State of the Union offers hope for next two years

Kicking the can: Embracing the right to human dignity

Lately, Bowdoin has been full of events that point to one question. What do freedom of speech and critical inquiry mean on our campus, particularly in relation to each other?
Undiscussed is a student group that has brought speakers with opposing viewpoints on abortion to campus to spark conversation and thought.
Much of the campus recently participated in Yellow Shirt Day, an annual event inspired by a protest of an anti-gay marriage speaker who visited Bowdoin in 2005.
Last year, two student group advisors were booted from their positions for failing to sign a non-discrimination agreement that they felt ran contrary to their faith.
In an inappropriate letter to the editor, a trustee condescendingly chastised a student for his pro-Palestine views and accused him of not understanding the First Amendment. As a campus, we tend to be very progressive and are often loudly proud of that fact. But we also had all seen the Offer of the College innumerable times prior to signing the matriculation book and began our first years at Bowdoin ready to gain a standard for the criticism of our work and views.
Can Bowdoin have a specific viewpoint and still claim to be an institution of critical inquiry, or does the College’s adoption of an idea preclude it from fairly weighing different viewpoints?
First, let us dispense with the idea that this is a First Amendment debate. It’s not. The First Amendment prevents the government from restricting freedom of speech, not private institutions like Bowdoin. However, Bowdoin does exhort the importance of free speech and states that it is the “cornerstone of intellectual life” at the College. Thus, it is our own standards, not those of the government, to which we must hold ourselves.
In the Faculty Handbook, immediately after the lionization of free speech, there is a passage that in some interpretations may serve to limit it.
In it, the College affirms its responsibility to protect its community from discrimination and intimidation, and says that “[E]very student and faculty member at Bowdoin must maintain toward every other student and faculty member an unqualified respect for those rights that transcend differences of race, sex, or any other distinctions irrelevant to human dignity.”
Now, first, let me say that that is a fantastic sentence. Were I in a lazier mood, I would leave the discussion right there because there is absolutely nothing that can follow the message and construction of that phrase, which came from a book with possibly the dullest title ever.
It is easy to dismiss a person whose ideas, routines, preferences or culture do not fit into your ideal. But differing opinions and the experiences that shape them can challenge our own opinions and experiences, and we should not shy away from that.
Learning about a different view might add nuance to our own opinions, even if they are changed very little or not at all. It seems that if we are serious about our inquiries and our desire to sharpen our minds and our arguments, we must not ignore our critics.
Perhaps the most cherished idea at Bowdoin—and indeed in the entire American experiment—is that human beings are equal at their core. This does not mean that differences in characteristics that lead to success do not exist. Clearly, some people are better equipped to succeed in today’s world than others. Others get lucky.
But we are all afforded an equal measure of human dignity, and a right that is given to one of us should not be withheld from another. We have tried to build a society on that idea, and we will continue to progress with that principle squarely in our sights.
Bowdoin has consistently affirmed its commitment to the common good and its unequivocal stance on political equality, and it has no obligation to give a platform to speakers with views contrary to that mission.
If a certain political statement cannot be made without “unqualified respect for those rights that transcend…distinctions irrelevant to human dignity,” then it has no place in a pluralistic society or an intellectual tradition like Bowdoin’s, and we do not need to give it the time of day.
Even keeping in mind, that we should constantly be engaging in self-criticism and questioning whether or not our views are correct, there are certain things that we can take as given. Human dignity is one of those things.
If an argument does not begin under the assumption that humans must have political equality, there is no reason for Bowdoin to provide a purveyor of that argument with a soapbox.
While Bowdoin should not be in the business of rejecting an argument’s conclusion, it can and should be in the business of rejecting premises that deny human dignity.
All too often, the first people to complain that their freedom of speech is being trampled are the ones with arguments that relegate an entire subsection of humanity to a second-class position. Along with freedom of speech comes a marketplace of ideas. Time and space are valuable, and we should not expend such scarce resources giving a platform to valueless positions.
Bowdoin, as both a buyer and seller in that marketplace, has no obligation to use its resources to further arguments that are contrary to its pluralistic worldview. If you are losing in the marketplace of ideas, you should perhaps re-evaluate your position.

Kicking the can: Law is not on the side of parents who refuse to vaccinate their eligible children

For a large part of my (albeit short) life, I was blissfully unaware of the anti-vaccination movement. I knew that some people dismissed medicine out of hand—generally on religious grounds—but I had no idea that a growing number of otherwise reasonable and educated people believed that vaccinating their children was somehow unhealthy.
My parents and their friends belong to community where due deference was given to the opinions of doctors and scientists, and wholesale rejection of scientific findings was considered irrational. How lucky I was. While my ignorance was bliss, the ignorance of anti-vaccination parents constitutes a grave public health risk—one that was recently thrust into the public consciousness by an outbreak of measles at Disneyland.
Measles is a disease that spreads easily through the air—much like the common cold—but is much more dangerous. In developed countries like the U.S., death only occurs in about 0.2 percent of measles cases, according to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). However, in less developed countries, the mortality rate can be as high as 10 percent.
But, there’s another difference between measles here and in the sort of place only National Geographic and the Navy SEALs venture: the infection rate is on the rise here. According to the CDC, between 2002 and 2007 there were well under 100 cases of measles in the U.S. each year. In 2014, there were more than 600. And just 37 days into 2015, there have already been 102 cases. Not surprisingly, nearly all of those who contracted measles were unvaccinated.
Parents have all sorts of reasons for refusing to vaccinate their kids, but none of them are valid. From religious objections to a rejection of anything unnatural, and from the demonstrably false belief that vaccines give kids autism to some really hilarious conspiracy theories, parents latch on to ignorant justifications that can hurt their own kids or others.
Of course, certain individuals have medical conditions that prevent them from being vaccinated, and they instead rely on the herd protection of a healthy populace to avoid contracting dangerous infectious diseases. The greater the percentage of people in a country that are immunized, the harder it is for a disease to gain a foothold. And because vaccines are not 100 percent effective, it is important for everyone who is able to get vaccinated.
Some parents of vaccine-ineligible children have threatened to sue the parents of unvaccinated children for endangering their kids. More power to them. It’s certainly not inconceivable that they win.
One parent who deserves such a lawsuit is Dina Check, a Staten Island mother who filed suit against the City of New York for its refusal to let her unvaccinated child attend school during a chickenpox outbreak.
“The devil is germs and disease, which is cancer and any of those things that can take you down. But if you trust in the Lord, these things cannot come near you,” said Check, who did not vaccinate her child on religious grounds.
I’d urge her to tell that to children in the third world—many of whom, I’m sure, place a great deal of trust in God—who cannot obtain the measles vaccine, and are susceptible to contracting the disease and dying.
Check’s lawsuit, Phillips v. City of New York (2015), was dismissed in federal court. The U.S. Court of Appeals Second Circuit said that New York City’s refusal to allow unvaccinated students to attend school during an outbreak was constitutional, citing a century-old decision that stated the police power of the state extended to vaccination requirements, and that New York’s rule could have been much stricter and remained Constitutional.
Phillips and the previous case, Jacobson v. Massachusetts (1905), demonstrate that states’ interests in keeping their citizens safe are so important that they supersede even religious objections, which are usually protected by our constitution.
With the growing wave of antipathy towards vaccination, we should not forget that smallpox, one of the most horrific diseases known to mankind, was eradicated thanks to vaccines.
Barring the efficacy of lawsuits to force parents to vaccinate their children, states should move quickly to require vaccination for all those eligible and energetically pursue the goal of a healthy populace.
Perhaps the best argument that a court has laid forth that could support vaccine mandates comes from Prince v. Massachusetts (1945), which dealt primarily with child labor laws, but briefly delved into the issue of vaccination.
Justice Rutledge, writing for the majority argued that: “the family itself is not beyond regulation in the public interest, as against a claim of religious liberty…[a]nd neither rights of religion nor rights of parenthood are beyond limitation…[The state’s] authority is not nullified merely because the parent grounds his claim to control the child’s course of conduct on religion or conscience. Thus, he cannot claim freedom from compulsory vaccination for the child more than for himself on religious grounds. The right to practice religion freely does not include liberty to expose the community or the child to communicable disease or the latter to ill health or death.”
It may be true that we give parents ample opportunity to fuck up their kids. But this is a question of them fucking up other people’s kids, and we should absolutely prohibit the possibility.

Kicking the can

State of the Union offers hope for next two years

This piece represents the opinion of the author:

January 23, 2015

With the midterm elections far behind us and the new Congress in session, there is reason to hope that President Obama’s last two years in office may be his two most productive. The last four years under a divided government have been bleak, to say the least.

Obstructionist Republicans have bitterly fought nearly everything the president and his party have wanted, including must-pass bills such as continuing resolutions and debt ceiling increases, leading frustrated Democrats to all but shut out Republicans in the Senate.

Meanwhile, conservatives demonize the President and the Democratic Party, sometimes with bizarre theories. Former Sen. Scott Brown, for example, claimed that terrorists would take advantage of the “porous” border to infect Americans with Ebola (which is actually the exact plot of a Tom Clancy novel), and then-Rep. Tom Cotton asserted that ISIL and Mexican drug cartels would team up to kill innocent Americans.

Both are smart enough to know that those claims are patently ridiculous. One of the two was elected, partially thanks to such fear-mongering. But now that Republicans have more than achieved their midterm goals and attained large (but not filibuster- or veto-proof) majorities in both houses, it seems possible to move beyond such childish stunts and get on to legislating.

In his State of the Union address to the new Congress on Tuesday, President Obama laid out one policy that many Republicans wholeheartedly support. He asked Congress to give him fast-track authority on trade deals such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) that would open many Asian markets to American business and strengthen intellectual property rights around the world.

Fast-tracking would essentially give the President the power to negotiate trade deals independently of Congress, then submit the finished product to Congress for a quick, amendment-less, up-or-down vote.

Predictably, many Democrats and their allies are none too pleased with the president’s intentions, claiming that the deals will cost innumerable American jobs. They’re probably wrong, but that’s not really the point here. Rather, the point is that the president and a Republican-controlled Congress agree on something. It’s really just a cherry on top that the bill in question will help ensure American competitiveness in the 21st century global economy.

What else can the president and Congress do to cooperate and get things done? The approval of the Keystone XL pipeline comes to mind. The unfortunate thing about the pipeline is that it has become a symbol in the fight over climate change.

Its approval should have been routine, and experts (such as, you know, the U.S. Department of State) have found that its environmental impact would be negligible. Of course, the pro-pipeline jobs argument is ridiculous as well—perhaps a double-digit number (!) of permanent jobs would actually be created by its construction.

In fact, oil companies don’t particularly care about the pipeline anymore. They’re transporting the fuel they extract via rail, rendering the pipeline superfluous for their purposes. If anything, the pipeline would reduce the environmental impact of the tar sands oil extraction in question, as a pipeline is much less prone to spillage than a train.

Ultimately, it’s just an empty fight between conservative firebreathers and environmentalists opposed on principle. In the past, the president has signaled that he might not be opposed to the pipeline’s approval, and it is likely that his recent veto threat is no more than posturing. The president wants Congressional Republicans to know that he won’t just swallow whatever bill comes before him. He should use the pipeline as a bargaining chip, perhaps in exchange for the closure of a major tax loophole or a part of the his ambitious community college plan. He and the minority Democrats will get something they want, and Republicans will be able to claim a major victory that really doesn’t cost anything. The best part? It’s even more than win-win: such a deal will set the stage for future cooperation.

Perhaps the clearest signal that congressional Republicans are ready to get down to the business of governing comes from what they’re not saying. It’s been a while since I’ve heard the oft-repeated campaign promises to repeal Obamacare and tear down the president’s health care policies.

The official Republican response to the State of the Union, delivered by Sen. Joni Ernst, only contained three sentences about the law, and although she used the word “repeal” once, she was much less confrontational than during her campaign, when she promised to “make ’em squeal” in Washington.

Republican leadership knows that repealing the law is unfeasible and appears to be backing off and focusing on more practical targets.

Enacting fast-track authority for trade deals could be one of the first steps in building a productive relationship between President Obama and a Congress that sounded awfully bloodthirsty during campaign season.

If the legislative and executive branches can get off to a good start, perhaps Obama’s last two years can resemble President Bush’s last two years. Bush and the Democratically-crontrolled 110th Congress took steps to save the American automobile industry and passed legislation to bail out the U.S. financial system. Republicans may be willing to govern with the help of the president and Democrats, but after a sweeping victory they will want to claim some of the spoils if they are going to sit down at the negotiating table and do business.

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