Summer 2016

HARVARD POLITICAL REVIEW

AFTER AUTOCRACY

THE NEW NUCLEAR MADMAN

INTERVIEW: RICHARD STENGEL

VOLUME XLIII NO. 2, SUMMER 2016 HARVARDPOLITICS.COM

WHO IS OUR ENEMY? THE COMPLEXITY OF ANTAGONISM

THE NEW HARVARD POLITICAL REVIEW. ON SCREENS NEAR YOU.

HARVARDPOLITICS.COM

WHO IS OUR ENEMY?

8

The New Nuclear Madman Ali Dasterdji

14 A Values Based Order Arjun Kapur

11 A False Narrative Sunaina Danziger

6

Punch-Drunk Donovan Keene

17 A Broken Frame Brandon Dixon

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CULTURE

3 From Silicon to Gold Yehong Zhu

37 Digital Love Pooja Podugu

6 Punch-Drunk Donovan Keene

40 The Netflix Effect Bella Roussanov

UNITED STATES

INTERVIEWS

20 Who Will Be the One? Lizzy Thomas

42 Richard Stengel Gabrielle M. Williams

23 The State of Integration in the United States Catherine Zhang

ENDPAPER

26 An Atheist in the Oval Office Lizzy Schick 26 An Atheist in the Oval Office Lizzy Schick

44 To Love This World Priyanka Menon

WORLD 28 After Autocracy Sebastian Reyes 31 Beneath the Ink Minnie Jang 34 The Trouble with DDR Jasmine Chia

40 The Netflix Effect Bella Roussanov

Email: president@harvardpolitics.com. ISSN 0090-1032. Harvard Political Review. All rights reserved. Image credits: Flickr: Cover- The US Army, Table of Contents- The US Army, Shannon Ramos 6- Yzukerman, 11- Blandine Le Cain, 17- Fuseboxradio, 23- Steve Snodgrass, 34- Christopher Michel. Photographer: 4- Sebastian Reyes. Wikimedia: 14- US Department of State, 20- US Air Force, 26- Cezary P, 28- Mstyslav Chernov, 31- Wikimedia Commons, 36- Wikimedia Commons, 37- Wikimedia Commons, 39- Gage Skidmore, 40- Wikimedia Commons, 42- David Shankbone, Endpaper- Chensiyuan. YouTube: 8, 24

SUMMER 2016 HARVARD POLITICAL REVIEW 1

FROM THE PRESIDENT

HARVARD POLITICAL REVIEW

Who is our enemy?

A Nonpartisan Undergraduate Journal of Politics, Est. 1969—Vol. XLIII, No. 2

EDITORIAL BOARD PRESIDENT: Joseph Choe PUBLISHER: Flavia Cuervo MANAGING EDITOR: Mark Bode ASSOCIATE MANAGING EDITOR: Ali Hakim ASSOCIATE MANAGING EDITOR: Perry Abdulkadir STAFF DIRECTOR: Ari Berman CAMPUS SENIOR EDITOR: Tasnim Ahmed CAMPUS ASSOCIATE EDITOR: Akash Wasil COVERS SENIOR EDITOR: Tess Saperstein COVERS ASSOCIATE EDITOR: Sam Kessler U.S. SENIOR EDITOR: Quinn Mulholland U.S. ASSOCIATE EDITOR: Carla Troconis U.S. ASSOCIATE EDITOR: Henry Brooks WORLD SENIOR EDITOR: Sam Plank WORLD ASSOCIATE EDITOR: Jack Boyd WORLD ASSOCIATE EDITOR: Jacob Link CULTURE SENIOR EDITOR: Hana Connelly CULTURE ASSOCIATE EDITOR: Emily Zauzmer INTERVIEWS EDITOR: Minnie Jang HUMOR EDITOR: Richard Tong BUSINESS MANAGER: Enrique Rodriguez ASSOCIATE BUSINESS MANAGER: Jenny Horowitz SENIOR DESIGN EDITOR: Kyle McFadden ASSOCIATE DESIGN EDITOR: Victoria Berzin MULTIMEDIA EDITOR: Solange Azor ASSOCIATE MULTIMEDIA EDITOR: Peter Wright WEBMASTER: Julia Steigerwald Schnall

SENIOR WRITERS John Acton, Julianna Aucoin, Ashley Chen, Jenny Choi, Colin Criss, Colin Diersing, Matthew Disler, Avika Dua, Rachel Hanna, Harry Hild, Johanna Lee, Paul Lisker, Sarani Jayawardena, Clara McNultyFinn, Priyanka Menon, Mattea Mrkusic, Andrew O’Donohue, Pooja Podugu, Advik Shreekumar, Tom Silver, Kim Soffen, Gavin Sullivan, Vikram Sundar, Alec Villalpando, Celena Wang, Emily Wang, Angela Yang.

STAFF Victor Agbafe, Maha Al-Suwaidi, Ben Barrett, Marty Berger, Evan Bonsai, Jiafeng Chen, Amy Chyao, Gansu Colakoglu, Chris Cruz, Nathan Cummings, Justin Curtis, Sunaina Danziger, Ali Dastjerdi, Sal DeFrancesco, Brandon Dixon, Jullian Duran, Matthew Estes, Joshua Florence, Samarth Gupta, David Gutierrez, Conor Healy, Olivia Herrington, Nian Hu, Cindy Jung, Arjun Kapur, Daniel Kenny, Kieren Kresevic, Gal Koplewitz, Bin Hui Kwon, Ayush Midha, Sienna Nielson, Kevin O’Donnell, Derek Paulhus, Apoorva Rangan, Sebastian Reyes, Neill Reilly, Audrey Shi, Wright Smith, Sydney Steel, Narayan Sundararajan, Ashim Vaish, Sarah Wu, Fiona Young.

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

Ron Fournier Walter Isaacson Whitney Patton Maralee Schwartz

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During the summer of 1954, a group of preteen boys embarked on a three-week camping trip to Robbers Cave, not knowing that they would be participating in a grand psychology experiment. The boys were randomly divided into two teams that engaged in a series of competitions ranging from baseball games to pitching tents.

As predicted, each team grew closer in solidarity as the members worked together to defeat their opponents. Yet despite the fact that the two teams were largely homogeneous, each team began to create negative stereotypes about the other and hostilities arose whenever there were interactions between them.

Before long, the boys were no longer enjoying a camping trip—they were fighting against their enemies.

There is a human tendency to see ourselves as part of an ingroup united against an outgroup. This theme is pervasive and plays out all around us.

As an American citizen, I have seen my country fight wars against terrorism in the Middle East. I turn on the TV and see Democrats and Republicans fighting for the White House. I look outside my dorm room and see protesters fighting against sexual assault violence on campus. Studies have shown that even arbitrary and trivial distinctions like the color of your shirt can be enough to trigger this innate tendency to favor your own group over another. It is not hard to imagine how much more salient this tendency can be when the differences are much more substantial.

To see how widespread this theme is, you need not look farther than the pages of this issue of the HPR. Ali Dastjerdi

points out how Donald Trump’s stance on nuclear threats is reminiscent of the madman approach adopted by President Richard Nixon during the Cold War. Sunaina Danziger examines the pitfalls of increased xenophobia against Muslim refugees. Arjun Kapur describes the necessity for Western countries to unite and defend their shared values against the increasing influence of terrorist networks. Brandon Dixon takes a close look at how the Black Lives Matter movement’s desire to dissolve an unjust criminal justice system has been met with resistance.

The boys at Robbers Cave ended up putting aside their differences to tackle challenges that required both teams’ mutual respect and cooperation.

These tasks (like fixing a broken water pipe) could not be accomplished by just one team alone, and the benefits of completing the tasks were conferred on both teams equally. Soon enough the division between the two groups faded and all of the boys became united as one.

Reality is rarely this clean. For example, the United States may never be able to team up with enemies like North Korea and ISIS no matter how many “broken water pipe” challenges they face. Despite this sobering fact, we should constantly seek out opportunities to achieve peace and harmony with our enemies even when doing so may seem impossible.

Joseph Choe President

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FROM

SILIC N G LD TO

Yehong Zhu

I

walk into the Cambridge office of General Catalyst, located in a fourth-floor office building adjacent to the Charles hotel. The space is warm and well-lit, with modern furnishings and polished hardwood floors. Chatter floats from nearby conference rooms as smartly dressed partners wander in and out of the lobby. It’s business as usual on Monday afternoons: founders to meet, deals to source, due diligence to be done.

Peter Boyce II ‘13 soon greets me with a charismatic smile.

An investor at General Catalyst and former resident of Mather House, Peter is instantly recognizable by his black-rimmed glasses, signature mane of dreadlocks, and easygoing persona. A natural conversationalist, he possesses a champagne-like buoyancy that instantly puts one at ease. He apologizes for getting pulled into a partner meeting earlier: “Mondays are the busiest days for VC firms,” he explains, “but I’m usually pretty good about making time for people.”

Peter is an optimist. As he talks about the new wave of millennial needs and the role that software might play in those experiences, he weaves together a picture of what the future might look like a decade down the line. “The gap between finding an opportunity to create something, and being able to do that, is just collapsing,” he explains. “I think that this is going to dramatically change the opportunities, especially for folks in universities.”

A BILLION-DOLLAR CHECK BY ANY OTHER NAME We live in a world of billion-dollar valuations. The most valuable private startups in the world—known as “unicorns” in tech parlance—include household names like Spotify, Dropbox, Pinterest, Uber, and Airbnb. In 2014, a 23-year-old Stanford dropout and CEO of a popular photo messaging app turned down Facebook’s $3 billion offer to buy his startup. Today, SnapChat is valued at $16 billion—greater than the GDP of Iceland.

Stories like these are so remarkable that they sound like fairy tales. Once-mythical companies are now ubiquitous, their college-age founders ascending to fame and fortune on the backs of unicorns. Using the spell of technology, they’ve allowed us to accomplish once unimaginable tasks with the touch of a button.

In order to scale the magic, however, they need support from the modern-day Wizards of Oz: the venture capitalists.

Venture capitalists are professional investors who understand the intricacies of financing and building startups. In exchange for assuming the high risk that comes with investing in a startup, they receive a significant share of equity and thus a stake in the future direction of the company. Because VCs expect a high return on their investment, they will often work with the company for five to 10 years before any money is repaid. At the end of the

SUMMER 2016 HARVARD POLITICAL REVIEW 3

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From left to right: Scott Xiao ‘19, Dean Travers ‘19, Alex Wendland ‘19

investment, they hope to sell their shares of the company for many times more than they initially invested.

But all that glitters is not gold. While venture financing can present an alluring option for founders, “Money is the wrong motivation for doing a startup,” explained entrepreneur, social investor and Cabot House faculty dean Stephanie Khurana to the HPR. Khurana maintains that the real value of a startup lies not in the investment itself, but in the vision behind it, a sentiment shared by venture capitalist Michael Skok. “Great entrepreneurs are not thinking about funding; they’re thinking about creating value,” Skok noted to the HPR. “They don’t get themselves confused with the car and the fuel that makes it run.”

The typical seed round of venture funding, meant to support the company until it can generate its own revenues, ranges between a few hundred thousand dollars to a few million. Because of the substantial numbers involved and expectations of exponential growth, funding is only appropriate for innovative startups with demonstrated traction that have exhausted all other available resources. But within the Harvard startup ecosystem, there are many options for bootstrapping and funding less substantial capital needs, including business competitions with prize money and “pre-seed” rounds hovering around $20,000.

After all, VC money comes with strings, and the smartest approach to funding is the one that undersands a particular company’s needs.

MINIMALLY VIABLE PRODUCT In today’s day and age, two friends studying computer science could conceivably incorporate a software company in their dorm room with minimal overhead costs. Thanks to advances in

4 HARVARD POLITICAL REVIEW SUMMER 2016

technology and the widespread availability of online resources, companies are becoming easier and less expensive to found. A quick Google search will lead you to website templates, online platforms to find designers and developers, invoice generators, free legal documents, website analytics, email management software, and courses and e-books to teach you how to do it all.

Moreover, there are a multitude of free resources available within the Harvard community to help student entrepreneurs.

These include co-working spaces such as the Harvard Innovation Lab, competitions such as the President’s Challenge and the Harvard College Innovation Challenge (which offer prizes that range from $1,000 to $70,000), classes in entrepreneurship and computer science, access to a network of Harvard alumni working in technology, and a lenient “time off” policy in case students want to temporarily drop out of school to work on a project.

Yet in spite of this lowered barrier of entry into entrepreneurship, a basic level of funding is often necessary for students to work on ideas over the long term. “If you have the opportunity to intern at Facebook, [and you] tell your parents that you’re not going to do that because you want to work on an idea—chances are, they’re probably going to want you to live in an apartment over the summer, to have food to eat,” explained Boyce. “That’s the role of capital today. It’s being able to live while you’re building an idea.”

A need arose for “pre-seed funding,” in cases in which founders needed a few thousand dollars to pay for capital expenses that were too large to pay out of pocket, but too small to necessitate a formal seed round. As a student at Harvard, Boyce founded Rough Draft Ventures—a student-led venture branch of General Catalyst—to address this need. A similar student-led venture firm known as Dorm Room Fund was created and backed by

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First Round Capital.

While there are minor differences between Rough Draft Ventures and Dorm Room Fund, the two funds are similar in nature.

Both are comprised of student partners who source deals from talented entrepreneurs on campus. They do this by screening applications for funding, inviting the best student teams to pitch their ideas in person, then voting on which startups to fund.

Both are financed by their parent firms: General Catalyst and First Round Capital, respectively. And both offer around $20,000 in pre-seed funding to startups in the form of uncapped convertible notes, which translate into equity during a future financing round.

“We have the friendliest term sheet an entrepreneur is going to get,” explained Lisa Wang ’16, a student partner at Rough Draft. “I think giving students a little bit of money to get off the ground makes a big difference.” Karine Hsu ’16 of Dorm Room Fund added that the biggest advantage is that the student partners of these firms are typically younger, more accessible and easier to approach in person than [professional] venture capitalists, whose schedules are often packed. “It’s cool because we’re all students at the end of the day,” said Hsu. “We’re all here to learn together, and we can have a conversation over dinner.”

Ultimately, pre-seed investments are a win-win on both sides.

Whether or not the student portfolio companies succeed or fail, the investments are significant enough to encourage their peers to continue with entrepreneurship, yet small enough to minimize risk to the firm. Moreover, venture capital firms want to establish relationships with talented young founders from Harvard who become career entrepreneurs later in life. What better way to find the next Mark Zuckerberg than by hiring students—who are intimately familiar with the who’s who on their campuses— to serve as talent scouts?

GAINING TRACTION Because the majority of early-stage ideas don’t gain enough traction to necessitate a formal round of funding, college is more often a valuable learning experience for future founders than a launching pad for the next Facebook. Exceptional student startups are rare by definition—they require hard work and incredible diligence to sustain, and they need a compelling and timely reason to motivate investors and consumers around their product.

They do, however, exist.

Scott Xiao ’19 and Alexander Wendland ’19 are the co-founders of Luminopia, a mobile application that combines hardware and virtual reality to treat lazy eye in children. Although lazy eye affects more than 5 percent of the population, the eye patch is the only effective treatment that currently exists. “We saw that there was a lot of pretty solid research showing that virtual reality could treat lazy eye, but there was no one bringing it to market,” explained Xiao. He and Wendland had met during Visitas, along with a third co-founder, Dean Travers ’19, who is currently taking a semester off to work on Luminopia.

Unlike software startups, biotechnology startups are capital intensive. To test out their idea, Luminopia needed to run a clinical trial, which costs “between $150,000 and $250,000,” accord-

ing to Xiao, who added that they were fortunate enough to raise enough seed money from family and friends. Wendland says that they are hesitant to raise capital at the early stages because “prior to a clinical trial, it would have required too much equity,” but eventually they may need to raise a round of VC funding to cover three to four more clinical trials before market expansion.

Entrepreneurial blood runs in the family. Scott’s older sister Grace Xiao ’17 was named a 2016 Thiel fellow for creating Kynplex, an online life sciences platform that allows scientists to find and connect with scientific companies, labs, and investors. Kynplex co-founder Raul Jordan ’17 explained that he and Grace were initially looking for labs to work at and discovered in the process that “scientific information is scattered and virtually nonexistent on the Internet.” Having collectively raised $25,000 from Rough Draft Ventures and $100,000 from the Thiel fellowship, Jordan plans to take time off in the fall of 2016 to join Xiao, who has already left school to build out their startup. According to Jordan, “We realized that this is our creation, this is what we love, and we’re not going to give this up that easily.”

HIGH RISK, HIGH RETURN There are benefits to raising venture funding that extend beyond just taking a check. Ben Pleat ’17, Vice President of Harvard Ventures, told the HPR that VC firms “give you the name, they give you the money, but they also give you the network, feedback, and their portfolio of other companies that they work with … it’s a very strategic thing because it puts you in a network of a company that wants you to succeed, go public, cash out.”

But these benefits come at a cost. A significant portion of equity is exchanged for funding, especially at the early stages of a startup. Founders start with 100 percent ownership, which is typically diluted by 10 to 50 percent through each round of investment. Wendland notes, “as soon as you get funding, you’ve given up control.” According to Khurana, entrepreneurs need to be thoughtful about the kind of business they’re building, honest about whether VC money is truly necessary, and skilled at holding their own in negotiations. “Chances are, if it’s only a good idea, you’re not going to keep a lot of equity,” she said.

Money also changes the nature of the work. Once one raises funding for a startup, the stakes are higher, the pressures are intensified, and investors are expecting a high return. “Before funding, you’re a team of three undergraduates working on a cool project,” said Pleat. “After funding, you’re a team of three undergraduates playing with other people’s money.” Khurana advises entrepreneurs to take the process at their own pace—to build a quality business on their own timeframe. “[VC’s] are going to want to see a rocket ship. When you take that money, they’re going to want to see the rocket ship fly.”

According to Skok, the biggest risk of entrepreneurship is not monetary in nature. Because entrepreneurs are inherently risk-takers with their life, they’re making the most valuable investment of all—their time—and the VC is essentially investing behind that. “I can’t get my time back, but I can get my money back. Good entrepreneurs understand that very well, and they’re very thoughtful about how they spend their time.”

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PUNCH-DRUNK The Ban of Tackling in Ivy League Football and its Repercussions

Donovan Keene

I

n late February, the eight Ivy League football coaches unanimously chose to eliminate all full contact hitting in practices. The move is considered the most aggressive measure yet to address brain injuries and trauma in football. After being formally affirmed by the Ivy League’s policy committee, athletic directors, and university presidents, this new rule will supplement existing limitations on full-contact practice frequency during the offseason and spring, which are among the most rigorous in collegiate football.

Although the research on concussion prevention is relatively new, studies have explicitly shown that limits on full contact practice can reduce the incidence of concussions. In the National Football League, concussions have declined during practices in both the preseason and regular season since 2012, when limits concerning the quantity of full contact practices were imposed.

Medical director of the Concussion Legacy Foundation and co-director of the Center for the Study of Traumatic Encephalopathy at the Boston University School of Medicine Dr. Robert Cantu has stated that current research clearly “shows that you not only have fewer subconcussive hits, but also concussions.”

While the evidence surrounding the benefits of limits on full contact is clear, the next step towards improving players’ safety is not. The elimination of full contact in practices for high school and collegiate athletes is an important measure; however, the introduction of more robust, controversial methods of injury reduction has complicated matters.

THE GAME PLAN Ivy League coaches’ decision to ban full contact in practices was largely inspired by Dartmouth head coach Buddy Teevens.

Teevens eliminated full contact practices in 2010 in an attempt to reduce injuries, especially concussions, which atrophied players over the duration of the season and prevented them

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from playing in games. Currently, the Dartmouth football team hits tackling dummies and pads, including the “mobile virtual player,” or MVP, which was strategically designed by former Big Green football and Dartmouth Rugby Football Club alumni at the Thayer School of Engineering. Coach Teevens told the HPR that the introduction of the mobile virtual player has simultaneously reduced head injuries and improved the team’s tackling, as the simulated player movement has enabled Dartmouth players to train at the same or an increased volume with less danger.

“People look at it and say we’re nuts,” Teevens said, “but it’s kept my guys healthy. It hasn’t hurt our level of play. It’s actually made us a better team.” Thus, changes like this can make it possible for players’ safety and health to improve without negatively affecting a team’s performance.

MOVING THE CHAINS: INITIATIVES FROM YOUTH TO PROFESSIONAL FOOTBALL Since Coach John Gagliardi of Division III St. John’s University in Minnesota opted to eliminate hitting in practice altogether, the team has won four national titles and 489 games.

This is by far the most wins of any coach, at any level. His “Winning with Nos” philosophy includes players’ prohibition from tackling in practice, no whistles or yelling, no playbook, no roster cuts, and no required strength and conditioning workouts.

Following in Gagliardi’s footsteps, a majority of coaches across the United States have eradicated the Oklahoma Drill—a drill testing players in confined full contact situations—as well as other drills requiring players to hit heads. Coaches’ measures to reduce contact in instances like these have alleviated repetitive subconcussive trauma. In an interview with Malcolm Gladwell in the New Yorker, Dr. Cantu indicated that this trauma was especially evident among linemen and those that “[weren’t] necessarily people with a high, recognized concussion history,” but

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“individuals who collided heads on every play repetitively doing this, year after year, under levels that were tolerable for them to continue to play.”

Efforts at improving player safety in football are not exclusive to the professional and collegiate levels, as many youth leagues and high school football programs are undergoing similar adaptations. Started in 2013, the program Practice Like Pros actively promotes less contact in football practices. Supported by multiple NFL Hall of Famers and progressive-minded individuals from both medicine and football, Practice Like Pros has assisted efforts like those at Dartmouth, playing a critical role in mitigating the discrepancy between professional, collegiate, and high school football. In high school, 60 to 75 percent of concussions occur on the practice field compared to only three percent in the NFL. Presently, Practice Like Pros is working towards change in high school football by focusing on five areas of reform. This strategy emphasizes converting all youth leagues to flag football before the ninth grade level, eliminating full contact in the offseason, reporting symptoms of concussions to prevent second impacts, ensuring full-time trainers are on every team and EMS at each game, and studying catastrophic injury and maintaining a national brain tissue bank.

Subsequent to the development of this program, dozens of states that control public school athletics have significantly reduced or eliminated contact in practice. Many Boys & Girls Clubs throughout America have taken additional measures to reduce the incidence of head trauma among children and young adults, shifting their emphasis from tackle football to flag football. In alignment with the mission of Practice Like Pros, Somerville Recreation switched its youth football programs from tackle to flag football for children in first through eighth grades after an increase in injuries and decline in enrollment. Somerville director of recreation and youth Jill Lathan stated in a press release that “the rise in injuries among young people playing contact football, both in game situations and during regular practices, demonstrates a need for us to reevaluate the programs we offer to our youngest residents.”

A 2015 study by the University of Wisconsin corroborates the effectiveness of contact limits on sports related concussions, claiming “the rate of SRC sustained in high school football practice was more than twice as high in the two seasons prior to a rule change limiting the amount and duration of full contact activities.” This statewide rule, which removes full contact the first week of the season and limits it to 75 minutes the second week and 60 minutes in the following weeks, has witnessed the rate of concussions among football players drop by approximately half.

Although this change received initial pushback by those directly involved in the game in fear of reduced preparation, improvements in player health and reports of increased team-wide success have abated concerns.

THE COIN TOSS: ALTERNATIVE METHODS OF CONTACT REDUCTION AND THE REPERCUSSIONS Executive director of the Ivy League Robin Harris addressed critics’ concerns that these changes would alter the nature of the

game in a late February statement: “We’re not trying to change the nature of the game, we’re just trying to make it safer.” One of the most recent suggestions to reduce brain trauma and concussions in competitive football is the “Hawk Tackle,” which “calls for the tackler to keep his head to the side while driving his shoulder into the thigh or chest of the runner.” This technique is derived from tackles made by rugby players. Assistant head coach of the Seattle Seahawks Rocky Seto, has noted that “It is safer and more effective than traditional methods while still packing a wallop.” After introducing the Seahawks’ Hawk Tackle to his players, 55-year-old Georgia Southern coach Willie Fritz’s team recorded their best season in tackling in 2014. These examples suggest that there are indeed methods to make the game safer without sacrificing performance.

Furthermore, rules against hitting opponents in a defenseless position in the head have reduced concussions at all levels of play, according to NFL Competition Committee co-chair Rich McKay. Since this ban, there have been significant reductions in concussions and fines for illegal hits, evidenced by the 25 percent drop in total concussions from 2013 to 2014 and a 36 percent decline since 2012 in the NFL. Aside from the Hawk Tackle and measures to remove headhits to defenseless players, one thought to prevent concussions and chronic traumatic encephalopathy is the shutting down of competitive football altogether. The idea has been suggested by students, parents, and medical professionals alike. While the elimination of football may remove the incidence of any footballrelated injury, especially in high school and collegiate athletics, it leaves a serious void—physically, emotionally, culturally, and socially. Universities and public education systems should indeed have the ability to regulate athletics in order to promote safety of participants. However, it should not be at the cost of a physical outlet, source of entertainment, and tradition of community for many. According to Michael Baumann of The Atlantic, while football has its cons, it can “build a sense of community for players and fans alike, and serve as a welcome escape from the pressures of ordinary life.” Baumann adds that, “The sport cuts across distinctions of race, class, geography, and religion in a way few other U.S. institutions do, and everyone who participates reaps the benefits.” By respecting both players and the game, teams can ban tackling in practice and disprove the argument “that if you’re not working on these techniques and skills in practice, but asking the athlete to do it on Saturday in a game, then they are potentially predisposed to injury,” as Gagliardi of St. John’s has.

The Ivy League’s elimination of full contact practices is certainly a step towards creating a safer environment for players.

Admittedly, this rule change may affect how the game is played, as well as shape future safety reform, which could even bring about football’s demise. Nonetheless, the consideration of shutting down competitive football has immeasurable repercussions far beyond those directly involved in the sport, as football serves as a unifying force on college campuses throughout the United States, fostering community and pride in a population otherwise marked by its differences. Consequently, Harvard, the Ivy League, and football teams across the country should exercise cautious consideration in navigating the pathway to make football safer.

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WHO IS OUR ENEMY?

THE NEW NUCLEAR MADMAN Ali Dasterdji

S

ixty years ago, Bert the cartoon turtle was a familiar figure to students in classrooms across the country. Bert reminded students about the importance of “duck and cover” in the event of a nuclear strike. His omnipresence was but one symbol of America’s nuclear obsession. From the mass construction of personal bomb shelters to dissemination of dog tags to schoolchildren for ease of post-mortem identification, nuclear preparedness was an ever-present aspect of American life. The Soviet Union was our clear enemy, and brinksmanship was the name of the game.

During the Cold War, the Nixon administration engaged in a form of brinkmanship that became known as the nuclear madman strategy. Nixon wagered that if other nations believed he was an irrational decision-maker they would be less willing to engage in nuclear escalation. This strategy was a perilous one that was abandoned by presidents who came after Nixon. Yet today, the madman approach seems to have made a frightening comeback with the rise of Donald Trump, the current frontrunner for the Republican nomination.

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NEW NUKES, NEW FEARS Our fear of nuclear weapons seems to have reemerged in new ways. According to a 2014 Pew poll, Americans rank North Korean nuclear arms development as the second most imperative threat facing the country, preceded only by the threat of ISIS. Those fears aren’t unwarranted. North Korean nuclear weapons pose a real threat to the United States and global stability. But how can the development of a small nuclear arsenal with questionable delivery capacity pose a threat to the behemoth nuclear capacity of the United States? The answer is by causing uncertainty.

Newly proliferating states cause widespread instability as nations scramble to rebalance the international order. Nuclear blackmail can cause miscalculation and subsequent escalation by threatened states. States are much less willing to go toe-totoe with nations that could potentially accept a disproportionate amount of risk in escalating hostilities. In the case of North Korea, the almost insane stated willingness to escalate nuclear conflict with the United States seriously diminishes the willing-

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ness of U.S. policymakers to respond. Most of these threats are likely sabre rattling, but threats like the ones made by North Korean leader Kim Jong-un earlier this year make it hard to see North Korea as simply all bark and no bite. In a public statement, Kim went so far as to warn against a pre-emptive nuclear strike against the U.S. mainland and commit to continued high-level nuclear development and testing despite intense international scrutiny.

The current situation could become much worse if North Korea developed a launch capacity able to reach the United States.

In this world, any escalation against North Korea by the United States, even one involving only conventional weapons, would risk catastrophic loss of American lives. Our willingness to place American lives at risk might be dramatically overwhelmed by North Korea’s willingness to accept an even greater risk, effectively disarming the United States against a North Korean nuclear threat. Such a scenario would prevent intervening actors like the United States from stepping in during regional conflicts instigated by North Korea for fear of nuclear escalation. Not only would this allow for sustained North Korean adventurism in

the Northeast Asia, but also a dismantling of U.S. credibility in a wide range of security commitments across the globe as nations under our security umbrella began to question our commitments.

UN-DETERRED MADNESS All of this could happen without North Korea launching a single nuclear weapon. Nuclear weapons shape modern global security not because of their use, but because of the threat that they might be used. Effective deterrence requires the enemy to believe a nuclear state would actually risk using their nukes.

However, nuclear escalation is suicidal, or at the very least incredibly self-destructive, and so a direct nuclear threat is virtually always an empty one. Nuclear threats become credible when states take actions that increase the probability of accidental nuclear escalation, creating legitimacy through cost.

The ultimate purpose of deterrence is the absence of conflict, but meaningful deterrence requires an increasing possibility of war. Nixon’s answer to this contradiction was the madman

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WHO IS OUR ENEMY? WHO IS OUR ENEMY?

theory: make your enemy believe you are irrational, unpredictable, and willing to accept absurd risk and they won’t provoke you. Nixon believed this strategy didn’t require any actual commitment to increased risk; he could stage controlled escalations and the USSR would be unwilling to respond for fear of what could come next.

A prime example of this strategy was operation Giant Lance.

Giant Lance was a secret operation that placed the majority of U.S. nuclear assets on high alert and ordered a squadron of bombers armed with nuclear weapons to fly patterns near the USSR. Nixon gave the command for the order not because he wanted to prepare for a conflict, but to make Russia believe he was willing to start nuclear war over the resolution of the Vietnam War. Nixon thought Giant Lance was an effective move that risked very little; he was wrong on both fronts. Such a largescale ordeal resulted in very little known reaction from the Soviet Union. To this day, there is no evidence that the Kremlin reacted in any conciliatory way because of the “madness” Giant Lance signaled. More importantly, the operation did increase the real risk of nuclear escalation. Lower commanders, lacking knowledge of Nixon’s intentions, waved peacetime nuclear weapons safety requirements to get the bombers used in Giant Lance in the air as quickly as possible. These bombers then flew into sensitive territories near the USSR to which they were not commanded, in flight patterns that were potentially dangerous.

Despite Nixon’s best intentions, Giant Lance inched the world closer to nuclear disaster without observably budging negotiations with the Soviet Union.

because we have to be so open—maybe because you have to say what you have to say in order to get elected—who knows? But I wouldn’t want to say.

This insistence on secrecy is similar to that of Nixon-era operations like Giant Lance, which were entirely covert, keeping even high-ranking military officials in the dark.

Despite his commitment to non-disclosure, Trump has made certain views on nuclear use clear. He expressed a willingness to use nuclear weapons against North Korea and refused to rule out the use of tactical nuclear weapons against ISIS. This implicit threat of nuclear escalation resembles the words of Kim Jung-un more than it does of any recent president. Trump even went as far as positing a world with Japanese and South Korean nuclear arms as a potentially beneficial one. At a time when the United States is actively pursuing the eradication of nuclear weapons globally, these comments place Trump far outside of mainstream U.S. foreign policy.

Trump tempered his statements with the caveat that nuclear weapons should be a last resort. Ironically, he did so whilst praising General Douglas MacArthur’s approach to the Pacific during World War II: leveraging the first use of nuclear weapons as a primary mechanism of fighting China or North Korea. When confronted about this contradiction Trump praised the strategy as a victorious one that didn’t actually lead to nuclear confrontation. He then added, “You don’t know if he wanted to use them [nuclear weapons], but he certainly said that, at least.” Trump’s praise makes it clear he believes in the nuclear madman strategy.

MADMAN TRUMP

After decades of taboos against threatening nuclear escalation, Donald Trump is clearly willing to once again reintegrate the nuclear madman approach into American foreign policy.

Recently, President Obama openly condemned the madman strategy in an interview with the Atlantic, stating, “There are ways to deter, but it requires you to be very clear ahead of time about what is worth going to war for and what is not.”

History has proven the madman theory to be a risky failure.

Donald Trump and anyone else who wishes to sabre rattle with nuclear weapons should be wary of the costs. There is no credible threat of nuclear war without real risk of destruction. North Korea might not be the behemoth nuclear power the Soviet Union once was, but it is still a dangerous enemy with which to engage in a game of nuclear Russian roulette. Threats like North Korea warrant a nuclear strategy that can succeed. We would be mad to repeat a strategy that can’t.

Donald Trump has resonated with many Americans who are fearful of the future and angered by the country’s current trajectory. On the issue of nuclear weapons, Trump has decided to resolve American’s fears in a dangerously familiar manner. Most of what we know about a Trump presidency’s foreign policy regarding nuclear weapons comes from comments he made during a New York Times interview conducted in late March.

A cornerstone of Trump’s foreign policy is secrecy and unpredictability. On multiple occasions, when asked about a specific issue of foreign policy Trump has simply refused to respond, citing the importance of keeping our enemy uninformed. He made this stance abundantly clear in the Times interview: I don’t want them to know what I’m thinking. The problem we have is that, maybe because it’s a democracy and maybe

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TRUMPAGEDDON

WHO IS OUR ENEMY?

A FALSE NARRATIVE IMMIGRATION AND THE “ENEMY WITHIN”

Sunaina Danziger

F

rom Damascus to Paris, from Istanbul to Brussels, and from Lesbos to Berlin, 2015 and early 2016 witnessed an international refugee crisis, escalated conflict in Syria and Iraq, and the proliferation of ISIS-orchestrated terror attacks across western Europe. These events, rather than engendering a more cooperative, inclusive international community, triggered unprecedented divisiveness and exclusion, the mainstreaming of populist-nationalist political parties, and widespread xenophobia. The United States, less directly affected by the refugee crisis and in many ways removed from the trend of European populist nationalism, has seen its own increase in xenophobia take shape from within the anti-immigration and generally offensive rhetoric driving Republican frontrunner Donald Trump’s campaign.

In the face of unrest in the Middle East, the mass migration of over a million refugees, and the rising influence of ISIS both regionally and abroad, many have attempted to define “the enemy” as “the other.” Taking up the mantle of offensive rhetoric, citizens and politicians alike have become comfortable collectively categorizing followers of ISIS and Syrian refugees fleeing rampant conflict based on a common religion. Common folk and political elites alike have blamed immigrants for declining economic security, using “otherness” as a means of defining the enemy on home soil. Yet perhaps more than anything, the

past year has demonstrated the pitfalls of attempting to define a common enemy through tactics of exclusion and xenophobia.

Our dangerously divisive international environment not only weakens national security, it skews foreign and domestic policy decisions around the world.

THE PARIS-BRUSSELS STORY The March 22 ISIS-orchestrated attacks in Brussels are the latest in a trend of violence against western Europe, part of what appears to be a broader assault on Western civilization and liberal democracy. Just as in the aftermath of the November attacks in Paris, the bombings in Brussels have brought about heightened rhetoric surrounding how to define and defeat “the enemy.” Newspapers ran headlines, citizens flew banners: “Europe at War,” “Je Suis Sick of This.” But at war with whom? ISIS claimed responsibility for the attacks hours after bombs went off at Brussels Airport and a subway station adjacent to the European Union headquarters. The ISIS suicide bombers responsible for the attacks—Ibrahim and Khalid El Bakraoui, Belgian nationals of Morrocan descent—were linked to the same terrorist cell that perpetrated the Paris attacks.

Yet just as leaders across western Europe and its allies

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expressed solidarity with Belgium, and U.S. airstrikes successfully targeted a number of key ISIS commanders, “#StopIslam” began trending on social media. Individuals publicizing the hashtag suggested that Islam as a religion and cultural practice, and thus Muslims across the globe, ought to be considered “the enemy.” Meanwhile, anti-immigration, ultra-right parties across the European Union appear to have become the continent’s new flashpoints. In Germany, Pegida, or “patriotic Europeans against the Islamization of the Occident,” has attempted to “mobilize popular resentment” in favor of banning refugees from entering Germany, shouting “no sharia in Europe!” The Golden Dawn Party—an aggressively anti-immigration, neo-fascist party in Greece—has generated support for its proposed policies to ban the immigration of Syrian refugees and to increase surveillance of Greek Muslims. The Golden Dawn boasts broad-based support from victims of record unemployment.

Yet “#StopIslam” and other slogans of Islamophobia only aid the forces of division and paint a portrait of a false enemy.

Xenophobia in western Europe likely aids ISIS recruitment efforts. Harvard Kennedy School professor and former dean Joseph Nye described to the HPR how “excessive rhetoric that alienates Muslims and weakens their willingness to provide crucial intelligence endangers us all.” Exclusionary rhetoric plays into a climate of division and inequality where “people whose identity has been uprooted by globalization search for identity in the imagined community of a pure Islamic caliphate.”

Nye further characterized ISIS’s appeal as “far from parochial in nature.” Policy and rhetoric in the broader Western world make Muslims and immigrants question whether they qualify as “European,” which in turn plays into ISIS’s recruitment model.

Marine Le Pen, leader of France’s ultra-right National Front Party, spoke in Montreal on March 22, condemning acts of “Islamic fundamentalism” and urging Belgium and France to take a hardline stance against admitting Syrian refugees and other migrants, for fear of a “threat from within.” A day later she arrived on the scene of the tragedy in Brussels, suggesting a form of European “ethnic nationalist solidarity” against encroaching and easily radicalized immigrant populations. Le Pen’s rhetoric is extreme and reactionary, perhaps, but it hints at a long-standing tradition of divisiveness between ethnic majorities and minorities in Europe. Ibrahim and Khalid El Bakraoui were members of ISIS, but also Belgian nationals, which makes defining the “enemy” particularly complicated.

Europe’s current trend of nativist nationalism may have its roots in a long-term inability to assimilate immigrant populations. Juliette Kayyem, Harvard Kennedy School professor and

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former assistant secretary for intergovernmental affairs at the Department of Homeland Security, discussed Europe’s longterm immigration problem with the HPR: “Europe has a generational problem that existed long before the rise of ISIS, which is an inability to have immigrant communities that feel whole with the majority.” Addressing the Syrian refugee crisis, Professor Kayyem added that “Europe tends to focus exclusively on migration. No one considers what will happen to these people and communities once they are actually European nationals.

Learning the language, feeling invested in the country’s future— an assimilation model the United States is very good at supporting—just does not happen to a large extent in Europe.” Thus, second generations that do not feel culturally European can be particularly vulnerable to radicalization. A sense of cultural and political solidarity tends to form within and amongst minority groups, who feel more kinship and loyalty to each other than to their countries. This in-group solidarity makes native Europeans more likely to consider immigrant communities as “the enemy.”

National migrant laws and religious expression restrictions codify these divisions between ethnic majorities and immigrant populations. For instance, states across Europe, including France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Spain, and Italy, have each adopted legal statutes banning or partially banning wearing the Muslim veil. These bans stem from Europe’s troubled relationship with multiculturalism. In Belgium itself, far-right parties such as the Christian Democrats and Vlams Blok have played a fairly mainstream role in national politics since the early 2000s.

Both support “increased autonomy” for the country’s Christian majority. Now, in light of the Brussels attacks, these policies constitute an immediate national security concern: divisive rhetoric alienates individuals like the El Bakraoui brothers, who in turn discover identity in terrorist groups such as ISIS, which flouts modern national boundaries.

THE UNITED STATES Although the United States has witnessed its fair share of offensive and exclusionary rhetoric, immigration forms the backbone of the country’s citizenry. This, combined with our geographic isolation, has generally provided a bulwark against terror recruitment within the United States. Professor Kayyem described the vital and often overlooked relationship between immigration policies and national security: “Our history of being able to assimilate and integrate immigrants absolutely makes us safer. If there’s any part of our experiment that has been incredibly successful it’s been the capacity of our immigrant community

WHO IS OUR ENEMY? WHO IS OUR ENEMY?

Donald Trump’s rhetoric has triggered anti-immigrant hostility in the United States.

not only to assimilate successfully but to feel invested in our own security.” The American immigrant culture is based in the notion that anyone and everyone—regardless of ethnicity, religion, or cultural background—can become an American citizen, participating in and fulfilling the American dream.

Yet a far less inclusive perception colors Donald Trump’s America: one overpopulated by illegal immigrants and in need of being made “great again.” Trump’s rhetoric, and that of his increasingly vocal supporters, is dangerous and offensive, and has triggered anti-immigrant hostility within the United States. Acting in an analogous manner to Europe’s ultra-right nationalists, Trump uses Mexico and the Muslim world—and thus Muslims and immigrants from Mexico within the country—as scapegoats for the plight of blue-collar, white America. His rallying cries and offensive statements are broadcast across the globe as a paradigm of American bigotry.

Trump’s statements are largely rhetorical and primarily reflect the beliefs of a disgruntled, largely uneducated and politically inactive electorate. His following could perhaps be seen as an incarnation of the European ultra-right within the United States. Yet, unlike in Europe, Trump does not have and is

unlikely to gain a foothold within U.S. policymaking. In its fight against ISIS, for instance, the United States has largely avoided the divisive language that governs Trump’s campaign and much of the European political landscape. This, to a certain degree, stems from President Obama’s clear efforts to push back against an “us vs. them” mentality: he refuses to designate ISIS and its contemporaries “Islamic extremist groups,” preferring the terms “fundamentalist extremism” or “violent extremism.” This is not an instance of over-applied “political correctness,” nor is it necessarily a rejection of ISIS’s grounding in mythos, religion, and textual Islam. It is rather a strategic means of dissociating, in official political language, the extreme terror group from millions of American Muslims, asylum seekers, and peaceful followers of the Islamic faith across the world.

Trump’s narrative is a false one, and the enemies it projects are contrived. The past year has exposed the amount of antiimmigration sentiment that lies latent in both the United States and Europe. Spreading false narratives demonizing immigrants and engaging in petty conflict over superficial difference could hardly be more counterproductive. There is no enemy more dangerous and self-destructive than an enemy created within.

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WHO IS OUR ENEMY?

A VALUES BASED ORDER Arjun Kapur 14 HARVARD POLITICAL REVIEW SUMMER 2016

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“T

his is not a clash of civilizations,” John Kerry declared on November 16, 2015, standing before a world shaken by the November 13 Islamic Statecoordinated attacks on Paris. The secretary of state, speaking at the American embassy in Paris, argued, “This is a battle between civilization itself and barbarism, between civilization and medieval and modern fascism both at the same time.” The attacks, the deadliest France has seen since World War II, killed 130 people and injured hundreds more less than a year after an al-Qaeda branch orchestrated the lethal shooting of staff at the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo. Western capitals have recently been attacked by terrorists to perpetuate the notion of “Islam versus the West,” to threaten the free speech of organizations such as Charlie Hebdo, and, in the Islamic State’s case, to employ asymmetric warfare as a counter to territorial losses in Iraq and Syria.

Describing the perpetrators as “psychopathic monsters,” Kerry’s remarks were aimed at reinforcing the Obama administration’s continued plea not to identify radical Islamic terrorists as true representatives of the religion and the Muslim world as a whole. Indeed, one will never hear the president use the word “Islamic” to describe the terrorists, preferring instead the term “violent extremists.” The administration’s strategy has been to deny the legitimacy sought by the Islamic State. Hoping to work with Muslim leaders in a global counterterrorism effort, the White House carefully communicates with the intention to avoid an alienation of Muslims both in the West and abroad.

More narrowly, Kerry sought to dispel comments made regarding the Paris attacks by GOP presidential hopefuls, such as thencandidate Senator Marco Rubio’s explicit statement, “This is a clash of civilizations.”

On this point, Kerry is right. Civilizations are not “clashing,” but values are. No matter how powerful its terrorist network grows, the Islamic State cannot claim to represent an entire civilization based on its warped version of Islam. What it can do is sustain a globalized attack on the West’s way of life and the values it champions. Making matters worse, the terrorists are striking Western societies precisely at a vulnerable political moment when Western politicians are making isolationist cases for leaving alliance structures at the core of the post-1945 order. In the face of external and internal threats, it is imperative for Westerners to reinvigorate their belief in shared values and defend Western unity and resolve. The international community is in dire need of a values-based order.

WHAT ARE WESTERN VALUES? How should Western values be defined? This author’s definition would include but not be limited to individual liberty, freedom of expression, freedom of association, the rule of reason, the rule of law, equality of opportunity, religious liberty, democracy, and private property. Their product is the model of liberal democracy the political scientist Francis Fukuyama famously termed “the final form of human government” in his 1989 piece “The End of History?”

Perhaps one of the best articulations of Western values was the remarks made by the Muslim apostate and author Ibn Warraq at an Intelligence Squared debate values hosted in 2007: The great ideas of the West—rationalism, self-criticism, the disinterested search for truth, the separation of church and

state, the rule of law, equality before the law, freedom of conscience and expression, human rights, liberal democracy—together constitute quite an achievement, surely, for any civilization. This set of principles remains the best and perhaps the only means for all people, no matter what race or creed, to live in freedom and reach their full potential.

In an interview with the HPR, Harvard professor of comparative religion Diana Eck offered an additional dimension to what constitutes Western values: “courage, a sense that we do shape our world and our destiny ... It’s to some extent individual, but it is also nurtured by society and education.” Human advancement is a common endeavor, and it is in the vein of the ideas expressed

by Warraq and Eck that Western values could be understood as universal.

Unfortunately, Fukuyama was incorrect to predict that the post-Cold War world would feature “the end point of mankind’s ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy.” Instead, it has been incumbent upon the West to deal with a global ideological competition precipitated by radicalization and what U.S. ambassador to the UN Samantha Power calls “problems from hell.” In some cases it has risen to the occasion, and in others has dithered. But it is in the West where the values it cultivated are best defended, and why they cannot yet be spoken as truly “universal.”

A VOID OF MEANING The modern period is far from the only time in which the West has had to stand up for its values in opposition to those of its enemies. Disaffected youth and those left out of the West’s economic and social fabric latched onto the values of competing systems during geopolitical struggles such as the Cold War. Populations in regions ranging from Latin America to Southeast Asia accepted and even voted in communist governments in search of independence from real or perceived Western imperialism.

The choice in their minds stood as one between exploitative Western-imposed capitalism and revolutionary socialism. For example, Vietnamese independence leader Ho Chi Minh (who even cited the American Declaration of Independence in his 1945 proclamation of Vietnamese independence) used communism as the vehicle through which to liberate his nation. Even within leading democracies one could find rebellious teenagers embracing notable Marxist figures such as the Argentine revolutionary Che Guevara in popular culture.

In the post-Cold War world, with communism discredited as a rival system by the fall of the Soviet Union, an ideological vacuum emerged. Despite China’s economic miracle through its use of a state-capitalist model, the post-Deng Chinese model’s ideological allure does not manifest itself at the grassroots. The late former Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez seemed to present a cult of personality-based leftist alternative for Latin America, but the “Chavismo” bubble burst once oil prices decreased and Chavez himself passed away.

Yet even without a challenger, liberal democracy has lost its shine to many Westerners. The Soviet collapse tarnished socialism, and it seemed only logical to double down on capitalism. Yet the heightened marketization of the West in some respects undermined Westerners’ faith in their way of life. As Harvard government professor Michael Sandel argues, markets

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do not by themselves create an adequate moral framework for human activity. Nevertheless, markets and governments increasingly controlled by special interests are exactly the mechanisms through which modern Western societies shape behavior. As Sandel wrote in The Atlantic, the West’s overuse of markets and their “nonjudgmental stance toward values … has drained public discourse of moral and civic energy.”

A deficiency of historical self-understanding, too, has catalyzed an ideological hollowing out of the West. As Harvard history professor Niall Ferguson argued in his 2011 book Civilization, the failure of educators to effectively teach “the foundational texts of Western civilization” (written by authors ranging from William Shakespeare to Isaac Newton) has contributed to the West’s greatest foe: its own citizens’ “pusillanimity” fueled by a pernicious case of “historical ignorance.” It is a hopeless pursuit to stand up for shared civilizational values if a society no longer has faith in their contemporary relevance.

Add the decades-long secularization of the West, and a recipe for self-doubt emerges. A 2015 Gallup survey found that Americans’ “confidence in the church/organized religion” hit an all time low of 42 percent. With religion fading, yet another dimension of public life with the capability to provide meaning to citizens’ lives has been diminished. Struck with disfavor of religion, market-driven institutions, and the great works and figures of their history, Westerners are plagued by a void of meaning— one that the Islamic State has viciously seized upon.

COUNTERING THE IDEOLOGICAL INSURGENCY What has filled the ideological vacuum is a radical jihadist interpretation of Islam. As CNN host and Washington Post columnist Fareed Zakaria points out, today’s terrorist “has chosen the path of terror as the ultimate act of rebellion against the modern world.” Radical Islam serves as the “off-the-shelf ideology” he or she latches onto for the practical purposes of violent extremism. It provides the ideological ammunition behind the attacks in Paris, Brussels, San Bernardino, and other cities struck by jihadists.

“This is not an existential threat to the future of the universe,” former British Ambassador to the United States Sir Peter Westmacott told the HPR. However, he said, “this is a challenge to our way of life,” and there remains a “need to work together with all the different faiths and communities to try to ensure that young people are not seduced by this poisonous kind of rhetoric.” Defending free societies from the ideological insurgency of radical Islam continues to be a common problem for the West and its allies.

Leadership through values is possible. As Eck told the HPR, the expression of values through policymaking is apparent today in Germany: “You seem them coming out in some of the ways in which Angela Merkel addresses the immigrant refugee crisis,

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something that is deeper than simply the convenience of Germany but that does have to do with that very deep sense of human dignity and the responsiveness to human need.” Hopefully Merkel’s example at the national level can inspire more vigorous international cooperation on constructing policies shaped by values.

THAT’S THE WAY THE COOKIE CRUMBLES Domestic politics in the West exhibits a bleak future for the strong network of alliances necessary for the assembly of a values-based order. In the most powerful country on Earth, the United States’ constitutionally enshrined values are under siege. Republican frontrunner Donald Trump and his campaign staff both figuratively and physically assault the press, propose banning foreigners from entering the country based on their religion, and denounce the people’s right to protest. Is there any better textbook case of a political figure seeking to undermine Americans’ First Amendment rights—one of the best institutional expressions of Western values?

Not only do nationalist figures such as Trump trash values, they also reject the international institutions that uphold them.

As Trump suggests the United States leave NATO, France’s rightwing National Front leader Marine Le Pen calls for her country to leave both NATO and the European Union. The two also vow to clamp down on free trade and to forcibly restrict immigration.

As Washington Post columnist Anne Applebaum notes, “we are two or three bad elections away from the end of NATO, the end of the European Union and maybe the end of the liberal world order as we know it.”

The West must revitalize its alliance structures, not rid itself of them. NATO in particular provides vital intelligence sharing efforts and military coordination in fights against common enemies such as the Islamic State. Moreover, it contributes to combating radicalization by helping to defend shared values. As NATO secretary general Jens Stoltenberg recently told Foreign Affairs, “NATO is based on some core values: human rights, individual liberty, and democracy.”

As jihadists wage ideological warfare and nationalist demagogues propagate fear mongering and isolationism in the West, a values-based order is needed more than ever. Secretary of State John Kerry may be right about the lack of “clashing civilizations,” but he and other Western leaders must spearhead efforts to strengthen their nations’ alliance structures and employ a counter-extremism strategy capable of protecting liberal democracy from both internal and external threats. The post-1945 order can be revamped for the challenges of the 21st century, and it should be based upon the values that bring out the best in humanity.

WHO IS OUR ENEMY?

A BROKEN FRAME

BLACK LIVES MATTER Brandon Dixon SUMMER 2016 HARVARD POLITICAL REVIEW 17

WHO IS OUR ENEMY?

I

t started on Facebook. Alicia Garza drafted a post dubbed “A love note for Black People,” crafted largely out of sympathy for a dead child and disgust for the system that killed him.

That post was the impetus for a movement hearkening back to the impassioned protesting of the Civil Rights Movement: Black Lives Matter. However, Black Lives Matter has an obvious twist.

It has thrown off the decorum and peacefulness that was previously used as a shield against white incrimination and is fighting racism with all the urgency of a militia unit. Their weapons?

Words, protests, and the transcendent force of social media.

Their goals? That part is a bit trickier.

At its crux, Black Lives Matter is a movement aiming to address a system that its followers have identified as unduly antagonistic towards African Americans. The solution starts with tackling rampant police brutality, according to a campaign launched in conjunction with BLM dubbed Campaign Zero.

“We can live in a world where the police don’t kill people by limiting police interventions, improving community interactions, and ensuring accountability,” the website states.

While the language Campaign Zero employs displays an obvious degree of level-headedness in its framing, comments made by everyday people sympathetic with the goals of BLM are often more volatile. In an essay dubbed Racism by Another Name, Jay-Marie J. Hill likened police brutality to a “sickness” brought about by systemic state violence.

For those placed in the crosshairs of the movement’s ideology, BLM can seem unnecessarily militant. Some vigorously decry the movement. In a piece entitled “The profound racism of Black Lives Matter Movement,” John Perazzo asserts that BLM “is in fact one of the most destructive, hateful, racist movements in living memory.”

That the jury is proverbially hung on the validity of BLM points to some inherent tensions within the campaign. BLM faces a choice, one that could make or break the momentum of the movement: to operate within the confines of a system that they have already identified as unfavorable in the hopes of affecting marginal change; or to dissolve that system and create something new in its place. Thus far, the indication is that BLM is going for the latter. As a result, the movement has inadvertently garnered a host of enemies—people who either take issue with its goals, practices, or rhetoric.

THE PROBLEM’S IN THE FRAME The problem for Black Lives Matter emanates from the manner in which it frames its grievances. Another recent social movement found itself in a similar situation, although its tone allowed for greater inclusivity. Occupy Wall Street captured national attention in 2011 when a series of protests decrying social and economic inequality swept across the country. For Occupy, framing the issue meant designating a specific “target”: the richest 1 percent of Americans. It was a rallying cry that was easy for the majority of people to answer because, by definition, most people fall into the category of “the 99 percent.” The movement did not divide people along lines endemic to their identity (race, culture, religion), but rather along lines associated with their wealth.

According to its guiding principles, Black Lives Matters has aimed to be an inclusive movement that seeks to incorporate

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members from different cultural and racial backgrounds. But while its goal may be bridging cultural divides, it is compromised by the fact that its message rests upon racial lines. Whether this was its original intent or not, the movement creates a division between black and white Americans. Whereas black Americans are protesting for valid reasons based off of a dangerous trend of police brutality, many white Americans feel as though they are being singled out by the movement. The result: a notion of a dangerous “otherness,” something that has fermented conflict throughout our nation’s history.

Alison Denton Jones, a lecturer on social movements at Harvard, highlighted the Occupy movement’s advantageous inclusivity to the HPR: “Once you start that conversation, it’s not that hard for people to realize that they’re in the 99 percent and they’re not being targeted by this movement, whereas Black Lives Matter has a big issue with many people, especially white people, feeling like they’re being lumped in.”

Occupy, while not prey to the same challenge, faced a hurdle in its decentralized approach to mobilization. In 2011, that decentralization was heralded as its greatest strength. In 2016, after the smoldering embers of the movement have faded, that “strength” has been identified as the reason for Occupy’s failure.

Importantly, though, decentralization seldom led to situations in which local movements fell out of step with the organization’s central philosophy. BLM, however, has been riddled with such instances.

That the Black Lives Matter movement has managed to sustain itself this long without much local violence is remarkable.

It’s something that is tied, somewhat paradoxically, to its status as a conventionally “leaderless” movement. Or, as prominent BLM activists describe it, a “leaderfull” movement. Indeed, the overarching organization decries the idea of having a fountainhead, but chapters abound with local leadership. Perhaps there is a sense of duty that these leaders feel for keeping the peace.

That is not to say that Black Lives Matter has not had its fair share of escalated encounters. From the BLM chapter at Wesleyan, which embarked on a campaign to disestablish a newspaper that ran an op-ed criticizing the movement for not addressing its extremists, to the protesters at Dartmouth who reportedly slung curses at their classmates and even went as far as to physically pin a student against a wall, college campus iterations of BLM have been riddled with controversy. Furthermore, protesters in Cleveland threatened a reporter who was filming a demonstration and, in 2014, protesters who were believed to be associated with BLM chanted “we want dead cops” in the wake of Eric Garner’s death.

These incidents, though not representative of the movement as a whole, are often misconstrued as such. As a result, they are used as fodder for a firestorm of criticism by BLM’s enemies.

ENEMIES ABOUND Any well-meaning disruptive movement is bound to make enemies. For BLM, those foes abound. The movement has made enemies out of self-professing moderates, hardline conservatives, and even former civil rights activists.

The largest group allied against BLM seems to be a cohort of right-wing media outlets that denounce the tactics and purpose of the movement. Some published editorials that criticized BLM

WHO IS OUR ENEMY?

for its rejection of its rival movement, All Lives Matter. Others point to instances in BLM’s short history in which local chapters have acted belligerently.

Hand in hand with the conservative media comes the conservative political base. In this election cycle, Chris Christie, former Republican presidential hopeful, brutally rebuked the movement for what he characterized as “lawlessness,” specifically in what he believed was a call for the murder of police officers. He extended that criticism to President Obama and the Democratic Party, who have defended the matter in the past. “I’ll tell you the thing that disturbs me the most [about] what’s going on with the Democratic Party in Washington,” Christie said. “They’re not standing behind our police officers in this country.”

Politicians in general are put in a compromising position when they have to address BLM. On the one hand, they could throw their support behind the movement and risk alienating a cohort of police offices or other public defenders who feel as though the movement is unjustly targeting them. On the other hand, politicians could condemn the movement and risk the ire of liberals and African Americans who believe that its goals are common-sense propositions rather than grossly unreasonable demands.

Surprisingly enough, BLM has even drawn the disapproval of members of the original Civil Rights Movement. They often criticize BLM for abandoning their brand of civil disobedience.

In an op-ed in the Washington Post, former Civil Rights activist Barbara Reynolds denounced BLM as something that is “hard for [her] to get behind,” because the tactics that the movement uses are completely different from the ones activists previously employed. Reynolds notes, “at protests today, it is difficult to distinguish legitimate activists from the mob actors who burn and loot.”

For BLM organizers, the docility shown by Civil Rights activists is too weak to address the nation’s race problems. For Civil Rights activists, nonaggressive tactics were necessary to highlight the often egregious racism and prejudice of the institutions oppressing African Americans. BLM believes that the nature of the current world—a faux color-blind society that is ignoring rather than addressing racism—is not conducive to the same approach. In their eyes, it needs a jarring blow to encourage its leaders to change. That unabashed approach makes people uncomfortable, especially in a society that has ebbed closer and closer to a state where the extreme of political correctness is the new norm. To blazon its website with comments that put the onus of institutional racism on the state—“it is an acknowledgement that Black poverty and genocide is state violence”—is to subvert that new norm.

These tactics, which have led to people describing BLM as “not your grandparent’s civil rights movement,” have lined up a succession of enemies that might prove fatal if efforts aren’t made to assuage tensions.

THE SOLUTION IS ALSO IN THE FRAMING Some would argue that smoothing things over isn’t the

answer. Others assert that it is the only way for BLM to enact substantive change.

The reality is that BLM lacks political capital. Thus, up to this point, any attempts to influence policy have been driven by force-the-issue demonstrations that have mainly symbolic effects. BLM is more likely to take to the streets than to lobby in boardrooms to make change. Politicians, who often count police officers and other public safety groups among their primary constituents, are loathe to appease BLM in fear of losing their political base. To aggregate the political capital needed to be actively engaged in the legislative process, BLM has to be prepared to stop spurning political candidates and institutions. In 2015, the Democratic National Committee offered to endorse the movement—an endorsement that BLM quickly turned down, arguing that “The Democratic Party, like the Republican and all political parties, have historically attempted to control or contain Black people’s efforts to liberate ourselves. True change requires real struggle, and that struggle will be in the streets and led by the people, not by a political party.”

Alternatively, its leaders can begin running for political office in the hopes of addressing the problems from within. In Baltimore, prominent BLM activist DeRay Mckesson announced his candidacy in the mayoral election in February 2016.

Brandon Terry, an assistant professor of African American Studies at Harvard stressed to the HPR the importance of BLM amassing local political capital, rather than national support: “So many of these issues have their roots at the local level or municipal level. You’re not going to change criminal justice only at the federal level,” Terry said. “It requires a lot: it requires money, it requires organization, and it requires network coordination and it’s going to be difficult.”

However, operating outside of traditional institutions, as the movement has been doing thus far, has dangers as well. For BLM, the problem is alienating the people that could possibly enact the change they are working towards, and further drumming up the view of a radical black movement. To be successful, BLM needs to lean partially on values that previous social movement leaders have identified as integral to success.

Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote in his Letter from Birmingham Jail that “In any nonviolent campaign there are four basic steps: collection of the facts to determine whether injustices exist; negotiation; self purification; and direct action.”

BLM has somewhat convoluted the order of those steps, but are nonetheless following the general formula. Its website serves as a sort of hub for statistical support of their mission; direct action is obvious in the organized protests, sit-ins, and social media campaigns that have been started in response to the movement’s rallying call.

The self-purification will arguably come once the movement arrives upon a decision about the question of framing. Should they continue to frame the movement in a way that is off-putting to support outlets, or should they amend their methods to be more amenable to the public? If the latter route is taken, then negotiation will be easier for BLM to accomplish. The former, on the other hand, might do little except prolong a cycle of reciprocal animosity between BLM and its many opponents.

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WHO IS OUR ENEMY?

WHO WILL BE THE ONE?

Vice Presidential Possibilities for the 2016 Presidential Race Lizzy Thomas 20 HARVARD POLITICAL REVIEW SUMMER 2016

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f and when America has sufficiently caught up with the Kardashians, it should perhaps turn to reruns of this year’s presidential primary debates for its trashy TV fix. In some ways, the race has truly resembled reality TV—in one of the key players involved, in the nature of the insults hurled, and in the addicting quality of its narratives. Questions like “Will one of the major political parties really choose the “You’re fired” guy?” have glued eyes to TVs, phone and computer screens for nearly a year. And yet, there will come a time when the identities of the nominees will not be so interesting—namely when the nominees become party candidates.

“The presidential race is a big story, until it’s not,” Joel Goldstein, a St. Louis University law professor and author of the book The Modern American Vice Presidency: The Transformation of a Political Institution, told the HPR. “Then, the vice presidential race becomes the big story.”

And with Ted Cruz’s April 27 announcement of Carly Fiorina as his running mate in the scenario he secures the nomination, the starting gun to the VP race has certainly sounded. Who else might join the race?

THE CLINTON CHOICE The way Diaz Rosillo sees it, Clinton has two vice presidential options. Firstly, she could amplify her existing strengths by picking someone to energize her base, namely a Latino, African American or woman.

A few Latino options have been discussed in the early stages of running mate speculation. Both Julian Castro, current U.S. secretary of housing and urban development and former mayor of San Antonio, and Tom Perez, secretary of labor, have been considered.

However, Professor Joel Goldstein sees a potential strategic pitfall for those two particular options.

“Since Clinton was part of the Obama administration during his first term, somebody who wasn’t might have more appeal,” Goldstein said.

However, Clinton and the Democratic party may not actually need any help with Latino voters if their general election opponent is the candidate who all but called Mexican immigrants rapists and drug smugglers.

“Just putting Trump out there, if that doesn’t boost Latino turnout, it’s hard to think what would,” Goldstein said.

So who is behind vice presidential door number two?

“She could go for someone who could help her with a demographic she’s not doing so well with, most notably working class white males,” Diaz Rosillo said.

That may be a doubly important demographic for Clinton to target with her VP pick, given its support for her primary opponent, Bernie Sanders, and likely general election foe, Trump.

To that end, a white male from the Midwest could be particularly helpful. Sherrod Brown, senator from Ohio, fits that bill. What’s more, the perception of Brown as an ally of Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren could help Clinton expand electorally to the left wing of the Democratic Party which has

fueled Sanders’ lengthy bid.

Another important consideration in a running mate for Clinton is his or her age, given her own: 69 on election day.

“She’s old enough that I think she needs to have somebody who will be a plausible successor, just in case,” Goldstein said.

Castro is the youngest of those discussed, at 42. Perez is 56, and Brown 63.

For all the novelty of Clinton—securing the Democratic party nomination will make her the first female presidential nominee from one of the two major parties—the considerations that will likely factor into her VP calculus are fairly commonplace. The same will not be true for the man Diaz Rosillo thinks likely to be her opponent come November.

THE DONALD’S DECISION The constitutional requirement that presidents in fact have vice presidents will put a forcible end to the one-man show phase of the Trump campaign.

However, Trump faces greater challenges in his running mate selection than an unwillingness to share the spotlight. He has made a brand and a winning primary campaign of his political outsider status. But that attribute—utter lack of political experience—has not historically proven to be a winning one in the general election. Of all 44 presidents in the history of the country, only three had not held elected office prior to the presidency, and all three came from high ranking-military backgrounds (Zachary Taylor, Ulysses S. Grant, and Dwight Eisenhower).

It should be noted that, if he actually receives the nomination, Trump is already beating long odds—in that same time span, only three other losing nominees, in addition to the three already mentioned, had the lack of background he does.

So Americans have generally been reluctant to elect an outsider—how would they feel about two? Presidential nominees with backgrounds as governors provide somewhat of an analog to Trump, as they too are Washington outsiders.

“If you think about the governors, they’ve all picked Washington insiders,” Goldstein said.

“So the conventional thing for Trump to do would be to show he is serious about government and pick someone with national security experience or legislative experience.”

Trump is cognizant of the need to bolster the legitimacy of his hypothetical ticket, having said in February that he wants a number two who is “political” to “get lots of great legislation that we all want passed.”

But can Trump navigate the vice presidential paradox of needing political experience and outsider identity at the same time? Diaz Rosillo thinks there might be a way and has a very specific option in mind: John Kasich. The current Trump opponent, Ohio governor, and former Ohio congressman strikes the right balance between experience and inexperience. Despite his experience as governor, he left the House of Representatives in 2001.

“He has a lot of Washington experience, but he’s not necessarily a Washington insider. He’s fought the system, he’s made a

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name for himself most recently as a governor, not as a senator or a member of Congress,” Diaz Rosillo said. “He’ll bring the legislative experience from his time in Congress many years ago, and he’ll bring the executive experience from his time as governor.”

Another potential solution to the experienced outsider conundrum may come from the military. Picking a high-ranking general would elevate a Trump ticket’s foreign policy and national security standing, all while avoiding Washington.

“A general as running mate would help assure people concerned about Trump’s foreign policy and national security experience,” Diaz Rosillo said. Although they are leaders, generals typically have a lack of specifically political experience in common with Trump. “A general would be very bold, but I think it’s less likely than him picking someone with more political experience.”

Outside of Kasich and a decorated military leader, who, strategically speaking, should Trump have as running mate? A serious limiting factor may be who is willing to have Trump.

WHO WILL WORK WITH TRUMP? Trump lacks more than experience. He is also missing robust support from groups that make up an increasingly large portion of the population and the electorate. He has demographic deficiencies, both those consistent with the Republican party at large and those exacerbated by his statements on Mexican-funded walls and legal punishment for women who obtain abortions.

Sean Spicer, Chief Strategist and Communications Director at the Republican National Committee, doubts the ability of a VP choice to expand into target demographics, desirable for his party though that might be.

“There are a lot of demographics that we as a party want to do better with. Younger women, blacks, Hispanics, Asians,” Spicer told the HPR. “If you choose a woman, that doesn’t necessarily mean you’re going to do better with women. There’s a bit of a misperception about that. It’s never proven true. Geraldine Ferraro was on the Dem ticket, and they didn’t win. Sarah Palin was on the 2008 ticket and they didn’t win.”

At any rate, Trump’s poor numbers with Latino and female voters may pale in severity to his inability to unite the Republican Party behind him. This could restrict the number of Republican Party elites Trump could choose who would actually run with him.

“Trump may have a problem, not in that many Republicans are going to vote Democratic, but in that some of them might simply not vote,” Diaz Rosillo said. “One challenge will be to unite the party and get Republicans who currently don’t support him—not just don’t support him, but are really actively against

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him—to come into the fold and vote.”

The RNC would support a Trump bid, Spicer said. Still, in the course of the primary, many of the party’s leaders have come out strongly against Trump. Republican heavy hitters Scott Walker, Nikki Haley, and Lindsey Graham have all endorsed Cruz in the three candidate-stage of the primary. In his endorsement statement, Graham lauded Cruz as “the best alternative to Donald Trump.”

So much opposition could leave Trump with a limited group of candidates who fit the vice presidential requirements of being experienced enough to be his VP and willing to be his VP. Thus, Trump’s penchant for provocation may not just drive away voters, but would-be VPs as well. Vice presidential nominees become extensions of their presidential nominees, and therefore are associated with all their positions, Goldstein said.

Given the unpredictability of Trump’s views, that association may be undesirable.

“People may have some concern about being the first responder on everything he says,” Goldstein said. “He insults somebody, and you walk off an airplane to a reporter saying what do you think about what Trump just said?”

Ultimately, though, Diaz Rosillo sees Trump’s minute selection pool undergoing expansion, should he secure the nomination.

“Right now, we’re in the middle of a very heated battle for the Republican nomination,” Diaz Rosillo said. “Once he’s the nominee, I think a lot of the people who are opposing him, even pretty viciously, would accept an offer to be his running mate.”

UNIMPORTANT DOES NOT MEAN UNINTERESTING Castro or Perez, Kasich or Christie—will any of it really matter in regards to the ultimate question of Clinton or Sanders or Trump or Cruz? Not tremendously, Diaz Rosillo says.

“Research has shown that voters don’t care much who the running mate is,” Diaz Rosillo said. “They look at the top of the ticket. In a close election, the choice of running mate can really help a candidate if the selection is wise. But for the most part, the selection of a running mate is a lot less consequential to people’s vote choice than people would assume.”

The uncertainty of that central presidential question stems in part from the unusual nature of many of the characters involved, which presents the potential for them to bring on unusual cast mates. Perhaps the 2016 vice presidential race will be the better analog to reality TV: providing little relevance to reality, but lots of entertainment.

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THE STATE OF INTEGRATION IN THE UNITED STATES Catherine Zhang

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n 1954, the Supreme Court handed down its landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision, unanimously striking down state-ordered racial segregation in schools as unconstitutional. In the majority opinion, Earl Warren argued, “separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.” Therefore, according to Warren, even if the separate facilities were of equal physical quality, segregation still inflicted significant social and psychological harm upon black students, inhibiting their educational development. Activists lauded the decision as a major victory for the Civil Rights Movement, one that would pave the way for complete integration.

Today, over 60 years later, America has failed to achieve the type of integration that the plaintiffs of Brown v. Board envisioned. In 2013, Richard Rothstein, an education analyst at the Economic Policy Institute, declared, “Racial isolation… has become a permanent feature of our landscape.” American schools are more segregated today than they were in the late 1960s, when the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights first began enforcing desegregation orders. Data published by the National Center for Education Statistics shows that during the 1968-1969 school year, approximately 77 percent of black students and 55 percent of Latino students attended public

schools that were comprised of over 50 percent racial minorities. In 2009-2010, the percentages shifted to 74 percent of black students and 80 percent of Latino students, with over 40 percent of black and Latino students attending schools that were more than 90 percent minority. Meanwhile, the typical white student attends a school where more than three-quarters of his or her peers are also white.

Even within racially diverse schools, racial mixing is not guaranteed. In October 2014, the Department of Education published a press release that lambasted the process of “tracking”—or placing students on separate educational tracks based on ability—as a form of modern day segregation. Higher income students, most of whom are white or Asian, are more likely to get tracked into high-level classrooms, while poor children, many of them black or Latino, are left behind in lower-level classes with more students, less experienced teachers, and less rigorous curricula. Lisa Darling-Hammond, professor at the Stanford Graduate School of Education, notes that even when grades and test scores are comparable, black students are more likely to be assigned to lower-track, nonacademic classes. Furthermore, school districts disproportionately and often improperly categorize minority students as needing special education, further perpetu-

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ating racial isolation in schools. African American children are almost three times more likely than white children to be labeled “mentally retarded.”

At the same time, new hope for racial integration has emerged through school assignment plans that emphasize socioeconomic diversity and school choice—ironically, repurposing some of the same mechanisms by which white students avoided integration in the last century. After a series of disappointing Supreme Court cases that restricted policymakers’ options for racial integration, as well as the rise of the school choice movement, school districts are turning to other innovative solutions to facilitate equal educational opportunity.

Forced busing of students to assigned schools—authorized by district courts to ensure racial diversity—caused white families to flee to the suburbs or private schools, leaving urban schools with higher concentrations of low-income and minority students. White and minority schoolchildren, originally divided within school districts, became separated across them. After Nixon assumed the presidency and changed the political balance on the Supreme Court, the judiciary gradually retreated from school desegregation suits and curbed the ability of school districts to pursue integration. Two court cases in particular limited school districts’ options: Milliken v. Bradley and Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1.

REVISITING BROWN: WHAT WENT WRONG?

MILLIKEN AND PARENTS INVOLVED: TWO STEPS BACK

Concerned with political turmoil, the justices on the Warren Court initially postponed the Brown decision to deliberate how to best desegregate schools. In the end, their decision failed to provide any concrete method for remedying racial segregation in schools.

It was not until Brown II, a follow-up decision by the court, that the justices delegated the responsibility of desegregation to district courts, ordering them to do so “with all deliberate speed.” Martha Minnow, author of In Brown’s Wake: Legacies of America’s Educational Landmark, observes, “‘All deliberate speed’ was the compromise offered by a Court preoccupied with white resistance to racial equality.” The phrase’s ambiguity allowed states and local districts to stall desegregation through a combination of avoidance, delay, and resistance. The most notable example occurred in 1963, when Alabama Gov. George Wallace blocked the front door of the Foster Auditorium at the University of Alabama to prevent two black students from entering.

Obstruction politics consumed much of the South in a similar fashion, causing serious delays in implementation. In Greensboro, North Carolina, for instance, the school board declared it would abide by Brown, but did not transition toward integration until 1971—17 years later—after numerous demonstrations and lawsuits.

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Although Brown struck down state-authorized racial segregation, it not address indirect segregation resulting from residential housing patterns and private choices. The 1974 Supreme Court case Milliken v. Bradley clarified the distinction between de jure and de facto segregation, establishing that school systems were not responsible for desegregation unless segregation was an explicit policy of the school district.

In the case, the Supreme Court prohibited cross-district bussing as a remedy to de facto segregation in racially balkanized neighborhoods. The NAACP had charged the state of Michigan and the city of Detroit with enacting policies to increase racial segregation in schools—including redlining and exclusionary zoning—highlighting the relationship between discriminatory housing practices and educational segregation. While the Court agreed that the city of Detroit had violated the constitutional rights of African American students, the court held that the scope of the remedy should match the scope of the violation.

Since they found no inter-district violation, they ruled that suburbs could not be included in plans to rectify urban segregation.

The second Supreme Court case that restricted policymakers’ ability to promote racial integration in schools involved the Seattle School District’s use of a “racial tiebreaker” in school

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assignment decisions. The District was one of several school districts that pursued voluntary school integration plans to combat racial isolation. It allowed students to apply to any high school in the District, using certain characteristics as deciding factors in admissions if schools became oversubscribed. If a school’s population deviated a certain number of percentage points from the total student population in Seattle, the racial tiebreaker would go into effect.

Parents Involved in Community Schools, a non-profit education group from the area, sued the Seattle School District for its use of the racial tiebreaker. The case went to the Supreme Court in 2007. In a three-way split (4-1-4), the Court struck down Seattle’s school assignment plan, arguing that racial balancing does not constitute a compelling state interest. In the majority opinion, Chief Justice Roberts famously declared, “the way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.”

NEW HOPE FOR SCHOOL INTEGRATION? In February, the White House announced that President Obama’s proposed annual budget includes a $120 million “Stronger Together” grant program, which would double federal funds supporting school integration. President Obama’s approach differs from previous federal integration efforts in two aspects.

First, it emphasizes integration across socioeconomic strata instead of race. The grant program would reward school districts that voluntarily attempt to break up large concentrations of poverty. Second, it seems to rely on the idea that new integration programs prioritize voluntary choice over compulsion. Instead of forcing students to integrate by redrawing attendance zones, school districts can foster diversity by creating fiscal incentives for students across various socioeconomic strata to mix.

The White House proposal reflects a general shift in focus toward socioeconomic integration. In “A New Wave of School Integration,” Halley Potter, Kimberly Quick, and Elizabeth Davies of the Century Foundation report that 91 district and charter networks across the country use socioeconomic status as

a factor in school assignment, over double the amount in 2007.

These school districts and charter schools enroll over 4 million students and span 32 states. One notable example is Cambridge Public Schools and its Controlled Choice Policy, which requires that the percentage of students at each school who qualify for the Federal Free & Reduced Lunch Program must be roughly equal to the School District’s averages. Originally pushing a racebased integration policy instead of one based on income, the Cambridge City Council amended the policy in 2001 to focus on socioeconomic status.

Given the historic connection between race and class, socioeconomic integration policies can indirectly produce racial integration, with less restriction. While using racial indicators in school assignments is prohibited due to Parents Involved, using socioeconomic indicators is not, making these plans legally advantageous.

Many school districts attempt to promote income diversity by redrawing school attendance boundaries, but an increasing number of integration programs rely on voluntary choice. These programs can be district-wide, such as the Controlled Choice Plan in Cambridge. Families rank their choices of schools, and then get placed based on a combination of family preference, diversity considerations, and programmatic factors.

Magnet schools with special pedagogical foci incentivize families to apply to schools outside of their neighborhoods. At the same time, families who wish for their children to attend a neighborhood school can reflect that preference. Some individual charter schools and magnet schools directly consider socioeconomic diversity in admissions, and use recruitment strategies to facilitate integrated enrollment.

Over 60 years after the Supreme Court struck down state-authorized racial segregation in schools, America has yet to achieve integration on any meaningful scale. But even as the United States reaches a level of segregation higher than that of the late 1960s, there are signs of promise that we are crafting the tools necessary to fight racial segregation in education.

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AN ATHEIST IN THE OVAL OFFICE

Lizzy Schick

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hat does it take to be electable? The answer to that question underlies the successes and failures of any democracy, and the United States is no exception. The demographic makeup of America’s elected offices has slowly diversified over the years, with one exception: religious affiliation. Almost the entire Congress identifies as Christian, as has nearly every president and vice president to date. Article Six of the Constitution mandates that no religious test or qualification can render a candidate ineligible for public office, yet it is plain that American government remains somewhat dominated by religious values. In fact, voters oppose an atheist candidate more than one that has committed adultery or one that has no experience in Washington. Atheism is not only unappealing in a candidate but can also literally be a barrier to entry. In seven states, all in the Bible Belt, technically unenforceable legislation

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bars atheists from running for office.

This election season, the question of whom the American public considers electable has become particularly salient. During the current election cycle, the major candidates from both parties have expressed their deep commitment to faith—some Christianity, others Judaism—demonstrating that religiosity remains a de facto requirement for office.

BIASES Americans’ tendency to dislike atheists is an attitude based in traditional biases. Atheists seem particularly threatening to Christian morality and value systems, even when compared to other stigmatized groups such as American Muslim and LGBTQ+ populations. This fear of secular immorality has psy-

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chological roots. Matthew Baum, an expert on public policy at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, told the HPR that in many cases, religion serves as a sort of heuristic or mental shortcut that can communicate a candidate’s likely values and policies to voters. America’s comparative religious fervor, which forces candidates to disclose their personal religious views, is thus prompted—at least in part—by a need to know candidates at a glance.

Because of the pressure to hold a religious identity, particularly a Christian identity, politicians often feign religiosity.

Donald Trump’s “Two Corinthians” gaffe exemplifies these often farcical efforts to court evangelicals and other religious groups during elections. The practice of cultivating a religious persona occurs on both sides of the aisle as Democrats like Hillary Clinton also use religion to appeal to voters. Only certain religions possess this appeal, of course. Rumors that President Obama was Muslim captivated his opponents and enraged his supporters during his campaign for Senate in 2004 and for president in 2008. Still, polls suggest that Americans by and large would prefer a candidate of any mainstream religion to a secular one.

A recent Gallup poll on the presidency found that atheists were the least electable group listed in the survey except for socialists, which seems ironic given socialist Bernie Sanders’ significant popularity this election season. The results revealed that 40 percent of Americans say they would not vote for an atheist, receiving even less support than other frequently stigmatized groups like Muslims and LGBTQ+ individuals. Moreover, atheist activism has little traction in the political sphere and fails to make headlines or arouse sympathy from outsiders.

ELECTABILITY While the portion of voters who would not vote for an atheist composes less than half of the electorate, even 40 percent opposition can condemn a candidate to electoral failure. When only 60 percent of voters across party lines would even begin to consider voting for a candidate, the likelihood of winning an election is low. Former U.S. Representative Barney Frank (DMass.) does not align himself with any particular religion nor does he identify as an atheist, but he has experienced firsthand Congress’s palpable religiosity. Frank told the HPR, “As long as there is a significant percentage of people who will not vote for a certain individual, then it becomes very hard to get the 50 percent. It doesn’t have to be that a majority is against you becoming president for that to become politically impossible.”

The same Gallup poll showed that atheists could glean support from 64 percent of Democrats, 61 percent of Independents, and 45 percent of Republicans. Thus, though an atheist or secular candidate would fare better among liberal voters, his chances of

election would still be slim.

These pressures help explain why candidates tend to put on religious performances regardless of the sincerity of their beliefs. As of 2014, almost a quarter of Americans self-identified as religiously unaffiliated, almost double the number from the previous year, which suggests that the religious makeup of government does not reflect the changing electorate. It might also imply that a significant portion of election officials exaggerate or fabricate their religiosity, as many Americans believe politicians like Donald Trump do. Baum acknowledges these norms, explaining, “We have not in modern times had a major presidential candidate who has gone on to win a nomination, let alone be elected president, who hasn’t invoked their religious faith as part of their strategy for electoral success.”

A PLACE FOR SECULARISM While attending the National Religious Liberties Conference in Iowa, Ted Cruz professed to an enthusiastic audience, “Any president who doesn’t begin every day on his knees isn’t fit to be commander-in-chief of this country.” Such statements characterize the ferocity with which many Americans regard religion and the presidency. In fact, the vast majority of our nation’s presidents have been Christians. Only two—Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln—have had no formal affiliation with a religion, though both were deists.

The presidency may still be unreachable for atheist candidates, but secular candidates could have an easier time in the near future, especially if secular and non-secular political blocs and organizations make a good-faith effort to cooperate. Frank emphasized to the HPR that despite the frustrations nonreligious people may experience at the hands of religious opponents, they “should not reciprocate by being disrespectful of sincerely held religious views.” Perhaps practicing mutual respect will lead to more equal treatment of beliefs in American government.

The merits of European secularism demonstrate the potential for a similar system in America. The religiosity that infuses American politics can amplify biases and deepen ideological rifts by creating yet another criterion on which politicians publicly disagree. A candidate’s religion should never overshadow their qualifications for office, yet our nation has come to a point where that phenomenon can readily occur. Granted, these questions are never simple. Look at how French laïcité has contributed to Islamophobia, and it is evident that extreme secularism can be just as problematic as extreme religiosity. In the end, Americans should remember that moderation and cooperation are just as important to religious identities as they are to party identities in our political system.

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AFTER AUTOCRACY

CHALLENGES IN TUNISIAN DEMOCRACY Sebastian Reyes

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or its decisive contribution to the building of a pluralistic democracy in Tunisia in the wake of the Jasmine Revolution of 2011.” It is with this rationale in mind that the Norwegian Nobel Committee bestowed its 2015 Peace Prize upon the Tunisian National Dialogue Quartet, a coalition crucial to the drafting of the country’s democracy composed of the Tunisian General Labor Union, the Tunisian Confederation of Industry, Trade and Handicrafts, the Tunisian Human Rights League, and the Tunisian Order of Lawyers. Upon announcement of the award, the immediate reaction from journalists and analysts, many of whom expected a more prominent figure such as Pope Francis or German Chancellor Angela Merkel, was one of surprise. In retrospect, however, it is difficult to deny that the Nobel Committee was anything but exceptionally astute in its choice. The prize recognized not only the direct accomplishments of the quartet—namely drafting and negotiating a “Road Map” for the future of the country amidst political violence in 2013—but also celebrated Tunisia’s successful transition from a corrupt and oppressive autocracy under the rule of strongman Zine El Abidine Ben Ali to a vibrant, burgeoning democracy and a beacon of hope for the region.

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In many ways, Tunisia is much better off today than it was prior to the revolution just over five years ago. The measure that is perhaps most demonstrative of the country’s rapid transformation is its ranking in “Freedom In the World”—the annual global survey of political rights and civil liberties conducted by watchdog organization Freedom House. While in 2011 Tunisia earned scores of 5 in civil liberties and 7 in political rights—both on a scale on which 1 is “best” and 7 is “worst”—in 2015 the country scored 3 and 1 in those same categories respectively.

This is not to say, however, that Tunisian democracy is free of critical challenges. Prevailing analysis has focused largely on two main perils facing the country: the expansion of jihadi terrorism, especially as conducted ISIS, and bleak prospects for overall economic development. But to suggest that these threats are the only—or even the most important—ones plaguing the nascent democracy is to neglect the perspective of the common people.

Indeed, rather than the broad, macro-level issues pertaining to security and economics that given constant attention in the media, the most salient challenges the nation faces are grounded in the everyday safety and financial anxieties of ordinary Tunisians.

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“Context is particualrly key in understnading why ordinary citizens perceive an increase in domestic insecurity.”

A POLICE STATE NO MORE Aside from the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to the National Dialogue Quartet, the two largest news stories in 2015 related to Tunisia were unmistakably grim. On March 15, 17 tourists were killed and 36 more hospitalized after armed militants opened fire and detonated grenades at the Bardo Museum in Tunis. Three months later, on June 28, gunmen killed 38 and wounded 39 on the beach of the Hotel Riu Imperial Marhaba in the city of Sousse. ISIS claimed responsibility for both attacks.

The twin atrocities exemplified real challenges Tunisia faces in the fight against terrorism. But Melani Cammett, a faculty member of the Government Department at Harvard University who specializes in the Middle East and North Africa, argues that such security issues are not threatening to the development of democracy as a whole in Tunisia. In an interview with HPR, Cammett noted that the aforementioned attacks have “not led to a democratic breakdown … One concern [is that] in order to address [threats to security] the country would have to curtail civil liberties.” But although the enactment of a tough anti-terrorism law in response to the attacks of last year made some citizens nervous, no curtailments of civil liberties resulting from security concerns have threatened the existence of the developing democracy as of yet.

Nevertheless, Tunisians are scared. Almost half of the Tunisian population view terrorism as the most important problem their country faces, much more than any other issue. There is reason to believe, however, that these survey numbers may be artificially inflated. In an interview with HPR, Youssef Cherif, a Tunisian political commentator, pointed out that “if you take a Tunisian citizen or policy-maker and ask them, ‘When was the last time you were confronted by terrorism?’ [the answer] will be ‘never,’ because … there [have been] very few terrorist attacks.” How, then, can widespread anxieties over terrorism be explained? For Cherif, part of the answer is simple: “Terrorism has been covered so much in the media that everyone is talking about [it].”

Perhaps a more interesting explanation is rooted in perceptions of the capacity of the Tunisian state. According to Cherif,

“the state is weakening … the feeling of security, that [regardless of ] whatever happens the state will come and save you, is slowly disintegrating.” In large part, this new lack of faith in the state and feeling of insecurity has manifested in ordinary Tunisians’ doubts about their immediate personal safety. In an interview with HPR, Laryssa Chomiak, a political scientist living in Tunisia, noted that before the Arab Spring, Tunisians often repeated the narrative that their country was much more stable than its neighbors. But in the post-revolutionary period, Chomiak explained, those opposing the revolution and the newly elected government have propagated the view that the country has become gravely insecure, a perspective that has resonated with significant portions of the Tunisian populace.

Their anxieties, then, stem not only from terrorist shocks that Tunisia has experienced since its revolution and how these have been portrayed by major media outlets, but also from “the real [concerns] of security that any kind of large urban center [has] to deal with—pickpocketing, burglaries, etc.” The few statistics that are available validate these perceptions. Information compiled in the U.S. State Department’s “Crime & Safety Report” on Tunisia for 2016 note that while “theft and property crimes showed a slight decrease from 2013 to 2014,” the level of both violent and nonviolent crimes in the country, especially in its urban centers, remains high.

Context is particularly key in understanding why ordinary citizens perceive an increase in domestic insecurity. Chomiak portrayed Tunisia under Ben Ali as “one of those picture perfect police states” where “you could walk around [in] the middle of the night and nothing would happen to you. You had cops at every roundabout.” While in some ways the ambience of security and stability under Ben Ali was spurious—it owed its existence to merciless repression and widespread politics of fear—today Tunisians perceive a real degradation in their level of personal safety.

This increase in crime and general insecurity is unlikely to be curbed anytime soon. While the Tunisian parliament has adopted some legislation dealing with security matters, said Cherif, “the problem is not about passing laws—it’s about implementing them” He argued that since 2011, the main challenge for the gov-

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ernment has been figuring out how to turn policy into reality.

THE RIGHT TO WORK It is difficult to find anyone to disagree that matters of security pose a significant challenge for Tunisia. Cammett, however, argues that “the biggest threat” to the country’s democracy in the long term “is the lack of prospects for economic development and the problems for economic growth.” Indeed, in the aftermath of the revolution, Tunisia’s economy has struggled and largely deteriorated. While the country’s average rate of growth was around 5 percent in the decade preceding 2011, growth slowed to 2.3 percent in 2014. Security concerns are not wholly irrelevant to the country’s economic performance either—the terrorist attacks of 2015 have greatly diminished the number of tourists to the country, causing the Tunisian government, which relies on tourism for a noteworthy portion of its GDP, to reduce its predicted growth rates by 2.5 percent. Only worsening the country’s economic situation is a steady decline in foreign direct investment, down 9.4 percent to just over $1 billion in 2014.

Perhaps the most relevant metric, however, is the country’s unemployment rate. Since the ousting of Ben Ali, around 15 percent of the entire Tunisian populace has been without a job.

Among youths, the unemployment level is 31 percent.

A number of commentators and scholars of the region have identified the country’s widespread joblessness as a key factor contributing to the onset of the Arab Spring. But Chomiak contended that the triggering event of the revolution in 2010, Mohammed Bouazizi’s public self-immolation and the less-covered protests of this year were motivated by individuals seeking a very specific kind of work—civil service. Ridha Yahyaoui, whose electrocution and subsequent death sparked the events of this past January, decided to protest directly after being denied a job in a local government office. Chomiak contextualized the situation by noting that when Tunisians “talk about economic grievances, it’s not about getting any kind of job; it’s getting specific kinds of jobs that are within the right-to-work culture … it’s about having this dignified position that allows you over a lifetime to take care of your family.” This right-to-work culture is evident in the fact that Tunisians—by margins of over three to one—believe that their government should provide assistance in securing employment. Tunisians, therefore, are hardly clamoring about a dearth of low-pay, temporary employment opportunities, nor are they worried about abstract macroeconomic indicators like foreign direct investment. Rather, the driving force of uncertainty for Tunisian citizens and thus the country’s democracy is a lack of well-paying positions that offer secure long-term employment prospects.

In the face of rampant unemployment, the Tunisian government has focused primarily on expanding hiring opportunities

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for exactly these types of “dignified” jobs. These efforts, however, have had little success, as the number of job seekers has far outnumbered the number of civil service positions made available.

SELECTIVE MEMORY Deteriorations in both personal safety and job stability, when coupled with the perceived threat of terrorism and macroeconomic decline, appear to have engendered a general longing for a stabler past among at least a segment of the Tunisian populace.

Cherif affirmed the presence of this sentiment, citing everyday conversations with his compatriots and the recurrent remark, “‘It was better under Ben Ali.’” He attributes this mounting nostalgia, however, to a collective amnesia, arguing that “people don’t [remember] what used to happen under Ben Ali, while they know too much about what is happening today.”

Indeed, the politics of Tunisia’s pre-revolutionary past was repressive and inaccessible to ordinary citizens. Cherif, drawing on his own personal experiences to characterize the reality of life under Ben Ali, remembered how he brought up politics in discussion only to have his friends disparagingly ask, “‘Why are you talking about politics? It’s useless!’ … That is the feeling that people had in Tunisia … The common people couldn’t have any say.”

In contrast to the political situation in Tunisia just over five years ago, perhaps the most striking difference today is the pluralism and openness that has taken root. In her retrospective article for the Washington Post published in January of this year, Chomiak asserted that the “most notable achievement of Tunisia’s 2011 revolution—one that astonishingly seems to have been forgotten—is the space for political critique, assembly, and speech that the revolution carved and has protected.” There now exists even “the freedom of being allowed to criticize what the government is doing, to criticize individuals within government, to criticize security forces,” she told the HPR. This dramatic metamorphosis of the Tunisian political climate suggests that democracy, though in existence for a mere five years, may have a long future ahead of it if the threats it faces can be sustained. These threats, however, are not well reflected in media portrayals of jihadist violence and macroeconomic sluggishness. The true test of Tunisian democracy will be whether the country’s new leaders can adequately address the immediate concerns of their citizens. Understandably, more than any augmentation of their freedoms, Tunisians want improvements to the basics: personal security and access to stable jobs.

In order for the country’s democracy, so passionately fought for, to survive in the long run, Tunisians will have to eschew any nostalgia for their country’s autocratic past in favor of a cautious optimism for its future.

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BENEATH THE INK A Deeper Look at Gang Violence in El Salvador Minnie Jang

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“T

enemos único camino, único destino, que es la muerte o el penal.” We have one path, one destiny, which is death or prison.

Juan Flores is 32 years old and was born and raised in Apopa, a municipality in the northern district of San Salvador. Living near the country’s capital, nestled in the heart of Central America, Juan looks and plays the part of an average, working-class Salvadoran, but one thing sets him apart—his arms are covered in tattoos.

Recruited into the network of las maras—Salvadoran gangs— when he was 13 years old, Juan spent 15 years as a member of Barrio 18, one of El Salvador’s two main rival groups. In 2007, he was sent to prison on criminal charges, and when he emerged five years later, he yearned for redemption. He found solace in Catholicism. The Church eventually led Juan to League Central America, a collegiate apparel company that employs former gang members and runs various rehabilitation programs. Since 2012, he has had the freedom to share his story, through companyorganized presentations and now through a conversation with the HPR, tracing memories in the ink on his body that serves as a permanent reminder of his past.

However, the other estimated 55,000 active gang members in El Salvador remain tangled in violence. The country’s homicide rate is skyrocketing, now at 104 murders per 100,000 people, or an average of over 20 murders per day (the United States’ homicide rate is just four per 100,000 people). Many of the homicides result from fighting between Barrio 18 and its rival gang, Mara Salvatrucha, or MS-13. These violent conflicts have caused some news outlets to call El Salvador, a country of 6.11 million people (smaller than the state of Massachusetts), the new murder capital of the world.

Such negative labeling of El Salvador has harmful consequences. As Linda Garett, senior policy analyst for the Center for Democracy in the Americas, noted to the HPR, “the media and press coverage given to this problem only enflames and incites fear.” Pointing fingers at gangs as the source of all violence in the country fails to acknowledge the role of structural forces that leave poor Salvadoran youth with few other options.

“Death or prison”: deep historical and sociopolitical roots of inequality have produced this grim set of alternatives and offer a broader lens through which to consider comprehensive solutions.

HECHO EN LOS EE.UU. | MADE IN THE USA The origins of El Salvador’s modern-day gang problem can be directly traced to the country’s civil war between 1980 and 1992. Over 75,000 people died in this bloody conflict between guerrilla fighters under the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front and the central government’s counterinsurgency forces. Much of the funding for the military’s death squads came from the aggressively anti-communist Reagan administration, which funneled $1 million a day into the repressive Salvadoran regime. At the same time as the United States was funding a war that established violence as a way of life, hundreds of thousands of Salvadorans were attempting to flee north. Many eventually settled in Los Angeles, establishing densely populated and alienated refugee communities where gangs formed as a mechanism of self-defense and protection. Their culture was characterized by a common saying: “vivo por mi madre, muero por mi barrio.” I

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live for my mother, I die for my neighborhood.

In 1994, following the end of the civil war, U.S. immigration authorities began a massive series of deportations of Salvadoran refugees, inadvertently planting the seeds of crime in an unstable post-civil war climate. American-bred Salvadoran gangs infused the process of remaking a war-torn society with survival-driven violence. Moreover, in the midst of deportations, the World Bank reported that 48 percent of households in El Salvador were living in poverty due to limited access to employment and education. Such social instability combined with the fragility of a fledgling democracy created the perfect recipe for gangs to flourish. The deep-seated inequality that once spurred guerrillas to war has now created a country in which 31.8 percent of the population lives below the national poverty line and the leading cause of death for adolescents under 19 years old is homicide.

Jocelyn Viterna, associate professor of sociology and co-director of the Transnational Studies Initiative at Harvard, further explained the lack of alternatives for youth within this harsh reality. “There is a sense that you’re going to die if you join [a gang] and you’re going to die if you don’t join—so why not join and a get a little money and status out of it before you are killed.” Many others also flock toward las maras for the sense of community that they provide. With high numbers of non-marital births and single-parent households creating unstable home environments, Salvadoran children searching for emotional and financial support are often drawn to the promise of community and advancement that gangs offer.

LA MANO INSEGURA | THE UNCERTAIN HAND

Breakfast, lunch, dinner, repeat—waiting for his next meal was the only thing Juan had to do every day of his five-year prison sentence. Lamenting the lack of any opportunities to better himself while incarcerated, Juan viewed prison as a “university for delinquency,” where he learned some things, but “nada bueno.”

Prison reform and rehabilitation programs have been on the Salvadoran government’s agenda since the 2014 election of current president Salvador Sánchez Cerén, a former guerrilla leader. Once in office, Cerén launched the “Plan El Salvador Seguro,” a comprehensive strategy for quelling violence with a focus on prevention, reintegration, and community building.

At the same time, however, Cerén has continued a mano dura, or heavy handed, approach against active gang networks. The tactic originated in 2003 and involves deploying military units for anti-gang crackdowns. Moreover, the government has rejected the idea of facilitating a truce between rival gangs, refusing to engage in dialogue with las maras in accordance with its rhetoric of “war against gangs.”

The logic behind these contradictory methods lies in the government’s need to show proof of progress. Adriana Beltrán, senior associate for citizen security at the Washington Office on Latin America, explained the dissonance in an interview with the HPR. “In countries like El Salvador, when a certain situation has become politicized and when the government is under tremendous pressure from a society that is demanding greater security… they tend to look for any kind of measure that has short-term impact, to communicate to the citizenry that they are doing something.” Yet, a recent poll conducted by the University of Central America Institute of Public Opinion showed that

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“In fact, military operations and massive incarceration of gang members have exacerbated the problem of gang proliferation by adding to existing violence through extrajudicial killings and overwhelming the country’s inadequate prison system.”

two-thirds of Salvadorans believe that the government’s public security policies are actually achieving little to no results and that the country’s situation is worse than a year ago.

In fact, military operations and massive incarceration of gang members have exacerbated the problem of gang proliferation by adding to existing violence through extrajudicial killings and overwhelming the country’s inadequate prison system. Given the extent and depth of El Salvador’s street violence and the apparent ineffectiveness of current policy, Viterna believes that any approach moving forward will have to be significantly more ambitious: “We have problems in the judicial system, police system, overcrowding in prisons, not enough jobs, gang recruitment in schools—there needs to be an entire societal overhaul to make a solution happen. El Salvador simply cannot do that on its own.”

UN BUEN VECINO | A GOOD NEIGHBOR More than two decades after its involvement in the Salvadoran civil war, the United States remains intimately tied to El Salvador’s transnational movements as a new generation of Salvadoran refugees attempts to flee the violence of their country. This time, the mass migration consists primarily of 60,000 unaccompanied minors sent across the border to escape gang recruitment.

The Obama administration has responded to this migrant crisis with a $1 billion aid package for Central America; the current federal budget also allocated $750,000 toward investment in the region’s development. In general, the United States has supported the Salvadoran government’s militaristic means of public security. However, if properly distributed and utilized, U.S. aid has the potential to expand opportunities for the over 300,000 Salvadoran youth aged 15 to 24 that neither study nor work and are prime targets for gang recruitment.

At a grassroots level, U.S. investment in local job creation, culture, and education is essential, according to Leslie Schuld, director of Centro de Intercambio y Solidaridad, a non-profit organization based in San Salvador that focuses on Salvadoran solidarity and social justice. Education in a country where only 21 percent of poor teenagers complete high school is especially “key because it gives people the tools they need to make changes—all this is a part of the tapestry of building community.”

Through funding scholarships, vocational training, and extracurricular programs in local communities, U.S. aid can empower

youth by offering them alternatives to gang involvement and building support structures around them.

Nevertheless, to say that there is one solution to the country’s complex and tumultuous history is undoubtedly a stretch.

Education is simply a step in the right direction. The gang rehabilitation program at League Central America that worked with Juan offers English lessons and night classes. Though not exactly a wide-sweeping national reform, the program serves as an example of effective targeted interventions. The founder, Rodrigo Bolaños, described his mission to the HPR. “The company has become a human development center where everybody has hope. Everybody wants to be successful because we offer them a path to becoming successful. Everybody has a dream.”

DEBAJO DE LA TINTA | BENEATH THE INK “Society is not ready to see a person with tattoos and offer him their hand.” Juan’s somber assertion reveals the discrimination that gang affiliates face from ordinary Salvadorans, to whom words on skin spell out murder and extortion. Overcoming this societal fear is just one challenge in forming a solution as extensive as the problem itself.

However, ultimately, “El Salvador is not violence, and violence is not El Salvador,” said Viterna. While the media has recently drawn attention to homicide statistics, it is important to note that the Salvadoran government, for all its shortcomings, has indeed made significant strides in other areas of reform, particularly education and health care. Its hardline policies against gangs have proven less successful, but with the help of U.S. aid, more comprehensive social reform is within grasp. Over half of Salvadorans may feel fear when they think of the future of their country, but 40.9 percent still have hope.

Recently promoted to a supervisor position at his company, Juan is also working his way through grade 10 classes as he studies to become a lawyer. His tattoos, physical markers that once broadcast his social alienation, no longer bind him to a life of crime and desperation. Somewhere past the faded edges of the ink, he has found his way out.

“Aquí están mis tatuajes. Ya no tengo miedo … Aquí, soy libre.”

Here are my tattoos. I’m not afraid anymore … Here, I’m free.

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The Trouble with DDR: Ending the World’s Longest Civil War Jasmine Chia

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mong myriad fiercely debated issues, three words are obstructing Myanmar’s peace process negotiations: demobilization, disarmament, and reintegration.

Myanmar has been fighting a civil war for more than 68 years, and although many of the Ethnic Armed Organizations— a series of armed rebel factions—have signed the Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement with the government, the powerful Kachin Independence Army continues to battle Myanmar’s state military, the Tatmadaw, in the jade-laden North. Moreover, even those groups that have agreed to a temporary truce are far from at peace with the Burmese state.

Speaking anonymously with the HPR, a member of the KIA described the situation: “The Tatmadaw call demobilization, disarmament, and reintegration a trade­off with peace. Even conceptually, this is wrong: peace cannot be traded. Neither can it be given to the other group as if one were superior in deciding such a thing.”

Much rides on the success of the peace process. Myanmar is a country of incredible ethnic diversity, with the majority Bamar group making up two thirds of the population and the remaining one third being comprised of ethnic nationalities, including

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the Mon, Shan, Kayah, Kachin, Karen, Rakhine, and Chin, who collectively make up Myanmar’s seven states (which were drawn along ethnic lines) and form the basis for the Ethnic Armed Organizations.

SEEDS OF DISTRUST Myanmar is also a country that has been forged in the fires of war. Independence hero Aung San founded the Burmese Independence Army, and its armed struggles against the repressive occupation of the British and then the Japanese defined the state’s emergence. It is a country whose history is written in blood and arms, where coercion and violence have been the currency of politics and government since 1962. The ethnic nationalities have felt the pressure of this violence: they have been fighting against the Tatmadaw in the world’s longest­running civil war. This war finds its roots in the arrogance of the British colonial administration. Under British rule, colonialists employed administrative simplifications along territorial and racial lines that created “two Burmas”—the Burman­majority Burma, which was incorporated into the British Raj, and the frontier

ethnic nationality regions, which remained under indirect rule.

The British militarized the separation between the “two Burmas” during World War II. In 1941, the “Thakins,” an anticolonial group led by nationalist hero Aung San and Burma’s future first prime minister U Nu, helped the Japanese invade Burma with the hope of deposing the British. The British leveraged ethnic national guerrillas (e.g. the Kachin and the Karen) and exploited racial enmity between Burmans and the minority groups in widespread propaganda praising the “loyal” nationalities and denigrating the “treacherous” Burmans. In the proxy war between Japan and the Allies—fought out between ethnic Burmans and Karen—whole villages were arrested and executed.

As the Burman nationalists realized the Japanese had no intention of giving their country the independence for which they were hoping, they began to collaborate with the British and eventually defeated the Japanese. However, the independence process was not completed until 1948, after which Burma’s state building was left entirely in the hands of ethnic Burmans. And so the independent state that the British had promised the Karen for their loyalty during the war never materialized.

Following the war, the Karen began to organize their armed

guerrillas under the Karen National Defense Organization, which started a full-scale insurrection in 1949 against the newly independent but centrally controlled Burman state. That year, the First Kachin Rifles also revolted, and the Shan, Wa, Mon, Arakan and Karen were not far behind.

The Burmese military remained in power throughout the conflict and ruled for 68 years, only giving way to democratic rule very recently. In 2015, the National League of Democracy won by a landslide in the first democratic elections since 1962.

And Aung San Suu Kyi, the party’s leader, and the NLD are making the peace process a central priority. However, an understandable, but toxic, lack of trust permeates the peace process.

The coalitions of ethnic armed groups at the table categorically reject demobilization, disarmament, and reintegration as a path to reconciliation.

FORCING PEACE Although coercion is no longer the currency of politics in Myanmar, arms are still the currency of sovereignty. The same army that raped, tortured, and burned down entire villages

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Aung San Suu Kyi, First State Counselor of Myanmar

government in Kachin state.”

The Karen National Union is a government in all but name.

Gravers said of the KNU: “They’re not a political party. They’re not a business organization. They have many departments, and they are a semi­-state structure.” In the Brigade 6 area of the Thailand­-Myanmar border, they have historically provided education and healthcare. However, the recent ceasefire agreement has seemingly undermined the KNU’s role in the area. “It [is] quite obvious that the army has moved in,” explained Gravers.

“They are building administration buildings, schools, clinics— they haven’t staffed them yet but they are preparing this silent conquest.” With DDR still a subject of controversy, the army seems to have gone ahead and implemented some changes according to their own vision of peace. “The ceasefire has [already] weakened [Karen state],” even though no terms of peace have yet been agreed upon.

Indeed, despite the democratic transition and peace talks, there is little to hold the army in check. Gravers reminded us that “Than Shwe [Myanmar’s former military dictator] is still pulling the strings behind the scenes—he is meeting with the government every week to discuss matters, and at a local level the army commanders are the same as they’ve been for years.”

With the weak connection that the central government in Nay Pyi Taw has with the outlying states, it is these local commanders that determine government policy on the ground.

A GLIMMER OF HOPE during the civil war is now making DDR a condition for peace— forcing independent militias to give up their arms and potentially be absorbed into the military themselves. Mikael Gravers, an associate professor at Aarhus University who has done extensive research in Karen State, said in an interview with the HPR that whenever he travels “to Karen State and talk[s] to civilians and tell [him] it will take at least 10 years after genuine peace before [they] will get rid of the weapons.” Disarmament, it seems, is an unattractive option in such a trust deficient climate.

“They look upon the weapons [as] their defense and their security.”

While Gravers conceded that some groups would perhaps be more cooperative with the idea of DDR than others, he maintained that others would firmly oppose the idea. Take the Wa for example: “They have modern, highly sophisticated weapons, they control a lot of border trade, especially opium and heroin, and the army has never even attacked the Wa state army.” The incentive for such a group to turn over their arms to the state military is weak at best.

Furthermore, the ethnic groups’ arms do not just protect sovereignty; they also safeguard locals’ access to public amenities. For the past 60 years, ethnic armed organizations have not only functioned as independence fighters but have also become de facto providers of public goods. According to the KIA member, they “provide electric power where the Burmese military cannot.” The fact that ethnic armed organizations are already fully integrated into their regional communities makes the idea of reintegration all the more complicated. “We are a functioning

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Demobilization and disarmament are unlikely to be achieved in the near future. Even if ethnic armed organizations sign a peace agreement, arms will remain an undercurrent of their bargaining power. However, there are still waypoints for a viable negotiations process. Ethnic groups have advocated for security sector reforms—“a set of policies, plans, programs and activities that a government undertakes to improve the way it provides safety, security, and justice.” David Dapice, an Ash Center economist currently working on agricultural policy in Myanmar, is optimistic. “You can turn some of the militia into construction workers and pay them good salaries: not shovellers or pickmen, but people with heavy machinery skills who do things like build roads that are badly needed,” he suggested in an interview with the HPR. Dapice also spoke of setting up a joint police force separate from the army as another reform that could enhance security and gradually reintegrate local militias.

Concurrent to peace talks are talks of Myanmar becoming a federal union, which would give states the local autonomy to implement security sector reforms. A federal constitution would address issues of revenue sharing and resource sharing but give states jurisdiction to determine most policies locally. This would likely not only appease ethnic groups who have become accustomed to autonomy but also loosen the military’s current monopoly on power.

If Aung San Suu Kyi can deliver on her promise for democracy in the legislature and at the bargaining table, perhaps Myanmar can rebuild itself with the pen rather than the sword.

DIGITAL L VE THE PROMISES AND PERILS OF ONLINE FANDOM Pooja Podugu

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ouTube, perhaps the Internet’s first major, and undoubtedly largest, video-sharing platform, has been the home of a vast array of content in its more than 10 years of existence. But somewhere between the viral cat videos, the pop music, and the talk show hosts is an ever larger number of individuals who utilize the site for their own personal creative expression. Back in 2007, YouTube made moves to encourage and incentivize user-generated content by launching the YouTube Partners program—a system that allows creators to monetize their videos and receieve a portion of the ad-generated revenue.

With these changes, uploading to YouTube became a viable career path for the site’s most popular creators. And as content became more professional, cohesive, and diverse, YouTube also became steadily more mainstream, attracting more and more viewers to the site. By 2014, only five years after the platform’s first million-subscriber channel, nearly 800 channels had reached the same milestone—and a select few had reached even greater heights, surpassing 10 and sometimes 15 million subscribers. Today, over 2,000 channels boast audiences of over a million, and the most followed channel, PewDiePie—run, like the majority of YouTube channels, by an individual creator from the comfort of his home—has surpassed 40 million subscribers.

With audiences of this size, and a majority of those audiences falling into younger—teen and even preteen—demographics, it is clear that the YouTubers of today command enormous influence over significant numbers of young people. To overlook such

influence is to turn a blind eye to a rapidly growing form of entertainment that, by the estimation of many, is quickly replacing traditional media in its appeal. Furthermore, to ignore the sway of YouTubers over their audiences is to permit an immensely complex dynamic of power to flourish without any critical scrutiny or oversight.

Especially in recent years, as the sizes of YouTube audiences have multiplied, the fascination and curiosity among fan communities about the personal lives of the figures they admire has grown astronomically. This admiration (even obsession) has transformed the role of many of YouTube’s most popular content creators from general entertainers to veritable celebrities. Impassioned fans swarm to see them at public appearances, like, retweet, and respond to their posts within seconds, and scramble to uncover the identities of their love interests, their addresses, and their current whereabouts. Although the transaction between YouTubers and their viewers can often be rewarding, this very same dynamic can quickly turn dangerous and even exploitative from both sides.

The complex relationship between content creators on YouTube and their viewership seems to encompass several delicate balancing acts, among them the tradeoff between creators’ right to privacy and fans’ right to express curiosity and intrigue about the lives of their favorite online celebrities. Another key dimension of this relationship is the potential for creators to utilize their public influence in either positive or exploitative ways.

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CULTURE

THE TOP 5 WAYS FAN CULTURE CAN BE REALLY GREAT AND REALLY TERRIBLE Internet fandom, in the many years it has existed and the countless manifestations it has taken, provides a number of positive benefits to those who partake in it. In 2016, the locus of fandom on the internet is Tumblr—a microblogging website on which users create carefully curated collections of photos, GIFs, text posts, videos, and the occasional piece of original content.

While Tumblr itself has burgeoned into a complex and multivariate outlet for creativity, humor, social justice awareness, and general human awkwardness, one of its most significant functions is playing host to a range of fan communities. Fandom is such a huge part of Tumblr’s Internet niche that its staff runs a specific blog, aptly named “Fandometrics,” dedicated to Tumblr fandoms and their relative week-by-week strengths. Nearly every week for the last two years, the top two positions of the fandom charts have been occupied by YouTubers Dan Howell and Phil Lester, known on the site by their user names danisnotonfire and AmazingPhil. The two are best friends and flatmates from England who create sketch comedy shorts, opinion videos, and vlogs about their lives together and their various self-described “nerdy” interests.

Dan and Phil’s fandom is numerically the strongest by Tumblr’s assessments, and their followers have even dubbed themselves “the Phandom,” a tongue-in-cheek portmanteau of the two creators’ names. Their followers admire and look up to the young men, 24 and 29 years old respectively, for their humor and the chemistry that they share. A sizable portion even enjoys speculating about the possibility of the duo being involved in a romantic relationship with one another. Last year, the pair received the honor of being the number one and two web celebrities on Tumblr from the website’s staff. Other YouTubers also regularly make appearances in the top 10 fandoms: among them are Troye Sivan, a blossoming musician; Connor Franta, who creates more traditional vlogs on a variety of subjects as well as directs and oversees a lifestyle brand; and Tyler Oakley, a popular LGBTQ spokesperson, a comedic vlogger, and recently the subject of his very own documentary film.

One of the most positive aspects of fandom surrounding these individuals stems from the fact that many fans feel that Internet celebrities represent their own personal identities. Sivan, Franta, and Oakley are all out members of the LGBTQ community and encourage fans to create safe spaces for themselves to talk about sexuality, gender, and other axes of identity in supportive and uplifting ways. Young people across the planet can come together in admiration of these individuals and in doing so find a community of people among whom their various identities are not only accepted, but celebrated.

Moreover, fandom, especially on Tumblr, gives viewers an opportunity for unrestricted creative expression through writing and art. Fans can discuss aspects of their favorite creators’ latest video with other people who share in their appreciation. They can create art depicting a favorite moment from a video or photo that a creator posted to her Instagram. They can write about the inspiration they draw from these creators—in the case of Franta

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for example, they see a young man who grew up in the Midwest and spent much of his life in denial of his sexuality, but eventually gained the courage to accept himself and his identity in front of millions of people, move to Los Angeles, and pursue the career of artistic creation that he had always wanted.

But much of the writing and art produced by fans also involves speculation about the personal lives and relationships of the content creators. And the desire for greater queer representation among public figures has at times led fans to imagine or hope for same-sex relationships between individuals where none has ever been confirmed—Howell and Lester are a prime example. Of course, this phenomenon is neither new nor unique to YouTube celebrities. There is an entire tabloid industry dedicated to similar personal speculations with traditional film and music stars as the primary subjects.

But even while there is a substantial measure of acceptance around these practices—“shipping” (imaginary matchmaking), fan fiction, etc.—on the part of content creators (in Howell’s own words, he “[loves] the fan fiction”), others have had complicated relationships with diehard fans. Hank Green, one half of the popular vlogbrothers YouTube channel, addressed this issue in a post on his personal Tumblr. He ranted that the “shipping” of real people “bugs him ... It requires a certain amount of objectification to get to a place where you (someone who does not know [these content creators]) are getting up in their junk about the decisions you think they should make in their personal lives.”

THESE DARKER SIDES OF INTERNET FAME WILL BLOW YOUR MIND Yet even while these fan practices can violate content creators’ privacy, there is also an arguably greater element of responsibility that must be shouldered by creators themselves.

It is too easy for YouTubers in positions of power over audiences that are millions strong to unintentionally—or quite purposefully—exploit the trust and admiration of their viewers.

This culture of exploitation begins in quite simple and even relatively harmless ways. For example, YouTubers often utilize their own fan bases as marketers, incentivizing them to share their videos on social media in return for favorites, follows, likes, and retweets. Perhaps unwittingly, this establishes an immediate divide between fans and the creators they adore, underscoring the idea that even the most minimal amounts of notice from these creators, a measly favorited tweet or a blog follow on Tumblr, is worth something—and that such attention can only be attained in return for something else. This is perhaps frivolous example, but it is an instantiation of the hierarchy between creators and fans, one that becomes the backdrop for several other layers of exploitation.

A further extension of this relationship, perhaps with somewhat more tangible consequences, is monetary exploitation. One example is a practice that is common practice for some YouTubers: hosting live-streamed shows on online platforms through which fans are able to enter comments and questions into a realtime chat that the broadcaster can then view and respond to.

CULTURE WORLD

Connor Franta, Troye Sivan, and Tyler Oakley have all amassed large online followings.

It all seems quite simple and in keeping with the accessibility motif of YouTube stars, but in some ways this simple gesture can play into uneven power dynamics. On highly popular live streaming sites like YouNow, for example, fans can pay money to send the broadcaster premium messages and therefore readily gain the attention of the creator, rather than send a regular message that would get buried in a sea of thousands of comments.

The issue with this dynamic arises with the fact that some of the money that fans pay in order to garner this extra attention goes directly into the pockets of their favorite celebrities. This is once again—and this time much more explicitly—placing a price on the most minimal level of attention that a YouTuber can afford a viewer. This not only leads to a monetary loss for fans, but it also reinforces the notion that the notice of a YouTube star is something to be passionately desired and, indeed, paid for.

But the exploitation does not always stop there. In the last three years alone there have been at least 30 cases of sexual assault, harassment, and rape at the hands of YouTubers, often targeting young viewers, some of them underage. These individuals, primarily male and all of them over the age of 18, often seem to abuse their roles as public figures. Perhaps most well documented was a video uploaded by a user called Sam Pepper who “pranked” women by inappropriately touching them on the street. After the video rightly left viewers disgusted and upset, other allegations of Pepper’s sexual harassment and assault of women came to light. In other cases, highly popular YouTubers were found soliciting nude photos and sexual favors from fans sometimes as young as 15.

Unlike the scrutiny and media maelstroms that surround sex scandals involving traditional celebrities, however, these

scandals have caused only the tiniest ripples outside of the YouTube community. While many of the accused offenders have been effectively blackballed within online circles, there is little in the way of accountability and enforcement to ensure that such abuses of power do not continue or that those who have already been implicated in abusing fans do not have continued access to the avenues by which they were able to do so. These are, of course, problems that persist with rape culture and sexual assault nearly everywhere, but they are in some ways magnified by the unchecked culture of hyper-obsession and admiration that surrounds YouTube celebrities.

While many YouTube stars have used their platforms in resoundingly positive ways, championing social causes and charities, launching mental health awareness and anti-bullying campaigns, and promoting community service and cultural awareness, it is clear that the intoxicating power of public influence can easily become insidious and overtly destructive. In the same vein, the practices of fans can also very quickly and at times unintentionally cross the line from appreciative to invasive.

But while the relationship between YouTubers and their most ardent fans is one that is undeniably complicated and fraught, at the heart of the matter is an incredibly positive and groundbreaking way for any person to share their creativity with the world and find communities of people willing to engage with and celebrate it. Only with heightened awareness of the dangers of celebrity culture on the part of those within, and especially those outside of, the YouTube community, can an adherence to those original values and intents of the platform be maintained.

SUMMER 2016 HARVARD POLITICAL REVIEW 39

the

effect

Television Ratings in the Internet Age Bella Roussanov

O

nce upon a time, way back in 1950, Nielsen, the largest television audience measurement company in America, deemed a handful of families across the country “Nielsen families.”

These households recorded their television viewing habits in diaries that Nielsen collected during advertising sweep periods. In 1987, Nielsen adopted the People Meter, a black box that logged the number of television views in a given household.

Flashing lights confirmed that the viewer was still watching every 15 to 20 minutes, and a Nielsen representative visited every few weeks to check up on household demographics such as employment and income.

Nielsen’s system had its flaws, from button fatigue to deliberate manipulation of numbers. But by creating a representative sample of the country, Nielsen provided advertisers and networks with reliable data on who was watching what.

Television has changed by leaps and bounds since the days of poodle skirts and TV dinners, when families gathered around a television set to pick from a few popular channels. Today’s evolving landscape includes DVRs that allow viewers to record television shows and online platforms that enable consumers to stream programs via the web. For instance, nearly 55 percent of viewers under 35 watched the Quantico premiere online in the week following the live airing, and 38 percent of the audience for Bob’s Burgers views the show on Hulu or on the Fox app. And a growing body of shows—from independently produced content to subscription-based programming from services like Netflix— exists solely on the Internet.

THE RATINGS PROBLEM In the midst of such dramatic changes, Nielsen is struggling to keep up. Although the technology has evolved, the basic principle has remained the same, relying on a just sample of the overall U.S. population—around 40,000 households—and a traditional television screen. Based on this data, Nielsen produces an overall viewership number and an 18-49 (age range) rating, which measures attention from this coveted advertising demographic. With the advent of DVR and video on demand, Nielsen started publishing not only Live+Same Day ratings, which count live viewership and recorded viewing on the airdate itself, but also Live+3, Live+7, and Live+30 ratings, which incorporate any

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recorded viewing within three, seven, and 30 days, respectively.

Live+3 and Live+7 ratings are quickly becoming the primary figures that networks consider when evaluating their programming; Fox announced in December that it would no longer recognize Live+Same Day ratings.

But although emphasis on live viewership has decreased, Nielsen cannot yet accurately measure how many people watch content online. Online streaming of many broadcast shows is still not counted by Nielsen for purposes of ratings, although the company has begun to track 1,000 shows on Netflix, Amazon Prime, and Hulu (excluding mobile streams). Cathy Perron, who teaches television management at Boston University, explained to the HPR, “Other than going to a website for a particular broadcast network—so going to ABC.com to watch Scandal or something like that—there hasn’t really been a way to measure beyond that.” As matters stand, technology cannot accurately determine whether online viewers are in fact watching the programs for which they have pressed play. Nielsen has tried to integrate some internet data, such as Twitter and Facebook chatter, but the web poses another fundamental problem to audience measurement. As Philip Napoli, a professor at Rutgers University who has written several books on audience measurement, told the HPR, “The measurement online was always hampered by the fact that to deliver unified ratings, the program had to have the exact same commercials online versus on TV.” Until ratings can be equalized across platforms for advertisers, the Internet will remain a gap in Nielsen’s coverage.

THE NETWORK’S DILEMMA Nielsen’s shortcomings—particularly among viewers in the 18-49 demographic, who are more likely to watch television on mobile devices—have caused networks to reconsider the importance they place on ratings. Streaming services like Hulu may not factor into Nielsen results, but networks still receive money for selling shows to them. With streaming bringing in delayed waves of viewers at the same time as ratings are down across the board, networks are becoming more and more hesitant to cancel their shows, even if ratings are suffering. “In the old days you knew by the third or fourth week if a show truly had traction,” Mark Pedowitz, president of The CW, commented to the New York Times. “You’re now looking at seven or eight episodes

CULTURE

before you get a determination.”

Drops in ratings throughout all of television are prime evidence of the degree to which consumption is changing. Streaming means fewer traditional and DVR viewers; Internet piracy means fewer viewers watching ads. Due to the emergence of Netflix and Amazon Prime, not to mention independent online productions, viewers have more and more choices when selecting shows. As a result, the very definition of a hit has changed drastically. The 2015-2016 season claims few blockbusters, and even those hits hardly amass the viewership that past successes garnered. NBC’s Blindspot—one of this year’s top shows, according to Slate—boasts an audience of eight million; in 1995, The Single Guy pulled in 20 million viewers and was still canceled after two seasons. According to NBC, Blindspot’s ratings double when mobile streams and delayed DVR viewings are added, but even an audience of 16 million is lower than the 20 million mark that didn’t cut it for The Single Guy. As ratings drop and internet media grows ever more popular among young people whom advertisers seek to reach, change seems imminent. Aymar Jean Christian studies independent web series creators and their influence on the television industry at Northwestern University. In an interview with the HPR, he commented that “things are coming to a head in terms of the ratings being so bad on television that networks are really going to have to start working with the online broadcasters to make sure that these things are lining up.” Nielsen announced in 2006 that it would incorporate views from online and mobile systems, beginning with its “Anywhere, Anytime Media Measurement” initiative. A decade later, it appears that Nielsen is at last starting to fulfill its promise. “What’s in development at Nielsen is a new tool that will be available in October, I believe, and it is going to measure all platforms at all times,” explained Perron. “It’s going to count a ratings point as a ratings point all across those platforms, so there won’t be any, you know, ‘a ratings point is worth more if it’s on television versus if it’s viewed online versus if it’s viewed on mobile.’”

Networks have recently been giving up their initial attempts to air programs online with fewer ads and less frequent commercial breaks. Hulu has begun to give its programs the same ad slots that they receive on regular television, particularly within the Live+Same Day window, so that, for advertising purposes, an online viewer can be counted the same as a traditional one.

Nielsen is also addressing the technological problem of tracking users online: with the help of acquisition eXelate, the company is developing ways to maintain unique user profiles across platforms. Christian said, “I can imagine, five years from now, that Nielsen has a new way of rating audiences that unifies TV, the web, and mobile, and ads are being sold in a different way, probably, that’s more immediate, more targeted.”

CHANGING THE GAME As audience measurement changes, the market adapts alongside it. In many ways, television’s current period of transition is analogous to that of the 1980s, when the introduction of cable networks led to an explosion of viewing options. Cable networks did not become financially successful until Nielsen introduced People Meters to track viewer demographics, making demographic targeting economically viable. “If you can’t measure it

and authenticate it, it’s very difficult to sell it,” noted Northwestern University’s James Webster, who researches media audiences, in an interview with the HPR. But as ad-supported online viewing becomes more intertwined with traditional viewing, networks may begin to rethink their programming. According to Webster, when the entire population of online viewers (rather than a small sample) can be counted, data collection moves from a sample-based approach to a server-based approach. “One of the limitations of the old recipe of sampling is that as the environment gets more and more fragmented, as you have more and more small audiences looking at programs or channels, you run into a problem of sampling error.” The ability to count these smaller audiences means that as ratings techniques become more precise, in theory, niche programming will be able to better target its demographics.

Christian predicts that networks might begin to give their creators more control over content. Already, networks are more frequently ordering entire series rather than going through the expensive pilot process. “The only reason broadcasters haven’t given creators control over their content is because they’ve been dealing with marketing to big mainstream audiences,” Christian explained. “As their ratings go down … they’ll be able to act basically like cable networks and target niches and work with producers they feel will guarantee audiences quickly, as opposed to working with producers they think will be able to create the next Friends or ER.” The Northwestern scholar, having worked extensively with independent web series creators, sees networks reaching out to producers who have guaranteed large followings online, rather than those who have worked within the network system, yielding more distinctive, culturally specific programming. “I’m hoping that television becomes a lot looser and fresher and less kind of formulaic.”

The Internet has undoubtedly changed television, but just as television adapted to cable in the 1980s, television is evolving to meet this 21st-century challenge. After all, the industry exists to make money. Napoli noted, “People have been predicting for at least 15 to 20 years that at least one of the major broadcast networks … was going to give up being a broadcast network and become a cable network” in response to the market evolution that began in the ’80s—but none have. Instead, they started charging cable retransmission fees. “The broadcasters have become a sort of dual revenue stream business without a lot of us really knowing it.”

Broadcasters are similarly looking to monetize the Internet, and, in doing so, are changing the way that audiences are measured. Nielsen announced on April 4 that it would be collecting server-based direct viewing data from Dish, another piece of today’s fragmented television audience. As Nielsen makes concrete steps towards a unified ratings system, there is reason to believe that broadcasters will start looking to smaller, more demographically specific audiences. There will be monetary value in targeting niches. It is this sort of thinking that has already spawned new shows like Empire—with a mostly black cast and large black viewership—rather than shows like Friends, which attracted an enormous mainstream audience. If Nielsen ratings can capture the full breadth of what young people enjoy in an age when more options pop up every day, even broadcast television will have no reason to shy away from working with bright new creators and making television that caters to an America that has itself evolved since the days of the original black box.

SUMMER 2016 HARVARD POLITICAL REVIEW 41

INTERVIEWS

INTERVIEW: RICHARD STENGEL

with Gabrielle M. Williams

Richard Stengel is the Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, providing global strategic leadership of all Department of State public diplomacy and public affairs engagement. After working alongside Nelson Mandela on his autobiography, he later served as associate producer for the 1996 Oscar-nominated documentary, Mandela. As former managing editor of TIME and Time.com, Stengel received a 2012 Emmy award as executive producer for TIME’s documentary, Beyond 9/11: Portraits of Resistance.

Some have said that the United States is being “out-communicated” by potential rivals ISIL (Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant), Russia, China, and Iran. What’s your take, and how has the shifting state of communications in the 21st century complicated your efforts to communicate with foreign nations?

So, our communication isn’t just government messaging. If you look at all the media and content that’s created by America, that’s what I look at as our messaging ... Our messaging and

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content dwarfs everybody else’s. Our government content is just a tiny percentage of that. Look at the amount of what ISIL does on social media every day, so let’s say around 50,000 to 60,000 pieces of content. Taylor Swift gets retweeted 3 million times a day. That is more content than ISIL does in a month. So, not that there’s a one-to-one correspondence, but I think this argument that we’re being “out-competed” is deeply, deeply flawed, in part because people are not looking at the whole waterfront of content.

Some of your duties include overseeing the Center for Strategic Counterterrorism Communications.

Which recently developed technological strategies do you use to perform counterterrorism successfully?

One of the things that’s happened over the last few months is that we’ve had a process of dynamic change and evolution of CSCC, which is the organization you mentioned, to become the Global Engagement Center. And the idea comes from this kind of central insight that, you know what, we’re actually—in this space as counter-ISIL—not necessarily the best messenger for the message we want to send. Who is the best messenger? People

INTERVIEWS

who have credible voices, like mainstream Muslims who are out there saying that Daesh is not legitimate Islam. So what we want to do is get away from the business of direct counter-messaging by the government to helping amplify and optimize the content of people who are credible voices against Daesh. And we’re seeing this great growth of counter-Daesh messaging among people all around the world. We want to help that.

How would you describe the state of modern communications with the public given that we are in an increasingly digital age? Have any technological developments significantly impacted your work with transparency, particularly with regard to President Obama’s administration?

Well, absolutely. I mean, if you look at the number of people at the State Department who are on social media, on Twitter, on Facebook, it’s grown exponentially. One of the things that I’ve been trying to do is to help people do that. We’re in the midst of a modernization project for all the websites of all the embassies around the world. I constantly advocate for ambassadors to be on Twitter and Facebook, and I think we’re seeing a new kind of digital communications strategy on the part of the State Department that’s really having a positive effect. People see that we’re the country that actually interacts with you. We have a conversation with you; we value your opinion. And I think that is a core American value.

Before assuming your current position, you were the managing editor of TIME magazine and Time. com. How has your journalism background come into play with your new duties in the State Department?

It helps because, first of all, I understand media and how to interact with media. I understand storytelling and the power of good storytelling. I understand fact-based communication and not disinformation or misinformation. So, I think the government using some of the tools and capabilities of the private sector to enhance our own messaging and content is a great thing.

It’s a wonderful thing, and I always encourage more private sector people from media and technology to go into government because I think folks like that have a really important role to play.

You collaborated with Nelson Mandela in writing his autobiography. What was that experience like, and have any takeaways from that experience impacted your life today?

ence of my whole life. Not to mention, I met my wife while I was working with Nelson Mandela—and she’s a South African—and my two sons spent time with Nelson Mandela while they were little while he was still alive. The idea of working with him, of trying to internalize his voice as you do when you’re working with someone on their autobiography, is just a fantastic thing. I mean, if you say to yourself everyday, “What would Nelson Mandela do?” I promise you’ll be a better person. So in some small way, I’d say it has helped me to be a better person..

What advice do you have for young people interested in entering politics in today’s world, which has become increasingly charged with media scrutiny and technological “digging”?

I really encourage young people to go into public service of some kind. When I was editor of TIME, we did an annual national service issue where we encouraged people to do a year of service between high school and college. Of course that can come any time, and it doesn’t even have to be young people. I really think it’s the responsibility of citizens in a democracy to make it go, and one way that you can make it go is by getting involved with public service, however brief or however long. And one of the great things about our country is you can go back and forth. I mean, you can be in the private sector, you can go into government or public service, and you can go back. I just think that makes both realms more powerful.

In the “digital age,” mistakes have a tendency to follow you and gather attention from the public.

Across your career, have you made any mistakes that had significant consequences because of the prevalence of technology in the media? What did you do for “damage control,” so to speak?

Well, I’ve made many mistakes. I’m not one of those people in public life who say, “I have no regrets.” I have plenty of regrets, and you know, I’ve made a lot mistakes on social media. I’ve been taken to task for things. But again, that’s the idea, that we are, as government people, able to have a conversation and say, “Hey, I made a mistake,” or “Sorry about that...” I think that teaches people something about us as a people and as a government. I’ve made plenty of mistakes, and I’m sure I’ll make more.

This interview has been edited and condensed.

Yes, it was, really in some ways, the most wonderful experi-

SUMMER 2016 HARVARD POLITICAL REVIEW 43

ENDPAPER

TO LOVE THIS WORLD

Priyanka Menon

T

wo thousand sixteen is a rather curious number. Though it is not a prime number itself, it can be written as the product of three distinct primes, said explicitly as two times two times two times two times two times three times three times seven. It is also what mathematicians call a triangular number, which basically means if you were to arrange 2016 dots into a triangle, all three sides of the triangle would have equal length. And, perhaps most excitingly, when you add 2016 squared and 2016 cubed, you get 8197604352, which is comprised of exactly one copy of each of the single-digits numbers.

Growing up, what I thought I loved the most about math is the idea that the discipline of mathematics as the study of not simply this world, but any possible world. Math allows us a degree of abstraction so high that its theories extend beyond this world alone, becoming universal in the most literal sense of the word. After all, even an alien would obtain a result of two when adding one and one.

It has taken me the better part of the last four years to realize how wrong I was—admittedly, with a little help coming from NASA’s rejection of my application to become their next astronaut. Jokes aside, mathematics is not a group of disembodied theories, floating around in the ether. It is a discipline of, by, and for this world, not any possible one. Its theories, at any and all levels of abstraction, are grounded in the reality of this earth.

The questions mathematicians ask are the products of the world around us.

This is true for not only my concentration here at Harvard, but for all of ours. Whatever we have studied, no matter how obscure or theoretical it may appear, connects to the environment in which we live. Whether we were anthropologists working in the refugee camps of Jordan or biologists collecting samples in the forests of the Pacific Northwest, we have bridged the gap between theory and practice during our four years here, scaling the walls of the supposed Ivory Tower to witness and engage with the world around us.

Almost without fail, what we have witnessed in our engagement is the fact that this world is deeply flawed. That environment which prompts our questions, scholarly or otherwise, has often revealed itself to be a place of hate, pain, and injustice.

Day after day we have glimpsed the ways in which people living an ocean away or next door have been stripped of their dignity, unprotected by human or civil rights.

As a result, it may feel as if this world is unworthy of our at-

44 HARVARD POLITICAL REVIEW SUMMER 2016

tention, that it is much more productive to turn our attentions to the abstractions of our minds. Perhaps there is simply too much injustice for any single individual to make a positive impact.

This sentiment may even be morally justifiable, rationalized by appeals to our own ignorance and youth. Is it not the epitome of Ivy League hubris to think that we, a group of 21 and 22 year olds, have the answers to age-old questions? After all, isn’t it nearly impossible that the Class of 2016 has something novel to say about problems that have existed for millennia?

I’m not so sure.

Perhaps the way of approaching the issue can be found by remembering our first moments at Harvard. Looking four years into the past, it’s easy to forget that Harvard has not always felt like home. During my first months on campus, the question I heard most clearly from Harvard’s walls was, “Who are you?” It wasn’t a question of identity, so much as one of belonging. Who are you to sit in the classrooms Ralph Waldo Emerson did? Who are you to say you belonged to the same campus once inhabited

by John Adams? Who are you to ask anything from an institution that numbers eight U.S. presidents among its alumni?

It is only once I heard my peers’ answers to these questions did I realize I too belonged here. Through their art, writing, and protest, my classmates affirmed their right to call Harvard their home, just as much as Emerson, Adams, or FDR once did. They taught me that no individual is unimportant. Moreover, my brilliant peers realized that this sense of belonging engendered the responsibility to leave a positive impact on this historic, beautiful campus. In addressing this duty, they offered ways in which Harvard could function even better as our collective home, moving this institution to become a more equal and just place. Their contributions mattered.

And so, rather than turn away from the broken world we see before us, I propose we make the world our home. Not in the sense of claiming it for our sole exclusive use, but rather in the sense of turning it into a place we care about, deeply and irrevocably. In the same way we’ve made Harvard our home over the past four years, we must spend the rest of our lives making this world a hospitable one, moving it closer to the idealized versions we’ve theorized in our minds. We must invest our time here, in this environment, for it is here we have the opportunity to make a tangible difference. This world, not any possible one, is one worth living in. This world is worthy of our love.

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