Issue 1: Alumni and Senior Issue

Review THE HORACE MANN

Volume XXIV - September 2014

ALUMNI AND SENIOR ISSUE

CHAOS AND CONFLICT IN THE MIDDLE EAST

Review

Letter From the Editor

THE HORACE MANN

Ikaasa Suri

Editor-in-Chief

Lauren Futter Executive Editor

Jenna Barancik Laszlo Herwitz

Managing Design and Web Directors bigpicture.com

W

elcome back, Horace Mann! I hope you are all well rested from relaxing and fulfilling summers. Now that the school year has finally started, I am thrilled to present the Alumni and Senior Issue of The Review Volume XXIV.

This issue is particularly special, with an accumulation of articles written by both alumni and seniors of The Review 2014-2015 staff. Years past late nights in the StuPub, our alumni writers took the unique opportunity to share their views of the world from a later stage in their lives. Some of them are in college, others have already graduated and are working, but all of them came back to The Review to delve into and write about the complexities that shape our world.

This month’s features topic is in light of the escalation of violence in the Middle East.

From the Israeli launch of Operation Protective Edge in Gaza to the continuing chaos in Syria and the reawakening of ISIS in Iraq, this summer was one to challenge global and domestic policies, as well as social and political beliefs. From the fresh, insightful arguments presented by our alumni, I see no better way for the writers of The Review staff to learn about the diverse perspectives on these national and international issues.

We’re thrilled to have our alumni writers’ continual support. The enduring connection with this publication is something I hope the rest of our staff will carry with them as they continue beyond the hallways of Tillinghast.

I cannot express how grateful and proud I am of the efforts of this year’s senior staff. Our design and senior editors have been hard at work writing for this issue and preparing for the year ahead, setting great examples for our incoming juniors editors. In addition, I would like to thank our alumni for taking the time to write eloquent, engaging pieces and for returning once again to The Review’s table of contents. I am especially grateful to last year’s EIC and Executive Editor, Caroline Kuritzkes and Sam Henick, whose hard work and dedication bridged the gap between friendship and mentorship for years to continue. Lastly, I’d like to thank Mr. Donadio, our faculty advisor, for all the work he’s done behind the scenes to ensure The Review’s success. It is this dedication of writers and editors, past and present, that make The Review what it is today: a magazine able to unite students of all different backgrounds, fostering a sense of global awareness, rational intellect, and community. I am excited to present this first issue to you with hopes of a very productive and successful year ahead.

Enjoy the issue!

Matthew Harpe Adam Resheff Brett Silverstein

Managing Content Editors

Emily Kramer

Senior Editor - Domestic

Neil Ahlawat Senior Editor - International

Elizabeth Xiong

Senior Editor - Features

James Megibow Mitchell Troyanovsky Senior Editor - Economics

Alexander Newman Abigail Zuckerman Senior Editor - Science and Technology

Edmund Bannister Charles Cotton James McCarthy Harry Seavey Samantha Stern Senior Contibutors

Ben Alexander Daria Balaeskoul Maria Balaeskoul Gabriel Broshy Daniel Jin Cassandra K-J

Anna Kuritzkes Natasha Moolji Anne Rosenblatt Daniel Rosenblatt Peter Shamamian Eric Stein

Junior Editors

Miranda Bannister Evan Greene Ray Fishman Alex O’Neill

Matthew Parker Aditya Ram Spencer Slagowitz Evy Verbinnen

Associate Editors

Gregory Donadio Faculty Advisor

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Ikaasa Suri Editor-in-Chief

Volume XXIV

The Horace Mann Review is a member of the Columbia Scholastic Press Association, the American Scholastic Press Association, and the National Scholastic Press Association.

Opinions expressed in articles or illustrations are not necessarily those of the Editorial Board or of the Horace Mann School. For more information, please visit www.hmreview.org.

Table of Contents

Nathan Raab ‘13

page 4

The Hobby Lobby decision applied basic principles of religious freedom and was justified.

Hobby Lobby: We the People

DOMESTIC

Caroline Kuritzkes ‘14

page 8

Hobby Lobby assumes that laws of religious freedomfor individuals apply to corporations.

20 FEATURES

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Hobby Lobby: We the Corporations

page 15

In order to for immigration reform to be possible, the House of Representatives must the Gang of Eight’s most recent proposed bill.

Laszlo Herwitz ‘15

page 26

The Creation of the Kurdish State page 21

Supporting the creation of a Kurdish State may bring stability to the Middle East.

page 29

Palestine’s beligerent policies towards Israel have prevented a lasting peace.

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page 18

Vladmir’s Putin’s aggression towards the international community have gone virtually unchecked by NATO countries, paving the way for Russian expansion.

Sam Henick ‘14

No War on Syria

James Megibow ‘15

Re-Defining Capitalism Mitchell Troyanovsky ‘15

page 32

The term “Capitalism” has been distorted to represent cronyism whereas true capitalism promotes the good of a society.

The Reality of Educational Isolation Matthew Harpe ‘15

page 36

The current US education system is not doing enough to promote upward social mobility.

34 SCI-TECH

INTERNATIONAL

Putin’s Power: Obama’s Failure to Contain the Russian Bear Adam Resheff ‘15

The emmergence of ISIS represents further tensions amongst the different nations of Iraq.

Gaza

ECONOMICS

The Road to Immigration Reform

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page 24

page 12

The death of Michael Brown demonstrates the need for a re-evaluation of racial prejudice in today’s society.

Alex Posner ‘13

Ben Greene ‘14

If the United States wishes to promote lasting peace in Syria, it must support the Assad regime.

No Killer Cops in Our Community Ikaasa Suri ‘15

More Than ISIS: A Struggling Iraq and Murky Future

Big Data Deependra Mookim ‘11

page 38

Big Data can be used by the public and private sector to promote efficiency in the workplace.

Tackling the Ebola Crisis Lauren Futter ‘15

page 41

The Ebola crisis has been marked by the inability to effectively address the crisis due to a lack of needed infrastructure in Western Africa.

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PRO

Nathan Raab ‘13

HOBBY LOBBY CON Caroline Kuritzkes

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We the CORPORATIONS D

epending on which liberal critic you ask, the decision is based on “the idea that women are in effect children…[whose] choices are to be second-guessed and gently redirected” (Dalia Lithwick), or a “desire to favor corporations over…average Americans” (Norm Ornstein), or simply “conclusory assertions and results-oriented reasoning” (Marcia Greenberger). Caroline Kuritzkes, in this volume, calls it “another attempt to cripple Obamacare under the guise of a triumph for religious liberty.”

The decision is nothing of the sort. Hobby Lobby takes basic principles of religious liberty and applies them in a straightforward way. It is not – or at least should not have been – a particularly hard case.

I take the facts directly from the Court’s opinion, with some additions and omissions

for concision’s sake. “In August 2011…[the Department of Health and Human Services] promulgated the Women’s Preventive Services Guidelines. The Guidelines provide that [most] employers are generally required to provide coverage…for ‘all Food and Drug Administration approved contraceptive methods, sterilization procedures, and patient education and counseling.’” Some employers, like religious notfor-profits, were granted exemptions from the mandate.

“David and Barbara Green and their three children are Christians who own and operate two family businesses. Forty-five years ago, David Green started an artsand-crafts store that has grown into a nationwide chain called Hobby Lobby. There are now 500 Hobby Lobby stores, and the company has more than 13,000 employees.

Hobby Lobby is organized as a for-profit corporation under Oklahoma law,” and five members of the Green family own almost all Hobby Lobby stock.

“The Greens believe that life begins at conception and that it would violate their religion to facilitate access to [certain] contraceptive drugs or devices that operate after that point.” Under the Guidelines, however, Hobby Lobby would pay “close to $475 million more in taxes every year if they…refused to provide coverage for the contraceptives” to which they objected. If they chose instead not to provide any insurance for their employees, they would pay “roughly 26 million” in additional taxes annually.

It seems intuitive that the Greens and Hobby Lobby had less of an ability to exercise their religion after the guidelines than

“Hobby Lobby takes basic principles of religious liberty and applies them in a straightforward way. It is not – or at least should not have been – a particularly hard case.”

September 2014

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“Governments don’t get to decide whether religious beliefs are true or false.”

before; that is, the guidelines impeded the free exercise of Hobby Lobby’s religion.

Some commentators, however, have argued that this is not the case.

Does Hobby Lobby’s corporate form make it incapable of exercising religion?

Some people believe so. People for the American Way, a liberal advocacy group, argues that “the Bill of Rights is for people, not corporations.” “To equate a corporate entity with the same legal status as that of the corporation’s individual owners,” Kuritzkes claims, “is nonsensical.” But this cannot be correct. Some corporations can exercise religion in a meaningful sense: churches and synagogues, for example, are usually organized as corporations. A law prohibiting Baptist churches is a paradigmatic violation of religious freedom even though it might never mention a natural person.

Perhaps these examples are anomalous – religious organizations, after all, are explicitly religious in scope. Can we draw a line “between a community made up of believers in the same religion and one embracing persons of different beliefs?” No – for two reasons.

First, the dichotomy between “believers in the same religion” and “persons of different beliefs” is clearly oversimplified; religious communities regularly disagree amongst themselves, as any member of a New York synagogue would know. And this difference between ‘the same religion’ and ‘different beliefs’ is not only a hard question, but also a religious one – whether someone who does not believe in transub-

stantiation is Catholic is a question for the Catholic Church and the Catholic Church alone.

But second, even if we agreed that such a distinction was coherent, it would not cut against Hobby Lobby. All of Hobby Lobby’s board of directors are Pentecostal. Hobby Lobby’s mission statement commits the company to “honoring the Lord…by operating…in a manner consistent with biblical principles,” and to “sharing the Lord’s blessings with our employees.” The company’s internal employee handbook contains biblical references and staff meetings begin with Bible readings. Surely employees of Hobby Lobby engage in a coherent set of religious activities – not more or less coherent than those of a reform synagogue.

Might a profit/not-for profit distinction work better? For-profit enterprises, however, regularly exercise religion. Kosher butchers, for example, are not charities.

An FDA rule that all incorporated butchers must stock ham in their stores would surely pose a burden on these corporations’ religious exercise nonetheless. A Christian bookshop (like Mardel, another plaintiff in Hobby Lobby) would see its religious freedom limited if required to stock tomes on Judaism. This distinction too must fail.

But even if corporations cannot exercise religion, surely natural persons can. This makes even clearer the guidelines’ burden on religious exercise.

Incorporation is a name for a set of benefits – limited liability, in particular – individual States grant to business-owners. For obvious reasons, withholding a generally

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available benefit from religious persons limits religious freedom. If Congress chose to prohibit people who wear turbans from operating corporations, Sikhs would be outraged, with good reason.

In this case, the government limited the options of families like the Greens: they could not simultaneously make use of the benefit of incorporation and operate according to their religious principles. As a matter of law, it is true that the Greens’ actions as directors of their corporation are not theirs personally; it seems unclear, however, why this might matter in a normative sense. And even as a matter of law, people like the Greens who have not yet incorporated would still be burdened personally: their secular competitors can incorporate; they may not, or at least without ruinous fines.

This is why the Court in Hobby Lobby chose to extend RFRA only to “closely-held corporations,” a common legal term used to refer to a corporation which “has more than 50% of the value of its outstanding stock owned (directly or indirectly) by 5 or fewer individuals at any time during the last half of the tax year” (I quote the IRS). With five or fewer owners, the harm to each individual owner is clear. Whether someone is meaningfully harmed if they merely cannot buy stock in a corporation seems to be a closer question, which is why the Court reserved it for a future case.

Lastly, it should not matter that “IUDs and morning-after pills, the contraceptives to which Hobby Lobby specifically objects, are not scientifically recognized as abortive

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viralnewschart.com

methods of birth control.” To begin, Hobby Lobby’s complaint is less about what happens biologically and more about risk tolerance. Doctors generally define conception as beginning with implantation – the moment the fertilized egg “implants” itself in the uterus. The Greens believe that conception begins with fertilization, and copper IUDs may rarely – gynecologists are unsure – prevent fertilized eggs from implanting.

Whether this definition is correct is clearly a religious question rather than a scientific one.

But there is a more glaring problem here. The Greens believe that God will be unhappy with them if they participate in funding contraceptives they believe to be abortifacients. They may believe many other things. They probably believe that Jesus Christ was the Son of God. They probably also believe that that He was crucified and resurrected from the dead. It’s a decent bet that they believe that He walked on water and fed five thousand people with two fish and seven loaves of bread. Religious beliefs generally are not confirmed with scientific evidence.

The point of religious freedom is that all this is okay. Governments don’t get to decide whether religious beliefs are true or false. (Four hundred and fifty years ago, on St. Bartholomew’s day, French Catholics decided that Catholic doctrine was true and Protestant doctrine was false. We saw where that led them.) The Greens sincerely believe that the contraception at issue is immoral; that is enough for a valid religious liberty claim.

But religious liberties, like any set of liberties, are not absolute. The legitimate exercise of my religious liberties ends when the government has a compelling interest in restricting them – when I might harm someone else, for example. Was the government’s interest compelling in this case?

We should generally evaluate a compelling interest holistically, and not by parts.

Barry, for example, might have a compelling interest in visiting Florida; Belinda, his wife, may have a religious objection to amusement parks. Barry does not have a compelling interest in visiting Disney World, even though Disney World is in Florida, because he could go elsewhere (Miami, say) and work around his wife’s religious objection. The government, in other words, needs to show not only that the end of its contraception coverage is compelling, but also that the means of forcing Hobby Lobby to pay for it was compelling.

The government clearly failed to satisfy this test. HHS, for example, could have paid for the whole contraceptive mandate out of its general budget. It could have extended the same work-around it used for religious non-profits and paid the contraceptive coverage for women working at religiously objecting organizations. These options would not have limited Hobby Lobby’s religious exercise, and so the government was not compelled in its choice of means. Other options were available to provide the contraception at issue.

These options may not have been politically feasible at the time the Guidelines were promulgated, nor may they be today.

September 2014

This is an odd response to make, however, for two reasons. First of all, it is axiomatic that what our rights are does not change with popular opinion. This is what it means to be a right rather than a policy preference. Under this standard, however, any rights violation is acceptable if the public demands it as part of a broader policy.

(We have a compelling interest in policy X. The public will only support policy X if we mandate Christian prayer in school. We do not therefore have a compelling interest in mandatory prayer.)

But secondly, these options would be politically infeasible because public support for contraception subsidies is so tenuous.

Courts cannot unilaterally declare certain social goals compelling state interests absent specific constitutional authorization; they must look to Congress and the President for guidance. Many members of Congress – and their constituents – believe that contraception subsidies do not constitute a compelling interest. Proponents of the Guidelines, in our democratic system, do not get to elect new constituents for these members.

Justice Jackson observed fifty years ago that “the very essence of constitutional freedom of press and of speech is to allow more liberty than the good citizen will take.” The same is true of freedom of religion. We may believe that the Greens are deluded, greedy, self-centered, or sexist – but our system of government nonetheless protects their beliefs as much as any others.

Hobby Lobby was not a hard case. It’s time for everyone to move on. HMR

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We the PEOPLE S

adly, the word “failure” seems to be this summer’s recurring mantra. Trite declarations about the failures of America, Congress, and of course, President Obama, are unfortunately pervasive through mainstream media coverage. In our long-awaited military departure from Iraq, we have failed to leave the country stable and secure in the face of an ISIS crusade. We have tried, and failed, to facilitate Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, and this summer’s death toll of 1880 Gazans and 67 Israelis serves as a harrowing reminder of what we could not achieve on the international stage. We have failed to deter Putin from expanding influence in Ukraine, and we have failed to contend with the surge of Central American-child migrants seeking refuge over our borders.

Inundated constantly with cries of defeat, it is easy to lose sight of the few accomplishments that have served this nation well.

It is even easier to overlook the so-called

“achievements” that, in reality, turn out to be nothing of the sort. In what Republican Speaker John Boehner calls “a victory for religious freedom,” the Hobby Lobby Supreme Court decision stands out as a “success” more in line with our nation’s recent failures.

Spurred by flawed logic and disregarded repercussions, the ruling reveals another attempt to cripple Obamacare under the guise of a triumph for religious liberty.

In September 2012, Hobby Lobby Stores, an arts-and-crafts chain based in Oklahoma, launched what would become a lawsuit crusade against the Affordable Care Act’s contraceptive mandate. The closely-held for-profit corporation and its owners, the Green family, objected to a requirement that they pay for the contraceptive coverage of their female employees. Citing the 1993 Religious Freedom Restoration Act, a law that prevents governments from “substantially burdening religious exercise without com-

pelling justification,” Hobby Lobby alleged that morning-after pills, IUDs, and other forms of birth control violated the corporation’s religious beliefs. The company viewed those contraceptives as akin to abortion, and thus felt that covering them in insurance plans would implicate its employers in endorsing a practice they opposed on religious grounds.

Through a series of federal lawsuits and appeals, Hobby Lobby argued against Sylvia Burwell, the Secretary of Health and Human Services, for an exemption from the contraceptive mandate under the pretext that the law infringed upon the religious liberty of the company’s owners. The government appealed to the Supreme Court in September 2013, and on June 30th, 2014, the Court ruled five-to-four in favor of Hobby Lobby. According to The New York Times, Justice Alito, writing on behalf of the majority, maintained that the requirement sub-

“To pretend that corporations operate under the same laws as individuals – or to equate a for-profit corporate entity with the same legal status as that of the corporation’s individual owners – is nonsensical.”

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dayonepatch.com

stantially burdened Hobby Lobby’s religious freedom since the company could be fined $475 million for disregarding the contraceptive mandate. Stressing the ruling’s supposedly “limited” scope, he also asserted that a federal religious freedom law such as the Religious Freedom Restoration Act affected only “closely-held” for-profit corporations run on religious principles.

It is not difficult to see that the Hobby Lobby ruling could pose a serious threat to women’s contraception access throughout the country. The decision is not nearly as narrow as the Court insists. Though the majority recognizes that the government could potentially pay for the coverage from which these closely-held corporations are now exempt, the prospects of rallying this Congress to agree on a bill that would accomplish that end are next to nil. Operating under the IRS definition of a closely-held business, or one in which five or fewer individuals own 50% or more of a company’s stock value, a study conducted by the Social Science Research Network in 2000 found that over 90% of American corporations are “closely-held.” A 2009 Columbia University study estimates that more than 75 million workers, or 52% of the U.S. labor force, are employed by closely-held corporations (the World Bank estimates that the American workforce comprises 158 million employees in total).

The Affordable Care Act already exempts small businesses, religious non-profits, and churches from the mandate, or roughly onethird of American workers, according to a federal judge. The destructive consequence of this decision is that practically any busi-

ness can claim an exemption that could block tens of millions of women from receiving contraception free of charge. In today’s economy, that is a serious problem.

Unsurprisingly, the decision has rightfully triggered scathing outrage from women’s rights groups, pro-choice activists, doctors, and medical organizations across the nation, as well as a fierce dissent from Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg, representing the Court’s minority opinion. President of the Planned Parenthood Action Fund Cecile Richards called the ruling “deeply disappointing and troubling,” seeing as it could prevent women “working hourly wage jobs and struggling to make ends meet from getting birth control.”

Ginsberg mentioned in her dissent that an IUD can cost almost as much as “a month’s full-time pay for workers earning the minimum wage,” or about $1000 as estimated by ThinkProgress, a nonpartisan political blog.

But the Hobby Lobby case could raise far more exhaustive and damaging implications beyond women’s restricted access to some forms of contraception. The fact that the company succeeded in its lawsuit is shocking, considering that its case rests on a number of logical inconsistencies. The first and most consequential hole: Can a for-profit corporate entity lay claim to the same legal rights as an individual? Though lower courts diverge on the question, Justice Alito clearly believes so. He maintains in his majority opinion that “protecting the free-exercise rights of closely-held corporations thus protects the religious liberty of the humans who own and control them.” This line of reasoning is fairly dubious, to say the least, given

September 2014

that for-profit companies are subjected to countless obligations and corporate laws to which ordinary citizens are not. To pretend that corporations operate under the same laws as individuals – or to equate a for-profit corporate entity with the same legal status as that of the corporation’s individual owners – is nonsensical.

Unlike religious-based nonprofits, in which employers and employees presumably share the same faith, all 18,000 workers of the for-profit Hobby Lobby business do not necessarily hold Christian beliefs identical to those of Hobby Lobby’s Pentecostal board of directors. Despite biblical references in the company’s handbook and mission statement, Hobby Lobby’s for-profit identity leaves no room for that assumption.

Impeded access to contraception would not be problematic for an exclusively Catholic organization in which employers, employees, and shareholders alike objected to the mandate under a similar religious pretense.

Sure, dispute can still exist between people who share the same faith, but it is even more likely to occur between employers and employees who do not. Justice Ginsberg rightfully points out this distinction in her dissent, noting that the difference “between a community made up of believers in the same religion and one embracing persons of different beliefs constantly escapes the Court’s attention.” For-profit corporations are discrete bodies with duties and rights unconnected to those of their shareholders.

It is regrettable that the majority either failed to recognize or intentionally dismissed this logical error.

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11.2 MILLION U.S. women ages 15-44 use oral contraceptives

58 PERCENT

use contraception at least in part for purposes other than family planning

The second flaw in the logic is that IUDs and morning-after pills, the contraceptives to which Hobby Lobby specifically objects, are not scientifically recognized as abortive methods of birth control. In a renowned medical journal, Alta Charo, a University of Wisconsin Professor of Law and Bioethics, denounced the decision as a misuse of “scientific information in the context of women’s reproductive rights and health” and a disregard for “the well-accepted distinction between contraception and abortion.” Accepting that some Christian groups deem abortion sinful, the Court still ignored the fact that the contraceptive coverage in question is not actually abortive in nature.

Hobby Lobby rationalized its lawsuit with either an accidental or deliberate conflation of medical ideas that the Court chose to endorse.

These glossed-over logical hurdles are just the beginning. What is even more disconcerting is the fact that the majority sided with Hobby Lobby on a decision that could potentially open gateways to a flood of legal exemptions on the premise of religious claims. According to The Becket Fund, the law firm representing Hobby Lobby, for-profit corporations have already argued religious opposition to the Affordable Care Act in 49 pending federal cases. Justice Ginsberg’s dissent raises a host of questions about the case’s disturbing implications: “Would the exemption…extend to employers with religiously grounded objections to blood transfusions (Jehovah’s Witnesses), antidepressants (Scientologists), medica-

tions derived from pigs, including anesthesia, intravenous fluids, and pills coated with gelatin (certain Muslims, Jews, and Hindus), and vaccinations?”

And there are far more unsettling issues to contend with. One could easily imagine religious freedom declarations calling for exemptions, medically-related or not, that are even more laughable. How can the Court be certain that the Hobby Lobby ruling will not be invoked by plaintiffs and lower courts in unintended contexts? Could the ruling apply to companies owned by Mormon families, who recognize marriage between only a man and a woman, and grant them an exemption from hiring gay employees?

Based on the Court’s interpretation of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, what is to stop a corporation from arguing for practically any legal exemption in Court?

The ambiguous language of both the majority opinion and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act only exacerbate the problem. The Court does not even qualify a “substantial burden” to religious liberty (as cited in the act) in a manner that lower courts can systematically implement. It is not so difficult to envision district courts caught up in a complex web of subjectivity about what exactly constitutes a strain on religious freedom gross enough to warrant an exemption.

Perhaps the most distressing aspect of the ruling is the ease with which a corporation could fabricate religious claims as a surface excuse for evading the law. With respect to the contraceptive mandate, the decision could rouse a business to declare a nonex-

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REASONS OTHER THAN FAMILY PLANNING: 31% menstrual pain 28% menstrual regulation 14% acne 11% other medical reasons 4% endometriosis

istent religious objection in order to avoid paying for coverage and help reduce the company’s expenditures. Such an economic motive put into practice would not be inconceivable. Our justice system hardly has the capacity to accurately differentiate between sincere religious claims and those that are falsified to preserve a company’s profits.

As Amy Davidson, a New Yorker columnist, aptly observed, “the majority is either being disingenuous about how broad its ruling is or is blind to its own logic.” Yet it is almost impossible to believe that the Court lacked the insight to anticipate these grave misgivings or to detect the case’s logical holes. What is more likely is that as Catholic males, the five members of the majority – Alito, Thomas, Scalia, Roberts, and Kennedy – held little empathy for the millions of women whose contraceptive coverage is now at risk. What is even more likely is that they capitalized on another opportunity to undermine the Affordable Care Act after it had been signed into law. Such a feat would not be surprising given the far right’s track record of weakly-masked attempts to accomplish the same objective (see the 2013 Government Shutdown for reference). It is no surprise that Republican Speaker John Boehner lauded the ruling and compared the Affordable Care Act’s contraceptive mandate to the Obama administration’s “repeatedly crossed constitutional lines in pursuit of Big Government objectives.” The real “victory” is not about true religious freedom.

It is about the far Right advancing one more step in its aim to dismantle Obamacare and

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“Hobby Lobby rationalized its lawsuit with either an accidental or deliberate conflation of medical ideas that the Court chose to endorse.”

continue a thread of party obstructionism.

Doing so at the expense of female employees may just be a matter of collateral damage.

That is not to say that a religious freedom act would be superfluous to our constitutional system. On the contrary, it is unfortunate that even in 2014 in the supposed “land of the free,” our country’s reality is still far from the ideal of religious tolerance that our founding fathers once envisioned. In this regard, Hobby Lobby and the far right wing are correct. What is incorrect is the invocation of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act in its current nature and behind the backdrop of much graver religious discrimination and hate crimes occurring in the U.S. on a daily basis.

Muslim, Sikh, and Hindu Americans, for instance, have far more cause for uproar about spiritual rights, yet these groups have made much less noise in the political arena than the Hobby Lobby owners. The Pluralism Project, a Harvard University research initiative to document America’s evolving religious demography and promote religious diversity, reported a “spike of religiously motivated hate crimes” against Sikhs, Muslims, and Hindus in the wake of the September 11th attacks. Since 9/11, over 1000 complaints of discrimination and violence against Sikhs have made their way to the Sikh Coalition, a community-based nonprofit that strives to protect Sikh civil and human rights. From the 2011 murders of Surinder Singh and Gurmej Singh Atwal in California to Michael Page’s 2012 mass shooting at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin,

calls for religious liberty from these groups would be far more valid.

In December 2012, Erika Menendez murdered Sunando Sen in Queens, New York by pushing him into the path of an advancing subway car. According to The New York Times, she told the police afterward that she “pushed a Muslim off the tracks” simply because she “hat[ed] Hindus and Muslims.”

In 2008, a student in Hightstown, NJ set Jaskirat Singh’s turban on fire. In 2001, three teenagers burned a Sikh temple outside New York City. On October 31st, 2003, a Hindu temple was defaced in Ashland, Massachusetts, while a Baltimore mosque was vandalized in June 2005. TSA secondary screening is required for Sikhs 100% of the time at some U.S. airports. The MTA ordered Sikh subway operator Kevin Harrington to wear a patch on his turban despite his protestations that doing so would violate his religious beliefs. And the NYPD bars turbans altogether.

The above cases constitute only a fraction of the hate crimes, acts of violence, and systemic discrimination sourced by rights groups such as the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the Sikh American Legal Defense and Education Fund (SALDEF), and the Sikh Coalition. These grievances, however, gain little political traction and are rarely translated into legislative or judicial action. The Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department, U.S. Attorneys offices, and the FBI have investigated over 800 cases of hate crimes against Muslim, Sikh, Arab, and South-Asian Americans since

September 2014

September 2001, yet only 48 convictions have been made to date. The NYPD turban ban has not been lifted. The TSA’s racial profiling policies have not been revised. Stringent gun control remains a distant dream as long as the NRA lobby wields outrageous power and Congress resembles a circus act.

Calls for government action to reinforce claims of religious freedom have gone largely unanswered for the past thirteen years – until now.

Within the national context of such pressing religious discrimination claims stemming from Muslims, Sikhs, and Hindus in particular, why did the Supreme Court majority suddenly invoke the Religious Freedom Restoration Act to gratify Hobby Lobby? Lower courts reject that very logic in scores of civil suits about employer discrimination against Sikhs, Hindus, and Muslims every year. U.S. legislative and judicial trends on religious freedom shed light on a complete about-face in the Court’s rationale – one that was likely guided by an underlying motive of intransigent anti-Obamacare policy.

The American public has long settled for obstinate political partisanship and an overwhelming divide in Congress. It is time to reject the petty politicking of the Supreme Court’s majority members and their efforts to paralyze Obamacare under the façade of a victory for religious freedom. Millions of women will now be barred from receiving the health care that was deemed their lawful right. Our justice system stands more divided than ever. Victory can be dangerous. HMR

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ikaasa suri

As I sit here writing, I am beginning my senior year of high school set on applying early decision to college. Raised in upper middle-class families and attending school with a high percentage of Manhattan’s elite, for us Horace Manners, the notion of college is deeply entrenched in our mindsets. So ingrained is the idea of graduating and continuing on to a higher-level institute of learning, that we barely acknowledge the privileged bubble in which we live. Throughout our nation, even just a few blocks away from Horace Mann itself, college educations are far out of reach, disturbingly replaced by a basic human instinct: survival.

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ith the odds stacked against him, Michael Brown, a young African-American teenager, had been able to procure a freshman position at Vetterott College.

This month marks what would have been his first full month there as a student. Michael Brown, however, is dead. On August 9th of this year, the unarmed 18-year-old, having stolen cigars from a local convenience store, was apprehended and shot by Darren Wilson, a seasoned six-year officer in the city of Ferguson, Missouri. Prior to the shooting, both men had engaged in a physical brawl from which Brown walked away. Then, with his back towards Wilson, Brown was shot once. Having raised his hands signaling surrender, Brown stopped. Wilson continued towards him, shooting him five more times until he fell to the ground. At that point it was no longer a matter of the police apprehending a thief; it was a matter of racial prejudice apprehending a black man.

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Domestic Since no punitive action has been taken against the officer, Brown’s family is pursuing a criminal lawsuit against Wilson, charging him with the illegal killing of their son. Their cry for justice, however, is doomed to fail; the jury consists of six white men, three white women, two black women, and one black man. Such a heinous assault on human rights is not an isolated incident. Throughout history, African-Americans have been abused by a fundamentally white society. Abraham Lincoln may have freed the slaves, but make no mistake, we have a long way to go to achieve racial equality. Just because our nation has successfully elected a black President, it does not mean we have live in a post-racial society.

Michael Brown’s killing is reminiscent of the recent deaths of Trayvon Martin, Renisha McBride, and Eric Garner. Such injustices speak to larger racial issues that exist not only within pockets of the Deep South, but also all throughout the United States of America, the supposed land of the free.

On February 26th, 2012, George Zimmerman, a neighborhood watch coordinator, shot the unarmed, 17-year-old high school student, Trayvon Martin.

Wearing a black hoodie, Trayvon had been walking through the neighborhood that night, and Zimmerman perceived

2012 Feb. 26:

Trayvon Martin shot and killed by a neighborhood watchman, George Zimmerman, in Stanford, Florida

him to be a threat to the safety of the area. The encounter resulted in a verbal and physical altercation that led to Zimmerman’s shooting of the black student.

Under Florida’s Stand Your Ground Statute, while Zimmerman was not allowed to make a legal arrest, he had the right to defend himself with a lethal weapon.

This in itself speaks to the arguable miscarriage of justice within the legal system of Florida. The fact that Zimmerman was found not guilty underscores the negative racial undertones of this nation.

Despite the thousands of demonstrators who protested both silently and verbally against Zimmerman’s racist demeanor, still no action was taken against the watch coordinator or towards addressing the larger issue at hand. Zimmerman felt justified in stopping a young African-American boy simply because he looked suspicious walking the streets of an upper middle class neighborhood. His viciousness is more than disturbing; it is appalling.

The case of Renisha McBride tells us that the act of racial profiling is not just limited to the smaller towns of the South, but extends to even the larger cities of the Midwest. In Detroit, Michigan, another race-based killing occurred. After crashing her car in the western part of the city, the African-American woman stumbled

2013 June 10:

Zimmerman’s trial begins with special prosecutor appointed by Governor Rick Scott

to a house for help. McBride knocked on the windows and doors of the residence, frightening the white homeowner, Theodore Wafer, who then shot and killed her with a shotgun. Wafer was convicted of second-degree murder, using a firearm to commit a felony, and manslaughter.

Wafer’s sentence of life imprisonment, the maximum possible sentence, was reduced to 17 to 32 years. This case points to an intrinsic fear deeply rooted within American culture. If Renisha had been a white woman, she probably would not have been shot. It was this all-too-common prejudgment that telescoped exactly the inherent racial biases still alive in this country.

It is not unusual for the police to denigrate people of color through abuse.

Police brutality is a form of oppression.

Officers often look for reasons to arrest African-Americans, when their only real crime lies in the difference of their skin color. On July 17, 2014, in New York City, two police officers viciously attacked and arrested Eric Garner on spurious charges of selling untaxed cigarettes. Garner, however, was trying to break up a fight at the time. His involvement in the altercation and his skin color are what caused him to be targeted by the police. A resident of Staten Island, Ramsey Orta, recorded the entire exchange on cam

June 13:

Zimmerman acquitted of second-degree murder and manslaughter charges

“At that point it was no longer a matter of the police apprehending a thief; it was a matter of racial prejudice apprehending a black man.”

September 2014

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Domestic era, bringing to surface the misuse of certain illegal police techniques, such as the chokehold and chest compression, to corral Garner. Because of the brutality with which he was treated, Garner suffered from a heart attack minutes after the arrest and died soon after. Of the two officers involved, one was stripped of his gun and badge, while the other was merely reassigned to desk duty. Such inappropriate and unlawful tactics are common abuses of power used mainly against African-Americans. The lack of stringent sanctions against the patrolmen involved in Garner’s case yet again begs the question: Would he have been

brutality maltreated if he were white?

Clearly, the prosecution of perpetrators is not enough to bring about social justice. Ever-present complex racial dynamics exist across this nation infiltrating socio-economic and political infrastructures of individual cities and towns. In some, it is the combination of the over-militarization of the police and the contrived political setup in which a white minority controls the politics and the police. In others, it is the impunity with which officers around the country act, despite national movement-based efforts to integrate transparency and accountability into policing. In Ferguson,

Nov. 2:

it is the way in which an unarmed black teenager was shot several times fits perfectly into a metaphor for oppression.

Some claim that the issue of race remains an open wound. Therefore, they think that the best way to go about this is to let it sit there and heal itself. But this truth is, racism is alive and well in United States of America and in a much more complex state. The flames, the clouds of tear gas, the death youth: how can we allow the bigotry to continue? HMR

July 21:

Renisha McBride shot and killed by white homeowner, Theodore Wafer, outside of Detroit, Michigan

Officers Justin Damico and Daniel Pantaleo placed on desk duty.

Pantaleo is later stripped of his badge and gun.

2014 July 17:

Eric Garner dies of a heart attack while being put in a chokehold by two Staten Island police officers

August 1:

Medical examiners confirm Garner’s cause of death: chokehold and chest compression

August 7:

Theodore Wafer convicted of second-degree murder, receiving a sentence of 17-32 years

August 9:

Young, black teenager, Michael Brown, shot and killed by mysterious police officer later identified as Darren Wilson

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Domestic

the ROAD TO IMMIGRATION REFORM Alex Posner ‘13

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013 appeared to be the year of immigration reform. Calls for action from within the Democratic base reached a tipping point and the Republican Party—fresh off a decisive presidential defeat—also seemed poised to act.

The GOP leadership realized, as many had warned, that its party’s viability relied, in large part, on its ability to court Hispanic voters. A growing U.S. Latino population coupled with a declining GOP base could spell doom for the Republican Party.

In April of last year, a bipartisan group of Senators—called the Gang of Eight—drafted and introduced a comprehensive immigration reform bill. The legislation was voted out of committee a month later and passed by the Senate a month after that. In a Congress stymied by partisan paralysis, there finally appeared to be a glimmer of political hope.

The House of Representatives, however, has declined to consider the legislation.

Speaker John Boehner, buckling to pressure from the most conservative factions of his base, has refused to let the House even vote on the bill. Considering the legislation most likely has the support to pass, Boehner’s

intransigence represents a serious miscarriage of democracy.

It also represents poor policy-making. The immigration reform bill, when judged on its merits, is an intelligently crafted, timely, and necessary piece of legislation. Among other things, it strengthens border security, eliminates per country green card quotas, and increases the number of visas available to foreign students who possess degrees in science, technology, engineering, and math. Studies have indicated that every 100 foreign students with STEM degrees who choose to live in this country help to create 236 jobs.

At its core, the legislation provides a path to citizenship for the more than 11 million undocumented immigrants currently living in this country.

The proposal, as outlined, would guarantee legal residency for those individuals who meet the following criteria: have passed terrorism, criminal history and other security checks, paid all applicable fees, civil penalties, and taxes, demonstrated basic citizenship skills and English language skills, and proven continuous residence in the United States. This path to citizenship is far from easy and is

September 2014

based around a strict conception of what it means to be a valuable, contributing member of society. Citizenship comes with certain rights and privileges, but it also comes with genuine responsibilities.

This proposal certainly ensures those responsibilities are fulfilled.

Providing legal status and eventually citizenship to eligible undocumented immigrants also makes strong financial sense. Creating a path to citizenship would bring the more than 11 million undocumented immigrants out of the shadows of society and create millions of new taxpayers. The Center for American Progress estimates that over the next 10 years, immigration reform would boost tax revenues by $109 billion dollars. In addition, reform would add $606 billion to the coffers of the Social Security trust fund, enough to pay for the retirements of 2.4 million native-born Americans. Finally, immigration reform would add $115 billion to Medicare—extending the program’s solvency by an additional four years.

Many fear that providing legal status to our nation’s undocumented immigrants would deprive native-born Americans of job opportunities and de

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Domestic

Creating a path to citizenship would bring the more than 11 million undocumented immigrants out of the shadows of society and create millions of new taxpayers.

us.azteca.com

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Domestic

With more dollars to spend, immigrants would inject more money into the American economy, elevating GDP and, with it, tax revenues. press wages. However, historical precedent does not support that belief. In 1986, Congress passed the Immigration Reform and Control Act, which provided a path to citizenship for the nation’s— at that point—4 million undocumented immigrants. Economists have studied the effects of the bill and have found that American workers were not harmed and, in many cases benefitted, from the influx of legal immigrants. A 2009 study from economists at Colgate University found that overall immigration did not reduce the employment opportunities of native-born Americans. Instead, native workers moved into more highly skilled occupations. Another study, from economists at the University of California, Davis found that native workers saw their wages increase by an average of 0.6% in response to immigration.

The central point is that immigration reform would be a boon to our economy.

Previously undocumented workers, now protected by minimum wage laws, would see their incomes jump—according to a Center for American Progress report—by between 15% and 25%. With more dollars to spend, immigrants would inject more money into the American economy, elevating GDP and, with it, tax revenues. In fact, according to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, the Gang of Eight bill would lead to a $1.4 trillion increase in real GDP by 2033. And, associated with that economic growth, an $800 billion deficit reduction. Simply put, immigration reform makes financial sense.

But perhaps the greatest benefit of this proposal is something that escapes quantification: the peace of mind

September 2014

of millions of immigrants who have been forced to live in fear of deportation—in fear of having their lives upended and their families split apart. The proposed immigration bill would provide our nation’s immigrants with the confidence to build better lives, to open new businesses, to pursue advanced degrees, and to live the American dream. We can only unlock the full potential of our nation’s residents when we give them the signal that we value them as people and as productive, contributing members of our society. We have the ability to make that vision a reality, but petty politics must first fall by the wayside. HMR

nbclatino.com

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International

Putin's Power Obama’s failure to contain the Russian bear

Adam Resheff

D

uring the Presidential elections of in 2012, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney warned the American public of Russia’s growing power, labeling our former Cold War adversary “our greatest geopolitical foe.” President Obama did not hesitate to make a mockery of Romney for his comments. Pundits, colum-

nists, and political junkies alike categorized the remarks as another in a long line of Romney gaffes made in the homestretch of the election.

Romney, though, seems to have been more perceptive and prescient than his detractors gave him credit for.

After pushing to integrate Russia into the international community, Obama now

faces an increasingly aggressive Russian foreign policy pushed forward by Vladimir Putin. In past months, President Putin has demonstrated his hope of destabilizing Ukraine in order to maintain his influence in the former Soviet state. Despite outcry

by Western politicians and diplomats, Putin has continued his aggression and main-

latimes.com

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International tained the upper hand.

Putin’s history of defiance of the international community, though, is not a novel trend; a former KGB agent, Vladimir Putin originally entered politics in 1991 as the head of external relations for the mayor of Leningrad and later became the head of Federal Security and the Russian Security Council under Boris Yeltsin. Soon, President Yeltsin appointed Putin as Prime Minister and since then, Vladimir Putin has, officially and unofficially, augmented his position of power.

In the past, Putin has not hesitated to instigate conflict with West. In 2008, Putin invaded Georgia, a NATO and US ally, whose oil pipeline has helped the United States ease its reliance on oil from the Middle East. In 2013, as the US tried to apply pressure through the UN on Bashar al-Assad, Syria’s president, to step down amidst revelation’s of his government’s use of chemical weapons against his own people, Putin used Russia’s position on the UN Security Council to block action against Assad’s regime. To further the issue, Putin’s government continued to supply Assad with conventional-style weapons. And then, in the same year, Putin allowed his government to grant Edward Snowden, a privacy activist who released thousand of classified US government documents, temporary asylum, despite cries from lawmakers across the political spectrum for his arrest. Putin has never shied away from belligerent actions, but his move-making has never led the

United States to sever ties. Yet, his military action in the Ukraine has changed the Obama administration’s approach to Russia.

Over the past nine months, Russia has revamped its expansionist policies. The conflict was initiated on February 26, when President Putin ordered military drills near the Ukrainian border under the ruse that he was acting to protect the rights of Crimea’s ethnic Russians.

These actions came after Ukraine announced its intention to form an economic alliance with the European Union and to align itself more with the Western World. Only two days later, Russian masked gunmen invaded various military bases throughout the region, and after these attacks the Russian Parliament proceeded to approve the use of military force in Ukraine. After two weeks of continued use of Russian military action in the Crimea, 96.7 percent of Crimeans supposedly supported a referendum to become part of Russia. In the following months, Russian rebels and Special Forces continued to attack Ukrainian citizens. The Ukrainian government has continued to accuse Russia of funding the rebels and personnel carrying out the attacks. More recently, on July 17, the Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 was shot down over Eastern Ukraine and it is widely suspected that pro-Russian Rebels were responsible for the crash. Towards the end of August, NATO provided satellite and photographic evidence that Russian troops entered Ukraine.

Putin’s confrontational foreign policy

and denial of their aggression towards Ukraine is similar to its invasion of Georgia several years ago. The violence began in the same way, with the buildup of Russian troops in areas of historical conflict. At the rate Putin has progressed and pushed into Ukraine over the past year, it is clear that he will not stop until he has access to the Sea of Azov’s military base and the large supply of fuel in the peninsula.

The responses of the international community have been few and ineffective. Many members of NATO and the rest of the international community have attempted to admonish Russia for its aggressive policies. France, who provides warships to Russia, has recently suspended its trade of these ships to the natoin in protest of the invasion of Ukraine. Germany has also implemented sanctions against Russia. However, these sanctions are unlikely to be enforced and are therefore ineffective, seeing as many Germany companies rely on Russian natural gas. The European Union has also stepped up against Russia by offering Ukraine $15 billion in financial aid. Most recently, at a NATO summit in Newport, Wales, leaders discussed the creation of a Global Police Force. This initiative would be spearheaded by the United States and would reinforce the organization’s commitment to its member nations. These actions sound sufficient in theory; however, Russia has continued to progress into Ukraine despite the response of the Western World. In order to truly halt Putin’s attempt to re

“Despite outcry by Western politicians and diplomats, Putin has continued his aggression and maintained the upper hand.”

September 2014

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International

“Obama’s handling of Russia over his presidency has left Obama looking like he’s been playing checkers while Putin’s been playing chess.” cover territory belonging to the former Soviet Union, a global power such as the United States, needs to change its current policies towards Russia.

Obama’s handling of Russia over his presidency has left Obama looking like he’s been playing checkers while Putin’s been playing chess. Obama’s instance in the importance of creating a world based on international cooperation and making Russia a member in that idealistic vision has left the door open for Putin to run wild. When Putin bolstered autocratic rulers and harbored labeled enemies of the United States government with no rebuke from Obama, what other conclusion should Putin have drawn besides that he had free reign on the international state? Why shouldn’t Putin continue destabilizing Ukraine to prevent its government from shifting economically towards the West? Obama clearly does not have the will to engage in a standoff with Putin that extends beyond excluding him from the international groups Obama tried to include Russia in and putting in place economic sanctions that fall short of hitting Putin or his cronies directly. The lack of any sort of broad economic sanction or military posturing, especially following the shooting down of flight MH17, makes Obama look weak and gives Putin the a pass in expanding his power. If the Obama administration doesn’t make the change towards a more aggressive policy on Russia, Putin will continue terrorizing the West and remain at the helm of Obama’s vision of a world order, with its glorious international cooperation and all. HMR

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International

latimes.com

THE CREATION OF A KURDISH STATE The struggle to create a Kurdish state may actually be worth it in bringing stability to a fracturing Iraq and encouraging the growth of democracy in the Middle East.

September 2014

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International

SAM HENICK ‘14

A

Kurdish state would span parts of northern Iraq, northeastern Syria, northwestern Iran, and eastern Turkey and encompass some 74,000 to 151,000 square miles. But Kurdistan does not exist. With Iraq in turmoil from the Islamic State offensive, the question of Kurdish autonomy has once again become a topic for debate. Peshmerga forces are fighting off ISIL advances into Iraqi Kurdistan with the aid of limited United States airstrikes, but the help ends there. Kurds are being discouraged from statehood one hundred years after the end of World War I, which failed to ensure Kurdistan’s existence.

The Kurds are a traditionally nomadic Iranian people who speak Kurdish languages. There are Kurdish languages (part of the Indo-European family of languages), and though Kurds do not all follow a certain religion, there is a common culture and identity and one of the longest ethnic histories in the Middle East.

Kurdish territory was part of the Ottoman Empire, which collapsed after WWI. The Treaty of Sèvres (1920) was supposed to create a Kurdish state, but the treaty was never ratified and was nullified following the Turkish War of Independence. Mustafa Atarük, the first president of Turkey, and his forces re-conquered the area and effectively forced the Allies to accept the renegotiated Treaty of Lausanne in 1923, which defined the borders of the Republic of Turkey and deprived the Kurds of their own self-ruled region. The British mandate of Iraq and French mandate of Syria were assigned other areas populated by the Kurds.

Kurdish nationalism in the 20th Century played a role in shaping the push for autonomy. Kurds worked through the political system in Turkey in the 1950s, the 1960 Turkish coup d’etat changed the political landscape, and the 1970s ushered in an era of Marxist political thought which would eventually form the militant separatist Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK)—listed as a terrorist organization by the US, European Union, and NATO. The PKK sought to carve out a separate state in the southeast for

the country’s Kurds or have autonomy and greater political and cultural rights for Kurds inside Turkey. In 1983, more than 37,000 people were killed, and hundreds of thousands more were forced to leave their homes when the political tensions manifested themselves in the form of armed struggle. Tensions eased when the European Union encouraged peace and PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan was captured in 1999, but Turkey still faced strains within the country and abroad.

In Syria, Kurds are the largest ethnic minority, but there are attempts to suppress the ethnic identity of Kurds in Syria with tactics like bans on the use of the Kurdish language businesses that do

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The Horace Mann Review | Vol. XXIV

“While a Kurdish state might set a ‘slippery slope’ precedent for other ethnic groups, the Kurds have mananged to, despite bouts of violence, maintain stability and modern Western practices.” not have Arabic names, Kurdish private schools, and books and other materials written in Kurdish. As a result of the Syrian civil war, however, Kurds have joined the rebellion against Assad’s regime and have been able to take control of large parts of Syrian Kurdistan.

Kurds share strong ethnolinguistical and cultural ties with Persians and other Iranian peoples, and the fact that Kurds share much of their history with the rest of Iran is seen as a reason why Kurdish leaders in Iran do not want a separate Kurdish state. Although Iran has never brutally dealt with Kurds as Turkey or Iraq did, it has always been opposed to a Kurdish state and the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan (KDPI) did not push for greater autonomy like the PKK

did in Turkey. Kurds have been integrated into Iranian society and politics and are, for the most part, not pushing for independence from Tehran.

Kurds constitute approximately 17% of Iraq’s population and are the majority in at least three provinces in northern Iraq—together known as Iraqi Kurdistan—which became a semiautonomous state following the Gulf War. A 1970 autonomy agreement failed, and violence and genocide in 1974 and again in 19801988 during the Iran-Iraq War led the Peshmerga to push out Saddam Hussein’s forces in northern Iraq during the 1991 Kurdish uprising. In 1992, the KDP and Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), a liberal offshoot of the PDK, established the semi-autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government and ruled jointly despite the Kurdish Iraqi Civil War that was mediated by the US. The 2003 invasion of Iraq and the subsequent political changes led to the ratification of a new Constitution of Iraq in 2005 and the recognition of Iraqi Kurdistan in Article 113. In response to the Islamic State’s capturing of cities throughout Syria and Iraq, Kurds took control of oil-rich Kirkuk and the surrounding area, as well as most of the disputed territories in Northern Iraq.

In June, the Kurdish President Marsoud Barzani announced plans to hold an official independence referendum within several months.

Times are changing quickly in the Middle East. Nouri al-Maliki, the former prime minister of Iraq, proved incompetent, and the rapid and incredibly successful Islamic State campaign has proven the fragility of the Iraqi state. The Kurds have remained strong. Despite initial setbacks of the peshmerga forces against the northern offensive by ISIL in August due to a lack of sufficient weapons and other supplies, with the aid of US and Iraqi airstrikes, the Kurds have held on to their territory and retook the strategically important Mosul Dam after losing it temporarily to the insurgents.

The Kurds did not publicize beheadings of innocent civilians and journalists.

They did not impose laws so strict that

International

al Qaeda seems fairly benign. In fact, the Kurds have always been reliably hostile to terrorism. Furthermore, the fact that the Kurds exported crude oil to Israel in June indicates a potentially more liberal and pro-Western economic and foreign policy than other Arab nations. The US can take this opportunity to work towards a Kurdish state. Syrian Kurds have helped in the fight to save Yazidis by helping them escape the ISIL onslaught while Turkish Kurds have deployed their forces to protect the oil-rich Iraqi Kurdish city of Kirkuk.

The PKK’s Öcalan has pressed for peace recently and remarked that his movement’s 30-year war with Turkey’s government was nearing an end through democratic negotiations. Perhaps the US can reconsider its relation to the PKK now, especially seeing as a successful peace treaty would allow the US to work with the PKK without straining their relationship with Turkey. Even Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan said: “The Kurds of Iraq can decide for themselves the name and type of the entity they are living in,” despite Turkey’s history with its Kurds and fears of nationalism spreading to its own Kurds.

The Turkish prime minister’s statement in spite of Turkey’s history with the Kurds shows Turkey’s interest in an Iraqi Kurdistan as a legitimate trade partner—as evidenced by the 50-year agreement allowing them to export Kurdish oil to the world via a pipeline that runs through Turkey and the establishment of a consulate in the Iraqi Kurdish capital Erbil—and sends a message to the rest of the world; a strong Kurdistan is needed to help Iraq stop ISIL and to establish stability.

Perhaps the US fears that the “Balkanization” of the region would lead to similar conflicts that arose almost exactly one hundred years ago. These beliefs rely on the fact that European powers making politically motivated and relatively uninformed decisions somehow made the perfect division of the Ottoman Empire. Many of the borders established by the Treaty of Versailles fail to exist today, Germany being perhaps the most salient example. While a Kurdish state might set a “slippery slope” precedent for other ethnic groups, the

Kurds have withstood as much resistance and managed to maintain democratic principles and, despite bouts of violence, maintain stability and modern Western practices. The Kurds are also a significant minority in the region of Kurdistan: 15-25% of Turkey’s population, 7-10% of Iran’s, 15-23% of Iraq’s and 9-15% of Syria’s.

Iraq is already on the verge of breaking up, and letting ISIL overrun the Kurds would not make maintaining the Iraqi state any easier to keep together.

If a unified Iraq is going to be saved, it will have to be done with the help of the Kurds. As Jonathan Foreman wrote in the Wall Street Journal on July 10, “this country-in-the-making has proved to be a haven of stability, relative security and pro-American, pro-Western sentiment ever since it broke free from Saddam’s misrule. A major American air base in Kurdistan would improve the U.S.’s much-weakened strategic position in the Middle East while guaranteeing Kurdish independence. Not long ago such an alliance would have been politically all but impossible.” A US airbase in Sulaymaniyah or Erbil could increase American leverage in the region. Relying on air bases in Kuwait, Qatar or Bahrain is not a sound policy, given the fact that they are dictatorships vulnerable to upheaval, and it is well documented that elements within Qatar and Kuwait’s ruling elites have long sponsored terrorist organizations.

Kurdistan would not appear on the map overnight. It would involve a referendum and a vote by the UN. But the time has come to start pushing for an independent Kurdish state, a state that could house the members of the Kurdish diaspora and the Kurds from local states. It would require a great deal of diplomacy to balance the interests of Syria, Iraq, Turkey, and Iran in terms of their territorial sovereignty, and perhaps Kurdistan would not fulfill nationalists’ aspirations for a complete Kurdistan. But in the interest of stability and in the right to self-determination, the US can implement Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points a hundred years later to solve the issues in the Middle East today. And Kurdistan would be a testament to a new world order, crafted from the missteps of the 20th century and the folly of inaction. HMR

September 2014

“The Kurds of Iraq can decide for themselves the name and type of the entity they are living in,”

Hussein Celik, spokesman for Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party, on behalf of Turkish Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan 23

Features

More Than ISIS

A STRUGGLING IRAQ AND A MURKY FUTURE.

alarab.co.uk

A

Ben Greene ‘14

s the last of the American troops withdrew from Contingency Operating Base Adder in October of 2011, President Barack Obama remarked that now in place was a “sovereign, stable, and self-reliant” Iraq. Years of American involvement that began in March of 2003 had finally concluded, with government officials satisfied at the removal of Sadaam Hussein and his Sunni Ba’athist regime. Left in power was an eager Shiite majority that had long been oppressed by the minority Sunnis under Hussein. Yet in no way was Iraq nor the Iraqi governance sys-

tem positioned for long-term stability. Instead the vacuum created by the abrupt withdrawal of American troops fostered a safe haven for persistent ethnic divide and extreme government corruption on both the national and local levels.

Now the oil rich nation faces a growing insurgency of Sunni militants, recognized for their ruthlessness against all those who don’t adhere to their radical Salafist Islamic ideology. Yet the inherent Iraqi problem is not simply the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, better known as ISIS. The underlying issue is

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The Horace Mann Review | Vol. XXIV

a complex knot of deeply rooted dissimilarities in the Iraqi people. Unless Iraqis, and they alone, can discard their ethnic divisions and facilitate an inclusive democratic state, the country that was so embroiled in senseless violence for the past decade will revert back to an unwanted tradition of bloodshed and warfare.

Hidden by the gruesome nature of the ISIS offensive is a vast split between Iraq’s three main ethnic groups. The majority Shiites control the south of the country, including most of the nation’s capital, Baghdad. The mi-

Features nority Sunnis, who have been routinely persecuted by Baghdad’s primarily Shiite government occupy much of the country’s west and the Kurds control the semiautonomous region of Iraq Kurdistan in the nation’s northeast. As the Iraqi Constitution stands, the central government is divided fairly between the three main ethnic groups: the Shiites retain the role of Prime Minister, the Sunnis occupy the Speaker of the Iraqi Parliament, and the Kurds hold the position of President. Yet despite the apparently equitable configuration of the government, the inherent discourse between all of Iraq’s native groups persists and has not lessened. Ramzy Mardini, an expert on Iraq at the Atlantic Council, explains “The basic equation is this: ISIS provokes Shiites, Shiites overreact and generalize their response against Sunnis, and more Sunnis come to support ISIS. It’s a vicious circle, with each cycle hardening the sectarian divide.” Much of the present issue was caused by the futile government of former Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki. Maliki and his regime systematically targeted groups other than his ethnic Shiite majority, alienating many Sunnis and creating an avenue for ISIS support. Although Maliki has been replaced by a seemingly more moderate Shiite politician, Haider al-Abadi, much of Iraq’s Sunnis and Kurds are wary of any Shiite with excessive power. Maliki’s government has planted a seed of distrust and rift between all of Iraq’s ethnic groups that has so badly damaged the national psyche. Now that tainted seed is teetering on the edge of sprouting during a time when national unity is of the utmost importance.

The appointment of Abadi by the Kurdish President, Fuad Masum, was met with approval both within Iraq and in the international community. The United States applauded the removal of Maliki, with President Barack Obama calling the introduction of a new head of government “a promising step forward” for the embattled nation. Yet Abadi, known to be far more even-keeled and internationally savvy than the brash Maliki, is still a member of the major Shiite Dawa political party. The intrinsic problem with the Iraqi political system is not the alignment of their administrative branches or the mandate of their constitution. The fundamental obstacle is that Iraqi politics are not based on political ideas or viable reforms, but rather on ethnic allegiances and deeply rooted tribal strife. Until Iraq can learn to put aside their sectarian tensions in the political sphere, there will be no longterm stable Iraqi democratic state.

Intertwined with the Iraqi perspective of the current crisis is the American re-

sponse to the mushrooming ISIS insurgency, which already has taken the lives of two American journalists in gruesome fashion.

Together with the Iraqi government, Iraqi Special Forces, and the Kurdish peshmerga, the United States government faces a precarious junction in the battle against Salafist extremism. Determined to avoid a groundtroop operation in Iraq, Obama must carefully tread the fine line between over-involvement in a country where we hoped to never return, and under-involvement in a region where the threat of terrorism continues to proliferate.

There is no question of ISIS’s brutality. The executions of freelance journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff highlight ISIS’s eagerness to terrorize everything and anyone standing in their way of establishing an Islamic caliphate.

Military action against ISIS has turned into a vital combative action against the growing group. However, the United States and its western allies would be remiss to think that military action will quell the increasing appeal of Islamic extremism. Every time a bomb is dropped, every time an innocent civilian dies due to American artillery or air strikes, a new generation of international Jihadists are born.

The strategic military advantage of American involvement cannot be understated—US-led airstrikes allowed Kurdish peshmerga forces and Iraqi Special Op Units to retake crucial sites in northern Iraq from ISIS including Mosul Dam, the largest in Iraq. But it is naive to postulate heavy bombardments will assuage the long-term concerns of the United States and its allies. What makes ISIS, as well as any other terrorist group included the various branches of Al-Qaeda, Boko Haram, and Al-Shabaab, function is its constituency.

And these groups attract a substantial group of followers because they claim to be representatives of the people, of the sanctity of Muslim life. If the United States and Iraq are to wipe out ISIS, it will not be because of expanded military operations, but because of creating a ruling government that is more appealing to the people.

The constraints of ISIS’s restrictive law has already begun to be felt by the diverse people of Iraq’s north. The Yazidi people, who were flushed out of their communities onto Mount Sinjar earlier last month, have witnessed first-hand the cruelty of ISIS’s methods. Various news sources have reported daily beheadings and executions for Iraqis Christians, Yazidis, Shiites, or other clans of people labeled infidels by ISIS and its leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. ISIS has placed strict laws on the role of women in society. Women must be fully clothed in public in traditional Islamic

September 2014

garments and most are denied access to basic education. The most effective strategy of combatting ISIS is counteracting their strategy at the roots. Creating an inclusive government with prominent Sunni politicians is a start, but then implementing grass-root programs in small Sunni villages will build off of the momentum of the newly appointed government.

The war against terrorism is slowly turning into a war of social media and popular culture.

That’s where the United States and its allies must attack. Win the hearts of the people.

As much as it would be naïve to claim that military operations will defeat ISIS entirely, it would equally naïve to assume propaganda and governmental reform will defeat

“Every time a bomb is dropped, every time an innocent civilian dies due to American artillery or air strikes, a new generation of international Jihadists are born.”

ISIS entirely as well. A mixture of both winning over the people and combatting ISIS militarily will prove to be the most effective strategy. Expanding the military operation into neighboring Syria, where ISIS’s headquarters is located, may be a necessary step for American artillery. The city of Raqqa is home to much of ISIS’s operational capacity and damaging Raqqa’s infrastructure may postpone the growth of the insurgency. Arming the Kurdish peshmerga with more advanced weaponry should be an avenue worth undertaking for the United States. The peshmerga has proven to be the most adept force combatting ISIS in the region, but they have been most successful when fighting alongside American aerial support.

Whatever path is chosen by President Obama and the United States Congress, the most essential step in securing Iraq’s future remains creating a country where diversity can be fostered. That means altering a national culture that has for years been defined by the ethnic divisions in society. And while it is surely not an easy task, it is a vital one. And it may be Iraq’s last chance to do so. HMR

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NO WAR ON SYRIA

O

nce thought of as a straightforward manifestation of the Arab-Spring revolutionary democratic spirit, the conflict in Syria has increasingly become a tangled web of differing ideologies and interests. This web presents an especially unique problem for western governments, particular that of the United States. As the conflict drags on and the body count mounts, the US government must face the stark political reality: if it wishes to protect its interests in the Middle East, the US must throw its support behind the Assad regime. While this idea may

seem morally repugnant, the fact still remains that Assad is the lesser of two evils.

It is important to remember that the US would not radically deviate from policy by supporting Assad. The US government has a long history of supporting authoritarian regimes and military coups across the globe. During the Cold War era the US backed and helped to stage a series of coups against socialist, yet democratically elected leaders in Latin America, replacing them with authoritarian leaders, such as Augusto Pinochet in Chile. While

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these dictators committed wide-spread and horrific human rights violations and abuses, the US did not waver in its support because the threat of communism was more potential detrimental to US interests than any potential threat posed by authoritarian regimes. In Iran the US overthrew the democratically elected leader in favor of the authoritarian Shah because of oil concerns and the threat posed by a populist regime in the region. The cold war interventions, in particular, arguably played a significant role in the US containment policy that was eventually responsible for the

Features japantimes.com

BY LASZLO HERWITZ destruction of the USSR. In more recent years the US has cooperated with authoritarian regimes in the Middle East, such as that of Muammar Gaddafi, to fight the threat posed by terrorism.

This support, while lacking any base in morality, has been vital to furthering US political and economic interests across the globe.

The Arab Spring revolutions have marked a change of course for the US. Now more focused on being the leader of the free world, the US has felt a moral obligation to side with democratic revolutionaries against author-

itarian governments, such as that of Hosni Mubarak, of which it used to be a steadfast supporter. In Egypt and in Libya, where the US participated in the enforcement of a NATO no fly zone, US support for the revolutionaries has done little to further US interests. In Egypt, the democratically elected Muslim Brotherhood seemed to be pursuing policies that would be detrimental to the interests of the US’s allies in the region, specifically Israel. In Libya, the lawlessness that rose in the power vacuum created by Gaddafi’s upset is still rampant across the country, threaten-

September 2014

ing US interests and the overall stability of the region.

The US, with the image of the radical militias of Libya in mind, is faced with a potentially similar situation in Syria. Already, the two strongest of the rebel groups fighting Assad are, as Assad claimed in the beginning, radical terrorist organizations. One of the groups, Al-Nusra Front, is an official Al-Qaeda affiliate. The other, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), is a terrorist group so radical that even Al-Qaeda has disavowed and condemned its actions. The so-called

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Features “moderate opposition” rebel forces have been eclipsed by and swallowed up in this greater mix of different groups all fighting to advance their interests. The US can no longer guarantee that the military aid they funnel to the rebels will go to the moderate opposition instead of the terrorists. The threat posed by ISIS has spread from Syria into Iraq, creating significant problems for US interests in the Middle East. If the US wishes to maintain the rather fragile stability it achieved in Iraq then it must do all that it can to destroy ISIS in both Iraq and in Syria.

In order to rip ISIS out by its deeply planted roots, the US must turn to the Assad government, which is equally committed to the destruction of ISIS. Although this action would very likely mean the end of the Syrian revolution and a continuation of Assad’s tyranny, the benefit of eliminating ISIS as a terrorist organization would significantly outweigh any geopolitical cost incurred through US support of the Assad regime. Since Assad’s authoritarian government was distinctly secular with large restrictions imposed on the practice of religion, the US would not need to worry as much about a resurgence of radical religious groups within Syria. Support of Assad would bring an increased measure of safety and security to the US’s interests and allies in the region. If the US continues to support the moderate opposition within Syria, it will continue to inadvertently provide a cover that will allow ISIS to continue to grow and strengthen its

“In order to rip ISIS out by its deeply planted roots, the US must turn to the Assad government, which is equally committed to the destruction of ISIS.”

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footholds within Syria and Iraq. In the unlikely event that the rebels do manage to oust Assad without direct US military intervention, Syria will be left in a position similar to that of Libya: a country with no centralized government and many armed militias with control over different parts of the country. The instability created by such a scenario would only serve to aid terrorist organizations such as ISIS expand their reach within Syria. Such instability would endanger both Iraq, to whose stability the US has already devoted a massive amount of military resources, and Israel, which, as the only Jewish state in the region, would be a natural target for radical militias and terrorist groups inside Syria. The detrimental effect of allowing such a situation to unfold leaves the US to consider the lesser of the two evils: the authoritarian government of Bashar Al-Assad.

That is not to say that the US should necessarily give outright support to the Assad government because doing so would very likely anger many of the US’s western allies, ultimately harming its power and interests. The US should instead withdraw all monetary and military support it is currently supplying to the rebels and should conduct airstrikes on ISIS strongholds within Syria. Although this would ultimately weaken the rebels, aiding Assad, it would not constitute explicit support for the regime. While this is certainly a weak moral decision, in the political sphere it is a relatively strong one which would allow the US to protect its interests, influence, and allies in the region without incurring the wrath of the international community. HMR

Features

DEFENDING

ISRAEL THE BASTION OF FREEDOM

nbcnews.com

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inston Churchill stood before parliament on June 4th, 1940 to deliver a speech of desperation. With the fall of France to the Third Reich, the United Kingdom became the last European bastion of freedom and democracy: An island, not only geographically, but culturally, politically, and worst of all, militarily. England faced an unprecedented threat, every day unsure of its own survival, its own freedom, and when

James Megibow Churchill calmly but powerfully uttered, “We shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be. We shall fight on the beaches; we shall fight on the landing grounds… We shall never surrender,” it sent shivers down the spines of his listeners. When faced with its own demise and the slavery of its own people, capitulation of any kind became impossible for the British. Their island was to be defended to the last man.

So too is Israel an island. Its culture of freedom and democracy alongside its Jewish heritage has made it a target for the much larger Sharia monarchies and military juntas that surround it. Israel, like the United Kingdom in 1940, fights for its very survival as the only true bastion of democracy in the entirety of the region, threatened every day with the massacre of its own people should its defenses crack. The defense of democ-

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Features racy and of national identity was never an easy task, but Israel “will never surrender.” Its policies in the Gaza strip are justified.

The Palestinian political factions have engaged in such an aggressive indoctrination of its own people, pushing theological, ideological, and blatantly anti-Semitic reasoning for the destruction of both Israel and the Jewish people. From schools to television to radio, Hamas’ propaganda machine has all but erased any possibility for lasting peace.

Palestinians will not accept peaceful coexistence as an option. Terrorists who detonate bombs or fire rockets into the south of Israel are not tried and punished, but paraded to the cheers of the Palestinian crowd. They view the fabricated propagandistic Palestinian claims to the entire land of Israel as divinely validated. They will not rest until all of Israel is destroyed. As one can imagine, in peace talks, if one country’s goal is to survive, and the other’s is to destroy, they have some understandable trouble seeing eye to eye.

When the United Nations General Assembly voted to partition the Levant into a Jewish and Arab state, the Jews received virtually all desert lands, while the Palestinians received both the major cities in the region (Jassa, Nazareth, Jenin Hebron, Beersheba, Gaza, and Acre) and 100% of the land surrounding Jerusalem. Yet, despite the infertile and indefensible land given to the Israelis, they were ready to peacefully coexist.

They had plans for complex irrigation systems and nation building that would improve the lives of Israelis and create arable farmland in the Jewish homeland.

The Arab state had other plans. In May 1948, a coalition of Egypt, Iraq, Syria, Transjordan, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen invaded the newly founded Jewish homeland. 63,500 soldiers invaded a country with a newly formed

IRON DOME military of just 29,677 men and women. Israel has, in fact, never fought a declared war with better soldier counts than doubly outnumbered. But, as with United States in 1776, as the call to arms rose in the face of certain defeat, Israeli civilians shocked their enemies and the world when they flocked to the banners of local grassroots militias who eventually combined into the Israeli Defense force on May 26, 1948. Israeli military personnel grew to a miraculous 117,500.

As sadly occurs in war, destruction of towns and homes by stray artillery fire and scorched earth tactics grew rampant, leaving many refugees without a place to go. Fear of the policies that the

winning nation might endorse also drove many from their homes. Often the blame for these refugees gets pinned on Israel with the intention of distorting the facts to give the appearance of Israel forcing Arabs from their homes and bulldozing them, when in truth the refugees were a sad and unfortunate consequence of the war that their own governments began.

In fact, at the onset of war Arab leadership actually instructed Palestinians to migrate. The Palestinian government paid the price of attempting to destroy Israel with the annexation of over 50% of its original territory. Such is the cost of starting aggressive wars of conquest especially in the time period. Germany

“When enemy combatants start tunneling into your country to bomb civilians, the government has an inescapable responsibility to protect its citizens.” www.global-gateways.com

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Features suffered a similar fate in world war two and the ottomans in world war one.

Israel later decided to voluntarily leave the Gaza strip in the interest of providing Palestinians some national sovereignty and stabilizing the region. To promote such stability, Israel left Gazans with the burgeoning agricultural industry that they had built. In response, Gaza burned down the 3,000 greenhouses: the first of many actions it has taken to destroy the lives and livelihoods of its own people.

Couple these historical facts with the statement that there has never been an independent Palestinian state in the Levant, and it is hard not to be perplexed by Palestinian claims to Israeli land “from the river to the sea.” Without historical precedent, the support of international law, or actual ownership of the land Palestinian self-endowed entitlements to murder Israeli civilians in the name of “reestablishing” a state that has never, in fact, existed become more horrifying than confusing. These delusions, however, are likely an inescapable consequence of being governed by a registered terrorist organization.

The current Israeli military operation in Gaza is necessitated by the repeated government sponsored terrorist attacks into southern Israel and within Israel’s major cities. The firing of rockets from one country into another with the intention of murdering civilians has always been an act of war, and Israel cannot reasonably be seen as the aggressor in this conflict. Yet, when rockets were the only problem, Israel did not initially take action, instead opting to try its very best to take a stolid defensive position with the Iron Dome. Only once the Palestinian government began funding underground tunnels into Israel (instead of roads, hospitals, and the public services Gaza continues to lack notably) did the IDF finally take action. When enemy combatants start tunneling into your country to bomb civilians, the government has an inescapable responsibility to protect its citizens.

Israel even, in the face of the constant threat of total annihilation, offered to give Palestine its own free state.

At the Camp David Summit in 2000, Prime Minister Ehud Barak agreed to a peace treaty that would have supplied the Palestinians with a free state in the West Bank and Gaza. The Palestinians promptly denied this likely because it

would require the recognition of the state of Israel.

Israel, the island of the Middle East, the only regional bastion of freedom, democracy, and our western ideals, fights for its very survival. The fight for these principals and one’s national identity has never been clean or easy, but it’s a fight worth fighting. HMR

The fight for these principals and one’s national identity has never been clean or easy, but it’s a fight worth fighting.

September 2014

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CLASS

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Economics

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n the last decade capitalism has increasingly come under attack from the common man and the politicians who used to champion it. Recently it has become more and more politically intelligent to be a proponent of more regulation and wealth distribution. As headlines about increasing wealth inequality and skyrocketing executive pay appear all over the American news cycle, politicians such as Obama claim that inequality is the “defining challenge of our time.” Entrepreneurs who have always been heralded as the heroes of this country are now vilified for trying to make a profit off of someone or some problem. The current system is criticized for creating winners and losers, and being a net zero sum system. So, given this recent criticism, is capitalism in its current incarnation the best possible economic system?

terprise capitalism the greatest invention in human history.

Capitalism works because it plays off of natural human instincts. Profit motivates people to change the world in ways such as developing drugs to curing diseases to creating the iPhone. Every time a transaction takes place in the economy it is consensual and therefore creates value. One person is receiving a service or product that he or she values more than the service or product the other is giving.

Capitalism when done right is a win-win system; whenever anyone participates in the market, they benefit.

The twentieth century was defined by the ideological battle between freedom and control. Freedom and free enterprise capital won this battle by every measure.

The United States was far more socially evolved and economically advanced than

rently, the intellectual case for capitalism has been understood as people creating business and proving goods/services to pursue only their self-interest. Capitalism is inherently about other people. Part of capitalism is self-interest, but the other part is caring for other people and causes that transcend one’s self interest. Nobody can make a profit by thinking purely about making a profit. A company needs to know what customers want and what problems they have so that the company can fix them. Describing capitalism as a system purely driven by making a profit is not only inaccurate but also misses the entire point of capitalism. Profit is purely an added incentive to identify problems and create solutions.

The other reason capitalism has come under attack is because of actual problems with the current incarnation of

“When people think the game of capitalism is rigged, they tend to ignore who originally rigged it.”

As much as people talk about world hunger, global poverty, big global problems, and the ways to fix them, people tend to ignore the ways these issues have been fixed in the past. Our current economic system began around 200 years ago. In the early 19th century, 85% of the entire global population lived on less then a modern dollar per day. There were only about one billion people on the planet, and the population had stayed fairly constant throughout human history. Life expectancy was only about 30 years and the majority of the world was illiterate.

Malnourishment has dropped from 26% to 13% in just the last 40 years. In fact, world hunger is on track to be eliminated within the 21st century. How have all of these societal improvements occurred?

The answer lies in the workings of free enterprise capitalism. Humans have existed for thousands of years, and yet more then 95% of all progress has come in the last two hundred years. As Marc Gafni, the founder of the Center for World Spirituality, said, “Capitalism has lifted more people out of poverty then any force in history through the power of voluntary exchange.” Capitalism has transformed the face of the planet so dramatically that it is not an overstatement to call free en-

the Soviet Union. Without free markets to guide the Soviet Union resources were not allocated efficiently and there was no incentive system for work and progress. After the Berlin Wall fell, the whole world knew of the dismal results of socialist experiments. One by one countries that used to believe in socialism began to turn to freedom and experienced rapid economic growth. It is not a coincidence that since 1950 South Korea’s GDP per capita has increased by 15,000% from 150 to 22,000 dollars. This is the kind of rapid growth the free enterprise capitalism allows. Capitalism works not just in theory but in reality as well.

Capitalism has come under attack partially because of misconceptions about it. People associate capitalism with greed and exploitation, but in a truly free enterprise, it is not possible for capitalists to exploit or discriminate. While people technically make profit for themselves, they do it by fixing problems in the world.

Nobody would give a company money unless the service that the company provided solved a problem or filled a need for the customer. In order to change the way people perceive capitalism, academia and the business world need to change the way they talk about capitalism. Cur-

September 2014

capitalism. In theory, capitalism should be perfect, but in the past 25 years there have been fundamental changes to the economic infrastructure of countries such as the US that threaten the effectiveness of capitalism and lead to criticisms of the system. The cancer that threatens the well-being of capitalism is crony capitalism. In free enterprise capitalism, competition and economic freedom allow companies and people to engage with whomever they want. Crony capitalism is the exact opposite. Unfortunately, more and more businesses engage in crony capitalism leaving the masses to equate crony capitalism with free enterprise capitalism. As governments, especially in western nations, have sharply increased in size and scope, increased regulations have facilitated crony capitalism by the government’s meddling in the economy.

Whenever the government grants any favor to a company that gives it a competitive advantage over another company, the government creates crony capitalism.

Our government gives tax cuts, subsidies, monopolies, and lower regulatory barriers to companies all the time. These benefits would not be a problem if the government gave them to everyone, but it does not. Some companies in the same

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Economics

“Half a century of careless economic meddling creates a cycle of unfairness where well-connected individuals can cheat the free market system and get a competitive edge from the government.” industries have more regulation then others or are hurt more by equal regulation. Other companies receive subsidies while other companies do not, and many companies use campaign finance to extract political favors from politicians to improve the company’s standing in the marketplace. Increased regulation cannot have an equal effect on everyone, so some companies benefit relative to other companies.

Anything that shifts the competitive balance of an industry leads to perverted capitalism because the self-regulation that should come about from competition does not work anymore. This shift leads to a cycle where a lack of competitive balance begets exploitation of resources and the market. This exploitation then leads to more regulation, which further perverts the market and creates more crony capitalism. When people think the game of capitalism is rigged, they tend to ignore

who originally rigged it. Half a century of careless economic meddling creates a cycle of unfairness where well-connected individuals can cheat the free market system and get a competitive edge from the government. Crony capitalism is the biggest cancer in our system and it needs to be wiped out.

The other problem for businesses in the US that leads them to crony capitalism and other acts such as relocation to another country that make them seem un-patriotic to the public, creating another stain on capitalism, is taxes. The taxes on business are enormous. The stigma associated with business nowadays has caused the public to push for lower tax rates for individuals and higher tax rates for companies. The United States now has the highest corporate tax rates in the world at 39 percent, federal and state taxes included. However, this does not include all the other taxes such as

employer, property and franchise taxes.

As John Mackey, CEO of Whole Foods, writes in his new book “Conscious Capitalism”, “Whole foods had profit after taxes of $343 million, but we paid over $825 million in taxes total. The amount of taxes we paid was 24 times the amount we spent on philanthropy and twice as high as the amount of profit we got to keep. If our taxes were lower there would be lower prices for consumers and higher wages and benefits for our workers.” Taxes are a necessity, but there is a problem when taxes are so high that companies have to hold money overseas and relocate to pay less. Incredibly, high taxes are a symptom of the disease that is anti-capitalism: the belief by people that corporations need higher taxes because if we lower taxes they receive more profit. There is lack of understanding that receiving more profit results in a lowering of prices and a hiring more workers to expand businesses.

Whole Foods Profit as a Percentage of Revenue ($ Billions)

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37%

37%

38%

39%

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2013 Source: Marketwatch

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Economics

“Capitalism is the main reason for human advancement. Continuing the same economic progress we have witnessed in the last two hundred years requires reverting to pure free enterprise capitalism.”

The vilifying of businesses needs to stop if we plan on getting back to a healthy free enterprise economy. This process starts with the government making the right choices about economic meddling and changing the perception of capitalism in the business world and academia.

The majority global health and economic problems manifest themselves in third-world countries around the globe.

When people are asked about solving these problems, whether they are domestic or in other countries, the general answer is philanthropy. The problem with philanthropy is that while effective in the short term, philanthropy cannot make any fundamental changes. In fact, philanthropy can even hurt the economic development of the region. Consider a situation in which a philanthropic effort provides water to an area in a poor African nation for a month. Now suddenly all water sellers become obsolete because

people are getting free water. For-profit water suppliers will have to close up shop and fire the workers. Once the water runs out from the philanthropic effort, there is neither free water nor a water business.

It is important to remember that while philanthropy is good and charitable donations can help solve global problems, no solution is better then economic development and the introduction of free enterprise capitalism. Countries such as South Korea and Japan turned around incredibly quickly through rapid economic growth as a result of the implementation of capitalism.

If the answer is so simple, then why has free enterprise capitalism not been implemented in these countries? The answer is that it has, but a final cancer in capitalism is causing these countries to not experience the same growth as historical examples. That cancer is corruption.

Capitalism needs investment. You cannot

start a business without initial capital or a country without initial financing. People need loans to start businesses and financing to create value in the country. In corrupt countries, government officials steal financing and take for themselves and distribute the rest to their wealthy friends. These actions creates huge wealth inequality, which is then blamed on capitalism Capitalism is the main reason for human advancement in history, and continuing the same economic progress we have witnessed in the last two hundred years requires reverting to pure free enterprise capitalism and change the current perception of capitalism. Capitalism is not a necessary evil. Capitalism has done more good for world then any invention or system in the last 5000 years.

HMR

playingintheworldgames.wordpress.com

“People associate capitalism with greed and exploitation, but in a truly free enterprise, it is not possible for capitalists to exploit or discriminate.”

September 2014

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Economics

THE REALITY OF EDUCATIONAL ISOLATION Matthew Harpe

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lbert Shanker, the former President of the American Federation of Teachers, once outlined the two goals of American public education: “to promote social mobility” and encourage “social cohesion among America’s increasingly diverse populations.” If those are to be the standards for our education system, the situation today looks pretty dire.

A recent study by researchers from Harvard and Tufts universities found that the United States still lagged behind many developed countries in upward mobility. A child born in the United States to a family in the bottom quintile of earnings has only a 9% chance of rising into the top quintile.

While the United States trails numerous other countries in income mobility, many point to the fact that despite popular belief, income mobility in the U.S. has not actually decreased appreciably in the past twenty years. The problem is, however, that while some areas of the country appear

to rival European nations in upward mobility, there are many poorer parts, where rates of upward mobility are downright abysmal. Memphis, Tennessee offers children in the bottom quintile a 2.8% chance of rising to the top quintile, and Greenville, Mississippi is even worse at 2.2%. Though moving from the bottom quintile to the top may seem like an excessively challenging achievement, many individuals and families in the bottom quintile aren’t even below the poverty line, and the bottom limit of the top quintile of income falls well within the third lowest of the seven federal income tax brackets. The unfortunate truth is that for many American youths, the odds of even reaching the upper middle class are slim.

The chances for successful social integration remain low. With regard to race, according to the Public Religion Research Institute, the average white American has only one African American friend per one hundred friends and African Americans

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have, on average, even less than one Asian American friend per one-hundred friends.

Even more surprising, is that, according to the Huffington Post, approximately 40% of African American and Latino students go to schools where at least 90% of the student population consists of minorities, and approximately 80% of African American and Latino students go to schools with a majority minority student population. The economic stratification is almost as startling.

Students are divided based on their location of residence, so students from poor neighborhoods end up in schools with other poor students. Since much of school districts’ education budgets come from property taxes, schools in poorer areas are often underfunded, and poor students are consistently given worse facilities and teachers. In some areas of Long Island, New York, school districts spend over $25,000 per student annually, while in Alpine, Utah, the school district spends just over $5,000

Economics per student annually. The United States remains one of only three OECD members (of which there are thirty-four) that provide more educational resources to well-off students than disadvantaged students. It is no coincidence that the areas most prone to low upward mobility are home to subpar schools, as well as significant racial and economic segregation. If we can’t integrate different racial and socio-economic classes in school, and we don’t give disadvantaged groups the adequate tools to rise out of poverty, how can we ever expect to achieve true social cohesion in the U.S.?

The trouble with racial isolation in school does not only correlate to less government funding and resources, but also to the environment in which the students are learning. As outlined by the Economic Policy Institute, there are a host of issues regarding a community’s attitude towards learning that deeply influence the educational experience of students. First, when the majority of students are weaker, it is difficult for exceptional students to be challenged. Second, it is hard for teachers to provide consistency, when new students are constantly being added and others are often missing school. Third, when students are not prepared to learn and teachers must focus on discipline, valuable time that should be dedicated to learning is lost. Fourth, when students have parents without strong educations, they are less likely to have parental pressure to perform in school and are most likely to have friends who have similar attitudes. With few to emulate who have gone to college, isolated students often don’t take advantage of their education and don’t thoroughly consider all of their options.

There are countless problems with our nation’s education system, but, first and foremost, we must address the many poor communities that we simply fail to even adequately serve. The education gap between poor and wealthy students is continuing to increase. While the white-black achieve-

ment gap has dropped since the desegregation of schools in the 20th century, the income achievement gap risen steadily for the past 60 years. Particularly striking is that by age four students under the poverty line are already 18 months behind an average four year old in cognitive ability. Disadvantaged students simply don’t have as much exposure at home to activities that develop brain function. In fact, the National Center for Children in Poverty observed that due to the discrepancy in reading between income groups, a low-income, third-grade student with uneducated parents knows 4,000 English vocabulary words compared to 12,000 for a middle-income third-grader.

What poor students need in order to catch up is the individual attention many wealthier students receive at home. As Richard Rothstein of the Economic Policy Institute argues, we must address “conditions that bring too many children to school unprepared to take advantage of what schools have to offer.” Students are unprepared not only in the sense that they enter school already lagging in important subject-matters, but also in the range of complications they regularly deal with.

Disadvantaged students often are exposed to more violence and crime than others, increasing their daily levels of stress. A lack of space to work quietly hinders their abilities to work effectively. And inadequate healthcare and nourishment lead to a lesser ability to concentrate and more days of school missed due to illness. Finally, stressful situations at home, which often accompany the struggle to make financial ends meet and unstable families, make it harder to focus on school. While many experts estimate the U.S. could reasonably spend more money on education or, at the least, much more efficiently allocate the funding, if we must act in the most cost-efficient manner, the future of education may be more about dealing with personal problems. With more curriculums and courses that are very well thought out available online, there is far less

of a need to focus on the actual subject material. Instead, we should employ teachers who are able to help students with problems at home, general learning difficulties, and health issues, as well as develop strong work ethics and important life skills. If we can begin to use interactive technologies to teach class material to students at their own pace, teachers will have the ability to float around the classroom, working individually with students and giving them the individual attention they need and deserve.

Regardless of the solution, that degree of teacher-student interaction is a must.

Perhaps equally as important is working towards training the next generation. Patrick Sharkey of NYU finds that children who grow up in poor neighborhoods but whose mothers grew up in middle-class neighborhoods perform only slightly below children who grow up in middle-class neighborhoods and whose parents are from middle-class neighborhoods. Meanwhile, children who grow up in middle-class neighborhoods but whose parents grew up in poor neighborhoods, score significantly lower than either group. Mr. Sharkey concludes that, in some manners, “the parent’s environment during childhood may be more important than the child’s own environment.” We have to make a more significant effort to teach life skills. If we can share the values that well-educated parents manage to impart on their children with disadvantaged individuals, we can begin to dramatically curb the cycle of poverty and sub-standard education.

The problem of inequality, not just in income but also of opportunity, needs to be confronted from a variety of angles. Economic and political change are necessary – education can only solve part of the problem – but without an education system that caters to disadvantaged students, no matter how we attempt to rebalance opportunity, poor children will never be able to fully take advantage of the opportunities they have. HMR

“If we can’t integrate different racial and socio-economic classes in school, and we don’t give disadvantaged groups the adequate tools to rise out of poverty, how can we ever expect to achieve true social cohesion in the US?” September 2014

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Science and Technology

BIG DATA Deependra Mookim ‘11

“B

ig Data” is a silly umbrella term for a profoundly transformative concept. At its core, the term represents our ability to collect, store, and make sense of large data sets. The sheer amount of data generated is one of the drivers underpinning the big data revolution. From the dawn of mankind to 2003, we created an estimated five exabytes of data. From 2003 to 2012, we generated 2.7 zettabytes–500 times the amount up to 2003. Data generation is also not slowing down. Collection costs are falling and engagement with data-driven platforms are rising. In addition to the volume of data, increasing variety and velocity define big data.

Data is being created through the form of videos, photos, social media comments, etc. The velocity of data is rising as more data originates through real-time sources such as GPS data from smartphones.

While potentially valuable, this kind of data is unstructured. Traditional database tools are not equipped to handle unstructured data, which is why the big data revolution has necessitated a new set of IT tools and skills.

The private sector has a generally positive and optimistic view of big data’s possibilities. Businesses across a wide range of industries have realized they can benefit from smarter decision-making through big data. In fact, entire business models’ cornerstones include big data.

For example, Uber, an on-demand taxi service, is upending the taxicab industry through its usage of data to create better dispatch algorithms. The service more efficiently connects drivers with passengers through tools such as charging different prices based on demand (i.e. surge pricing) and then takes a 20% cut of a ride’s fare. Uber was recently valued at an

astounding $17 billion. Big data has been all the rage in the private sector, but the concept can also translate to the government. The potential for big data in government is far-reaching in application, similar to what we have already seen in the private sector. However, big data poses a unique set of challenges and risks in the public sphere.

The government is in a unique position to collect data strategically due to its scope and numerous touchpoints with citizens. Analyzing this data could yield new insights on managing administrative programs and help create a smarter government. This is not wishful thinking: we have already seen the benefits of a data-driven approach to governance.

For example, the Santa Cruz Police Department introduced PredPol in 2011, a predictive analytics tool to anticipate where crimes are going to be commit-

The government is in a unique position to collect data strategically due to its scope and numerous touchpoints with citizens.

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ted. In that year, Santa Cruz experienced a 27% decrease in burglaries; the results were similarly impressive when PredPol was rolled out in 2012 for Los Angeles.

While no substitute for effective police work, programs like PredPol enhance traditional judgment and are particularly valuable in a time of strained government budgets. While healthcare has been a sore point for our government, it is at the same time an area ripe for a big data revolution. Panorama, developed by IBM for the Canadian government, illustrates the kinds of opportunities available through big data. The 2003 SARS outbreak prompted the Canadian government to take action, especially due to a post-SARS study that highlighted a failure to use, share, and analyze collected data. Panorama now offers Canada a system with integrated data components such as outbreaks, immunizations, and family health. Big data has proven its utility through novel applications by the government and untapped areas from homeland security to education provide reasons to be excited about the future.

The big data revolution has been

bolstered by a number of powerful technological forces. In terms of hardware, computing power is increasing exponentially with Moore’s Law, data storage costs are falling, and Internet networks are getting faster. Software also progresses as tech giants and startups alike focus on harnessing big data. Secular trends like the Internet of Things–intercon-

nections between physical objects and the Internet–makes big data even bigger by increasing the variety and velocity of data inputs. Business model innovations like crowdsourcing similarly augment the data that would be accessible to the government. For example, Boston launched an app called Street Bump to identify potholes that need to be fixed.

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Science and Technology

Harnessing big data will be critical to achieving a smarter government. We have even already leveraged data in areas from policing to healthcare, and technological mega-trends like crowdsourcing have served as additional tailwinds.

Users that have downloaded the app can turn it on and simply leave their phone on the dashboard or in a cup holder. The phone’s accelerometer can sense when the car goes over a sudden bump and the GPS coordinates of the pothole are sent to the city. The app has helped to detect thousands of potholes, and it is only getting better through further iterations of the software.

Government use of big data is not as well-defined as it is in the private sector. The Obama administration has acknowledged these issues, with key findings presented in a 90-day review of big data and privacy. The review included survey results that showed that 80% of respondents were “very much concerned” about the transparency of data use. The NSA spying scandal exemplifies the root cause of this concern: big data is powerful and can be abused without the appropriate checks and balances. Even

with the best of intentions, big data can create a risk of privacy invasions or discriminatory outcomes. One of the criticisms of Boston’s Street Bump app is one of social prejudice. Smartphone owners typically live in wealthier areas, which means the app identifies fewer potholes in poorer areas. Our legislative treatment of data is often outdated; for example, the Stored Communications Act governs law enforcements’ accessing electronic information and was originally passed in 1986. Since then, the availability and profile of data have changed dramatically. The usage of big data in government requires proper controls and updated legislative frameworks.

Harnessing big data will be critical to achieving a smarter government.

We have already leveraged data in areas from policing to healthcare, and technological mega-trends like crowdsourcing have served as additional tailwinds. Even

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more exciting are the remaining possible applications of big data to government.

Using big data will require more data scientists, instead of just political scientists. Big data also requires wholesale change in governance, with new oversight structures and more nimble regulations to keep up with constantly evolving technologies. The tremendous benefits from big data justify the investments and privacy risks we must bear. Governments are often criticized for being slow and bureaucratic. While big data won’t solve everything inefficient about the government, it could enable better decision-making, greater collaboration, and smarter allocation of resources. HMR

Science and Technology

TACKLING THE EBOLA CRISIS Lauren Futter

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E

pidemics have always been a source of fascination in movies, books, and TV shows. Usually, a patient begins exhibiting unusual symptoms. Before long, everyone with whom that person comes into contact becomes infected. The movie, TV show, or book then follows one man’s quest to find the vaccine in order to save his family and, as an afterthought, the world. The whole scenario is nicely wrapped up in two hours.

In reality, outbreaks of disease are messier. Problems such as slow reacting governments, insufficient supplies, and the denial of the general public delay treatment and impede the ability to contain the illness. Now, faced with the Ebola virus, countries throughout Western Africa are confronting these problems.

Despite the World Health Organization (WHO)’s declaring a state of emergency, the reaction toward the crisis has been plagued with inefficiency, ill equipped personnel, and misinformation.

The Ebola outbreak began in December in southeastern Guinea with the death of a two-year-old boy. A week

after the boy’s death, his mother, sister, and grandmother died. It was not until March that the outbreak of the disease was announced, although at first officials could not identify the specific type of disease. By late March, the WHO publically acknowledged that the disease was the Ebola Virus. By then it had already spread to Liberia. July saw the virus spread to Nigeria, prompting the WHO to declare a state of emergency.

WHO is now predicting that the crisis may continue for another six months.

One of the most pressing problems of the Ebola outbreak is the lack of resources necessary to contain it. During the first Ebola outbreak in the Congo in 1976, although the disease was virtually unknown at that time, medical officials knew to quarantine villages in Yambuku and to isolate high-risk individuals. However, now, given the limited financial and medical resources of the affected countries, it has been nearly impossible for health care officials to keep up with the number of infections.

In Liberia, there is one official treatment center which is overrun with patients.

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Because of the lack of facilities, many people who have Ebola are forced to live in school classrooms that have been converted into shelters for the sick. There is a lack of running water and electricity in hospitals in Sierra Leone and Liberia, making it difficult for doctors to care for the sick.

In addition to a lack of basic necessities, many hospital workers do not have even the most rudimentary of tools, including rubber gloves. With a disease like Ebola, which is easily spread through bodily fluids, vomit, diarrhea, and bleeding from the eyes, ears, and mouth, rubber gloves can mean the difference between invulnerability and infection.

Doctors must not only battle the virus but the people they are hoping to assist as well. In the past, doctors were welcomed in communities experiencing outbreaks. Now, they are met with distrust, as members of various communities believe that the doctors are spreading disease or that Ebola is a hoax. In Guinea, young men wait on the border of villages with knives and other weap-

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WHO declares state of emergency

organizations such as Doctors Without Borders from entering villages desperately in need of aid. These uninformed actions are only managing to spread the virus. Members of the community often touch the Ebola patients and contract the disease, or prevent those with Ebola from seeking proper medical treatment.

Some of the infected also refuse to acknowledge that they have Ebola and run away from medical facilities or turn to local folk remedies. Some members of communities touched by the outbreak have turned to violent protest. On August 16th, angry protestors raided an Ebola isolation center in Monrovia, taking items infected by patients. By taking supplies used in medical facilities that have been infected, the attackers have endangered the lives of many more residents of the slum where the facility is located.

Other violent protests have resulted in the closure of medical facilities. These reactions in part stem from West Africa’s experiences with civil war and government corruption, which generated a strong mistrust of the government. That mistrust has contributed to the spread of Ebola.

The only way to slow the outbreak is to ensure the availability of medical teams and supplies to fight the epidemic.

However, equally important is that the assistance reach the treatment centers.

Several pharmaceutical providers such as Mapp Biopharmaceutical have begun work on vaccines. While the development of these vaccines may prevent the spread of the disease in the future, virologists believe that they will have limited effect on this current outbreak. Another company, GlaxoSmithKline is working with the National Institute of Health, but its vaccine will probably not go to trial until next year. For the vaccines that have been approved, there is only a limited supply that has not yet been proven to be fully effective. Therefore, while research into vaccines may prevent future outbreaks, governments must address today’s epidemic by, at a minimum, supplying rubber gloves and goggles. China has sent $5 million worth of aid and several doctors with medical supplies and teams to countries affected by the outbreak. The doctors will be instructing teams on how to treat Ebola patients. In late August, the US sent over 50 disease specialists and USAID has committed $12 million to the problem. Supplying

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1976

Scientists discover Ebola after an outbreak in the Congo

The 2014 Ebola outbreak begins with the December death of a two-year-old boy in Guinea.

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March

WHO acknowledges outbreak

July

medical teams and equipment to areas that need them the most such as Liberia, which has the second lowest number of doctors per person in the world, will allow for Ebola to be contained much more efficiently.

But getting these medical teams and supplies to the affected communities is equally part of the equation. West African governments must first win the trust of their citizens. In order to win this trust, those who refuse to acknowledge Ebola must be educated about it. Health officials are attempting to spread this awareness by disseminating information online. Although only 7.4% of Liberians have access to the Internet, nearly 69% have access to cell phones. Health officials can spread awareness by sending information about the disease to those who have access to cell phones. The African media is also attempting to educate the public on Ebola. By playing jingles that explain what Ebola is and how to diagnose it, African TV stations and radio are raising awareness. However, the efficacy of media campaigns is predicated on people linking what they see in the media to what is happening in their communities. Many Liberians in neighborhoods such as West Point say that they see Ebola on television but have not seen it in their towns. This denial and lack of trust has been difficult to combat.

Where education fails, though, proof of the worth of health care workers and the government can succeed. If developed nations provide aid in the form of health care supplies and doctors who can work efficiently to help neighborhoods affected by Ebola, Liberians may slowly begin to trust the health care workers who are trying to help them. The system for addressing Ebola is currently disorganized because of its lack of infrastructure and proper medical supplies. Liberians and other West Africans believe that the health care system is causing the spread of Ebola. By proving that the health care system will actually help communities, the government can slowly win the trust of the people.

Still, to some extent, the damage is already done. Much of what is needed to stem the Ebola crisis should have been done months ago. In order to prevent crises such as the Ebola outbreak from happening to the same extent that it did this year, a combined effort to invest in Africa’s infrastructure must be made. One

Science and Technology option, which once seemed impossible, is a private-public partnership. In this scenario, aid money would be diverted from the countries in need of aid and would instead be given to engineering firms for the purpose of building roads.

Because there is still rampant corruption in many African governments, investing in engineer firms would ensure that investments were being used properly.

Although investment in engineering firms might better secure funds for infrastructure, the African Development Bank estimates that Africa will only be a middle-income continent by spending nearly $90 billion every year for a decade on infrastructure. In order to raise this capital, African nations cannot simply rely on aid organizations. African governments must invest in their own people by actively promoting their countries as fertile ground for business investment. In order to promote themselves in this way, countries must divert military spending to improving health care.

Military spending in Africa rose 8.3% in

2013 to $44.9 billion, and most of the investment in infrastructure has been for commercial use. While many countries in Western Africa and throughout Africa need to invest more in infrastructure, it is important to consider health care infrastructure, as well. While many aid advocates argue that it is only through the traditional path of building infrastructure that Africa can attract businesses that will grow the economy, there are no set rules that state a country can only grow in this one way.

In order to improve healthcare quality in Africa, healthcare officials should begin using telemedicine. Telemedicine is the process by which doctors in urban centers communicate with doctors in small communities in order to treat patients. These urban doctors might be specialists in neurosurgery, pediatrics, and other forms of healthcare. Instead of building underused specialty hospitals in remote communities, telemedicine would allow remote communities access to many different types of care. Health-

care officials in small communities will be able to communicate with doctors in urban centers to better treat their patients. In the uncommon scenario that someone does need specialty care, local doctors can coordinate with urban hospitals to move the patient so that he or she can receive treatment. Telemedicine would provide early alerts of disease outbreaks so that if Ebola or any other contagious disease appears, medical officials will be able to quickly identify and contain the problem.

Ebola is a wake up call. In order for Africa to prevent further outbreaks of contagious disease, governments throughout Africa must be willing to invest in healthcare education through the use of the media and telemedicine while waiting for infrastructure improvements.

Only through educating the public and building new infrastructure can these countries protect their citizens. HMR

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