Environments

WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY

POLITICAL

REVIEW 29.3 | October 2018 | wupr.org

FEATURING:

Sorting, Polarization and Gridlock Holding His Memory Hostage

Table of Contents 6

MSD Project Clear: A Step in What Direction?

Christian Fogerty

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Kavanaugh and Ford: The Hierarchy of Single-Sex Schools Rachel Olick-Gibson

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Growing in New Directions Sienna Ruiz

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The Skill of Normalizing Controversy Christian Monzon

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Nice to Meat You, Clean Meat Caron Song

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Breakdown of Boycotts Kyle Fry

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Holding His Narrative Hostage Ishaan Shah

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Tropical Trump: The Rise of Jair Bolsanaro Rohan Palacios

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CampusNext Thomas Fruhauf

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India's Precarious Balance Akshay Thontakudi

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Up and Away Natalie Snyder

Environments

National

International

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St. Louis' Lacking Investment Environment Jacob Finke Sorting, Polarization and Gridlock: Policy Finds a Way Michael Fogarty

Editors' Note Executive Director: Sabrina Wang

Dear Reader, “Turn around. Look at what you see.”

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: Amy Wang Theme Spread: Michael Avery Feature Designs: Maggie Chuang Catherine Ju

So begins the title song from the 1984 epic fantasy film The NeverEnding Story. In it, the protagonist, a shy and bullied ten-year-old named Bastian, happens upon an alluring book that transports him to the land of Fantasia. A force called “the Nothing” threatens to devour the magical land, and Bastian plays a crucial role in saving Fantasia. The film explores how adult apathy and cynicism (represented by the Nothing) threaten to blunt humanity’s imagination (or, Fantasia).

The flip side to the Nothing might as well be the Everything. All that you do perceive when you turn around, look around, and see: the reality, and the make-believe; your perception of what surrounds, and another’s antithetical understanding, too; the hard stuff and the soft stuff, and Everything in between.

We thought twice about choosing Environments as a theme. The word has come to take on a rather partisan bent. But how better to capture the confusion—the beautiful mess, the frustrating wonder—of living surrounded? We are not alone, but immersed in communities, biomes, and systems that dictate, sometimes more and sometimes less, our lives on this planet. In politics and in our personal lives, in finance and in biology, our environments control us—and we try, with varying success, to control them.

Our writers and artists answered the challenge. Christian Fogerty discusses the implications of St. Louis, “this giant behemoth of litter we call a city,” existing above a sewer system. In “Growing in New Directions,” Sienna Ruiz grapples with how an injury reconstrues self-actualization. Jacob Finke wonders how we might fix St. Louis’s weak investment environment. And Caron Song introduces us to an important alternative to conventional meat. And all their work was beautifully introduced

by Amy Wang’s enchanting front cover.

Contributors to this issue also grappled with other pressing matters. With the Kavanaugh hearings still on our collective minds, Rachel Olick-Gibson considers the impact of single-sex schools through her unique position as a graduate of the same high school attended by Dr. Christine Blasey Ford. Rohan Palacios explains the political situation in Brazil, which just elected a new leader, and Kyle Fry reconsiders whether boycotts can effectively challenge industry.

We’re extremely proud of the articles and artwork that came together into the Environment issue, and we hope you find interesting and engaging. As always, WUPR is open to new writers, artists, illustrators, editors, and discussants. Visit wupr.org/join to learn more.

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

WU POLITICAL REVIEW | Environment

MSD PROJECT CLEAR: A STEP IN WHAT DIRECTION? Christian Fogerty | Artwork by Rachel Jackson

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nderground sewage tunnels tend to get relegated to the back of our mind— lumped in with all those chase scenes in Marvel movies. But they are very real, and St. Louis is built over a wide swath of them, along with natural caves and artificially filled in caves just waiting to collapse. Owing to Missouri’s karstic limestone landscape, water always manages to find its way underground into these spaces. Ever since we dumped this giant behemoth of litter we call a city on top of it, we have been trying to control our little slice of the Earth’s subsurface in overtly extravagant ways, some good, some bad. The latest installment in this display of extravagance is the Metropolitan St. Louis Sewer District (MSD) Project Clear, a new multi-billion-dollar initiative to divert polluted sewage from entering the Mississippi river. The project has good intentions, but with sewage bills and taxes expected to rise over the next decade to pay for twenty-eight miles of new underground tunnels and thousands of new green landscapes, it is worth an examination.

The River Des Peres that winds through Forest Park is an imposter.

The original one was buried a century ago after persistent flooding and a rank stench compelled the city government to bury it underground.

This was one of the most highly regarded engineering projects at the time, a tunnel system built under the entirety of the gleaming, advanced, innovative city that was St. Louis. Before then, sewage was thrown directly into the rivers. But “progress” made way for new methods involving steel, concrete, and efficient construction to hide our waste. By the time the city population peaked above 800,000 in the middle of the 20th century this tunnel system worked well, and all

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our excrement was out of sight, out of mind. The problem was, storm water inevitably made its way into these tunnels, mixing with the waste in a combined sewer system. Now in 2018 the tunnels are reaching maximum filth capacity.

Unfortunately, much of this stagnant sewage from the past century has increasingly found its way into the rivers as the tunnels are filled, and

tunnels for sewage and storm water, cutting off downspouts and other pipes near homes to alleviate leakage into sewage tunnels, and growing green spaces to sponge up storm water where pavement once blocked the way. For many families in high poverty areas, the cost of this project is a heavy burden, so it is important to analyze the costs versus benefits here. How much will this project aid public health versus injure it? First, it is important to distinguish the various approaches to solving the problem.

The one with the highest impact in reducing gallons of storm water mixing with sewage is the tunnel drilling. It turns out this method is most effective in the southwest portion of St. Louis, where the replacement River Des Peres and its tributaries flow. Over the next decade a group of workers will drill through solid rock up to two-hundred thirty feet below the surface, slowly shaping the new tunnels. In a few years time, massive Tunnel Boring Machines (TBMs) will worm their way under our very feet, shredding rock and soil out of the way, without a sound at the surface.

it will continue to do so for years to come, unless we do something about it.

For now, “doing something about it” means slowing rising sewage bills across St. Louis county to fund MSD Project Clear and its various initiatives to reduce the amount of storm water entering sewage pipes by drilling separate

At the same time, contractors will disconnect as many house pipes that lead into sewage tunnels as possible to avoid further choking the already heavily burdened tunnels. Along with the tunneling, this is expected to be one of the most important parts of the project.

Workers in brightly colored vests will survey homes over the next decade and block off some of the easiest paths storm water takes to get underground such as ground penetrating downspouts, open yard drains, and other uncapped openings. For all the current wastewater with no place to go, big storage tunnels will be drilled above and below ground. If the wastewater is to

WU POLITICAL REVIEW | Environment

ever have a chance at making it to one of MSD’s treatment plants, it needs a place to stay for a while. These seven treatment plants are already overworked, receiving over 350 million gallons a day before pouring out into the Mississippi, Missouri, and various other rivers and watersheds. With increasing overflow, more of these “waiting rooms” need to be built. According to Politico, these tunneling and disconnection methods will cut the amount of storm water entering sewage tunnels by 80 percent.

The other method, called “rainscaping”, will take effect mainly in the northeast portion of St. Louis, where there are many abandoned, condemned homes. After demolishing these homes, space will be cleared for grass, bushes, and trees to grow and absorb storm water. This method is not as effective as building tunnels as it is only expected to soak up 2 percent of the total overflow storm water, however it is much cheaper than the tunnel, making once desolate areas more aesthetically pleasing, and contributing to carbon sequestration, a win-win-win. The MSD offers grants to the public to grow these gardens so this percentage could rise, but it is not likely to make as significant a dent as the tunnel system.

So is this project worth the costs? In my view, yes it is. Although not all the storm water will be diverted from mixing with sewage, these are positive steps taken by St. Louis policy makers.

All across the country, cities are taking similar steps, with different amounts of money proportioned between rainscaping and direct tunnel maintenance. For example, Philadelphia is spending 2.5 billion dollars on creating green spaces all over the city. Chicago is providing its citizens with free rain barrels as well as other rainscaping initiatives. Hundreds of more cities are coming up with measures like this to keep their rivers clean. Just like St. Louis, the majority of these cities have combined sewer systems built in the early 20th century. It is essential that city policy makers turn their focus to this archaic infrastructure and start doling out some money for long-term projects. The decisions one city

along the Mississippi river makes literally flow to every other city along the river, so it is crucial that cities collaborate. Just this March, a treatment plant failure in Memphis ended with 200 million gallons of wastewater in the Mississippi.

The time is ripe for cities to plan long-term projects like MSD Project Clear. St. Louis is at the front of the pack here, but not without some blots on its record.

The biggest challenge faced by these projects is each city’s inherent unequal distribution of

On the project’s website the work is equated “to constructing 11 Busch Stadiums, rebuilding I-64 nine times, or erecting seven new Mississippi River bridges”. resources. Where the money is, the innovation is. In St. Louis this is stark, as the tunneling will mainly be done in the southwest portion of the city while rainscaping will be predominantly in the northeast. In an ideal world, every downtown building and suburb alike would be lined by lush gardens, roofed with solar panels, and decorated with plants on every window. Unfortunately, the day-to-day lives of most people don’t contain breaks for watering flowers or hours at the local organic farm. The word must get out so people will be inspired to spread the changes equally across the city. The truth is, most St.

Louis citizens aren’t aware of MSD Project Clear even though many of them pay those slowly rising sewage bills. The immensity of the project is mind-boggling. On the project’s website the work is equated “to constructing 11 Busch Stadiums, rebuilding I-64 nine times, or erecting seven new Mississippi River bridges”.

But like a lot of environmental projects, the results are difficult to see immediately and the real work is overlooked, or in this case, underground. The rainscaping component of MSD Project Clear is vital to creating awareness of what is going on. So, whoever’s reading this article right now, go ask for money to build a garden! Or at least learn about the cool tunnels.

If all else fails, go read about Elon Musk’s vision to create the fastest tunnel boring machines known to man. If Elon Musk doesn’t get you hooked in, I don’t know what will.

After the crisis in Flint, Michigan it is easy to see how diabolical of an issue polluted water can be. Along with the increasingly higher amount of precipitation during rainy seasons, rising water levels, and climate change, public health will have to continue to prioritize focusing on how best to maintain clean water supplies.

MSD Project Clear is expensive, but necessary in an age marked by inaction on environmental issues. I’m glad you, dear reader, took the time to educate yourself about this project. Now please go out and tell your friend. Although it would best if you went out and sponged up your roof with shrubs and vines, you don’t have to.

Learn more about that vast tunnel system right under our feet and how we can make its goal come true. https://www.projectclearstl.org/about/

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

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WU POLITICAL REVIEW | Environment

GROWING IN NEW DIRECTIONS Sienna Ruiz | Artwork by Maggie Chuang

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he only plants my family can keep alive are succulents and vines. They require little water and nurturing and lots of light, making them perfect for a busy family in droughtprone California. I have always felt a simultaneous love and resentment towards these vines that spilled over the fence in the backyard—they looked beautiful, but why couldn’t we be like a normal family with a neatly ordered garden that was properly tended and restricted to an elegant little plot? Rather, the vines followed no arrangement, and I had always seen the way they grew more as a kind of war. The ivy on the right side of the fence had the advantage of age and wisdom, having been there since we moved into the house, while the young potato vine threatened its place with its constant reach. The resilient wisteria, however, was staging a resurgence all the way on the left, and after years of dormancy it was finally entangling with the lemon tree as an invaluable, if unwilling, ally. The chayote looked opposite from the deck, using this structure as support, as it mounted an offense from afar. The backyard to me was in constant conflict, an unchecked growth that felt wrong compared to the quaint lattices of Berkeley gardens with their prim, gentle plushness.

In the past few months, I have come to think of these vines differently. After unexpectedly coming home from what was supposed to be my official “summer in St. Louis,” that elusive benchmark for Wash U students, they were a welcoming sight from the manicured lawns I used to be surrounded by all the time. They came to comfort me during what was the most painful summer of my life.

It was supposed to be perfect, not painful. Where I wanted last summer to be the last fling of my “youth”, this summer was supposed to be when I became an “adult”. Last year, I studied abroad for six weeks, walked my way around Madrid, worked as a camp counselor, and took a road trip up the West Coast to see my favorite band in concert. I wanted to have a great time before I followed my classmates to internships and opportunities that would be invaluable to creating a stable career in a respectable field. And after all of my work sophomore year, it felt like I was finally on track; I landed a nice-sounding

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internship at City Hall that aligned with my public health interests, I was accepted into a fellowship from Wash U to cover the costs, and I got off-campus housing arrangements to finally secure an independence away from endlessly arranged university dorms.

But this was just a summer of pretend. I only impersonated an adult. I commuted to work, appalled by the softly narrated atrocities on NPR that filled the car. I sat in a horribly mind-numbing internship from 9–4, saying things like, “I can’t believe the weather today!” and, “So glad it’s Friday!” in a sickeningly sweet voice to adults who did not know my name. The only consolation came from climbing, and I gave those plastic walls everything I had. I threw myself into the one sport where I could definitively see selfgrowth from week to week. It was fine that I was not getting anything from an eight-hour work day, that my routine was not saving me, because at least here I could set fixed goals and measure improvement according to a clear, graded scale.

As I got stronger each week, I felt that I had to be reaching closer to my ideal self, that I had to be getting better, because I could not be suffering this summer for nothing. This desperation came to an abrupt end with a jarring crack one day when I was climbing and fell.

Later, with three bones broken and the morphine wearing off, I was drowning out of my body and out of time. The only logic that made sense to

Striving for an imaginary perfection is not only painful but also distracts from the inherently chaotic and messy process that is selfactualization.

me was the pain that kept pulsing, “failure, failure, failure”. My broken bones were inextricably linked with my hands, empty of accomplishments. A “prestigious” internship and fellowship and a newfound sport vanished before my eyes, and I was sure that it was all because I had been too weak to dedicate myself fully, to hold on and not fall. I flew home in a perpetual drug-induced haze, the world fuzzy at the edges and all of my limbs heavy at once. The only thoughts that made sense were lists of everything I lost coming back to me like treasures washing up to a long-abandoned shore. Internship, fellowship, networks; running, driving, gardening; biking, skating, hiking; each list as balanced and rhythmic as waves, as the steps I could not take anymore.

The pain never subsided, and all I could focus on was the negative space this break created for me. But one day, as I sat at home listing off everything I had lost, my sister said to me, “No— this is only a setback if growth is linear. And it’s not”. That was all she left me with, and I kept turning her sentence over and over like I used to stroke rocks plucked from a river, touching the ragged edges and feeling for an ancient truth in it. For weeks I sat immobile in our house, only able to look into our backyard at those old vines again, and I repeated that sentence like a prayer or an incantation. It became a balm to a wound that no pain medication could touch because its roots were much deeper than broken bones.

I stared out the window and all of the different greens of the backyard were calming now. I saw that those vines were not fighting for height or coverage but were, like me, simply trying to survive alongside anything in their path. Their growth is anything but linear; they climb and sprawl and weave, and in the case of darkness, they let some branches die while finding new places in which to find the sunlight.

Now, it is a bit terrifying to say that I want nothing more than to grow like those unruly vines. I do not have a set path for my life now or after graduation, and I do not want one. I do not know if there is a reassuring way to say that I do not have a four-year plan or a clear idea for my career or even set date for when I will be able to walk fully again. All I can say is that I am at peace with it, and I am learning to love rather

WU POLITICAL REVIEW | Environment

than fear the questions that I am asking myself.

Is it possible to have more indefinite goals rather than resume milestones?

This semester, I would like to be more present, a better listener, and a more receptive friend, but I am an ambitious, driven person, and I am afraid that I cannot motivate myself without shame. Despite this fear, I know that this is all I can do because I am done with the ways I have done things in the past. I accept this unknowing because it is not that I cannot be the “perfect” Wash U student, but that I do not want to be.

Striving for an imaginary perfection is not only painful but also distracts from the inherently chaotic and messy process that is self-actualization. I have had lists of achievements I wanted to attain for my whole life, but they have not made me a better person, a better sister or daughter or friend. The torturous process of getting into a good college, securing a scholarship, finding

work experience did not make me a fulfilled person. Rather, these experiences only served to divert my attention from things I had not accomplished, like learning healthy means of communication or dedicating myself to being a valued member of the communities I treasure. I have nothing to check of my list of college goals because I do not have a list anymore, because those bulleted lines strangled the more enigmatic values that are far harder to realize.

If you find comfort in structure, and you can compassionately lead yourself on that journey, then by all means go on. But this is all to say that I am done with competition. I am done with sacrificing my values and well-being to feel like I am getting somewhere when all I have ever gotten in return is hurt. I will still do my best for good grades and a job after graduation (and don’t tell my parents that I’ll likely climb again), but as the poet Adrienne Rich wrote, “I am choosing

something new / not to suffer uselessly yet still to feel”. Trying to find a higher moral value in the pain I put myself through was all I had ever known. Pain was supposed to make me a better student and a more worthy person, but all it has done is scrape me raw. This is why I finally choose to forgive myself and to feel everything all in its messy totality because no path can save me. Because it is the only way I know to keep going, to scramble towards the sunlight.

Sienna Ruiz is a ‘20 in the College of Arts & Sciences.

She can be reached at sienna.ruiz@wustl.edu.

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WU POLITICAL REVIEW | National

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HOLDING H IS M E M ORY H OSTAGE

Ishaan Shah, features editor Artwork by Maggie Chuang His name was mentioned in over twelve thousand journal articles. Early descriptions of his brain were the first attempts at memory research. After his autopsy, his brain was sliced into 2,401 70-micron thin slices and uploaded to create three-dimensional model of his brain while 400,000 viewers watched on a livestream. After his brain, was sliced up there was a fierce intellectual property battle over who had the rights to keep the brain slices themselves. It ended when M.I.T. produced a 15-year old document in which the patient’s appointed guardian signed off the brain to the institution. Who was H.M.? And why did scientists fight a war over the research they conducted on him?

Henry Molaison lived with “perfect amnesia” for the last five decades of his life and became the most important research subject in history.

In Luke Dittrich’s novel, Patient H.M., Dittrich explores the history of Patient H.M.’s procedure, his treatment as a research subject and a patient, and the ethicality of the research done on him during and after his life. His novel asks us to question who controls the narrative of a research study in today’s research environment: the scientists or the information itself? On September 28, I interviewed Luke Dittrich to try to answer these questions.

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THE INT ERVIEW Ishaan: [00:00:26] Give us some background on your latest book, Patient H.M. Luke: [00:00:41] Patient H.M. is the story of the man who was arguably the most important human research subject of all time. Henry Molaison was severely epileptic and in the early 1950s received an experimental brain operation to treat his epilepsy. It didn't do much for his epilepsy, but what it did do was render him almost completely amnesiac for the rest of his life. He could not retain new episodic memories...A lot of what we know about how memory works at a physiological level stems from six decades of research that was conducted with Henry post-operatively…My grandfather was the surgeon who operated on him. I tell the story of Henry, but I also tell the story of my grandfather and how he came to perform that momentous operation.

Ishaan: [00:02:22] In a review of Patient H.M. published in AAAS (American Association for the Advancement of Science), there was a professor, Laura Stark, who said you had a personal vendetta against the lead scientist who took care of patient H.M., Suzanne Corkin. Why do you think the scientific community questioned your credentials after you published Patient H.M.?

Luke: [00:02:54] This is a story about conflicting narratives, and the [scientists are] the people who managed and controlled the research conducted on H.M. They also controlled his life in many ways. There was a principal investigator, Suzanne Corkin, who passed away sadly just before the book was published. She managed H.M.'s scientific career for about a half century and also managed in a lot of ways his personal career and was the ultimate sort of gatekeeper to H.M…A lot of the people who objected to my book most vociferously were people who had personally built their careers on the broken mind of Patient H.M., and I discovered during the course of my reporting many questionable ethical decisions that were made in in their pursuit of knowledge when it came to H.M. I think there are serious questions of informed consent.

I think there are serious questions of data integrity and data preservation. I know that MIT never sufficiently responded to the allegations…I have an extended transcript of Suzanne Corkin detailing to me how she shredded H.M.'s data…

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Ishaan: [00:06:25] In the New York Times article, Suzanne Corkin described her reaction to Patient H.M.’s autopsy as “ecstatic.” To what extent was H.M. a research subject and to what extent was he a patient? Who is taking care of his health and well-being while this intense research was being conducted on him? Was he allowed to live on his own terms and live a fulfilling life?

Luke: [00:07:01] This is a central question at the heart of my book. Many of the problematic actions that my grandfather took were because he was a man who straddled this divide between medical practice and medical research…Patient H.M. is a product of this attempt to wear both hats…In the moment that my grandfather chose to perform the bilateral medial temporal lobectomy, Patient H.M. shifted from being a person who my grandfather was trying to perform a therapeutic intervention on into being a research subject. For the MIT researchers, led by Suzanne Corkin, he was a complicated figure as well.

They were day in and day out generally nice to him but ultimately he was a person who they built their careers upon their exclusive and fairly unfettered access to him.

And to the question of whether he could consent…I think that because my grandfather removed not just his hippocampus which means that he couldn't lay down episodic memories but he also removed his amygdala (which means patient H.M. tended to be docile and passive), if you put a sheet of paper in front of him and say “sign this” he was going to tend to sign it. Henry for a period of more than a decade…was the only person signing his informed consent forms.

Ishaan: [00:10:07] Was there anyone who was taking care of him outside of the lab?.

Luke: [00:10:14] …There was this period of time where he was his own guardian signing his own consent forms. MIT ultimately realized that that was problematic and so they asked for a man to apply to the court’s to become Henry's conservator. That man (Henry’s third cousin) claimed to be Henry's closest living relative. It was not the case. His closest living relatives were around and never consulted.

Ishaan: [00:11:32] How was Henry able to indicate that the other guy, the third cousin, was his next of kin?

Luke: [00:11:45] Henry lived a life where it was difficult to be aware…I think most kind of evocatively and poetically patient H.M. described to Brenda Milner that he felt like he was “like waking from a dream...every day is alone in itself.”

That's his life. Those hazy moments. Yeah. It’s almost like a horror story in some instances. Not that he was miserable. Yeah, I think he wasn’t miserable. I think maybe moment to moment he had sadness but he certainly wasn't aware in the sense that we are.

Ishaan: [00:13:38] Concerning Suzanne Corkin’s comments about “shredding Patient H.M.’s data,” what is the appropriate line between openly publishing data and leaving research data to the process of peer review?

Luke: [00:14:13] In Henry's case, a lot of the data that we are talking about is quite old. He was somebody who we studied for ages. There may not have been any legal requirement for to keep that data you produce regardless whether it's published or not…Nevertheless, legal or not, the idea of knowingly consciously shredding the data not just of any research subject but of the most important human research subject of all time, struck me viscerally as the wrong thing to do, and I think that it struck most scientists who would read that bit say that's not the right thing to do. Patient H.M. is so important to our understanding how memory works and it costs us nothing to preserve the data. Why not preserve it? It may be of use to someone else later.

Footnote: This interview is abridged. A full transcript will be available online.

Mr. Molaison’s story reveals a dark, underreported debate concerning how to conduct ethical research. Clear throughout Patient H.M’s entire story is a deep, institutional incentive to control the significance of the research conducted and the conclusions scientists derive from the data itself. From the way data was handled by researchers to the way H.M’s consent was adjudicated, it is clear that the priorities of those who had the most access to H.M. were their own scientific careers and not the accurate dissemination of novel information. His story asks us to critically evaluate the conclusions we can draw from research conducted today and yesterday given the biases inherently present in published research.

THE SCIENCE LOBOTOMY Patient H.M. had a procedure done called a bilateral medial temporal lobectomy. A lobectomy is a procedure which removes a specific part of the body. This specific surgery removes the anterior two thirds of his hippocampus and amygdala, parts of the brain.

AMYGDALA The amygdala perform a primary role in the processing of memory, decision-making and emotional responses (including fear, anxiety, and aggression).

HIPPOCAMPUS The hippocampus plays important roles in the consolidation of information from short-term memory to long-term memory, and in spatial memory that enables navigation.

AMNESIA This gave Patient H.M. amnesia, a memory deficit. Patient H.M.'s amnesia was unique because he was unable to convert any shortterm memory into long-term memory after his surgery.

Ishaan Shah ‘20 studies in the College of Arts & Sciences. He can be reached at ishaanshah@wustl.edu.

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WU POLITICAL REVIEW | Environment

ST. LOUIS' LACKING INVESTMENT ENVIRONMENT Jacob Finke

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oreign direct investment, or FDI, can provide great growth opportunities for cities, providing a new influx of capital—and usually jobs—in regions that sometimes desperately need it. Two good examples of the benefits of FDI could come from the St. Louis region and Louisville, Kentucky.

St. Louis is, according to the World Trade Center St. Louis, home to “perhaps the country’s most splintered and geographically spread network of governments.” This splintered set of governments is almost laughable at times; the St. Louis City and County area is home to ninety municipalities, 75% of which are not accredited, according to Better Together, a local non-profit that addresses St. Louis regional fragmentation.

This lack of organization has a chilling effect on business and economic development. Some municipalities make it easy to invest by providing clear instructions and online documentation necessary to set up or purchase a business, but some do not. In one municipality, businesses might flourish and tax revenues may be high due to various incentives. Just a few blocks away, a different municipality, still a part of the St. Louis community, may be suffering from lack of investment.

Louisville, by contrast, has a unified city-county government. The Louisville/Jefferson County Metro Government was established in 2003 after a county-wide referendum. This arrangement means that no matter where a business opens up or invests its money, its tax dollars fund the entire metro area. It also simplifies administrative processes by streamlining most services into a larger, more modern governance structure that is more capable of adapting to the 21st century economy.

Louisville, with a population of around 740,000, is roughly half the size of St. Louis City and St. Louis County (total population 1.32 million), but the unified City-County model of government makes Louisville much more attractive for business. St. Louis and its ninety municipalities however, are not as attractive.

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I wanted to see how the policy changes regarding foreign investment would affect, for example, the St. Louis area. I found out that they wouldn’t.

Take, for example, Google Fiber. In 2015, there were whispers that Google Fiber would come to the St. Louis region, according to the St. Louis Business Journal. It didn’t. It did, however, come to Louisville. The development of Google Fiber’s high-speed internet service, like many large investments, will require infrastructure to be built around the city and approval from the relevant governmental departments. The key difference in Louisville is that it only needs to be approved from one of each department—the Louisville/Jefferson County Metro Government corresponding authority. In St. Louis, Google Fiber would’ve been required to interact with relevant departments each and every St. Louis municipality—all ninety of them—to bring its services to the population.

This same chilling effect goes for FDI as well.

Since 2000, the St. Louis area has received a measly $250 million in foreign direct investment from China, according to a report commission by the National Committee on US-China Relations (NCUSR). Those investments have led to the creation of a remarkably few 150 jobs in the past seventeen years, according to the same study.

By contrast, Louisville received $3.4 billion in investment, which led to the creation of 6,020 jobs during the same period.

Louisville has half the population of St. Louis, but the Chinese FDI in Louisville was 12 times greater in dollar value, and 360 times greater in job creation. How could this have happened?

For one, St. Louis’ largest investment project, according to the same NCUSR report, was the acquisition of the video game developer Riot Games by Tencent, the Chinese tech firm best known for the WeChat messaging app. Only 90 jobs were created in the district during the last year, with some of them coming from the Riot Games acquisition. Conversely, Louisville’s largest Chinese investment project was the acquisition of a GE Appliances plant, which led to thousands of jobs. St. Louis’ fragmented political system makes it unattractive for large investment projects that would span multiple municipalities; in a unified city-government, that is not a concern.

St. Louis City and County split in the 1800’s, because the City residents did not want their tax dollars funding development projects in the County. It was probably a bad idea then, but it is absolutely a bad idea now. St. Louis needs a revitalization, and for that, it needs region-wide collaboration.

For St. Louis to attract large investment projects—those that would cover the whole region—St. Louis needs to modernize its system of governance. Step one is merging the city and county into a unified government, and incorporating small municipalities—DeMun, Clayton, U-City, and 87 more—as subordinate to a larger St. Louis City-County Metro Government, following models in Indianapolis, Louisville, and Nashville.

Jacob Finke ‘20 studies in the College of Arts & Sciences. He can be reached at jbfinke@wustl.edu.

WU POLITICAL REVIEW | Environment

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WU POLITICAL REVIEW | Environment

INDIA'S PRECARIOUS BALANCE Akshay Thontakudi

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ndia has one of the largest populations in the world. With a country this size, many aspects of development and growth in the economic sphere become complicated.

According to the Union of Concerned Scientists, India is the third largest carbon emitter, behind the United States and China. However, its per-capita emissions are far lower than either country. This makes sense given that a majority of the population does not live with electricity or other amenities. In fact, only 6% of the population owns cars, and many live on less than $2 a day, according to NPR. As India marches toward its goal of complete modernization, both statistics will rise dramatically, which has major ramifications for the global climate if handled inappropriately. As the country continues to rapidly transform, there are several challenges that lie ahead.

While India is one of the most populous countries, it also is most affected by the consequences of climate change. Global warming has resulted in many negative effects for the Sundarbans, a rendezvous between three major rivers of India (Ganges, Meghna, and Brahamaputra) and the Bay of Bengal. This area is a network of islands, sandbars and mangrove forests which are being rapidly degraded due to the continuously rising sea levels. The problem is two-pronged as the increasing tides erode the islands and also raise salinity in the forests, causing them to suffer.

Many endangered species live in the Sundarban area, and with loss of land comes a shrinking number of places they call home. The issue affects the Indian citizens as well. For the villagers who live in the Sundarbans, the habitable land is steadily decreasing, which is leading to increasing conflict with the native Bengal tiger population.

In addition, scorching heat waves that devastated the population in the summer of 2015 are predicted to become more intense and commonplace. According to the New York Times, the 100 most populous cities worldwide are slated to have summer high temperatures of at least 95 degrees by 2050. Twenty four of these cities are within India, giving a heightened sense of urgency. The intense heat and humidity makes the use of air conditioning a requirement.

However, with the increased use of AC comes

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The world is heavily invested in India's success, as their choices have consequences for decades to come. two problems: AC itself is energy intensive, it uses refrigerants which are greenhouse gases, and many building designs are opting to rely on air condition to cool buildings, discarding architecturally efficient ways of circulation. This leads to a feedback loop where higher AC usage damages the environment further, increasing temperatures, which in turn necessitates the use of air conditioning. Because of these challenges, coupled with the size of the country, many are not optimistic about the future emission patterns. Although the Indian government has tried remediating these problems through aggressive clean energy goals, like outputting 100 gigawatts of power through pure solar energy, Ajay Mathur, Director of Energy and Resources Institute, says that no matter how fast India increases clean energy, it will probably double its coal usage by 2030.

The difficulty in eco-friendly development extends beyond logistical challenges: India and her people are deeply attached to tradition and cultural values. Cremation is a sacred last rite performed for the deceased to release the soul from the body. However, cremation takes up to three days and the large burnings are harmful to the environment, using about 900 pounds of wood for each cremation, according to NPR. In response, companies have come up with ecofriendly cremation techniques that burn less wood, release less soot and take less time. Due to its religious and cultural significance, however, many are resistant to these new cremation methods and prefer to stick to tradition. Chitra Kesarwani, an owner of one such eco-friendly cremation company, indicates that the greatest

challenge is educating averse individuals, and although progress has been made in recent years, it's clear that it will take much longer before such methods are adopted on a larger scale.

Most highly advanced countries today grasped their position through unsustainable methods of farming, deforestation, or nonrenewable fuel usage. Due to the urgency and impact of climate change, India doesn't have this option. The country has already taken steps to address this challenge through heavy investment in green energy, like solar power. Researchers have been toying with alternative cooling methods such as heat-reflective building paint and massive tree-planting initiatives, according to the New York Times. Although it's a good start, India's path to success is daunting. As the country continues to struggle balancing rapid development with environmentally conscious decisions, it's important to watch how they end up positively or negatively affecting the environment and learn from their choices. The world is heavily invested in India's success, as their choices have consequences for decades to come.

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

WU POLITICAL REVIEW | Environment

NICE TO MEAT YOU, CLEAN MEAT Caron Song | Artwork by Avni Joshi

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n front of you sits a harmless-looking plate of luxurious foie gras. You wish you could savor the rich, buttery, and decadent taste of goose liver, but your conscience prevents you from digging in. Which unfortunate goose was force-fed this time so you could enjoy this sinful delight? Just as you start to feel sick, you suddenly remember: this is clean meat! Without further ado, you dig into the innocent foie gras that didn’t come from an actual goose; it came from a petri dish.

Clean meat. Cultured meat. Synthetic meat.

In vitro meat. These terms refer to meat that is produced in a laboratory from cell cultivation rather than from slaughtered animals. Scientists can cultivate muscle cells and grow them in a lab the same way the cells grow in an organism. This straightforward process begins with a muscle sample that is collected from an animal. Technicians then extract stem cells from the tissue, multiply them by placing them in “growth media”, a mixture of sugars, amino acids, vitamins and minerals, and allow them to differentiate into primitive fibers that gradually burgeon into brand new muscle tissue.

The extraordinary process of growing meat in a scientific laboratory may initially sound bizarre or unnatural, but numerous startups and millions of dollars of funding into clean meat research have already been given the green light. Why? Scientists estimate that the world population will increase to 9.6 billion by 2050, with more of the population living in urban areas and increasing middle class size, both trends that point towards more meat consumption.

With this enormous surge in population size, the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations predicts that there will need to be a 70% increase of world food production in order to feed the planet. There are major consequences that result from feeding 9.6 billion people using traditional meat production methods; the deforestation rate will double, resources will decrease at an alarming rate, and greenhouse-gas emissions

will increase by 77%. If no acceptable meat production alternatives are established by then, the environment might just be doomed.

Start-ups such as Finless Foods, Mosa Meat, Memphis Meats, SuperMeats, and JUST, Inc., work on developing different lab-grown pork, poultry, beef, and fish, but they all have a common goal: make clean meat commercially viable. The race isn’t predominantly against each other; rather, it’s a race against time because with each passing second, more and more

resources such as land, energy, and water are being used to support cattle, poultry, pigs, and other traditional meat production sites that drain the Earth and release immense amounts of harmful greenhouse-gases. In fact, a 2011 Oxford study indicated that making 1,000 kg of clean meat takes 7%–45% less energy, 90% less water, 99% less land usage, and 78%–96% lower greenhouse-gas emissions. While these estimates may not perfectly predict the impact of clean meat—it’s too soon to be able to really determine the environmental impacts of clean meat production—it can certainly be concluded that the environmental consequences of switching from factory farming, slaughterhouses, and large-scale farming to lab-grown cultured meat

should have positive impacts in the long-term.

The term “clean meat” isn’t only applicable to its environmentally friendly implication: clean meat can be much healthier for our consumption since it can be engineered to include certain amino acids, healthy fats, vitamins, minerals, and bioactive compounds that can exceed the amount found in natural meat. Unhealthy compounds, such as cholesterol and saturated fats, can be reduced and made less effective. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that pathogens in conventional meat are the most likely cause of deadly food-related illnesses, but clean meat is completely free of dangerous bacteria because it’s produced in a sterile lab environment. Furthermore, clean meat doesn’t require the use of antibiotics or hormones, which makes consumption even safer.

Of course, there are many possible drawbacks in producing clean meat. The amount of electricity and heat required to power a large-scale clean meat industry can be enormous and therefore not completely benign. While animal welfare will be significantly bolstered, clean meat production does not entirely eliminate animal suffering because the techniques required to obtain muscle tissue can be invasive, especially if done on a massive, global scale, though it is arguably still much better than the current slaughterhouse process. Unemployment could become a major issue if the livestock/slaughterhouse industries are depleted. Since 2013, the first $330,000 clean meat burger has come a long way; research efforts have helped produce much more economically feasible results, but unfortunately, there is only so much to predict about the positive and negative consequences from clean meat production. There is still much to explore in this area of culinary intrigue that can only be done so over time… if our planet allows us this luxury.

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

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WU POLITICAL REVIEW | Environment

CampusNext

By Thomas Fruhauf

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Michael Fogarty, editor-in-chief Artwork by Catherine Ju

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Even before the 2010 midterms, President Obama faced a proudly obstructionist Republican opposition. Republican's strategy during the Obama presidency was to slow down or block every piece of legislation Democrats tried to pass. Republican filibusters prevented Democrats from passing the DREAM Act and a compromise cap-and-trade carbon regulation scheme. Congressional Republicans' refusal to cooperate led President Obama to implement more limited versions of these policies—DACA and the Clean Power Plan, respectively—through unilateral executive action. Obama would have clearly preferred to implement his policy agenda through legislation instead of executive action, but Republican obstructionism forced him to look for alternative paths.

This is the defining feature of our current, gridlocked, political environment. Policy that would otherwise have been implemented via legislation has found its way into existence through more

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merican government is broken.

Supermajoritarian institutions in the United States, most notably the Senate, have created legislative gridlock and frustrated majorities. The Senate effectively requires 60 votes to pass normal legislation. Therefore, a party with majorities in both chambers of Congress, or in one chamber and the White House, can be rendered legislatively impotent.

Legislative hardball and stonewalling by minority parties has created impenetrable gridlock, leaving recent Congresses unable to pass legislation in regular order. Instead, our government has started to work in weird ways. Legislative gridlock hasn't stopped policy from being made, it’s now just being made outside of the normal channels in ways that strain our constitutional and political system.

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Over the past 50 years, the Republicans and Democrats have become increasingly polarized. The gap between the ideology of the median members of the two parties has grown consistently over time. This trend is largely driven by a rightward move of the Republican party; Democrat’s position has remained relatively consistent.

convoluted means. Today's polarized politics have clearly run up against the supermajoritarian constitutional constraints that allow a minority of Senators representing an even smaller minority of the population to prevent the majority from exercising legislative power. These constraints, especially the filibuster, have been responsible for the dramatic venue change of policymaking from Congress to the executive and judicial branches. This has become increasingly evident during both the Obama presidency and the first couple years of the Trump presidency.

In addition to legislative obstructionism, Republicans have used the courts as another

venue to implement their agenda. Republican attorneys general have challenged some of President Obama's signature policy achievements—including the Affordable Care Act, DACA, the Clean Power Plan—in court because they could not muster the popular and congressional support to overturn them through the normal legislative path.

Even with their newfound majorities in both chambers of Congress and control of the White House after 2016, Republicans have been largely unsuccessful at implementing their policy agenda in Congress. Last summer, they failed to repeal and replace the ACA, despite voting to

WU POLITICAL REVIEW | National

LEGISLATIVE GRIDLOCK HASN'T STOPPED POLICY FROM BEING MADE, IT'S NOW JUST BEING MADE OUTSIDE OF THE NORMAL CHANNELS IN WAYS THAT STRAIN OUR CONSTITUTIONAL AND POLITICAL SYSTEM. POLARIZATION AND GRIDLOCK 800

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do so dozens of times previously in the Senate and making repeal a central plank in their 2016 platform. They turned to reconciliation, a Senate procedural loophole that requires only 51 instead of the normal 60 votes, to pass the tax cut bill at the end of 2017.

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non-normal governance and policymaking it causes, has several common, interlinked, causes. The two primary causes are more ideologically-sorted parties and asymmetric partisan polarization where both parties, but especially the Republicans, have marched towards the extremes of the ideological spectrum. In combination with Americans’ geographic self-sorting into red states and blue states, sorting and polarization have collided with our supermajoritarian institutions to create profound legislative gridlock. It has become an oxymoron to say liberal Republican or conservative Democrat.

There is no longer any overlap between the parties; the most liberal Republican is to the right of the most conservative Democrat. At the same time, the gap between the median congressperson in each party has widened, which has made compromise harder. It is now almost impossible for either party to win a filibuster-proof majority,

and at the same time for any Senator to cross the aisle to vote for cloture.

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The primary argument in favor of supermajoritarian constraints is to promote stability. If it only takes a simple majority to pass major legislation, 0.50 then a form of policy “whiplash” could emerge in which alternating, narrow majorities repeatedly change major policies back and forth. This would clearly0.25 be destabilizing. However, it has become clear that supermajoritarian hurdles are not preventing policy change. Instead, they have caused politicians to implement their policy preferences 0.00 through indirect, inferior pathways such as executive action.

The symptoms of this sorting and polarization fueled gridlock are largely separate from, but complemented by, Republican's choice to engage in "constitutional hardball": shutting down the government, threatening to default on the national debt, leaving a Supreme Court seat open for almost a year while refusing to consider the qualified judge who had been nominated to the position, all of these actions contribute to the sense that Washington is broken, that our country no longer functions normally, and that compromise is no longer possible. If this is the case, we should seriously consider lowering some of the supermajoritarian barriers to legislating.

Legislative -0.25 gridlock, and all of the forms of

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WU POLITICAL REVIEW | National

KAVANAUGH AND FORD: THE HIERARCHY OF SINGLE-SEX SCHOOLS. Rachel Olick-Gibson

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am a 2017 graduate of Holton-Arms School, the same high school that Dr. Christine Blasey Ford attended. As a Holton student, my group of friends consistently interacted with the all-boys high schools based in D.C., Maryland, and Virginia (DMV), particularly with boys from the Landon School. Personally, I rarely hung out with boys from Georgetown Preparatory School, the school Brett Kavanaugh attended, although several of my friends did.

This is not a criticism of anyone who attended these schools but rather of the culture of DMV single-sex schools. I loved my all-girls school. It gave me the courage to criticize the culture it inadvertently cultivated.

Students of DMV single-sex prep schools interacted in a social setting infused with moneyed and gendered hierarchies in which participants saw themselves as partaking in the greatest party culture in the country. Based on a 1983 letter Kavanaugh wrote concerning his senior beach week published by the New York Times, and on comments from Kavanaugh’s close friend and participant in the assault of Dr. Ford, Mark Judge, I gather that aspect of DMV culture has not changed significantly over the last forty years. In his 2005 memoir, “God and Man at Georgetown Prep,” Mr. Judge stated that the DMV was “positively swimming in alcohol, and [his] class partied with gusto.”

The boys threw the vast majority of our parties.

These gatherings consisted of boys solely from one all-boys school but girls from several different institutions as boys’ schools fostered competitive, cultish rivalries. If a boy from one school attended a party hosted by a boy from another, the guest would immediately, often forcefully, be removed from the household. The boys threw the parties, and the boys had the power. They dictated every facet of social engagement from guest lists to black lists; They controlled the selection of female company and often felt entitled to order from that selection.

Black lists consisted of the boys’ exes, effectively shunning their former girlfriends from this elite circle. I saw girls called whores for breaking up

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with guys, whores for talking to another guy, whores for dancing, whores having their limbs yanked and flung to the floor for hooking up with an ex’s friend. A whore for being the one who was broken up with and thinking you had the right to make choices in reaction to your ex’s choice. Our exes made the decision to leave our lives in the romantic sphere, yet wielded the

exes with bruises and shattered their spheres of social engagement.

The culture of single-sex schools in this region engrains in these boys’ minds that they are the best: socially, physically, and intellectually. It tells them that, if they attend these elite institutions and work hard, they are entitled to the kind

It tells them that if they attend these elite institutions and work hard that they are entitled to the kind of life and the kinds of jobs they desire. They had a right to the world, so why wouldn’t they have a right to our bodies too? power to dominate our social spheres long after their exits.

This was boys’ treatment of their exes. I can’t imagine the united defense that would have played out had a girl accused one of their “brothers” of sexual assault and he had denied it. I can’t imagine their treatment of a girl they may have perceived as attempting to ruin their brother’s life based on a lie. Despite the fact that several of my friends were sexually assaulted in high school, I’ll never know if this would have been the reality of their reaction, as not a single girl came forward.

Many media sources identified accounts of Kavanaugh’s heavy drinking and lurid statements as fundamentally contradicting the image he put forward in his defense: a boy who attended a serious academic institution, got straight As, exercised, did community service, and worked a summer job. However, descriptions of Brett Kavanaugh as a sexually-aggressive and belligerent drinker do not contradict but rather complement this image. In the DMV, the boys who made competitive college applicants, went to country clubs, and came from prestigious families were the same ones who left their

of life and the kinds of jobs they desire. They had a right to the world, so why wouldn’t they have a right to our bodies too?

Sexual assault was a frequent and silenced occurrence in our community. The DMV culture nourished male-dominated hierarchies that provided boys with the power to destroy a girl’s social world and a sense of entitlement that dominated their physical and sexual conduct. Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation proves to these boys that the narrative arch of their upbringing reigns true: they can commit these acts, and their conduct can even become public, and they will still rise to one of the most authoritative positions in determining the future of our nation with a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court.

Rachel Olick-Gibson '21 studies in the College of Arts & Sciences. She can be reached at rachel.olick-gibson@wustl.edu.

WU POLITICAL REVIEW | National

THE SKILL OF NORMALIZING CONTROVERSY Christian Monzon

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anuary 21st, 2017: To start the Trump Administration the day after president Trump’s inauguration, White House press secretary Sean Spicer claims Trump’s inauguration held the largest crowd in history despite images showing a clearly more dominant crowd for president Obama. Nobody cared, though; after all, a lie about a crowd size affected nobody.

And yet Spicer’s first press conference set the tone for the administration. It started a 2017 in which “covfefe”, the week-long tenure of Anthony Scaramucci and the president’s twitter account made more news than the Trump administration’s actual enforcement – and dismantling – of national laws. Quite simply, it began an ongoing period in which the sheer ridiculousness of our politicians distracts us

For example, instead of focusing on Trump lawyer Michael Cohen’s knowledge of Trump’s collusion with Russia, Americans seemed intent at exploring his role in silencing porn star Stormy Daniels, with whom Trump had an extramarital affair—normally very scandalous, but not outweighing possible treason. However, instead of treating it like a scandal (similarly to how Republicans impeached Bill Clinton for covering up an extramarital affair), we read it, laugh about it on shows like Saturday Night Live, and move on to the next Trump scandal. We form a vicious, unhealthy cycle of normalizing certain scandals while ignoring even more serious ones.

Most recently occurred the Kavanaugh hearings. Despite the composed, convincing hearing of Dr. Christine Blasey Ford and the rambunc-

As the Trump administration rolled on, it engineered a political environment in which politicians successfully distract us from matters of national importance using scandals with less gravity. from their efforts to undermine our democracy and pass laws many Americans detest.

In Trump’s first 100 days, he twice tried to implement a Muslim ban, moved towards dismantling NAFTA and ordered reviews into the protected status of federal lands. Many Americans, however, found amusement in Sean Spicer’s repeated gaffes and Trump’s ridiculous tweets.

But the first 100 days only scratched the tip of the iceberg; as the Trump administration rolled on, it engineered a political environment in which politicians successfully distract us from matters of national importance using scandals with less gravity.

article “whether a president can be criminally indicted and tried while in office”. His opinion juxtaposed to his nomination during an investigation into the president’s collusion with another country means a judge now sits on the supreme court who believes that Trump’s possible guilt of collusion means nothing during his presidency.

Congress, and seemingly most Americans, ignored Kavanaugh’s stance on presidential immunity because they instead focused on the comparatively less serious matters surrounding the judge’s assault.

From the day Sean Spicer made a ridiculous but unimportant lie about an inauguration crowd size to the day the senate approved Brett Kavanaugh to join the supreme court, Trump eroded Americans’ attention span. We can no longer focus on the president’s scandals and controversies because far too many occur, and even if we can focus, we normally only do so with scandals with relatively less importance.

Trump effectively changed our political environment to one in which politicians are totally immune to scandal and public opinion; more dangerously, a justice now sits on the supreme court who believes they should be immune.

tious, emotional, immature hearing of judge Kavanaugh surrounding Dr Ford’s accusation that Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her, congress still accepted Kavanaugh and he currently serves on the highest court in the land. The hearings angered Americans for about a week, but Kavanaugh barely appears in the news anymore, and Americans moved on.

Meanwhile the focus on his assault—under normal circumstances, a serious accusation—distracted from Kavanaugh’s opinion that, as he wrote in 2009, “the president should be excused from some of the burdens of ordinary citizenship”. He questioned in a footnote for that same

Christian Monzon ‘22 studies in the College of Arts & Sciences. He can be reached at christian.monzon@wustl.edu.

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WU POLITICAL REVIEW | National

THE BREAKDOWN OF BOYCOTTS Kyle Fry

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n early 2011, the New York Times reported that college students across the country were calling for the removal of Chick-fil-A restaurants on campuses, in response to one restaurant donating food to a local Pennsylvania anti-LGBT group. Over the course of the next year, further investigations revealed that Chickfil-A donated millions of dollars to strictly anti-gay and “traditional family” organizations.

Proponents of gay rights sharply criticized this move, gay advocacy groups told members to stop eating there, and a change.org petition was even started to dissuade the restaurant from these practices. Despite support from well-known politicians such as Rick Santorum and Mike Huckabee, Chick-fil-A president Dan Cathy issued an apology statement, and tax records showed that by 2012, Chick-fil-A had significantly reduced or ended contributions to the controversial organizations. In the meantime, sales figures were soaring.

So why did Chick-fil-A change its policy even though the boycott never produced a significant drop in revenue that would compel that change? Looking at a range of recent boycotts, almost all have failed to inflict a cost, monetary or otherwise, that would make it worthwhile for a company to mitigate the damage by acting on the offending issue. We know that these boycotts inflict minor costs at best by looking at a few indicators: a company’s yearly profits, its stock price, and the number of boycotters.

These indicators are not perfectly reliable, and therefore, analyzing the impact of a boycott can be difficult, especially when it concerns a private company. The number of people who boycott is seldom a trackable number, there may not be a set date when a boycott starts or ends, and different individuals or groups may have different demands. Sales figures could include other markets the company is in. Tracking stock prices isn’t a reliable measure either, as stock prices can be driven by many different factors; government changes, stock market predictions, even a CEO’s tweets can all influence the price.

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Nevertheless, we can reasonably infer if the consumers are satisfied with a company or not if we take the company’s numbers with a grain of salt. And consumers are frequently satisfied even while calls for a boycott are at their peak.

More and more, companies post increased or even record profits, while media outlets report on Americans boycotting the same companies across the United States. How is this possible?

Unfortunately, it’s just as difficult to find why boycotts today fail as it is to find whether they fail. One reason could be the trend of increasing globalization. As companies expand their brands to foreign markets, they gain access to consumers that might not care about certain social or political issues affecting Americans and will continue to buy their products regardless. But some companies do not have products marketable to the rest of the world. Restaurants like Chick-fil-A or sports leagues like the NFL don’t have foreign markets to rely on. Companies can also alienate one demographic to attract more support from another opposing group. While many were outraged at Chick-fil-A supporting anti-LGBT causes, influential politicians on the opposing side provided free advertising for the restaurant. It could also be too difficult to boycott a company if it provides a unique or necessary service. In the aftermath of the infamous video showing a passenger being dragged off a United Airlines flight, many swore not to fly United, only to admit later that in some cases, United was often the cheapest or only viable option to get to certain destinations.

In many cases, however, boycotts fail simply because public interest fades. It is easy enough to choose not to use a product or service. But a boycott is a movement. It requires more and more people to sign on, and it needs those people to stay until they achieve their objective.

Frequently, boycotts simply fizzle out as the public becomes distracted and the boycotters fall into old habits. One reason for this could be that boycotts themselves don’t lend themselves

to being remembered; Afterall, it is the act of not going somewhere and not buying something. No one announces to the world that it is their 45th consecutive day not eating at Chick-fil-A. Ironically, it seems it can be the threat of a boycott, rather than a boycott itself, prompts corporations to change. Frequently, negative publicity and the general dissatisfaction of consumers, even if the complaints have no threat or weight behind them, can cause a company to react quickly. At Chick-fil-A, while there may not have been many actual boycotts, the media coverage certainly did not favor the restaurant.

Most news outlets reacted with contempt, and the opinions of left-leaning consumers soured.

While it is impossible to know exactly what caused president Dan Cathy to cut donations to anti-LGBT causes in 2012, in the face of rising profits and new franchise openings across the United States, it certainly doesn’t seem like the boycott helped.

For a more recent example, take the Papa John’s controversy. In May 2018, John Schnatter, Chairman of the Board for Papa John’s Pizza, used a racial slur during a private meeting with a marketing firm. On July 11, Forbes first reported the event. That same day, Schnatter resigned from the company. Certainly, no observable change to the company’s revenue could have occurred in that short amount of time that would require mitigating damage to the brand. Yet the board at Papa John’s did not wait to see whether Schnatter’s comments would have an impact on the company, which might have meant they could have kept the face of the company on board. While the Louisville Courier-Journal and a few other news outlets reported on smaller groups that called for boycotts, the Papa John’s controversy ultimately fell out of the spotlight.

As the Papa John’s boycott quickly died down, other events in the news have drawn the public interest since then. Take the 50+ calls for boycotts on ethicalconsumer.org, a site dedicated

WU POLITICAL REVIEW | National

to keeping track of major boycotts, ranging from Nike to Israel. The Nike boycott against the purported use of kangaroo leather in their football cleats is rather old and has been rather unsuccessful: there was no apparent change on Nike’s part, and over the past 5 years, Nike stock and sales have steadily increased. However, in just the past few months, there has been a new call for boycotting Nike, this time for their support of Kaepernick. This boycott of Nike failed as well, judging by Nike stock, sales, and social media mentions, which all grew rapidly directly afterwards. So, it is no surprise that as controversial as Kaepernick is, the company would be inclined to keep him onboard. Clearly, Nike doesn’t need to worry about losing money to boycotts because they support Kaepernick, or even because they use kangaroo leather. So it becomes unusual when the marketing success of Kaepernick for Nike contrasts with the NFL’s viewership drop, which many argue is also a result of Kaepernick.

The NFL anthem controversy is a rare case where a boycott was effective at reducing an entity’s revenue, and subsequently led to the corporation addressing the issue. As Kaepernick’s decision to kneel quickly became divisive, many football fans swore off watching the NFL as no action was taken against Kaepernick for his protest.

From 2016 to 2018, average viewership diminished by about 1 million people per season, and ratings fell as well. But it wasn’t until September 2017 that those opposed to Kaepernick’s actions gained their biggest supporter, President Trump, who tweeted out a call to boycott the NFL until “players stop disrespecting our flag and country.” However, on September 25, Twitter analytics showed over 2.4 million mentions of the “taketheknee” hashtag, but only about 100,000 mentions of the “boycottNFL” hashtag. This discrepancy suggests that after the president boosted the topic to the top of trending, more people took to twitter in support of Kaepernick than against.

Despite the widespread support for Kaepernick, NFL owners approved a rule change requiring players to stand during the national anthem in May 2018. Naturally, the owners did not provide reasoning for why they made the change in their comments; even the NFL commissioner rebuked the notion that players were unpatriotic for refusing to stand. But it’s reasonable to conclude

there to do now? It would be pessimistic to say nothing. So perhaps it is time to bring the boycott back, one unspent dollar at a time.

No one announces to the world that it is their 45th day not eating at Chick-fil-A. that the NFL boycott was successful. Unlike the other boycotts examined in this piece, there was a measurable decline in patrons in the seasons following Kaepernick’s protest. The popularity of the “boycottNFL” hashtag also showed that many people still cared a year later, a good sign that people were dedicated to abstaining from watching the NFL. This is a remarkable success for a modern boycott, but it is not the trend. Boycotts against Chick-fil-A, Papa John’s, United, Nike and others have failed in recent years. We can no longer count on boycotts to make companies respond to consumer interests.

That is not to say that there is no way to hold a company accountable when the time comes; the NFL provides some hope that the boycott is not dead, and the quick response of Papa John’s shows that just the fear of bad public opinion can sway a company’s decision-making.

It is ultimately worth noting that sometimes publicity isn’t always enough to change the direction of a company either. Going back to Chick-fil-A, it is true that in 2012, donations to anti-LGBT organizations were substantially reduced. But just a few years later, Chick-fil-A has resumed those same donations. So what is

Kyle Fry ‘20 studies in the College of Arts & Sciences.

He can be reached at k.fry@wustl.edu.

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WU POLITICAL REVIEW | International

TROPICAL TRUMP: THE RISE OF JAIR BOLSANARO Rohan Palacios | Artwork by Maggie Chuang

B

efore October 8, most people outside of Brazil had never heard of Jair Bolsonaro.

An undistinguished seven-term congressman before this election cycle began, Bolsonaro was most famous among Brazilians for his history of misogynistic and anti-black comments, around which he built his brand as a politically incorrect outsider fighting for Conservative values in Congress. However, the former army captain, who had been considered a fringe candidate of the far-right, won the first stage of Brazil’s presidential election with an impressive 46% of the vote. His opponent in the run-off election, Fernando Haddad of the leftwing Workers’ Party, failed to overturn the deficit, and three weeks later, Bolsonaro was elected president of the most populace country in Latin America. Often referred to as a “Tropical Trump,” Bolsonaro’s notorious bigotry is only part of the danger he poses to Brazil. A Bolsonaro led government has ominous implications for marginalized groups and the global fight against climate change; it could also present a serious threat to the institution of democracy in Brazil.

“She doesn’t deserve to be raped, because she’s very ugly.” This comment, directed at a rival Congresswomen, earned Bolsonaro a court ordered $2,500 fine and international ridicule in 2015. It was not his first brush with controversy. According to The Independent, he told Playboy that he “would be incapable of loving a homosexual son…I would prefer my son to die in an accident” in a 2011 interview. Although Bolsonaro is a Roman Catholic himself, his brand of hardline religious conservatism is part of his appeal to Brazil’s large Evangelical population, especially on issues like abortion and gay rights.

His embrace of anti-black tropes in a country in which around 50 percent of citizens identify as black or “Pardo” (of mixed race) is baffling but has yet to impede his momentum. On the campaign trail, Bolsonaro derided “quilombos,” communities within Brazil descended from escaped slaves, as useless, saying “I don’t think they even serve for procreation anymore.”

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The endless stream of infuriating soundbites has provided critics with plenty of material. A major focus of Haddad’s campaign was Bolsonaro’s conduct. Perhaps that focus was misguided.

Although a history of racist comments has aroused some frustration, Bolsonaro still has visible support among Pardo, black, and indigenous voters throughout the country. Legendary AfroBrazilian footballers Ronaldinho and Cafu even publicly endorsed Bolsonaro, and he carried the states containing some of Brazil’s most diverse cities including Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo.

In response to his vehement rhetoric, massive women-organized demonstrations took place before the first round of the election under the banner #EleNão (not him), yet recent polling found Bolsonaro’s support among the female electorate nationwide rose after the marches.

Progressives in Brazil are beginning to find out what Americans learned in November of 2016: while blatant misogyny ought to disqualify one from a nation’s highest office, in reality it does not.

Understanding the appeal of Jair Bolsonaro begins with understanding an anti-corruption sting dubbed Operation Carwash. Since 2014, Brazil has been roiled by an investigation into corruption at the highest levels of government.

The scandal has implicated over eighty politicians, including the sitting president and the two that preceded him. The only reason Haddad found himself leading the Workers’ Party ticket is that Lula da Silva, Brazil’s president from 2003 to 2011, was forced to bow out of the race at the last minute to contest allegations of corruption, although those allegations are widely viewed to be politically motivated. The overwhelming level of corruption has exhausted Brazilians, and Bolsonaro, who is only loosely affiliated with his party (the Social Liberal Party) has emerged from the past few years of scandal unscathed.

Along with the perception that he is an authentic, if brash, leader, Bolsonaro’s militaristic approach to preventing crime appeals to millions of voters who fear inner city violence stemming from the drug trade. Donald Trump warned

of “criminals, drug dealers, and rapists” swarming across the Mexican border and painted a dire picture of “American carnage” in cities supposedly being torn apart by lawlessness. Bolsonaro and his supporters have better evidence to support their claims of a Brazil under siege by organized crime. According to the Brazil Forum of Public Security, 63,880 people were murdered in 2017, around 175 deaths every day. The murder rate rose to 30.8 per 100,000 people; compare that to 5 per 100,000 in the US and 25 per 100 per 100,000 in particularly violent year in Mexico. This violence is driven by organized crime and has sparked public pleas for a robust solution. To combat the violence, Bolsonaro promises to roll back gun control laws, a move that would to comfort wealthy Brazilians rather than protect the poor who are actually in danger.

Furthermore, he has argued that security forces should be empowered to use lethal force more often. Never mind that, per the New York Times, police officers themselves were already responsible for 5,144 killings in 2017, up 20 percent from the previous year. Nevertheless, no other candidate has seized upon people’s (legitimate) fear of violence with the same effect.

Headline grabbing quotes obscure some of the subtler, yet troubling aspects of Bolsonaro’s platform. Home to world’s largest forest, Brazil is an integral part of the fight against climate change. Bolsonaro is a vocal climate denier who, like President Trump, has criticized Brazil’s participation in the Paris Agreement of 2015. To withdraw from the agreement, Bolsonaro would need congressional approval, a difficult task.

Even if it is prevented from leaving the Paris agreement, a Bolsonaro administration would be enthusiastic in the adoption of “pro-growth” policies at the expense of the Amazon rainforest. Deforestation in Brazil already happens at an alarming rate. Bolsonaro has called for Brazil’s environmental agencies to be shuttered and for environmental reserves and indigenous communities to be removed to make way for industrial development. Unsurprisingly, mining companies have been among Bolsonaro’s most important

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backers. A Brazilian president so uniquely hostile towards the Amazon and the people who preserve it is a terrifying prospect in a world already being buffeted by the extreme weather patterns linked to climate change.

Bolsonaro’s most alarming characteristic is his reverence for the military dictatorship which ruled Brazil from 1964 to 1985. “The dictatorship’s mistake was to torture but not kill,” he told an interviewer in 2016. He has repeatedly expressed admiration for the military leaders who orchestrated brutal torture programs to stamp out dissent during the dictatorship and has proposed putting generals in charge of certain government ministries. This should be concerning to anyone supportive of democracy. In a country whose democratic institutions, from legislature to judiciary to police, lack credibility, the threats posed by a strongman without regard for democracy are heightened.

The parallels between Jair Bolsonaro and Donald Trump are not subtle. Their ideological proximity was on display in August when Jair’s son Eduardo, himself a member of the Brazil legislature, tweeted a picture with former Trump advisor Steve Bannon exclaiming “We share the same worldview.” It was on display when former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke endorsed Bolsonaro, saying that “he sounds like one of us.” Trump’s campaign used Facebook and Twitter to disseminate their spin to individuals, millions of Brazilian voters received bulk messages over WhatsApp from marketing groups believed to be supportive of Bolsonaro. More

disquieting than the similarities between the two is that Bolsonaro been embraced by mainstream Conservatives even more than President Trump. In a fawning profile entitled “Brazilian Swamp Drainer,” the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal endorsed Bolsonaro saying, “After years of corruption and recession, apparently millions of Brazilians think an outsider is exactly what the country needs. Maybe they know more than the world's scolds.”

This nonchalant dismissal of serious concerns betrays Conservative disinterest in how Brazil is governed. Numerous commentators pointed out the parallels between the Journal’s endorsement of Bolsonaro and its support for Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet throughout the 1980s. In 1973, Pinochet took power in a CIA-backed coup against the democratically elected President of Chile, Salvador Allende. Under Pinochet’s regime, secret police “disappeared” more than 3,000 dissidents and tortured tens of thousands.

Conservative apologists for Pinochet point to Chile’s stellar macro-economic growth during his reign, growth created by the extreme free market policies of a group of University of Chicago educated economic advisors known as the “Chicago Boys.” Bolsonaro’s top economic advisor, Paulo Guedes, is also a graduate of University of Chicago; his prescription for the Brazilian economy includes privatization of all stateowned companies, and massive tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy. Both Guedes and Bolsonaro have also advocated for a bigger role for generals in governance. As long as their policy prescriptions continue to serve private interests,

an autocratic Bolsonaro administration will enjoy the same cover from Conservative elites.

None of this is too assert that Bolsonaro will turn Brazil into an autocracy the way Pinochet did in Chile. Unlike Pinochet, Bolsonaro will be a democratically elected leader with a legitimate mandate to reform. Brazil’s democratic institutions, while weak, remain independent of the military. However, Bolsonaro can still wreak havoc on Brazil and the world. Elected leaders like Narendra Modi in India and Recep Erdogan in Turkey have leveraged their own religious conservatism and nationwide social unrest to build formidable bases of power and undermine democracy and stability in their respective regions. It is not hard to imagine Bolsonaro following a similar path. To govern in Brazil’s system of government, he will have to build a legislative coalition which might serve as a check on Bolsonaro’s worst policymaking impulses as long as the more moderate parties show a little courage. Yet, since 2016, many Conservative politicians in the US have subordinated their belief in democracy and civility in order to ride President Trump’s momentum to electoral success and the chance to pass massive tax cuts.

Anyone who recognizes the threat of bigotry and autocracy to Brazilians, and climate change to the world, must hope that Brazil’s leaders resist the urge to follow suit.

Rohan Palacios ’21 studies in the College of Arts & Sciences. He can be reached at rpalacios@wustl.edu.

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