WUPR Issue 20.1: New Horizons

Washington University

political review 20.1 | February 2014 | wupr.org

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Editors’ Note Dear Reader, Editors-in-Chief: Moira Moynihan William Dobbs-Allsopp Executive Director: Nicolas Hinsch Staff Editors: Nahuel Fefer Aryeh Mellman Ben Lash Tori Sgarro Features Editor: Billie Mandelbaum Grace Portelance Director of Design: Michelle Nahmad Asst. Director of Design: Alex Chiu Managing Copy Editor: Stephen Rubino Director of New Media: Raja Krishna Programming Director: Hannah Waldman Finance Director: Alex Bluestone

Welcome back! We hope you are settling into 2014 well. In the spirit of the New Year, we’ve asked our writers this issue to look ahead and forecast some of the important events and trends on the horizon. Fittingly, our cover photograph features a testing site near Creech Air Force Base for one of the more controversial new developments in American military: unmanned drones. But drones are just one of many developments at the forefront of political debate, and in the following pages our writers have tackled a slew of issues regarding what’s to come in 2014.

This is an especially exciting year for our organization. Ten years ago this fall, the staffs of two partisan publications came together to create a single, multi-partisan magazine, the Washington University Political Review. Yes, 2014 marks our 10th anniversary as an organization, and in honor of this milestone, we have launched a redesigned magazine. The result is a fresh, friendly layout, for which we owe many thanks to our Design Chief, Michelle.

Anniversaries are, among other things, a time for reflection. WUPR owes a great deal to a long list of current and former members, whose work has contributed in countless ways to the strength of our organization. But our success over these past ten years is also due in no small part to our organization’s strong sense of identity. Given the occasion, we would like to rearticulate it here: We seek to provide the university community with an open forum to address issues on a local, national, and international scale. We accept submissions from all current undergraduate students, regardless of an author’s political stance or affiliation; we ask only that any opinion expressed is sincere and clearly articulated. Because our content is writer-generated, our aim is not to be comprehensive, but rather to suggest that each argument presented merits consideration. Consequently, views expressed in our magazine are our writers’ alone and represent neither the positions of the editorial staff nor those of the larger organization. Finally, in our effort to accommodate a diverse array of views, our organization will not endorse any political figure, issue, or ideology.

Thanks for your support. Please, keep reading, Will Dobbs-Allsopp Moira Moynihan

Front Cover and Theme Page: Kelsey Rogers Shelby Lindblad Back Cover Illustration: Alex Chiu We accept submissions from any undergraduate: editor@wupr.org

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Table of Contents National 4

Advice for Obama in 2014: Take Advantage of the Media

interNational 12 Obamacare Should be Judged

Charlie Thau 5

When Harry320 Met Sally95: The Future of Online Dating

on Substance, not Style Gabriel Davis

Hugh Dunkley, Jr.

of America’s Great Remaining Injustices Henry Kopesky

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South Sudan and the Future of Africa

16 Is Turkey a Banana Republic?

Victoria Sgarro 7

Stories Nations Tell Themselves

Oya Aktas 19 The Business of Babymaking

Gabe Rubin

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Charlie Crist’s Quest for Redemption in 2014

13 Trial as an Adult: One

Charlotte Jones

THEME: NEW HORIZONS

Hannah Waldman

24 “Techies” Take the City

Billie Mandelbaum 25 The Future of America and

the Middle East: Rhetoric and Realism Grace Portelance 26 Climate Change: Will Anyone

Take a Stand?

Claire Bartholomew 9

Attacking Modern Day Slavery

20 For the Sake of the Country, the

GOP Must Accept Gay Marriage

Kathleen Valadez

Aaron Wildavsky 10 Odious Debt

Javier Delgado

21 The Rise of the Individual in the

11 Ukraine: A Country Divided

Dan Bromberg

Unless otherwise noted all images are from MCT Campus

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Post-Arab Spring Middle East Kaity Shea Cullen

27 The New American Dream

Naomi Duru

Spring 2014 Event Schedule What About The Establishment Clause?

A public lecture by Guido Calabresi, Yale Law School and U.S. Court of Appeals Thursday, February 27, 2014, 4:30 p.m. in the Bryan Cave Moot Courtroom at Anheuser-Busch Hall (Law School) Co-sponsored with Washington University School of Law Let the Record Play!: The Phonograph in the Making of Modern American Religion A public lecture by Prof. Lerone A. Martin, Postdoctoral Research Associate, John C. Danforth Center on Religion and Politics Respondents: Prof. Gerald Early and Prof. Laurie Maffly-Kipp Wednesday, March 5, 2014, 4:30 p.m. in Umrath Lounge Beyond the Culture Wars: Recasting Religion and Politics in the Twentieth Century A conference with public keynote lecture by James Kloppenberg, Harvard University: Barack Obama and the Paradoxes of Progressive Christianity Thursday-Saturday, March 27-29, 2014 in Umrath Lounge Keynote lecture to be delivered Thursday, March 27, 2014, 7:00 p.m. in Umrath Lounge Full conference schedule at rap.wustl.edu

Food, Religion, and Politics: A Conversation on Contemporary Issues in the U.S. A moderated discussion with Karen Adelman, co-owner of Saul's Deli, Berkeley, California; Rabbi Ari Hart, co-founder of Uri L'Tzedek; Jason Fowler, co-founder of Sustainable Traditions and Land and Table, Lynchburg, Virginia; Rev. Jennifer Ayres, Ph.D., Candler School of Theology, Emory University; and Prof. Benjamin Zeller, Lake Forest College.

Tuesday, April 8, 2014, 5:00 p.m. in May Auditorium (Simon Hall) Religion and Sexual Revolutions in the United States A graduate student conference with keynote lecture by Prof. Rebecca L. Davis, University of Delaware Friday, May 9, 2014 (more details to follow) For more information or to RSVP: rap.wustl.edu rap@wustl.edu 314-935-9345 Free and open to all.

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Advice for Obama in 2014: Take Advantage of the Media Charlie Thau

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n the book Double Down: Game Change 2012, authors Mark Halperin and John Heilemann offer a fascinating anecdote illustrating the incredibly short attention span of most Americans. As the Republican primaries were heating up, and Newt Gingrich’s approval was on the rise, Mitt Romney’s advisors, dumbfounded, were sent scrambling to formulate a game plan. A barrage of tests and several focus groups later, they found that voters had only a loose awareness of the fact that Gingrich had “baggage” related to his personal and political life. Determined to rectify this ignorance, Romney embarked on a campaign of vicious attack ads and then went on to win his party’s nomination.

The episode teaches us two simple lessons: that Americans have an overwhelming tendency to forgive and forget, and that, with the passage of time, specific problems of the past tend to become murkier in the eyes of the public. All of which brings us to Barack Obama.

What we learned from 2013 is that in this age of “firework media” it all comes down to explosive, attention-grabbing stories. If the White House is able to take advantage of that, we might just look back 20 years from now and remember Obama’s past 12 months as only “baggage.”

Whichever way you analyze and dissect, no matter your political affiliation, most people agree: 2013 was a startlingly bad year for the president. The White House can recover, however, if they take advantage of the modern media.

The phenomenon of “forgiving and forgetting” is exacerbated in today’s social media age by the relentless 24-hour cable news cycle.

Intense competition among modern media outlets forces networks to dramatize many events. They strive to make each story “explode,” like fireworks on the Fourth of July, turning the electorate into entranced observers, heads metaphorically swiveling from headline to headline, each louder and more attention grabbing than the last.

This past year, the media had no shortage of such stories. Coming off of a decisive victory in the 2012 elections, Obama was likely optimistic heading into 2013. Almost immediately, however, he was met with defeat, a trend that would continue like a plague throughout the year. In the wake of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, Obama was unable to convince Congress to pass smarter gun laws, even as 92 percent of polled voters said they would support stricter background checks.

Benghazi continued to haunt the White House and its staff as

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round after round of congressional hearings attempted to pinpoint blame within the administration for security lapses and inconsistent communication in the days following the attack. Next, it was revealed that the IRS had systematically targeted pro-Tea Party groups prior to the 2012 election, causing an enormous uproar, with many wondering if the White House was involved.

In June, Edward Snowden blew the whistle on the NSA and the massive amount of data-mining that was going on without the American people’s knowledge. While Obama initially defended the NSA for protecting U.S. national security, he has since expressed guarded support for potential reforms. Exacerbating the problem, the Justice Department was found to have invaded the privacy of AP phone records as part of a leak investigation.

Regarding Syria, the President’s “Red Line” and his unexpected gamble to ask for Congressional approval for a military strike resulted in a public rebuttal of epic proportions, as a war-weary nation declined to participate in another Middle Eastern conflict. Obama then looked inept to many as Russian President Vladimir Putin delivered a powerful punch to the White House’s international credibility by slamming the United States in a New York Times opinion piece and forging a deal with Syria.

Lastly, Obamacare. Although the Democrats emerged from the government shutdown politically victorious, the administration squandered any political momentum. The rollout of the new healthcare law was nothing short of a disaster. Technical troubles plagued, then delayed the website causing many to wonder: if the government can’t set up a website, how can it run an intricate and complex national healthcare system? News continued to worsen, as many were astonished to learn that their healthcare plans were being dropped because they were deemed inadequate under the new, more stringent standards of the Affordable Care Act. To add insult to injury, President Obama won the 2013 “Lie of the Year” award from the nonpartisan fact-checking site PolitiFact for the false claim that “if you like your plan, you can keep it.”

Part of what we love about the New Year is that it gives us a clean slate, and the Obama administration is certainly no exception. There is hope for the president in 2014 if he focuses on three key issues: growing the economy, punishing Republicans for their intransigence regarding immigration reform, and reversing the public’s perception of Obamacare. What we learned from 2013 is that in this age of “fireworks media” it all comes down to explosive, attention-grabbing stories. If the White House is able to take advantage of that, we might just look back 20 years from now and remember Obama’s past 12 months as only “baggage.”

Charlie Thau is a freshman in the College of Arts & Sciences. He can be reached at cthau@wustl.edu.

When Harry320 Met Sally95: The Future of Online Dating Charlotte Jones

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t the ripe old age of ten I decided it was time for me to join the online dating community. My coy attempts to elicit any flirtation from my 4th grade crush, Nick, had failed, and one day, while my mother was out grocery shopping, I snuck on to her computer and typed in “eharmony.com”. I had seen the commercials featuring the amiable founder Neil Clark Warren, and he had assured me that eHarmony “used a scientific system to help you find someone who’s looking for you.”

Something about those commercials got to me. I filled in my personal information including my “worldgurl@yahoo.com” e-mail address and promptly began an exhaustive survey of who I was and what I wanted in a life partner. While my lifespan had yet to surpass a decade, I had a pretty good idea of whether or not my future husband would like literature (Harry Potter) and enjoy travel (Disneyland). Yet, after spending a solid forty minutes on this survey, I ultimately came to the step that demanded a credit card in exchange for my results. Feeling cheated, I quit the browser – furiously weighing the pros and cons of asking for a monthly subscription as a Christmas gift. I never asked for one though. Why? Subconsciously, I didn’t think it was right.

The stigma of online dating is complicated. From the most rational perspective, online dating is the most efficient form of meeting a potential partner. Depending on the depth of the survey and the intent of the website, individuals can meet others to form relationships ranging from lasting and

meaningful to brief and superficial, depending on what they sign themselves up for. Entire communities can be distilled down into who’s eligible, interesting and compatible.

In today’s modern age we pride companies and people on efficiency and productivity – so why not dating?

The technology behind dating sites may be new, but the idea isn’t. Relationship advertising originated in the 1700s when bachelors and bachelorettes would put out notices in newspapers. This proactive way of finding a match has, however, suffered a long history of prejudice. Young people have eschewed the idea that they won’t be able to find love on their own and will have to resort to the unromantic option of Plan Desperation: eHarmony, match.com or so many more.

Yet recent surveys show that 1/6th of marriages originating today come from online dating, and more and more Americans are warming up to the idea of online dating being a legitimate platform for connection. According to Pew Research Center, the percentage of Americans who consider online dating “a good way to put yourself out there” climbed from 44 percent in 2005

these alleged drawbacks are actually advantages of technology and dating’s integration.

While online dating fulfills many peoples’ desires in the form of casual dates, hookups or long-term relationships, the associated flaws of its virtual nature have yet to be fully resolved. 42 percent of women have been contacted by someone in a way that made them feel uncomfortable and over half of all users (54 percent) have felt seriously misguided by another’s dating profile. The detached nature of online dating raises opportunity for both fraud through anonymity and boldness through distance.

While introverted individuals can ease into communication more easily through a keyboard than through face-to-face contact others can feel more liberated to act without social propriety.

The online dating community is changing with the times along with peoples’ perception of its users. While a fifth of Americans still view online daters as “desperate,” that percentage is down eight points from eight years ago. With the combination of increased integration of technology in the individual, private sphere and the influx of online dating matrimonies, the future of vir-

The detached nature of online dating raises opportunity for both fraud through anonymity and boldness through distance. to 59 percent in 2013. This rise in public approval is in some part due to the sheer number of long term relationships resulting from virtual connections. The number of Americans who know a long-term couple that met through online dating has doubled in the past eight years. Yet another factor is people’s appropriation of technology into their daily lives. Americans incorporate technology whenever they need something– to find directions via Google Maps, to find restaurants from Yelp and now to find dates through OKCupid. Some claim that technology is draining the mystery from romance through online daters’ ability to pre-screen potential matches. Yet those who have been around the block a few times argue that

tual courtship is looking bright. I certainly did feel desperate at age ten – a washed up 4th grader down on her luck – yet I believe that with this current trend, fewer and fewer Americans are feeling like online dating is a personal defeat. The day that people exchange their online profile urls instead of phone numbers may not be so far away.

Charlotte Jones is a freshman in the College of Arts & Sciences. She can be reached at charlotte.jones@wustl.edu.

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South Sudan and the Future of Africa Victoria Sgarro

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n July 2011, the international community looked on hopefully when, after 20 years of bloody civil war, South Sudan finally became independent from the Republic of Sudan. Supported by nearly 99 percent of Sudanese voters, and as home to the third-largest oil reserves in Sub-Saharan Africa, South Sudan seemed poised to become one of Africa’s greatest success stories. However, long-held ethnic tensions and disputes with Sudan over oil rights kept the young nation’s future uncertain. Would South Sudan rise to the occasion of newfound independence or give way to political instability and ethnic conflict?

Less than two and a half years later, South Sudan’s future appears less promising. Plagued by violence throughout its lifetime, the new country saw its political tension come to a head on December 15 after an alleged coup attempt.

President Salvak Kiir accused rebels loyal to former Vice President Riek Machar, whom the president sacked in July, of staging the failed coup. Following the government’s accusations, violence broke out between members of Kiir’s Dinka tribe and Machar’s Nuer tribe in the capital of Juba and has since spread to half of South Sudan’s 10 states. Over 1,000 people have been killed in the fighting, and at least 180,000 displaced.

Yet outside of the current situation in South Sudan, there exists a growing enthusiasm for Africa’s future. Experts hope that the rich oil reserves found off the continent’s west coast and in countries like South Sudan will fuel accelerated economic growth in Africa’s many underdeveloped countries. Moreover, the United Nation estimates that Africa’s population will quadruple within the next century. Thus, optimists believe that Africa’s growing workforce combined with its abundant energy resources will spur record-breaking development in the near future. In fact, Africa is expected to experience this growth

South Sudan’s story of initial promise and its subsequent inability to realize that promise illustrates Africa’s dilemma as a whole. just as developed countries such as China and the United States face aging populations and declining birth rates. These circumstances will make Africa’s rise all the more influential.

However, South Sudan’s short history reveals a different future than this theory of rapid oil-fueled development would suggest. Although South Sudan has one of the largest oil deposits in Africa, the

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country has yet to transform its oil resources into progress. Neighboring Sudan has stood in opposition to this goal since South Sudan’s independence. While South Sudan gained about four times as many oil deposits as Sudan through their split, Sudan still controls the only export pipeline in the region, which begins in South Sudan but runs north through Sudan to the Red Sea. Because the two countries could not agree on how much South Sudan should pay to use the pipeline, South Sudan was forced to suspend oil production for 15 months, drastically cutting the government’s budget (previously almost entirely made up of oil revenue) and significantly raising food costs.

South Sudan finally ended its oil hiatus six months ago. Unfortunately, as the country solved one problem, another surfaced. In December, Machar’s rebel forces captured South Sudan’s oil-rich Unity state, which marks the starting point of the export pipeline. Sixteen oil workers were killed in the fighting, causing international oil investors, including China, to withdraw workers and shut down oil wells. It is likely that Machar will use his control of the country’s fragile oil infrastructure as leverage in his own power struggle against Kiir. As the country looms on the brink of civil war after only two and a half years of independence, the success of South Sudan’s oil production and developing economy is at stake once again.

South Sudan’s story of initial promise and its subsequent inability to realize that promise illustrates Africa’s dilemma as a whole.

Although South Sudan, like many other African countries, has the potential for great economic development because of its rich oil resources and rapidly growing population, its unstable governance and poor security prevent the realization of such possibilities. Instead of harnessing their abundant oil resources and growing workforce as some experts predict, many African countries could instead follow in South Sudan’s path. In a recent study conducted by the Fund for Peace, researchers found that 18 of the 25 most failed states on earth (including South Sudan) are found in Africa. If these countries do not change course, no amount of oil deposits or population growth can save them.

Above, a band waiting to play in South Sudan’s independence day celebrations, July 2011.

Victoria Sgarro is a junior in the College of Arts & Sciences. She can be reached at vrsgarro@wustl.edu.

Stories Nations Tell Themselves Gabriel Rubin | Illustration by Andrew Kay

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t the Smithsonian Institute’s Udvar-Hazy Air and Space Center, the killing machines sit side-by-side with the Concorde, hang-gliders, and a space shuttle. Every object receives the same scant curatorial attention; the labels show only details about the plane’s manufacturer and time of service. There is no deep contemplation here, no attempt to understand why these machines were created or how they were used. In the case of the Enola Gay, this lack of context seems particularly jarring. The B-29 that unleashed atomic war on the world, that killed some 80,000 people in Hiroshima, Japan, receives the same treatment as an early prop plane used in traveling circuses. Halfway across the world though, in a nation still grappling with its role in World War II, similarly cavalier treatment of wartime history is threatening to engulf an entire region in armed conflict.

Japanese prime ministers face perennial pressures from rightwing nationalists to visit Yasukuni Shrine, the burial place of military figures from the Meiji Restoration to the present. Among those buried there are World War II-era war criminals convicted by international tribunals. Neighboring countries, particularly South Korea and China, find visits to the shrine deeply offensive, as the military men buried there are responsible for the deaths of millions of their countrymen. Some prime ministers yield to the pressure and visit to satisfy a vocal portion of their base, others stay away to avoid inflaming regional tensions. In December, in accordance with his unabashedly nationalist rhetoric and desire to remilitarize Japan after decades of avowed pacifism, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe visited the shrine.

The international response came fast and hard. China, already at odds with Japan over maritime rights and territorial claims in the East China Sea, issued a statement saying that Abe’s visit “[tramples] on the feelings of the people of China and the other war victim nations, and is an open challenge to historical justice.” The United States, despite being Japan’s closest ally, scolded Abe for taking “an action that will exacerbate tensions with Japan’s neighbors.”

The visit to Yasukuni fits in with Abe’s overall vision of a strong, nationalist Japan no longer compelled to self-flagellate over its wartime actions. Abe has a personal stake in rehabilitating the memory of wartime leaders; his grandfather Nobusuke Kishi was a convicted war criminal himself. Abe’s conservative Liberal Democratic Party has

also been pressuring local school districts to adopt more “patriotic” history textbooks, specifically ones that downplay atrocities like the Nanking massacre (when Japanese troops murdered around 300,000 Chinese civilians) and the systematic rape of sex slaves euphemistically known as “comfort women.” The textbook controversy has also roiled regional diplomatic relations.

Abe and the LDP have defended their nationalist actions by pointing to another nation that values gung-ho patriotism: the United States. The argument here is that visits to the Yasukuni shrine and textbooks that portray military actions in a positive light are simply patriotic symbols like those common in the United States.

The difference between a visit to Yasukuni and a visit to the United States’ military shrine of Arlington Cemetery is one of narrative. The United States has been able to write its own history and construct a national myth without worrying (much) about the possible backlash from those who disagree with that narrative. In the documentary The Fog of War, former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara admits that if the U.S. had lost World War II, he and others who orchestrated the firebombing of Japan would have been convicted as war criminals. They killed hundreds of thousands of civilians as part of their “total war” doctrine. McNamara is buried in Arlington Cemetery. Is visiting his grave any less of an affront to human rights and historical memory than a visit to Yasukuni?

The uproar over visiting Yasukuni and rewriting textbooks points to the fragility of historical memory– the past cannot speak for itself.

The three-year-olds running around Udvar-Hazy looking at the Enola

Former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara admitted that if the U.S. had lost World War II, he and others who orchestrated the firebombing of Japan would have been convicted as war criminals.

Gay did not know they were in the presence of one of the greatest weapons of mass destruction in world history. The people of China and Korea have a stake in preserving the truth about those buried in Yasukuni– their ancestors should not have to suffer the indignity of having their murderers glorified. But before the U.S. government scolds Japanese nationalists for distorting the historical record and honoring war criminals, perhaps they should take a walk around Arlington or pay a visit to the Smithsonian.

Gabriel Rubin is a junior in the College of Arts & Sciences. He can be reached at grubin@wustl.edu.

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Your Ideas Here WUPR is always accepting submissions from Washington University undergraduates.

Send your ideas to editor@wupr.org

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Attacking Modern Day Slavery Kathleen Valadez | Illustration by Sara Wong

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hat our nation is failing when it comes to putting human traffickers behind bars is no secret. According to the U.S. government’s own estimates, while the national success rate in solving murder cases is about 70 percent, the annual percentage of trafficking and slavery cases solved is less than 1 percent. Essentially, this means that nearly every person responsible for trafficking and enslaving people in the United States is doing so with impunity. The problem may stem from a lack of understanding of the nature and pervasiveness of trafficking; by definition, a victim of human trafficking can be a person of any age, gender, race, or ethnicity who is being transported from one place to another to do anything against his or her will. Yet, a xenophobic tendency to pigeon-hole and marginalize both victims of trafficking and their traffickers allows Americans to distance themselves from the issue altogether. The disproportionate focus on the sex trafficking of young, non-native women only serves to confuse policy, impede victim identification and rehabilitation, and encourage the perpetuation of social structures which aim to govern the sexuality of women and minority populations.

According to Julietta Hua, a researcher at the University of Minnesota, most U.S. public service announcements, advertisements, and pamphlets paint a picture of victims of human trafficking as solely foreign women. Both men and native victims are largely ignored. Yvonne Zimmerman, author of “Other Dreams of Freedom: Religion, Sex and Human Trafficking,” states that even female victims are overwhelmingly portrayed as young, naive, innocent and lacking in sexual agency. As a result, women who seem too independent or display too much agency risk being viewed as not helpless or “good” enough to receive the advocacy and the treatment that they deserve. Furthermore, a victim who is male or LGBT risks not receiving advocacy at all because he does not fit the role of “victim” that has been presented to the general public. Such a closed-minded view of who may or may not be a victim of a crime in which victims are already often carefully hidden cripples our ability to identify, rehabilitate, and protect modern day slaves.

Although activists fighting trafficking in the United States often use “the fallen woman” as a way to gain interest and support

in their cause, relying on this trope detracts from the plight of individuals trafficked for something other than sex work, or victims who are men. Research by the University of California-Berkeley found that 46 percent of the people in slavery in the United States are forced into prostitution, meaning that more than half of slaves in the United States are trafficked for some other purpose. Despite the existence of an estimated minimum 10,000 forced laborers in the United States, there are virtually no arrests for labor trafficking, and the government only keeps a count of survivors of the crime who have also assisted the authorities in investigations.

While any type of human trafficking is

matters overly-complicated for prosecutors, not to mention that these distinctions once again isolate and elevate the importance of sex trafficking over labor trafficking. While sex trafficking makes up roughly half of all trafficking cases, two-thirds of the law is dedicated to prosecuting sex traffickers and rehabilitating those victims. This national focus on the forced prostitution of women, particularly foreign born women, when addressing the subject of human trafficking oversimplifies one of the most pervasive and complex human rights violations in human history. Recently passed legislation in states such as New York exacerbates this problem by continuing to create harsher penalties for sex trafficking than for other kinds of trafficking.

These laws detract from the plight of victims of labor trafficking, and also minimize the perceived seriousness of this crime. Even more problematic are the complications

The national focus on the forced prostitution of women, particularly foreign born women, when addressing the subject of human trafficking oversimplifies one of the most pervasive and complex human rights violations in human history. an egregious human rights violation, a disproportionate amount of coverage is given to the issue of sex trafficking. In reality, labor trafficking and sex trafficking are each responsible for about half of these cases in the United States, and stereotyped notions of trafficking victims may prevent the US from adequately addressing the issue.

The Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000, which governs U.S. trafficking policy, makes a legal distinction between sex trafficking and labor trafficking and even separates two different kinds of sex trafficking. This is unique to U.S. law, as no other trafficking law or treaty makes these distinctions. The result is that that there are three different types of trafficking under U.S. law: labor trafficking, sex trafficking, and also “severe” trafficking, which includes a sex act by a minor. Obviously, these distinctions make

in identifying and rehabilitating a victim of sexual violence and slavery when a dichotomy was forced early on in the process and the victim was labeled as one type or the other.

More flexible legislation might aid in the healing process of the victim and also aid in achieving more serious convictions for more traffickers. By expanding our idea of who is a modern day slave, more victims will receive the attention and aid that they deserve while prosecutors will have the ability to convict more traffickers with harsher sentences. In order to more aggressively combat human trafficking in the United States, discourse and legislation need to reflect the diversity of the victims and the seriousness of all facets of the crime.

Kathleen Valadez is a senior in the College of Arts & Sciences. She can be reached at k.valadez@ wustl.edu.

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Odious Debt Javier Delgado

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igh levels of public debt have been a burden for impoverished countries for a long time. Economists agree that public goods and services, such as health care, roads, power grids, and ports. are critical for activating an impoverished economy. In many of these countries, this is not possible because the government is carrying a huge load of debt, and their limited tax revenue is used almost entirely to service this debt. This is one of the components of the so-called “poverty trap”: when poverty is extreme, individuals do not have the ability to save and, therefore, there is no economic growth.

Once nations are able to escape the trap, they step onto the development ladder, on which it is possible for them to grow and improve in a more independent way. Many development economists have theorized that policies of debt cancellation for poor, heavily indebted countries have the potential to jumpstart growth in these nations.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF), an organization dominated by wealthier countries, has opposed these policies. In this debate, however, is important to keep an old but often ignored concept in mind: odious (or illegitimate) debt.

This legal notion was conceived by Russian jurisprudence expert Alexander Nahum Sack (1890-1955), who defined odious debt as having three conditions. He argued that if debt is incurred without the knowledge or approval of the population, spent on activities that are not beneficial to the people, and if lenders know about this situation but do nothing about it, the regime that took on the debt, as opposed to the nation, is obligated to pay it back. His analysis was based on the cases of Mexico in the late nineteenth century and the United

If debt is incurred without the knowledge or approval of the population, spent on activities that are not beneficial to the people, and if lenders know about this situation but do nothing about it, the regime that took on the debt, as opposed to the nation, is obligated to pay it back.

States in the early twentieth century. Both countries announced that they were not going to repay debt incurred by previous regimes – Emperor Maximilian I and the Spanish Empire, respectively – because the money had been used against the population and not for their benefit.

Although this notion sounds quite idealistic, it has in fact been acknowledged in international law. Ecuador provides one of the most well-known examples of a successful claim based on this doctrine.

In 2007, President Rafael Correa created a commission tasked with analyzing the public debt that the country had incurred since 1976.

At the time, Ecuador was spending almost half of its budget on repaying the debt. The commission reached the conclusion that a portion of the debt was illegitimate and the government announced that they were not going to repay 70 percent of their debt. President Correa

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IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde.

announced that, “We are placing our national priorities above international interests. When the time comes, if we can, we will take care of international interests, but our first priority is life. Only after that can we take care of debt.”

Unsurprisingly, the market value of the public debt went down, and the Ecuadorian government was able to buy it back at 35 percent of its original value, reducing their debt by 65 percent. The subsequent increase in available resources allowed the government to increase spending on health care, education, infrastructure, and job creation. Between 2008 and 2012, Ecuador reduced its poverty rate from 35 to 27 percent.

Following the initial invasion of Iraq, the United States took advantage of the principle of illegitimate debt. In 2003, George W. Bush appointed former Secretary of State John Baker to lead an effort to convince creditor countries to forgive the debt incurred by Saddam Hussein. Bush argued, “The future of the Iraqi people should not be mortgaged to the enormous burden of debt incurred to enrich Saddam Hussein’s regime.” As a result of his efforts, the portion of Iraq’s debt held by the Paris Club, an informal group representing some of the world’s wealthiest companies, was soon reduced by 80 percent.

Although this is a clear example of the application of the Odious Debt Doctrine, some scholars, such as Joseph Stiglitz, have pointed out that this is a special case, driven by political motives. In fact, in most of the cases that illegitimate debt is brought up as a rationale for debt cancellation the United States has acted very differently, siding with creditors.

Yet, the United States might benefit from advocating for more generous debt cancellation policies. Developing countries are potential clients and will start consuming the modern technology and human capital that developed nations provide if developing nations can step onto the development ladder. Developed nations might experience short term losses, but the potential benefits are considerable, for both sides.

Javier Delgado is a junior in the College of Arts & Sciences. He can be reached at jadelcar@gmail.com.

Ukraine: A Country Divided Dan Bromberg

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kraine has found itself, once again, the subject of an age-old, East-West European rivalry. Until recently a country nearly absent in the Western imagination, Ukraine has now, thanks to mass protest, made the headlines of every major Western newspaper. Problematically, the reality of the Ukrainian people, whose opinions are hardly as unanimous as international media might suggest, has been simplified to the end of international political gain. As a result, a large segment of the Ukrainian population is necessarily alienated, and the push for faster European Union integration is given more attention than either the desperate economic situation of the country or the mounting human rights abuses of the Yanukovych administration.

A Country Divided In Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, the namesake character notices a fellow prisoner making the sign of the cross before his midday meal, and decides, therefore, that the man must be a West Ukrainian. Indeed, this is not without precedent: Western Ukrainians have historically had a different, more European culture than Russia or their compatriots to the east.

West Ukraine was never a part of the Russian empire, and was incorporated into the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic only in 1939 when the Soviet Union invaded Poland and occupied Galicia. As a result of this historical divide, people in West Ukraine, and their neighbors in Central Ukraine, have their own politics and culture: they speak Ukrainian primarily, have a stronger sense of Ukrainian nationalism, and hold religious allegiance to the Kyiv Orthodox patriarch and the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church. South and East Ukraine, on the other hand, have far reaching ties to Russia and Russian culture. The dominant language there is Russian, religious ties are primarily with the Moscow patriarch, and public sentiment is less damning of the Soviet era and more skeptical of Ukrainian nationalism than in other parts of the country.

This regional divide in Ukraine has been obvious in every election since 1994. West and Central Ukraine consistently votes for the relatively liberal and pro-European candidates like Viktor Yushchenko and Yulia Tymoshenko, while the East and South vote for pro-Russian candidates like Leonid Kuchma

and Viktor Yanukovych. Indeed, this December, Ukraine’s Research & Branding Group found that while 84 percent of people in West Ukraine support the Euromaidan (so named after the Maidan, the central square of Kyiv, and the European aspirations of its participants) protests, 81 percent of people in East Ukraine oppose. Nationwide, this translates to 49 percent of people in the country supporting Euromaidan, and 45 percent opposing it.

Ukraine, then, is not a country united against a corrupt, Russian-backed government (corrupt and Russian-backed, though it may be), but a country with a populace in fundamental disagreement as to where its future lies. If Ukraine is to be the center of an East vs. West tug-of-war, then the West’s alienation of Ukraine’s eastern population is not advantageous to its cause. When U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry urges the Ukrainian president “to listen to the voices of his people who want peace, justice and a European future,” he estranges a segment of Ukrainians for whom “a European future” is

offering money and gas discounts on the other. On December 5th, before the deal with Russia, Ukraine asked the European Union for a €20 billion bailout; what happened to that request is unclear. While American dignitaries can go to Kyiv and shout ich bin ein Ukrainer to their hearts content, a bankrupt nation is more likely to be persuaded by financial assistance.

The East-West divide in Ukraine is not soon to go away, and neither is the rivalry between Russia on one side, and the European Union and the United States on the other.

With strong cultural support within Ukraine, and a well-managed economic carrot-andstick game, Russia, it seems, is in better position to influence Ukraine. If neither America nor Europe is willing to outbid Russia for Ukrainian influence, it can, at the very least, pressure the Ukrainian government to lessen some of the human rights abuses that are most prominently threatening the future of the country. For example, Yulia Tymoshenko—a pro-Europe activist and the main political rival to president Yanukovych—still

Ukraine, then, is not a country united against a corrupt, Russian-backed government (corrupt and Russian-backed, though it may be), but a country with a populace in fundamental disagreement as to where its future lies. not necessarily desirable. Putin, on the other hand, plays the regional divide to Moscow’s advantage. Not only does he woo the Eastern Ukrainians with reminders of their shared religion and culture, and talks of “brotherly love,” but he also gives money (to the tune of $15 billion and a reduction in the price of gas), which likely also appeals to Ukrainians in the west who are wary of a default of their debt-ridden government and weary of their impoverished economy.

rots in prison on internationally unrecognizable charges. With elections scheduled for early next year, and opposition to the ruling party either in prison, weak, possibly barred from running (as may be the case with Vitali Klitschko), or otherwise absent, it seems that international pressure to free Tymoshenko may make the difference in 2015.

Role of the West With many words but little action, the West seems insincere in the face of hundreds of thousands of protestors who are clamoring for its attention. If the West wants to help Ukraine, it can do better. Russia has been threatening Ukraine’s trade on one side, and

Dan Bromberg is a sophomore in the College of Arts & Sciences. He can be reached at danieljbromberg@wustl.edu.

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Obamacare Should be Judged on Substance, not Style Gabriel Davis

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f there is a single word that adequately describes the rollout of the Affordable Care Act, President Obama’s signature legislation, it is probably inefficient. Disastrous may be a close second. Healthcare. gov, the website created to allow millions of Americans to enroll in insurance policies under the new law, was plagued by issues from its opening on October 1. Millions of people who tried to enroll were unable to do so as a result of slow loading times and crashes. The problems were not instantly fixed; through October, November, and most of December, users of the website still experienced problems signing up. The website’s initial functionality was so poor that President Obama was twice forced to extend the deadline by which new enrollees had to sign up.

So what was the response to such a rocky start for what should have been one of Obama’s shining moments? Naturally, Republican lawmakers used the website’s failure to make bold claims about the failure of the Affordable Care Act as a whole. Representative Darrell Issa (R-CA), chairman of the U.S. House of Representatives Oversight and Government Reform Committee, alluded to Healthcare.gov’s mishandling as “a sign of a failed system that is often seen in the federal government,” before concluding that by “its very design, the federal government may never be efficient or effective or innovative enough to carry out big initiatives like Obamacare.”

Republican House Majority Leader Eric Cantor echoed similar sentiments, claiming that the “website does serve as stark evidence that the federal government is ill-equipped to centrally manage our nation’s healthcare.”

While Healthcare.gov’s issues are certainly not inspiring confidence in the law’s supporters, Republican lawmakers are largely overstating the implications of what is really just a flawed website design. As numerous defenders of the law have pointed out, previous large initiatives, such as Social Security, often took a few years to sort out initial problems, but can ultimately be effective.

Jonathan Gruber, one of Obama’s leading healthcare advisors who played a large role

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in the law’s formation and is likely hoping for its success, notes that we will not really be able to begin judging the law based on its actual impacts until Fall of 2014 at the earli-

est. He further stated that “we won’t be able to draw final and firm conclusions until late in 2016.”

Obamacare does not need to run as smoothly as a well-oiled startup to succeed.

When Republicans make these sweeping claims about the law’s failure and the government’s incapacity, they are skewing the public’s perception in an unjust way. One thing everyone agrees upon is that our nation’s healthcare system is broken. Obama ran for office with Obamacare on his platform twice, against the minimally substantive alternative plans Republicans offered. The law was passed by Congress and then found constitutional by the Supreme Court. What the nation needs and deserves now is time to see whether it works or not. The law needs more than a few weeks or months to be judged.

If we are to know what healthcare system works best in this nation, then the Afford-

able Care Act should not be subject to constant undermining by Republican officials who still deny the reality of the law’s passage and seek to damage the law’s reputation and implementation at every chance they get. Perhaps certain Republican officials truly believe that this law is so awful that it will destroy the nation.

Unfortunately for these officials, the time has passed for them to stop Obamacare. Although it is not hugely popular in public opinion polls, it was supported by all three branches of government. At this point, they need to give the law some space to either succeed or fail, at least until they have substantive data that the law is actually hurting the nation.

What Obama and the rest of the law’s supporters must be wary of is the public opposition to the Affordable Care Act. Republicans will probably continue to make biting claims about the inefficiency of government every time Obamacare runs into a speed bump. For better or worse, oftentimes in politics all that matters is perception. So even if Obamacare is destined to work eventually, fixable issues that plague the law such as Healthcare.gov threaten to distract the nation from the empirical data that should determine whether the law is considered successful. It is vital that the Obama administration avoid further issues like the malfunctioning of Healthcare.gov, so as to keep the nation focused on what really matters.

Obamacare does not need to run as smoothly as a well-oiled startup to succeed.

The advantage of the law as compared to market-run healthcare relies entirely on its ideology of social good, rather than attaining profit. As long as Obamacare is functional, it should not be judged in the same manner that investors would judge a private company’s performance. Obamacare simply needs to run smoothly enough to stay out of the way of the benefits that will hopefully spring from its ideological foundation.

Gabriel Davis is a freshman in the College of Arts & Sciences. He can be reached at gabriel.davis@wustl.edu.

Trial as an Adult: One of America’s Great Remaining Injustices Henry Kopesky | Illustration by Margaret Flatley

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here were you when you were 14 years old? Did you play baseball or maybe piano? It’s likely that you did and said some things that, if you even remember them today, make you cringe with regret. As a middle school-aged kid, you probably did not have the mental capacity to operate in a socially mature way, in the same way that you do today.

Some children’s mistakes at that age are more significant than others. In 1999, a 17-year-old boy from Missouri, named Michael Barton, started a fight with his younger stepbrother, Quantel Lotts, who had been subjected to years of physical and sexual abuse, as well as extreme neglect. The argument ended when Lotts stabbed the older boy twice with a hunting knife, killing him. In a moment of anger and fear which he cannot even remember, a moment born out of poverty and bred by years of abuse and neglect, Lotts effectively brought an end to his own life at the young age of 14. To be clear, the state of Missouri is not allowed to execute Quantel Lotts; the death penalty for those under the age of 16 was outlawed by the Supreme Court in 1989 and for those under 18 in 2005. Rather, Lotts was sentenced to life in prison without parole. In other words, Lotts will die in prison, having forfeited a life’s worth of liberty at the dawn of his adolescence.

It hardly seems right for Lotts’s youthful failings to determine the rest of his life. It is a widely-known scientific fact that adolescents are not fully developed, neurologically or emotionally. In fact, the confluence of the development of the prefrontal cortex (the part of the brain that regulates a person’s actions and decisions) and the social expectation that adolescents will test their boundaries make teens the most impulsive age group by far. Paradoxically, the U.S. legal system has chosen the midst of puberty, the worst time in a person’s life for the assignment of responsibility, as the age of responsibility for one’s own actions.

It hasn’t always been this way. The legal treatment of juveniles changed dramatically in the 20th century, after the Progressive movement of the early 1900s initiated a repudiation of child labor and other abuses of youth. Still, before the death penalty was temporarily rendered unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in 1972, its history was an ugly one. In 1944, 14-year-old George Stinney, Jr. was electrocuted for the murder of two young girls; he was so short that books had to be piled beneath him in the electric chair. Shockingly, Stinney was only one of the 365 minors who were executed in the United States prior to 2005. Since 2005, the Supreme Court has made two more modest strides in the realm of juvenile criminal justice: in 2010, it outlawed life sentences without parole in non-murder trials for minors; in 2012, it banned mandatory life sentences for those under 18.

There exists, however, staunch opposition to the liberalization of the laws that deal with juvenile offenders. Victims’ rights groups, such as the National Organization of Victims of Juvenile Lifers, have asserted that a killer is a killer, and that some offenders “are so fundamentally dangerous that they can’t walk among us.” Indeed, most rational people agree that people like Charles Manson, Richard Ramirez (the Los Angeles Night Stalker), Sirhan Sirhan (Robert Kennedy’s assassin), and David Berkowitz (the Son of Sam killer) should be incarcerated for life. But unlike Quantel Lotts, these criminals have all had at least one parole hearing; Lotts has been allowed none. The argu-

ment that juvenile offenders should not be entitled to parole hearings because of their danger to society, when they are actually some of the most easily-rehabilitated offenders in the correctional system, falls apart when one realizes that even America’s most dangerous killers are granted the possibility of parole. It is only appropriate that American youth be granted the right to be rehabilitated, and the right to

In other words, Lotts will die in prison, having forfeited a life’s worth of liberty at the dawn of his adolescence. leave the justice system once their rehabilitation is complete.

So what lies ahead for the American criminal justice system?

Hopefully, a more just future. According to the Equal Justice Initiative, in 2007, 73 Americans were serving life sentences without the possibility of parole for crimes committed before they were 15 years old. These children, sentenced to die in prison, made up only a fraction of the 2,225 inmates serving life terms behind bars for crimes committed prior to adulthood. Many of these young people have made regular efforts to have their cases reexamined. It is only a matter of time before the case of Quantel Lotts or one of his fellow juvenile inmates makes its way to the Supreme Court.

Henry Kopesky is a freshman in the College of Arts & Sciences. He can be reached at hrkopesky@wustl.edu.

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Things to watch for in 2014 Billie Mandelbaum & Grace Portelance

senate elections Republicans need to gain six seats, and defend four competitive seats they currently hold, in the 2014 Senate elections in order to take control of the Senate for the first time since 2007. Senators up for reelection include:

Battle for Increased Minimum Wage With the federal minimum wage set at $7.25 an hour, legislators are seeking to raise the rate within their respective states. In 2014, minimum wage legislation is to be proposed in twelve states and the District of Columbia.

One such state is Massachusetts, where legislation has been introduced that would raise the minimum wage from $8.00 to $11.00 by 2016.

marijuana legalization With recreational marijuana laws set to take effect in Colorado and Washington, other states are expected to introduce legislation that would loosen restrictions previously placed on the drug. In an October 2013 Gallup poll, 58 percent of Americans favored legalizing marijuana.

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Mary Landrieu (D-Louisiana), Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky), Mark Pryor (D-Arkansas), and Susan Collins (R-Maine).

three supreme court decisions to watch for in 2014 In June, the Supreme Court is expected to issue opinions in the following cases:

McCutcheon vs. FEC The first major Supreme Court case surrounding campaign spending since Citizens United involves the constitutionality of aggregate spending limits.

Currently an individual can give up to $123,200 to federal candidates, parties, and political committees. According to the Communications Workers of America, individuals could donate up $3,633,200 if current spending limits are deemed unconstitutional.

McCullen v. Coakley This case focuses on whether a 2007 Massachusetts selective exclusion law—which prevents protesters from being within 35 feet of “an entrance, exit, or driveway of ‘a reproductive health care facility’”— is constitutional. The Court’s ruling is expected to have important implications on the limits of free speech, as well as the ongoing political debate over abortion rights.

National Labor Relations Board v. Noel Canning This case arose in 2012 after President Obama made “recess appointments” to the National Labor Relations Board while the Senate Republicans were holding brief pro forma sessions. Republicans argue that because of these pro forma sessions, President Obama’s appointments were unconstitutional.

If deemed unconstitutional, hundreds of labor cases handled by recessappointed board members will have to be reviewed.

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Is Turkey a Banana Republic?

Oya Aktas

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Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey.

anana republic. To most of us, these two words bring to mind a fashionable, high-end clothing brand. To the leaders of Turkey, “banana republic” is the kiss of death to any sense of governmental legitimacy they might have previously enjoyed. On December 27, a member of the opposition party in the Turkish Parliament, Emine Ülker Tarhan, called on Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan to resign, insisting that his Justice and Development Party (referred to as “AKP” in Turkey) had turned Turkey into a “banana republic.”

In political science, this term characterizes a politically unstable country whose economy is structured around the export of a single product, resulting in stratified social classes and dependence on foreign investment. There is no strong political feedback mechanism for citizens of banana republics to assert their will, and therefore the leaders can act with political immunity to further their own interests.

Tarhan’s accusation is a strong one to level against a party that won around 50 percent of the popular vote in the last general elections, and thus requires greater scrutiny.

Since the establishment of the Turkish Republic in 1923, the military has always played a powerful role in governmental affairs as the protector of secularism. Each time the military perceived governmental actions as a threat to Turkey’s democratic or secular identity, military leaders led a coup d’état. As a result, Turkey underwent three military coups in 1960, 1971, and 1980. The governments established between these coups were often riddled with corruption and pow-

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erless to affect significant change for fear of upsetting the military.

However, the Turkish people shocked the military in 1991 by electing a party with an Islamist agenda, the Welfare Party, as part of a coalition government. The election of the Welfare Party demonstrated the Turkish people’s frustration with the vicious cycle into which Turkish politics had devolved. Yet, the military once more intervened in 1997 with a post-modern coup and forced the Welfare Party to resign, later entirely banning the party from participating in politics in 1998. From the remnants of the Welfare Party, AKP emerged.

Previously the mayor of Istanbul and a member of the Welfare Party, Recep Tayyip Erdogan founded AKP in 2001 with a conservative democratic platform. He professed to have shed his Islamist agenda in lieu of Western-oriented aspirations to join the European Union (EU). In the 2002 general elections, AKP won 36 percent of the vote and acquired control of the Turkish Parliament. Conservative Muslims comprised Erdogan’s core support base, but many others also cast their votes in favor of AKP. Some voted for AKP because of its pro-European Union platform, while others voted for AKP in protest of the military. Many voted for AKP believing that its Muslim credentials would lead to more moral political practices and prevent corruption. Under Erdogan’s government, the Turkish economy recovered from a 2001 economic crisis. He also broke the hold that the military had on Turkish politics by exposing a coup plot and then prosecuting military leaders. Erdogan’s support base grew and AKP

won an increasing percentage of the popular vote in the next two general elections in 2007 and 2011. By 2012, AKP had been in power for a decade.

Erdogan’s policies gradually began to lose their EU-oriented rhetoric and instead became increasingly paternalistic. The government implemented campaigns to bring Turkey’s moral character more in line with Muslim values. For example, the government posted signage discouraging romantic displays of affection on public transportation.

Parliament passed laws restricting the sale of alcohol. Erdogan encouraged people to give up rakı, the national alcoholic beverage of Turkey. Most potent was Erdogan’s allegation that Atatürk, the idolized founder of the Turkish Republic, had been nothing more than a drunkard. AKP’s incendiary policies culminated in the order to tear down Gezi Park, Istanbul’s equivalent of Central Park, to build a shopping mall. At the end of May this past year, environmentalists set up camp in Gezi Park to protest the construction project.

The brutal police attempt to clear the protesters’ camp on June 1 catalyzed the pent up frustration harbored against AKP and Erdogan.

What became the Occupy Gezi movement spread throughout major cities in Turkey as citizens flocked to the streets in order to protest the dictatorial mentality that Erdogan had adopted. Social media became a vital tool for organization and communication. People of different age groups, different political beliefs, and different classes peacefully asserted their democratic right to be heard. AKP leaders initially dismissed the movement as a radical group not representative of the population as a whole. The government relied on police forces to dispel the protests with tear gas, rubber bullets, and pressurized water cannons. Protesters persisted and an atmosphere of solidarity permeated Gezi Park. Celebrities held concerts, the intelligentsia created a free library, and people from around the community brought food to sustain the protesters who camped out at the site. Those who were apprehensive about actively protesting still contributed to the movement with the loud clanging of their pots and pans that resounded from balconies across Ankara and Istanbul in the evenings.

Occupy Gezi united the Turkish people in a common cause: making their voices heard.

Over the course of the month, the number of protests gradually diminished as the fervor of the movement died down. Some worried that the Gezi movement had been futile, with no tangible outcome to show

for their efforts. However, the Occupy Gezi movement had accomplished its original goal: saving Gezi Park. Beyond this initial cause, many new goals had been integrated into the Gezi movement, including the overthrow of Erdogan and the overturn of AKP’s paternalistic laws. Yet, not all demonstrators espoused these more drastic wishes. The most noteworthy aspect of the movement was its universality. Rather than coalescing around a list of demands, Gezi protestors instead joined in a visceral sense of Turkish pride and unity. The diversity of its support base made a concrete agenda or top-down leadership difficult to enact, because either would have inherently ostracized certain members of the movement. The failure to overthrow Erdogan does not undermine the Occupy Gezi movement; protestors ultimately achieved a much more valuable goal using democratic tools of interest aggregation to make their voices heard. The protests reminded Erdogan of his responsibility to the Turkish people as a whole, not only to those who had voted for him. The protests confirmed that Erdogan’s power is not absolute; his power is derived from the people.

After the Gezi movement died down, Erdogan then became involved in a power struggle for the Muslim vote as he and his longtime supporter, Fetullah Gülen, began

The protests confirmed that Erdogan’s power is not absolute; his power is derived from the people. publicly criticizing each other. Gülen is an influential cleric living in Pennsylvania who had contributed funds and his support base to AKP for years. A rupture between the two men became evident as Erdogan began accusing Gülen of using the police forces and the judiciary, which are both controlled by Gülen’s supporters, to subvert the AKP government. Gülen responded by publicly cursing Erdogan in Arabic, a serious Muslim affront. The struggle between Erdogan and Gülen thus compromised both Erdogan’s core constituency of Muslim voters and his financial support.

Finally, last month, Erdogan suffered the most formidable challenge to his legitimacy to date. A corruption scandal erupted on December 17 as police carried out sweeping arrests, bringing into custody important businessmen, the sons of three cabinet members,

and the head of a state-owned bank. Amidst accusations of accepting bribes, the Minister of the Interior, the Minister of Urban Development, and the Minister of Finance all resigned from their posts, prompting Erdogan to appoint 10 new cabinet members. One resigning cabinet member directly implicated Erdogan in this scandal, insisting that Erdogan was aware of the bribes and that he should therefore step down. Erdogan’s response has been to accuse opposition parties of trying to sabotage the government.

AKP has pointed to the fact that the anticorruption investigation had been ongoing for over a year to prove that officials delayed the arrests as a tool to affect AKP’s demise.

However, the fact remains that regardless of when the arrests were made or how long the evidence was kept secret, top-level AKP members were involved in accepting bribes from various businessmen. AKP and Erdogan’s reputations as honest Muslims, and any moral high ground they thereby enjoyed, have thus been irrevocably undermined.

Returning to the question of whether Turkey can be accurately described as a banana republic, there is no doubt that AKP’s legitimacy has been severely compromised.

Nonetheless, the chain of events that began with the Occupy Gezi movement is proof that Turkey’s government is far from a banana republic. In response to the dictatorial mentality that Erdogan and his government adopted after a decade-long tenure, the Turkish people poured into the streets to make their voices heard. The subsequent power struggle between Erdogan and Gülen indicates that Gülen felt Erdogan’s grip on power was at least partially compromised, and therefore felt confident enough to demand more influence. Finally, the charges brought forth against the AKP government demonstrate that corrupt government officials are not allowed to proceed indefinitely without consequences. These scandals all indicate serious problems in Turkey’s governmental structure still exist, and that Turkish democracy is far from perfect. Still, Turkey is unique in the Middle East in that it has a century-long history of democracy through which it has cultivated a democratic political culture. Whether or not the Turkish people will hold AKP responsible and remove Erdogan from power will be revealed in the 2014 elections.

Oya Aktas is a sophomore in the College of Arts & Sciences. She can be reached at oya.aktas@wustl. edu.

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The Business of Babymaking Hannah Waldman

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or women under the age of 35 who engage in natural intercourse, the average pregnancy rate is 20 percent. In the eyes of the average American consumer, this process is hardly a model of efficiency. In 1978, in response to this desire for a more surefire method of procreation, scientists successfully developed in-vitro fertilization, a technology that can increase a women’s chance of pregnancy by 40 percent or more. While this 20th century innovation unleashed the possibility for new responses to the age-old question, “where do babies come from?” these technologies initially created reproductive options that were only available to the wealthy. Now, these alternatives are more feasible for middle-class couples and individuals wanting a child. With increased access, however, has come a host of legal and ethical considerations that not only challenge idealized notions of globalization, but also question the ways in which economic status stratifies reproduction Not unlike other industries, in order to lower the cost of reproduction without compromising quality reproductive health corporations have been looking to global markets to yield a more cost-effective product. One such organization, PlanetHospital, offers commercial surrogacy, a monetary arrangement in which a fertile woman carries the child of a couple or single person, for a reduced cost by outsourcing production to surrogates overseas. With clinics located in India, Thailand, Panama, and Mexico and expanding to Greece, Lithuania, and the Ukraine, PlanetHospital, according to its mission statement, works to empower clients and help “would be parents realize their dreams” by “breaking down the geographical, financial, political, and syndicated borders of medicine.” In the United States, commercial surrogacy costs

$70,000, a price contingent on the couple providing their own embryos. PlanetHospital provides this service for $39,000-$48,695, depending on where the surrogate lives.

From a liberal-democratic mindset, the increased availability of these services appears to level the reproductive playing field by allowing more people—gay, straight, fertile, infertile, single, married, male, female— the opportunity to have a child that bears their genetic background. While all people should be entitled to have children of their own, international surrogacy elucidates major inequities in how society supports and encourages the reproduction of some people, but not others. In the documentary Made in India, Aasia, a surrogate living in poverty in India, described her motivations for carrying someone else’s child as rooted in her desperation to provide for her own children. While PlanetHospital and other companies work to make the process of international surrogacy a business transaction that both sides benefit from equally, the language used by the in-

Ministry of Women and Child Development to legislate the industry more strictly. One article published in the Times of India asked, “In a country crippled by abject poverty, how will the government body guarantee that women will not agree to surrogacy just to be able to eat two square meals a day?” Though this reflects the disconcerting distribution of global wealth, the most recent draft of the Assisted Reproductive Technology Bill fails to address the needs of impoverished mothers.

Instead, it plans to bar foreign singles and gay couples from benefitting from these technologies. These proposed guidelines are neither uncommon nor relatively extreme, as commercial surrogacy remains illegal in Canada, Belgium, France, Japan, and the Netherlands, with varying controls on altruistic surrogacy.

While surrogacy is liberalizing in many respects, PlanetHospital’s description of a surrogate as a “rented womb” treads a slippery slope between exploitation and a mutually beneficial exchange. There are inherent inequities in transnational surrogacy that are

From a liberal-democratic mindset, the increased availability of these services appears to level the reproductive playing field by allowing more people— gay, straight, fertile, infertile, single, married, male, female—the opportunity to have a child that bears their genetic background. While all people should be entitled to have children of their own, international surrogacy elucidates major inequities in how society supports and encourages the reproduction of some people, but not others. tended parents to describe the service Aasia provided them evokes the idea that she gave them a gift that is beyond compensation.

Though a surrogate receives payment, the idea that she must carry a stranger’s child in order to take care of her own juxtaposes the possibilities offered to the wealthy with the limitations placed on the poor.

While India’s previously lax rules governing surrogacy made the country a popular location for reproductive tourism, the influx of approximately 10,000 foreign couples visiting yearly for this purpose caused the

common to any globalized market. However, because the product in question is a child, and the machine used to achieve this end is a woman, global society must proceed with caution to ensure that the future of this practice does not become commercialized to the point where it loses its original purpose: assisting in the creation of families.

Hannah Waldman is a sophomore in the College of Arts & Sciences. She can be reached at hannahwaldman@wustl.edu.

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For the Sake of the Country, the GOP Must Accept Gay Marriage Aaron Wildavsky| Illustration by Gretchen Oldelm

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t’s no secret that millenials have deserted the Republican Party.

Barack Obama’s 34 and 23 percentage point victories among young voters in 2008 and 2012 respectively make this glaringly clear. But does this mean that young adults won’t vote for Republicans, period?

Not remotely. Yes, younger people tend to be more liberal than older people, but in 1984 Ronald Reagan won 59 percent of the youth vote—a record margin for a candidate of either party until Obama’s 2008 landslide. In 2000, George W. Bush put up a solid showing among young voters, losing that group by a mere two points.

So where did the GOP go wrong? Why has the 18-34 year-old demographic become so deeply, uniformly blue? There’s no simple answer to that question and no quick fix to the problem. The party’s image has undoubtedly suffered, thanks to both its own extremists and unfair treatment by the media. But on top of that, there’s no getting around the fact that in order to remain relevant, Republicans will need to change their platform on a few issues—most notably gay marriage.

Opposition to gay marriage is simply no longer a sustainable position for the Republican Party. That’s because gay marriage is arguably more of a generational issue than a partisan one, and the incoming generation supports it. According to an April 2013 NBC News/ Wall Street Journal poll, 73 percent of Democrats and 34 percent of Republicans support the legalization of gay marriage. That would seem to justify of the GOP’s current position. But dividing the country by age rather than party tells a different story. A March 2013 ABC News/Washington Post poll revealed that 81 percent of Americans aged 18-29 support gay marriage, while the same can be said for only 44 percent of those 65 and older.

The reason young people overwhelmingly support gay marriage isn’t just that they tend to be Democrats—though that does have something to do with it. The aforementioned Washington Post/ABC News poll found that over 50 percent of young Republicans and GOPleaning independents support gay marriage, which is remarkable considering the party’s overall support for it is only at 34 percent.

The message from these numbers is clear: young people, regardless of party affiliation, support gay marriage. And, they feel strongly about it—according to a March 2013 survey by the College Republican National Committee, 26 percent of young voters say they would not vote for a candidate who opposed gay marriage regardless of his or her positions on other issues,. That’s one fourth of the youth vote gone automatically when a candidate professes opposition to gay marriage. Granted, most of that 26 percent probably wouldn’t ever vote for a Republican anyway, but the number nonetheless indicates a broader problem.

To avoid losing the incoming generation to the gay marriage debate, the GOP has three options: it can redirect attention from the issue as much as possible and hope that millenials won’t notice; it

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can try to reach a compromise that might make nobody happy; or it can declare the battle lost and join the left in welcoming legalized gay marriage. Each of these strategies will disappoint somebody, but the third stands the best chance of working.

The de-emphasis strategy seems appealing, and has worked in other contexts. Just look at Pope Francis. The pontiff is a man who has called marriage equality “destructive pretension against the plan of God,” yet has managed to win the adoration of leftists worldwide simply by emphasizing more important things, such as fighting corruption, giving charity, and showing compassion toward all. But for Republicans, the problem with gay marriage de-emphasis is that the party has been trying it for a while now, with little success.

This failure can be blamed in large part on the mainstream media, much of which pursues—actively or by default—a pro-gay marriage agenda. Look no further than then-Washington Post ombudsman Patrick Pexton’s February 2013 column, “Is the Post Pro-Gay?” Pexton unabashedly admitted that journalists do not treat this issue objectively. “Most journalists have a problem with religionists telling people what they can and cannot do,” he wrote. “[Many journalists] see people opposed to gay rights today as cousins, perhaps distant cousins, of people in the 1950s and 1960s who, citing God and the Bible, opposed black people sitting in the bus seat, or dining at the lunch counter, of their choosing.” Given this unfortunate reality, deemphasis seems unlikely to work.

The GOP could also take a neutral approach and no longer declare an official position on gay marriage. The party could call for the status quo, in which states individually determine the legality of gay marriage, and encourage its candidates not to take a public stance on the issue. But to quote Calvin and Hobbes creator Bill Watterson, “a good compromise leaves everybody mad.” Such a move might be seen by the socially conservative Republican base as a cop-out and by the moderate left as a weak, unsatisfactory overture. It could be successful—especially if combined with de-emphasis—but it probably won’t be.

That leaves an ideological turnaround as the best option. The Republican Party has no real choice but to concede defeat in the gay marriage battle. This is a matter of realism. It would not, as some

Gay marriage is arguably more of a generational issue than a partisan one, and the incoming generation supports it. commentators have suggested, mean turning the GOP into a second Democratic Party; it would simply mean accepting failure on one, relatively isolated front.

I myself happen to be a Republican who sees no problem with the legalization of gay marriage; indeed, I strongly support it. But even if I did oppose it, I would like to think I would have the foresight to accept an inevitable, isolated loss for the sake of our party’s greater cause. This country needs conservative leadership. We cannot afford to lose it over a battle the GOP is never going to win.

Aaron Wildavsky is a freshman in the College of Arts & Sciences. He can be reached at aaron.wildavsky@wustl.edu.

The Rise of the Individual in the Post-Arab Spring Middle East Kaity Shea Cullen | Illustration by Katherine McCarter

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hile the spread of stable democratic institutions has been thwarted by a number of political, economic, and cultural factors, the spread of social media has nonetheless served to promote the rise of the individual in the region.

In general, Middle Eastern societies have remained true to their tribal histories, continuing to place the family or tribal unit above the individual. Haifaa Al-Mansour, who pushed social and political boundaries by creating the first film produced entirely in Saudi Arabia, emphasizes that in her nation “you survive as a part of the collective, you don’t survive as an individual.” Fiercely conservative cultures and regimes have preserved this mindset across the region, where education systems typically encourage blind acceptance of authority and cultural norms. The importance of the collective is so deeply ingrained in the culture as to be reflected by the language itself. Maghreb writer Saleh Basher notes the pejorative connotation of the Arabic term “fard” (individual), while the word “batal” (hero) historically referred to an individual who sacrificed for the sake of the group.

But with the rise of social media, the experience of the individual has increasingly been championed by activists across the Arab world.

Indeed, it was the deaths of two undistinguished individuals that, coupled with the crucial power of social that networking, touched off revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt. Khaled Koubaa, president of the Internet Society of Tunisia, has reflected that “three months before Mohammed Bouazizi burned himself in Sidi Bouzid we had a similar case in Monastir… What made a difference this time is that the images of Bouazizi were put on Facebook and everybody saw it.” A similar case occurred in June 2010 when police in Alexandria, Egypt, beat

businessman Khalid Said to death in response to what human rights activists claim was possession of evidence of police corruption. Less than a week after the incident, a Facebook page entitled “We are Khalid Said” posted post-mortem cellphone photographs of Said. Within weeks, 130,000 users had followed the page. That number now exceeds 3.6 million.

Additionally, the propaganda posted by revolutionary social media sites has been increasingly focused on the struggles of the individual. A far cry from the nondescript drawings that characterized 20th century wartime propaganda, revolutionary social media sites today share the stories and images of those affected by the war, using the real-life experiences of the individual to garner support rather than calling on a duty to the group or emphasizing generic slogans and talking points. With social media platforms employing the value and plight of the individual to challenge entrenched elites and abusive dictators who claim legitimacy in the security and stability that they provide to the collective, individualism is gaining an unprecedented degree of traction across the Middle East.

Even outside the revolutionary context, social media has provided a platform for activists to challenge conservative norms and argue for more individual liberty. The most notable example is that of the movement by Saudi women to oppose the ban on women driving.

In response to official statements that such challenges to tribal customs should be a “societal” decision, Maya Gebeily writes that Saudi women launched “an individualistic and open-ended campaign” that was coordinated and supported through sites like YouTube and Twitter. Although a ban on protests precluded a public show of unity, many participants in the highly decentralized campaign uploaded

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photos and videos to social media, while other shows of support came from around the world through Twitter and an online petition. Social media provided a means of coordination beyond the realm of government control, as well as access to a supportive network that made it possible for Saudi women to fight for individual rights, even when their fellow protesters were not physically present with them. Thus, social media continues to provide crucial support for movements working to expand individual freedom, even in the most traditional and tribal of societies.

Independent studies suggest that individualism in the Middle East is, indeed, growing in the post-Arab Spring era. Despite ongoing uncertainties, there exists a “growing social norm of tolerance and respect for other individuals’ opinions” throughout the region, according to a study conducted by J. Walter Thompson and Tunisiana. Moreover, the same study finds that youth believe it is “more important to show your differences and views within your group than to be a passive participant,” with 90 percent agreeing that an “individual’s opinions deserve tolerance and respect.” There is also independent evidence that social media may well be at least partially responsible for this dramatic shift, with a July report released by Dubai’s School of Government indicating that “between one third and one half of Middle Eastern social networkers felt the sites influenced community change, and roughly half believed that social media had made them more tolerant to opposing views.” Together, these trends suggest that access to social media, where individuals are more likely to express and view liberal opinions, has made the region more accepting of progressive views on individual freedoms, even when they come into conflict with the traditions and norms of the group. This is especially impactful in a region where state-owned media is the norm and censorship laws are among the most restrictive in the world. Social media provides a rare platform for liberal ideas to be not only vocalized, but also endorsed, advocated, and spread.

The rise of social media creates a new set of challenges on the international stage as well. Increasingly, states are using social media to communicate publicly. While “public diplomacy” is largely unexplored water for international actors, its importance is unquestionable, and its audience is attentive. In the international arena, there is a new inclination to effectively “pitch” the state to consumers of social media, including foreign citizens and NGO’s, but such “branding” efforts

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can bring a new set of challenges to the conservative governments of the Middle East.

First, they must tailor their messages to two separate but alert audiences—one international, to which they strive to appear free and just, the other domestic, which they strive to control and pacify. Language may be the most effective barrier on social media, and is heavily exploited to address the audiences separately. Nazila Fathi, a former New York Times correspondent to Tehran, where national leadership for example, including President Rouhani, Foreign Minister Zarif, and Ayatollah Khomeini, is particularly active on social media, points out that Rouhani and Zarif’s “posts on Facebook are in Farsi, targeting Persian-speaking users, while on Twitter they tend to post more in English, hoping to reach out to a more global audi-

Perhaps the situation can be seen as a small win, where individuals have seized for themselves the right to access social media, and the government, unable to beat them, has resolved instead to join them. ence.” But even the language barrier is not ultimately impermeable, and leaders face a greater challenge in eliminating the disparity both between their statements in Farsi and in Arabic.

These leaders must also publicly address international conflicts of policy. Ironically, Iranian citizens are deprived legal access to social media despite their tweet-happy leadership, which prompted Twitter Chairman Jack Dorsey to tweet Rouhani himself about the matter. Rouhani’s vague response dodged the question, but nevertheless made reference to the “#right” of his people to access information. Notably, Rouhani’s use of “#right” demonstrates an understanding of international pressure towards greater individual freedom. Additionally, the exchange with Dorsey revealed the international community’s commitment to these values and ability to exert such pressure. With diplomatic statements now easily accessible across the

globe, conservative leadership in the Middle East faces a new dimension of external pressure to respect human rights and provide for basic individual liberties.

Public diplomacy brings new pressure for governments to resolve the discrepancy between what they publicly promote and what they enforce. While Rouhani’s statement, at least on the surface, purported agreement with Dorsey’s call for individual rights in Iran, internet restrictions persist.

Ali Bangi, director of Toronto-based censorship bypass group ASL 19, states that “people are really ... upset” that “officials use [social media] platforms while ordinary Iranians can not.” But many Iranians have found ways to bypass the restrictions, and Rouhani has yet to crack down. Fathi even argues that Rouhani and Zarif “use social media to distance themselves from the more conservative and hostile tone of the previous administration.”

Perhaps the situation can be seen as a small win, where individuals have seized for themselves the right to access social media, and the government, unable to beat them, has resolved instead to join them.

Historically, individualism has been an important Western ideal, contrasting with the “familial social orders” and “ageless traditions” that Edward Said ascribes to the East in his influential 1978 work Orientalism. But the rise of social media has introduced this value to Eastern cultures in an unprecedented way.

As Philip Seib, former director of the Center on Public Diplomacy at the University of Southern California, argues, “new communication technologies can bring unprecedented closeness to the individual citizen’s relationship to her or his state, and therefore enhances the work of diplomats who champion democracy, human rights, and related ideals.”

As technology continues to develop, people will become more connected, language barriers more irrelevant, and communication more difficult to restrict. Distinctly Western ideals will, gradually and over time, permeate more of Eastern culture, and the rights of the individual will become more important than the benefit of the group. Eventually, these changes may well pave the way for an entirely new, more accepting, and more peaceful way for the East and West to communicate and conduct diplomacy.

Kaity Shea Cullen is a sophomore in the College of Arts & Sciences. She can be reached at kscullen@ wustl.edu.

Charlie Crist’s Quest for Redemption in 2014 Hugh Dunkley, Jr.

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hings have not gone as planned for Florida gubernatorial candidate Charlie Crist. Republican Governor Rick Scott has been a beneficiary of Florida’s relative economic strength. The state boasts a low unemployment rate and both consumer spending and the Consumer Confidence Index have increased modestly since Scott took office. Republicans now seem to have a decided advantage heading into the 2014 midterm elections. To make matters worse, Crist’s campaign manager has quit. Despite these early shortcomings, however, Crist can still redeem himself.

To better understand what Charlie Crist must overcome, we must first delve into his past. Crist is the Republican-turned-Democrat former governor of Florida. In 2010, he decided to step down as governor in order to pursue the Republican nomination in Florida’s Senate race. Despite being the early favorite, Crist began trailing in the Republican primary to Tea Party candidate and eventual winner, Marco Rubio. As a result, Crist decided to change political parties and challenged Rubio as an independent. Crist lost Florida’s Senate race and in the wake of the 2012 presidential election once again decided to switch his political affiliation. This time, Crist changed from an independent to a Democrat.

For Crist to rise from the political ashes in 2014, he must first devise a plan to show that Scott was an undeserving beneficiary of Florida’s economic turnaround. While Scott is an unpopular Tea Party governor whose approval ratings have never risen above 50 percent, economic conditions often drive political success. Generally, when the economy is prospering, an incumbent will claim credit. This helps incumbents, even unpopular ones, win political races. If this is the case in Florida, Crist has every reason to be concerned - under Scott, Florida’s unemployment rate has decreased from 10.9 to 6.4 percent.

In many ways, Crist’s current situation is analogous to that of Mitt Romney in the 2012 presidential election: Mitt Romney, a viable challenger, was unable to upend incumbent President Obama (who suffered from low approval ratings) due to America’s steadily improving economy.

So, why shouldn’t Crist fret? For starters, a state’s unemployment rate could be interpreted in many different ways. Simply because Florida’s unemployment rate has decreased by 4 percent does not mean that Rick Scott has added jobs left and right, as this statistic may also indicate that, within the labor force, Floridians have gotten discouraged and have stopped looking for work altogether. In fact, Scott has added to the unemployment rolls by privatizing some

public sector jobs. Florida’s falling unemployment rate can also mean that Florida has been affected by national economic measures such as quantitative easing. But even if Floridians do give Scott credit for what has happened in the short term, polls still show Crist beating Scott in an electoral matchup. There is even a December 24, 2013 Quinnipiac poll which has Crist beating Scott 47 to 37 percent. These polls results reflect an area in which Crist leads Scott: likeability. For Crist and his camp at least, Scott’s uninviting presence will be used as a wedge which separates Scott from many voters.

Crist’s redemption in 2014 may also be tied to the less-thanglorious rollout of President Obama’s signature healthcare law: the Affordable Care Act, commonly referred to as Obamacare. Its implementation has been hindered by many factors, including congressional gridlock. Republicans nationwide have taken advantage of the opportunity to make Democrats appear incompetent and have lambasted the unsuccessful rollout of Obamacare. It appears that Republicans are succeeding in these efforts. According to a December 26, 2013 CNN/ORC international survey, the GOP have a lead over Democrats in a generic ballot 49 to 47 percent. Although this national backlash against Democrats could decide a close election in Florida, Charlie Crist once again need not fear. Obamacare has at least another year to gain traction. In addition, the Republican midterm advantage can change if the Tea Party faction of the GOP does something controversial, like attempt to cause another government shutdown.

Finally, Crist must face the resignation of his campaign manager, Bill Hyers, who previously managed New York Mayor Bill De Bla-

For Crist to rise from the political ashes in 2014, he must first devise a plan to show that Scott was an undeserving beneficiary of Florida’s economic turnaround. sio’s campaign. While his departure represents the loss of lucrative fundraising opportunities, Florida’s status as one of the most important swing states means that Democratic allies will be pouring dollars galore into this race. If Crist can capitalize on Scott’s unlikeable nature and prove to voters that Scott was not responsible for recent job creation, he is not close to being finished in 2014. In fact, he has only just begun.

Hugh Dunkley, Jr. is a freshman in the College of Arts & Sciences. He can be reached at hdunkley@wustl.edu.

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“Techies” Take the City Billie Mandelbaum | Illustration by Steph Waldo

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n December 20, protesters in San Francisco stopped a private bus transporting Apple employees to work at the company’s headquarters in Silicon Valley. Dozens of demonstrators marched in front of the unmarked black, Wi-Fi equipped bus repeatedly chanting, “Our mission: No evictions,” and distributed pamphlets entitled, “San Francisco: a tale of two cities.” Members from groups such as Eviction Free San Francisco, Our Mission No Eviction, and Causa Justa/Just Cause, were responsible for the protest, which ended up delaying the bus’s departure by thirty minutes.

The demonstration—which followed an incident in which protesters delayed a private Google-operated bus earlier in the month—is the most recent development in the rising tensions between San Francisco’s working and middle class residents and the tech world. While protestors have criticized these private buses for blocking public bus stops, community activists are far more concerned with larger issues such as income inequality, gentrification, and classism, all of which have arisen as “techies” have hit the city.

Although many contritely say that the future lies in technology, the current tech boom has been both a blessing and a curse for the city of San Francisco. Last year, San Francisco had greater economic growth than any American city of comparable size, due in large part to the innovation and commercial enterprises brought to San Francisco by the tech world. While many major tech companies have main campuses in Silicon Valley,

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the increasing number of techies who want to live in San Francisco has caused a spike in housing prices. This has caused a housing bubble, forcing less-affluent residents out of the city. According to the National Association of Homebuilders, San Francisco housing is the most unaffordable in the United States. The median price of a singlefamily home is $900,000, while the median rent for a two-bedroom apartment is $3,250 per month. A minimum wage tenant would have to work eight full-time jobs just to afford such an apartment. As housing prices have risen, so have evictions, which have increased by 38 percent over the last three years. With the correlation between the tech boom and the housing bubble, it’s no surprise that, as former San Francisco mayor Willie Brown wrote in the San Francisco Chronicle, “the tech world is becoming an object of scorn.”

As the cost of living rises and techies move in, San Francisco is becoming increasingly gentrified. This trend can be seen in the city’s Mission District, a once predominantly working-class Hispanic neighborhood

and wealthy. Neighborhood panaderias selling 50-cent churros have been replaced with organic bakeries selling artisanal loaves of bread, while family-owned auto body shops have been priced out of the area by “fixie” bike boutiques. Not only have minorities been evicted from the Mission, but writers, artists, activists, members of the workingclass, and middle-class families have been forced out as well.

Yet if the tech industry has helped pull the San Francisco economy out of the recession, is there an inherent problem with this recent phenomenon? Although the city’s economy is strong as a result of the tech boom, the gentrification and inequality that have accompanied this prosperity have already had serious ramifications. Aspects of the city’s diverse “left coast” bohemian culture are dying out as the city’s artists, immigrants, activists, and yes, even drag queens who once called San Francisco home are forced to move elsewhere. Without such “characters,” the city risks developing a culture of ubiquity, catering to the likes of those who are predominately white and wealthy.

To prevent such an occurrence, the city’s government needs to enact policy measures that will help reconcile San Francisco’s “originals” and newly arrived techies. Measures promoting affordable housing have already been passed. The city’s Housing Trust Fund will dedicate $1.5 billion dollars to develop such projects, but housing reform will most

Neighborhood panaderias selling 50-cent churros have been replaced with organic bakeries selling artisanal loaves of bread, while family-owned auto body shops have been priced out of the area by “fixie” bike boutiques. that is now a haven for young and wealthy tech workers. Both Twitter co-founder Evan Williams and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg have recently purchased homes in the Mission for millions of dollars, with Zuckerberg paying nearly $10 million for his abode.

City evictions are highest in this neighborhood, where the Hispanic population has fallen by more than 20 percent since 2000.

What was once a culturally diverse area has become a refuge for San Francisco’s young

likely need to go further. If near-sighted officials only acknowledge the riches reaped by the technology industry then, as San Francisco local Guillermo Gómez-Peña told the New York Times in November 2013, residents “will wake up to an extremely unbearable ocean of sameness.”

Billie Mandelbaum is a freshman in the College of Arts & Sciences. She can be reached at bmandelbaum@wustl.edu.

The future of America and the Middle East: Rhetoric and Realism Grace Portelance

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pon his election as president, Barack Obama made it very clear that one of his first priorities was the repair of the United States’ relationship with the Middle East. It should come as no surprise that as former president George W. Bush left office, anti-American sentiment was rampant; from the War on Terror to the “Axis of Evil,” Bush’s strategy relied on using power and strength to ensure national security. However, although President Bush’s policies were incendiary, President Obama’s have also fanned the flames by favoring pragmatism even when it conflicts with the interests of the people of the region. In every other part of the world, America is seen in a generally positive light. Yet as Obama’s second term comes to a close, it doesn’t feel like we are much closer to peace, or even stability in the Middle East.

Is social peace, or even a friendship, between the United States and the Middle East really on the horizon?

For many in Europe, Asia, and Latin America, the election of President Obama improved opinions of the United States, a reflection of a confidence in the new president’s foreign policy platform. Indeed, even Obama himself stated in 2008 that he had “ a unique opportunity to reboot America’s image around the world and also in the Muslim world in particular.” He claimed that the world was ready for this new message, one of peace and cooperation. However, from this moment on approval of Obama’s policies worldwide have gone into an almost unanimously steady decline. While Obama remains fairly popular, confidence and support of his policies have fallen by over 10 percent in key European countries such as Britain, Poland, and France. According to Pew’s Global Attitudes project, nearly every surveyed country now holds less faith in Obama than in 2009, a trend consistent throughout the Middle East (though the region largely had low approval to begin with). While his plan clearly departed from the rhetoric heavy, hard line approach to foreign policy, it now seems almost naive to assume that a new president is a truly fresh face for America—it is still his job to protect American interests, even when it conflicts with the interests of others.

These interests have been made clear by un-

popular military policy, in particular drone strikes. While favored by American citizens, drone strikes are understandably very unpopular in the countries in which they take place, as well as among other world powers, as it reinforces the image that the US works unilaterally to achieve its own ends. Obama,

It now seems almost naive to assume that a new president is a truly fresh face for America—it is still his job to protect American interests, even when it conflicts with the interests of others. while rhetorically an idealist, has acted pragmatically, learning that promoting democracy and attempting to engender goodwill is not enough to maintain national security, as made evident by the anti-American attacks and demonstrations during the Arab Spring.

The key point to this is the digression of policy from rhetoric: while it is noble and popular to praise peace and promote friendship globally, the real (and really complex) relationship between the United States, its allies, and its enemies has a long history of ignorance, mistrust, and violence. While many have a romantic ideal that simple goodwill can solve the problems we face, President Obama has had to embrace that as Commander in Chief, his job is to protect the nation, even when it deteriorates already longbroken relationships.

With the immense diversity in interests, culture, and opinion of the countries across the Middle East, it is a mammoth task to promote America’s reputation along with its interests. Peace is an ideal far off in the distance. Despite this, there is a realm within which President Obama has improved international relations, one that holds promise for

future cooperation: the influence that Harvard’s Joseph Nye coined as “soft” power.

Soft power represents the ability of the United States to persuade and attract to achieve its interests, as opposed to using force to achieve them. Engendering admiration for our economic system, our humanitarian aid, our execution of freedom and democracy, and most importantly an inclination to act multilaterally and fairly, may be the most important ways to decrease anti-American sentiment and consequently improve national security. When President Obama took office, the world seemed to think that he would work towards international cooperation, and favored him because of it. When he was perceived to have not accomplished this, his (and America’s) ratings declined. For most of the world, it seems as though humility and cooperation will work wonders for creating friendships with the United States.

There is a long road ahead, paved with mistrust and inconsistencies, before the Middle East and the United States can reach peace and stability. Even as policies and leaders change, there is still a strong sentiment among Muslim countries that our anti-terrorism efforts are actually anti-Muslim. Because of this, it is vitally important that we rebuild lost trust and maintain consistent policies, considering the interests of other nations when acting. If this seems impossible, consider the difficult question facing our elected officials face today: can we foster goodwill while also protecting ourselves? Choosing strength over peacemaking may seem to be the safest choice in the long run, but we must be careful how much ill will we are fostering.

Further disappointment on this front will only add to the negative history between the US and the Middle East, pushing peace and cooperation further into the horizon.

Grace Portelance is a freshman in the College of Arts & Sciences. She can be reached at grace. portelance@wustl.edu.

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Climate Change: Will Anyone Take a Stand?

Claire Bartholomew | Illustration by Esther Hamburger

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he week of January 6 saw a recordbreaking cold front sweep across the country, with cities as geographically disparate as Chicago, Atlanta, and New York experiencing historic low temperatures.

Minnesota Governor Mark Dayton ordered all public schools to close to protect students from the weather for the first time since 1997. The Green Bay Packers’ playoff game against the San Francisco 49ers was one of the coldest in NFL history with temperatures as low as -14 degrees Fahrenheit, and a storm that dumped snow on the Midwest was deemed Hercules for its terrifying power. Citizens braced themselves for what scientists are calling a “polar vortex.”

This dangerous arctic outbreak has many people wondering if extreme weather may not be so rare these days.

In the past five years alone, Superstorm Sandy ravaged the East Coast, wildfires erupted throughout the Rocky Mountain region, and a Category 5 tornado decimated Joplin, Missouri. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration proclaimed the natural disasters that occurred in 2011 and 2012 the most costly natural disasters in U.S. history. As U.S. National Weather Service acting director Laura Furgione said in a January 2012 article in The Huffington Post, “The normal has changed, I guess.

The normal is extreme.”

But as worrisome as the increasing frequency of extreme weather may be, the lack of any action to control this weather is even more worrisome.

Many people are beginning to wonder: is anyone ever going to do something about the climate change that causes such extreme weather?

Ever since the public became aware of the existence of climate change, there have been people—politicians, specifically—who insist that this troubling phenomenon is not significant enough to act on. For example, only 50 percent of Republicans currently believe that there is solid evidence the Earth is warming. In response to the recent cold front, Donald Trump tweeted, “This very expensive bullshit has got to stop! Our planet is freezing, record low temps.”

Of course, the term “global warming” has long been cast out in favor of the more

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scientifically accurate term climate change.

Dr. John Holdren, the Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, said in a video released by the White House on January 8 that an overall warmer planet will change weather patterns everywhere at all times of the year. As the ice in the Arctic continues to melt, the fragile

climate system will struggle to adapt. This means the warmer it gets, the more extreme and erratic weather we will have—like the coldest temperatures in the United States in two decades.

Unfortunately, a few naysayers have managed to deter many governments from doing anything substantial about climate change. At the Cancun Climate Change Conference in 2010, governments around the world passed the Cancun agreements, pledging to keep the global average temperature rise below two degrees, protect the world’s forests, decrease the amount of carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere, and mobilize funds to enable countries to take action

against climate change. But agreements like this, which seem to be made every year, mean nothing if no government takes concrete action. As with many other controversial political issues, a lack of accountability often characterizes the international community’s handling of climate change. Too many world leaders are satisfied with taking the path of least resistance, which does little to shift the trajectory of climate change.

Politicians need to take a stand, even if it means jeopardizing their chances of reelection because a swath of the population is too stubborn to admit that we could be damaging our planet irrevocably.

Thankfully, with the implementation of the Affordable Care Act officially underway, Obama needs a new cause to champion. Considering that he appointed former Democratic Presidential Nominee John Kerry, a longtime climate obsessive, to run the State Department, and that many of his political advisers are committed environmentalists, it seems possible that Obama will dedicate his second-term efforts to climate change. In fact, in his February 2013 State of the Union address, he announced that he planned to direct his cabinet “to come up with executive actions we can take now and in the future to reduce pollution, prepare our communities for the consequences of climate change, and speed the transition to more sustainable sources of energy.”

However, his words will only matter if he takes definitive steps to reverse the course we have set ourselves on.

If we want to save our planet, someone in a position of power must decide to take matters into his or her own hands. Someone must look at the cold front that blanketed the Midwest and realize that if we do not take swift and significant action, we are doomed to even more dangerous manifestations of climate change: flooding of coastal cities, water and food scarcity, migration, unrest, the list goes on and on. As climate change develops in 2014, someone must take a stand.

Claire Bartholomew is a sophomore in the College of Arts & Sciences. She can be reached at claire. bartholomew@wustl.edu.

The New American Dream Naomi Duru

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e just want you to be better off than we were.” This is the statement my parents, and many others, have said to their children after creating a new life in America. I was born thousands of miles away in a city called Lagos, Nigeria to parents who wanted nothing but the best for me, even before I was brought into the world.

They had already begun to start a life in America, the land of opportunity, going to school and working endlessly. Now, 18 years later, I am lucky enough to be attending college in hopes of making my future kids even happier than I am. This is the typical story of the American Dream. It is based on the idea that hard work and opportunity will allow you to live a prosperous life and then pass the dream on to the generations after you. However, with the 2008 recession, congressional gridlock, and a poor job market, I have become skeptical of just how attainable the American Dream may actually be.

Education Nowadays, it is safe to say that a college diploma has replaced a high school one as the golden ticket to a middle class lifestyle. In a more technologically advanced society, certain skills are necessary to be competitive in the workforce and to be more financially and socially secure than previous generations. These specialized skills come from receiving a higher education, which is unfortunately becoming harder to obtain here in the United States. As if this is not bad enough, the idea of going to college has only become more unattainable for lower income students as tuition prices consistently increase every year. Current prices saddle students with thousands of dollars in debt and often send parents to the poorhouse. At a time when entering the most thriving economic sectors (such as green energy and biotechnology) requires a higher education, it becomes unsettling to know that the majority of Americans no longer believe that college is an essential part of the American Dream. Even though this same majority ranks hard work and education as the two most influential factors when it comes to success, the price of college is quickly altering this mindset. This backwards thinking only sets up more problems down the road when it comes time to enter the job market, and eventually retirement.

The Job Market It is no revelation to anyone that our job market is not exactly what it used to be. Although our current unemployment rate of seven percent is the lowest we have seen since 2008, it still is not low enough to create hope for a more prosperous year. This is because the currently low unemployment rate is not a reflection of jobs sim-

ply popping up, but rather it is a result of the increasing number of people who are dropping out of the labor force. This unfortunate reality is affecting the lives of recent college graduates. Now more than ever, college graduates are having a harder time finding work than the rest of the population. Currently, about 36 percent of graduates are working in jobs that do not require their degree such as clerks, waitresses, and construction. Now many find themselves competing not only against their peers, but also an influx of adults who are still in the job market, leaving them with college degrees and high school wages. However, this should not be reason to dismiss the value of a college education, but instead a catalyst to work harder to do better.

Retirement For those people who are able to successfully navigate the job market, the moment that most of them look forward to after working for years is the opportunity to retire. Unfortunately, this stage of life too will not be quite as easy for the current generation for three key reasons. First, maintaining one’s standard of living after the age of 65 will now require 18.7 times a person’s final pay versus the 16.1 times it took the preceding generation. This means that our generation is going to be in need of more money in a more unforgiving job market.

Second, the life expectancy is even longer for our generation (due to technological and medical advances). Men are projected to live 18 more years than the last generation until the age of 83, and women are said to live 20 years longer until the age of 85. So, we are going to need to sustain our increasingly expensive lifestyles for more time than was once required. Lastly, despite the increasingly expensive

At a time when entering the most thriving economic sectors requires a higher education, it becomes unsettling to know that the majority of Americans no longer believe that college is essential to the American Dream. cost of retirement, our generation is ignoring retirement planning.

Only about half of the people who are eligible for a 401(k) are actually going through with it. Thus, our generation is contributing much less toward our retirement than is needed to sustain it.

Ultimately, these factors throughout the different stages of our lives can add up to create a future that is not quite as dreamy as it once was. Getting through school, establishing a career, and retiring comfortably are all still within reach, but to make this dream a reality will definitely require more effort than in the recent past.

Naomi Duru is a freshman in the College of Arts & Sciences. She can be reached at nduru@wustl.edu.

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Talking Points 38 percent

6.6 million $900,000

of American adults who are “single and looking” for a partner have used online dating sites or mobile apps.

Visitors to the Vatican in Pope Francis’s first year, more than double the number who visited in his predecessor’s first year.

Median price of a single family home in San Fransisco.

11.7 million $20 million 55-64 Unauthorized immigrants living in the United States.

MO Gov. Jay Nixon’s proposed investment in the Missouri Preschool Program for fiscal year 2015.

Fastest growing age bracket demographic on Twitter.

“I had no knowledge or involvement in this issue, in its planning or its execution, and I am stunned by the abject stupidity that was shown here.”

–NJ Gov. Chris Christie at a press conference after revelations that top aides in his administration orchestrated the shutdown of highway lanes on the George Washington Bridge.

Illustration by Jackie Reich

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