JHU POLITIK
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MARCH 30, 2015
VOLUME XVII, ISSUE IX
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JHU POLITIK EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Eliza Schultz MANAGING EDITOR Christine Server
HEAD WRITER Julia Allen
ASSISTANT EDITORS Katie Botto Dylan Etzel Preston Ge Abigail Sia
POLICY DESK EDITOR Mira Haqqani
CREATIVE DIRECTOR Diana Lee
MARYLAND EDITOR David Hamburger
COPY EDITOR Florence Noorinejad WEBMASTER Ben Lu MARKETING & PUBLICITY Chiara Wright FACULTY ADVISOR Steven R. David
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CAMPUS EDITOR Juliana Vigorito
STAFF WRITERS Olga Baranoff Dylan Cowit Arpan Ghosh Alexander Grable Rosellen Grant Rebecca Grenham Evan Harary Shrenik Jain Shannon Libaw Robert Locke Morley Musick Sathvik Namburar Corey Payne Zachary Schlosberg
• March 30, 2015 • Volume XVII, Issue IX
INSIDE THIS ISSUE
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Week in Review: Free Speech Cases Dylan Cowit ’16 The Social Physics of Tunisia Dylan Etzel ’17 No, Really, Are We in a Tech Bubble? Evan Harary ’16 In Defense of the Women’s Dignity Drive Carlene Partow ’16 How to Read The News-Letter’s SAE Editorial Morley Musick ’18 Libertarian Economics Failed Developing Countries Alexander Grable ’15
Volume XVII, Issue IX • March 30, 2015 •
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Week in Review: Free Speech Cases by Dylan Cowit ’16, Staff Writer License Plates, the Confederate Flag, and the First Amendment The Supreme Court of the United States heard oral arguments this week in Walker v. Sons of Confederate Veterans, a First Amendment case concerning state-issued license plates. When a Texas chapter of the Sons of Confederate Veterans proposed a license plate design with an image of the Confederate flag, Texas state officials rejected the design on the basis that many members of the general public found the design offensive. The Sons of Confederate Veterans argue that state-issued license plates are a form of private speech and that censoring a chosen message would thus violate the First Amendment. In contrast, Texas claims that specialty license plates are a form of government speech and that the state can dissociate itself from symbols, messages, and viewpoints that it does not wish to convey. In deciding whether such license plates express the speech of the government or motorists, the Supreme Court will finally answer a First Amendment question that has been debated by constitutional scholars for decades.
India’s Supreme Court Strikes Down Censorship Law This past Tuesday, the Supreme Court of India struck down a controversial law that had made it illegal to spread “offensive messages” on electronic devices. The relevant section of the Information Technology Act, which first came into existence in 2000, had allowed the government to imprison any individual who posted “information that is grossly offensive or has menacing character.” The law has long sparked outrage among the general public in India, especially following the 2012 arrest of two young women who had shared and “liked” a Facebook post criticizing the shutdown of Mumbai. In its ruling, the Supreme Court of India declared the challenged provision of the law unconstitutional, arguing that it was a violation of the freedom of speech. Law student Shreya Singhal, who first petitioned the court in the case, declared the court’s ruling “a victory for the country.”
Ruling on Campaign Speech Regulations Upheld By declining to review a recent decision by the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals, the Supreme Court of the United States has reaffirmed the striking down of a Minnesota campaign law. The relevant section of the 101-year old statute, known as the Fair Campaign Practices Act, had made it illegal to knowingly make false political statements about ballot questions. The lawsuit regarding the statute was first filed in 2008 by Joel Brude and Ron Stoffel, two individuals who were alleged to have made false statements in political campaign materials. Although the suit was initially dismissed in 2013 by U.S. District Judge Ann Montgomery, the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed Judge Montgomery’s decision last September and struck down the Minnesota law as a violation of the freedom of speech. Now that the Supreme Court has denied a request to review the decision of the Eighth Circuit, final resolution has been brought to the case. ■
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• March 30, 2015 • Volume XVII, Issue IX
The Social Physics of Tunisia by Dylan Etzel ’17, Assistant Editor
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eporters all over the world marveled at the completed Tunisian Constitution in 2013. The country was the first in the Arab world to successfully transition from authoritarianism to democracy with relatively little bloodshed while including Islamists – the Ennahda political party – in the political transition. Even more miraculous was the group that saved Tunisian democracy: an alliance made up of lawyers, merchants, human rights advocates, and the labor unions. Their union, known as the Quartet Initiative, managed to draft a constitution that satisfied two conditions: it both placated Ennahda, and served to liberalize Tunisian society, as the people had demanded in the overthrow of the Ben Ali regime. However, the democratization of Tunisia has produced an equal but opposite reaction: civilian violence. Many political and religious questions have arisen since the Constitution’s inception. To what degree does the law need to respect the Qur’an? To what extent must the law provide freedom of speech? For the most part, reactions to these questions were contained inside of a political bubble, as the government successfully answered the needs of its people. But just less than two weeks ago, that bubble popped, as violent religious extremists massacred civilians at Bardo, the country’s national museum. ISIS claimed responsibility for the attacks, puzzling many analysts given ISIS’s general absence from the region. An Al Qaeda division operates locally, but the Islamic State is geographically distant from Tunisia.
Although ISIS’s physical reach does not extend to Tunisia, the terrorist organization has attracted many recruits from the country since mid-2014. Business Insider columnist Pierre Bienaimé acknowledges a new twist to the ISIS recruitment story: the effect that democratization has had on extremism. Analysts typically cite youth unemployment percentages in explaining the vast numbers of recruits that ISIS receives from various countries. However, Tunisia’s number of emigrants leaving the country to join ISIS is unusually high. It is therefore necessary to highlight the cause of this phenomenon: the liberal compromises made by the Tunisian parliament. This deduction is consistent with the opinion of the Tunisian government. On March 26, the Minister of International
Cooperation of Tunisia, Yassine Brahim, published an oped in The Wall Street Journal with the subtitle, “Extremists are afraid of the country’s democracy.” This analysis is simple but telling. Curiously, Mr. Brahim ends the article with a call for increased international investment and tourism, which is, at the very least, a dangerous proposition for foreign visitors and, at most, antithetical to his conclusions. Augmenting foreign influence will serve to catalyze the violence, considering that the aggressors are already outraged by the influx of foreign, specifically Western, ideas. This is not the first time the structure of action-reaction has appeared in the theory behind liberalizing the Middle East. U.S. presence in Iraq led to rampant civilian violence before ISIS ever conquered Mosul. Public outcry, though muted by the Western media, expanded under the first few Iraqi democratic governments. By contrast, the framers of the Tunisian Constitution sought to change politics slower than had occurred in Iraq or in the case of other democratic failures of the Middle East. Despite the attack on the Bardo Museum, gradual change has produced favorable results thus far. However, the comments made by Mr. Brahim may indicate a transition toward faster change. Simultaneously, ISIS has publicly claimed that Bardo was “just the start.” There are ways that Tunisia can pursue both anti-extremist and progressive policies, but liberalization will take time. International investment could be part of a solution, as Mr. Brahim recommended, provided that it generates job growth. At the same time, innovations in Islamic finance that coordinate with foreign direct investment could provide a sense of religious familiarity for which some Tunisians seem to yearn. It is impossible to overlook the fact that liberalizing a community requires more time than the constitution drafting process. Under the former regime, dissidents could simply be repressed; if Tunisia wants to maintain its genuine democracy, it must treat dissidents as part of the political system. This is not to say that the government should negotiate with aggressors, but it must continue to acknowledge the requests of its religious population. Liberalization includes recognizing all opinions, not just attempting to have foreign investment steer the political system. ■
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No, Really, Are We in a Tech Bubble? by Evan Harary ’16, Staff Writer
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ber is, by any traditional measure, a young company, but you wouldn’t know it given how far it reaches. Founded in 2009, it is currently worth approximately $41 billion. Snapchat, founded 2011, is worth $19 billion, and Tinder, a two-year-old company with no revenue stream, is worth at least $1 billion. Skim any industry news source and you will find at least five startups claiming to revolutionize their target industry, connect customers to an unheard of extent, and usher in a new era of socially conscious consumption. The world of tech startups clearly moves fast and thinks big, and investors have rewarded it accordingly. Money has flowed into tech startups at remarkable rates in recent years, with the NASDAQ soaring past 5000 for the first time since 2000. A chorus of prominent investors think that this wave of investment has reached unsustainable levels. To Mark Cuban, billionaire investor and owner of the Dallas Mavericks, the current tech climate bears an unsettling resemblance to that of the 1999 dot-com bubble. “If we thought it was stupid to invest in public internet websites that had no chance of succeeding back then, it’s worse today,” Cuban wrote on Blog Maverick. Cuban continues to point out that while the companies of the dot-com crash were public and therefore liquid, most “angel” investors in today’s tech companies are private and have no means to liquidate their investments should the going get tough. Sir Michael Moritz, an early investor in Google and chairman of Sequoia Capital, struck a similar tone when speaking to CNN. “There are a whole lot of crazy little companies that will disappear,” Moritz said, adding that investment would be put to better use in China, “the most vibrant setting for startups in the world.”
see the breakneck pace at which some startups grow as risky business. Even beyond the household names like Whatsapp and Instagram, both sold or valued at over $1 billion, there are countless multi-million dollar companies with no revenue streams. It certainly seems that many tech startups, in their haste to revolutionize our daily interactions, forgot to find a way to make money. Some fear that if these companies never find a way to turn a profit, investors will panic and, in doing so, drive down tech valuations and bring about a financial crash. But not everybody is ready to condemn Silicon Valley just yet. TechCrunch conducted a statistical comparison between today’s tech climate and that of the dot-com boom, finding scant similarity. But this may, more than anything, reflect the different conditions under which businesses operate after nearly a decade and a half, a monumental financial crisis, and unprecedented technological innovation. TechCrunch found that Venture Capital funding is rising, but still barely half of its 1999 peak. But, compared to 1999, when fundraising and valuation moved more or less in sync, valuations today dwarf fundraising, a worrying notion to some. Others dismiss concerns wholeheartedly, putting the potential for a tech bubble in perspective. Phil Perlman of Yahoo Finance writes that the number of people involved in “angel investing is microscopic relative to the 2000 tech bubble and so the amount of money lost will be inconsequential.” He continues, saying that Cuban, a multibillionaire with an unusually large stake in tech, “is overstating the damage that will be done.” Who knows whether the tech bubble is imminent or not, but should anyone but the super-rich care? Pearlman doesn’t think so. He concludes that “chances are, if you are reading this, you are not affected.” ■
Cuban and Moritz command enormous respect in tech investment circles, and they are far from the first to shout fire in a tech startup culture that is, with approximately 225,000 angel investors, a fairly crowded room. Industry sources such as Forbes have warned of a tech bubble since early 2014, and it’s not difficult to understand why people
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• March 30, 2015 • Volume XVII, Issue IX
In Defense of the Women’s Dignity Drive
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by Carlene Partow ’16, Contributing Writer
ast month, I attended a Student Government Association meeting to advocate for a finance bill to fund the Women’s Dignity Drive. My involvement with a network of local homeless shelters led me to propose the drive in response to residents’ need for feminine hygiene products, tampons and pads. Unfortunately, after a lengthy deliberation, the senate killed the bill. The senators cited a variety of reasons for vetoing it, ranging from disapproval that their money would be spent on T-shirts with the term “feminist” emblazoned across the chest to their erroneous belief that the drive was not a school-wide event, despite that its fundraising efforts would be held on the Breezeway, a public space visited daily by a large portion of the student body. Especially troubling was the senators’ concern that the drive would not directly benefit the student body. They argued that SGA is elected by the student body to serve its interests, and that they could not in good conscience fund an event that was not specifically intended for students. This argument, I believe, represents an air of entitlement and privilege that is detrimental to both our student body and the Baltimore community within which we are situated. Johns Hopkins has a sordid history with the greater Baltimore area, from gentrification efforts that have displaced families (consider the University’s ongoing partnership with East Baltimore Development Inc.) to paying unionized Hospital workers, most of whom are black Baltimoreans, so little as to qualify them for food stamps. The University has a responsibility to make amends with the community it has for so long abused. Our student body, too, has a responsibility to make reparations to the community we live in, not only because of past errors but also because of the Baltimore community’s continued support of Johns Hopkins. The participants in our research studies, and the workers who staff our cafeteria, maintain our pipes in freezing weather, and venture to campus when the city has otherwise shut down for snow, are all Baltimoreans. The University simply would not function without these individuals. These facts seemed relevant to only one portion of SGA: the black senators and president, who made clear that their votes in support of the bill came from knowledge
of Johns Hopkins’ history and the fact that the drive would be benefiting a historically marginalized group. Furthermore, precedent indicates that SGA happily funds events held by groups that are made up of primarily white, affluent students like fraternities, but apparently reject efforts that benefit women of color. Events such as FIJI’s the PUSH, which benefits the United Service Organization, has historically received $1000, and the Beta Theta Pi tailgate received another $1000 this past year, which was approved by 20 out of 22 senators. In addition, for the past two years, Dance Marathon has been given $500. There is nothing that makes these events more accessible to the student body – and accessibility was a key reason that SGA withheld funding. One could actually argue that the non-central locations and weekend times of these other events renders them less accessible to the student body. The primary difference between them and the Dignity Drive is that there was nothing uncomfortable about the other charities. Donating to the military or cancer research disturbs no existing social hierarchies and, as a result, they are easily supported. In fact, supporting fraternity events over the Dignity Drive serves to reinforce these hierarchies. Perhaps the most egregious breach of integrity came at the end of the meeting once the bill had failed. Every senator who spoke against it in the two hours of discussion explicitly stated that, although they did not believe that SGA should fund the event, they obviously supported the cause, seeing its merit, and pledged to personally donate. In the past month, only 5 of 32 senators have donated. My question for SGA is this: does educating the student body about an important public health problem faced by Baltimore’s homeless population, and encouraging us to help rectify it, not benefit us? We are, after all, the world’s leading institution of public health research. Furthermore, does an initiative like the Dignity Drive not allow us to bond together for the greater good of the city in which we live? The drive, I believe, has had an edifying impact on our student body, and I hope it will encourage SGA to reconsider the events it supports – and does not support – in the future. ■
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How to Read The News-Letter’s SAE Editorial
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by Morley Musick ’18, Contributing Writer
n March 5, The Johns Hopkins News-Letter published an editorial demanding that the administration lessen the sanctions placed on the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity in the wake of a gang rape. Upon an examination of the piece, its argument falls apart, because the editorial fails to grasp the true purpose of fraternity reform. Its first point, which compares SAE to the Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity, also accused of having housed a gang rape in March 2013, is especially worthy of dismissal. The editorial highlights that, unlike the brothers of SAE, a number of Pike’s members themselves are implicated in the rape. They claim that, because SAE members committed lesser crimes than Pike, SAE should receive a lighter punishment. But this belief fails to take into account the goal of both these sanctions: to prevent future rapes in fraternity houses. Regardless of what punishment the university placed on Pike in the past, what is important now is how SAE’s new sanction will make fraternities safer. We should reject the editorial’s Pike comparison because this earlier punishment has no bearing on the future of safety at fraternity parties. The News-Letter rightly sees absurdity in the sanction’s purported justifications, and uses this absurdity as grounds for rejecting the suspension. If we were to believe the administration’s reasons for punishing the fraternity (“providing alcohol to minors and failing to adequately manage who is able to enter a party”), we too should reject SAE’s punishment. This pattern of conduct describes most – if not all – fraternity parties, yet no other houses are being punished. But, as The News-Letter states, these misdemeanors must not be the true reason for SAE’s yearlong suspension. The Office of Institutional Equity did not find evidence to suggest that SAE had created a dangerous environment, and yet the Johns Hopkins administration has stated that “the sanctions … speak to the ways in which we will continue to hold members of our community responsible for creating safe environments…” The Vice Provost’s letter suggests that one wing of our administration found no evidence to suggest that SAE created dangerous conditions – but that another wing is nevertheless punishing the fraternity for creating dangerous conditions in the hopes that other fraternities will become safer.
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From this contradiction, we can identify two possible truths: either SAE did foster an unsafe environment and we need to do something, or they did not create an unsafe environment and there is no apparent reason to take action. The News-Letter believes that the truth is closer to the latter option, whereas SAE is being treated as if the former were true. They believe in the OIE’s findings – which should, theoretically, exempt the fraternity from punishment – and claim that the Vice Provost is “punishing SAE for the assault rather than their actions.” What this argument fails to take into consideration is the fact that rapes occurring in fraternity houses and the actions of that fraternity are always connected. Regardless of what OIE found, a rape took place in SAE’s house, and from that alone, we can conclude that its members fostered unsafe conditions, however inadvertently. The News-Letter recognizes that fraternity parties are almost universally unsafe (note their comment: “We all know this could have happened to anyone”), but never challenges such dangerous and commonplace conditions. They are caught between their politically correct responsibility of calling for some punishment, while believing in their hearts that SAE did nothing that actually led to the rape. Their belief rests on a terrible, ever-present philosophy: that if everyone is doing something, it cannot be wrong. They know that most fraternities create unsafe party conditions and that this rape could have happened at any house. They believe, therefore, that SAE need not be punished. However, Pike’s punishment did not prevent the rape at SAE, and punishing one fraternity will not make all fraternities safer. The truth of the matter is, instead, that all fraternities need to change, and we need to enforce that change with meaningful reformative safety measures. In order for this to happen, our administration first needs to be honest about the purpose of its sanctions. Then we will be able to cease these absurd discussions about fairness and changes to fraternity culture, which, lest we forget, are nothing when weighed against the horrors of rape. ■
• March 30, 2015 • Volume XVII, Issue IX
Libertarian Economics Failed Developing Countries
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by Alexander Grable ’15, Staff Writer
eoliberals have long promised that their ideas of low or non-existent tariffs, no industrial subsidies, low government spending and low taxes, along with free movement of capital, would aid the developing world. But instead, these policies have created instability, burgeoning inequality, and slower growth. Since the early eighteenth century, countries that have successfully industrialized have almost always pursued a state-centric strategy of development. Ironically, given how the U.S. now pushes “free trade” agreements, the theory of state-led economic development is an American intellectual gift to the world. Alexander Hamilton, in his Report on the Subject of Manufactures, advocated for raising tariffs and giving subsidies to exporters to develop the fledgling U.S. economy, and became the intellectual godfather of a whole theory of development. Hamilton’s “American system” was implemented more fully beginning in 1828. The American system, with its high tariffs and facilitation of the development of infrastructure, ran counter to the prevailing “free trade” ideas coming from the United Kingdom. The U.K. itself began promoting low tariffs, free trade, and low government spending after the nation had previously developed its industries by doing precisely the opposite. The American system inspired the German economist, Friedrich List, who in turn was the brain behind Germany’s dynamic economic development from 1871 to 1913. Therefore, even at the height of classical liberalism, the fastest growing economies used the American system’s state-led model for economic development. But perhaps the most recent and most famous example of using the state to rapidly and successfully develop an economy is South Korea. In 1961, South Korea had half of the per capita income of Ghana. Today, South Korea has 40 times the latter’s per capita income. After General Park took power in a coup in 1961, he began to pursue a development policy that combined high tariffs, industrial subsidies, and cheap public credit for infrastructure spending and enterprises. He backed these policies with some of the most draconian capital control laws in the world. Legally, under General Park, a South Korean citizen could be executed for violating
capital controls. Instead of the economic disaster that economic libertarians would predict, South Korea became the fastest-growing economy in East Asia. General Park, as a pro-Japanese officer, copied what Japan had done in the 1930s and was continuing to do throughout the postwar period. Under the military regime, Korea was able to do it better. Not surprisingly, China has been booming with the pursuance of a development strategy modelled on the American system. By contrast, countries that have pursued free-market strategies of “development” have failed. One such example is Chile. Before 1973, Chile served as a model for the American system of development; it had one of the best performing economies in South America until 1972. Contrary to myth, Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet’s libertarian economic experiment was a disaster for Chile. After three years of a depression, the Chilean economy recovered somewhat due to a stock market bubble and then sank to new depths in the early 1980s when the bubble burst. Chile only began a sustained recovery after Pinochet espoused fewer of the policies touted by libertarian, U.S. trained economists. Today, despite its relative prosperity, Chile is worse off, in certain respects, than it was in 1971. Most of its industries are now anaemic or gone due to the policies of Pinochet. Like Russia, Chile is highly dependent on the price of commodities for growth. The comparison with Russia is telling because when Russia followed a more libertarian economic model in the 1990s, the result was the shrinkage of its economy by over 40 percent. Many Russians died for lack of health care or because they saw no reason to go on living. Such are the fruits of libertarian “developmental” economics. The point here is not to advocate for statist military strongmen like General Park. Rather, the point is that free trade is not a good model for economic development. Economic development is an ongoing process and some sectors of the economy will require tariffs and subsidies to renew or grow while others will not. Considering the negative impact of deindustrialization in United States over the past few decades, it is perhaps time for us to consider revisiting the American system ourselves. ■
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JHU Politik, founded in 2008, is a weekly publication of political opinion pieces. We proudly seek to provide the Johns Hopkins community with student voices and perspectives about important issues of our time. Rather than hide within a cloistered academic bubble, we know we must critically engage with the world that surrounds us. That, we believe, is at the heart of what it means to be learning. We are lucky to be situated in the city of Baltimore, a city with a rich history and an ever-changing politics. We aim to look at the politics of the Homewood campus, the city of Baltimore, the domestic landscape of the United States, and the international community . While we publish the Politik weekly, we work simultaneously on our special issues which come out once per semester. These magazines confront a single topic from multiple angles. We have run issues covering topics like the political nature of research, the Arab Spring, and our city Baltimore.
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• March 30, 2015 • Volume XVII, Issue IX