

“What we are seeing here is more of a culmination than a deterioration. This is where the trend lines have been heading.

Iraq is no more dangerous today than it was yesterday, but the fighting has moved to a larger scale,” Dr. Knights explained. The situation is very similar to that between 2004 and 2006, when Al-Qaeda in Iraq launched attacks around the country while supported by a sympathetic Sunni populace in Anbar Province.

The United States was able to develop a strategy against AlQaeda in this period, and formed alliances with local leaders and militias in Anbar, collectively called the Sawha, to work together against Al-Qaeda. The Sawha was composed of the Sunni tribal fighters and leaders who were persuaded to switch their support from Al-Qaeda in Iraq to the American forces during what American officials term “The Sunni Awakening.”

This response offers many clues to possible strategies the Iraqi government can pursue in dealing with the crisis. “The ideal response to this situation would be what we were doing in 2006-7, getting the Iraqi government to work with the tribes and to separate Al-Qaeda from the population, and also using hightempo counterterrorism operations with intelligence and special forces,” Dr. Knights stated.

During the Awakening in 2006-7, the Sawha forces changed their support from Al-Qaeda to the United States, thanks to a combination of overreach by Al-Qaeda and American political, financial, and military support. With the loss of their base among disaffected Sunnis, Al-Qaeda was unable to continue its momentum against the Shia government and the American forces. A combination of military and special operations that killed the Al-Qaeda leadership, including Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, decapitated the leadership of the organization in Iraq. The combination of the loss of Sunni support and counterterror operations against the leadership devastated Al-Qaeda in Iraq.

Unfortunately, the combination of regional instability and ethnic tension has allowed the organization to revive.

A WINNING STRATEGY? The United States has indicated that it will not be deploying troops on the ground in Iraq in the fight against Al-Qaeda, with Secretary of State John Kerry saying that, “[t]his fight belongs to the Iraqis.” Despite the lack of American troops on the ground, Dr. Knights explained how the Iraqi government could proceed in the face of the current crisis, and how it may be turned into an opportunity: “The one group of people that the Sawha leaders hate more than the central government is Al-Qaeda. This gives the Iraqi government the opportunity to do the right thing and stand shoulder to shoulder and fight Al-Qaeda. In Ramadi, they are fighting side by side, and they need to do more than tactically cooperate. They need to actually work with these guys in the long term, and sit down with them, and listen to their grievances, and then do something about it.”

Working with the Sunni tribes, in the manner of the United States during the 2006-7 campaigns against Al-Qaeda in Iraq, will give the Iraqi government the allies it needs in the Anbar Province to eject the Al-Qaeda forces from major populated areas. It also has the potential to decrease the hostility between the Shia-dominated central government and the Sunni tribes by working together to combat a common enemy. If the central government continues to launch military attacks against the AlQaeda forces without also reaching out to the Sunni leaders, it will succeed in killing militants but risk higher civilian casualties and alienating the Sunni population even further. By encouraging cooperation between the Iraqi government and the Sawha, the United States can play a role in promoting both Iraqi stability and combating Al-Qaeda.

If there is no agreement and reconciliation between the Sunni and Shia communities in Iraq, violence is likely to continue.

In Dr. Knights’ words, “The one group that matters is the Shia.

They will pick the next prime minister, and when they decide to forgive the Sunnis for the regime of Saddam, then Iraq’s situation will improve. If they do not reach this reconciliation, the problems will continue.”

Hopefully the current violence will be the apex of ISIS’s influence in Iraq and will serve as a wake-up call for the government to redouble its efforts to mediate with—and not marginalize—the Sunnis. If such reconciliation is not forthcoming, the bloodshed is only likely to increase, continuing to leave Iraq unstable and volatile for years to come.

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BOOKS & ARTS

POLITICS AND POETICS IN FICTION The Aesthetics of Cold War Cuba Julia Cohn

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he prologue of Telex From Cuba, published in 2008, opens with a young girl, Everly Lederer, fascinated by the notion of a physical boundary, the Tropic of Cancer, represented as a simple line on her globe. With her unconstrained imagination, “she pictured daisy chains of seaweed stretching across the water toward a distant horizon.” When her family crosses this boundary, moving to the exciting, exotic land of Cuba from the United States, she experiences a range of new social, cultural, and physical divisions. Yet, beyond the plot, Rachel Kushner’s novel is essentially about dissembling borders, bridging otherwise distinct entities: politics and aesthetics.

With her first two novels both named National Book Award finalists, Kushner has received the recognition that most emerging authors could only dream of. To reinforce these accolades, her most recent work, The Flamethrowers, dominated many publications’ best-of-2013 fiction lists. And, as if these awards weren’t enough to connote a literary triumph, Telex From Cuba made the cover of The New York Times Book Review shortly after its release.

All of this is to say, the literary world is coming to recognize the power of bringing visual attention to quintessentially political subjects.

MERGING POLITICS AND POETICS While the two texts focus on distinct moments of history in different countries and in opposing political landscapes, Kushner’s style, defined by the similarly vivid prose in the two novels, uniquely fuses her background in the arts with her political stances. In interviews, Kushner frequently cites filmmakers as principal influences on her work, and claims an interdisciplinary approach of applying the visual to the historical and political as a central characteristic of her working method. Kushner also writes for publications such as Artforum and BOMB Magazine, her identity as a writer strongly shaped by this familiarity with the visual arts.

The Flamethrowers, set in New York City, Nevada, and Italy and centering on a woman pioneering art movements in the

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1970s, most clearly evinces Kushner’s understanding of the art scene. Telex From Cuba takes as its subject the lives of American executives of the United Fruit Company and their families living in Cuba in the 1950s. The influence of aesthetics in this first novel is not as explicitly manifest in the plot, but rather comes in through her mode of storytelling, which is replete with poetic imagery.

In Telex From Cuba, Kushner’s precise descriptions and unexpected metaphors capture the tropical environment of Cuba and the worry that the climate and other unfamiliar aspects of the country inspired in Americans. The swampy humidity is almost overpowering and contributes to the sense of escalating tensions as revolutionary groups nestled in nearby mountains plot assaults on the sugar plantations run by Americans. Cuba’s sweltering tropical climate, drastically different from that of the hometowns of the American businessmen in the novel, is the defining quality upon which the success of these greedy managers is predicated, since they own plantations harvesting tropical products.

Yet, this climate is one among many foreign aspects of the country, and, importantly, it is one unfamiliar characteristic that provokes uncertainty and anxiety in the adults relocating to the region. The wives of the executives constantly whine about the heat. The residents of manager’s row, the gated and guarded area where the Americans live, come together for sophisticated events at the Pan-American club, the conversations among women often tending to the topic of their shared frustration over the inaccessibility to the luxury goods in vogue in the United States.

One wife is so concerned about the unfamiliar conditions of the tropics and the access to her favorite produce and food products that she packs as many canned hams and as much fancy silverware as she can before her move to Cuba.

These scenes, made memorable and thought provoking through Kushner’s attention to visual details, are among many others that enable Kushner to tackle small bits of U.S. foreign policy. Collectively, these instances of evocative behavior of the Americans serve to call attention to the nature and extent of the U.S. involvement in Cuban society, economics, and politics.

PERSONAL HISTORY TO NATIONAL LEGACIES Kushner originally became interested in the subject matter of Telex from Cuba after hearing stories of her mother’s experiences growing up in the nation. Kushner’s grandfather worked for a nickel-mining company and was a figure not dissimilar to the key players of the nickel-mining companies in Nicaro depicted in the novel. Kushner first researched her family history using archival materials that her grandparents accumulated and preserved. She then turned to fiction and nonfiction to immerse herself in the history leading up to the Cuban Revolution and the expulsion of American expatriates in 1958. Her six years of research ultimately culminated in a several months-long visit to Cuba.

Despite this extensive investigation and the personal impetus initially inspiring Kushner to pursue the project, the final product presents highly fictionalized characters. Quite the op-

posite of restricting her story to a factual retelling of her family members’ experiences, Kushner embellished and imported new characters: Raúl Castro appears as a pretty-faced, “fruity” fellow whom Cuban townspeople and Americans alike recognize as gay; Hemingway’s cameo renders the iconic author as a pansexual drunk who invites just about anyone to dance the pachanga, a portraiture not fully supported by historical facts; and Kushner has explained in several interviews that the real Christian La Mazière, a French agitator and arms dealer memorable for his dalliances with showgirls in the novel, actually worked for a fascist newspaper and was controversial but was never involved in Latin American politics. Kushner brought La Mazière, a character she first learned about in a documentary, to Cuba to experience this moment in history. And, in fact, that is how the tension between historical representation and real-life stories in her novel can be resolved, uniting research and writing: Kushner’s research extracts the essence of the moment in cultural and political history.

While undeniably a work of fiction, the intimate touch of personal histories is preserved somewhat through the narrative style. The story is largely told through the experiences of the children of the leading American businessmen, primarily Everly Lederer and K.C. Stites. This strategy of focusing on the lives of children imbues the story with a sense of innocence. Presenting children learning about the blending of American and Cuban customs and politics for the first time also relays information in such a way that encourages the reader to think independently from the mainstream, if waning, imperialistic attitudes of the United States in the 1950s. These children, brought to Cuba by their parents and raised in colonial outposts, never actively decided on this life of imperialism. In fact, their questioning of norms and divides between Americans and darker-skinned Cubans and Jamaicans renders these children as more reasonable than their adult counterparts.

The familiar trope of forbidden love appears in the novel when an adolescent Everly begins to fall in love with her family’s houseboy, Willy, a relentlessly energetic character and overall positive influence on the culture of the household. Conscious of class convention, Everly doesn’t dare mention her affection for Willy to anyone. Her enduring love for Willy prompts her to refuse to reciprocate the affection K.C. expressed towards her, despite the fact that K.C. is a well-liked friend of the family and a more suitable male companion. The subversive tendencies of the children—K.C.’s older brother figures as the most radical of the American youth running away to join the Castro brothers’ scheming—hint to the changing attitudes of the nation, the imminent Cuban revolution, and the decline of power of the Americans in Cuba.

The children provide a nearly unfiltered view of life in the bizarre, isolated colonial enclaves in Cuba, and, at moments, share sentiments more insightful than their parents could express.

Paired with Kushner’s sequences of poetic images reminiscent of a Joseph Conrad novel set in an exotic land, the overall effect of the novel is to challenge common notions of U.S. foreign policy in this Cold War era, shedding a new light on a period of history that isn’t frequently retreaded in contemporary culture.

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BOOKS & ARTS

JUDGING A MOVIE BY ITS TRAILER Valentina Perez

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wo movies that premiered in November 2013 differed in genre, rating, target audience, and production studio, among other things, but shared two critical features: they were among the most successful movies of the year, and they both had female protagonists.

The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, the sequel to the popular 2012 movie The Hunger Games based off the eponymous book series, stars Jennifer Lawrence as Katniss Everdeen, the tribute from District 12 who must re-enter a sacramental blood contest in the dystopian society of Panem. Frozen, an animated Disney movie loosely based off the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale “The Snow Queen,” features Princess Anna racing to find her sister Elsa to convince her to release the spell that cast the kingdom into eternal winter. Catching Fire and Frozen stand out among Hollywood films because of their female leads, and the scarcity of such movies has illuminated the different marketing methods used to promote these two films. While promotional material for Catching Fire highlighted the central role of Katniss Everdeen in the series and leveraged the popularity of actress Jennifer Lawrence, Frozen was marketed with gender-neutral methods that de-emphasized its princess protagonists.

PRINCESS WHO? The marketing of Frozen by Disney Animation Studios illustrates Hollywood’s doubts about the possible success of a female-led movie. Though the movie stars two princesses, the film’s initial trailers played down their roles and the movie’s musical numbers, instead focusing significantly on the antics of the humorous snowman Olaf. While later trailers did show Anna, even the title distanced itself from any fairy tale or princess story audiences might already be familiar with. Disney did this intentionally to appeal to boys, basing their decision on past Disney research reporting that boys do not want to watch movies with the word “princess” in the title. This titling tactic began after Disney’s 2009 movie The Princess and the Frog performed badly at the box office due to, in Disney’s view, its gender-

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specific title. With its 2010 animated feature Tangled, focusing on Rapunzel, Disney made the title gender-neutral to appeal to boys. Ed Catmull, president of Pixar and Disney Animation Studios, justified not naming the movie “Rapunzel” to the Los Angeles Times in March 2010 by saying, “We did not want to be put in a box. Some people might assume it’s a fairy tale for girls when it’s not.” Disney maintained the gender-neutral marketing strategy used for Tangled—which was critically acclaimed and successful at the box office—for Frozen. This tactic worked: Frozen took in $93 million in its premiere Thanksgiving weekend, which the New York Times reported was “one of the best Thanksgiving debuts on record,” and Frozen was one of the highest-grossing domestic movies of 2013. Disney’s genderneutral tactic also succeeded in attracting boys: 43 percent of Frozen’s opening weekend audience was male, compared to 39 percent for Tangled’s premiere weekend.

Disney’s marketing strategy for Frozen reflects a longstanding belief of movie studios that boys will not watch movies with female leads. This has contributed to the scarcity of movies with speaking, leading, or complex female characters. According to a study by the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, just 28.4 percent of speaking characters in the 100 highest-grossing American films of 2012 were female, a five-year low. Furthermore, the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media, founded by Davis in 2004 to change the portrayal of women in children’s media and entertainment, found that only 17 percent of people in group and crowd scenes in movies are women. These statistics are startling because women comprise 51 percent of the population and 52 percent of moviegoers, according to a 2012 study by the Motion Picture Association of America, Inc. These figures have also not changed significantly in decades, illuminating how the Hollywood status quo continues to be a predominantly male silver screen.

The most perplexing fact about the prevalence of movies without strong female characters is that these movies are less successful. The entertainment website Vocativ analyzed the top 50 highest grossing movies of 2013 and found that those that passed the Bechdel Test, which requires that a movie have at least two female characters who speak to each other about something other than a man, made $1.55 billion more than those films that didn’t pass the test. While this should indicate to Hollywood that both men and women want to watch movies with multidimensional female characters, such movies are still in the minority; for example, only 36 percent of the top 50 movies of 2013 passed the Bechdel Test. Hence the marketing of movies still reflects their heavily male composition.

Erin McNeill, a writer on media and childhood and founder of the Media Literacy Now organization, believes that supposed differences in what movies boys and girls want to watch are not based on gender, but rather on the passivity of female leads in children’s movies. “One thing that Hollywood isn’t understanding is that there’s not a huge difference in what boys and girls are interested in because they want to see action. So when you show an active heroine, boys are interested. … [Boys] aren’t interested in princesses because princesses don’t do anything,” she told the HPR. Rebecca Hains, associate professor of media studies at

Salem State University and author of The Princess Problem to be released in the fall, agrees that “when boys are disinterested in stories about girls, it’s because honestly, a lot of times, the stories that are peddled to girls rely on stereotypes and the characters aren’t very engaging.” She describes a shift in Disney’s movies, from “family movies” in the 1990s to “princess movies” in the early 2000s when, in her view, the success of its consumer products division with princess merchandise targeted at girls necessitated a change in the content of its movies.

This change in Disney film content reflects the wider Hollywood belief that women and girls are a niche market, meaning that the longstanding, male-focused business model for movies persists as the standard. Stacy Smith, author of the USC Annenberg School study, told the Los Angeles Times in May 2013, “Industry perceptions of the audience drive much of what we see on-screen. There is a perception that movies that pull male sell.

Given that females go to the movies as much as males, the lack of change is likely due to entrenched ways of thinking and doing business that perpetuate the status quo.” Since movie studios and producers have profited from these tactics for decades, they are hesitant to change course.

BOX OFFICE ON FIRE It is impossible to miss the face of Jennifer Lawrence as Katniss Everdeen in trailers, posters, or promotions for The Hunger Games: Catching Fire. Lionsgate Entertainment, which released the movie, faced similar concerns to Disney’s about the gender makeup of the movie’s audience prior to its release since the majority of the audience for the first Hunger Games movie was female. The studio also wanted to attract younger (under 25-yearold) viewers to Catching Fire, as the first movie had mostly older viewers. Lionsgate approached marketing for Catching Fire differently than Disney, highlighting how the movie depicted the tale of an active female protagonist in its promotions. As a result, Catching Fire promotional materials leveraged the popularity of Jennifer Lawrence to attract a wider variety of viewers, as Lionsgate Chief Marketing Officer Tim Palen told the New York Times just after the movie’s premiere. The studio also chose to show the movie in IMAX and feature battle scenes in trailers in the hopes of appealing to men. These tactics paid off: 41 percent of the opening weekend audience for Catching Fire was male, as opposed to 29 percent for The Hunger Games.

Instead of shying away from its strong female protagonist, Catching Fire promotions featured its female lead simply as she is in the movie. The movie’s marketing did not over- or underemphasize Katniss’ gender but rather focused on the plot and Katniss’ role in it. This direct form of marketing reflects the story’s plot, which, in the words of writer and founder of Reel Girl blog Margot Magowan, has “no sexism. It’s just girls being powerful. It’s girls being half of the characters.” Similar straightforward marketing tactics were used for Bridesmaids, a 2011 hit comedy that made over $169 million in the U.S., and The Heat, a 2013 summer comedy starring Sandra Bullock and Melissa McCarthy that took in over $134 million, according to Box Office Mojo. Both movies featured their female casts in trailers and thus were automatically assumed to target women because of

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Disney promoted Brave’s Merida as a strong female protagonist.

their female leads. However, they were also marketed to men by, for example, showing trailers during the NBA playoffs and on ESPN, which both have majority male viewership. Even Brave, an animated Disney Pixar film targeted at children that premiered in June 2012 and made over $237 million domestically, did not shy away from showing the action in the story of the female protagonist Merida.

Interestingly, though Lionsgate wanted The Hunger Games franchise to appeal to men more, male viewers are not necessary for the series’ box office success. Scott Mendelson, writer and film critic for Forbes, describes an important shift in the movie industry after the huge success of the Twilight series, which “proved that not only could female-centric films play at the top tier level of would-be blockbuster grossness, but you don’t need boys at all.” A similarly female audience has driven the success of The Hunger Games, leading Mendelson to believe that the series is “doing so well among women that they don’t need men. Any man who goes to see The Hunger Games is just a bonus at this point.” While the series might not need men for the sake of profits, the success of Bridesmaids, The Heat, Brave, and Catching Fire demonstrate that female-driven movies with multidimensional, active women can be blockbusters and, more importantly, can attract male viewers (even if profits would be good enough without them). These movies achieved success not by obscuring the prominence of their female characters and changing their marketing strategies but rather by broadening the targeted audience for their promotions.

PREVIEWS OF THE FUTURE

The differences in marketing for Frozen and The Hunger

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Games: Catching Fire pose an interesting conundrum. Both gained immense critical and financial success but used different, almost opposite, marketing strategies to achieve it. While Frozen glossed over its female princess leads, Catching Fire showed Katniss Everdeen as the strong female lead she is. Hopes for gender equality in Hollywood point to Catching Fire’s strategy as more promising because it recognizes that women can lead blockbusters and that men will watch movies with strong and active female leads.

However, change in the Hollywood status quo must also come from consumers. In the realm of children’s movies, Margot Magowan places responsibility on parents who choose what films their children see: “Sexist parents don’t take their sons to movies where girls star front and center, whereas parents do assume that girls will go see movies where boys star front and center. It’s up to parents to read their kids books where girls are the protagonists and girls are heroes. They must take kids to movies where girls are protagonists and girls are heroes.” Ultimately, numbers may be what truly drives the shift in how movies with female leads are made and marketed. Scott Mendelson, citing the success of hits like the Twilight series and franchises like Harry Potter, Pirates of the Caribbean, and Avatar, which appealed to women and were wildly successful, puts it simply by saying that “it doesn’t help to not appeal to women. If you want big blockbusters, you must appeal to women.” Box office success may be the message most certain to influence the content and marketing of Hollywood films. In this respect, the success of Frozen and The Hunger Games: Catching Fire will indicate that strong female characters can not only keep audiences in theaters but draw them there as well.

INTERVIEWS

INTERVIEW: HILDA SOLIS with Avika Dua those kinds of industries. We’ve got to do a couple of things to change the path, and I think it is not a normal situation, and it probably won’t be something that will reflect back on previous recessions. We know that for a fact—economists say that—so it is going to be a different situation and it’s going to require us to be more creative.

You have paid particular attention to working families and economic growth in Los Angeles County. What more can be done to train workers for “green-collar” jobs as part of an environmentally friendly economy?

Hilda Solis served as the United States Secretary of Labor from 2009 through 2013. She is currently a scholar in residence at her alma mater, Cal Poly Pomona.

The Wall Street Journal reported that American job recovery exists on two tracks, with the lowest-paying jobs lagging behind the highestpaying ones. Do you think this reflects a “weak recovery,” or is this sort of job gap stratification the new normal for the American economy?

I don’t know that I necessarily agree with all of that, because the figures that I have seen indicate that there has actually been an increase in the lower paying jobs, like in the tourist industry, the service industry, the retail industry. That has its ups and downs. Across the board we have seen job growth, and of course the higher paying jobs are the ones that are obviously harder to get into, so you need people who are going to be adequately trained for those jobs.

I think we have to continue to work at different levels here—make more education and training available for people that haven’t been successful, help to lift the people who are in those dead-end jobs, and hopefully also increase the minimum wage for those low wage service workers and folks in

I think that we really need to beef up more of our efforts with community colleges. This administration has already pushed this. We have already put in close to $2 billion for regional efforts to encourage collaboration among manufacturers, industry, different sectors, as well as with community colleges.

A lot of it can be organic and jump-started at the local level. That’s where the impetus should be, and the idea of where and how to formulate it should come from the bottom and grow. I think that there just has to be more effort. We have to get more relief made available through the federal government and federal funding, through infrastructure and through more investment that helps stimulate capital.

Late last year, President Obama created the interagency Council on Climate Preparedness and Resilience. Do you foresee climate-resilient investments and land management policies being effective?

I do. I hope that if we can’t get it done adequately at the federal level because of gridlock, then local and state governments can do much right now. I know that in my state of California they have.

As I return back home, I hope to work to inspire more businesses to invest in green, renewable energy and to train young people, as well as people who want to change their jobs entirely, to get into these new sectors. They’re going to be growing, and it’s already been shown that about three million jobs have been added alone in the green industry.

This interview has been edited and condensed.

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INTERVIEWS

INTERVIEW: YO-YO MA with Priyanka Menon Basically, you and I and most people say, do whatever you want and make sure it doesn’t hurt anybody. But too much freedom means we don’t think through the consequences, whether you are in the political, economic, or cultural realm.

You could really hurt someone by applying some way of teaching that is destructive.

So anyway, that might be abstract, so to take it into the role that music might play: music is sound and energy in space.

Sound is energy that moves air molecules. It hits the ear, we somehow interpret it and it makes order out of chaos. It joins people together—there is no culture that doesn’t have music.

What’s the function of music? Music tends to alert people to things, it can join people into a communal experience, it is part of a celebration of life, it part of the mourning of the passing of life. It comes up during the important times during people’s lives. It expresses things. It’s really hard to define music because it is very ephemeral, but its effect is generally always about something bigger than yourself.

I’ll give you some examples from the stage. We work with Armenians and Azerbaijanis, who are not exactly at peace.

We never say, “Let’s just put people from opposite sides of the political spectrum together,” but rather, if people actually share something, we highlight it. It gives more value, it gives more space, it stimulates the imagination to say, “This is possible, these people who might be in conflict are doing something that can only happen when there’s trust on stage.” The music is the tip of the iceberg for the trust that has to exist for people to perform together. So it’s not just that the music is nice, but rather that the underbelly of the music is collaboration and trust.

Yo-Yo Ma ’76 is a world-renowned cellist, the recipient of over 15 Grammy Awards, and winner of the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

You initiated the Silk Road Ensemble, which fosters collaboration with artists from around the world. What role do you see music having in prompting global dialogue and political change?

I think there has to be a place in society where politics, economics, and culture can meet. Like a Venn diagram with three intersecting circles, the common space is the space that as a culture worker, I want to inhabit. The greater that common space is in society, the more fulfilled its citizens are.

The more we have that kind of common space, the less people will make decisions that are deeply contrary to someone else’s interests.

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You also started the Silk Road Connect program, which integrates the music of the ensemble into a middle school curriculum on the Silk Road. In the days of shrinking school budgets, how do you see music education continuing its presence in public schools?

In a democracy, you get the democracy you work for. If we take ownership in the country we live in, it means that if we believe in something, we work hard for it.

So before we talk about music in the school, let’s go broader. Let’s start with us humans as sentient beings. How do we receive information? Visually, aurally, tactilely, and through taste and smell: we have the five senses. How do we imagine things? We know that in order for us as humans to move forward in life, we have to have imagination and innovation.

So, how do we imagine something? Can you practice imagina-

INTERVIEWS

tion? Imagination comes from all of our senses. It’s actually an artificial construct of different realities that you know.

Music is one of the great forms that show disciplined imagination. You can get into Bach’s mind by playing one of his pieces. What was he trying to do? Was he showing off?

Was he proving something? Where does he begin? Where does he end? We’re using our imagination to find a code. It’s not so much about music in schools; it’s about what music can bring. If you can draw or act, what does that do for your communication skills? If you can imagine who Bach was and what he was writing, wouldn’t that be a great thing for you to then be able to imagine someone who lives in East Germany?

You can think about Angela Merkel and the kind of family she came from. You can just riff on that and suddenly you have a better understanding of what it’s like to be German. Suddenly, you have an understanding from the inside, an empathetic understanding of something.

How do you respond to people who argue that musical appropriation by groups like the Silk Road Ensemble actually damages tradition?

When people talk about appropriation, they’re talking about who owns it. I’ve started saying, if it really is that good, it is really for everybody. For the people who talk about appropriation, I would respond, “I’ve come to realize that every tradition that we know of is the result of successful invention.” So, every tradition was at some point invented. People liked it and gave it a name and gave it a frame.

Frank Zappa also said the following: “I’m a singer/songwriter. I write this great song and people say, ‘Frank, please write me another song that’s just like that.’” When you want something exactly like what you already have and not something else, that’s when success is its own demise. You want to keep it, but meanwhile, the world is moving on. Traditions hit their peak and then the numbers get smaller. People have new stories to tell.

It’s fine to talk about appropriation and who owns what.

But culture is when something is living. And it’s passed on as something that’s alive. If nobody practices it a certain way, the culture is dead. So, you have to put the language of appropriation within the context of whether or not it’s living.

It’s all about what gets passed on that’s living. It’s not the industrial production of something that is incredibly beautiful that you can just put on your shelf and ignore. That’s not living. But if you use it every day and you get beauty out of it, then it’s living. If a tradition stops evolving, then it starts to die, just like human society and institutions. Everything is constantly evolving.

On the topic of evolution, as a classical musician, do you think we will still have orchestras as we imagine them now in 50 to 100 years?

The real question is, in 50 to 100 years, are we still going to have people? If we have people, then, will we have people who want to do things together, who want to express themselves together, who want to have gatherings? If we still have ears and memory and treasure memories and interactions, there’s a great likelihood we’ll still have orchestras. About 20 to 30 years ago, Ernest Fleischman envisioned an orchestra of the future, a group of 150 people who get together and are able to do everything. All different kinds of music, everything. That’s one person’s vision. Maybe someday something like that will happen. Because then, that orchestra will be the community’s orchestra. It has a relationship with a whole group of people within a spatial area and will do what that community needs.

Our communities have changed. The voices within our communities have changed too. We have to think, “Who are we serving?” We have to respond to what is happening, to acknowledge new and old things, to have the flexibility to honor and dignify people’s voices and traditions, and to try to make it all work together. It’s a microcosm of what we all have to do in society.

There is a part of music that is political. I think it’s important that there’s a separation as well as common space.

There are different spaces for music; it’s a big mansion. If it were only political, that would be horrible. All you would get would be propaganda or social realism. That’s not what the essence of music is. It can report on a truth that could be threatening to politics. These things are very real and very worth looking at, but if you’re looking at it solely through that lens, then you miss things. If you lose that perspective, then you really don’t have anything.

One last thing: a number of years ago, Gorbachev was invited to the Kennedy Library. I was invited to the lunch. I was sitting next to Mrs. Jacqueline Onassis. She said, “Yo-Yo, I don’t know what to say to him.” And so I took my chance to be brazen and I asked him, “Mr. Gorbachev, I’m a great admirer of Rostropovich (who was famously very close friends with Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn). What do you think of the relationship between culture and politics?” And he says, “I think they should be separate.” That was definitely a culture and politics moment. And, he answered my question.

This interview has been edited and condensed.

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ENDPAPER

OPENING THE DINING HALL Olivia Zhu

One Tuesday in October, 11 years ago, Lowell House announced its dining hall would be open 24 hours a day. On Wednesday, the space was damaged. The mess was not unexpected, but it was certainly dismaying to administrators and students hoping to create social study space in the heart of a campus home. More than a disappointment, though, the dining hall detritus seemed to indicate the fracturing of the social contract brokered just a short time before.

In many ways, Harvard has changed since that October. The early action admissions process was eliminated—and restored.

Media sources have picked apart Occupy Harvard, the Economics 10 walkout, Government 1310’s cheating scandal, and grade inflation. Drew Faust as president, ROTC’s return, expansion into Allston, and a move toward gender neutral housing: these, too, are Harvard’s recent past. In the last decade, the campus has grown and struggled, been condemned and lauded.

Yet still more change must come. In particular, it’s time to reframe the relationship between students, faculty, and administrators not as an “us vs. them” dichotomy but instead as a partnership. Discord, demand, and disobedience are not efficient or productive, especially not at an institution centered on the pursuit of Veritas—truth, by way of edification. At the end of the day, Harvard is a place of learning, and the question now is what we will learn in the next decade.

Hopefully, the lesson will be a familiar and welcome one: that we, as a university community, must work harder at trusting one another and making good on that collective trust. The social contracts we rarely articulate must hold. When we come to Harvard, we trust that our students are bright and eager, we trust that our professors are dedicated and passionate, and we trust that our administrators will always find the best course of action. We trust in the value of a degree, of tenure, and of this unique education.

This trust is not blind hope. For almost four centuries, Harvard and its constituents have served and supported one

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another—not in every circumstance, but in most. During those times when we fail or are less than perfect, we try to improve and usually do. We can and must ever challenge ourselves to be better, and there is no question that obstacles remain. But as we look forward, it seems that the faith that we can meet those challenges hinges on what we are willing to entrust to each other.

Think of the creation, acceptance, and implementation of an honor code, which seeks to build a stronger community focused on educational reciprocity and bound together by the pursuit of a greater and nobler truth—but which cannot exist without a foundation of trust.

Think of the Undergraduate Council’s campaign for an additional $250,000 in student organization funding, still an ongoing endeavor. The university administration must trust that clubs will utilize the monies responsibly, and it is certainly the student body’s hope that they will.

Think of the new class of Harvard students who will come to Cambridge in the fall, who, as diverse as they are, are united by trepidation and eagerness and the fact they have entrusted their next four years to us.

Eleven years ago in October, despite the trash left in the Lowell dining hall, a senior tutor in the house wrote that the incident would “not affect our commitment to leave the dining hall open.”

That tutor, Jay Ellison, is now the secretary of the Ad Board, and Harvard’s dining halls continue to welcome students all hours of the night. There is an unspoken trust that they will not close and they will not be damaged.

Some aspects of Harvard might never change: how piled snow breaks from Emerson’s eaves, how tourists continue to rub John Harvard’s foot, and how none of the pathways across Tercentenary Theatre will take a hurrying student directly to his next class. I hope, too, that this current Harvard community and the ones to come will always be willing to trust one another. I hope the dining halls will always be open.

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