Spring 2018: Side Effects

HARVARD POLITICAL REVIEW

REVISITING RECOVERY

FROZEN FUTURES

ACCESSING AMERICA

VOLUME XLV NO. 1, SPRING 2018 HARVARDPOLITICS.COM

SIDE EFFECTS SPRING 2018 HARVARD POLITICAL REVIEW 1

HARVARDPOLITICS.COM

SIDE EFFECTS

This issue’s cover topic was originally proposed by Amir Siraj, Jessica Boutchie, and Chimaoge Ibe.

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Is Direct-to-Consumer Advertising Right for You? Minnie Jang

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Marijuana, Rx Alexis Mealey

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Revisiting Recovery Meena Venkataramanan

Revisiting Recovery Meena Venkataramanan

CULTURE

17 Democracy’s Gatekeepers Matthew Rossi

35 Accessing America Campbell Erickson

20 Home Detention Cate Brock

38 Food Gap Siri Ninotchka Diaz-Granados

23 Can Democrats Win the South?

Byron Hurlbut

41 On Fame and Fidelity Carter Nakamoto

WORLD

17 Democracy’s Gatekeepers Matthew Rossi

Seeing Through the Smoke Clara Bates

11 Emergent Biotechnology Christopher Li

UNITED STATES

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INTERVIEWS

25 Frozen Futures Joseph Winters

44 Daniel and Jordan Allott Cara Kupferman

27 Nasty Party Raphaelle Soffe

46 Russell Bobbitt Yuri-Grace Ohashi

30 Cleaning Up Vanessa Ruales

CAMPUS

ENDPAPER 48 Udaipur Ali Hakim

33 Imperfect Union Will Imbrie-Moore

35 Accessing America Campbell Erickson Email: president@harvardpolitics.com. ISSN 0090-1032. Harvard Political Review. All rights reserved. Image Credits: Photographer: 1, 35- Redie Mumbili; 10- Meena Venkataramanan; 33- Matthew Rossi; 44Daniel and Jordan Allott; 46- Russell Bobbitt. Flickr: 20- doe-oakridge; 41- PunkToad; 41- sashimomura; 48- Tommy. Pixabay: 12- Qimono; 16- Axonite; 41- Alles. Public Domain Pictures: 1, 3- George Hodan; 11- B.C. Unsplash: Cover- Michael Grosicki; 8- Justin Luebke; 14- Itay Kabalo; 25- Steve Halama; 27- James Giddins. Wikimedia: 5- Laurie Avocado; 17- Re Jean Soo; 22- Jeremy Bentham; 23- wapcaplet; 30- Cayambe; 38lyzadanger; 41- Wellcome Gallery; 43- US National Archives. Design by: Victoria Berzin, Eliot Harrison, Quinn Mulholland, Erica Newman-Corre, Yuri-Grace Ohashi, and Matthew Rossi.

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FROM THE PRESIDENT

HARVARD POLITICAL REVIEW

Side Effects

A Nonpartisan Undergraduate Journal of Politics, Est. 1969—Vol. XLV, No. 1

EDITORIAL BOARD PRESIDENT: Samuel Kessler PUBLISHER: Drew Pendergrass MANAGING EDITOR: Akshaya Annapragada ASSOCIATE MANAGING EDITOR: Jacob Link ASSOCIATE MANAGING EDITOR: Russell Reed STAFF DIRECTOR: Sal DeFrancesco SENIOR COVERS EDITOR: Nicolas Yan ASSOCIATE COVERS EDITOR: Sarah Shamoon SENIOR U.S. EDITOR: Amir Siraj ASSOCIATE U.S. EDITOR: Chimaoge Ibe ASSOCIATE U.S. EDITOR: Jessica Boutchie SENIOR WORLD EDITOR: Alicia Zhang ASSOCIATE WORLD EDITOR: Darwin Peng ASSOCIATE WORLD EDITOR: Perry Arrasmith SENIOR CULTURE EDITOR: Katie Weiner ASSOCIATE CULTURE EDITOR: Savitri Fouda SENIOR CAMPUS EDITOR: Cindy Jung ASSOCIATE CAMPUS EDITOR: Julia Shea INTERVIEWS EDITOR: Martin Berger HUMOR EDITOR: Joseph Minatel BUSINESS MANAGER: Jacob Kern ASSOCIATE BUSINESS MANAGER: Wyatt Hurt SENIOR DESIGN EDITOR: Eliot Harrison ASSOCIATE DESIGN EDITOR: Erica Newman-Corre ASSOCIATE DESIGN EDITOR: Yuri-Grace Ohashi SENIOR MULTIMEDIA EDITOR: James Blanchfield ASSOCIATE MULTIMEDIA EDITOR: Sarah Tisdall SENIOR TECH DIRECTOR: Alisha Ukani ASSOCIATE TECH DIRECTOR: Gerardo Parra ASSOCIATE TECH DIRECTOR: Jason Huang COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT DIRECTOR: Alexis Mealey

STAFF Victor Agbafe, Marie Becker, Devon Black, Evan Bonsall, Beverly Brown, Jiafeng Chen, Pedro Luis Cunha Farias, Justin Curtis, Ashish Dahal, Nick Danby, Sunaina Danziger, Hadley DeBello, Sophie DiCara, Casey Durant, Austin Eder, Steven Espinoza, Adam Friedman, Daniel Friedman, Miro Furtado, Melissa Gayton, Jay Gopalan, David Gutierrez, Olivia Herrington, Thomas Huling, Chimaoge Ibe, Michael Jasper, Cindy Jung, Matthew Keating, Daniel Kenny, Andrew Kim, Kieren Kresevic, Amelia Lamp, Jose Larios, Ashiley Lee, Elton Lossner, Elizabeth Manero, Patrick McClanahan, Olivia McGinnis, Jake McIntyre, Ayush Midha, Andrew Morley, Iriowen Ojo, Nadya Okamoto, Mfundo Radebe, Anna Raheem, Anne Raheem, Alyssa Resar, Chico Payne, Juliet Pesner, Stefan Petrovic, Lily Piao, Allison Piper, Lizzy Schick, Matthew Shaw, Audrey Sheehy, Wright Smith, Nick Stauffer-Mason, Gloria Su, Anirudh Suresh, Richard Tong, Rachel Tropp, Nico Tuccillo, Derek Wang, Joseph Winters, Jenna Wong, Sarah Wu, Catherine Zheng, Anna Zhou, Andrew Zucker SENIOR WRITERS: Perry Abdulkadir, Chad Borgman, Henry Brooks, Ali Hakim, Quinn Mulholland, Derek Paulhus, Samuel Plank, Tess Saperstein, Akash Wasil, Emily Zauzmer

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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here is a strange dichotomy in every drug. Drugs lift people up, and they knock people out. They are used to heal, and they are used to get high. They boost economies and line purses while shrinking workforces and draining bank accounts. The same drugs manufactured to save life can be used to escape it.

It is often side effects, the unanticipated—or at the very least, unintended—consequences of drug use, which have the most significant impact.

These side effects are as diverse as they are potent. They are medical, economic, environmental, political and often all of the above.

These side effects—positive, negative, and in between—permeate every area of society. As the U.S. federal government continues to classify cannabis as a Schedule 1 drug alongside heroin and ecstasy, Colorado has earned over half a billion dollars in tax revenue from recreational marijuana, San Francisco and others have promised to reverse decades of marijuana-related convictions, and Peru has added itself to the list of countries that have legalized medical marijuana. Meanwhile, the opioid epidemic has continued to wreak havoc across the rural United States, and politicians have promised to devote more attention to combating prescription drug abuse while taking donations from the very drug companies who stand to profit from it.

In this edition of the HPR, we explore side effects from a variety of different perspectives. In “Is Direct-toConsumer Pharmaceutical Advertising Right for You?” Minnie Jang dives

into the fascinating history of those pesky pharmaceutical ads that flood U.S. airwaves. In “Marijuana, Rx” and “Seeing Through Smoke,” Alexis Mealey and Clara Bates both explore the side effects of marijuana legalization, with the former documenting the lack of progress in medical marijuana research and policy, and the latter discussing the tenuous state of America’s fledgling recreational marijuana industry under Jeff Sessions’ Justice Department.

In “Revisiting Recovery,” Meena Venkataramanan discusses developments in youth substance abuse treatment and prevention in Southern Arizona, and in “Emergent Biotechnology,” Christopher Li explains how recent advancements in biotechnology should invite caution as well as excitement. Alongside these articles on side effects are a number of pieces that are no less interesting—on topics ranging from Arctic governance to bigotry in the British Labour Party.

As the HPR embarks on its 50th year as a magazine, we look forward to continuing the same tradition of journalistic excellence that has defined it since its inception. This magazine is the first of four to be published by the HPR’s newest masthead, and I am so proud of the amazing work that our team does each day to make the HPR the nation’s preeminent collegiate political publication. Thank you for reading, and we hope you’ll enjoy.

Samuel Kessler President

Is Direct-to-Consumer Pharmaceutical Advertising Right for You? Minnie Jang

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alk to your doctor to see if [insert drug name] is right for you.”

One glance at the television screen tells the story: a shot of the outdoors hints at allergy medications like Claritin, a laughing couple winks for Viagra, and a wind-up toy symbolizes the depressive symptoms treated by antidepressants like Pristiq.

With familiar voice-over scripts and images of smiling (read: hired) actors, advertisements for prescription drugs flood our daily consumption of media.

One Kantar analysis revealed that 72 percent of commercial breaks during CBS Evening News and 62 percent of commercial breaks during the television show General Hospital include at least one advertisement for pharmaceutical products. Vowing to treat a host of common conditions ranging from arthritis to diabetes to erectile dysfunction, pharmaceutical advertisements have become an established norm in our cultural landscape.

However, their seemingly ubiquitous nature belies the fact that direct-to-consumer pharmaceutical advertising is banned in virtually every country except the United States and New Zealand.

This form of advertising refers to the marketing of pharmaceutical drugs to patients, rather than healthcare providers, through a wide variety of multimedia channels, from television to social media to print publications.

A closer look at the history of DTCPA reveals that consumer-targeted advertising wasn’t always an embedded norm of pharmaceutical promotion. Rather, a balanced set of risks and benefits has complicated this debate for decades, folding into long-term questions over consumer-oriented care and freedom of commercial speech. Meanwhile, spending on pharmaceutical advertisements has swelled by 62 percent since 2012, alongside skyrocketing costs of prescription drugs, which are projected to reach as high as $610 billion by 2021. With increasing pressure from the American public to manage growing healthcare costs, the role of DTCPA in the U.S. economic and cultural landscape warrants further investigation.

A DRUG (AD) OF CHOICE In 1983, Boots Pharmaceuticals aired the first televised prescription drug advertisement for their product, Rufen, a painkiller marketed as less expensive than its competitor, Motrin.

Just two years earlier, Merck Pharmaceuticals ran the first print

pharmaceutical advertisement in Reader’s Digest for a pneumococcal vaccine, called PneumoVax. During these early years of direct-to-consumer advertising, companies like Boots and Merck enjoyed a lack of regulatory precedent, expanding their marketing opportunities beyond the healthcare professional sphere for the first time. Around the same period, a nationwide movement championing patients’ rights began to gain traction, leading to the institution of consent forms for medical procedures and privacy acts for health records. Dual pressures from these patients’ rights groups, who demanded more consumer autonomy in medical decision-making, and from pharmaceutical companies, who strove to increase their advertising efforts, helped propel DTCPA to mainstream media.

In response to the growing industry of direct-to-consumer pharmaceutical advertising, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration issued a set of guidelines in 1985 that required consumertargeted advertisements to meet the same requirements as those targeted at physicians. The list of criteria included the name of the drug, its purpose, and a “major statement” of potential side effects that effectively precluded the use of short broadcast spots to promote any pharmaceutical products. Persuaded by companies to loosen these restrictions, the FDA released a 1997 guidance outlining standards for “adequate provision” of information regarding drug-related side effects, as long as the advertisement also listed other resources for patients to access more information, such as a toll-free phone number.

In the wake of relaxed regulations, budgets for DTCPA more than tripled between 1997 and 1998, launching a period of rapid and sustained growth. In the two decades since, the FDA has maintained its favorable stance towards the advertising practice.

Stephanie Caccomo, a press officer for the federal agency, told the HPR that “[the] FDA believes our enforcement of prescription drug promotion strikes an appropriate balance of executing our public health mission and respecting First Amendment rights” with regard to pharmaceutical companies’ commercial speech. These rights have created a legal safety net for companies to market their drugs freely, in the absence of an official process of FDA “approval” for marketing materials, except in rare cases.

Today, nine out of the 10 largest revenue-generating pharmaceutical companies, including Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer, and

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Merck, spend more on sales and marketing than on research Merck, spend more on sales and marketing than on research and development. Within this expanded arena of marketing, an estimated $6.4 billion was funneled towards consumer-targeted advertising in 2016 alone. At the same time, recent market trends have also showed stagnant growth rates within the pharmaceutical industry, in terms of lower drug sales and declining research and development productivity, meaning fewer drug approvals each year.

Against this discouraging backdrop, the cost of prescription drugs has skyrocketed into one of the largest areas of spending within the U.S. healthcare system, currently making up 10 percent of national health expenditure. Nearly 80 percent of American consumers have called the rising cost of pharmaceuticals as “unreasonable,” adding urgency to current policy debates over healthcare spending and reform.

In this context of national outrage, direct-to-consumer advertising presents a potential area for spending reduction and reform. However, with conflicting calls upon the government to simultaneously regulate and deregulate the FDA, the heated debate over DTCPA rages on, nearly 40 years after Rufen and Boots Pharmaceuticals first took to U.S. television screens.

A BITTERSWEET PILL TO SWALLOW Each year, the average American television viewer watches nearly 16 hours of pharmaceutical advertisements, more time than is usually spent with a primary care provider annually. It is estimated that around one-third of patients actually discuss a drug advertisement with their healthcare provider, with the majority eventually requesting a prescription.

Proponents of DTCPA cite this idea of consumer empowerment as the major benefit of advertisements that help cultivate patient-clinician dialogue by educating patients about their potential therapeutic options. A trade group representing a number of large pharmaceutical companies,the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, states in its guiding principles, “[Direct to consumer] communications about prescription medicines serve the public health,” noting the power of advertisements to increase awareness about certain diseases. Indeed, DTCPA is often heralded as a de-stigmatizing force for conditions like erectile dysfunction or depression that lack a public media platform.

On the other hand, pharmaceutical advertisements may also raise barriers to access through their frequent promotion of higher priced drugs, often of marginal benefit. In response to the growth of DTCPA, the American Medical Association released a statement in 2015 condemning these pharmaceutical advertising practices for “inflat[ing] demand for new and more expensive drugs, even when these drugs may not be appropriate.” Contributing to unnecessary healthcare costs, these advertisements are criticized for spreading misinformation about side effects, ultimately straining relationships between patient and provider.

A noteworthy example of this dangerous potential dates back to the boom of pharmaceutical advertising just before the turn of the century. In 1999, Merck Pharmaceuticals released a minute-long commercial for an anti-inflammatory drug called Vioxx, featuring Olympic figure skater Dorothy Hamill testifying to the drug’s benefits for her osteoarthritis. Five years after the drug’s launch, Merck was forced to pull its product from shelves,

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due to new studies that linked Vioxx to increased risk of stroke or heart disease. By then, approximately 20 million Americans had already used the drug, and the company had enjoyed annual profits of $2.5 billion in drug sales. Later research estimates that 88,000 heart attacks resulted from the use of Vioxx, leading to 38,000 deaths. While Merck has since agreed to pay large settlements for lawsuits filed against them, the story of Vioxx remains a cautionary tale.

DON’T SUGARCOAT IT—THE FUTURE OF DTCPA Nearly 20 years after the FDA lifted its moratorium on DTCPA, opinions on either side of the debate have hardly shifted.

The FDA continues to struggle with enforcing its “fair balance” requirement for promotional materials, a stipulation that seeks to balance the provided risk and benefit information. While some groups, like the AMA, have called for a complete ban of the practice, certain safeguards of drug companies’ First Amendment rights, as mentioned earlier, are likely to present obstacles.

Health policy researcher Dr. Aaron Kesselheim reinforced this likelihood to the HPR, stating that “[DTCPA] isn’t going anywhere anytime soon,” while pointing to the legal precedents set in favor of commercial speech by court cases that have upheld protections for off-label drug promotion.

Nevertheless, policy experts have suggested other solutions to improving DTCPA practices, rather than completely dismantling them. These include mandating pre-clearance of advertisements by the FDA, delaying advertising until providers have been fully educated on products in the market, and promoting disease-specific ads, thus removing their commercial aspect while retaining an educational component. In fact, new research has shown that the latter helps achieve the informative purpose of consumertargeted advertisements more effectively than product-specific ads.

Harvard University health economist David Cutler also suggested that policy experts are moving in the direction of “academic advertising,” which could manifest in government-run funds in charge of creating brand-less advertisements or dollarfor-dollar advertising that matches product-specific ads with disease-specific ones. However, Professor Cutler notes that changes to advertising practices might not directly translate to reduced pharmaceutical costs. Instead, he believes that regulation of marketing and sales “gives you leeway to enact other changes that would affect drug prices.” For example, if the government mandated all pharmaceutical companies to lower their prices by a certain margin, a ban or restrictions on DTCPA could provide an avenue through which to comply with those measures.

While President Trump’s administration has generally opposed efforts to further regulate government bodies like the FDA, the spiraling state of national health expenditure should justify calls for pharmaceutical advertising reform. With sales and marketing budgets for large drug companies only continuing to grow, driving the costs of prescription drugs ever higher, it might be time for Congress to re-assess the risks and benefits of DTCPA, and whether or not consumer-targeted pharmaceutical advertising is right for the American public. 

Investigating Barriers to Medical Marijuana Legalization Alexis Mealey

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lex Beck was in his early twenties when he was diagnosed with Stage III lymphoma. After he experienced debilitating side effects from the chemotherapy drug Rituximab and made no progress in treating his cancer, Beck turned to holistic medicine through a Facebook group called The Medicine TrWibe. The organization raised three thousand dollars to send Beck cross country to Colorado where he stopped chemotherapy entirely and used only cannabis in an attempt to cure his cancer.

Two years later, Beck continues to baffle doctors at Stanford University, “The doctors said that there is absolutely no reason, with the little amount of chemotherapy I received, that I should still be in remission ... I should have malignant tumors, but my PET scan showed no signs of disease.”

Beck’s story is just one of many cases of individuals being cured of numerous ailments by using cannabis, and anecdotal evidence has been bolstered by academic research. Cannabis has been shown to assist in the treatment of childhood seizure disorders, some cancers, muscle spasms, nausea, eating disorders, arthritis, and multiple sclerosis. This research, however, has been limited and obstructed by marijuana’s status as a federally illegal substance. Beck told the HPR that cannabis’ federal status has created tense, even dangerous conditions for researchers, explaining that, “If you release any information on the research you’re doing, you can get arrested.” Regardless of the potential legal repercussions, researchers appear to have made a convincing case, with 76 percent of doctors now favoring the use of medical cannabis.

Support for the healing capabilities of cannabis extends beyond the medical community. According to a 2017 Quinnipiac

poll, the American public recognizes the benefits of marijuana, and 94 percent of voters favor medical marijuana legalization.

Furthermore, 29 states legalized medical marijuana before the start of 2018. Public support has not, however, been sufficient to garner legal approval, with medical marijuana remaining illegal at the federal level. The Drug Enforcement Agency’s interference and the Food and Drug Administration’s complicated approval system have contributed to the problem.

BUREAUCRATIC BARRIERS Medical cannabis’ path to federal approval has been obstructed by bureaucratic opposition to research, stemming from the FDA’s failure to approve marijuana as medication. The FDA claims to have no issues with approving medical marijuana, so long as it is done using proper clinical research. The obstacles to marijuana legalization arise not from FDA attitudes towards the drug, but rather from the approval process itself.

FDA approval begins with companies submitting Investigational New Drug Reports for clinical trials of new medications.

The FDA then has 60 days to review and approve the trial. The Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, a research center controlled by the FDA, reviews the work done by outside agents, then makes recommendations on labelling and dosages to the FDA, with the FDA itself conducting no actual studies.

Because the FDA relies on outside research firms, cannabis research is at the mercy of state laws. Marijuana’s status as a federally illegal substance makes clinical trials extremely difficult, if not impossible to conduct, hence barring any possible FDA review and approval.

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In the fight for marijuana legalization, the DEA poses an even greater barrier than the FDA, as it has routinely blocked research efforts. University of Massachusetts researchers have battled the DEA for over a decade to get a permit simply to build a cannabis research facility, let alone enter into the human clinical trial testing required for FDA approval.

This conflict arises primarily from marijuana’s classification by the DEA as a Schedule I substance. Schedule I substances, according to the DEA, have “no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse.” On the current scheduling system, marijuana is ranked as having a higher potential for abuse than cocaine, methamphetamines, and oxycodone, all Schedule II substances; it is even ranked as having a higher potential for abuse than cocaine, which is ranked as one of the top five most addictive drugs and the third most damaging drug.

The major hypocrisy of this scheduling is government held patent number 6630507, which recognizes that cannabis has medicinal properties. The U.S. legal document states that cannabinoids, organic components of marijuana plants, have “particular applications” in preventing neurological damage after trauma, treating neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s, and treating autoimmune diseases. This government patent acknowledges numerous health benefits derived from cannabis. The very same government that holds this patent classifies marijuana as a substance with “no currently accepted medical use,” showing DEA scheduling is not only prejudicial, but contradictory.

BIG PHARMA, BIG PROBLEM DEA obstruction is given validity through marijuana’s status as a federally illegal substance, which is supported by anti-marijuana lobbying. The pharmaceutical industry contributes more to lobbying activities than any other industry, spending $2.6 billion on lobbying between 1998 and 2012. This massive effort has a clear motive behind it; recent estimates speculate that major pharmaceutical companies stand to lose $18.5 billion in profits if medical marijuana becomes legal in all 50 states.

Much of this profit loss would be generated from opioids and prescription painkillers, as medical marijuana has been confirmed to relieve pain disorders. In states where medical marijuana is legal, there has been a 24.8 percent decrease in fatal opioid overdoses on average. Moreover, in states that have legalized medical cannabis, there has been an average decrease of 11 percent in general prescription drug usage. The potential for medical cannabis to treat pain may even assist in ending America’s opioid crisis.

Painkiller manufacturers have been quick to take notice of falling prescription rates and attempt to counteract them. Purdue Pharma and Abbott Laboratories, the companies that produce OxyContin and Vicodin, are two of the largest donors to the Partnership for Drug Free Kids, one of the largest anti-marijuana lobbies. Purdue Pharma also donates to Community Anti-Drug Coalitions of America, while Abbott Laboratories is the second largest pharmaceutical donor to congressional representatives.

LAW ENFORCEMENT LOBBYING Though Big Pharma stands as one of the most economically well-equipped opponents of cannabis legalization, contrary to popular belief, law enforcement may bear an even stronger influ-

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ence.

Paul Armentano, the Deputy Director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, revealed to the HPR that he believes the influence of law enforcement agencies to be even greater than that of pharmaceutical companies. Armentano remarked that if congressional representatives were being unduly influenced by any industry, it would be law enforcement, which has been “far more prolific and consistent in their public opposition to this issue than any other special interest group.”

Armentano noted that politicians “speak the language” of law enforcement groups and “trust the message that they’re going to be hearing” from law enforcement representatives. While law enforcement influence is about credibility, from a political standpoint, endorsements may matter more. “Most people seeking local or state political office seek the endorsements of the local sheriffs, of the local DAs, of the judges,” said Armentano, “They’re not going to tick off that constituency that they need for election by opposing them on drug policy reform.”

The power of the purse, however, has not been lost on the private prison industry. One in five inmates in the U.S. prison system is incarcerated for nonviolent drug offenses. Federal legalization of cannabis stands to cut into the rate of incarceration for drug crimes, cutting profits for private prisons by decreasing the supply of incarcerated persons. Corrections Corporation of America, one of the largest private prison companies in America, now CoreCivic, collected $195 million in profit in 2014; that same year, CCA spent over one million dollars on anti-marijuana lobbying. CCA even stated in a 2014 regulatory report that, “[A] ny changes with respect to drugs and controlled substances or illegal immigration could affect the number of persons arrested, convicted, and sentenced, thereby potentially reducing demand for correctional facilities to house them.” Industry concerns over marijuana legalization are not for its potential health risks, but rather for potential profit loss.

FOLLOW THE MONEY Responsibility for medical marijuana legalization ultimately lies in the hands of Congress. Medical marijuana legalization has been painted as a morally enigmatic threat to public health, however, the motivation behind the anti-medical marijuana movement can be discovered not when one follows the morals, but rather the money. Elected officials have been lavished with more money from pharmaceutical companies than any other industry since 1998, with contributions spread roughly evenly between parties. Democrat Barack Obama received more money from pharmaceutical companies than any other political candidate in 2012; Republican Mitt Romney followed closely in second place.

According to a 2017 Quinnipiac poll, 94 percent of Americans favor medical marijuana legalization. Those who most strongly oppose it are not concerned citizens, but industries standing to lose profits. Prescription medications were responsible for 52 percent of all deaths caused by overdoses in 2015. Meanwhile, pharmaceutical companies have dedicated billions to preventing the legalization of cannabis, a competitive substance that has never been responsible for a fatal overdose.

Jon Marsh, a former U.S. Marine and leading cannabis activist, lays the blame for prohibition on Congress as well. Marsh has been using cannabis since 1993 to alleviate Gulf War Syndrome, a

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medical condition that causes chronic fatigue, muscle aches, and mood disorders such as anxiety and depression. Marsh commented in an interview with the HPR that cannabis prohibition is about “following the money trail.” For Marsh, the money goes deeper than just lobbying. As he explained, “Big Pharma will only be able to control the plant if the U.S. Government allows them to do so. And thus far, [the government has] directly aided pharmaceuticals.” Marsh sees Congress as Big Pharma’s financially motivated enabler, commenting that many congressional representatives have “stocks and futures in the very products and services which cannabis, and hemp, will compete with.”

Marsh similarly pardons law enforcement officials, including Attorney General Jeff Sessions, since Sessions is just doing his job as the U.S. Attorney General. He doesn’t blame Sessions for cracking down on marijuana, but Congress for giving him the authority to do so: “If Congress got together and simply repealed the horrific legislation ... Sessions could focus his attention elsewhere.”

GREENER DAYS AHEAD Though medical cannabis faces numerous obstacles to federal legalization, advocates see a path to constructive policy change appearing in the coming years. With striking results

from public opinion polling and continued research progress, activists are becoming increasingly hopeful for federal legalization. Marsh is one of these activists who is not yet ready to give up the fight. “By 2020 I see a shift where pro-cannabis will be a thing to be … The future is going to be very bright, how bright depends on the legislators moving forward in 2020.”

Beck took a slightly different approach to the question of this brighter future, instead placing the responsibility on the American public itself. “The best way to start is to have local communities band together and decriminalize on a county to county basis. Once enough counties do that, the state and federal governments will see that the people are speaking. They will hear us.”

Though congressional representatives may hear their constituents, the question is whether they will listen. Contrary to popular belief, medical marijuana legalization is not a partisan issue, and for the majority of Americans, is not a moral issue. It does, however, raise fundamental questions about the nature of a republic where representatives answer to the highest bidders rather than constituents. The question of cannabis legalization forces representatives to make a choice, testing where their loyalties lie. Only time can predict whether that loyalty will shift back into the hands of its rightful recipients: the American people. 

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YOUTH SUBSTANCE ABUSE PREVENTION IN SOUTHERN ARIZONA

Revisiting Recovery Meena Venkataramanan

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ourteen-year-old Matthew was recently arrested for smoking marijuana at his Southern Arizona high school.

Weeks later, he found himself at Sin Puertas, an adolescent behavioral clinic devoted to youth substance abuse prevention. In the presence of his program counselor, Matthew confessed that his friends introduced him to the drug in middle school and that he used it often because he thought it would relieve his depression. It did not, he admits. This was his third arrest.

In 2016, nearly one-quarter of high school seniors reported using drugs in the past year. Of that number, nearly three-fifths used alcohol, and about 35 percent have used marijuana. Moreover, the perceived harm of marijuana by adolescents has continued to decrease, contributing to a growing trend of softening attitudes towards youth with substance use disorders. In Arizona, a state where adolescent alcohol, marijuana, and cocaine use exceed national averages, the issue is especially grave.

Prevention has proved difficult in a world where youth drug and alcohol use is seldom treated as problem. However, certain Southern Arizona efforts, including La Frontera Center and Sin Puertas Adolescent Behavioral Clinic, have proved essential in mitigating youth substance use disorders by providing treatment services. Although these two organizations advocate different approaches to treatment, each does its part in working towards the shared goal of increasing access to rehabilitation in Southern Arizona by focusing on the key factor among its adolescent clients: motivation.

SIMILAR SITUATIONS On the outskirts of downtown Tucson rests La Frontera,

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an Arizona-based organization dedicated to substance abuse prevention. Aurora Thrush has been working to alleviate youth substance abuse at La Frontera since 2009. Her coworkers, Diana Spray and Lillian Castro, also perform intervention work with teenagers.

Just two miles north of La Frontera, Sin Puertas, a program of Pima Prevention Partnership, attempts to address the same grave but unnoticed issue through treatment and prevention services. Charlie Alcaraz, clinical director of Sin Puertas—whose name literally translates from Spanish to “without doors” and denotes accessibility—has been providing easy access to adolescent treatment and prevention services for 13 years.

Inside one of Sin Puertas’ teen lounges, positive messages decorate the walls, and a “feelings thermometer” poster is taped to the wall, which teens utilize to rank how they are feeling from “silence” to “ecstatic.” Beanbags are perched on the floor, and board games adorn the shelves, creating a comforting, welcoming environment. However, Alcaraz mentioned to the HPR that at Sin Puertas, “90 percent of the kids are in probation,” and demonstrate risk-taking behaviors. To him, these risk-taking characteristics are fascinating, because he can use them to encourage teens to take “healthy risks” instead of resorting to risky substance use behaviors.

Meanwhile, La Frontera focuses on a more clinical approach.

Each day is different for Thrush, Spray, and Castro. As clinicians, Thrush and Spray have a daily schedule of hourly appointments where they work with patients who have previously faced trauma, but also have crisis sessions for already-enrolled teenagers who are having a crisis and walk into the clinic without prior notice. As a Directed Recovery Coach, Castro told the HPR that she could “start out [her day] in a meeting and end at a detention

center,” since she works with more high-risk patients that may be hospitalized or in the Department of Child Safety.

Victims of youth substance use disorders come in all shapes and sizes. Spray told the HPR that the average starting age for La Frontera clients is around 12 years old, in the midst of puberty and peer pressure, but Thrush added that it could be as young as 8 or 9. Castro mentioned one of her patients who “started using heroin at age 5 and will be 18 soon ... he has been in DCS since he was a baby,” proving that to these children, drugs are just a normal part of growing up because of toxic environments and easy access.

“Just as my mom taught me to eat a tub of ice cream and watch funny movies when I’m stressed out, these parents teach their children to get drunk or high,” Thrush observed to the HPR, illustrating the similar stress both those who use drugs and those who don’t face but the radically different ways they deal with this stress.

There are a few key similarities that many of the clients at Sin Puertas share. Because most of the teens enrolled in Sin Puertas are involved with the justice system, the population closely reflects that of the justice system—about 80 percent males and 20 percent females. The majority of the clients have a family history of substance use disorders, come from single-parent homes, live with grandparents, or are in foster care. “Only 20 percent of them live in traditional, fully intact families,” said Alcaraz. Many teens at Sin Puertas have also experienced some form of trauma, including sexual abuse, physical abuse, or abandonment.

Furthermore, there is often a culture of substance use within the families of adolescents who come to both La Frontera and Sin Puertas. Many of these teenagers have families that struggle with substance use disorders and, as a result, are constantly

exposed to drugs and alcohol. In the poor socioeconomic communities where they reside, it is easy to come across teenagers dealing drugs in abandoned community facilities such as parks and playgrounds. These teens genuinely believe substance use is normal and that all of their more-affluent counterparts are engaging in the exact same behavior. “The community is so entrenched in bad behavior,” lamented Thrush, adding that community efforts to alleviate youth substance use disorders are desperately needed. “As social workers, we make a difference, but we only spin our wheels on a community level,” concurred Castro.

But what does community rehabilitation look like? Thrush hopes to transform the societal response to victims of substance abuse, and hoped for the establishment of more treatment centers than detention centers so “when a child is picked up [by the authorities], he or she is sent to treatment instead of being given a slap on the wrist.”

Castro asked, “Why don’t we send the parents to treatment?”

She remarked that because youth substance use disorders are aggravated by family environments, entire families should be sent to treatment instead of just adolescents. Spray observed that many parents push for individual youth substance use disorder recovery programs, but “there has to be family involvement” in order for real changes to occur.

DIVERGENT APPROACHES Although the demographics and the entrenched indifference of many families of clients at La Frontera and Sin Puertas are similar, their approaches to treatment significantly differ. A typical day at Sin Puertas is filled with both fun and productivity.

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Around 3 p.m., teens start arriving at the center and stay until 8 p.m. “They usually congregate in the game room, where they can shoot pool or play ping-pong,” remarked Alcaraz, adding that “they might casually chat with staff” as well. The goal is to make teens feel comfortable before therapy begins. Before counseling sessions begin, the teens get a chance to talk about their day and how they feel, which is when the feelings thermometer comes into play. Sessions also include motor activities, because “getting teenagers physically engaged” is important. The night continues with social activities that shape behavior and language skills, as well as productive group discussions and brainstorming. “If it’s not fun, we’re not working,” remarked Alcaraz.

Meanwhile, at La Frontera, therapy takes a different form. A variety of treatment programs are available to meet the changing needs of youth. Assessments are used to diagnose patients, and are based on a multitude of factors, including intensity, type of drug, frequency, mental health, individual motivation to improve, and family background, but clinicians can also add their personal recommendations to the results. In the end, many of the sessions include either motivational speaking or cognitive behavioral therapy, through which “the patient’s own rationalizations, or assumptions about drugs, are challenged,” according to Thrush. In this way, patients are encouraged to find alternatives to drug and alcohol use to cope with pain and stress, and are asked essential questions such as “What role does my addiction play in my family setting?” and “How can I increase my coping skills?”

Motivation is one of the biggest challenges teens face with respect to overcoming their substance use disorders at both centers. At Sin Puertas, there is a strong emphasis on selfmotivation. Instead of forcing teenagers to quit using drugs and alcohol, Sin Puertas staff want them to realize the drawbacks of using. Alcaraz wants teens to realize that, ultimately, “it’s their life,” and they have to make decisions on their own. Overall, Sin Puertas’ goal is to help put their clients on the right track again

by getting them to link their substance abuse with the negative circumstances in their lives and make their own decision to stop using. Sin Puertas has a 70 percent successful completion rate, which, Alcaraz cautioned, does not always equate with complete sobriety. Sometimes, successful completion means decreasing the amount and frequency of substance use, or going from, say, frequent heroin use to occasional marijuana use. It is not perfect, but it is a start. Although relapse rates are high at La Frontera because of noxious home environments, success stories drive the staff at both centers to keep working to fight substance use disorders with an air of optimism.

MOVING FORWARD Alcaraz recalls a young man who was on Juvenile Intensive Probation Services—the highest form of probation—and had recently come back from residential treatment. “He lived with his uncle and had a limited support system, and was also entrenched in a group of young people who consistently used drugs and alcohol. After coming to Sin Puertas, he connected with a couple of staff members immediately and started to enjoy counseling sessions. After six months, he was completely sober. Now, he is 23 years old and has been checking in with us every month since he completed the program. He still asks staff members for life advice, and now is a great dad who is raising two kids.”

Similarly, at La Frontera, another teenager with a substance use disorder expressed a desire to join the military. After a long treatment process, this teenager stopped using drugs, and recently graduated military boot camp, proving that dreams can come true. Despite their different approaches, a collective aspiration to success and an unyielding hope for improvement are what ultimately keep La Frontera and Sin Puertas running, and most importantly, the dream of a world without youth substance use disorders alive. 

Sin Puertas is an adolescent substance abuse prevention clinic in Southern Arizona.

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EMERGENT BIOTECHNOLOGY

A Dual-Edged Sword

Christopher Li

O

ver the past year, torrents of tweets, rhetoric of “fire and fury,” and debates over “button” sizes have kept the world’s attention on the threats of nuclear weapons. After all, much of today’s adult population lived through the Cold War, an era when prospects of nuclear war veered dangerously close to reality. But despite the fears of an escalating nuclear confrontation, one of the most complex challenges emerging for American national security lies in a threat whose origins and propagation are more opaque: biotechnology.

In recent years, the H1N1 crisis, the Ebola epidemic, and various outbreaks of infectious diseases have all demonstrated the damage that biological threats can inflict. The 2001 Amerithrax case issued a powerful reminder that state and non-state actors alike can leverage biological agents toward malign ends. Today, a central issue within the biosecurity landscape involves “dual use research”—legitimate and well-intentioned scientific research with the potential to be used for harmful purposes.

For all the good biotech innovation is bringing to society, concerns about dual use research are increasing. In the wrong hands, technology that cures disease can also be destructive.

This dilemma highlights the evolving effort—by the government, the public, and the scientific community—required to anticipate, preempt, and respond effectively to this threat. Yet balanced against the need for open academic inquiry and the life-saving potential of new technologies, broad categorical restrictions on research are infeasible and undesirable.

According to Nobel Prize-winning scientist Harold Varmus, who was appointed by President Clinton to serve as Director of the National Institutes of Health, new technologies like gene editing and genomic engineering “pose concerns and at least hypothetical dangers.” Now a professor at Weill Cornell Medicine, Varmus also told the HPR that recent controversies, such as those over the modification of influenza virus genomes, “require

informed debate.”

It is more urgent than ever, therefore, that the scientific community hold candid conversations, establish clear and consistent norms and principles, and engage policymaking bodies—at home and internationally—to chart a productive path forward.

THE CHALLENGE OF DUALITY Today, rapid advances in biotechnology carry enormous promises. Innovation in the life sciences is reshaping environmental protection, transforming energy production, and revolutionizing the diagnosis and treatment of disease. Increasing globalization of scientific expertise has led to breakthroughs around the world and raised the quality of life in both developing and developed nations.

At the same time, “next-generation” advancement has been accompanied by increased risks, particularly in research focused on toxins and pathogens. Genetic engineering and synthetic biology have become more powerful, but also more dangerous, augmenting the virulence and transmissibility of pathogens. As a result, the threat of biological agents—either in the form of a natural pandemic outbreak or an intentional attack—has become an increasingly significant focus of national security and health policy.

Fortunately, deliberate attacks have been rare, at least in the United States. Since 2001, when two U.S. Senators and several members of the media received anthrax spores in the mail, the American public has not encountered an intentional biological attack. But with technical advances progressing rapidly and more widespread dissemination of research findings, some in the scientific community and national security establishment have raised new concerns.

In 2015, for example, a publication by the World Health

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Organization concluded that the variola virus, which causes smallpox, a disease that has been eradicated globally, could be recreated using synthetic biology. More shockingly, it reported that the process comprised a mere three steps, and could be completed by a skilled lab technician or undergraduate student in three months using genomes available in the public domain.

Given the apparent dangers, a hasty government response might attempt to curtail potentially dangerous research by imposing heavy limitations on permissible science. But such a response would disrupt America’s culture of academic inquiry and the free exchange of ideas, cornerstones of the scientific domain for centuries. The United States has established itself as a world leader in biomedical research in large part thanks to its transparent scientific enterprise. As Varmus explained, “Historically we have benefited from policies that favor openness in research.” Balancing the need to mitigate risks without impinging on biomedical research is the challenge that makes any simple solution elusive.

AN OLD THREAT? ASILOMAR & RECOMBINANT DNA The tension between biotechnology and biosecurity is nothing new. In the early 1970s, scientists discovered how to combine different genes into new combinations to produce engineered proteins in bacteria. This technique, known as “recombinant DNA,” offered clear therapeutic applications. In 1975, however, a number of scientists led by Stanford biochemist Paul Berg called for a moratorium on recombinant DNA, citing the uncertainty of its risks. They convened an international conference of biologists, lawyers, journalists, and policymakers, assessed risks and benefits, and ultimately established detailed guidelines governing future research. It was at this Asilomar Conference that they agreed it was important for research to continue, but only under specific guidelines.

These guidelines provided the groundwork for subsequent

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regulations and laws in the United States and worldwide. In the years since, they proved to be both useful and effective.

Worldwide use of recombinant technology blossomed, ushering discussions of biomedical research into public discourse and driving the expansion of the biotech industry.

Today, products of recombinant DNA technology exist in virtually every pharmacy and hospital in the developed world. They include life-saving hormones such as insulin and erythropoietin, which patients with diabetes and anemia require to survive, vaccines like those for hepatitis B and HPV, and diagnostics such as those that detect the presence of HIV. Since Asilomar’s discovery in 1975, “none of the bad outcomes worried about at the time [have] materialized,” said Matthew Meselson, a Harvard geneticist best known for his landmark discovery of how DNA replicates. “On the contrary, recombinant DNA technology has made possible many benefits in medicine, in agriculture and in other fields, including basic understanding of life processes.” Meselson, whose work as a consultant for the U.S. government on bioweapons with Henry Kissinger under the Nixon Administration led to the first ban on biological weapons, added, “The evidence of nearly half a century of history is that the solutions proposed then were adequate, perhaps more than adequate, and that fears were exaggerated.”

MODERN CAPABILITIES: SECOND-GENERATION BIOTECHNOLOGY Today, things have changed. In the last months of Barack Obama’s presidency, his Council of Advisors on Science and Technology sent him a letter raising concerns about “secondgeneration methods” in biotechnology. According to the report, the “first-generation” technologies of recombinant DNA, while powerful, faced significant limitations in regulating gene expression, targeting genes with specificity, and delivering DNA into a cell. In contrast, newer “second-generation” methods enable precise gene delivery, high-throughput DNA synthesis, and direct gene editing.

Modern methods enable scientists to assemble recombinant genes more quickly than ever before, allowing scientists to manipulate viruses and pathogens with greater ease. New techniques have also enhanced the potential to weaponize naturally occurring pathogens by engineering them to overcome existing immunity and become drug resistant. A team in Australia demonstrated, for example, that by inserting one gene into the mousepox genome, the new virus became capable of killing mice that had previously been resistant.

To be sure, creating sophisticated tools of bioterror is still no simple task. Moreover, the probability of an ill-intentioned individual acquiring the technical competence and resources

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is still fairly low. “The most dangerous near-term threat by far is certainly from nature,” argues Meselson. “As for deliberately caused disease, history is again relevant. It is now 16-plus years since the anthrax letter attacks. What can be learned from this?

First, that there has been no repetition. Even though it is relatively simple to prepare dispersible anthrax spores, even though the letter attacks of 2001 showed that simply mailing the spores through the post works, there has been no repetition.” But Meselson acknowledges that risks exist. And in an increasingly digital and interconnected world, the threat is still real.

DUAL USE RESEARCH OF CONCERN Potentially dangerous biological research is difficult to regulate precisely because it is “dual use.” In an overwhelming majority of cases, it is conducted legitimately for medical or academic aims. And while nuclear programs require large laboratories and facilities, bioengineering requires comparatively little lab space and modest resources, making detection, let alone regulation, difficult.

In the United States, current policies surrounding “dual use research of concern” apply specifically to 15 agents and toxins and seven types of experiments. But these policies have flaws.

Perhaps the biggest complication is that research may seem not to possess any “dual use” potential in its initial stages, only for concerns to emerge as it progresses. Furthermore, the policies only apply to federally funded research and institutions—privately funded institutions are omitted, as are pharmaceutical and biotech companies. And although these policies withdraw government funding in the case of non-compliance, they do not actively impose sanctions. On another level, issues of dissemination persist. While large academic institutions and research facilities may adhere closely to policies, no universal standards for scientific journals exist, and no norms in international settings have been established.

CHARTING A WAY FORWARD? Is there, then, a clear way forward? Left with no easy options, one solution is to impose stringent bans, to prohibit experiments, or to sanction non-compliant journals. Governments could also restrict access to sensitive knowledge to only individuals with security clearances. These broad, categorical answers are likely poor solutions, since they are, as President Obama’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology reported, “likely to interfere with fulfilling the promise of biotechnology for improving human health and welfare.” Indeed, the enormous public good ushered in by the age of recombinant DNA, when contrasted with previous setbacks in biomedical research after heavy-handed restrictions such as the ban on federal funding for human embryonic stem cell research, warns us of the risks of generalized solutions and indiscriminate regulations. Moreover, these measures may not even prove effective, since scientific expertise is too widely disseminated across nations.

Perhaps despite the changes in technology, the principles

that were successful at Asilomar can still be applied with success today. International forums for scientists, open dialogue among policymakers, private-sector engagement, and participation from educational institutions will be critical if we hope to bolster research and biosecurity. Diagnosis must precede prescription, if scientists seek to develop solutions with nuanced thought rather than rushed and imposed politicization.

Certainly, greater discussion and awareness will be needed.

“Inclusion of [dual-use research] in graduate training programs and greater attention to it by groups like the Nuclear Threat Initiative could help with these matters,” said Varmus. In addition to the scientific community, policymakers in the government can play important roles as well. As John Holdren, former science advisor to President Obama and Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, told the HPR, “I believe the policies we worked out in the Obama Administration, after wide consultation and careful thought, strike the right balance.” Holdren added that “increased cooperation in intelligence and biosurveillance is one way to work with allies internationally to manage biosecurity risks.”

Perhaps the most effective strategy the government can implement involves response and preparedness. Multiple public health crises in recent years have underscored the importance of efficient interagency protocols, response coordination, and emergency planning. As Meselson explained, “In the case of smallpox or Ebola, for example, or some newly emerging virus, the toll can be greatly reduced by traditional public health measures—keep children home from school, cancel big spectator sports events, curtail travel, measures of personal hygiene, etc. The great degree to which such measures can be effective is often unappreciated.”

In the end, scientists, policymakers, and citizens should continue to have robust conversations and thoughtful dialogue.

As inevitable as it is that biotechnology will continue to advance, it is equally certain that new risks will continue to emerge. Only balanced and informed foresight, guided by lessons of history, will ensure that our policies are smart and effective. Most importantly, we should recognize that scientific advancement is not without mistake, and that difficult corrections will inevitably be needed. We would do well to remember that the price of science, an imperfect human art, is humility from us all. 

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SEEING THROUG THE SMO Clara Bates

F

ew industries worth almost $10 billion are illegal under federal law. Fewer still operate out of giant dispensaries that sleekly advertise their extensive selections, or stateof-the-art cultivation processes, in open sight of passersby. But we live in a new age: the age of recreational marijuana.

2018 will be a telling year for the future of the burgeoning marijuana industry in the United States. The regulatory situation was already complex when, in January, an unexpected policy change at the federal level led to widespread confusion about the industry’s future. Meanwhile, policy implementation at the local level has been complicated by inconsistent Department of Justice enforcement, and the states which have already legalized marijuana must continue developing solutions to challenges widely overlooked by the public. These hurdles notwithstanding, many experts believe that the momentum propelling legalization across the country is likely to prevail.

THE CONFLICT INTENSIFIES Tensions concerning the future of recreational marijuana exist not only between state and federal marijuana law, but also within the Trump administration itself. When Trump entered office, the Department of Justice operated under the Cole Memo, which discouraged DOJ resources from going towards the enforcement of federal marijuana law in states where the

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drug had been legalized. Although Trump affirmed that he was “in favor of medical marijuana 100 percent” in a 2016 interview, his Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, has long been a vocal opponent of both medical and recreational marijuana use, concerning marijuana activists deeply. As Trump neared a year in office without any significant action on marijuana policy, those invested in the industry felt increasingly safe from federal interference. But Sessions’ January decision to rescind the Cole Memo reignited activists’ deep-seated fears. Suddenly, it seemed likely that the federal government would act to punish marijuana use and possession by individuals previously deemed legal by the states.

For John Hudak, senior fellow at the Brookings Institute and marijuana policy expert, Sessions’ announcement, rescinding a policy that held bipartisan support, was indicative of an “individual letting his own … biases overwhelm public policy.” This view is not in the minority: dozens of Republican members of Congress and Governors have spoken out against the policy.

The direct effect of the policy on the legal marijuana market, however, is unclear, as the enforcement power will be in the hands of federal prosecutors. Federal prosecutors in California and Colorado, for instance, have committed to operating as they did before Sessions’ shift. Others, such as U.S. Attorney in Massachusetts Andrew Lelling, who labeled it “a straightforward rule of law issue,” have sided with the Trump administra-

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GH OKE tion. Enforcement seemingly depends on prosecutors’ personal priorities. It is unlikely that the policy will have a uniform effect across the country; rather, it will serve to continue the fragmentation of an already inconsistent framework of law.

In an interview with the HPR, Tick Segerblom, a Nevada state senator, warned that overwhelming grassroots support for marijuana would cause problems for any serious attempts at federal enforcement. He predicted that there “would be riots in the streets… You can’t put the genie [of marijuana legalization] back in the bottle.” Hudak noted, however, that no matter the impassioned rhetoric of local lawmakers, in the event of a sustained federal crackdown, states would be powerless to protect the industry, as federal law trumps state statutes.

THE UNANTICIPATED CONSEQUENCES OF LEGALIZATION For now, there is little that states can do except wait to see whether Sessions’ move will have any effect. Meanwhile, states on the frontlines of legalization must continue to iron out policy wrinkles themselves.

Already, 30 states have legalized medical marijuana, and eight plus Washington D.C. have legalized recreational use. Driven by legislative efforts and voter propositions, even more states, such as Vermont and New Jersey, are on track to legalize recreational

marijuana in the coming year. Hudak suggested that Massachusetts and California, the largest states to legalize recreational marijuana, will provide important case studies for the rest of the country. “All eyes will be on these new states as a signal of how effective marijuana policy is,” he noted.

THE ROAD AHEAD Some challenges are sure to arise in all states. A significant concern for lawmakers is clarifying what level of THC is acceptable when driving. Using the same tests for marijuana as those used to determine intoxication from alcohol is inadequate, because the effects of marijuana use do not manifest themselves physically in the same way as alcohol. Treating marijuana as an equivalent to alcohol can allow for overwhelming police discretion. No accurate tests have been implemented for roadside use when officers pull people over for driving under the influence of marijuana. This discretion may manifest itself in potential for the next arena of police abuse of power against minorities.

As Jacob Sullum wrote in the January issue of Reason magazine, police officers currently possess broad power to claim that drivers are under the influence of marijuana. He cited the example of an officer in Georgia who arrested three drivers for marijuana intoxication, booking them and placing them in jail for the night, before tests finally proved that there was no THC

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in their blood. In the absence of clear regulations, police abuse of powers in regulating driving under the influence is deeply concerning. Interestingly, however, in states where marijuana is legalized, overall arrests, which had disproportionately targeted minorities, have decreased dramatically. Hudak noted that more public awareness about the effects of driving under the influence of marijuana is critical, as is more knowledge about penalties.

Segerblom suggested adopting a new test rather than test bloodlevels of THC once arrested. “There’s no correlation between what’s in your blood and being under the influence. Medical patients can have sky high THC levels but ... function perfectly,” Segerblom commented.

Segerblom said the most pressing issue will be regulating public use of the substance. In all states that have legalized marijuana, public consumption remains illegal. Current laws that allow marijuana use only within one’s home are especially problematic, as tourists—a pillar of the Nevada economy—have nowhere to legally consume marijuana. Contradictory law manifests itself in manners difficult to resolve: for instance, if a casino worker finds marijuana in a hotel room, the question of whether it should be treated as equivalent to alcohol, since recreational marijuana is regulated under Nevada state law, or as equivalent to heroin, since marijuana is classified under the federal Controlled Substances Act, remains difficult.

Another question for states that have legalized the substance is what to do with those imprisoned under a law that no longer exists at the state level. There is little precedent to guide the way. During the Prohibition era of the 1920s, when there was a federal ban on alcohol, thousands were arrested and jailed, many of whom were not released after the 21st Amendment repealed Prohibition. Jon Gettman, professor of criminal justice at Shepherd University and a marijuana reform activist, told the HPR that individuals who are arrested for marijuana possession most commonly receive misdemeanors. Though jail time is less common, misdemeanors still appear indefinitely on individuals’ records, affecting their ability to get jobs, houses, loans, and more. Gettman argues that states must create new laws to expunge the records of those previously arrested and filed for marijuana possession.

BREAKTHROUGHS DESPITE UNCERTAINTY Though detailed policy-making at the state level has room to advance in 2018, the progressive approach to marijuana in the states has been surprisingly effective. Hudak, the author of Marijuana: A Short History, is surprised by the capability of states to effectively regulate marijuana. Segerblom confirmed that statelevel marijuana policy has proven overwhelmingly successful, commenting that marijuana in Nevada is strictly “regulated, tested, and taxed.” In many states, strict laws to trace marijuana throughout all levels of production, called “Seed to Sale,” have limited interstate issues and streamlined quality.

Jeffrey Miron, Director of Undergraduate Studies in Economics at Harvard and the Director of Economics Studies at the Cato Institute, however, believes that the bureaucratic rule-making and extensive regulatory measures implemented by states actually hinder the potential economic benefits of legalization.

He argued that “[states are] trying to regulate in a complicated and expensive way … believing that they can get the benefits of legalization and yet not have anyone actually increase their

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use of marijuana.” However, the consensus of state lawmakers in Oregon, Washington, Colorado, and other states, has been overwhelmingly positive as to the overall impact of legalization, especially as the details of regulations continue to be refined.

Thus, though the Trump administration seems unlikely to reverse course on marijuana policy or other social issues, the states have proven themselves more than capable. On issues like the “environment, labor, and minimum wage,” according to Hudak, the progressive approach at the state level has the potential to empower states beyond the Trump administration’s agenda.

For example, state-level policy development has allowed states to adopt laws specific to their needs, such as Nevada’s prioritization of access for tourists. Segerblom expressed confidence in states’ abilities to continue implementing effective policy, arguing that “we don’t want to go crazy on the federal level … then it will just empower big pharma, or big alcohol or big tobacco to … take it all over.”

Federal legalization any time soon looks unlikely, despite popular support, because marijuana has come to be a states’ rights issue. Hudak views the most likely scenario to be the federal enactment of legal marijuana as a waiver program, whereby states that so choose can legalize marijuana without the threat of federal intervention, but are otherwise not forced into legalization.

As Gettman, an activist in the push to legalize marijuana who has been involved with the issue for over two decades, noted, “It’s hard to make an argument based on any empirical observations that there’s going to be a reversal or a change in this trend.” No states have gone back to prohibition after liberalizing marijuana laws, even at the more incremental levels of medical marijuana. This suggests that public policy may finally be catching up to public opinion. Despite the whirlwind around federal crackdown of marijuana law, shiny dispensaries adorned with neon cannabis leaves are not going anywhere. 

UNITED STATES

DEMOCRACY’S GATEKEEPERS

2018’S SECRETARY OF STATE ELECTIONS Matthew Rossi

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I

n state politics, the most enviable marker of power is the socalled “triplex.” To achieve a triplex, a political party must sweep the state’s three most influential offices. The first two are the governor and attorney general positions, the former due to extensive executive powers and the latter due to their power to sue the federal government. But it is the third and most frequently overlooked member of the triplex who may have the most influence over democracy: the secretary of state.

The duties of the secretary of state encompass serving as the state’s chief election official, along with such administrative duties as permitting and business authentication. Because of their role in the electoral process, secretaries of state have critical influence over who can vote and how easy it is to do so.

“A chief election official must do three things: make sure only eligible voters vote, make sure every eligible voter has the opportunity to vote, and make sure that every eligible voter meets convenience at the polls and during the registration process,” said Jason Kander in an interview with the HPR. Kander, who served as Missouri’s secretary of state from 2013 to 2017, is the founder of the voting rights group Let America Vote.

As the nation enters a divisive debate over voting rights and alleged voter fraud, these officials may be the last line of defense against laws that disenfranchise American voters. Yet not all secretaries of state have taken up this mission with verve.

Richard Cohen, president of the Southern Poverty Law Center, a civil rights group, said in an interview with the HPR that “in a perfect world, all secretaries of state would be dedicated to ensuring that the franchise is as widely available as possible and is fair. So often now, that is not the orientation of many secretaries of state.”

Thus, the outcomes of the 26 secretary of state elections in 2018 are poised to have direct effects on elections to come. A look at some of the key races in the coming year indicates that Democrats are on track to seize back the secretary of state office in several critical states, potentially permanently altering the electoral landscape in the process.

Benson emphasized the tremendous power of the office. “Students of democracy can simply not ignore the significant role that a state secretary of state, if given the authority over elections, plays in consistently overseeing, interpreting, and implementing election laws and democratic principles in their state,” she wrote.

Eight years later, Benson is back for a second try at the office, and she believes her experience as a law school dean, non-profit CEO, and legal expert will set her apart from the field of Republicans looking to succeed Johnson. While three candidates are currently vying for the Republican nomination, raising the possibility of a damaging contested primary, Benson is as of yet unopposed in the Democratic primary and has quickly secured the endorsements of top party officials.

The debate over voter ID laws is expected to feature heavily in the race, especially after the Michigan House made its ID laws even more stringent in 2016. Under the House bill, voters without proper photo identification will not be able to cast even a provisional ballot with a signed affidavit, an option taken by over 18,000 voters in the 2016 presidential election. Controversially, the bill is expected to have an outsized impact on Wayne County, which contains a large proportion of the state’s black population and the overwhelmingly Democratic city of Detroit.

For critics of voter ID laws, the Michigan crackdown represents a new development in a long legacy of disenfranchising minority voters. “It seems clear from the record in North Carolina and Texas that voter ID laws have been enacted with oftentimes discriminatory intent, particularly to suppress the votes of poor people and people of color,” said Cohen. Kander, who opposed a 2016 Missouri referendum instituting a similar ID law, criticized ID laws more generally as a partisan suppression tactic, saying that “the Trump Administration and national Republicans are not going to back down from making voter suppression a key part of their strategy to win elections.” While the law’s proponents defend it as necessary to safeguard the integrity of the polls, its future may be on the line as election season ramps up.

MELEE IN MOTOR COUNTRY

THE ARIZONA BLAME GAME

The state of Michigan is, by most accounts, ancestrally Democratic. Nonetheless, Democrats have struggled to capture even menial power within Michigan’s state-level apparatus.

President Donald Trump’s narrow capture of Michigan in the 2016 presidential election solidified a new normal in the Great Lakes State—one in which Democrats are no longer presumptive favorites for statewide victories.

Nonetheless, Democrats are feeling optimistic about their 2018 chances in the state, hoping their nominees will be bolstered by the unpopularity of term-limited Republican Governor Rick Snyder, who has faced questions about his management of the Flint water crisis. After being shut out of the executive branch for eight years, the Democratic Party sees the open secretary of state seat as a prime opportunity for takeover.

In 2010, term-limited Secretary Ruth Johnson, a Republican, was elected by a relatively narrow 5.5 percentage points while Snyder was elected to his first term as governor by nearly a 20-point margin. Johnson’s Democratic opponent in the general election, Jocelyn Benson, had a unique qualification for the secretary of state position: she wrote the book on it. In her 2010 book, State Secretaries of State: Guardians of the Democratic Process,

March 22, 2016, was not Secretary Michele Reagan’s night.

During the day, Arizona’s presidential primary was plagued by long wait lines, with some voters turning around and going home in frustration. “They reduced the number of polling places by more than 50 percent from the last presidential preference election,” explained Katie Hobbs in an interview with the HPR. “I think a second grader could have looked at that and said, ‘That doesn’t look like enough polling places.’ And yet [Reagan] approved that plan.” Hobbs, Arizona’s Senate minority leader, declared her candidacy to be the Democratic nominee for secretary of state in March 2017.

Later that primary night, as results from precincts began pouring in, Reagan’s highly touted project to digitally display election results as they were finalized crashed and burned, with nothing to see on the webpage but an error message. Reagan had joked earlier that she would either be celebrating with a bottle of champagne or crying with a bottle of Jack Daniels depending on the success of the project; it seems a safe bet that Reagan pursued the latter recourse.

Reagan, a Republican, is by almost all accounts the most vulnerable incumbent secretary of state on the ballot in 2018.

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UNITED STATES

Prevailing by barely four points in 2014, Reagan’s performance has been plagued by misstep after misstep, with various election-related crises derailing her first term. Perhaps the most prominent scandal Reagan has endured was her failure to mail informational brochures to over 200,000 households ahead of the 2016 election. In the wake of the debacle, Arizona’s attorney general appointed a special prosecutor to investigate the case. Prosecutor Michael Morrissey found that Reagan knew about the failure to mail the pamphlets two weeks prior to when she notified the public, violating a state law provisioning that electoral pamphlets be sent to homes prior to the start of early voting. While Morrissey’s investigation concluded that Reagan displayed incompetence, it did not recommend indictment or prove criminal intent.

While some have called for Reagan to be impeached or recalled following her blunders, Arizona’s political observers expect she will remain in office unless the voters decide to cast her aside. Reagan will first have to survive the Republican primary in August, and while no one has stepped up to challenge her as of the end of 2017, several individuals are considering it, including wealthy businessman Steve Gaynor, Republican National Committeeperson Lori Klein Corbin, and former State Senate President Steve Pierce.

Whoever emerges from the Republican primary will face a stiff challenge from Hobbs, who has positioned herself as an outspoken advocate for voting rights. Hobbs has committed to making it easier for ex-felons to regain their voting rights after serving their sentences, saying, “it’s easier for a felon to have their gun rights restored than their voting rights restored. That is absolutely unacceptable. If we have in our laws a consequence for a crime and a person has paid that consequence, they should have their rights fully restored.” On the national debate over voter fraud, Hobbs celebrated the dissolution of Trump’s voter fraud panel: “when cases of voter fraud are less frequent than cases of people being struck by lightning, it’s ridiculous to make these claims [of fraud].”

Arizona’s secretary of state is particularly powerful because they serve as the executive branch’s second-in-command, and are elevated to the governorship in the case of a vacancy. If Hobbs were to unseat Reagan, she would thus become the most powerful Democrat in the state government since Governor Janet Napolitano left office in 2009.

FORTIFY THE RED, HIDE IN THE BLUE While Michigan and Arizona stand at the forefront of Democrats’ takeover opportunities, the party is intent on contesting seats even in ruby-red states. In Georgia, no Democrat has won a statewide open seat since 1998. In 2018, the race for secretary of state may offer Democrats their best chance to clinch a statewide victory in 20 years, with former Congressman John Barrow making an unexpected bid for the seat. Barrow, who represented a solidly conservative district in the House of Representatives from his initial election in 2004 until his defeat in the 2014 Republican wave, is making his moderate credentials central to his campaign. “When I left the House I was the most bipartisan member of Congress from either side of the aisle running for reelection that year,” said Barrow in an interview with the HPR. “I think that bipartisanship is virtually a prerequisite for this job.”

Barrow’s proven record of winning tough races will likely serve

him well in a state trending toward Democrats.

In addition to bipartisanship, Barrow identified even-handedness as a key quality to have in a secretary of state: “Folks want someone who will administer elections on the up and square.”

And on the issue of restoring voters’ confidence in their polling locations, he emphasizes taking decisive action to revamp election infrastructure rather than the escalation of partisan debates over voter fraud. “Nobody today uses the same phone that they used in 2002,” said Barrow. “And yet in our elections, we’re using not only the same hardware but the same software that we were using back in 2002. The technology to cheat has long since outstripped that generation’s technology to keep cheaters out.

That’s why we need a wholesale overhaul of our election technology in Georgia.”

In sharp contrast to strong Democratic recruitment in red states, several Democratic incumbents are as of yet going unchallenged in traditionally blue states. Secretary Denise Merrill of Connecticut, who from 2015 to 2017 served as the president of the National Association of Secretaries of State, stood at the forefront of a frosty reception to Trump’s now-disbanded voter fraud commission, which was chaired by another secretary of state: Republican firebrand Kris Kobach of Kansas. Merrill, a Democrat first elected in 2010, pushed back on Kobach’s requests for private voter information, denigrating his “lengthy record of illegally disenfranchising eligible voters in Kansas.” While Merrill’s 2014 reelection was closer than expected, with the incumbent winning by a narrow four points, she had not drawn a single Republican challenger as of the end of 2017, raising the possibility that Merrill will simply get a pass come the general election.

The yawning gap in recruitment and energy between the two parties could reshape the political landscape heading into the 2020 presidential election, especially with the coming census and redistricting on the horizon. Despite early advantages, Democratic challengers in closely divided states will face tough campaigns against capable opponents. Kander, who himself was in a similar position ahead of the 2012 elections, had this advice for his fellow Democrats as they craft their arguments: “It’s very simple—no matter who you are going to vote for and no matter who you’ve voted for in the past, if you are an eligible voter we’re going to do everything we can to make sure you meet nothing but convenience in the process.”

With sweeping powers over electoral matters, secretaries of state may be the most critical power-brokers in the important debate over whether voting in America is a right or a privilege.

“No one would talk about your right to bear arms as a privilege,” said Cohen. “No one would say that your right to not be subjected to an illegal search or seizure is a privilege. The question is, are we going to continue on the path of making the franchise more universal, or are we going to go backwards?” 

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HOME DETENTION ...an alternative to mass incarceration?

Cate Brock

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he United States has the second highest incarceration rate in the world, and a single inmate costs taxpayers an average of $33,274 per year. The large size of the incarcerated population, coupled with the high costs of the prison system, forces us to question how efficient and effective incarceration is, both for offenders and the rest of the community.

One underutilized alternative to prison is home detention or “house arrest,” a system where low-level offenders fulfill part or all of their sentences at their homes under electronic monitoring. Individuals in home detention programs have a tracker to monitor their location, and any travel must be pre-arranged.

This allows individuals to maintain family relationships and jobs, while also serving their sentences and undergoing rehabilitation. The United States should implement home detention programs at the local level as an alternative to prison for lowlevel offenders.

Growing home detention programs would drastically decrease government and taxpayer costs. For example, New Zealand has a strong home detention program that was implemented around 20 years ago. In a statement to the HPR, the New Zealand Department of Corrections wrote that a single prison inmate costs over $200 per day, while a home detention participant costs just under $40 per day. Implementing a small home detention program with just 10 participants saved Portage County, Wisconsin over $100,000 in 2016.

SUSTAINING EMPLOYMENT In most home detention programs, offenders are required to have employment in order to remain eligible. Because participants are employed, they must pay a fee to participate in the program. Some programs require a flat weekly fee, but others have an income-based charge. In Tippecanoe County, Indiana, for example, the daily cost of the home detention program is equal the the offender’s hourly wage. An income-based charge creates a system that is more inclusive for individuals of all economic backgrounds.

By requiring their participants to work, home detention programs allow offenders to maintain employment while serving their sentences; otherwise, offenders find it difficult to keep their jobs while living in prison for extended periods of time.

This opportunity also helps to keep people from facing the difficulties of finding a job after being incarcerated—an almost impossible task for many. It enables participants of the program to continue providing income for their families, and it provides a means for them to pay the fees incurred by being a part of the program.

Granted, it can be challenging for home detention participants to maintain employment when employers are notified of their criminal status. However, many successful home detention programs work with employers in an effort to keep participants employed. Additionally, businesses may be eligible for tax credits when hiring home detention participants.

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Home detention programs often go further, providing job training to offenders. Amy Kreiger is an adult reentry court coordinator in Allen County, Indiana. Her program uses home detention as an early release option for offenders, and the organization provides intensive job training for participants. “We work with a number of agencies,” she said in an interview with the HPR. “They work with our offenders to provide them a short version of an employment academy. They teach them how to write a resume, how to seek employment, and how to talk about their felony. They also have some additional workshops to help them work through some of the barriers they have as offenders returning to the community.” This preparation gives offenders the skills they need to gain employment.

tive. Participants in the New Zealand program found that home detention provided a good balance between prison and “normal life.” They had structure and a support system that held them very accountable to their actions, but they were also allowed to remain connected with the outside world.

Home detention also makes it possible for offenders to maintain a relationship with their families while also serving their sentence. Participants from the New Zealand program noted that being able to see their kids was a high point of the home detention program, and most of the family sponsors enjoyed having their loved ones at home with them. The study also found, however, that being a home detention sponsor could put some strain on relationships; oftentimes family members felt guilty about

Moreover, home detention participants often enjoy the work.

Jim Oliver, chief of criminal law for the Indiana Prosecuting Attorneys Council and career prosecutor, said in an interview with the HPR that “[participants] have an incentive to make it to work on time, to work as many hours as they can, and to keep the job. They have an incentive to go to work because they get out of the house. They have an incentive to work longer hours because they stay out of the house. They know if they can’t pay for their home detention, it’s not going to be an option for them.” These incentives reveal the benefit to employers of hiring home detention participants. These individuals are monitored by probation officers and have much motivation to do a good job, making them reliable employees.

leaving the offender at home, and despite having jobs, offenders couldn’t always contribute as much financially, putting an extra burden on other family members.

Home detention alone is not a cure-all for mass incarceration.

Requirements for home detention vary from program to program, but offenders with high-level or violent convictions and habitual offenders are not eligible for home detention programs across the board. In the United States, home detention is best suited for the local level, where probation officers can keep a close eye on participants and participants are generally lowerlevel offenders. Offences that are typically suitable for a home detention sentence include driving under the influence, minor drug offenses, and petty theft like shoplifting. Offenders who are suspected of dealing drugs or offenders who commit crimes resulting in victims are generally not eligible for home detention.

Part of Oliver’s job is to bring a prosecutor’s perspective to determining who does and does not qualify for home detention.

“I try to draw the distinction between people who we’re afraid of and people who we’re mad at,” he explained. “The people who we’re afraid of, we want to incarcerate. People that we’re mad at because they broke the law, but they’re not habitually dangerous, we want to make sure have consequences. They might not need

REHABILITATION, FAMILY RELATIONSHIPS, AND PROGRAM QUALIFICATION Along with employment, some offenders may be required to participate in rehabilitation classes. A study conducted in New Zealand found that individuals under home detention generally enjoyed the classes they attended. The courses were helpful to participants and provided another approved way to remain ac-

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to be incarcerated. So home detention, day reporting, or work release are good options for us.”

Ultimately, home detention sentencing is done on a case-bycase basis. In New Zealand, a judge determines if home detention is a suitable sentence. Gordon Irving, the senior communications advisor for the New Zealand Department of Corrections, told the HPR that “the judge must take into account a pre-sentence report and recommendation from a probation officer. The pre-sentence report will take into account the offender’s risk to the public, their motivation to change, their risk of re-offending, and the suitability of the proposed home detention address.”

This detailed process ensures that offenders are placed in an appropriate rehabilitation program and takes into account community safety.

MANEUVERING COMPLICATIONS Home detention programs must address some difficult issues.

Many programs require offenders to have approved housing, a suitable sponsor, and a stable job to qualify for the program, but this can be difficult for offenders who are homeless or for multiple offenders who live together. “One of the requirements is that offenders have a home in our county,” Kreiger said. “If they don’t have a home we try to find a halfway house. We try not to deny anybody.” Halfway houses, community sponsors, or prison work release are alternatives to traditional home detention that allow the program to accommodate more offenders.

Another hurdle home detention programs face is community skepticism. Community members often question the reliability of home detention for keeping their communities safe, but with reliable equipment and a strong program, home detention is a secure alternative to incarceration. Of the New Zealand program Irving explained that “Corrections’ use of electronic monitoring is world leading. The compliance rate for electronic monitoring is around 98 percent.” Electronic monitoring is not strictly limited to location tracking, as many assume. Several home detention programs require participants to check in via drug or alcohol monitors multiple times each day or before driving. A program in Portage County, Wisconsin, uses an alcohol monitor with a camera to ensure the individual taking the test is the program participant. These extra precautions make home detention a very viable option.

Still, there is the chance that individuals could commit additional crimes when they leave their homes. Irving noted that “electronic monitoring does not replace effective supervision from probation officers, the use of interventions and programs, regular risk assessments, and positive community support.” According to the New Zealand Department of Corrections, in 2016, just under 20 percent of home detention participants offended while on home detention. This is down from 25 percent in 2012, however. Ultimately, the effectiveness of home detention largely depends on the quality of the program and other outside factors. 

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Can Democrats Win in the South?

Byron Hurlbut

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n one remarkable night in December, red, white, and blue confetti rained down on supporters of Senator-elect Doug Jones. The Birmingham Sheraton Hotel was filled with Democratic exuberance long absent from Alabama. Jones’ breathless victory couldn’t help but stand in stark contrast to the sobering images of unused “glass-ceiling” confetti from Hillary Clinton’s election night party. She lost Alabama by nearly 28 points—yet, just over a year later, Alabama elected its first Democratic Senator since 1992. The surprising victory has sparked hope among Democratic activists that even the American South—a bastion of Republican voters over the past 30 years—is in play during the 2018 and 2020 elections.

Many of those activists hope that Democrats can win on a steady diet of anti-Trump rhetoric and mainstream liberal ideas—a formula that Jones executed perfectly. President Donald Trump’s approval rating is hovering around record lows and, as Jones’ victory showed, it can significantly lower Republican and raise Democratic turnout. However, anti-Trump sentiment alone might not be enough to carry the Democrats in the 2018 and 2020 elections and beyond. Can Jones’ win be replicated beyond a Trump administration? A 50-state strategy more closely tailored to local politics could win Democrats crucial seats in their bid to regain control of the House, Senate, gubernatorial offices, and state legislatures. In addition to the national party’s focus on local organizing, individual candidates can do a better job of representing their specific constituents’ ideals and policies.

By focusing on the mantra “all politics is local,” Democrats can win in a broader geographical region than their national policy would otherwise allow.

WHAT DOES DOUG JONES’ VICTORY MEAN? Although Jones’ victory sparked hope within the Democratic party, it’s hard to tell how predictive his victory is for future elections in the South. Can Democrats simply win off of back-

lash to the Trump administration? To answer that question, we must first determine how much of Jones’ win was attributable to his opponent, accused child molester Roy Moore, and not antiTrump sentiment. Using a post-election breakdown formulated by modelers at FiveThirtyEight, we can see if the results from Alabama represent a winning formula or an outlier that could lead to complacency.

Usually a 28- or 29-point Republican stronghold, Alabama fell to Jones by 1.5 points. This means that between Moore and Trump, we need to account for about 30 points of change. Polling indicated that Moore was 10 points worse than the average Republican candidate to start with, and allegations published by the Washington Post cost him another 10 points. That combination leaves 10 points of other impact which can be explained by the president’s lack of popularity, aligning nicely with Democrats’ 10-point margin on generic congressional ballots. The logical question is how much will a 10-point swing affect 2018 midterm elections? The short-term answer is that, especially in the South, a Trump presidency could significantly boost Democrats’ chances: a 10-point swing on the generic ballot would put almost 40 congressional seats into play. If by this November, Democrats still maintain a 10-point edge on the generic ballot, all 39 seats with a 10-point Republican edge or fewer should be competitive. Based on the Democrat’s last wave election in 2006, Democrats will only win around 65 percent of those seats. That math would mean Democrats could win 25 congressional seats in the South. Democrats only need a total of 24 seats nationwide to take back the House.

So, perhaps in 2018 and 2020, Southern Democrats in relatively close seats can win. “This is going to be a weird, weird, weird year where anything can happen,” said Greta Carnes, a longtime Democratic organizer in the South, in a recent interview with the HPR. But what happens after that? A potential surge in popularity could be enough to take back the House but will not last if Democrats fail to adjust their strategy. Democratic

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leadership has acknowledged the need for new strategy and is actively working to shift their techniques nationwide to focus more on local organizing.

A 50-STATE STRATEGY The Democratic National Committee has long-term hopes that Democrats can win in the South regardless of the president in office. Tom Perez, the DNC chair, has publicly advocated for the return of a 50-state strategy—a term and technique coined by former chair Howard Dean. This involves actively investing in state parties everywhere. It is meant to appeal to a broad base of Americans by being both localized and hyper-aggressive, never ceding any electoral ground unopposed. The strategy was largely credited with massive electoral victories in the 2006 and 2008 elections, handing Democrats seats in traditionally red states like Kansas and Montana.

For all its success, however, the 50-state strategy was seemingly abandoned in early 2009 when the newly elected president, Barack Obama, created Organizing for America. OFA relegated the DNC to a money pass-through for large donations while it advocated only for the president’s policies like the Affordable Care Act. Without a consistent grassroots effort on behalf of all Democrats, “[Democrats] started losing races all across the South,” Jaime Harrison, chair of the South Carolina Democratic Party and former candidate for DNC chair, told the HPR. “[Democrats] eventually lost the majority in the House.

That majority was built on Southern seats.”

After a sluggish 2017, the DNC has reaffirmed its commitment to state parties both in word and action. Starting under Perez’s leadership, each state party is granted $10,000 a month by the national party which has identified the most vulnerable Republican seats, including many in the South. Eight Southern states have congressional districts targeted to be flipped by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. More are sure to follow. Harrison evoked a territorial battle by saying, “If the Republicans aren’t ceding territory, why the hell do we cede territory to them? We could win in places—Democrats have won in places like North Dakota and South Dakota and Montana.”

The more aggressive approach is partially enabled by the surge in declared Democratic candidates that has reached unprecedented levels across the South. In Texas, for example, for the first time in 25 years, Democrats will be running for all 36 congressional seats. The “no ground given” attitude of the national party seems to have extended to grassroots efforts as well.

Not only are federal elections being challenged at remarkable rates, but, according to the Texas Democratic Party, Democrats are running in 89 percent of state house races and 88 percent of state senate races.

If Democrats can have an active presence in Southern states and are able to field candidates for elections, the next challenge is actually turning out voters. Carnes underlined the challenge of voter turnout, explaining that “turnout is everything, especially in a midterm election.” And, although a dedicated local presence can drive turnout, what ultimately moves people to vote is the candidate, not the national party.

SOUTHERN POLITICS, SOUTHERN POLICY Crafting a popular Democratic platform in the South is

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no easy task—and one that has caused a significant amount of consternation among activists. One proposal is to implement the national platform as outlined by the DNC. The second proposal is that Democrats in rural areas should move right on more ‘social’ issues like the gun laws and abortion. Both of these arguments have clear fallacies: the first dictates a single ideology for everyone, the second fails to stand firmly for progressive values.

Brad Komar, the campaign manager of recently elected Virginia Governor Ralph Northam, told the HPR that “voters get to pick what matters most to them. It’s not parties, campaigns, or politicians.”

Luckily there is a middle ground. The DNC need neither dictate policy nor encourage the dilution of their message. Instead, Democrats can rely on the electoral free market, or the principle that constituents will elect good candidates that represent their values and policy ideas. To better encompass the values of their constituents, the Democratic party should shift to a ‘big tent’ ideology, welcoming in classic liberals, blue dogs, and whatever new coalitions or caucuses arise. Harrison expressed disgust towards the idea of litmus tests for Democrats: “We, as a national party, don’t control the constituents in South Carolina. We don’t control the citizens in North Dakota or Missouri. Those people, at the end of the day, are going to pick the man or woman or someone who reflects the things that are of their values.”

Because Southerners are not a monolithic group, they will elect a range of candidates. In other words there is no single, perfect Southern candidate. Recently elected Virginia Governor Ralph Northam stands in sharp contrast to Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards. Although both are Democrats, Northam advocates gun reform while Edwards describes himself as proSecond Amendment. Northam supports abortion rights while Edwards is staunchly anti-abortion. Both, however, are Democrats elected in the South because of what Komar calls “credibility.” By running as an authentic Virginian as opposed to being seen as a D.C. insider, Northam spoke to Southern values while running an extremely liberal campaign. Edwards may be an even better lesson to Democrats however, as he was elected before the Trump administration.

By no means are either of these the only recipes for success.

Democrats can run on a number of platforms, ranging from moderate to liberal, but Komar made one point abundantly clear: “credibility of a message is almost as important as the message itself.”

WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN? There seems to be a perfect storm brewing for Democrats in the South. The political environment right now is ripe for upsets and could lead to a wave election in this round of midterms. For sustained success, however, Democrats need to invest in their state parties. Much of that responsibility falls on the backs of candidates themselves, even with a more robust national organizing presence. Candidates can and should speak to issues on which they have credibility. Like Northam and Edwards showed, that will lead to different policy solutions. By focusing more on local organizing, candidates can craft policy platforms that speak to the beliefs of their constituents while upholding Democratic ideals. “You just can’t have all the answers for what’s ailing their communities,” Harrison expounded, “Sometimes, you know, that’s difficult for Democrats.” 

WORLD

FROZEN FUTURES The Modern Race for the Arctic

Joseph Winters

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hat do you do when you discover a new ocean? The Arctic Ocean may not be a secret today, but climate change is quickly turning it into a new frontier.

Before, ice was a huge barrier to exploration, development, and shipping. Now, with climate change warming the Arctic two times faster than anywhere else on Earth, melting Arctic ice is exposing a new world and a new status quo.

Because of its sparse population and limited access to natural resources, remote governance of the Arctic has historically been defined by general cooperation and compromise. Decisions are made on a consensus basis by the Arctic Council, a body formed in 1996 by the eight littoral Arctic nations, with the main directives of representing indigenous peoples and devising environmental protection strategies. Despite a longstanding norm of collaboration towards these goals, tensions have recently risen as Arctic countries begin to recognize political opportunities exposed by retreating ice. However, because the Arctic is melting at an alarming rate, environmental concerns must outweigh short-sighted political ploys for power.

BACKGROUND The 1982 Law of the Sea, a U.N.-sponsored treaty signed by

167 countries—but not the United States—helps nations determine who owns what in the far north. Most ownership of the Arctic Ocean is decided in terms of “exclusive economic zones” that extend 200 nautical miles from each country’s shoreline.

Within these EEZs, countries are free to explore the ocean’s depths, but not the surface, which is considered international territory.

Together, the Arctic Council’s decision-making power and the Law of the Sea make up the framework for regulation of the Arctic. Since the Arctic Council has no enforcement powers and mostly only releases affirmational statements, perhaps its most important role is as a forum for discussing Arctic affairs, though some of its discussions yield binding legal agreements like the 2013 Agreement on Cooperation on Marine Oil Pollution Preparedness and Response in the Arctic. The Council’s directives are split between five working groups, who specialize in things like sustainable development, protecting biodiversity, and monitoring the environment.

In an interview with the HPR, Halla Logadottir, who cofounded the Arctic Initiative, explained that Arctic politics have operated with a historic backdrop of collaboration. However, melting ice is raising new political and military questions, many of which the Arctic Council is ill-equipped to handle. In fact,

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the Council is forbidden by mandate from discussing military matters, leaving member nations to devise defense strategies without the Council’s formal discussion forum.

INTERNATIONAL COMPETITION Many countries stand to gain from an Arctic thaw, regardless of their geographic connections to the actual Arctic Circle. Up to a fourth of the world’s remaining carbon reserves lie north of the Arctic Circle, 80 percent of which are beneath the sea. Iceless summers, which may become the north’s new norm, would provide unfettered access to these fuel sources.

As home to half of the Arctic’s four million citizens and most of the region’s land area, Russia has a strong case for Arctic ownership—and a strong economic incentive. Already, Moscow claimed the North Pole for itself in 2007, even though it is outside of Russia’s EEZ. Russian energy plants on its Arctic borders have put the country on track to overtake Qatar as the world’s leading exporter of liquefied natural gas. As recently as December 2017, a $27 billion plant became fully operational on the Yamal Peninsula, complete with its own seaport.

Perhaps even more tantalizing to Russian interests is the creation of alternate shipping routes. With less ice, the Northern Sea Route over Russia or the Northwest Passage over Canada and Alaska could drastically quicken shipping speeds. Russia recently completed such a route, traveling from Norway to South Korea in 30 percent less time than it would have taken to use the traditional Suez Canal.

In an interview with the HPR, George Soroka, a Harvard lecturer on government, explained just how complex Russia’s Arctic motives really are. With its unique access to the Arctic’s economic potential, Russia sees the chance to seize symbolic capital and geopolitical power associated with exploiting the North. “It feeds an imperial fantasy that Putin has developed about being a nation that can bend nature to its will,” Soroka said.

Russia also wants to strengthen its armed forces in the Arctic, even though its military presence in the region already far outstrips that of any other Arctic country. Both the United States and Finland have expressed apprehension over military exercises on the Russia-Finland border. According to the Director of the National Snow and Ice Data Center, Mark Serreze, government officials have frequently visited not for climate data, but for military strategy. “The Department of Defense is all over this,” he told the HPR. Certainly, defense is one of the main factors driving development in the Arctic. Take, for example, ice-breaking escorts, specially designed to barrel through thick layers of ice and clear the way for larger vessels. Currently, Russia owns more ice breakers than the rest of the world combined and has eleven more in the works, including the world’s first nuclear-powered ice breaker.

The United States lags far behind with two vessels and a third in the design process, even though the Department of Defense has recommended a minimum of six. Interestingly, these ice breakers seem to make up a yardstick for northern security; the race for their construction constitutes a miniature arms race of sorts.

ENVIRONMENTAL CONCERNS The sparse political framework for Arctic regulation, coupled with newfound economic opportunities north of the Arctic Cir-

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cle, overshadows a more pressing concern: the Arctic is melting.

And human activity is speeding it up. Climate talk often revolves around the tension between mitigation, or slowing climate change, and adaptation, or preparing for the worst. But focusing on EEZs, who owns the North Pole, and how to get oil to South Korea the fastest—that is neither mitigation nor adaptation. It is a short-sighted frenzy.

The Snow and Ice Data Center has been recording Arctic ice cover since 1979. Since that time it has observed a steady decline in ice coverage, with the biggest losses occurring at the end of the melt season every September. According to Serreze, as early as 2040, the Arctic may be “seasonally ice-free.”

However, ambiguity over the future Arctic landscape has bred international apathy. In an interview with the HPR, Victoria Hermann, Managing Director of the DC nonprofit The Arctic Institute, worried there has been a lack of engagement from countries on the environmental implications of the melting Arctic, especially between the United States and Russia. Not that there’ is any reason to expect otherwise, given that the United States has recently done a u-turn on climate policy, choosing instead to pursue short-term gains like reopening U.S. waters to offshore drilling. “There’s a short-sightedness around hydrocarbon development in general,” Hermann said.

However, a race to exploit the Arctic will have no winner.

Indigenous villages will wash away into the sea, Arctic animals will run out of habitat, and fish populations will decline. Even rich countries’ “adaptive” infrastructure projects, meant to better prepare them for the reality of climate change, are at risk of collapse, as melting permafrost will warp and soften the ground they are built on. Everyone loses if the permafrost melts and takes with it an invaluable record of natural history.

Those are only the proximate consequences, since what happens in the Arctic does not necessarily stay in the Arctic. “From a climate change perspective, the loss of sea ice can influence weather patterns at middle latitudes,” said Serreze. The effects are unpredictable, ranging from freak storms further south to altered patterns in agriculture. Who will care about geopolitical power if their crops at home are decimated by a monster storm?

Scientists believe that Arctic melting is past a tipping point, which calls for combined mitigation and adaptation. The world must redouble efforts to curb emissions and live up to the Paris Agreement while simultaneously preparing for the reality of an ice-free Arctic. Each expert interviewed for this article echoed a similar message: as the Arctic faces increased economic and political scrutiny, there is an opportunity for nations to collaborate toward common interests.

The Arctic Council and the Law of the Sea are not enough to deal with the new political realities in the Arctic; these might call for the creation of another body. But the original purpose of the Arctic Council—to represent native peoples and to protect the environment—is a reminder that these priorities are what will matter in the long-term, both in the Arctic and further south. “It’s about more than the melting of the Arctic; there must be a mission beyond that,” said Logadottir. “It’s up to politicians and leaders in the region to make sure that decisions being made now are sustainable.” And it is up to us to elect and support those leaders. 

WORLD

NASTY PARTY LABOUR AND ANTI-SEMITISM IN BRITAIN

Raphaelle Soffe

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very September, the annual Labour Party Conference is held in the United Kingdom. As one of the largest and most high profile events in Europe, it was most recently hosted in the Labour-controlled city of Brighton with over 13,000 attendees and 450 fringe events. For the United Kingdom's Labour Party, the conference often serves as on opportunity to foster unity, heal divisions, and plot the party's future. Attracting pressure-groups and businesses from across Britain, the 2017 Conference attracted major U.K. leaders including party leader Jeremy Corbyn and London Mayor Sadiq Khan.

However, the mood quickly turned toxic when Labour members and activists called for the expulsion of Jewish and pro-Israel members. A fringe event speaker stated that the Holocaust was a “‘yes or no’ question.” At the same meeting, an audience member was met with cheers when comparing pro-Israel supporters to Nazis. Understandably, when the stories leaked to the media, there was outrage.

In response, the leader of the Brighton City Council, Warren Morgan, threatened to ban the party from the city. The Jewish Labour Movement chair Jeremy Newmark, speaking to the HPR, expressed his deep concern that “a large number of Labour activists appear to be willing to entertain the question that somehow the Holocaust is up for debate.” As senior leaders of the Labour Party scrambled to condemn the comments, Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn was forced to deny accusations that Labour had become the new “Nasty Party” of the United Kingdom.

Unfortunately, the anti-Semitism seen in Brighton was not an isolated incident. After the successful leadership campaign of the hard-left activist Jeremy Corbyn in 2015, multiple allegations surfaced that Corbyn was turning a blind eye to anti-Semitism within the party. The Campaign Against Antisemitism pointed out that in 2016 and 2017, 75 percent of British Jews felt that political events had caused anti-Semitism to rise, and that more than four in five

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considered the Labour Party to be harboring anti-Semites in its ranks.

Meanwhile, the hard-left allies of Jeremy Corbyn continue to argue that anti-Semitism has been exaggerated in order to depose Corbyn from his position as leader of Labour, their words having the damaging effect of further fueling conspiracy theories about Jews. Newmark strongly rebutted this claim, as it was “rooted in a deeply anti-Semitic idea that when Jewish people step forward to complain about racism or anti-Semitism, they must be doing so in bad faith or [as] part of a broader agenda.”

THE NEW ANTI-SEMITISM Anti-Semitism has a long history in the United Kingdom.

From the massacre of hundreds of Jews at Clifford’s Tower in 1190, to the Edict of Expulsion issued by Edward I in 1290 expelling all Jews from the Kingdom of England, British antiSemitism dates as far back as the Norman Conquest. Oliver Cromwell’s readmission of the Jews in 1655 did little to subdue the prevalence of anti-Semitism within politics.

In the 19th century, Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli received abuse from his own party for his Jewish roots. The British Union of Fascists attempted to capitalize on anti-Jewish sentiments in 20th century Europe, leading to the historic Battle of Cable Street where communists, anarchists, and Jews built barricades to prevent a BUF march in East London. But, it was only in the aftermath of the Holocaust that this old form of antiSemitism was heavily stigmatized in public discourse.

Over the last few decades, accusations of anti-Semitism in the Labour party have become increasingly visible in the mainstream of U.K. politics. Originally found in the far-right, a new form of anti-Semitism emerged within the political left and Islamic groups as a response to the establishment of the State of Israel, and more recently, the 2008-2009 Gaza War. Irwin Cotler, previous attorney general of Canada and international human rights expert, identified this “new anti-Semitism” as anchored in discrimination against the Jewish people’s right to live as an equal member of the family of nations. Recognizing that rigorous debate and critique surrounding the activities of Israel is understandable and important, Cotler argues that the line of anti-Semitism is crossed when the discussion turns to the dismantling of the Israeli and predominantly Jewish state.

When asked by the HPR on how it distinguishes between criticism of Israel and anti-Semitism, the Campaign Against Antisemitism responded that, “Often, criticism of Israel goes far beyond the legitimate political discourse and crosses into antiSemitic hatred, using the State of Israel as a means by which to attack Jewish people.” It is this form of anti-Semitism that has found a home in the far-left element of the Labour Party, and within certain members who continue to exercise anti-Jewish hatred under the complex veil of anti-Israel criticism. With Jeremy Corbyn now serving as leader of the Labour Party, his reluctance to directly condemn anti-Jewish remarks made by his Labour allies, or even by members of Parliament, has not gone unnoticed.

THE LIVING NIGHTMARE OF KEN LIVINGSTONE Jeremy Corbyn’s blind spot on anti-Semitism begins with his key ally Ken Livingstone, otherwise known as “Red Ken,” who

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endorsed Corbyn in the 2015 Labour Party leadership election.

Today, he stands as an ever-present reminder that anti-Semitism is treated quite differently than other forms of discrimination within the party. Previously the Mayor of London, Livingstone has a long history of openly anti-Semitic and controversial Hitler comments.

Writing for the Labour Herald in 1982, he criticized his party’s muted response on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, suggesting that it was due to a sort of Jewish “distortion” running throughout British politics. He has fueled anti-Jewish conspiracy theories by claiming extremist Jews were organizing fascist paramilitary groups in order to harm his reputation, describing Jews as “basically a tribe of Arabs,” and arguing that the reason for the decline in Jewish support for Labour in 1984 was because Menachem Begin entered politics and then "suddenly the Jews became reactionaries, turned Right, nearly to be fascists."

To add to this, Livingstone has frequently expressed inaccurate and insensitive revisionist views of World War II. For example, Livingstone has compared the actions of British troops in Northern Ireland to the Nazi persecution of Jews, refused to apologize for comparing a Jewish journalist from the Evening Standard to a German war criminal, and argued that “every year the international financial system kills more people than World War II. But at least Hitler was mad.” Livingstone embodies the dark, anti-Semitic element of the far-left, showing a blatant disregard for the extent of historical suffering endured by the Jewish community, and fueling distasteful conspiracy theories.

In 2016, Livingstone was suspended from the Labour Party after he claimed Adolf Hitler “was supporting Zionism before he went mad and ended up killing six million Jews” on a BBC Radio London interview. Corbyn described the comments as grossly insensitive, but failed to acknowledge them as anti-Semitic. It had to be one of Labour’s own MPs, John Mann, that angrily confronted Ken Livingstone about the historical inaccuracy and racist nature of his remarks. 107 Labour MPs and 48 Labour peers signed a statement expressing their disgust, declaring: “We stand with the Jewish community and British society against this insidious racism.” London Mayor Sadiq Khan pointed to Livingstone’s lack of remorse and the disciplinary panel’s decision to not expel Livingstone as setting a dangerous precedent on the Party’s approach to racism.

Despite fierce opposition from both sides of the Commons, Livingstone appears to have escaped expulsion once again.

Speaking to the HPR, the Leader of the Welsh Conservatives Andrew R. T. Davies slammed Corbyn’s response “as too little too late,” and stated that anti-Semitism in the party has “exacerbated under Corbyn’s leadership.” For every day Livingstone’s unashamed anti-Semitism is debated, and his position within the party entertained, the fear, anger, and hurt within the party’s Jewish membership grows. Even if he were eventually to face expulsion, the damage created by Labour’s hesitance to do so may be far beyond repair. Labour’s problem with anti-Semitism does not end with Livingstone—other Labour politicians have been subject to similar accusations in recent years.

A TOLERANCE FOR INTOLERANCE The Labour Party was embroiled in another anti-Semitic row in 2016, when it was discovered that MP Naz Shah had called for Israel’s population in the Middle East to be “transported”

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out to America. It was further revealed that she wrote a caption #ApartheidIsrael on a picture that appeared to compare Israel to the Nazis. Concerningly, Shah was a relatively new MP, elected in 2015 for the constituency of Bradford West, suggesting that perhaps a new generation of casual anti-Semitic sentiment was emerging. At the time of the revelations, she was a parliamentary private secretary to the shadow Chancellor John McDonnell.

Jeremy Corbyn stated that Shah made a “fulsome apology,” but his comments were criticized for refusing to admit that the posts were anti-Semitic.

It was only when the crisis reached the front pages of major U.K. papers like The Times and the Daily Mail—and it was further revealed that Shah had employed a Labour councilor who claimed Orthodox Jews from Russia were involved in the “sex trafficking trade”—that Corbyn’s hand was forced and he suspended Shah from the party. Two months later, Shah’s suspension was overturned and she was reinstated. In Shah’s defense, Newmark noted that Shah showed “signs of genuine contrition” and argued that she did not have an understanding of contemporary anti-Semitism. For this reason, her case heavily contrasted to “Livingstone’s utter lack of contrition.”

However, it is the Labour leadership’s close affiliation with Momentum, a grassroots movement and far-left political organization, that has seriously concerned many Jewish Labour members and MPs. Known for its unwavering support of Corbyn and its growing dominance within the Labour Party, Momentum has pushed for deselecting moderate Labour councillors, and permitted the use of casual anti-Semitism by its members.

In 2016, Jackie Walker was removed from her position as Momentum vice chair after footage emerged of Walker slamming Holocaust Memorial Day as it was not “open to all people who experienced Holocaust,” even though Holocaust Memorial Day is a national commemoration day dedicated to the remembrance of those who suffered in the Nazi Holocaust and subsequent genocides in places like Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and Darfur.

Walker also questioned whether it was necessary for Jewish schools to receive particular security. Momentum’s response was to remove Walker from her vice chair position as she should have been more “careful,” but to keep Walker as a member as her comments were not necessarily anti-Semitic.

Ironically, Momentum’s harshest words lay not with Walker, but with the person who filmed the footage, stating that “the leak is unacceptable and undermines much needed political education.” But it was Labour’s reluctance to expel Jackie Walker that reopened old wounds. In fact, it was the second time Walker had been suspended from Labour, after previously claiming that Jewish people were the “chief financiers of the sugar and slave trade.” Again, just like with Ken Livingstone and Naz Shah, the Labour Party refused to expel Walker. Instead, a suspension sufficed.

Semitism.

The key change within the rules, on “conduct prejudicial to the party,” will make it easier to expel members who express anti-Jewish and hateful views. The change found overwhelming support among average Labour voters, with 98 percent of eligible party members supporting its implementation. Despite this clear consensus for change, the conference debating the rule change saw speaker after speaker condemn it as a threat to freedom of speech.

Jewish attendees were clearly distressed and discomforted at the disproportionate time given to speakers who represented a very marginal element of Labour voters. The proposal passed successfully, but the hostile row that developed as a consequence served as a sharp reminder that the amendment may sugar coat, as oppose to mitigate, the increasingly complex and distasteful new anti-Semitism within the far-left.

Reactions to these recent reforms have been mixed. Rabbi Laura Janner-Klausner, the Senior Rabbi to Reform Judaism and one of the most high-profile Jewish leaders in the U.K., told the HPR that she could “definitely hear a change in tone, nuance, and direction.” In reference to Livingstone’s continued suspension but not removal from the party, she added “I am assuming that when they revisit, they will discipline him more strongly, but that’s not because of what it looks like but because of what it is.” With stronger rules in place, there is hope for increased vigilance towards anti-semitism.

However, others have noted that Labour still has a ways to go. Newmark, having personally assisted in drafting the new rules, was more skeptical, claiming “it’s very easy to amend a rule book.” “The real sign of change will be when we have the opportunity to see how further cases are dealt with. The proof of the pudding is in the eating. It will be the enforcement of the rules that deliver change.”

The Labour Party’s soft-handed approach to anti-Semitic remarks has generated international attention, led to national condemnation from the British prime minister, and significantly unnerved Jewish party members. As a consequence, Labour now runs the risk of becoming the new “nasty party” of British politics. All eyes are on the Labour leadership to deliver its promise of zero tolerance for anti-Jewish hatred. Racism is racism, no matter the religion or creed. Under the reformed rules on antiSemitism, Jeremy Corbyn has the potential to restore Labour’s reputation as a Party for equality, but he must first recognize that a halfhearted response to anti-Semitism is not only insufficient—it is a damning sign of complicity. 

LABOUR ON THE MEND With the recent events in Brighton, and the mounting pressure to stamp out anti-Semitism both within the party and in grassroots organizations, the Labour leadership has pledged its support for tough new rules on anti-Jewish hate speech. In a positive step towards reform, Momentum has asked its delegates to vote in favor of the rule change, with leader Jon Lansman admitting that Labour ought to do more to rid itself of anti-

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CLEANING UP Vanessa Ruales

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n 2002, there was an air of excitement in Brazil as the Workers’ Party, or Partido dos Trabalhadores, came into power. The PT, led by the exceptionally charismatic Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, promised unparalleled changes to the political establishment, among them reforms aimed at stamping out the country’s age-old problem of corruption. Now, the Party—and Lula himself—has been ironically laid low by its own graft: the Odebrecht scandal.

Odebrecht, Latin America’s largest construction firm, was one of various companies that paid millions of dollars in bribes to Brazilian officials in exchange for contracts with Petrobras, Brazil’s state-controlled oil firm. The investigation in response to the scandal, Operation Lava Jato, uncovered systemic graft among the country’s most powerful executives and politicians.

The investigation marks a momentous change in Latin America: A government has finally been forced to answer corruption allegations at the highest levels, breaking a long tradition of the public’s tacit acceptance of corruption as simply the way the government works.

What led to this avalanche of governmental accountability in Brazil? What accounts for the sudden successful prosecution of so many figures in government and business? The answer lies with the unexpected but powerful force of the judicial reforms the PT made during its 13-year rule. These anti-corruption

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reforms have not only made corrupt leaders suffer the consequences of their actions, but have also begun the process of creating societal intolerance towards corruption in Brazil.

BRAZIL’S JEITINHO CULTURE Brazilians have long been accustomed to governments riddled with corruption. In fact, Brazil’s judiciary has been plagued by a tacit cultural acceptance of corruption as a necessary evil.

This belief is so deeply entrenched in Brazilian society that there is even a term for it: the jeitinho brasileiro, or the Brazilian way. The justification for this acceptance? A common expression among Brazilians regarding their public officials explains it simply—rouba mas faz—The Brazilian politician steals, but gets things done. Consequently, instead of serving as a check on the power of Congress and the executive, the judiciary has been nothing more than a tool for Brazilian politicians.

Prior to da Silva’s administration, the legal process in Brazil was marred by misconduct and a lack of political independence.

The government deliberately overwhelmed courts with timeconsuming, inconsequential cases. Because the 1988 Constitution granted citizens a seemingly endless right to appeal decisions, small cases languished in the system for years. The government often took advantage of this fact to avoid paying

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Brazil’s Judiciary Roots Out Corruption its debts. Instances of corruption by judges were also common; some judges were known to have sold more lenient sentences to convicted criminals. Therefore, Lava Jato took the world by surprise when the investigation exposed a legal system tremendously effective at rooting out corruption.

THE STORY OF LAVA JATO While Lava Jato originally began as a simple investigation of a money laundering operation, it soon uncovered evidence of widespread corruption in the Brazilian government. In February 2014, investigators were led to Posto da Torre, a popular gas station in the heart of Brasilia during an operation probing doleiros, or money launderers. There, the police unexpectedly found a currency exchange and money wiring machine in the gas station that allowed executives from Petrobras, Brazil’s state oil company, to steal company money and move it to overseas accounts.

These doleiros worked for Paulo Roberto Costa, a Petrobras executive who became the principal link to exposing dishonest public officials. He revealed to investigators that he and other Petrobras executives had routinely overpaid and provided extremely profitable terms to companies they hired for various contracts, such as the building of oil refineries. These companies would, in return, pay one to five percent of each deal back to

Petrobras executives, amounting to about $3 billion in bribes.

Ultimately, the Lava Jato investigation not only implicated minor local officials, but even prominent figures in the national government. When whistleblower Delcidio do Amaral, leader of the Workers’ Party in the Senate, was jailed on corruption charges, do Amaral immediately turned on other politicians, providing police with a testimony that implicated 74 minor officials. Within his testimony, do Amaral provided evidence that implicated corrupt politicians from all parties, flagrantly demonstrating to the Brazilian public and the world the extent of graft in the government. Most surprisingly of all, he contributed the accusations that placed scrutiny upon former President da Silva and his hand-picked successor, then-President Dilma Rousseff.

Discovery of Odebrecht’s role in the scandal entangled not only Brazil’s leading domestic politicians, but also powerful officials abroad. Probes into these cases revealed that, just as it had in Brazil, the company paid bribes to officials all over Latin America to secure lucrative construction contracts. Consequently, the Odebrecht scandal rocked the world with a staggering $800 million in payoffs, and $7 billion in settlements.

THE FIGHT AGAINST JEITINHO Although da Silva ran on a campaign of anti-corruption in

Amanda Wasserman

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2002, numerous instances of graft in his administration prompted widespread protests. In response, da Silva enacted a set of anti-corruption measures that later proved to be crucial in the Lava Jato investigation. According to Jonathan Watts, the Latin America correspondent for the Guardian, the most important of these changes was to provide more power and more resources to federal police and prosecutors. In a recent interview, Watts told the HPR that “The key step was in allowing public prosecutors to vote for the attorney general.” This led to the appointment of Rodrigo Janot, who was ruthless in his prosecution of corruption. Not only did Janot keep the Lava Jato investigation running, despite major backlash from politicians left and right;he also maintained the rule of law when he charged da Silva and Rousseff with corruption, even though Rousseff had appointed him four years prior.

In addition to this change in electing the attorney general, da Silva also enacted a set of reforms that profoundly improved the courts’ efficiency, enabling them to process more corruption cases. Among these statutes was Law 11417, which allowed the Supreme Court to judge cases based on stare decisis, a legal principle that allows previous decisions made in similar cases to stand. This helped reduce the Supreme Court’s massive caseload, and allowed Brazilian judges to focus more resources on trying anti-corruption cases. The changes were a crucial step in strengthening the judiciary and eventually weakening jeitinho culture.

LAWMAKERS UNINTENTIONALLY ROOT OUT CORRUPTION Emboldened by the PT’s legislative actions, the public took to the streets again in 2013. More than a million protested the government’s corruption, as well as excessive spending and poor government services, both caused by a deep economic downturn and made worse by preparations for the impending World Cup and Olympics.

Feeling the pressures of economic malaise, Rousseff enacted four anti-corruption laws: the 2011 procurement reforms, the 2011 freedom of information law, the 2013 Clean Company Act, and, most importantly, the 2013 organized crime bill. Andrew Spalding, professor of law at the University of Richmond and head of the university’s Olympic Anti-Corruption Research Team, discussed da Silva’s legal reforms with the HPR. “The organized crime bill is by far the most important of the four major legal reforms in blowing open the Odebrecht bribery scandal.

This is underappreciated, even among Brazilian lawyers.”

What lawyers and lawmakers did not appreciate, Spalding explained, were the two principal provisions of the bill, which strengthened obstruction of justice charges and extended leniency agreements. The former stipulated that those who were charged with obstruction of justice were subject to the same punishment as if they had been an accomplice to the crime or had committed the crime themselves. The latter granted judges greater ability to grant plea bargains, or a reduction of a criminal’s sentence in exchange for information. Prior to the bill, judges could only reduce a sentence by two-thirds, but now they had the authority to drop charges altogether.

Without these laws, the organized crime bill, and the reforms made under the da Silva administration, Lava Jato could not have occurred. Freed up from trivial cases and empowered by

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an independent attorney general, judges like Sergio Moro took harsh stands on corruption, refusing to offer bail to arrested elites. This measure was enough to convince Nestor Cervero, a Petrobras executive, to talk to the police about a plea deal and to provide evidence necessary to untangle the web of corruption.

By spring of 2017, plea bargains made possible by the organized crime bill implicated 77 involved individuals. Strengthened obstruction of justice charges also put added pressure on defendants, whose families were in some cases also implicated by their crimes.

Consequently, what started as a routine money laundering investigation led to billions of dollars in settlements for the companies involved, brought executives like Marcelo Odebrecht to justice, uncovered graft committed by more than 100 powerful politicians, and scrutinized even the makers of the reforms, da Silva and Rousseff. The sentencing and impeachment of these two figures, although controversial, signals that Brazil’s judiciary has made great strides in effectively fighting corruption.

THE FUTURE OF CORRUPTION IN BRAZIL Although these reforms appear to have reduced corruption in Brazil, efforts by current President Michel Temer, an outspoken advocate of dismantling Lava Jato and the leader of Brazil’s most corrupt party, the PMDB, threatens the future efficacy of these reforms. Temer has been charged with racketeering, obstruction of justice, and funneling federal money to key officials that could help him avoid a conviction.

However, Brazil’s judiciary may still prove to be resilient in the face of such challenges. As Steven Levitsky, a professor of government at Harvard University, explained, “for a long time, Brazil’s judiciary has grown more independent, more sophisticated for decades.” Given this fact, and Brazil’s increasing economic development—which has created a society more demanding of democracy—it is likely that this slow change will continue regardless of Temer’s presidency.

The strength of Brazil’s judiciary is an especially pertinent issue when considering the upcoming presidential elections. As of January 2018, recently convicted ex-president da Silva is the lead candidate at 35 percent, according to Reuters, while the Trumplike right-wing dark horse candidate Jair Bolsonaro is in second place. In a country where the two leading presidential candidates have either been convicted of corruption or criticized for charges of racism and sexism, Brazil’s political future appears to be bleak.

However, Levitsky’s analysis of the Brazilian people’s predicament provides hope: the judiciary system has strengthened for so long that it has changed Brazilians’ expectations of their leaders. Their probable choice of da Silva as their next president is not a reflection of the continued approval of the jeitinho, but a reflection of the fact that the system is so corrupt that it is difficult to find a clean and capable candidate. Consequently, it will take time for the system to keep pace with this judicial and cultural shift. While Bolsonaro’s candidacy is worrisome and likely indicates growing political and economic discontent, the results of Lava Jato are clear. The people have changed their expectations and will continue to demand a clean government, thus slowly continuing to strengthen the jewel of Brazil’s government: its judiciary. 

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IMPERFECT UNION Despite Grad Students’ High Hopes, National Unionization Trends Spell Failure

Will Imbrie-Moore

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or several years, graduate students at Harvard and other private universities across the country have been pushing for unionization. Seeking stronger protections for their benefits and pay, recent successes have emboldened their efforts. However, there is a strong anti-unionization inertia in the United States, and graduate students are likely to face intense opposition from the federal government and from Harvard’s administration in the future. While graduate student unions have made substantial gains recently, this opposition will inhibit further success.

THE HISTORICAL FIGHT FOR GRADUATE STUDENT UNIONIZATION Graduate students at private universities were first granted the right to unionize in a 2000 ruling by the National Labor Relations Board under President Bill Clinton’s appointees.

However, the NLRB’s ruling was soon reversed in 2004 under

President George W. Bush. That ruling stood until 2016, when President Barack Obama’s appointees restored unionization rights to graduate students at Columbia.

Since the Columbia ruling, a wave of graduate student unionization efforts has arisen at universities across the country. At Harvard, graduate students filed to hold an official unionization election; the student body appeared to vote against unionization in the November 2016 election, but union organizers disputed the exclusion of some apparently eligible voters. The NLRB ruled in their favor, and a new election will be held this year.

With that ruling, supporters of unionization at Harvard have expressed newfound optimism. “I think a lot of us were surprised,” said Jack Nicoludis, a union organizer and graduate student studying chemistry.

MOTIVATIONS FOR UNIONIZATION Graduate students hope to gain protections for their com-

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pensation and benefits under collectively-negotiated contracts with the university. “The real way that we can ensure that … we continue to have the pay and benefits that we need to be graduate students is that we have a contract,” Nicoludis said.

In particular, unionization proponents fear rising health coverage and housing costs, as well as stangnating pay—an especially potent issue given the university’s recent endowment woes. “When the endowment does poorly or when the endowment gets taxed—like what is in the new tax bill—grad students need to make sure that they will get the same pay and benefits,” Nicoludis said. “We know that in previous years—like last year— when the endowment did poorly, graduate students got a lowerthan-expected wage increase.”

Many graduate student union organizers are also seeking other workplace protections. Following the recent outcry and activism targeting workplace sexual harassment and assault, graduate students have been especially focused on these issues. Organizers see unionization as an opportunity to ensure that the school strengthens its students’ personal protections. “The university is going to say, ‘you guys have it good,’ but I don’t feel like we have protected benefits until we have a contract to secure that for us now and in years to come,” Nicoludis said.

THE NATIONAL DECLINE OF UNIONS Nationally, workers’ unions have been in decline for decades.

As the domestic manufacturing industry has decreased in size and unions have faced greater opposition from employers and politicians, fewer and fewer workers are represented by unions.

Since 1973, the union membership rate of the American workforce has fallen by over 15 percent.

The trend can be partially attributed to the decline of the manufacturing industry, which has relatively high unionization rates. However, employers and the government have also systematically and successfully opposed unionization in manufacturing, as well as other sectors. “There are obviously a lot of good employers out there, but there are also a lot of employers who will push back as hard as they can get away with,” Susan Block, director of the Harvard Law School Labor and Worklife Program, told the HPR. Across the country, employers have stepped up efforts to prevent unionization. A study by the Economic Policy Institute found that employers threatened to shut down particular branches of their companies in 57 percent of unionization elections, and threatened to cut wages and benefits in 47 percent. In 34 percent of elections, employers fired workers. Often, these coercive tactics actually fall within the confines of the law. Even when the law is broken, employers face few repercussions.

“There are structural problems in the law itself that makes it a weak tool to protect workers’ rights,” Block said. “So, if you have employers who are willing to push the boundaries or pass the boundaries of the law, then the law doesn’t do a lot to dissuade them from that.”

For those workers who have been able to unionize, employers do not cede to collective bargaining easily. That same EPI study found that the majority of newly-unionized workers still lack contracts one year after electing to form unions.

“The enemy was the collective spirit,” former union-buster Michael Jay Levitt explained, describing his experience in a

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powerful and widespread operation by large employers to oppose unionization. “I got hold of that spirit while it was still a seedling; I poisoned it, choked it, bludgeoned it if I had to, anything to be sure it would never blossom into a united workforce, the dreaded foe of any corporate tyrant.”

Conservative anti-union efforts in government also play a substantial role; so-called “Right to Work” laws have been enacted in 28 states. This policy allows individual workers in unionized positions to opt out of their union while still reaping the rewards of collective bargaining. Right to Work can cripple unions financially, contributing to their decline. Bankrolled by large employers, Republicans have successfully pushed for more and more such legal limitations on unionization and collective bargaining.

CLOUDY FUTURE FOR A UNION AT HARVARD At Harvard, support for a graduate student union is hardly universal. Union organizers lost the November 2016 vote, 1526 to 1396. Although some eligible students were excluded from that election, the fact remains that substantial resistance to unionization exists among Harvard’s graduate students. Nothing indicates that the election do-over will go much differently.

Harvard has a long record of opposing its workers’ unions, and it has treated its graduate students in the same way. In 2016, the university clashed with its dining hall workers’ union on the establishment of a new contract, resulting in a nearly monthlong strike. More recently, Harvard has run a major information campaign against graduate student unionization, targeting students with emails and flyers warning of exorbitant dues and academic disruption. “I expect the university to continue their anti-union campaign in this new election,” Nicoludis said.

Even if the unionization process makes it through Harvard, it will face serious opposition in Washington. With the NLRB back under Republican control, it will likely reverse its 2016 ruling and ban graduate student unions at its next opportunity. In fact, the administrations of Yale and the University of Chicago have already filed motions with the NLRB to overturn the 2016 decision. “Right now, that’s a decision that could be reversed again,” Nicoludis said.

“The National Labor Relations Board is famous for flip-flopping when the president changes,” former NLRB chair Wilma Liebman told the HPR. This is especially true of the graduate student unionization issue, as rulings on that have already been reversed twice in recent memory. “There’s every reason to believe that the new Republican majority, given the opportunity, that they will revert back,” Liebman said.

Liebman also believes that Harvard could actively pursue an NLRB reversal of this kind. “The Ivy League has historically been really opposed to the notion of having to bargain with graduate students,” she explained.

Graduate student union organizers are optimistic about their chances for the future. But opposition from their employers and the government suggests that they are destined to join America’s overwhelming national trend of unionization decline. As Block argues, “[labor] law … is not an agile tool. It takes too long, the remedies are too weak, [and] the structures that it creates just don’t fit today’s economy particularly well. I absolutely think that it’s inadequate to the time.” 

CULTURE

Accessing America Campbell Erickson

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he story of the refugee in America has always been one of controversy, of the idyllic “American dream” but also of xenophobia and nativism. People escaping extreme, lifethreatening adversity and persecution have been met by both welcoming arms and threatening glances. Most recently, President Donald Trump has referred to “Haiti and African nations” with derogatory terms while discussing national immigration policy, and has lowered the 2018 cap on admitted refugees to the United States to an all-time low. America struggles with dissonance in its rhetoric and policy around refugees, as messages of nationalism and bigotry contradict the narrative of America as a home for all seeking shelter and safety—and this tension is surely impacting those arriving from areas of active conflict, political disintegration, famine, and oppression. One might assume that, for young people who know little of their home country and who have spent their lives in refugee camps hearing stories of this American dream, this incongruity would be hugely demoralizing. Yet instead of succumbing to the pressures of ongoing, sometimes implicit forms of oppression and discrimination in America, refugees—specifically those who arrive to the United States at a young age—are carving paths for themselves that no president, immigration ban, or populist campaign message can curb.

Young refugees are actively pursuing education America. In a groundbreaking working paper published in June 2017, Notre Dame professors William Evans and Daniel Fitzgerald revealed some important findings about refugees in America: in addition to paying $20,000 more to the government than they receive in government programs over the course of twenty years, refugees arriving in America under the age of 13 are graduating from college at higher rates than native-born students. This means that young refugees are overcoming both dehumanizing rhetoric and institutionalized barriers, such as poor school districts, meager access to after-school programming, and minimal experience with the American educational system as a whole, to build their own American dreams, developing and relying on the qualities of individualism, perseverance, and intellect that, for many, embody precisely what it means to be American.

In an interview with the HPR, Ahmed Badr, a Wesleyan University sophomore who left Iraq and arrived in America on refugee status at the age of 10, said that the data about education and refugees presented in the working paper was “surprising but not surprising at the same time.” Badr explained, “I’ve seen the resilience of refugee youth, so I understand it.” But, as Badr points out, the story of young refugees’ success isn’t simply the result of personal resilience. There are pervasive cultural, economic, and community-related differences in the ways that young refugees approach education when compared with native-born students.

It is these differences, Badr argues, that are at the root of young refugees’ growing achievements.

HOMES OF BEAUTY AND CONFLICT Redie Mumbili is a freshman at Huston-Tillotson University in Austin, Texas. He arrived in the United States at the age of 11 from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The last time he saw his home country was at the age of 7, when his family fled war and unrest in the Kivu region of the D.R.C. and crossed Lake Tanganyika by boat to Tanzania, where they would live in a refugee camp for four years. In an interview with the HPR, Mumbili

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shared memories of a D.R.C. where natural beauty contrasted with relentless violence, a duality that has made him appreciative of the opportunities available in America and that has left him with a desire to learn about, and eventually help bring peace to, his former home.

“When I was young,” Mumbili said, “everyone told me America was like heaven. I was expecting everything to be free and nobody to have it hard.”

The reality that a young Mumbili found when he arrived in Texas was quite different from the stories he had heard in Tanzania and the D.R.C. “I realized that no place on earth is perfect,” Mumbili said, “which motivated me to go back because Congo is a normal place with problems, like everywhere else, which also means that [the problems] can be fixed.” However, to succeed academically in America as a refugee and equip himself with the necessary knowledge to help fix those problems has not been a simple process.

When Mumbili arrived in Texas from Tanzania, he found himself at a crossroads of culture and education, as many arriving refugees do. His education had been interrupted while he was in the refugee camp in Tanzania, and the process of learning to understand and engage with the complexities of American culture—as well as with the intricacies of middle school drama— proved challenging. Mumbili recounted how he found a community among other refugees and immigrants from Africa, and it is the support of this community to which Mumbili credits much of his achievement. “We didn’t know much about college until our junior year of high school,” said Mumbili, “but we always got good grades. That’s just what we did.”

Preparing for and applying to college, a challenging task for practically anyone, can be magnitudes more difficult for refugee youth, simply due to a lack of familiarity with different systems of higher education and the complex story they have to tell in their applications. This generally means that refugee youth must do more research and preparation in order to even keep up with their peers during the college application process. Over the last year, Mumbili, along with a small group of mainly high school and college African refugees and immigrants, founded an organization called the Austin-African Community Association to help counter this problem. In describing the organization, Mumbili reaffirmed that the success of these young refugees in school isn’t necessarily due to effective, school-provided college counseling, but instead can be attributed to the support of refugee and immigrant communities whose members actively look out for each other. In many ways, Mumbili depicted the process of achieving higher education as one of learning together as a community. In the American system of education, meritocracy prioritizes individual success over group collaboration, but young refugees seem to be challenging these assumptions, taking a different approach to success by relying on and supporting those they are connected to by experiences of adversity, shared language, and similar cultural background. These bonds, epitomized by Mumbili’s experience, have likely contributed to the achievements of young refugees in the American education system.

EDUCATION: ACCESSIBLE EMPOWERMENT When asked why he valued education so dearly, Badr said that in his experience, it has always been “the most accessible

source of empowerment.”

“If your family is going through financial struggles, or your parents are struggling,” Badr said, “you learn that, although as a young person you cannot always work and bring money to the family, you can affirm your parents by making good grades and getting an education.”

Badr’s story begins in Iraq, where his childhood home was bombed while he was away at his grandparents’ house. His journey then led him to Syria, and eventually the United States, where he enrolled at a local high school in Houston, Texas. In a recent project Badr has been working on, called Unpacked: Refugee Baggage, Badr asked many young refugees about their goals in America. Most commonly, Badr found that these young people cite “the dream of education.” He pointed out that when refugees imagine life in America, it is not uncommon for their primary goal to be securing an education for their children. Although an education cannot remedy immediate financial strife, it does promise a transition toward prosperity and a hope for a more independent future. Badr explained how pervasive generational expectations and goals can impact the refugee experience; while parents begin working jobs with long hours and trying to learn English, their children are expected to put their energy into educational success.

Parental pressure can be intense in refugee communities, but this should not come as any surprise. Contrary to the belief of many Americans, refugee communities are in fact usually composed of former teachers, engineers, professors, and even doctors, many of whom work hourly-wage jobs in America due to language barriers or expensive recertification programs. Badr’s experience, however, highlights an important factor in understanding part of the reason that young refugees are experiencing high levels of academic success: “welcomed obligation,” as he calls it. Indeed, parental pressure means that young refugees feel a sense of responsibility to be successful in school. But while many students in the American system find pressure from parents to be constricting or counterproductive, Badr said that his impression is that, for many young refugees, this pressure is emboldening. “It’s my duty to make my parents’ work count for something,” Badr said, “The least I can do is do well on my schoolwork.”

A POSSIBLE JOURNEY Kahindo Musongira is the third of six children in her family.

She is currently a freshman at Texas A&M University in College Station, Texas. Musongira left the DRC with her family at the age of six, and found a new home in Uganda, where she would live for seven years. At 13, Musongira flew to Austin, and it was here that she began her journey in the American education system.

In an interview with the HPR, Musongira said that she’s “always been motivated,” but that many of her goals—the first of which is to graduate from law school—stem from experiences of injustice in the United States. “When my brothers first tried to go to high school,” she said, “they were older, so the administration told them that they shouldn’t go to school and should just get a job.” Today, though, both of her older brothers have graduated from high school and are enrolled in college. Musongira explained that there have been many moments during which she has felt that her family has been dismissed or underestimated in

the United States; she shared that once, for instance, her family went to pick up medication from a pharmacy, but the pharmacist would only give them expired medication. Musongira theorizes that this was because the pharmacist thought that nobody in the family spoke English.

While law school was always a dream for Musongira, she explained that “people used to think that [she] just liked talking.”

Musongira believed in herself from the beginning, but she said that once people realized that she was serious about attending college, the quality and rigor of her school of choice was constantly questioned by others, which eventually caused her to further doubt that the system would work in her favor in America.

This was until, she remembered, she “met a refugee who went to graduate school at A&M,” which made her “realize that if one refugee could do it, [she] could as well.”

Musongira believes that these kinds of interactions are quite possibly among the most important causes of young refugees’ success in the American educational system. For her, it was this process of meeting other successful refugees who had gone to college or were working professional jobs that helped her to realize that success was possible for her too. Just as U.S.-born students whose family members have attended college are statistically more likely to attend college themselves, young refugees with knowledge of older refugees who have attended college might feel more empowered to pursue higher education themselves. The importance, then, of not only developing communities of like-minded and ambitious peers who can work together, but also of seeing clear role models in positions of status, is undeniable.

IT’S ALL ABOUT AGE In interviews with all three refugees, Musongira, Mumbili, and Badr, the HPR asked what sets young refugees apart from their older counterparts. The responses from all three were fairly similar. Each interviewee attended an English Language Learners program for a short period of time when they arrived in the United States, and were thus able to quickly learn English, equipping them with the tools to understand and assimilate into American culture. Furthermore, due to their ages, none of them were allowed to work when they first arrived in the United States, meaning that, as Badr and Musongira both referenced, making good grades was their way of helping the family survive.

The third and last point discussed by all three interviewees was that young refugees, due to their participation in schools, had the ability to bond with a community of fellow refugees in a way that their parents and other older refugees did not, allowing them to build strong relationships and to bond over the experience of “trying to figure out who you are when coming from a diaspora,” as Badr described.

Conversations about refugees’ success in America, especially among those who arrive here at a young age, are crucial particularly at this time of scrutiny for programs such as the U.S. Refugee Resettlement Program and the UNHCR. Misinformation and absent nuance in public rhetoric about refugees and other immigrants have contributed to heightened xenophobia in recent years; the reality, however, is that young refugees today are embodying what many would call the American dream: a story of determination, support, and success of which all Americans should be proud. 

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the food gap ND A Y T I L A U INEQ

A

TY I R A P S I D DISEASE

merica’s record rates of income inequality may be to blame for the nation’s largest ongoing public health crisis. According to the Alternate Healthy Eating Index in 2010, a metric that assigns foods values based on their relative nutritional merit, the nutrition gap between the wealthiest Americans and the poorest doubled between 2000 and 2010 alone. While overall U.S. dietary practices have improved since the turn of the century—a trend frequently attributed to widespread nutrition education efforts—these improvements are concentrated in the high- and medium-socioeconomic brackets, leaving low-income Americans behind.

This phenomenon presents a serious challenge to society as a whole. Nationally, rates of chronic diet-related diseases have been on the rise for several years—117 million Americans have a preventable chronic disease, and many of these diseases, including cardiovascular disease, high blood pressure, Type 2 diabetes, and several types of cancer, are linked to poor dietary quality.

More than two-thirds of adults —and one-third of children—are overweight or obese. In 2008, obesity-related health problems were estimated to cost $147 billion nationally, while by 2012, diabetes costs had reached $245 billion, including $69 billion in decreased productivity.

While diet-related disease is a massive public health issue nationwide, the burden disproportionately affects the poorest Americans. Chronic diet-related diseases can cause further financial struggles, producing extensive medical bills and making work difficult. In 2006, people with obesity paid an average of

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$1,429 more in medical expenses than other people. Obesity is least prevalent among adults in the highest economic bracket.

Adam Drewnowski is a leading epidemiologist at the University of Washington whose research explores the pronounced relationship between socioeconomic conditions and health outcomes. In a conversation with the HPR, he explained that “not only obesity rates but also soda and salad consumption patterns can be readily predicted from residential property values.” In Seattle-King County’s census tracts, for instance, he found that every additional $100,000 in median home values was associated with a 2.3 percent decrease in obesity rates, and that the “obesogenic areas,” where high obesity rates are perpetuated by dominant cultural and social practices, were mainly those with low property values.

FOOD DESERTS AND THE PROBLEM OF ACCESS One of the most basic barriers for people of low socioeconomic status pursuing a healthy diet is a lack of access to highquality, nutritious food. Many low-income neighborhoods can be classified as food deserts, areas characterized by a limited availability of healthy food. Individuals who can’t access fullservice grocery stores are more likely to purchase food from convenience stores, where fresh produce and other healthy foods may be of limited quantity and low quality, if not entirely absent.

In Massachusetts alone, 2.8 million residents of low-income areas lack access to grocery stores, and diet-related diseases are responsible for an additional $3.5 billion in health care expenses each year.

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established in 2014, focuses on providing loans and technical assistance to support the health-driven expansion of local corner stores and food distribution hubs, as well as community-driven enterprises like farmers’ markets and food co-ops.

Over the last few years, companies like Whole Foods have been opening in these food deserts with the aim of improving community health outcomes; Cambridge’s own Clover Food Labs has made plans to open new locations in areas with limited access to healthy food options. Although some critics have raised concerns that corporate interests, including brand maintenance and an eye on profit, may prevent upscale food retailers from bringing their best wares into food deserts, examples have been promising. In Boston’s Jamaica Plain, for instance, Whole Foods, which has been a feature of the famously diverse neighborhood since 2011, boasts an expanded bulk department, complemented by location-specific sales.

The long-term impact of these supply-side interventions remains to be seen, but the deeply entrenched relationship between socioeconomic status and health outcomes suggests the need for complementary demand-side solutions. As of now, no study has been able to demonstrate that neighborhood residents become significantly healthier when a health food store sets up shop. Indeed, social and demographic markers are much better predictors of individuals’ food consumption patterns than where they shop and eat. The availability of healthy food is still secondary to factors like budget, culture, and dietary knowledge in shaping shoppers’ food choice.

Kristina St. Cyr Kimani, who leads the Massachusetts Public Health Association’s healthy and affordable food access work, is quick to point this out during an interview with the HPR. “You may have physical access to healthy food, but if it’s not affordable, you don’t really have access,” she said. Her definition of access also considers the effects of public transport: Long routes, bus-switching, and a limit on the number of grocery bags riders can bring onboard may all contribute to a hassled shopper’s decision to pick up food at the nearby corner store instead. That’s one reason why the Massachusetts Food Trust Program,

ISSUES BEYOND ACCESS If access is not the only problem, other factors must be driving consumers’ suboptimal food choices. The first and most significant barrier is likely to be price-related: healthy foods tend to cost more than unhealthy ones. Although health foods have become more popular in recent decades, even staples like lean meats, fish, fruits, and vegetables remain much more expensive per calorie than foods high in refined grains and added sugar.

For a shopper on a lean budget, it is easier to choose filling, energy-dense but nutrient-poor foods every time. As Drewnowski points out, “the narrow dietary focus on good versus bad foods ignores the basic economics of food choice. There is a social divide separating regular consumers of sugary soda from consumers of salad.”

As the income gap continues to grow, high-priced health food stores and restaurants can make a profit by targeting middle- and upper-class consumers, while the shrinking food budgets of low-income families drive them to choose low-cost empty calories. Even with access to stores like Whole Foods, most families with highly restricted food budgets will choose foods that provide maximum calories for minimum cost instead of stocking up on fresh produce. After all, Whole Foods, a middle-class favorite, is well-known for its nickname, “Whole Paycheck.”

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program is a federal program that provides food-purchasing assistance to roughly 45.6 million Americans. As the largest program in the domestic hunger safety net, SNAP has repeatedly been shown to reduce food insecurity for low-income families. However, the evidence

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as to whether SNAP promotes a healthier diet is inconclusive. In contrast to other federal subsidy programs like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program for Women, Infants and Children, SNAP does not require food purchases to meet any nutritional requirements. Numerous proposals have been made to institute basic nutritional requirements as part of SNAP, but each has been rejected by Congress and the Department of Agriculture, with many opposing the proposal as an infringement on recipients’ freedom to make their own dietary choices. In its current form, SNAP may help with price-related barriers to healthy food selection, but other factors still cause SNAP beneficiaries to choose low-quality foods.

Varying levels of nutritional knowledge may be another such factor to blame for the food gap between the rich and the poor. While national levels of nutritional science knowledge are steadily increasing, not everyone has the same access to up-todate nutritional guidelines. Instead, low-income individuals are more likely to be exposed to advertising for products that encourage sedentary lifestyles and the consumption of unhealthy foods and sedentary lifestyles. This is especially troubling because so many of these ads target children, on whom food choice ads exert a particularly strong influence.

The good news is that each of these issues suggests possible areas for intervention. Improving access to healthy foods via the introduction of health chains or community-driven efforts and increasing nutritional awareness are both worthy goals. Indeed, some combination of nutrition education, financial incentives, and improvements to the regional food landscape will be necessary to fundamentally reshape attitudes and behaviors born of an obesogenic environment.

However, in order to truly correct the yawning nutrition gap and subvert our national public health crisis, it is likely that more structural economic changes are also required. Nutrition inequality is largely a consequence of income inequality, and not just because of the high cost of healthy foods.

A VICIOUS CYCLE Unhealthy eating behaviors and the negative health outcomes associated with them are part of a vicious and deeply-entrenched cycle for families in the lowest socioeconomic brackets.

Its causes include the logistics of access and price, as well as the more insidious psychological and biological consequences of food insecurity.

Basic food insecurity—along with low-wage work, limited access to health care, poor housing, and other factors—is a significant daily stressor for low-income families. Stress is known to produce weight gain through metabolic and hormonal changes, as well as less healthy eating patterns. Several recent studies have also linked food insecurity to psychological stress and mental disorders like depression, which can have negative health consequences independent of dietary practices. Thus food insecurity has effects that are long-lasting and permeate seemingly separate aspects of an individual’s life.

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Food consumption patterns among low-income families add another concern: the metabolic changes associated with irregular food availability. Highly food-insecure individuals are often subject to repeated periods of food restriction or deprivation.

When food does become available, they are much more likely to overeat. This problem is especially severe given the cheapness and convenience of fast food in many food deserts, which traffic in high-calorie, low-nutrient foods that allow for overconsumption even on an extremely limited budget. These individuals are liable to experience worse health outcomes due to the metabolic changes that result from chronic or repeated food deprivation, as the body adapts to store more fat. Irregular access to food is also associated with an increased likelihood of developing an unhealthy preoccupation with food, spurring even greater overconsumption when food is available.

SOLVING THE NUTRITION GAP David Ludwig, a professor of nutrition at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and director of the New Balance Foundation Obesity Prevention Center at Boston Children’s Hospital, is the first to acknowledge that nutrition science has provided conflicting messages in the past. He emphasizes, however, that we can craft the outlines of a much healthier diet based on existing knowledge—the goal now is to design public policies that will encourage that way of eating. In an interview with the HPR, he maintained that we cannot neglect the overarching societal challenges faced by low-income communities. “Until we make systematic changes, it’s going to be easy to point the finger at the individual and expect personal responsibility to solve the problem.” While some low-income families might be able to maintain healthy diets, Ludwig added, “the risk is expecting that [personal responsibility] to be a public health solution, when such massive social forces are arrayed against the community, making it very difficult to sustain a healthful lifestyle.”

The kind of systemic changes that Ludwig is advocating for— including establishing subsidies for healthy foods funded by a tax on all processed foods—will not come easily. Implementation of this kind of solution, furthermore, will likely require campaign finance reform. As long as politicians are more accountable to special interests than public health, we are unlikely to be able to address the national nutrition gap. Ludwig’s advice?

“Vote with the fork, and vote with the ballot.”

As it stands, a dangerous and damaging cycle, in which patterns of unhealthy food consumption are worsened by budgetary restraints, poor food access, psychological distress, and metabolic changes, among myriad other factors, is the reality for a large percentage of the U.S. population. With so many structural factors perpetuating individuals’ suboptimal food choices, it should be clear that the onus to improve our country’s nutritional report card cannot rest on the low-income families whose diets are lagging. We need to focus on collective solutions: promoting widespread nutrition education, and supporting policies that improve the food environment and advance public health. 

CULTURE

On Fame & Fidelity

Carter Nakamoto

I

n April 2016, Beyoncé surprised fans with a new album, just months after performing a Super Bowl halftime show that paid homage to the Black Panthers, the Black Lives Matter Movement, and even Malcolm X. While the album was praised as an ode to black womanhood, Lemonade focused on the personal story of the singer’s reckoning with her husband’s infidelity. It was so empowering precisely because it presented Beyoncé as a vulnerable, complex woman struggling with disloyalty. Gone, it seemed, was the militant intensity of her Super Bowl performance, replaced instead with a wounded woman.

Beyoncé showed us intimate human emotions like suspicion, denial, anger, and apathy in the first half of the album, letting us know that she deserves better and is fully capable of leaving. But after all of that, she gives us “Sandcastles,” and the album’s narrative transitions from grief to reconciliation as she realizes that her love outweighs her sense of betrayal.

In the film released with the album, Beyoncé sets her music within the context of imagery of resolute black women, the poetry of Warsan Shire, and even Igbo Landing. Her transcendent Grammys performance for the album invoked Oshun, a Yoruba

goddess, in addition to her motherhood and pregnancy. Through this work, we come to see the superhero, goddess, iconoclast, activist, and scorned woman as inseparable in Beyoncé. Her ultimate decision to stay with her husband comes not only from nuance and emotion, but power and agency. Lemonade was Beyoncé’s platform to show her audience the varied aspects of the narrative of infidelity. As Harvard Chaplain Greg Epstein explained in an interview with the HPR, “we have made room in our society for nuance, for complexity. We’ve made room for people to have different views, different opinions about how they want to set up their own marriages.” Beyoncé demonstrates that while marriage is still rooted in universal traditions, it can break free of the rigidity of its past.

THE CARTERS AND THE CLINTONS Beyoncé has earned a reputation as a champion of female empowerment—particularly for black women—but she has also received significant criticism from other women of color on a variety of fronts; charges include the commodification of

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black women’s bodies, her promotion of capitalism, which they allege harms black women, and her disproportionate focus on men. However, some of the fiercest debate about Beyoncé has focused on the way she handles her marriage, in Lemonade and beyond. Her husband, Jay-Z, has released sexist songs like “99 Problems” and “Big Pimpin”; in fact, 50.2 percent of his songs refer to women as “bitches,” although he seems to have pivoted recently toward feminism. More significantly, Beyoncé’s decision to stay with a husband who cheated on her has been labeled as conservative or plainly non-feminist by women who argue that he humiliated her in public and betrayed the trust of the selfdescribed “baddest woman in the game.”

As Lemonade was released the 2016 presidential primaries were winding down, and it was hard not to be reminded of Hillary Clinton’s handling of Bill’s infidelity. Clinton, too, was a powerful woman whose husband was unfaithful, and she, too, chose to stay. This decision generated a substantial amount of feminist critique and debate. Carly Fiorina, a Republican who ran for president in 2016, regularly criticized the Clintons’ marriage, alleging that it was unhappy and rooted in political opportunism, but observers have pointed out that, had Clinton decided to leave, she would likely have been criticized for unnecessarily destroying her family.

Amidst this sea of judgement, which seems to put women like Clinton and Beyoncé in no-win scenarios, there seems to be some hope. In an interview with the HPR Nancy Cott, a Harvard professor who wrote Public Vows and has worked on several prominent marriage equality cases, argued that “the vindication of Bill Clinton showed that the majority of Americans thought that marriage morality was a private matter.” While public criticism still occurs—and often focuses unfairly on betrayed women no matter what they choose—these examples paint a picture of marriage as an increasingly personal and pluralistic institution in which women hold ever-increasing power.

groups, explaining that “the people who marry today are, by and large, from the upper socioeconomic echelons.” With a national divorce rate between 40 and 50 percent it appears that, while marriage is growing more open than ever before, it is also losing broad appeal as it becomes less and less necessary.

Current popular culture also presents a different, more inclusive image of marriage than it historically has. True, the conception of marriage created by Shakespearean comedies and the Victorian novels of Austen and the Brontë sisters remains alive and well. However, most people today are exposed to this narrative through different media, from pre-2000s Disney movies to romantic comedies to young adult books. The relevant media are quite varied. Some projects include races or, more rarely, sexualities outside of the majority. Some give us fully developed female characters with career goals, unique personalities, and strong female friendships while still pushing characters toward the inevitable relationship that will bring “happy ever after” —Frozen and Jane the Virgin come to mind. Some projects, like Lady Bird, Moana, and the incomparable Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, push past the plot point altogether, showing full, fleshed-out women’s stories that construct marriage as auxiliary while rooting out the rot in the way we typically think about it.

The messaging around marriage today, far more thoughtful and diverse than ever before, suggests that while the shadow of classical marriage still looms large, it no longer restricts, commands, or captivates people with the universal absolution it once did. That said, even as fewer people join the institution, we seem to keep striving for a newer, better version of it. Epstein argues that “there’s a reason why marriage is a big deal in the first place; we thrive as human beings in an environment where we can trust the people with whom we are closest.” But western culture is just beginning to explore the vast complications associated with making an inclusive, egalitarian reality out of the marriage construct that we used to know.

CREATING THE MODERN MARRIAGE

LURCHING ADVANCEMENT

These examples demonstrate how marriage has changed to become the increasingly egalitarian institution we are familiar with today. Although it originated as a permanent commitment designed to anchor a family and, in the eyes of many, to subordinate women, marriage is now a mostly equal partnership grounded in romantic love. “Marriage has become much more gender equal,” Cott said. “[Spouses] don’t have prescribed duties the way that husbands and wives historically had in the law. It wasn’t until the 1970s that all the specific demands on the husband and the wife were removed from laws.” Until 200 years ago, American laws forbade women from owning property, and until just 60 years ago, women were unable to obtain pensions for their husbands. Women’s newly secured equality means not only that women are free within marriages, but also that they are finally free to forgo them altogether.

Marriage has grown more equal in recent years in ways that go beyond the development of women’s legal rights, too. Interracial marriages were unheard of not long ago, and same-sex marriage was only legalized nationwide in 2015. However, despite the ways it has modernized, the institution of marriage is losing popularity today. Cott observed that “people are marrying later,” attributing the trend to “changes in sexual morality.” She added that marriage is losing popularity more quickly among certain

Cott is careful to caveat her descriptions of modernity, offering a reminder that “the history of gender differentiation is deeply, deeply embedded in marriage as an institution. While many people might want to throw that away, there’s no question that long history has an impact.” This history persists in a variety of ways, from the unequal division of domestic tasks to the convention of wives taking their husbands’ names, although both of these phenomena are becoming less common.

The experiences of the Clintons and the Carters highlight an issue in which inequality takes a more subtle form: adultery.

Women have been shrinking the “infidelity gap”—that is to say, the rate at which women cheat is approaching the rate at which men cheat. This can probably be attributed to women’s unprecedented access to employment and financial independence.

However, public perceptions of men who cheat and women who cheat still differ greatly. Esther Perel, a relationship expert and author of The State of Affairs: Rethinking Infidelity, spoke to the HPR about the consequences of cheating, which she believes are far worse for women than they are for men. Perel pointed out nine countries in which women can be killed for adultery, but she also argued that the problem goes beyond that. “We judge women in all the roles,” she said. “We judge the woman who is betrayed. We judge the lover. We judge the woman who strays.

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More importantly, we judge the woman today who chooses to stay.”

These issues aren’t really unique to marriage as much as they are instances of the broader problem of sexism in our culture.

Women face similarly “unwinnable” situations, even from a feminist perspective, for daily choices like wearing makeup. The social importance of the institution of marriage means that the sweeping forces of history and stigmatization are highly impactful, but the results vary greatly from couple to couple.

All of this goes to say that with all the baggage that comes with marriage, it cannot be a singular social monolith any longer.

Gone is the expectation that good wives stay with cheating husbands or that strong wives leave cheating husbands. As Epstein proclaims, “there are going to be a lot more ways to be married, and we’re right to push for that aggressively. When we liberate women to do things that they weren’t able to do in the past, we can also liberate men to do things that they weren’t able to do in the past, but we don’t want either group to be constrained to their old or new roles.” True, there are some values that still come with any healthy marriage: respect, mutual understanding,

and, hopefully, love. But the way this institution is perceived today suggests that social liberals gained substantial ground in the culture wars surrounding marriage and advanced more pluralistic ideals of the institution. It might be easier than ever to find some ground on which to criticize any given married couple, but with the exception of forms of abuse and domestic violence, those grounds will not be universal.

Beyoncé and Clinton were forced to make hard, personal choices when they found out that their respective husbands had committed adultery. In doing so, they showed that there is no easy answer—whether you are a devout feminist, a consummate politician, the mother of a young child, or anything else. Lemonade, in particular, balances the universal baggage of marriage with attention to individual nuance to demonstrate how vulnerable one can become when dealing with the intricacies of a commitment as significant as marriage. It pleads for empathy and understanding in an age when every couple is redefining what it means to have commitment, to know companionship, and to love. That is how to do right by the ever-modernizing institution of marriage. 

The Clinton family in 1998, the year the Lewinsky scandal broke

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INTERVIEWS

DANIEL & JORDAN ALLOTT with Cara Kupferman Daniel (left) and Jordan (right) Allott are collaborators on “The Race to 2020,” a journalistic project documenting the political sentiment in nine counties across the United States. Daniel Allott was the Washington Examiner’s deputy commentary editor. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Politico, and other publications. Jordan Allott is a filmmaker and founder of In Altum Productions. His work covers themes ranging from domestic politics to religious minority rights in the Middle East.

How did you choose the counties that you did?

Daniel Allott: We looked at some of the battleground states. Each of them has a different dynamic.

Jordan Allott: Let me give you an example: Robeson County, North Carolina. It is the poorest county of the 99 in the state. It is the most racially diverse rural county in the United States. It is 40 percent Lumbee Native American. In 2012, the county voted for President Obama by a little over ten percentage points. Last year, it voted for Donald Trump by over five percentage points.

We wanted to go there and meet those people, many of who had been lifelong Democrats, and introduce them to the rest of the country.

Have you found anything that unites all of these places?

DA: One thing that stood out among the Trump voters is that for many of them, he was the candidate of hope. We did a video early on where we asked people to try to sum up in one word why they think their county voted for Trump. The two words we heard more than any others were “hope” and “change.” That helps explain why someone who voted for Obama would also vote for Trump.

How has visiting these counties and meeting these people informed your view of the Trump voter?

JA: One thing that stands out is [that] they value people and especially political candidates who are present and authentic.

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A lot of these communities are not used to a presidential candidate coming to their area of the country, visiting with them, and being present. Trump turned to these communities that are often ignored [or] mocked—by the media, by Hollywood, even by academia, and definitely by the political parties—and said, “I am going to listen to you.”

At local level races, there might be a Democrat who was expected to win, and the Republican beat them because they showed up and went into these communities. As far as authenticity, I just spent [a weekend] in Howard County, Iowa, which had one of the biggest swings. It supported Barack Obama five years ago by over 20 percentage points and swung to Donald Trump by 20 [percentage points]. That is a 40-point swing.

[It] was my first time hunting. [I spent] two or three days with a group of about ten guys; most of them voted for Donald Trump.

They value authenticity. They appreciated that about Trump.

They knew that he was telling [them] what he believed.

How have these voters’ perspectives changed over the last year?

DA: Not a lot. When I ask them, “Would you vote the same way you did?”, [almost all would] vote exactly the same way. Nothing has changed. He is who he said he was going to be.

We have met a lot of ethnic and racial minority voters who said that they supported Trump or voted for him. We met two women—Muslim, Syrian refugees—in Erie, Pennsylvania, whom we got to know quite well. I emailed [one of them] and said, “I know you cannot vote, but if you could, who would you vote for?” She

INTERVIEWS

said [she] would vote for Trump. She [is] a Muslim, a woman, a refugee, and an immigrant from Iraq. But she is not focused on Trump’s purported sexism or [comments about] immigration. She is focused on jobs. She thinks he is a good businessman [who] is going to help the economy. Who am I to tell her she is wrong?

On a more personal note, what has it been like to work with your brother?

DA: It is terrible. [Both laugh.]

JA: I did not expect a question like that.

DA: I am in these counties full-time. Luckily, he only comes in for three or four days at once, and now I am sending him to different places. With him doing the film and me being a writer, we are not competing. If we were both trying to be documentary filmmakers or something, the competition would be too much. A good thing is that we can bicker.

their reasoning was [for] voting for somebody who arguably personifies the Seven Deadly Sins was important. I took the time to say, “These people are not necessarily hypocrites.” They have their reasons.

JA: It is difficult to understand the perspective of somebody of faith if you do not have some sort of faith. I have done work in the Middle East, and listening to someone who is a devout Muslim is easier if you have a faith background. Traveling throughout the United States, time and time again, it is a huge influence.

Faith, in different areas, drives people.

DA: And informs their votes.

JA: And their worldview about everything.

Many people have tried to explain the result of the presidential election. How does your project intervene in that debate?

DA: He can threaten to end the project or something, but it is not going to happen. [We] are in it for the long haul.

DA: People are less ideological than D.C. journalists and people in politics are and think others are. A lot of people vote, especially for president, for somebody they feel chemistry with or someone whose charisma they like. They vote for the person first and embrace their issues and policy prescriptions second.

JA: When we approach people, the first thing they do is look at us. They notice that they are seeing double.

DA: It lets people put their guard down a bit.

JA: We heard a lot of people who would vote for Donald Trump and then vote Democratic down the line. That shows you how much the personality of the candidate has to do with it.

How has this experience been different from or similar to other projects you have done?

DA: The key to understanding Trump’s America is love. It is easy to believe a caricature of a person, of a voter. If you are the family member or close friend of someone who believes in these things, you are forced to try and reconcile the caricature with the reality. It is easier to dismiss those voters, but if you are forced to struggle with it because you like this person and want a relationship with this person, that is empathy.

JA: We will still get the job done.

JA: I have spent ten or 15 years as a filmmaker doing some domestic political projects but focusing a lot on international human rights and religious freedom. I was in Syria just three weeks ago. Throughout my career, I have tried to introduce a Western audience to different situations. It could be religious or ethnic minorities and their plight in the Middle East, or it could be political prisoners in Cuba. Trump voters are not necessarily persecuted, but they are not given a voice, so we want to create a bridge between different communities.

DA: We do not have an agenda. The only criteria we have when we are interviewing people [is that] they have a connection to the county.

JA: One thing we hear a lot is, “Why do you want to hear my opinion?” This is exactly the sort of voice we need to hear.

JA: It is about empathy.

DA: That is empathy and embracing struggle. We can do that in all areas of our lives, in politics, too. That is the key.

This interview has been edited and condensed. 

It seems like religion is an important guiding force for both of you. Could you talk about how your faith has influenced your work on this project or in general?

DA: We have many friends who are people of faith, and I know Christians who voted for Trump. He did better than past Republican presidential candidates with that group. Finding out what

SPRING 2018 HARVARD POLITICAL REVIEW 45

INTERVIEWS

RUSSELL BOBBITT with Yuri-Grace Ohashi Russell Bobbitt is Marvel’s Head Property Master. He has spent more than thirty years in the industry, working as an actor, director, producer, and writer. He currently resides in Peachtree City, Georgia.

What sparked your interest and career in film?

When I was six years old, my mother was at work, and we had a record player. The record player uses a mechanical piece, and I was curious to figure out how it worked. I got some tools out, and I completely disassembled the record player all the way down to the motors, the cables, and the belt that drove the whole thing. And I was satisfied. I got how it worked, and I had no more need at that point to deal with the record player.

Then my mom came home. I got in big trouble for taking apart the record player. She said to me, at six years old, “Put this back together right now,” and I did. I picked up my tools and put it back together, and the record player worked. It played music.

I look back at that now as the moment I determined that I was mechanically inclined and interested in how things work. I took that later in life when I got into the film business through a friend of the family and applied that world to my film career in props. That was my moment [when] I decided I was interested in doing props, which translated into my life 20 years later when I finally got into the film business.

What has been your favorite production to work on?

There are so many that I would call my favorite, but I will

46 HARVARD POLITICAL REVIEW SPRING 2018

rattle off a few that pop out for me that are some of the iconic ones that helped define my career. I worked on The Flintstones movies a long time ago. Those were challenging and put my brain to work. I did movies like Hocus Pocus and Newsies that at the time were not great movies but went on to become cult films later in life. Looking back, people are excited when I say that I worked on Hocus Pocus or that I worked on movies like What About Bob?. What makes it for me is when I can go to work with incredibly talented people, whether they are behind the scenes or in front of the camera.

I have worked for the past ten years doing superhero movies.

Those definitely rate among the top ten movies that I have done because they are multibillion-dollar blockbuster films.

People dream of working on those their whole lives.

What film in particular brought you to Georgia, and what made you stay?

The reason that films are in Georgia is because the governor offers a tax incentive for production that comes into the state, and many states do that. Right now, Georgia is offering the best incentive. The cities and the state have open arms for the film industry right now, and we react to that. It is not just about money. It has to be about the ease of filmmaking in a particular place.

When Pinewood built this studio in Fayetteville, they built a beautiful facility that is user-friendly for the filmmakers.

Taking the tax incentive and coupling it with the good facility

INTERVIEWS

makes it attractive for a production to come and shoot here.

That is what brought us to Georgia, and that is what is keeping us in Georgia. Now, Marvel is just a small portion of the production that goes on in Georgia. There is also Tyler Perry, who has his studio here, EUE/Screen Gems, Blackhall, [and] so many [other] productions. There will be up to 30 productions at any given time shooting in Georgia—The Walking Dead, all of it. For me, where it started was Ant-Man, and then we parlayed into three or four other big films. They do not see a real end to it. As long as Georgia has open arms, both financially and city-wise, we will be here for a while.

As released by Film L.A.’s annual report and other news sources from 2016, Georgia came in first internationally for feature film production with a total of 17 movies.

California, however, came in fourth with 12 movies. Do you think California will take any strides to step up the competition now that Georgia, the United Kingdom, and Canada are such big competitors?

California is trying. There is not [much] incentive for California to do it. Why? I do not know. Recently, they reinstated their tax incentive to try to bring some production back, but they put a limit on it. I think it is a 100 million dollar limit.

That limit is not in any other state, and California is limiting it to what we would consider a smaller-budget film, but independent filmmakers look at 100 million dollars like it is a lot. It would be a medium budget film for tax incentives.

Apart from the tax incentive, with the 100 million dollar cap on it, only so many films can shoot there until their incentive is used up. That is why you are seeing a lower percentage of major film production shooting in California.

While there is some work there, they have not stepped up to the plate as much as Georgia, for instance, and Canada. Will they? We do not know. We all question that ourselves, and we are anxious to see what happens in the future.

it. All around, pound for pound and dollar for dollar, communities thrive from the company coming in and shooting its production. There is no way for us to ship lumber from California. We have no choice but to spend our money in the town, community, state in which we are filming.

Conversely, how do you think Georgia will influence the future of the film industry?

Purely financial. The answer is 100 percent financial, so if the governor or any new governor comes in and says, “Hey, we are no longer interested in the tax incentive for the film industry,” the film industry will go to the next state and film its projects elsewhere. Tax incentive is the complete motivation for any state or country to attract film. There is no other answer to that because we are a circus. We can pack up our trucks and film a movie anywhere. Even when we are shooting in Georgia, there are times that we will go away for a month and shoot in Scotland or what we need for the atmosphere of the story in the film.

My message to people is that it is obtainable. If you have a passion for anything, like cooking or clothing or decorating or writing, it is out there. People can have it if they really want it. If you want to devote your life to it, you can do it, and it is an awesome, thriving industry that even during the Great Depression did well. It is an awesome job to have.

Do you have any further comments about film, your work, or anything you would like to share?

My message to people is that it is obtainable. If you have a passion for anything, like cooking or clothing or decorating or writing, it is out there. People can have it if they really want it. If you want to devote your life to it, you can do it, and it is an awesome, thriving industry that even during the Great Depression did well. It is an awesome job to have.

This interview has been edited and condensed. 

Where have you seen the film industry’s influence manifest itself in Georgia?

When the circus that is a filmmaking company comes into town, it impacts the community in so many different ways.

Filmmakers need to eat, so we eat at restaurants. We buy our materials to build our sets at your lumberyard. We rent homes. We purchase homes. We hire local people to work on productions.

The entire society gets affected. The banking industry feels

SPRING 2018 HARVARD POLITICAL REVIEW 47

ENDPAPER

UDAIPUR Ali Hakim

W

e all define ourselves in part by where we are from.

I, for example, was born in the winter of 1996 in Detroit, Michigan. But perhaps it’s not so simple.

My parents had arrived here—via Minneapolis, Houston, Long Island, and small-town Kentucky—from Karachi, Pakistan, where they entered the world some 30 years before me. Uprooting from the soil in which they grew and planting themselves in new earth in a foreign land was no easy feat, but my parents had inspiration. Their own parents—my grandparents—were immigrants as well. Just as my parents had, my grandparents, too, left behind the only home they had ever known. But for my grandparents, their home was their home. It was our family’s ancestral homeland. It was the birthplace of their parents, their parents’ parents, and every Hakim and Paliwala that the world has ever seen. It was the City of Lakes, the Venice of the East, the Kashmir of Rajasthan. Its official name is Udaipur.

Now, that word—Udaipur—is little more than a distant memory for my family. Its semi-arid climate, the lavish palaces at its heart, and the austere forts at its perimeter are as real to me as a bedtime story.

My late paternal grandfather was highly educated (he was literate in English and would eventually study in the United Kingdom) but of modest means, and so he found himself on a train to Pakistan in search of greener pastures. His wife (my grandmother), who was probably even more well-read than he given the constraints on women at the time, joined for the ride. My maternal grandmother, on the other hand, lived a life of plenty in Udaipur. Odds are she would have never left had a Hindu mob not raided her home—which my mother nostalgically describes as a mansion—and almost slaughtered her family.

Once in Karachi, my grandmother met my maternal grandfather, who was a student at a prestigious boys’ boarding school before his family fled Udaipur for many of the same reasons as her own.

My grandparents’ journeys, it turned out, would be one-way affairs. Between Karachi, Pakistan and Udaipur, India lies one of the world’s most impermeable borders. So, although the City of Lakes is only 400 miles from Karachi—shorter than the distance between Udaipur and India’s capital—it might as well be on

48 HARVARD POLITICAL REVIEW SPRING 2018

Mars. There is little hope of India’s doors opening to readmit my native-born grandparents. And my parents, who have long been U.S. citizens, can hardly imagine visiting the birthplace of their ancestors.

In fact, even I, who have known no home besides the United States, have fantasized about entering the halls of Udaipur’s City Palace and dipping my toes in its five great lakes. We have our own in Michigan, but I imagine they’re not quite the same. I was crushed when my employer recommended I work in Lusaka, Zambia instead of Delhi, India due to immigration concerns.

I’m convinced that I cannot know myself completely without knowing Udaipur, without breathing its air into my own body.

When I find myself wondering who I am, what I want, what my purpose is, I settle on the thought that all would be revealed if I could just see my reflection on the surface of Lake Pichola. If I could discover a part of myself that remains, to this day, purely an abstraction. In that way, my relationship to Udaipur is less a yearning for a far-off land than a quest inward. The city is a catch-all for the parts of myself which I have yet to understand, or even to truly acknowledge. Because it feels so essential to my identity yet so distant from my life, it serves as a sort of reminder: even as my college years have been consumed by a rush to learn as much about the external world as possible, there is much about my interior being waiting to be discovered.

And so perhaps there is a silver lining to all of this. Although Udaipur lies 7,000 miles and one impenetrable border away from me, it is precisely this inaccessibility that defines much of the city’s value to my life.

Nevertheless, I’d be lying if I said my inability to visit the place of my dreams doesn’t stir in me a sense of deprivation, a feeling of having been robbed of a part of myself. Of course, I cannot blame my grandparents for moving, nor do I resent the rioters who ransacked my grandmother’s home or the bureaucrats who reviewed my visa applications or the politicians who set immigration policy. All I can do for the time being is keep dreaming of Udaipur—keep romanticizing it—and maintain faith that I will one day be able to reckon with it in person. 

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