What Were We Thinking? Selected Schar School Op-Eds (March 2023)

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From the Conversation:

Nonprofits Serving or Are Led By People of Color Get Less Funding Than Similar Groups Led By White Executive Directors

Interestingly, we found that nonprofits serving primarily people of color while also being led by a nonwhite executive director didn’t have more trouble in this regard compared with those organizations in one of these categories or the other.

—Mirae Kim and Bo Li

 

From Ms. Magazine:

‘Half of Men’: The Legacy of Iran’s Gender Apartheid

Women inside Iran, Khansarinia said, “refer to the Islamic Republic as a gender apartheid state. We have separate taxis, separate subway cars and separate parts of parks, for example, for women and men in Iran. Of course, this is often almost laughably described as a way to protect women, but we all know that really it’s a way to limit women, to limit their presence in the public space.”

—Bonnie Stabile

 

From Foreign Policy Magazine:

The U.S. Can Steal China’s Climate Leadership Crown

This shift underscores an inconvenient truth for Beijing: Given its status as the world’s largest emitter and second-largest economy, China’s climate commitments increasingly look insufficient, and even its former allies in climate negotiations want Beijing to do more. This creates major geopolitical vulnerabilities for China—and opportunities for the United States and its allies. In short, Beijing’s leadership loss on climate is Washington’s gain.

—Erin Sikorsky et. al

 

From Harvard Law & Policy Review:

The Equal Rights Amendment: Making Our Union More Perfect

Now that the Supreme Court has undermined its longstanding precedent protecting reproductive and LGBTQ+ rights under the Fourteenth Amendment, it’s clear that enacting the ERA is the only way to ensure that people of all genders are guaranteed equal protection of the laws under the U.S. Constitution in the decades to come. 

—Ally Coll et al.

 

From the Washington Post:

Virginia’s Governor and Lieutenant Governor Should Run as a Team

With separate balloting, the potential exists for candidates from opposite political parties serving together in the state’s two top offices. That is the case now in three states that elect the two offices separately. In Louisiana and North Carolina, Republican lieutenant governors serve under Democratic governors. In Vermont, a Democratic lieutenant governor serves under a Republican governor.

—Mark J. Rozell

 

From Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists:

The Biden Administration Overestimates Radiological Terrorism Risks and Underplays Biothreats

This is not to say bioterrorism is easy. Even if a terrorist used synthetic biology to acquire a pathogen, acquired pesticide drones to deliver the aerosol, and used 3-D printing and online markets to acquire lab supplies and equipment, the terrorist would still need to mass produce the pathogen and weaponize it without a lab accident or discovery by law enforcement. 

—Zak Kallenborn

 

From War on the Rocks:

The Sinking Ship of Theseus: Adapting the U.S. Military to the Modern Family

Instead, the Department of Defense should build a new career model that prioritizes the modern family, promotes stability, and allows for greater advancement. This will require the support of lawmakers and senior leaders, both civilian and military, to adapt the military to an occupational model.

—Marine Commandant Fellow Ryan Pallas

 

From Project Syndicate:

When Civilization Models Collide

The war in Ukraine is a theater for two competing development paths: Russia’s oligarchic capitalism and Ukraine’s burgeoning civil society. Western countries should mark this distinction, because oligarchic capitalism has increasingly taken root within their own systems of economic and political governance. The Ukrainians, meanwhile, have offered an alternative: people working together democratically to fashion a better collective future.

—Janine Wedel

 

From Newsweek:

The Costs of Not Supporting Ukraine Far Outweigh the Costs of Supporting It

The reality is that less American support for Ukraine is more likely to result in less—not more—European support for Kyiv. And diminished support from both America and Europe will result in diminished Ukrainian capacity to resist Russian aggression.

—Mark N. Katz

 

From the Washington Post:

Available Evidence Still Points to Covid Originating from Spillover

To be clear, all the evidence available for scrutiny points to the pandemic originating from transmission from live animals to humans — zoonotic spillover — at the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan, China.

—Saskia Popescu and Angela Rasmussen

 

From the Hill:

Our Democracy’s Greatest Threat Isn’t Trump—It’s the Electoral College

Guaranteed: Trump will not win the popular vote in 2024. If nominated, he will become the first presidential candidate in history to be so rejected three consecutive times by the American voting people. Yet he might get back into power, despite never having won the popular vote, much less a majority, in any election.

—Mark J. Rozell and Paul Goldman

 

From the Hill:

Policymakers Should Avoid Temptation of Subjecting Airlines to More Regulations

Taking to the skies is the safest, most efficient mode of transportation that exists. Lawmakers on Capitol Hill and Biden administration officials should be working to preserve that track record while giving airlines the runway to improve the experience for passengers. As history suggests, more regulations will get in the way. 

—Jeff Joseph

 

From the Hill:

Grievance Politics, Rather Than Problem Solving, Now at the Heart of Republican Party

When problem-solving fails, grievance politics triumphs. 

—Bill Schneider

 

From Homeland Security Today:

Erdogan’s 20-Year Legacy, Upcoming Elections in Turkey, and Impacts on the U.S. and EU

The opposition is closer to winning the upcoming May elections than they have ever been in the last two decades, if they don’t make any strategic mistakes and are prepared for the AKP’s moves, which is already experienced in using tricky cards in its toolbox. For example, Turkey should be ready to see the government’s security and fear of terrorism card.

—Mahmut Cengiz

 

From China and WTO Review:

The U.S. Trade Relations with China: Worrisome Developments in the U.S. Law

There is a growing anti-China bandwagon and a very toxic trade debate within the U.S. The legislative and regulatory measures emanating from the U.S. in the last half of 2022 are not helpful.

—Stuart Malawer

 

From the Hill:

Understanding Why Some in the US Don’t Want Victory in Ukraine

In some measure, this is pure partisanship, predictable in a time of bitter political polarization. But some on the far right see Putin as an ally in the U.S. culture wars. Putin regularly accuses the West of moral depravity. He told the Russian people in his annual state of the nation speech, “Millions of people in the West understand that they are being led to a real spiritual catastrophe. The elites, one must say, are simply going crazy.”

—Bill Schneider

 

From Project Syndicate:

When Civilization Models Collide

The rise of oligarchic capitalism in the West has both perverted capitalism and eroded democracy. Wealth inequality has surged, trust in institutions has plummeted, and Trumpism and other anti-system movements have flourished.

—Janine Wedel

 

From the National Interest:

NATO Braces for Space Warfare

In case of an attack on a NATO member state’s vital satellite infrastructure, what ought to constitute a proportional response? Is it appropriate to extend the law of armed conflict to outer space conflicts? And finally, what are the international legal limits on the means and methods of waging war in space?

—Joanna Rozpedowski

 

From the Richmond Times-Dispatch:

It’s Time to Reconsider Dillon’s Rule

Dillon’s Rule refers to rulings shortly after the Civil War by John F. Dillon, an Iowa judge and legal scholar, who ruled against municipalities asserting powers that trampled the rights of private property owners. He held that municipalities are creatures of the state that possess only powers that the state expressly grants them. The U.S. Supreme Court upheld his rulings.

—Mark J. Rozell