Transitions

WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY

POLITICAL

REVIEW 29.2 | October 2018 | wupr.org

FEATURING:

Bridging the Boundary of History One Person, One Vote (?)

A Transportation System Built to Last?

Table of Contents Transitions

National

International

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International Institute of St. Louis Megan Orlanski

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Transitioning to Inclusive Health Records Ishaan Shah

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Privatizing Lambert: Boon or Boondoggle?

Daniel A. Berkovich

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Just Do It: Nike’s Take on Activism Akshay Thontakudi

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Toward More Humane College Admissions Matthew Friedman

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A Transportation Revolution Built to Last?

Sienna Ruiz

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Bridging the Boundary of History Christian Fogerty & Daria Locher

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The Supreme Value: Why Free Speech is Paramount on College Campuses Johnathan Romero

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Dummymander: How Partisan Gerrymanders Could Backfire in 2018 Arik Wolk

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Trades & Tweets Jon Niewjik

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Theme Art Audrey Palmer

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"Into the New" Natalie Snyder

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Point/Counterpoint: Constitutional Amendments Connor Warshauer & Jack Goldberg

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The Antidote to the Sino-American Trade Conflict Johnathan Romero

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One Person, One Vote(?)

Garrett Cunningham

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Big Pooh Bear Is Watching You Caron Song

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Theme Art Michael Avery

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The New Ottoman Empire Jacob Ramer

Editors' Note Executive Director: Sabrina Wang Editors-in-Chief: Michael Fogarty Dan Sicorsky Staff Editors: Sophie Attie Ryan Mendelson Jon Niewjik Daniel Smits Features Editors: Max Lichtenstein Ishaan Shah Treasurer: Dani Figueiras Director of Design: Maggie Chuang Web Editor: Conor Smyth Programming Director: Liza Sivriver Front Cover: Lindsay Wang Theme Spread: Rachel Jackson Feature Designs: Michael Avery Maggie Chuang Avni Joshi Audrey Palmer

Dear Reader, Years ago, my (Dan’s) mother was reading the Thursday Styles section of The New York Times when a photograph of a pompous drinking glass caught her eye. The words “Things Change. Change Things” were painted on the exterior. Taken by the message, my mother decided our family needed motivational cups of our own. So, following a group trip to Michaels, into our cupboard we welcomed a set of homemade, Times-inspired cups. They were in no way Thursday Styles material, and though no one liked them more than my mother did; she trashed the glasses herself during a move years later.

But the glasses’ wretched fate did not make their message any less true. Indeed, few things around us stay the same for very long. People move constantly, political leaders flow in and out of office, and fashion trends come and go. College students are especially in transition—going from home to campus to abroad and then all the way back home again. There’s no escaping the looming midterms elections that will shift congressional power balances. And the world is in transition, too, with elections changing the political landscape everywhere from Mexico to Zimbabwe.

With our campus, country, and world in motion, WUPR opened its pages to artists and writers wanting to engage this issue’s theme: TRANSITIONS. We were thrilled with the unprecedented number of submissions from writers who tackled the theme with creativity and eloquence. Daria Locher and Christian Fogerty write about the transition from current events to history, while Matthew Friedman argues for a shift towards test-optional college admissions.

Writing in the National section, Arik Wolk analyzes how partisan gerrymanders in Illinois and New Jersey could backfire on the parties that drew the maps, Garrett Cunningham examines how changing demographics will impact representation in the Senate, and Sienna Ruiz explores the impact of Lime Scooters on transportation in St. Louis. In the International section, Caron Song explores China’s Social Credit System, while Johnathan Romero and Jon Niewijk present differing takes on the Chinese-American trade dispute.

We hope you will enjoy the content of this issue as much as we did. As we near the midpoint of the semester, we wish you strength and purpose in your studies and relationships. Remember that you can always get involved with WUPR, whether as a writer, artist, editor, or participant in our frequent discussions. Visit wupr.org/join to learn more.

Happy reading, Michael Fogarty & Dan Sicorsky Editors-in-Chief

WU POLITICAL REVIEW | Transitions

THE INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ST. LOUIS Megan Orlanski

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t is like it is so hard to be stateless. You have no rights, you have nothing. You know you are kind of like, the status of an animal…it’s that bad to be stateless.” This is how Suk Sapopka recounted his experience as a Bhutanese refugee to an intern at the International Institute of St. Louis in April 2017.

According to Human Rights Watch, Bhutan’s inhabitants of Nepali descent faced increasing persecution in the late 1980s, which resulted in the ethnic cleansing of one sixth of the Nepali population. Suk Sapopka was subject to persecution in Bhutan and was eventually arrested in 1989 and given the option to leave the country or die.

“Suk was forced to flee Bhutan in 1989, and from this time on he lived as a displaced person until being admitted to the Nepalese refugee camps in 1992,” reads Suk’s narrative on the Institute’s Oral History page. Suk lived in the refugee camps for nearly ten years, leaving the camps in Nepal for several years to pursue his education in India under a scholarship and later returning. In 2008, he and his family finally obtained refugee status and moved to the United States.

The International Institute in St. Louis, according to the most recent data on their website, has sponsored the resettlement of 23,967 refugees like Suk since 1979. Volunteers await newly migrated families and individuals at the airport and transport them to their new rental homes.

“Depending on the needs of the refugee family, initial welcoming services can include registration for English classes for adults and public school for children, job program registration, community orientation, and healthcare access,” according to the Institute’s Local Resettlement Program.

Over the years, the program has sponsored refugees from around the world but most predominantly from Bosnia, Vietnam, Somalia, Bhutan, Afghanistan and Iraq. As a subcontractor for the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, the Institute works with newly sponsored

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migrants that have completed their lengthy application process to obtain refugee status in the United States (a process that usually takes two years) and helps them transition into life in St. Louis.

Projects, such as an urban garden managed by the Institute, allow migrants to plant produce native to their home countries and often sell the produce for profit. Many immigrants, especially those from countries like Burundi, are accustomed to growing their own produce.

According to an interview from The Atlantic with Joel Walker, the program manager of the garden,

At a time when refugees can feel like lonely outsiders, the Institute helps families find a sense of belonging. when families sell the produce it allows them to become more familiar with the local economy.

The Institute also organizes The Festival of Nations­—an annual multicultural event in Tower Grove Park that features one hundred cultural groups. More than 125,000 visitors visit the two-day festival every year.

This past year, however, the Institute has faced increasing challenges. As the Trump Administration makes it harder for refugees to obtain legal status, the Institute has seen a dramatic decrease in the number of migrants they have been able to resettle. According to their website, the Institute has benefitted greatly from fundraising efforts on behalf of individuals and

businesses who organize runs, like the “Race for Refugees,” and community collaborations, like the “Love to Eat, Eat to Love” event that involved over forty restaurants in St. Louis.

The money donated to the Institute helps fund English classes, job trainings, loans to refugee business owners and counseling to continue their mission to “help immigrants and their families be productive Americans and to champion ethnic diversity as a cultural and economic strength.” For Suk and thousands of others, the Institute has and will continue to provide the resources to make the difficult transition to a new country and a new life easier. Suk has gained American citizenship and now works as a workforce solutions employment specialist at the Institute. He is one of the many success stories of refugees who have paved a better life for themselves and for their families after having to leave their homes behind. “(It was) a time of emotion, it is like a time of greatest respect, a time when [you] tell yourself hey, I belong to somewhere now,” Suk said of gaining his American citizenship.

At a time when refugees can feel like lonely outsiders, the Institute helps families find a sense of belonging, of place, and of identity in our very own St. Louis. As the chance to escape oppression and start a new life in the United States narrows for many under mounting opposition to immigration from the Trump administration, we must value the dedication of organizations like the Institute.

The International Institute recognizes the importance of diversity and inclusion, and it doesn’t see immigrants as a threat to the prosperity of our nation but rather as its driving force.

Megan Orlanski '22 studies in the College of Arts & Sciences. She can be reached at morlanski@wustl.edu.

Ishaan Shah, features editor Artwork by Maggie Chuang

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his past summer, a staff clinician and I were poring over a state’s internal Medicaid claims database, which interfaces with the Electronic Health Records (EHR) systems of hospitals, clinics, and insurers to pay doctors for services they provide for Medicaid patients.

We were conducting an audit of the vaccines covered by Medicaid, adding newly approved ones from the FDA’s roster and updating requirements for already entered vaccines based on new clinical guidelines. We had been going down the list of procedure billing codes, checking each one and noting any changes which needed to be made, until we stopped at the HPV vaccine code. HPV is a viral infection known to cause genital warts. We noted down the important boxes: “FREQ: 01, ADM: I, MIN: 8 MAX: 18 SEX: F”

Ishaan Shah ‘20 studies in the College of Arts & Sciences.

He can be reached at ishaanshah@wustl.edu.

We paused. Many of the most recent recommendations asked that both boys and girls receive HPV vaccines. So why was the HPV vaccine billing code an “F” and not a “B?” For reference, every single procedure code in most claims database is in some way gendered, whether it is allowed for both biological genders or it is only allowed for a single one. Hundreds of procedure codes are gendered to prevent fraud created by unreasonable claims. In this case, however, fraud prevention rears its ugly head. This particular error could have resulted in hundreds of unnecessary treatment authorization requests for providers trying to provide an essential preventative service. We submitted a priority request to make this change made, however, this simple designation forced me to confront the highly gender binary structure of our health records. According to a Journal of American Medicine report, “because the overwhelming [majority of patients] are not [gender non-binary] … there has been an implementation of a binary male/ female oriented system across multiple platforms such as EHR systems, billing and coding systems, and laboratory systems.” The inability of our

existing databases to effectively store and accommodate relevant gender information will impede our ability to effectively use gender identity and expression to improve the health of patients.

In the novel, Middlesex, Jeffrey Eugenides poignantly narrates, ““I was born twice: first, as a baby girl, on a remarkably smogless Detroit day in January of 1960; and then again, as a teenage boy, in an emergency room near Petoskey, Michigan, in August of 1974.” Middlesex blurs the line between male and female, immigrant and citizen, black and white, and good and evil forcing readers to challenge the artificial boundaries society places between seemingly binary options. The main character, Cal (Calliope), is born with a 5-alpha reductase deficiency, a condition in which an individual is born with male gonads which greatly resemble female genitalia. In Cal’s own struggles to come to terms with her gender identity, readers are able to see that a path to finding one’s gender identity is truly a journey and gender nonbinary patients need support throughout their transition. Cal’s coming of age is not unlike America’s own growth in its understanding of gender fluidity. While in the past gender dysphoria had been primarily treated with psychotherapy, biological treatments of gender dysphoria under sex reassignment surgery have grown significantly to help transgender patients become more aligned with the gender they identify with. An article in JAMA Surgery shows that patients requesting gender affirming surgery have increased 3-fold in Medicare and Medicaid populations from 2000 to 2014.

While treatment for gender dysphoria has improved, health information infrastructure for nonbinary patients has lagged behind. 2018 is the first year that providers and federally-funded programs who accept or work with Medicare and Medicaid patients will have to track sexual orientation/ gender identity because of a changed rule to the EHR Incentive program. This means that providers will be asking about the gender of a patient assigned at birth, their sexual orientation, and the gender they currently identify as (SOGI). This rule will strengthen existing nondiscrimination protections in the Affordable Care Act and allow providers to better address their nonbinary patients. Large EHRs like Epic have had a task force working on building SOGI (Sexual Orientation/Gender Identity) questions into their systems since the announcement of the rule in 2015. They quickly found that a patient’s sex was deeply coded into many of the EHR’s most useful tools: from recommended ranges of vitals to treatment recommendations to pedigrees. They also found that when deploying these SOGI questions, responses were wildly different from provider to provider.

With the corresponding technological change on the collection-side of gender identity information, there will need to be a unified provider training to collect SOGI-related information. Some surveyed doctors have said that they felt patients may be uncomfortable with being asked SOGI questions and they don’t feel comfortable asking them without losing patient’s trust.

However, a study conducted by Fenway Health found that patients were

generally comfortable with answering the questions about themselves. This may indicate that doctors require formal instruction in broaching the topic if they want SOGI data to be collected in the new systems. Furthermore, it may be useful to teach more doctors about how sexual orientation and gender identity information can improve care for LGBT patients by highlighting disparities that LGBT patients face.

Regardless, this data collection initiative still doesn’t address the claims denial systems implemented into internal claims databases. Providers and patients have to engage in an individualized treatment authorization process with the insurer to gain approval for gender affirming surgeries. A small study in the journal of LGBT Health found that only 29% of the 27 patients

in the study who qualified for hormone therapy were able to get it covered by their insurer after a physician’s prescription. These barriers are largely due to the gender-binary nature of internal claims databases which leads to external treatment authorization. For example, according to California’s Medi-Cal provider manual, any procedure with a gender mismatch requires a separate treatment authorization. Many other health plans similarly ask for further justification when a procedure is requested that does not correspond to a patient’s biological gender at birth. Furthermore, according to the Center for American Progress, state Medicaid programs in 18 states continue to explicitly exclude care for transgender individuals, and many do not address the issue of transgender coverage at all—which in practice has often meant that coverage is denied. EHRs and claims databases need to make it less difficult for transgender patients to get approved for care by building pre-approval into certain procedures based on established criteria.

While there has already been initiative to better incorporate SOGI data into health records, there is still more work to be done. Providers and hospitals have to be convinced to incorporate and encourage SOGI reporting and use it to make more informed decisions. There also has to be a better framework to approve gender-based therapies for nonbinary patients such that patients don’t have to go through an extensive authorization process for every single procedure. Regardless, progress is progress, and hospitals are clearly moving in the right direction.

WU POLITICAL REVIEW | Transitions

TOWARD MORE HUMANE COLLEGE ADMISSIONS Matthew Friedman

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he Washington Post described the decision as a “watershed.” One industry expert quoted in the Wall Street Journal considered it “breaking the ice.” The Chicago Tribune simply called it “a big change.” Whatever name you give it, the University of Chicago’s decision to allow American students to apply for admission without standardized test scores is part of a transition. A big transition.

The University of Chicago’s policy change is not the first of its kind, but it is the first from a top-ranked national university. Just two decades ago, applying to college without test scores was unheard of. Now, as the number of annual college applications soars, test-optional is slowly becoming the norm. This shift in college admissions policy is beneficial, both for American colleges and, more importantly, American students.

This shift in college admissions policy is beneficial, both for American colleges and, more importantly, for American students.

Test-optional policies create opportunities for students who would not otherwise have them.

Numerous studies have shown that standardized test scores track more to socioeconomic status than to any measure of academic performance. Therefore, emphasis on these scores can harm underprivileged students. Test-optional policies address that dilemma. According to an April study from the National Association for College Admissions Counseling (NACAC),

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students typically underrepresented at colleges (including those receiving Pell Grants, first-generation college applicants, and African Americans) applied to test-optional schools without test scores at nearly double the rate of other student groups at those schools. As Paul Sackett and his colleagues found in a 2012 study, the main barriers to college admission for students of lower socioeconomic status were those that prevented them from even applying to college—admissions rates in the study were constant between those students and their wealthier counterparts. As test-optional policies encourage higher application rates, they are a major step towards solving this problem.

Since students admitted through test-optional admissions policies achieve similar academic outcomes to those who submit test scores, changes like the University of Chicago’s allow schools to increase diversity while maintaining their prowess. According to the NACAC study, students who applied without test scores graduated at the same rate (if not higher) as those who had submitted test scores. The study also found that for their sample of students who did not submit test scores, “high school GPA correlated more strongly than the SAT, with success in college, in terms of both college cumulative GPA and graduation rate.” This finding did not hold true for those who submitted test scores, suggesting that while standardized testing serves as a valuable and important metric for many students, it should not be used as the defining feature of college admissions. In many cases, test-optional policies can provide well-prepared students who lack high test scores with the confidence they need to apply to selective schools.

A school’s admissions process says a great deal about an institution’s values. Ivy League schools like Yale and Princeton recommend or require that students complete an interview with alumni, reinforcing an image of prestige. Meanwhile, Pomona College, a small liberal arts school in California, emphasizes a list of traits in its applicants including “evidence of risk taking and

adventurousness” and “grit, kindness, diligence, or serving others.” By adopting a test-optional policy (and creating an optional two-minute filmed student introduction), the University of Chicago sends a message to students. The decision demonstrates that the school actually wants to get to know its applicants—the school no longer sees its applicants as numbers. Now, they are people.

The University of Chicago is not alone in its desire to develop a truly holistic admissions process. In August, Stanford University announced that it would no longer release its admissions rate, citing its desire to reduce “the outsized emphasis placed on the admission rates at U.S. colleges and universities.” Here at Washington University, the process is becoming more personal this year, with a new mandatory supplemental essay that will reduce the school’s reliance on numerical data. These are all positive developments in achieving more equitable college admissions.

Other schools should take note of the University of Chicago’s change. They should consider how their application processes reflect institutional values. How much worth should be afforded to tests that students can pay thousands of dollars to game? What role should supplemental essays play in assessing an applicant? Does a given admissions process actually aim to understand students’ lives? These are the discussions that admissions departments should be having this fall as they hold thousands of students’ lives in the balance. College can be a ticket to success.

Let’s make it a fair one.

Matthew Friedman ‘22 studies in the College of Arts & Sciences. He can be reached at matthewfriedman@wustl.edu.

WU POLITICAL REVIEW | Transitions

Theme Art by Audrey Palmer

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O

ne year can pass by quickly. Five years can as well. Ten years seems a pretty substantial period of time, but still stays in recent memory. Multiply this period of time by seven and we get 70 years—the span of time between now and the Holocaust, an event that almost feels hardened into a relic of a distant past. What is different about these spans of time that historicizes events at a seemingly arbitrary point in time? And when exactly is that changeover? Some historians have posited a “30-year rule” as the year at which an event becomes history. However, we believe that this separation isn’t a sharp boundary, but rather a liminal transition period. The danger of defining an event as “historical” is that the definition constructs an artificial separation between then and now. Understanding this grey area will help us recognize our relationship with past events, simultaneously affected by not only our recent biases, but also our tendency to separate ourselves from an event the moment it slips into this concept of the “past.” Once we recognize our relationship with past events, we can begin to make accurate assessments and comparisons within times marked by sensationalist narratives,

biased portrayals, and pervasive political appropriation by politicians and social activists.

Let us delve into the historical to analyze how quickly history can be rewritten during this liminal time due to the actions of a few people. One such transitional period was during the French Revolution. One of the most famous figures of the French Revolution, Maximilien Robespierre, had a visible shift in his portrayal in portraits throughout the Revolution. His first portrait, done before the Revolution, contains the inscription “tous pour mon amie” (everything for my love), and is painted softly and flatteringly; he has a rose in his hand and his hand on his heart.

We can understand this portrait in the context of traditional portraits done for noblemen, with no reason for them to be anything but flattering and reasonably true to image. However, with each additional portrait done during the Revolution, Robespierre’s face becomes gaunter, sharper, tenser, grimmer; the romantic smile in his first portrait evaporates into a grim, haunting frown.

In 2016, scientists published an article in the Lancet Medical Journal with a 3D reconstruction of Robespierre’s face based off his death

Christian Fogerty '19 studies in the College of Arts & Sciences. He can be reached at c.fogerty@wustl.edu.

Daria Locher ’20 studies in the College of Arts & Sciences. She can be reached at daria.locher@wustl.edu.

mask and found the first portraits to be the most accurate. This demonstrates that during the fragile liminal period of the French Revolution, a historical figure was easily and permanently altered due to the political biases at the time.

We see this same conscious choice in the contemporary media posts with pictures of Michael Brown, the notable figurehead of the Black Lives Matter Movement. His unfair representation by the media inspired the #IfTheyGunnedMeDown Twitter movement immediately following the shooting. With this hashtag, Twitter users posted side-by-side photos, one of “respectability” and one conforming to “menacing” stereotypes, to raise awareness of how the media portrays black victims of police violence.

Nowadays, smartphones have enabled people to have hundreds of photos of themselves in various situations, giving the media unprecedented access to someone’s personal life.

What will happen when this movement begins to be written down in history books? Will this rewriting of history be addressed or erased by the writers of these textbooks, intentionally or

unintentionally disempowering the Black Lives Matter movement?

However, this is not the major only event slipping into a crystallized historical lens. Others are natural disasters like Hurricane Katrina or the BP oil spill, school shootings from Columbine to Parkland, and even the election of Donald Trump.

Once we separate ourselves from these events and relearn their context we can correct collective memory. This mental space shared by individuals of a certain generation with respect to specific historical events contains both our personal reactions and the influence of political currents at the time. This is an essential component of the transitional period, when the event crystallizes in the group’s collective mind. People of the past transition into unchangeable relics of a “different time.” Even though it is not always on our minds, we are constantly in a transitional period relative to certain events. It is during the transitional period that we have the power (and, one might say, obligation) to detach ourselves from emotional and political biases to define the truth of an event for future generations.

WU POLITICAL REVIEW | National

National

DUMMYMANDERING:

HOW PARTISAN GERRYMANDERS COULD BACKFIRE IN 2018 Arik Wolk, staff writer

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t is no secret that political parties draw congressional district lines to benefit themselves. However, this November there are two states in which this gerrymandering could backfire on each party. Recent political trends and unexpected demographic shifts have changed the makeup of districts in many states since the district lines were drawn in 2010.

This could end up hurting the party that had drawn the lines to help themselves. In Illinois, Democrats could miss out on two prime pickup opportunities to take back the House, while in New Jersey, the Republicans’ attempts to manufacture GOP districts may end up with slim Democratic victories come November. If these gerrymanders do backfire, both parties may find themselves with a “dummymander”.

In Illinois, Democrats had control of the pen when redistricting took place after the 2010 census.

They had control of both houses the state legislature and the Governor’s mansion, giving them unilateral power over redistricting. Democrats attempted to expand their congressional power beyond the Chicago metro area. They drew two downstate districts with the hope of claiming two congressional victories beyond Chicagoland.

The twelfth congressional district was drawn to include the heavily Democratic St. Clair county and the leaning-blue city of Carbondale, where Democrats hoped their voters would outweigh the rural GOP voters also in the district. In the thirteenth congressional district, Democrats hoped to combine the Democratic college towns of Champaign, Urbana, and Bloomington to counter the Republican-leaning farmland in the district. While both districts were swept up in the Republican wave of 2014, they should, in theory, remain in-play for Democrats. However, both districts swung heavily towards Donald Trump in the 2016 election. The twelfth district went for Trump 55-40 after Obama won it 49-48, and Trump won the thirteenth district

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50-44 after Obama only lost it by a point. The blue-collar voters of each of these districts whom Democrats used to rely upon to win are now reliable Trump supporters.

National Democrats have targeted these seats in their 2018 campaign, but both could prove to be out of reach if the rural voters who came out to vote for Donald Trump in 2016 turn out again this November. Democrats have strong candidates in each of these seats, particularly in the twelfth district where they recruited St. Clair County Prosecutor Brendan Kelly, but failure to capture either of these seats could destroy Democratic hopes of retaking the House. Democrats likely need to win two of the four close seats in Illinois this year to remain competitive nationwide. While the 6th district in the Chicago suburbs is looking optimistic for Democrats, they will likely need one of the downstate seats. If the political trends in these districts continue as they did in 2014 and 2016, however, Democrats may have dummymandered themselves out of an easy House seat.

New Jersey’s redistricting process is one of the nation’s most complex. It is also politically confusing in that it creates the illusion of bipartisanship, while in reality it is one of the most partisan processes in the country. There is a bipartisan state redistricting commission with six Democrats, six Republicans, and one independent tiebreaker. Both parties submit redistricting plans and the independent tiebreaker ultimately makes the decision which plan to use, thus ensuring a partisan plan is used.

During the 2010 redistricting cycle, the Republican plan was selected. It was designed to create six Democratic seats and six GOP seats–hardly a representative sample for a blue state. The plan began to backfire on the GOP in 2016 when Democrat Josh Gottheimer defeated

Rep. Scott Garrett in the 5th district. 2018, however, could be the year where the plan comes apart at the seams for the GOP. Four of New Jersey’s five GOP-held seats are considered to be competitive this cycle. The second congressional district, currently held by retiring Congressman Frank LoBiondo, is considered to be a definite pickup for Democrats, while the third, seventh, and eleventh districts are toss-ups. All of these have a Partisan Voter Index rating of R+2 or R+3, meaning they voted only two or three percentage points more Republican than the average congressional district in the last few presidential elections. They only narrowly supported Donald Trump in 2016– with the exception of the seventh district, which supported Hillary Clinton by 3,600 votes. They are the exact types of district Democrats are positioned to win in 2018: wealthy, well-educated, and suburban.

Republicans drew these seats to ensure they would win elections in these districts by narrow margins, thus maximizing the impact of their voters, while Democratic voters were packed into already solid blue seats. 2018 could be the year this backfires on the New Jersey GOP. They may have spread their voters too thin, only giving their candidates marginal partisan advantages in their seats—advantages that may be too small to survive a Democratic turnout surge in November.

Arik Wolk ‘21 studies in the College of Arts & Sciences. He can be reached at arik.wolk@wustl.edu.

WU POLITICAL REVIEW | National

Theme Art by Audrey Palmer

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WU POLITICAL REVIEW | National

Point

AMENDING THE AMENDMENT PROCESS Connor Warshauer, staff writer

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nder Article V of the U.S. Constitution, two thirds of both the House and the Senate must approve of any potential Constitutional Amendment. If both houses approve, the amendment is sent to each of the 50 states and becomes law only if three-quarters of the states vote to ratify it. The system creates daunting barriers for any attempts to modify the constitution. Only seventeen amendments have overcome these barriers since the passage of the Bill of Rights and none in the past 25 years.

should be sufficient. The current system aims to prevent a small majority of states from inflicting their will on the minority by demanding that three-quarters of the states agree to any proposed changes. But the Senate already accomplishes precisely this goal. Since each state enjoys equal representation in the Senate, the upper house serves as a national proxy for stateby-state voting. My proposal would preserve the Senate’s role in the amendment process, ensuring the protection of minority states’ rights.

While a system resilient to change has real benefits, this extreme form of conservatism leaves options off the table. Want to reform the Senate so that Wyoming’s residents do not have 68 times the voting power of California’s residents?

Forget about it. Outside the box but potentially transformative ideas for how to improve electoral politics are excluded from political discourse, such as proportional representation, ranked choice voting, or term limiting the judiciary. More banal proposals are essentially precluded as well, such as gun control, campaign finance reform, or even restrictions on Presidential pardon power.

Reasonable people can oppose any of these policy changes; excluding them prior to consideration, however, cannot be excused.

State legislatures may actually be a far less meaningful check on the tyranny of the majority than Senators. Due to pervasive gerrymandering, both parties have constructed artificial majorities in various state legislatures across the country. States’ delegations to the national Congress tend to be more representative of the population than state legislatures. Instead of protecting the citizens living in minority states, artificial majorities in state legislatures can veto amendments supported by their constituents and voted for at the national level.

The current amendment process renders the present beholden to the past. While the Framers revolutionized politics at the time, many of their ideas now seem antiquated, or at least in need of an update. We should not hold contemporary politics hostage to the wills of our ancestors.

Defenders of Article V typically point to its ability to protect the minority from the tyranny of the majority, but what if that minority has been in the grave for a hundred years? If hundredyear-old corpses can overrule the overwhelming will of the people, democracy has given way to a tyranny of the ancestry.

Making the amendment process easier does not have to come at the expense of minority groups who still live and breath. I would propose simply eliminating the requirement that the states agree to new amendments; a national supermajority

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This worry is not hypothetical. State legislators in Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Missouri, South Carolina, and Virginia rejected the Equal Rights Amendment, which would have guaranteed equal rights for women, even though neither senator from any of those states did the same. States legislatures also quashed the Congressionally approved DC Voting Rights Amendment, which would have granted DC full representation in Congress and the Electoral College.

A nationally focused system would also not be particularly vulnerable to partisan waves.

Almost never in American history has a single party gained a two third majority in both the House and Senate. Absent a seismic shift in American politics, such a majority would be unthinkable in the present day. This natural check makes it highly unlikely that any amendments could be passed solely along party lines.

Only amendments with some bipartisan appeal, and vast popular appeal, could become law.

A final, and reasonable, concern holds that certain rights should not be subject to democratic decision-making at all. No majority, no matter how large, has the right to take away the inalienable rights of any minority, even a single individual. To accommodate these concerns, I would support preserving the onerous process currently in place for an amendment seeking to alter or repeal any of the fundamental freedoms found in the Bill of Rights.

Holding the rest of the Constitution to the same standard, however, makes little sense. The Constitution contains a host of practical formulations and decrees about the basic structure of government that should be subject to the democratic process, just like the rest of our laws. The

Want to reform the Senate so that Wyoming’s residents do not have 68 times the voting power of California’s residents? Forget about it. current system makes that nearly impossible.

Improving the amendment system is necessary to better our democracy but, tragically, requires an amendment of its own.

Connor Warshauer ‘21 studies in the College of Arts & Sciences. He can be reached at cwarshauer@wustl.edu.

WU POLITICAL REVIEW | National

Counterpoint

FIXING CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENTS: A CURE WORSE THAN THE DISEASE Jack Goldberg, staff writer

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t is easy to look at our chaotic political situation and say that we wish substantive, enduring change could be enacted more quickly. Legislation can get passed one year and repealed the next, so it is easy to see why the idea of making constitutional amendments simpler to pass is appealing. What’s more, when a problem has its roots in our Constitution, a true solution is practically impossible under the current state of affairs. The suggestion that we allow amendments to pass with two-thirds majorities in Congress alone, and no input from the states, is an attractive one. There are genuine problems that could be addressed via constitutional amendment, and this article’s companion piece names a few. I think, though, that the proposed change would create more

It would be tyranny of the majority in the most absurd of ways; a huge majority that lasts a single election cycle could rule the nation for decades. problems than it solves. I think that it is preferable that constitutional amendments remain extremely difficult to pass.

Let’s assume for the sake of argument that the proposed change will noticeably increase the frequency of successful constitutional amendments. Admittedly, the vast majority of failed amendments never make it out of Congress— only a half dozen have ever been voted down by the states. That said, I expect politicians would work harder to get them through—trading votes and compromising—if they knew there wasn’t

an additional obstacle in their path. Regardless, if we do not assume that this change will effectively increase the number of constitutional amendments, the debate is meaningless.

My first worry is that there is no reason to think that amendments will be used for our preferred purposes. Whether you lean left or right, it is tempting to think of passing an amendment that ensures that your policy agenda is enacted.

If it’s enshrined in the Constitution, it is practically inviolable. But the other side has the same avenue open to them, making it easier makes it easier for everyone.

We might start off addressing bipartisan complaints like the Electoral College, but what comes after that? The entire fabric of our legal system becomes vulnerable to popular waves from either side and to blatantly partisan constitutional amendments. Let’s say the Democrats have an incredibly good year in 2020, so with some compromises and the cooperation of moderate conservatives they can hit the twothirds mark on constitutional amendments. All of a sudden, they have the power to alter the founding principles of the law in their favor.

Since partisan waves of that magnitude are rare, it could be a whole generation before the GOP has enough votes to override. That could be a generation with no 2nd Amendment, or with abortion rights written into the Constitution. If all that sounds peachy to you, imagine the opposite happens and the country has to wait for a two-thirds-of-Congress blue wave to repeal an amendment banning abortion. It would be tyranny of the majority in the most absurd of ways; a huge majority that lasts a single election cycle could rule the nation for decades, and all this from representatives elected only for two to six years. A two-thirds majority in Congress does not prove that two-thirds of the American people or the states support an amendment, and it certainly does not prove anything about the preferences of future generations who must live under our amendments.

Even if we assume that these sorts of partisan

wave-driven amendments will be reversed relatively quickly—say, five to ten years later—this gives us a chaotic and concerning level of legal change. The Constitution is at the foundation of our legal system, and when it is amended, any statutes or judicial rulings stemming from the overwritten law become meaningless. The courts will be constantly defining our new laws and ruling on all of those new legal grey areas.

Unelected judges and justices will be in the position of constantly legislating from the bench as more and more amendments appear that need judicial interpretation. As the responsibility for lawmaking flows towards the courts and away from the legislatures, our democracy becomes less democratic. What’s more, constant change makes it tough for people to keep track of what the law actually says, and act accordingly. This places still more power in the hands of legal insiders, the judges and lawyers who find the law far more accessible.

I am not saying the current situation is perfect.

I am not saying that there aren’t advantages to having constitutional amendments as a viable option in the legislative toolbox. My goal is only to outline the dangers that grow progressively more worrisome the easier it is to pass an amendment. Exactly how those dangers are to be weighed is a debatable question. I think the weight of the arguments shows, however, that we should err towards leaving constitutional amendments rather difficult to pass.

Jack Goldberg '19 studies in the College of Arts & Sciences. He can be reached at jackgoldberg@wustl.edu.

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One Person, One Vote (?)

Garrett Cunningham Artwork by Audrey Palmer

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eveloping the Constitution of the United States was not easy. A testament to political engineering, the Constitution had to strike a balance of federal representation between its largest and smallest states. The compromise between these states meant that an upper chamber, the Senate, would consist of two senators per state while the lower chamber, the House of Representatives, would apportion representatives based on each state’s relative population.

Like most things in politics, this bicameral legislature was just a deal between two parties; smaller states wanted equal representation in the Senate, and larger states wanted proportional representation. At the time, having malapportioned representation in the Senate was not too consequential. According to the first census of the United States in 1790, the country was home to fewer than two million people that were somewhat well-distributed across the sixteen states. At the extremes of the population continuum were Virginia, which accounted for about

nineteen percent of the country’s population, and Delaware, which accounted for about 1.5 percent.

Since both states were entitled to two senators, a Senate vote in Delaware was worth about thirteen times more than a Senate vote in Virginia.

In 2018, the map of the United States is quite different. Most obviously, there are more states.

More importantly, the population is much less uniform across the 50 states. The most populous state, California, accounts for about twelve percent of the country’s population. Meanwhile, the least populous state, Wyoming, accounts for less than 0.2 percent. As a result, a Senate vote in Wyoming is worth about 70(!) times more than a Senate vote in California.

According to Census Bureau demographic projections, population inequality between states will continue to grow. By 2040, half of the United States population will reside in just eight states: California, Texas, Florida, New

York, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Illinois, and North Carolina. In other words, sixteen senators will represent half of America.

Nearly 72 percent of United States citizens in seventeen states will be underrepresented in the Senate compared to the average American voter.

The six senators of California, Texas, and Florida alone will represent over 30 percent of the country. Meanwhile, 68 senators from the 34 least-populous states will also represent 30 percent of the country.

The centralization of people in cities has played a major role in the diminishing population uniformity in America. According to the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, urban population growth is accelerating across the globe. Currently, about 80 percent of Americans live in urban areas. By 2040, that number will increase to over 86 percent. It might

be no surprise, then, that of the twenty largest metropolitan areas in the U.S., twelve of them are located in the aforementioned eight states.

Furthermore, seventeen of the twenty largest U.S. metropolitan areas are located in the seventeen underrepresented states.

The partisan effects of these changes are not clear. Theories such as “The Big Sort” claim that Americans are increasingly sorting themselves by ideology, and it is no secret that Democrats tend to cluster in urban areas. For instance, after the 2012 presidential election, researchers at the Martin Prosperity Institute at the University of Toronto found that the density of an area was strongly correlated with votes for President Obama.

However, not all of these ever-growing states are as left-leaning as California or New York.

As the 2016 election proved, Texas, Florida, Pennsylvania, Georgia, and North Carolina are

still quite purple. However, growing minority populations in these states – like the Hispanic population in Texas or the African American population in Georgia – might be favorable for Democratic candidates in the future.

Maps aside, it is important to recognize the critical roles of the Senate. The Senate has the power to approve treaties made by the executive branch. It also has the sole power to conduct impeachment trials and approve presidential appointees to executive and judicial branch posts like the Supreme Court. And in a federal government that is perpetually gridlocked, legislative duties on polarizing issues have become increasingly offloaded to the Supreme Court.

To have a minority of the country accountable for a majority of an upper chamber that has fundamental roles in shaping foreign policy and presidential appointments seems flawed at best and irresponsibly anti-democratic at worst.

According to a study of democratic systems in countries across the globe by Steven L. Taylor of Troy University, only Brazil and Argentina have greater malapportionment in their upper chambers compared to the United States. As our country’s population continues to cluster, the Senate will continue to represent an America that no longer exists.

Garrett Cunningham ‘19 studies in the College of Arts & Sciences. He can be reached at cunningham.garrett@wustl.edu.

WU POLITICAL REVIEW | National

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PRIVATIZING LAMBERT: BOON OR BOONDOGGLE? Daniel A. Berkovich

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n 1996, the United States Federal Aviation Administration created a program to encourage the privatization of the country’s airports, which are largely public. Since then, only one airport has successfully privatized through the program, but St. Louis Lambert might be next.

This past June, the City of St. Louis’ Board of Estimate and Apportionment approved a contract for an advisory team to review bids from private firms seeking to take over operations at Lambert International Airport. After the exploration is completed, the advisory team will present their data and findings to City Hall, the FAA, and the airlines in order to make a final decision.

The advisory group is comprised of transportation consultants and investment bankers primarily from the firms Moelis & Company and McKenna & Associates, and the team will be funded in full by nonprofit Grow Missouri, Inc. Given the mandate of City and FAA approval as well as a qualified advisory team, this process may seem to be an independent and balanced consideration of privatization. It isn’t.

Prior to the confirmation of the contract, eighteen of the twenty-eight members of the St. Louis Board of Aldermen wrote a letter urging the Estimate and Apportionment Board to discontinue negotiations with the selected advisory group. They cited concerns of an unbalanced framework and conflicts of interest. In fact, according to the advisory board’s own operation website, the contract with the City stipulates that many of the advisory team members will be paid more if the airport ends up being put up for lease. This effectively incentivizes the advisory team to recommend privatization to the City, even if their research suggests that doing so would not necessarily be a positive transition for passengers and residents.

But it doesn’t end there. Grow Missouri, Inc. is funded by Rex Sinquefield, a conservative activist, political mega-donor, and vocal advocate for airport privatization. The firm also employs

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Jeff Rainford, the chief of staff to former mayor Francis Slay. Not only did Slay initiate plans for the privatization project as one of his final acts in office, but he has also received campaign donations from none other than Rex Sinquefield.

A slanted framework. Mega-donor money.

Political interests. Does this set of circumstances necessarily imply that the privatization project is completely compromised by political bargaining and shady back-room deals? No, but the conflicts of interest should not be overlooked.

This process may seem to be an independent and balanced consideration of privatization. It isn’t.

In fact, the prospect of privatization may be worth considering. Proponents believe that a private airport would be more competitive and thus increase revenue, while opponents think that any extra funds would fall into corporate pockets instead of being reinvested into the airport. Specifically in St. Louis, supporters of privatization hope to relieve Lambert of its $600 million in debt, while others cite a recent uptick in traffic and revenue as a sign of success under public ownership.

Who’s right? It’s hard to say. There are very few examples of private commercial airports in the United States, and those in Europe are difficult to compare given variables like differing economic structures, transportation options, and even geographic layout. But many empirical analyses have been conducted to control for

these variables and deduce the impact of ownership structure on airport success. A 2005 study

by Jose Tongzon for the journal Transportation Research concludes that the greatest airport productivity boost is obtained from partially private ownership. Tongzon specifies that, as long as governments encourage some corporate participation without releasing regulatory power, revenues are likely to increase.

So, case closed? Not so fast. A 2012 report written by Bijan Vasigh for the Journal of Transport Literature conducts a similar analysis, but investigates the United States specifically. Vasigh concludes that privatization would not improve the productivity of American airports. But notably, he doesn’t disagree with Tongzon, either.

Vasigh explains that, given the sheer quantity of accessible airports in America and the fiscal independence with which they operate, U.S. airports already behave like private entities with public regulation. As a consequence, no action needs to be taken. However, Vasigh does note that the best way to determine the effects of privatizing a particular airport would be to analyze region-specific market environments.

Sound familiar? That’s exactly what the advisory group was hired to do. Perhaps the market conditions around St. Louis are conducive to privatization. Perhaps relinquishing some operational duties to private contractors would boost productivity. Privatizing Lambert may in fact be a beneficial transition for St. Louis, but the City deserves to have a non-partisan, unbiased, and impartial evaluation of this process before it’s cleared for takeoff.

Daniel A. Berkovich '21 studies in the College of Arts & Sciences. He can be reached at dberkovich@wustl.edu.

WU POLITICAL REVIEW | National

JUST DO IT: NIKE’S TAKE ON ACTIVISM Akshay Thontakudi | Artwork by Avni Joshi

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y laptop screen flickered as I watched footage of LeBron James announcing his I Promise School. The camera quickly cut away to the familiar afro I had seen plastered across the news.

"Believe in something. Even if it means sacrificing everything."

Earlier this month, Nike signed Colin Kaepernick on a new advertising deal, making him the face of the company’s 30th anniversary "Just Do It" advertising campaign. The decision to feature Kaepernick in the advertisement drew a visceral reaction as social media users lit up to assault or praise Nike's decision. Many called the choice a step forward in corporate activism, while others posted videos of themselves burning Nike shoes.

Regardless of opinion, it's clear that during these turbulent times, Nike has made itself the center of attention.

Using sociopolitical topics for branding is not a new phenomenon. According to Sarah Benet-Weisser, Professor of Media and Communications Studies at the London School of Economics, commodity activism is a common practice of associating a company brand with a specific political or social goal. Nike has done this before, running some of the first ads encouraging female empowerment or promoting issues like HIV/AIDS prevention. Most of these aims are generally uncontroversial in mainstream culture. People would almost universally agree that empowering women and preventing the spread of HIV are good causes to stand behind. In contrast, the complexity of racial tension and police brutality, especially in our current political climate, is a hot-button issue that can easily spell disaster with a misstep. When Pepsi released a commercial in 2017 designed to promote unity by having Kendall Jenner cross lines of protesters to hand a police officer a can of soda, the backlash was enormous. Many felt the tonedeaf ad trivialized the struggles of the Black Lives Matter movement and misrepresented protesting as a laid-back, entertaining activity.

While the company quickly retracted the campaign, its reputation had already been damaged.

According to Brandwatch, sentiment towards Pepsi soured with 60% of people on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook disapproving of the company. Although Pepsi ultimately recovered, it was haunted by the PR disaster for weeks to come. Nike’s decision to use such an advertising strategy means walking a razor-thin line, much like Pepsi did. However, the company's sensitive approach to the issue sets them apart, giving way to incredible success.

Although the Nike stock initially dipped during the week after the ad release, as of September 18 the stock hit a record high. From the same article, surveys show that consumers "overwhelmingly" support Nike's decision, with further indication that they would be more likely to buy shoes from the company. Despite the opposition, Nike is poised to benefit from this advertising maneuver, using a divisive issue to further their brand message and increase revenue.

Although the financial success satisfies shareholders, there are moral questions about commodity activism. A company by its nature exists to make a profit, and Nike's usage of a social issue is definitely a play to increase its profits and brand awareness. Given this information, does it dilute the message that Kaepernick, and others who kneel with him, are trying to send? It also could be construed as hypocritical that Nike is supporting a social aim simply for the benefit of the company, an issue that the firm may not have a serious interest in.

Alternatively, this could be a stepping-stone for a new breed of activism. With Nike making headway in ads supporting controversial sociopolitical goals, other companies will likely follow suit.

Commodity activism may become a means to spread support for ideas and movements using a company's audience and brand. It's unclear how effective these strategies will be in the long run, but it is certain that more companies will attempt to back activist goals more frequently.

Only time will tell whether or not they succeed both politically and financially.

It is important to keep in mind that Nike is first and foremost a company, and as a result its goal is to maximize profit. However, it is possible that the company supports progressive goals and found a way to achieve both objectives through an electrifying advertising campaign. In addition, Kaepernick hasn't played football since 2016, so this deal seems to indicate a targeted career move for him in his time away from the NFL. I believe the biggest outcome from this advertising move is the amount of attention it has generated in the news and on social media. The people may support or condemn the company, Kaepernick, and his reasons for protesting. But they're talking. As long as Kaepernick and his message remain in the limelight, there will be a constant push towards addressing the brutality and inequality that he has rallied against.

Akshay Thontakudi ‘19 studies in School of Engineering & Applied Science. He can be reached at a.m.thontakudi@wustl.edu.

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WU POLITICAL REVIEW | National

A TRANSPORTATION REVOLUTION BUILT TO LAST? Sienna Ruiz, staff writer | Artwork by Avni Joshi

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n early July, I rediscovered the wonders of riding a bike. For the first time in years, I felt the awe of my physical ability, the smooth weightlessness, and the mystical balance that a childhood in the hilly Bay Area discouraged. As I did not own a bike, my ride through Forest Park was possible because of Ofo, a bike sharing company that had just been introduced to St. Louis.

Though I did not know it then, I was participating in the boom in alternative transportation that hit St. Louis last spring. On top of the bright yellow Ofo bikes, Lime Bike, the more familiar and just as unmistakably colorful bike share company, introduced their model in late April, and the Bird scooters followed a few months later in July. At the same time that changes seemed to usher in a new era of transportation in St. Louis, the fleet of yellow bikes that I so admired disappeared within three weeks time.

Cities across the country, from Santa Monica to Boston, have seen the mysterious rise and fall of dockless bikes and scooters. Their sudden appearance is almost magical. One day the idea

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of motorized scooters becoming popular is absolutely ridiculous, and the next it seems as if there was never a more natural image than a teenager vaping while zooming fifteen miles per hour down the sidewalk. But this phenomena that has become so ingrained in urban culture so quickly and that is touted as a solution for all of our transportation woes deserves more critical thought.

The rapid influx of bikes and scooters begs the question of whether the city was adequately prepared for this change to ensure that the new transportation technology is as safe, eco-friendly, and equitable as it has the potential to be.

St. Louis is hardly a city known for being bikefriendly; rather, the maze of highways are built only with a car in mind, making the city almost unnavigable without one. Road conditions are also highly variable, adding another layer of difficulty for those making their way without a car. And even though experts can find their way through bumpy streets without bike lanes, driving through traffic is a tall order for inexperienced riders. Without proper infrastructure, bikes and

WU POLITICAL REVIEW | National scooters can become public health hazards. Due to the lack of adequate bike lanes, there are few designated spaces for bikes and scooters, meaning that riders risk collisions when they use bikes on major roadways. Being too slow for the speed of traffic and too small for drivers to see, electric scooters are forced onto sidewalks where they pose a threat to other pedestrians.

The issue of helmets is also at hand; although St. Louis city requires all scooter and bike riders to wear a helmet, the vast majority of riders do not, putting them at risk of head trauma and other injuries. For electric scooters, the more novel and attention grabbing transportation development, formal data on injuries has yet to be collected, but doctors around the country are raising awareness of the anecdotal increase in injuries that they see. In San Francisco, one of the cities most impacted by the rush of bike share and scooter startups, hospitals are gearing up to collect data in order to determine if there is a relationship between the use of dockless bikes and scooters and injury rates. According to the New York Times, Dr. Chris Colwell, Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital’s chief of emergency medicine said, “I’m quite confident that we were seeing five to 10 injuries from this a week, and I’m probably underestimating that…

We saw one or zero a month before the increase in electric scooters”.

Research concerning the injury risk of dockless bikes and scooters is still ongoing, and it is also important to note that this new form of alternative transportation can have many health benefits as well. More readily accessible bikes can inspire more physical activity, replacing stationary car trips. In an ideal world, dockless bikes and scooters can play a role in taking cars off the road, thereby improving CO2 emission levels and air quality. At the St. Louis launch of Lime Bike and Ofo, Chris Taylor, head of north America for Ofo, praised the, “real, positive changes” the city was making by contracting these companies, such as, “reduced traffic, lower emissions, and improved public health”. However, environmental costs may prove to be more complex than Taylor suggests. As a recent Vox piece pointed out, “scooters are only as green as the electricity that charges them. If your city gets most of its power from a coal or natural gas-fired power plant, that means your scoot around the neighborhood has a positive carbon footprint”. St. Louis is a city that generates the majority of its electricity from coal, so our rides may not be as eco-friendly as they seem. Replacing one non-renewable mode of transportation with another is not as much of a radical transition as companies and city leaders

would have it seem; rather, dockless bikes and scooters move to electrify transportation without the necessary infrastructure in our power grid to make them as eco-friendly as possible. On the other hand, scooters emit significantly less carbon dioxide emitting about 4 to 9 grams of CO2 per mile, while cars emit around 400 grams of CO2 per mile. Bikes and scooters can also encourage greater use of existing public transit by helping people navigate the “last mile”, or the crucial distance between one’s home or a central location to a bus stop or train station that often keeps people from using public transportation.

Another bold claim came from City of St. Louis mayor Lyda Krewson, who at the launch said, “By ensuring access to bikes across the city, we can improve transportation options for all St. Louisans and help bridge physical and social divides that have historically separated our neighborhoods”. Decades of residential segregation in St. Louis seems a tall task for 750 bikes to fix, and one wonders whether a larger public infrastructure project, like a finalized NorthSouth Metro line or expanded bus system, would better bridge vast disparities in public transportation. That being said, city ordinance does require that 20% of bikes that a company puts in the city be dedicated to, “social equity and inclusion target neighborhoods” such as The Ville, Jeff-Vander-Lou, and other historically disadvantaged areas. Scooters and bikes are also very popular among low-income residents.

As Vox notes, according to Populus, 72 percent of those who make under $25,000 and 75 percent of those who make between $25,000 and $50,000 have a positive perception of e-scooters specifically, and it is not hard to find a wide range of riders throughout the city.

Mobility may be essential to breaking the cycle of poverty, but permanent access to affordable transportation would be the most helpful to disadvantaged communities. And right now, bikes and scooters are far from permanent. The permit Ofo used did not obligate the company to stay for a predetermined amount time. Their sudden disappearance proves we have no guarantee of stability. Without set commitments to the city, it is unknown if bikes and scooters will stay if their company goes bankrupt, if city government passes more regulations on them, or if the vandalism that leaves bike frames gutted on street corners continues to increase. St. Louis citizens deserve more than uncertainty - if alternative, environmentally friendly, and affordable transportation is what people want, then it is time to give them something more substantial.

Dockless bikes and scooters cannot be where the development of public transportation stops, and they cannot distract from a faulty system that reinforces historical segregation patterns and stops far short of connecting major areas of the city. We must have higher standards for our public transportation resources, coupled with the expectation that what is here is here to stay.

A “transportation revolution” must be long lasting and built in conjunction with existing public infrastructure. Only time will tell if bikes and scooters fit the bill.

Sienna Ruiz ‘20 studies in the College of Arts & Sciences. She can be reached at sienna.ruiz@wustl.edu.

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WU POLITICAL REVIEW | National

THE SUPREME VALUE:

WHY FREE SPEECH IS PARAMOUNT ON COLLEGE CAMPUSES Johnathan Romero, staff writer | Artwork by Maggie Chuang

“K

nowledge is power” is a ubiquitous aphorism in modern society. As George Washington—our university’s namesake—once said, “Knowledge is in every country the surest basis of public happiness.” Further reflecting the salience of knowledge, the motto of Wash U is Per Veritatem Vis or “Truth Through Strength.” The exalted status of knowledge in society is remarkably recent. Not until the Enlightenment—or as it’s also known—the Age of Reason (17th-18th centuries) did knowledge become such a vaunted commodity so essential to human flourishing. It is no coincidence that the period in which reason and free expression wrenched much of religion’s stranglehold on thought and public discourse marked the beginning of 200-fold growth in the global economy.

Anecdotally, the Vatican-imposed house arrest of Galileo—arguably the progenitor of modern science and with it the Enlightenment—marked the symbolic turning point in which science percolated into the intellectual realm. In modern times, the champions of political correctness have inherited the derisive and censorial role of religious institutions.

The new ideology that informs this movement toward censorship stems from the relatively new philosophy of Postmodernism which rejects many of the core principles of the Enlightenment, such as the assumption that objective reality,

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truth, morality, social progress, and reason itself exist and can be realized. Additionally, postmodernists supplant these tenets with the cardinal belief that all expression—be it physical or verbal—represents a conscious or unconscious power play within the societal hierarchy. Even altruism is nothing but a socially conditioned behavior completely detached from any personal agency or initiative that acts to elevate one’s prestige and reputation within the social sphere. If viewed through the Postmodern lens, it is an example of what the hordes of social media now refer to as “virtue signaling.” Many university professors subscribe to this philosophy and are thus inculcating our generation with these ideas. Those who embrace NeoMarxism, the newest version of socialism, are far more prone to adopt Postmodernism as a justification for their objective of rectifying the power imbalances in society. Predictably, Left-leaning professors are more inclined to be Neo-Marxist and are therefore more enamored by Postmodernism. As evidenced by data collected by Mitchell Langbert of the National Association of Scholars, Left-wing thinking is far more common among professors than in the past and leaves only the natural sciences and mathematics with some political heterogeneity.

Unfortunately, it is the youngest generation—my generation—which has most fervently embraced

the ideology of political correctness. Due to no fault of our own, my cohort has been coddled by well-intentioned parents seeking to preclude our exposure to the perils of the outside world. This unprecedented fear among parents arose in the aftermath of several high-profile kidnappings of young children in the 1980’s and 1990’s. As adults, we carried with us a demand for unprecedented safety from both psychological and physical harm. Now that many of us are college students, we have established the institution of higher education as the focal point of the malicious movement to censor speech.

Few issues on the college landscape are characterized by the level of contradiction, confusion, and emotion as that of the debate over unfettered speech in the public sphere. The debate is riddled with jargon such as “safe spaces,” “trigger warnings,” and “microaggressions” that seem bizarre and foreign to outside observers.

While the issue of free speech on college campuses has always existed, this most recent iteration represents a particularly malignant strain of First Amendment encroachment.

This assault represents not just an attack on the Enlightenment values which have elevated science and reason in society, but also an affront to the core principles and responsibilities of a university: to edify and nurture the next generation

WU POLITICAL REVIEW | National

of professionals. In order to maintain rigorous standards of inquiry and ensure that only the ideas which survive intense scrutiny are promulgated in universities (e.g. evolution, Newtonian, Relativistic and Quantum Physics, mathematical formulas, liberalism, etc.), students must be free to discuss ideas freely. New, politically correct restrictions on the crucial, unfettered exchange of ideas in the form of “safe spaces,” “trigger warnings,” and “microaggressions” compromise the university’s capacity to maintain benchmarks of academic excellence. For those who find this assertion exaggerated, consider the example of Harvard Law School. In recent years, student organizations have encouraged students not to attend lectures on rape and sexual violence law if the content could prove “triggering.” According to Harvard Law Professor Suk Gersen, legions of students have accosted professors with questions like “Can you not use

occurs through a modified scenario of classical conditioning where one stimulus is systematically paired with a benign stimulus until the association between the initial stimulus (in this case, the “triggering” speech) and the originally paired noxious stimulus (residual trauma) is severed entirely. This approach in the clinical setting is widely called “exposure therapy,” and has an impressive record of success. Crucial to the success of this treatment, however, is the voluntary exposure on the part of the patient. If someone suffering from a phobia (typically precipitated by trauma) does not willingly undergo treatment, the results are the opposite. This requisite may be met—as it often is—through a detailed syllabus with information on the topics discussed in a course. Classes are perhaps among the most ideal environments for group exposure therapy; they are physically safe, voluntarily attended, and non-confining. The word

youth to seek government intervention to restrict its dissemination. Much of the language spouted by this group, such as “harm,” “safe,” and even “trauma” implies or connotes physical violence. This illustrates a phenomenon in psychology known as “concept creep,” whereby violence is pathologized to such an extent as to encompass emotional or psychological discomfort. In every stable, democratic society, the government possesses the legal monopoly on violence—apart from self-defense—to maintain order and the rule of law. If the full danger of this trend has not yet sunk in, consider that if violence includes speech, then the government would suddenly attain legal jurisdiction over the regulation of speech. Even constitutional amendments may be replaced given sufficient political will. The government need only guarantee a “right to safety” for its citizens.

“Safe space” should mean a physically safe academic environment where students can engage in polite intellectual discourse as a means of achieving group exposure therapy. the word ‘violate’ in class?” Some radical students have even asserted that Harvard should cease teaching rape law altogether for fear of reigniting trauma or a “second rape.” While the integrity of sexual violence law remains, will this continue when these discomfited students of today become the faculty members and college administrators of tomorrow?

Proponents of this trend might argue that it is to betterment of the psychological well-being of victims of sexual violence and is thus morally justifiable. Such a claim—while oft spoken—demonstrates an ignorance of basic psychology that is buttressed by decades of empirical research. Any typical college introductory psychology course would include content on desensitization, which is the gradual decline in the sensitivity of an individual or individuals to a stimulus or stimuli. Desensitization typically

“safe space” is a misnomer; these areas are no safer from danger than regular spaces. What is key is the co-opting of “safety” to mean “free from ideas which contravene deeply personal beliefs or one’s identity.” Ultimately, “safe space” should mean a physically safe academic environment where students can engage in polite intellectual discourse as a means of achieving group exposure therapy.

Most nefarious, however, are the incessant appeals to authority—such as university administrators or politicians—to maintain both a physically and psychologically benign environment for young people. As rational as this may seem prima facie, one must remember that in the minds of many of Generation Z (born during or after 1995), sources of psychological distress are not just physical, but also verbal. In other words, speech is sufficiently disconcerting for today’s

The First Amendment of the Constitution explicitly protects freedom of expression, because the Founding Fathers presciently predicted its role in safeguarding the wellbeing of American society and recognized its importance in a functional democracy. Paradoxically, in the Information Age, we risk depriving ourselves of the unfettered flow of knowledge that informs proper public discourse. Even Wash U is not immune to the movement toward censorship. Recall the motto of this university: Per Veritatem Vis. Can we even boast of our strength through truth if that “truth” is a lie?

Johnathan Romero ’20 studies in the College of Arts & Sciences. He can be reached at johnathan. romero@wustl.edu.

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WU POLITICAL REVIEW | International

International

TRADES & TWEETS Jon Niewijk, staff editor

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t is likely that anyone who has consumed any form of news in the last several months has heard about the U.S.’s trade war with China. It is equally likely that that news contained some mention of how irrational, ineffectual, and harmful this trade policy is. Trump’s tweets on the issue have not exactly inspired confidence that he knows what he’s doing with this policy. But his probable incompetence regarding trade should not be as concerning as many economists, politicians, and media organizations claim it is.

crucial part of the economy, and its theft directly results in profit losses and layoffs for U.S. firms.

Chinese firms and the government that regulates them have been stealing American IP for decades, and the U.S. has mostly let it slide. An extensive study conducted by Lighthizer’s office concluded that Chinese theft of American IP costs America anywhere between $225 and $600 billion per year. The Chinese government has enabled this theft by turning a blind eye, and by actively requiring U.S. companies that do business in China to give up some of their IP.

To understand why, it’s important to recognize the differing reasons that Trump and his administration present as to why the trade wars with China are necessary. Trump has focused on the trade deficit—when one country buys more stuff from another country than it sells to it—that the U.S. has with China. Trade deficits are not inherently bad; I have a trade deficit with Chipotle and am much happier for it.

In the past eighteen months, China’s government has begun to crack down on IP theft by its companies, but their actions have not been quite enough. The Trump administration’s tariffs are a clear message that the U.S. will no longer tolerate the current magnitude of IP theft that it suffers. Lighthizer and his colleagues recognize that the current trade war is mutually harmful in the short term; that’s the point. But if it were successful, the benefits would outweigh the costs that this relatively brief trade war has imposed on U.S. companies and consumers.

Even if trade deficits were harmful, imposing tariffs—taxes on imports—on Chinese goods in the hopes that Americans will buy less from China is a bad way to close a trade deficit. China has responded to American tariffs by imposing its own tariffs to make its own citizens buy less American stuff. In short, Trump’s tweets outline a policy that makes everything more expensive for everyone in the pursuit of a meaningless goal.

But the people who work for Trump that initiated the policy have a different explanation.

Robert Lighthizer, the U.S. Trade Representative, stated that the tariffs’ primary purpose was to pressure the Chinese administration to curb China’s rampant theft of American intellectual property. Intellectual property (IP) is the legal right someone has to something they invent or create; patents, trademarks, and copyrights are all examples of common IP protections. With the meteoric rise of the technology sector, it’s a

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These trade wars are an example of a recurring trend during Trump’s presidency: the discrepancy between what he says and what the U.S. government actually does. On many key issues, the administration’s actions have often gone against Trump’s proclamations. Trump makes threats on Twitter what seems like every other day, yet they almost always prove empty. He plays a global version of footsie with Putin, yet the U.S. responded to Russian meddling and crimes by expelling their diplomats and imposing sanctions, often to a more extreme degree than the Obama administration did. As the author of the anonymous New York Times op-ed said, there are still “adults in the room.”

We should not want an administration that works actively against the president. That’s

treasonous and damaging to the future of our democracy. Instead, we should remember that the overwhelming majority of what the U.S. government does is not executed by President Trump, but rather by people who are generally more rational and competent than he is. Trump is driving a train, not a car. He can do highly unlikely, catastrophic things like crashing into the train stopped in front of his (i.e. using his big nuclear button), but for the most part he is limited by the rails of bureaucracy, checks and balances, and by the fact that he can’t be everywhere at once. There’s a limit to how much he can swerve this country.

It may well be the case that Trump in fact knows nothing about trade and has no idea what he’s doing here. But that might not be as much a cause for concern as it may seem.

Jon Niewijk ‘21 studies in the College of Arts & Sciences. He can be reached at jniewijk@wustl.edu.

WU POLITICAL REVIEW | International

"Into the New" by Natalie Snyder

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WU POLITICAL REVIEW | International

THE ANTIDOTE TO THE SINOAMERICAN TRADE CONFLICT Johnathan Romero, staff writer

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or most of human history, all but a sliver of the populace scraped by on a meager income below the current International Poverty Line of just $1.90. Not until the Enlightenment in the West did global wealth experience a significant, sustained increase over time. Not coincidentally, the interval since the Enlightenment has also been the only period of meaningful international trade.

There is sturdy economic logic behind free trade. The rationale proceeds as follows: each country possesses relative strengths and weaknesses in its economic productivity. In a freely trading global economy, countries that excel at producing certain goods can specialize in producing those products while closing gaps in the supply of certain goods by exchanging their surplus for others in domestic demand. These imported products would arrive from countries that are relatively more efficient at producing them—ultimately resulting in more total goods available for all parties. This economic principle underpins all trade negotiations and is known as the Law of Comparative Advantage.

Unfortunately, in the era where terms such as “neoliberal” and “globalization” have become synonymous with our nation’s present economic woes, vocal minorities on both sides of the political aisle support some form of protectionism. One only need recall the tremendous enthusiasm for protectionist presidential candidates Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders during the last election. Uniting these two otherwise different demographic groups is a shared resentment and trepidation at the loss of manufacturing jobs due, in part, to outsourcing to countries with lower labor costs. This sentiment is epitomized by the widespread disdain for Chinese trade practices which many believe are unfair and responsible for the departure of the long cherished factory jobs.

Many Americans believe that China is not abiding by the shared framework of rules that uphold a fair and equitable environment of economic

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exchange. Instead, the common perception is that China has introduced economic measures that undermine this precondition of trade, therefore benefiting at the expense of the U.S. With this in mind, any punitive tariffs must be provisional in the pursuit of restoring the fair system of trade that has economically uplifted billions in the preceding decades.

The current administration does not hesitate to lambast the Chinese government for its allegedly unfair trading practices, which range from currency manipulation to intellectual property theft.

While the soundness of some claims are disputed, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) unequivocally imposes an undue burden on foreign companies and exporters seeking to tap the seemingly bottomless reservoir that is China’s economy. The U.S. government, among others, has a history of leveling allegations at the CCP for imbalanced trade and related economic measures. What distinguishes this administration is its willingness to venture beyond platitudes and vitriolic criticisms to substantive economic retaliation. For better or worse, the Trump administration has now levied tariffs on over $250 billion dollars worth of Chinese goods. Predictably, China retaliated with tariffs worth $60 billion on U.S. exports to the country. Signs of an escalating tit-for-tat trade war abound with the President threatening an additional $267 billion in tariffs and the CCP threatening a proportionate economic response. Despite the potential promise of temporary trade pressure, America’s present approach to eliciting concessions from the Chinese government is imprecise and wasteful.

China is a country that is parasitizing an otherwise optimal trade environment. Fortunately, in recent years the Chinese government has tempered some of its more egregious trade violations, such as government-led devaluation of the currency, which often ensure Chinese exports are cheaper for Americans than domestic products, but many nefarious practices steadfastly remain. The Chinese government continues to set restrictions on currency fluctuations, which

could allow Chinese goods to become either relatively cheap or expensive compared to their American counterparts as dictated by natural market forces. The CCP also imposes compulsory one-to-one joint ventures that nascent Chinese companies exploit to accelerate the acquisition of competitors’ technologies (as these ventures involve a sharing of technology and manufacturing practices). In the event of a stock market crash, the government would, and has, implemented stock breaks, which protect Chinese firms while preventing investors, such as Americans, from withdrawing investment. To this day, China harbors an elaborate network of “shadow banks,” which provide generous loans to domestic Chinese companies with a minimal regulatory burden. Beijing also distributes subsidies for domestic companies and enforces miscellaneous policies blatantly designed to favor domestic firms. The government supplements this with high tariffs on foreign goods to preclude any foreign penetration of the Chinese market. While these are serious infractions upon the free-trading international order, any economic penalties risk a severe escalation of tensions that would truncate economic growth for both the U.S. and China. Even without a cessation of trade, standalone retributive economic policies are often harmful to both parties. What emerges in America’s situation is the question of how to minimize domestic economic harm while promoting more mutually beneficial trade practices.

This outcome remains tenable only if the present administration embraces a policy of maximum pressure. The ultimate objective should be to inflict enough pain on the Chinese economy in order to compel the Chinese government to reform its economic practices. To accomplish this, the Trump administration should implement precise, punitive tariffs, sanctions, and, in specific instances, a blanket ban on the export or import of specific goods. The persuasive potential of these measures is directly proportional to the availability of substitute goods or services. Tariffs would be most effective if applied

WU POLITICAL REVIEW | International

to computer and smartphone software and chips. As a case study of the potential efficacy of this proposal, consider ZTE, the second-largest telecommunications equipment company in China and a symbol of Chinese technological dynamism. In the spring of this year the U.S. government imposed a 7-year ban on the sale of critical cell phone components from the American manufacturers such as Qualcomm to the company due to ZTE’s flouting of economic sanctions on North Korea and Iran in the past.

Given the limited availability of these parts from other domestic or foreign vendors, ZTE teetered near collapse and by the company’s own admission it would likely file for bankruptcy without access to invaluable American smartphone and computer chips. Mercifully, the President decided to rescind the sales ban in exchange for more lenient economic penalties. While the complete impact of the proposed measure was

tremendous political unrest and social upheaval, which would create foreign investment withdrawal, tourism decline and a stock market crash that would enflame the widespread discontent among Chinese citizens in a perverse positive feedback loop. China’s leaders are far from oblivious to popular sentiment and therefore face significant political pressure to avert a serious economic downturn. Economic sanctions targeting leading CCP members and the companies to which they invest would further exacerbate the strain on party leadership. Chinese President Xi Jinping, a ZTE investor himself, personally appealed to President Trump to withdraw the devastating export ban on the company and succeeded in securing some economic reprieve for the iconic telecom manufacturer.

Irrespective of unilateral measures, a united front of major Chinese trading partners represents

Lamentably, the current administration’s approach to applying tariffs is more scattershot than smart bomb. not realized, the market provided essential clues as to the probable—albeit hypothetical—outcome. With ZTE’s disintegration, thousands of high-paying domestic jobs in China would evaporate and deflate the nation’s burgeoning reputation as an international tech behemoth and send shockwaves across the domestic industry.

With China attempting to establish its tech credentials through its Made in China 2025 program, a broader export ban on these products would cripple the CCP’s efforts to foster an innovation and service-oriented economy. While relatively innocuous to the political stability of most nations, the CCP maintains its legitimacy principally through its prudent stewardship of Chinese economic growth. Without a flourishing economy, the Chinese government would confront

the ideal approach to stack the deck against the CCP. Lamentably, the current administration’s approach to applying tariffs is more scattershot than smart bomb. Instead of launching multiple feuds with NATO countries (e.g. Canada & Turkey), the administration should rejoin the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and spearhead the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) in order to coalesce a firm global alliance of trading partners that could collectively prohibit Chinese access to the world’s two largest trade partnerships. Bolstered by substantial tariffs and sanctions from China’s major trading partners—who largely constitute the members of the TPP—the world could essentially exclude the Chinese economy from the global market. In the aftermath of such colossal international pressure, roughly a quarter of the

Chinese economy (that which is dependent on trade) would vanish precipitously. Unfortunately, the sword cuts both ways, and severe economic strain would also propagate throughout the global economy. Despite its inevitability, this is by no means an unmanageable outcome.

In actuality this may be ameliorated through a series of domestic relief efforts such as the recent $12 billion funding package dispersed throughout America’s hard-hit agricultural sector. If the Trump administration were to keep the dispute ephemeral, the subsidized industries could repay their debt through the increased profits resulting from Chinese trade concessions.

In this high-stakes conflict, the Trump administration can mitigate domestic economic harm by implementing selectively appropriate economic sanctions, tariffs, and export bans to provide a portentous taste of America’s firepower in a wider trade conflict.

If this tactic of shock and awe does not suffice, the President should rally a coalition of trade partners to systematically exclude China from the global market with more sweeping sanctions and tariffs. Crucially, the most economical approach is one that complements the unique strengths of America’s economy with the legitimate threat of overwhelming global retaliation.

Most economists agree that America holds the better hand in this dispute. It’s time we used it.

Johnathan Romero ’20 studies in the College of Arts & Sciences. He can be reached at johnathan.romero@wustl.edu

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WU POLITICAL REVIEW | International

BIG POOH BEAR IS WATCHING YOU Caron Song | Artwork by Will Jamison

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ou are more than a number. How many times have you heard that phrase ever since starting college? Hopefully not too many. But for China’s 1.4 billion citizens, a single number will not only define who they are, but also determine their ways of life. These people will soon live in a chilling reality where their every action is monitored, evaluated, and quantified to calculate their Citizen Score, a number that is indicative of the “trustworthiness” of their character. What are these ratings used for? Nearly everything. If your rating drops too low, you could be banned from buying tickets for domestic flights. If your rating is high, you’ll have a better chance on dating websites to find a partner.

This outlandish scenario sounds like something straight out of a futuristic dystopian novel or an episode of Black Mirror (Nosedive, anyone?), but China’s Social Credit System (SCS) is not some fictional Big Brother—it’s absolutely real, as the implementation of this imposing system has been underway since its introduction on June 14, 2014 by the Chinese government. Millions of people are piloting the system for ongoing development and research purposes right now, but the program is expected to be fully operational by 2020 and participation is mandatory.

loyalty, and personal information. However, it’s the last two factors that are far more controversial: behavior/preferences and interpersonal relationships. Alibaba’s system judges someone who watches TV for six hours straight much more harshly than, say, someone who consistently buys school supplies because the former is likely to be a couch potato and the latter is probably a responsible student.

The glaring controversy lies not only within what can be objectively judged as “good behavior” under certain contexts and circumstances, but also in the seemingly innocent, Pavlovian nudge the system is giving to Chinese citizens; good behavior is rewarded with good benefits, but at what point will this turn into downright brainwashing when the Chinese government starts to push its own agenda? As for interpersonal relationships, who you choose to interact and become friends with is also judged based on how

How exactly is the Chinese government keeping tabs on every citizen’s daily activities? China’s massive data-mining tech companies are certainly involved (think of companies similar to Facebook or Google). In this day and age of digital information, it’s easy to assess someone just by glancing at their online profile, and when an illiberal dictatorship joins forces with capitalist establishments, it becomes even easier to collect personal information. The Chinese government has given licenses to eight private companies (all generate massive amounts of data) including Sesame Credit (owned by Alibaba Group), Tencent, Didi Chuxing (China’s largest ride-sharing service), and Baihe.com (China’s largest online-dating service) to design algorithms for determining Citizen Scores.

Alibaba can’t reveal the complex algorithm it uses to determine Citizen Scores, but it states that there are five main factors considered. The first three are standard: credit history, company

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economy is doing (thanks to the government!).

The SCS has been sinisterly creeping up on Chinese society under the guise of a beneficial system that encourages model behavior and strengthens the socialist market economy, since its purpose is to “improve the integrity and credit level of the whole society,” but it’s almost brazenly clear that the Chinese government is exploiting this front as a way to tighten its reign on the country. But that’s why the SCS is such a clever plan. As the world transitions into the peak of the Information Age, the distinction between what’s online and what’s offline becomes blurrier and blurrier. When we indulge in virtual experiences, we are simultaneously shaping our online personas, which are naturally different from our “real” personalities. For example, you might be nicer to your Uber driver if you see that their online rating is high, or you might deem someone to be friendly based on their Facebook profile. China’s SCS takes advantage of this culture shift by following the flow of change and capitalizing on our growing dependence on data.

Instead of waving around a big stick and dishing out threats, the Chinese government commands obedience by creating a naughty-or-nice system to incentivize Chinese citizens to put on their best behavior for more than just Christmas.

It might be easy to criticize China’s SCS for its controversial use of private data, but look at our own country. The NSA breathes down our necks while Amazon recommends us a shopping cart of goods. Data-mining is no longer just acceptable; it’s required in the society that we currently live in. China is merely taking the first outward step towards using something that has always been lurking in the shadows.

much “positive energy” is generated. Sounds nice in theory, right? Alibaba classifies conversations containing positive energy as those with nice messages about the government or how well the

Caron Song ‘19 studies in the School of Engineering & Applied Science. She can be reached at songcaron@wustl.edu.

WU POLITICAL REVIEW | International

MISSION To facilitate interdisciplinary dialogue and forge connections between students, academics and seasoned practitioners whose advocacy, organizing or research addresses global injustice

THURSDAY OCTOBER 25 BROWN LOUNGE 4:00PM

PANEL DISCUSSION Frontline Justice: Building and Understanding Social Movements

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KEYNOTE Gender Inequity Is Woven into Global Injustice: It Is NOT Inevitable Cynthia Enloe Professor, Clark University

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GENDER & SECURITY CASE COMPETITION 8:00AM Registration and Welcome 8:30AM Teams prepare case 11:30AM Presentations 1:00PM Lunch 2:00PM Awards and Closing

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WU POLITICAL REVIEW | International

THE NEW OTTOMAN EMPIRE Jacob Ramer

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ince the end of World War II, Turkey has been a strong U.S. ally. It was one of the targets of the Marshall Plan and was a crucial part of our pre-1991 fight against communism.

It joined NATO in 1952, sent troops to Korea, harbored U.S. missiles, cooperated with pro-U.S. Middle Eastern states, hosted American military bases, and, ultimately, stood with Washington in most major 20th century conflicts.

However, this has begun to change. A recent Pew study found that 76 percent of Turkish citizens hold an unfavorable view of the American people. The world has changed since the Berlin Wall fell and we entered the post-Soviet age. And accompanying the end of communism, the politics have changed as well. Recently, we have seen a departure from the amicable interactions of the last three-quarters of a century. While you might think this trend is simply a response to President Trump’s hostility towards many of our allies, this has been a trend since the mid-1990s and has become even more pronounced under Turkey’s current president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Turkey is ultimately not as aligned with the U.S. as it used to be. The reasons for this are complicated, but I think they boil down to two main points. First, Turkey no longer feels the same existential threat from Russia it once did, and second, the country’s politics are increasingly shaped by Islamic fundamentalism.

76 percent of Turkish citizens hold an unfavorable view of the American people.

Russia is Turkey’s nearest major neighbor, which shapes Turkey’s foreign policy. Throughout the Cold War, the Soviet Union made several claims to Turkish territory, mostly along its eastern border with Georgia. The USSR was extremely expansionist during this time, and Turkey, as a NATO member, impeded many of its strategic goals.

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Turkey occupies one of the most important strategic positions in the world because of its exclusive access to the Bosporus Strait, the narrow stretch of water that splits Europe from Asia and the Black Sea from the Mediterranean.

Access through here is imperative to Russian foreign policy. Russia has historically lacked a warm water port, and many of its expansion efforts, particularly in Crimea and the exclave of Kaliningrad near Poland, have focused on the ability to project power with its navy. During the Cold War, containing the Soviets in the Black Sea was important to keep them from expanding their power in the Mediterranean. Should conflict break out, a pro-western Turkish government would allow quick deployment of U.S. forces either in Southern Europe or the Arab states.

But since the fall of the Iron Curtain, Russia does not seem as threatening as it once was.

While Putin’s expansions in Ukraine and Iran are worrying, nuclear war doesn’t seem very likely.

Putin’s government has been relatively friendly to Ankara, with Russia becoming Turkey’s number one energy provider and Turkey remaining a major tourist destination for Russians. Reliance on the U.S. for protection just does not seem as necessary to Turkey as it once was.

Complementing this shift in priorities, Turkey’s government seems intent on pursuing policies that harken back to the days of the Ottoman Empire as Ankara’s influence independently expands in the region. Under Erdogan’s rule, the country has turned away from the secular liberalism of its founder Mustafa Kemal. Islamic fundamentalism is creeping into the daily politics of the country, with, for example, consistent references to Turkish military actions in Syria as a Jihad. Many of these actions have been against U.S.-backed Kurdish forces. While Turkey is a majority Muslim nation, the Turkish government has been historically secular, in contrast to nations like Egypt and Saudi Arabia. Under Erdogan, however, Turkey has begun to take an active stance towards becoming the dominant power in the Middle East. The increasing importance of Islam in state rhetoric appears to hint at Erdogan’s desire to at least wield influence over his Arab neighbors, pushing the U.S. out of the affairs of the region. In Erdogan’s mind, the

shared religion of the region and Turkey’s history as the Ottoman Empire serves to give reason for Turkish influence of local politics.

Erdogan’s regime is on a collision course with the United States. Increasingly hostile rhetoric and actions are straining our relations. Turkey

Ankara has begun to take an active stance towards becoming the dominant power in the Middle East. refused to allow the U.S. to use its airbases in the 2003 Iraq War, demanded the extradition of a Pennsylvania man it claims help orchestrate the 2016 coup, placed tariffs on our goods, and has taken some stances in support of the Iranian government. While these events will likely not lead to direct conflict between our two countries, this drift away from American influence will put pressure on policymakers to continually develop relations with other actors in the region.

Should a conflict like the one in Syria break out elsewhere, Washington and Ankara may find themselves supporting opposing forces.

Jacob Ramer ‘21 studies in the Olin Business School.

He can be reached at jacob.b.ramer@wustl.edu.

WU POLITICAL REVIEW | International

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