Transcendental Self Reconceptualizing the Idea of the Self within Western Philosophy: The Existence-Reason Binary and the Nonrational Transcendental Self Jennifer Kim Pomona College Author Ebba Brunnstrom Grace Engelman Alan Garcia-Ramos Fengyi Wan Editors Spring 2018 In order to overcome the existence-reason binary present in philosophy, I propose the notion of nonrational transcendental self. In philosophy, the ontological question asks, “How might a self understand its own being?” Views on the self were initially dominated by the rationalists, who argue that reason, rather than sense experience, reveals the true nature of things. In response, a subsequent movement called existentialism critiques rationalism for mistaking the human being as a stagnant thinker. Existentialists argue that human beings are not merely rational beings, but also dynamic subjects who experience and change. From the existentialist viewpoint, reason by itself is wholly incapable of capturing the subject’s lived experience. In my observation, the rationalist-existentialist debate gave rise to a conceptual binary, where existence and reason are mutually exclusive. It is my view that this binary hinders the revolutionary potential of existentialist philosophy. The binary is problematic because it disallows an alternative understanding of the self outside of reason and existence. There are complexities in our nature that occur outside the binary, such as our nonrational selves. If we continue to approach ontology without breaking the binary, we can never accurately or sufficiently answer the basic question of how to understand our own being. My answer to resolving the binary is to propose a rethinking of the self as nonrational and transcendental. First, I will induct nonrationality as an alternative to the binary that neither rejects nor is wholly subsumed under reason or its counterpart, existence. I begin by exploring examples of the transcendental self as exemplified in the Kantian subjects of moral and aesthetic judgments. I then introduce the notion of a nonrational transcendental self, which is the self that experiences and knows, but does not judge. Finally, I show that the nonrational transcendental self truly exists within us and reveals itself most clearly when we experience life alongside the question of suicide and when we experience a moment of beauty. The need to convey the nonrational transcendental self transpires from the restrictions of the binary. Therefore, I shall first identify the emergence of the reason-existence binary by tracing the use of reason and existence in historical ontological debates. The rationalist view of the self begins with Descartes, who articulates that rational self-reflection reveals the true nature of the human being as the thinking self, the eternal mind (Descartes – Translation: Haldane, 1991). Hegel, likewise, perceives reason as the proper lenses through which to discover the human being’s true nature and place in the world. In Hegelian philosophy, history is the linear unfolding of reason and all of our individual subjectivities are merely subsumed under this hyper-rational unfolding (Hegel – Translation: Hartman, 1953). Such extreme rationalism is challenged by the Kantian philosophy of transcendental idealism, which curtails the overreach of pure reason by designating it to a regulatory rule (Kant – Translation: Guyer and Wood, 1998). According to transcendental idealism, we are limited to knowing and perceiving phenomena (i.e. things as they appear in time and space). We do not have access to noumena (“things-as-they-are-in-themselves”) (Kant – Translation: Guyer and Wood, 1998). Reason, as our structural framework, can help us decide upon the truth of phenomena, but it cannot conclude anything substantial about noumena. As we are incapable of perceiving our noumenal selves, it is an illegitimate use of reason to attempt to rationally discover our true selves (Kant – Translation: Guyer and Wood, 1998). Consequently, Kant reintroduces the question of the self-understanding its own being, allowing existentialists to arrive on the scene and offer a viewpoint opposing the rationalists. Existentialism emerges with Kierkegaard’s publication of Either/Or in 1843. Kierkegaard points out that our singular viewpoint to life is our existing and subjective self. Objective truth only has meaning in relation to a knower, who is subjective and dynamic. Thus, Kierkegaard criticizes Descartes for mistakenly substituting the human being as an “infinitely indifferent” knower and explicitly rejects Cartesian rationalism as “a mirage [where] everything is and nothing becomes” (Kierkegaard – Translation: Hong and Hong, 1978). For Kierkegaard, reason, either as some ultimate methodology towards truth or as a priori structures of cognition and understanding, fails to account for our fundamental nature as those who experience. After Kierkegaard, existentialist thinker Heidegger published Being and Time in 1927. Being and Time reorients the ontological approach by introducing the concept dasein, which translates to being-in-the-world (Heidegger – Translation: Macquarrie and Robinson, 1962). In contrast to the rationalists who believe that true human nature can only be understood when abstracted away from experience, Heidegger argues that human beings are dasein and can know themselves only as they exist in the world. All philosophical inquiry on human nature must acknowledge our essential condition as dasein if it is to be accurate and effective. By contrast, ontology, which claims to understand human nature independent of its being-in-the-world, is illegitimate. Then, in 1943, another existentialist named Sartre published Being and Nothingness. Echoing Kantian thought, Sartre argues that we cannot ask what the nature of the human being in itself is. When we try to answer ontologically about our noumenal selves, we immediately establish a duality (between “I” as the subject and “I” as the referred-to object) that is essentially at odds with the oneness of self that we associate with the ‘true self’ (Sartre – Translation: Barnes, 1956). Instead of asking what being is, Sartre recommends that we ask how being is. In other words, what are our modes of being? Sartre states that the human being is a factical self, which refers to our physical being grounded in concrete circumstances (Sartre – Translation: Barnes, 1956). The human being is also a transcendent self, which means that we are not only our factical self, but also all of our negations and possibilities. For example, the seemingly insignificant waiter at a restaurant is not merely a waiter. That is, as a human being, the waiter’s existence does not depend on his or her being waiter. The waiter may be countless other things apart from a waiter and is still yet to be many things in the future. Sartre’s point is that our existence as human beings cannot be fully captured by the roles our factical selves play. For Sartre, the human being is essentially fluid and full of possibility (Sartre – Translation: Barnes, 1956). Therefore, Sartre considers that reason as logical form, which accepts negation and exclusion as definitive, cannot sufficiently account for the human being. My purpose in explicating the ontological debate between rationalists and existentialists is to show that within the philosophical tradition, there is a shift from understanding the human being as a stagnant thinker to an experiencing subject. I argue that the debate which motivated this shift in thinking also unintentionally produced a conceptual binary between reason and existence. Existentialism presents itself as a purposeful critique of rationalism. The language of the existentialists is intentionally contrasted to the language of the rationalists. The existentialists describe the true nature of the human being as subjective, dynamic, temporal, fluid, and grounded; rationalists, as objective, unchanging, eternal, and abstract. In reading existentialists’ work, the reader would think that the human being is essentially a dynamic subject in place of a stagnant thinker, but never both. Similarly, truth for the human being is seen as either subjective or objective, but not both. With such emphasized contrast, ‘existence’ becomes a concept that stands as a symbolic counterpoint to reason. This is the reason-existence binary. The reason-existence binary is undesirable and stunts the progress existentialism might make in answering the basic ontological question. The existentialists intended to reclaim the dynamic aspect of the human being in an effort to balance out the extreme rationalism preceding them. However, by presenting existence in contrast to, rather than alongside, reason, existentialism merely designated the human being to another extreme. The existentialists’ failure of a balancing act reveals itself as an issue within their own systems of thought. Kierkegaard, Heidegger, and Sartre all grapple with tensions resulting from the binary within their own philosophies. Part I: Limitations of the Binary Manifested as Existentialist Tensions Kierkegaard’s Unintended Inverse Hegelianism When Kierkegaard states that “subjectivity is truth”, he effectively turns Hegel (who saw objectivity as the one legitimate truth) on his head (Kierkegaard – Translation: Hong and Hong 1978). Kierkegaard rejects the hyper-objective, linear, rational, and systematic nature of Hegelianism and purposefully aims to be anti-systematic and anti-rationalist. However, Kierkegaard himself proposes that an individual must go through three stages (the aesthetic, the ethical, and the religious) in order to encounter a true self (Kierkegaard – Translation: Hong and Hong, 1978). These are the stages that an individual encounters when turning inward in his or her own subjectivity. The final stage climaxes in paradox and culminates in a person of faith. So then, it seems that Kierkegaard’s philosophy does entail a system that we must acknowledge in order to understand our own being. The irony is that by protesting objectivity with subjectivity, Kierkegaard unwittingly creates his own dialectical system and becomes the mirror image of the systematic and idealistic Hegelianism that he intended to counter. Theodor W. Adorno calls Kierkegaard’s philosophy “inverse Hegelianism” since the historical dialectic of objective ‘Reason’ in Hegelian philosophy is parallel to Kierkegaard’s inward dialectic of the subject’s subjectivity. Whereas the Hegelian subject must look further and further outwards to discover truth and the authentic self, the Kierkegaardian subject must turn deeper and deeper inwards to discover truth and the faithful self (Adorno – Translation: Hullot-Kentor, 1989). Thus, whereas Hegel’s setting and subject is all of history, Kierkegaard’s “objective inwardness strictly excludes objective history”, so that “history vanishes” in Kierkegaard (Adorno – Translation: Hullot-Kentor, 1989). However, without any sense of history, what is left in Kierkegaard’s philosophy is the abstract self posed against the abstract universal, interacting in a subject-object dialectic that Adorno calls “Hegel [inverted and interiorized]” (Adorno – Translation: Hullot-Kentor, 1989). That is, Kierkegaard neither avoids systematizing the process of the self understanding its own being nor refrains from abstracting (i.e. a self without a concrete history is an abstract self). In short, Kierkegaard fails to fully account for the existing subject and only manages to postulate it against the thinking subject. Heidegger’s Absurd Waiting Heidegger’s dasein is both being-in-the-world and being-not-of-this-world. That is, we cannot seek to understand our being as existing separate from the world we exist in and yet, there is the curious truth that we are born into and pass away from the world. We “come from” and “go away to” someplace not of this world. From this, Heidegger concludes that the significance and uniqueness of our time in this world are due to our temporality. As finite beings, every moment in time is unique. Our specific time also defines each of us as a unique being traveling different paths and encountering different ontological possibilities which become available to us by virtue of our specific past and present (Heidegger – Translation: Macquarrie and Robinson, 1962). Time is therefore responsible for determining the significance of all the opportunities we might have in this world. But since the importance of time itself is that it represents our sudden arrival and departure from this world from who knows where, then meaning itself also comes from who knows where. Heidegger wrote Being and Time in the 1920s and 1930s, directly after the First World War. Like the famous Lost Generation, Heidegger also addresses an era when the traditional ideologies and frameworks that gave us social identities and gave our actions meaning were quickly fading out. (Preceding Heidegger, Nietzsche defines that era as an era in which “God is dead” in contrast to previous generations which offered “God” and by extension, Christian morals, tradition, etc (Nietzsche – Translation: Nauckhoff, 2001). God and the institution of religion and tradition provided frameworks of significance which dasein could attach itself to find significance.) The era bore a sense of decay. The hollowness of a hollow man was no longer an individual problem, but an indicator of a lack of possibilities in the world of that generation. If the world shines through an authentic dasein (being-in-the-world), but the world itself is decaying, then an authentic dasein would decay instead of thrive. Heidegger recognizes this issue and offers the solution of reorienting dasein in order to increase its receptivity of meaning. Essentially, Heidegger states that if there is less meaning in the world, then we should be more receptive to it so that we can get more of it. If dasein is taken solely as a being in time, an increase in receptivity simply means a more anxious waiting for meaning to come. This is because meaning only comes from that “other world” where we came from to be born and where we go once we die. But Heidegger does not give any deadline for how long dasein must wait for meaning to appear. Indeed, he cannot even guarantee that meaning will ever come back. But if we are headed towards a meaningless world, we would be waiting forever. In Samuel Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot”, two individuals “actively” wait in a wasteland for “Godot”, an unknown figure who promises meaning, but cannot promise when, where, or how. This uncertain, but hopeful waiting depicts the issue that Heidegger’s solution runs into. In terms of time, Heidegger’s solution becomes a rather paradoxical (and apparently, parody-able) form of “active” waiting. Heidegger tries to reclaim our being from abstraction by positing dasein, but his philosophy is affected by the binary which separates existing from knowing. Ultimately, he ends up in a strange position of hopeful absurdism. In this position, he relies on a vague abstraction that renders even the being-in-the-world altogether hazy and opaque. Thus, despite Heidegger’s intent to have dasein reconquer itself as a grounded being, we arrive at a point where the absence of a metaphysical quality of dasein results, once again, in abstraction Sartre’s Difficulty with Dualism When Sartre introduces the factical self and the transcendent self to the reader, he explicitly states that this division exists only because they are necessary to parse out the modes of being. Sartre does not intend to propose a metaphysical dualism, where the factical and transcendent self are truly two different selves or beings. Although Sartre posits a disclaimer of his dualism, there is still ultimately a tension in saying that being-in-itself and being-for-itself are mutually exclusive and yet every human being is somehow both. Sartre’s preoccupation with being as always more than it appears in a given situation sits in direct contrast to reason, which only applies to appearances. This contrast motivates Sartre to depict human beings as half factual knowers and half fluid, illogical beings. This is an uncomfortable division both because our rational and existing selves do not exist unequivocally separate from each other and because we also have a nonrational self. Sartre himself identifies this issue as the “identity nihilation” or “internal negation” issue, stating that his view renders the self in a perpetually unstable equability where identity as absolute cohesion rejects diversity and unity can only be a synthesis of multiplicity (Sartre – Translation: Barnes, 1956). The self, as both whole and diverse, is never quite captured due to the oppositional nature between existence and reason that Sartre assumes. *** The binary itself is not easily grasped, but its effects are discernible. The tensions that emerge from the binary reveal that if the assumptions which underlie the argument are extreme and unfounded, the content itself is affected and distorted. To understand this in a more general sense, it is often what we consider possible, rather than the reality of the situation, which dictates the outcome. If we never venture down certain pathways because we never consider their existence, then those avenues of thought will never open to us, not because they cannot exist, but because we consider them unable to exist. The philosopher Derrida speaks to the violence of writing, of naming things, and of defining spectrums and hierarchies through names (Derrida, 1976). Writing separates, and it is within those separations that battles are fought. Writers always write in the context of previous thought, and so even though their intentions are to break cycles of thought, the methodology of writing itself binds them to reiterate the same structural violence that previous writers have also engaged in. In short, modern philosophers often end up writing within the dialogue set up by previous philosophers and find it difficult, if not impossible, to break out of that dialogue and introduce new possibilities. If the possibilities of the conversation are predetermined by restrictions on expression, the historical limitations will stunt the conversation and block the creation of new pathways of thought. While Kierkegaard provides an illuminating analysis of how Hegelianism neglected essential considerations for how the existing subject should come to understand itself, at the same time, Kierkegaard’s reactionary philosophy proves detrimental to the originality of his own philosophy. The content is simply turned on its head, but the ultimate goal of understanding remains out of reach. Heidegger’s concept of dasein reorients ontology into a humbler form, reminding us that we do not experience Being except as being-in-the-world and as being-towards-death. He criticizes the philosophical tradition of forgetting that our existence is wholly about being present-in-the-world. However, Heidegger falls prey to his own criticism when he separates human existence from whatever truth or meaning there was to be found in our existence. To Sartre’s credit, Sartre identifies and denounces the binary from the very beginning. Yet, despite this awareness, his own philosophy ends up depending on conceptual divisions born from the binary. What all of these philosophers point out but struggle to prove within their own philosophies is that the human being is always the meeting ground for both reason and existence. By imposing this binary, we become stuck with a mentality that cannot imagine outside of you are either this or that. There is no space for a new beginning because violence has already been done unto the space of possibility. While one side can point out the defects of the other, unfortunately, the inverse of a structure does not overturn the system nor introduce anything new, and so it cannot successfully escape the faults or solve the problems of the original structure. Inversion and rejection are still confined to the original sphere of thought and that influence is impossible to hide, even though the rest of the content may be revolutionary and inspiring. That is why the existence-reason binary limits existentialists’ answer to the ontological question of the self knowing its own being. Part II: Rethinking the Transcendental Self In light of the existence-reason binary, I offer an interpretation of a self that is transcendental and nonrational. The nonrational transcendental self is a transcendental self because it allows for a shift in perspective without loss of identity. It is nonrational because the shift is unconcerned with justifications. There is no categorizing or narrating the experience for a greater purpose. There is no expectation of ‘what ought to happen’. There is no need to prioritize anything within the experience. The nonrational transcendental self is the self that experiences its own being without having to focus or impose on it. It is the self that exists alongside the constant question of suicide and it is the self that arises when we experience moments of beauty. *** Section A: The Question of Suicide Camus famously said, “There is only one really serious philosophical problem and that is suicide. Deciding whether or not life is worth living is to answer the fundamental question in philosophy” (Camus – Translation: O’Brien, 1991). Camus’ infamous line was already preceded by a long line of thinkers grappling with the morality and rationality of suicide. St. Augustine, inspired by Plato and followed by Aquinas, states the Christian prohibition on suicide. When intolerable evils descend upon us, the truly pious withstand the onslaught and prove their virtue, whereas those who escape by suicide have sullied God’s gift of life to us (Saint Augustine – Translation: Paolucci, 1962). Suicide was seen as the ultimate unrepentable sin. St. Augustine also considers suicide irrational, pointing out that if suicide is meant to preserve happiness or escape unhappiness by avoiding pain, then that is foolishness for there is no happiness to be found in either giving up in the midst of fighting evil or in knowing that you can commit suicide (Saint Augustine – Translation: Paolucci, 1962). Then, David Hume famously wrote a defense of suicide as a rational act, stating, “suicide is no transgression of our duty to God” (Hume, 1783). God granted all beings and things with their proper functions and powers (Hume, 1783). A river has the power to stop man because God willed it. Yet, if man is able to create machinery that utilizes energy from a river or can divert a river from its course, this interaction causes no discord in the creation and would not be a crime in the eyes of God (Hume, 1783). God has given us the ability to judge and enact such behavior. Likewise, Hume asserts that there is no crime of “turning a few ounces of blood from their natural channels” (Hume, 1783). In this case, God has given us the ability to judge and enact suicide. Furthermore, just as the river turns according to the laws of matter and motion, so does the human body react according to the laws of nature as set by God (Hume, 1783). Hume offers several situations in which suicide might be consistent with our self-interest (e.g. age, sickness, and misfortune), but is also quick to state, “no man ever threw away life, while it was worth keeping… for such is our natural horror of death” (Hume, 1783). Thus, if someone ultimately judges that he or she is in a situation so haunted by suffering that it cannot be relieved except through death, then not only is committing suicide not a moral transgression, but it is also a perfectly rational act. Richard Brandt furthers Hume’s argument that suicide can be rational by way of a utilitarian argument. Brandt argues that a rational agent can make a sufficiently informed comparison about the likely utility between the two possible futures of survival and suicide and make an intelligible and rational choice from there. However, in response to Brandt, Christopher Cowley suggests that the concept of rationality does not apply to suicide. Judgements about suicide, such as those espoused by Brandt, are certainly intelligible (Cowley, 2006). However, these judgments are “third-person descriptions… implicitly assuming rationality” and “[maintaining] a clinical detachment” so that we end up “talking about the victim rather than to or with the victim” (Cowley, 2006). Cowley thus points out that asking the rational question of “what would anyone do in this situation” is more an abstract hypothesis and less about the agent and the agent’s act of suicide (Cowley, 2006). Furthermore, debating the rationality of suicide misses a major point, that rationality is essentially future-oriented. We call an act rational or irrational by presupposing a future in which we will have to face the consequences of that act (Cowley, 2006). Therefore, while we might consider someone’s reason for suicide rational or irrational, suicide itself cannot be properly judged by rationality because it is the erasure of the future that is a precondition of judging an act as rational or irrational. Thus, Cowley “rejects the exhaustive dichotomy between rational and irrational” because both concepts “run out” and fail to provide a language that sufficiently accounts for a discussion on suicide (Cowley, 2006). Rationality presumes justification, which not only assumes a future but also abstracts from the subject’s experience. However, if Cowley’s point stands, then how are we to approach the question of suicide? Who is the agent in question, if not a rational agent? Insofar as suicide is a human question, the answer relies heavily on how we understand the human being. Here, I hope that my notion of the nonrational transcendental self will help articulate our experience with the issue of suicide. Notice this: Although Camus and others have posed the question of suicide intellectually, we actually experience this question at every moment of our conscious lives. We do not necessarily confront the question (in that we do not feel compelled to justify our existences to ourselves every passing second), but simply by virtue of living, we exist alongside it. The rational self often resists; justifications often mean “this despite that.” But the nonrational self simply exists, without justification, and therefore, without resistance. It does not strive to endure because it is not about life, it is simply living. When a wind passes through the grass, we do not think the grass “resists.” Instead, it simply exists in its swaying along with the wind. Afterwards, we reason that the wind made the grass sway, and while this is very much true, this is a justification after the initial experience, where reason serves as a convenient framework with which to understand and recognize our experiences. Thus, the nonrational transcendental self settles the anxiety of needing a reason to live in an arbitrary world by accepting that it simply is, outside of want and reason. As the question of suicide is reborn every moment, so this self co-exists alongside that question. Returning to Camus’ question, I realize that suicide is not simply a grand philosophical issue, but an ever-present question. Of course, as Cowley admits, suicide can be discussed in terms of rationality. I think that this makes sense. After all, suicide has a widespread effect, and it is only natural that we abstract from the agent and act itself in an attempt to more deeply understand why such tragic events happen. However, the question of suicide also exists separate from our reasons to live or die. We know this because we have all witnessed that the reality of suicide exists beyond rationality. Sadly, many people who have every reason to live also die. We, as survivors, turn to religion and philosophy and literature, searching for reasons that might explain why they had to go when clearly, they had so much to live for. But regardless of the many arguments we might construct to justify a longer life, the insurmountable fact is that they have passed out of this shared world. As such, suicide is neither rational nor irrational. It is nonrational, which means that although existence can be rationalized, existence is or is not despite the rationalization. Suicide, not as an act to be judged, but as a constant question hand-in-hand with living, illuminates this aspect of the self. The nonrational self is also transcendental. The common understanding of transcendental is “a noumenal realm above”, but the nonrational transcendental self in this situation is a “settling.” The self that transcends life-or-death is not a self that rises above existence, but a self that is simply situated in one’s own being. Even facing the question of suicide, the nonrational transcendental self does not reach towards immorality nor does it turn within itself. There is no extortion and no resistance. It simply exists as it is. It is the mind before the mind is filled with thoughts. It is the state of existence that occupies the middle ground between wanting to live and wanting to die. This middle ground is what often allows people to survive depression, which sometimes manifests as an indifference to life and inability to hope. Think about the reverse situation. Many people who feel they have no reason to live continue to live. Whether it is because we are depressed or uncertain or have simply never seriously entertained the question, we can exist without a reason to live. While Hume and Brandt rightfully argue that we can make value judgments about what sort of life is worth living, the rational argument does not account for the actual state of our existence. Why not? This is because for human beings, the absence of reason to live is not a reason to die. Therefore, to discuss suicide as though it aligns with a linear spectrum of rationality is to collapse this inequality and equate the absence of reason to live with a reason to die. This discounts the struggle that many depressed and/or suicidal people struggle through. But intuitively, we all understand this inequality and we recognize the significance of the inequality. It is why we feel that there is no reason sufficient enough to justify suicide. However, for this intuitive truth to be true, we must grant that the human being exists and sees itself capable of existing outside the reason-existence binary and occupying the middle ground of the nonrational transcendental self. Section B: The Moral and Aesthetic Judgment Before I further explain the notion of a nonrational transcendental self, I wish to reference other types of judgments that are nonrational. Since the kinds of judgments we make portray the kind of being we are, I think this will help us to imagine concepts of the self outside the existence-reason binary. *** After his Critique of Pure Reason, Kant pursued other capacities of self-representation and self-understanding in the Second and Third Critiques, respectively. The Critique of Practical Reason contains Kant’s moral philosophy, which is premised on the principle that we must understand ourselves as we appear to ourselves. In other words, even if reason postulates a phenomenal determinism in the physical world, since we appear to ourselves as moral beings and morality implies agency, we must also take ourselves to be agents capable of affect. The reasoning here is practical: Given how we appear to ourselves, we must believe the necessary condition which allows for this appearance. Specifically, given that we appear to ourselves as moral agents, we must necessarily take ourselves to be free agents (Kant – Translation: Beck, 1956). This differs from the pure reason of Kant’s First Critique, which was discussed as a cognitive capacity functioning largely to structure our experience through concepts and categories. However, the Kantian self that engages in practical reason and which makes the moral judgment is inequivalent to a nonrational transcendental self. The nonrational transcendental self is not concerned with its own appearance or with self-justifications. Kant’s moral judgment is nonetheless a rational judgment, only it has to do with practical reasoning, which is bottom-top because it reasons from appearance whereas pure reasoning, which structures based on a priori conditions of cognition and pure categories of laws and structures, works top-down. To translate this back into our discussion of suicide, saying that the nonrational transcendental self exists alongside the ever-present question of suicide is inequivalent to saying that a person has a moral incentive to live. The moral incentive often appears as a justification, supplying a ‘despite’ in an intellectual, but not necessarily existential problem. Kant’s Third Critique, the Critique of Judgment conveys the aesthetic judgment (i.e. a judgment of beauty). The aesthetic judgment employs the individual’s capacities of imagination and understanding to enter into the mental state of freeplay (Kant – Translation: Walkter, 1963). While both imagination and understanding draw inspiration from the manifold of intuition, they are pure faculties or free faculties. Imagination is the synthesis of a manifold of intuition, and the synthesis is not totally predetermined by the content of the manifold. For example, in imagination, the intuitions of a horse and a horn can be freely synthesized into a unicorn. Understanding is the realm of pure categories (in contrast to concepts which require and apply to specific objects). In understanding, there are unifying laws (e.g. causation) that shape our experience of phenomena without discriminating between empirical details. Then, for freeplay to be the interaction of two pure mental capacities means that the aesthetic judgment is “merely subjective” (Kant – Translation: Walkter, 1963). That is, freeplay occurs only when the subject has removed him/herself from the world (i.e. become a disinterested subject) and re-presented an object that is no longer in front of him/her to him/herself. The aesthetic judgment deals only with this re-presentation. So, an aesthetic judgment does not apply to the object itself the way concepts do. The aesthetic judgment is thus another judgment different from a purely rational judgment. However, there is a quirk in the aesthetic judgment: Despite being completely subjective, our aesthetic judgment necessitates an ought; that is, everyone else ought to agree with our judgment of what is beautiful. Although an aesthetic judgment cannot claim logical universal validity (since it does not refer to a concept), we present our judgments of beauty with a universal voice (Kant – Translation: Walkter, 1963). Thus, the aesthetic judgment “must involve a claim to subjective universality” (Kant – Translation: Walkter, 1963). For Kant, the aesthetic judgment, in bringing together subjectivity and universality, allows us to re-imagine or re-present the human as a being whose sociability and individuality are seamless. In this way, the aesthetic judgment offers an alternative to the existence-reason binary because freeplay, the pure categories of reason, is communicable. However, it is worth noting that there is something a bit sinister about the ‘ought.’ Imagine that in your encounter with the question of suicide, someone comes up to you and tells you that you ought to live. It is a patronizing remark on behalf of the speaker. Hence, this ‘ought’ which is essential in rendering a statement into a judgment and initially seems to prove the human capacity for freeplay and sociability, actually betrays that the aesthetic judgment is not only about subjective appreciation and value, but also assumes an objective universal validity. While the Kantian subject of the aesthetic judgment offers an alternative to the self shuttling back and forth within the reason-existence binary, it is also not quite equivalent to the nonrational transcendental self. The nonrational transcendental self has no reason to prescribe an “ought” to anyone else. Since it is free from reason or desire, it has no need to prove itself or to display its faculties by way of judgments. As we shall see, the nonrational transcendental self appears less in a judgment of beauty and more in a moment of beauty. Section C: From a Judgment of Beauty to a Moment of Beauty The meeting ground of reason and existence and the full-fledged appearance of the nonrational transcendental self occur in a moment of beauty. The novel The Elegance of the Hedgehog illustrates the reveal of the nonrational transcendental self in a moment of beauty. In the story, we meet a young girl named Paloma who very rationally comes to the conclusion that life is not worth staying for and that suicide is the best option (Barbery, 2006). At the end of the novel, Paloma rescinds this decision of suicide, not because she finds some rational reason that justifies her life or tells her that things are bound to get better, but because Paloma discovers for herself that what makes life worthwhile is the inexplicable and nonrational moments of beauty that one encounters amidst, alongside, and even within the suffering that seems to be most of life. Paloma’s life seems to take a turn for the better when she meets Madame Michel, the concierge, and Kakuro Ozu, a new occupant of one of the luxury apartments. But then, without any particular cause and certainly without a satisfying rational justification (i.e. a mad man’s dance is no reason for someone to die), Madame Michel is hit by an automobile and dies. Paloma feels then what it might mean to die, what it really means to face a “never again” (Barbery, 2006). In essence, she suddenly acquires a newfound awareness of her own experiencing. Then, Paloma experiences a moment of beauty. As she and Kakuro Ozu pass through a courtyard, both of them solemn with grief at Madame Michel’s passing, they hear music drifting down from above. Paloma “stopped short… took a deep breath and let the sun warm [her face while she] listened to the music drifting down from above” and she felt that: “There’s a lot of despair, but also the odd moment of beauty… It’s as if those strains of music created a sort of interlude in time, something suspended, an elsewhere that had come to us, an always within never… Beauty, in this world.” (Barbery, 2006) To explain why Paloma’s moment of beauty was transcendent, first we must consider how human beings are frequently obsessed with playing the heroes and heroines of our own lives, sometimes to the point of playing our own villains. We impose ourselves onto events and other people to try to fit them into our narratives, which we use to self-justify and to explain ourselves to other people. Recognition is important to us. We often have this deep-rooted fear that we will not exist unless we define ourselves, but these definitions do not seem to be authentic unless others acknowledge them. So, we attempt to paste certain labels onto ourselves to garner attention from others. In this way, rationalism (as justification of narratives and labels) is our long-valued method of proving to ourselves and others that we exist at all. Reason has suddenly gained the illusive quality of being necessary to exist. But whether it is the rationalists attaching existence to what is considered “objective” and “immortal” or the existentialists equating the self with subjectivity, the one thing that remains when all else is stripped away from us is a response to the same fear. The question of how the self might understand its being has long been motivated by the anxiety that our existence may not truly be an opportunity for narrative or significance. Thus, philosophy has a natural habit of referring the human being to things they consider visible and indispensable in the hopes that we, too, must be so. However, when Paloma experiences the beauty of music, residing in one ephemeral but suspended moment, her newfound awareness allows for a shift in perspective. With her mind settled from a deeper understanding of life, the beauty of the music enters and shifts her perspective so that in that moment, she is no longer concerned with proving, justifying, or defining her own existence. In that moment, she is no longer obsessed with playing the hero. Paloma assumes the role of passerby, allowing and enjoying the music that is taking center stage in her experience. Thus, our encounter with a moment of beauty allows us to relinquish our need to prove our own existences without threatening our identities and we re-situate ourselves into the existence of a passerby or watcher without considering it a degradation or loss of self, but as the self taking a deep breath and for a moment, just settling into itself. To step away from the need to justify ourselves and re-affirm ourselves is to experience our own being as transcendent and our energy as nonrational (i.e. directionless and not aiming to be applied to anything). In more casual terms, you just are and you are enough to appreciate the moment for what it is. This is why Kant’s moral self is not the nonrational transcendental self. Kant’s moral self arises from a need to understand ourselves given how we appear to ourselves, but the nonrational transcendental self, which is what we are when we encounter moments of beauty or when we live alongside suicide, is not concerned with how we appear to ourselves. Paloma describes the moment of beauty as a moment of “time suspension.” It is the “always within never.” This is interesting because time is one of the Kantian transcendental conditions. So, if we are in a realm of suspended time when we encounter a moment of beauty, then experiencing beauty is not a type of ‘knowing.’ Time and space are simultaneously extended and absorbed and the vanity of the self connected with these determinations fades away. To describe Paloma as “standing where the music is” is normally a confusion of terms that fails to define her, but it is the realm of the nonrational and transcendental, which is the same realm as the middle ground between the absence of a reason to live and a reason to die. Pure experience, which involves both existence and reason but is not confined by either, is an open realm where all things that ground us may shift with no threat to our existence. Furthermore, if Paloma’s experience happens in time suspension, then we cannot expect it to happen or try to prolong it. With time suspension, possibility and actuality exist only insofar as they exist in each other. But without expectation, there can be no prescription. Thus, the nonrational transcendental self which appears in a moment of beauty differs from the Kantian subject making an aesthetic judgment in that the former is not considered with universal recommendations. The nonrational transcendental self is the middle ground devoid of the three cornerstones that inevitably create binaries: expectation, justification, and definition. Another character in The Elegance of the Hedgehog is Jean Arthens, who is the son of the previous resident of Monsieur Ozu’s apartment. When we first encounter Jean Arthens, Renee describes him as “a drug addict, a sad wreck, … no more than a tortured body staggering through life on a razor’s edge” (Barbery, 2006). Through her encounter with him, Renee sadly recognizes that as human beings “we all must fall” at some point and that even before the fall, nobody quite knows “what [this war is that] we are waging, when defeat is so certain… Step by step we clear the path toward our mournful doom” (Barbery, 2006). But then, weeks later, Jean reappears as a far healthier person, somebody who, “once so very close to the abyss, has visibly opted for rebirth” (Barbery, 2006). Renee wonders at his transformation, asking herself, “How is one reborn after a fall?” (Barbery, 2006). Jean tells Renee that what “practically saved his life” was none other than the “pretty little red and white flowers” that Renee had planted (Barbery, 2006). He explains that although “[he did not] know why”, he “used to think about those flowers all the time… and it did [him] good” (Barbery, 2006). Renee is amazed that a “camellia can change fate” (Barbery, 2006). Renee could not have reasonably known that Jean would have viewed her flowers in such a miraculous manner. Jean himself could not have reasonably anticipated his reaction. But the why was unimportant. The flowers were beautiful to him and in that moment of beauty, the nonrational transcendental self came forth. After her encounter with Jean, Renee asks herself those unanswerable questions of life: “Did he see [the pathways of hell]? How is one reborn after a fall? What new pupils restore sight to scorched eyes? Where does war begin, where does combat end?” Her answer is: “Thus, a camellia” (Barbery, 2006). Renee’s answer does not make any rational sense. It is nonrational, and in a beautiful way, it is transcendental. Paloma’s music in the sunlight despite Madame Michel’s death and Jean Arthens’ camellias after a close shave with the abyss… For both Paloma and Jean, it was a moment of beauty that allowed them, not to somehow overcome their grief once and for all or even to be inspired to grit their teeth and endure, but to let go and excuse themselves from always having to save somebody else or save themselves. They no longer had to grapple with “why.” When the self sees its own transcendental non-rational being, it realizes that it is all things already. Conclusion I do not think that my reimagining of the self would escape Derrida’s wrath. As he rightly predicts, my attempt at explaining a nonrational transcendental self also succumbs to the same binary of worldly existence and reason that I critique in the first part of this thesis. In explaining why things are not some way, I find myself relying on the traits of that one way to explain my counterpoint. As Derrida points out, each new term we create in response to previous binaries is yet another appeasement for our constant need to commit violence against ourselves in the form of new justifications and differentiations, in service of so-called systematic thought. However, I believe that there are still important takeaways from my proposition of a nonrational transcendental self. First, while the nonrational transcendental self can express the binary, it is not merely the binary. It is whatever was before the binary existed. The importance of this first point is that we can open our minds to the fact that the binary did not always exist and is therefore not a necessary or restraining metaphysical truth of philosophy. In fact, I think we can come to see that up until the very point prior to the existence-reason binary, either existence or reason could have theoretically functioned like nonrationality. This binary was an arbitrary creation, which took its meaning from the circumstances it arose from (in this case, the existentialist push-back against rationalism). It is a useful binary in that it gives us a language in which to express our thoughts about two important aspects of the human being, but the danger of its arbitrariness is that we may slip into confusing its applicability into a metaphysical and necessary truth. So long as we can understand things existing beyond the binary, we shift ever closer to creating a theory which speaks true to both our experience and knowledge and are better able to step away from the temptation of fitting experience into theory. Likewise, the nonrational transcendental self, as revealed in its experience of a moment of beauty, challenges the strict distinction between the abstract and actual. Return for a moment to Kantian aesthetics. The Kantian subject of the aesthetic judgment is not identical with the nonrational transcendental self that experiences a moment of beauty for the former is defined by its capacities while the latter is unconcerned with its capacities and more engaged with the experience of beauty in that very moment. However, the Kantian notion of aesthetics is highly relevant because it illustrates the subject as able to merge abstraction and experience in the process of “freeplay.” This is significant because it illustrates that we do not have to sacrifice abstraction and conceptualization in order to experience actuality. In their efforts to reject rationalism, the existentialists try to do away with abstraction and conceptualization. However, anti-conceptualization only reinvents, rather than resolves, fundamental tensions. We see this clearly in Kierkegaard’s inverse Hegelianism. Even on the everyday level, it is plain that abandoning the abstract does not lead to freedom. Taking away all methods of conceptualizing and imagining possibilities forces a person to submit to his circumstances. His existence, in becoming only ‘actual’, is no longer connected to what is possible. In contrast, the experience of the nonrational transcendental self embraces abstraction so that a person’s subjectivity can extend beyond actuality into a more moving experience, where unrealized possibilities support the actuality of the present moment. The nonrational transcendental self is the grounds upon which object and subject experience each other as existentially inseparable (e.g. Paloma stands where the music is) as possibility and actuality shift into one another. When we experience the question of life and death (at every moment) or a moment of beauty, all conditions of an existing self are fulfilled without having to give a strict definition of its existence and capabilities. The nonrational transcendent self shows that the human being does not depend on rejecting rationality or proving its own subjectivity in order to exist as it is. Without asking for definition, the nonrational transcendental self appears to us in moments of life and beauty, demanding nothing of us except to pass through with an open mind. This is the aspect of the self that I believe became lost amidst the tensions of the existence-rationalism binary and is now reclaimed through the reimagining of the self. Footnotes 19 The "hollowness of a hollow man" is in reference to T.S. Eliot, The Hollow Men. (London: Oxford University Press, 1951). 20 This summary of Richard Brandt’s argument was quoted from: Christopher Cowley, “Suicide is Neither Rational nor Irrational” in Ethical Theory and Moral Practice. Vol. 9, No.5 (2006): p. 495. 21 I realize that transcendence is a highly loaded term. However, I specifically chose a term with a lot of baggage from the existence-reason binary in order to show that the word can be used outside of the binary. The more obvious term that I might use is “reorientational” or “resituational”. But I used transcendence to show that transcendence and reaching that freedom of shifting a position do not arise only from turning deeper within yourself or by abstracting further and further away, but simply by settling into yourself, as you are. 22 Self-justification in this context is reminiscent of the Kantian subject of the moral judgment and explaining ourselves to others is similar to the ‘ought’ that the Kantian subject of the aesthetic judgment imposes onto others. References Descartes, Rene. Meditations on First Philosophy (Translated by Elizabeth S. Haldane). Reprint, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991. Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich. Reason in History (Translated by Robert S. Hartman). Reprint, New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, 1953. Kant, Immanuel. Critique of Pure Reason (Translated by Paul Guyer and Allen Wood. Reprint, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Kierkegaard, Søren. Concluding Unscientific Postscript in The Essential Kierkegaard (Edited by Howard Hong and Edna Hong). Reprint, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978. Heidegger, Martin. Being and Time (Translated by John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson). Reprint, New York: Harper & Row Publishers, Inc., 1962. Sartre, Jean-Paul. Being and Nothingness: An Essay on Phenomenological Ontology (Translated by Hazel Barnes). Reprint, New York: Philosophical Library, Inc., 1956. Kierkegaard, Søren. Stages on Life’s Way in The Essential Kierkegaard (Edited by Howard Hong and Edna Hong). Reprint, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978. Adorno, Theodor. Kierkegaard: Construction of the Aesthetic (Translated by Robert Hullot-Kentor). Reprint, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989. Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Gay Science (Translated by Josefine Nauckhoff). Reprint, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Derrida, Jacques. Of Grammatology. Reprint, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976. Camus, Albert. The Myth Of Sisyphus, And Other Essays (Translated By Justin O'brien). Reprint, New York: Vintage Books, 1991. Augustine, Saint. The Political Writings Of Saint Augustine (Edited By Henry Paolucci). Reprint, Washington, D.C.: Regnery Publishing Inc., 1962. David, Hume. Two Essays: Of Suicide And Of The Immorality Of The Soul. Reprint, Ann Arbor: Michigan University Library, 2008. Cowley, Christopher. "Suicide Is Neither Rational Nor Irrational". Ethical Theory And Moral Practice 9, no. 5 (2006): 495-504. doi:10.1007/s10677-006-9031-9. Kant, Immanuel. Critique Of Practical Reason (Translated By Lewis White Beck). Reprint, Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merill Company, Inc., 1956. Kant, Immanuel. The Analytic Of The Beautiful In Critique Of Judgment (Translated By Walkter Cerf). Reprint, New York: The Bobbs-Merill Company, Inc., 1963. Barbery, Muriel. The Elegance Of The Hedgehog. Reprint, New York: Europa Editions, 2006. Heidegger, Martin. The Basic Problems Of Phenomenology. Reprint, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1982. Sartre, Jean-Paul. Existentialism Is A Humanism (Translated By Carol Macomber). Reprint, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1945.

*Feature* John R. Allen John R. Allen is a retired United States Marine Corps four-star general, and former commander of the NATO International Security Assistance Force and U.S. Forces - Afghanistan (USFOR-A). He was appointed by President Barack Obama as the special presidential envoy for the Global Coalition to Counter ISIL (Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant). He is currently the President of the Brookings Institution, and his most recent research addresses the effects of artificial intelligence in a variety of sectors. Allen’s piece in JPPE’s second issue explores the effects of artificial intelligence on the future of education. Fall 2018 Artificial intelligence (AI) and emerging technologies (ET) are poised to transform modern society in profound ways. As with electricity in the last century, AI is an enabling technology that will animate everyday products and communications, endowing everything from cars to cameras with the ability to interact with the world around them, and with each other. These developments are just the beginning, and as AI/ET matures, it will have sweeping impacts on our work, security, politics, and very lives. These technologies are already impacting the world around us, as Darrell West and I wrote in our April 2018 piece “How artificial intelligence is transforming the world ,” and I highly recommend that anyone just discovering the topic of AI policy read it thoroughly. There, Darrell and I describe several important implications related to AI/ET, but chief among them is that these technology developments are on the cusp of ushering in a true revolution in human affairs at an increasingly fast pace. As AI continues to influence and shape existing industries and allows new ones to take root, its macro-level impact, particularly in the realm of economics, will become more and more apparent. Control over the research and development of AI will become increasingly vital, and the winners of this upcoming AI-defined era in human history will be the countries and companies that can create the most powerful algorithms, assemble the most talent, collect the most data, and marshal the most computing power. This is the next great technology race of our generation and the stakes are high, particularly for the United States. If American society is to embrace the full range of the social and political changes that these technologies will introduce, then it is the education and training we provide our youth and workers that will fuel the engines of future AI, and therefore geopolitical success. I've studied and written extensively about the effects of AI/ET on the evolving character of war toward a concept I’ve called hyperwar – or, a new era of warfare in which, through AI, the speed of decision making is faster than anything that has come before. At a superficial level, this topic often devolves into a discussion of “killer robots,” or at the very least the impending use of AI in lethal autonomous weaponry. While those discussions are relevant and inextricably linked, they represent a narrow understanding of the greater issues at hand. The concern over AI’s potential or theoretical military applications must not distract us from how far-reaching the impact of AI will be in nearly all other policy domains. Health care, education, agriculture, energy, finance, and yes, national security, will all be reshaped in some way by AI – with education being the pivot point around which the future of the United States revolves. This is not solely a matter of social redress – which is by itself is extremely important – but in fact is a larger national security issue. The way we use education to prepare our next-generation of leaders will directly determine whether the US retains its leadership in critical fields of relevance in the emerging digital environment. Without a sufficiently educated population and workforce, the US likely will slip behind other states for whom AI/ET is not only means for improved social organization, but for strategic superiority, and potentially for digital and physical conquest. A future in which the United States is second in the race for AI technology would create a situation of national technological and digital/cyber inferiority, which could in turn result in national strategic subservience – something simply unimaginable in a world of growing strategic competition with systems of government very different from ours. Many Americans grew up with the understanding that the US’ capacity to fight and win a nuclear war was defined by its superiority in the Strategic Triad, the three legs of our strategic deterrence: our missile squadrons, our bomber fleet, and our ballistic missile submarines. Behind that dizzying array of hardware was the undisputed power of US intellectual and technical capabilities, and behind that was a near unlimited supply of talented engineers, each trained by a system of education undisputed in its excellence. That system was built from the ground up to produce crucial STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) protégés in the quantities needed to ensure American strategic superiority, which contributed directly to the US and its allies prevailing in the Cold War. For the health of our American way of life, our competitive advantage, and the strategic security of our nation, the basis for tomorrow’s system of education must reflect a deliberately tuned and calibrated system that proactively emphasizes AI/ET, big data analytics, and super-computing. Unfortunately, in both relative and absolute terms, the US is falling behind in the race for superiority in these key technologies and AI. Where the US strategic advantage of the 20th Century was secured by American nuclear superiority, US superiority in the 21st Century will likely be preserved, safeguarded, and sustained through a system of education that envisages the changes necessary and is sufficient to embrace and apply relevant technologies. It will also be underwritten by educators who grasp the profound shifts in the pedagogical skills essential to the educational needs of the 21st Century. The need to adapt is great – and for this system to be fully embraced it must come in the form of a comprehensive and national US strategy for education in the digital age, to include the resources necessary to bring education into the digital classroom, and to educate and train entire generations of educators to be relevant in the 21st Century and beyond. The United States must at all costs preserve its position of primacy in AI, big data, and super-computing through leaders who understand these issues on a fundamental level and have the political will to develop and resource a comprehensive plan for reimagining our national education efforts. In thinking about the essence of a US national education strategy adapted to the digital age, several important questions arise pertaining to the way we think about education and develop the next generation of leaders: What will be the implications for how we educate, train, and develop teachers? A discussion on the impact of AI on education will point dramatically to those who facilitate the process in our schools. The very term “teacher” may be insufficient to adequately capture the role of this key individual in the educational experience. Teaching and learning requirements may be substantially re-ordered and the dynamic of learning versus teaching in an AI-based system of education will be very different. And while teachers today are in many ways the unsung and underappreciated heroes of the American workforce, the teachers of the digital age may define the future of America. This will raise important questions about requirements for teaching degrees and related certificates in this new environment, and the necessary adaptation of the science of pedagogy to these changes. Ultimately, the key question will be “are the teachers of today ready to develop the leaders we will need tomorrow?” A difficult question, to be sure, and the answer today is no. The national education strategy must focus on their development as it focuses on the students as well. What will the AI-based classroom look like? With AI, every aspect of the traditional learning environment is up for reimagining. Will classrooms continue to be physical spaces? Or instead, will it be a virtual "space" using networked augmented or virtual reality technologies? The answer is yes to both, and the student in tomorrow’s AI based educational experience will be exposed to an immersive, digital education heretofore unimaginable. The distributed, networked, virtual reality classroom is both enormously exciting, and at the same time frightening for the enormity of its potential. There are major challenges to measuring success in an AI-based educational process. For instance, if our students can become more deeply involved in the pathways of their own learning through AI, measurement will occur moment to moment, as well as the success of remediation. In the best-case scenario, we will know at the end of each student’s day if s/he is meeting academic requirements and quickly correct deficiencies as necessary to stay on track. In any case, there are profound moral questions to consider with a system such as this, and policymakers must understand the underlying dynamics of the technologies at play if they are to fully support society. What will this kind of system of education do to reduce inequalities in our society? One of the most profound aspects of education in the AI environment is that these technologies could unleash the potential and productivity of a huge sector of American and global society hitherto constrained by their educational experience and resulting lack of opportunity. Local governments, schools, and especially the private sector will need to routinely intersect to create synergy and symbiosis to enhance our educational processes. Through the AI-powered digital space, “opportunity for all” may become a reality for those who previously had little means of achieving their own piece of the American Dream. The profoundly limiting feature of these opportunities lies in internet and 4G and 5G penetration within the United States, and the sometimes appallingly scarce educational resources committed in some areas in America. There are large segments of the US where our education systems, and our youth, have limited-to-no access to the internet and to Wi-Fi. If we hope to achieve our digital potential, and to continue to maintain our lead in AI and other emerging technologies, a national program to bring Wi-Fi and the internet to all our citizens is absolutely essential, and will in any case help to close the sometimes yawning gaps created by racial and income inequality in the US. AI/ET promise to usher in a bold new era of human history, one where the machines we create will oftentimes be smarter, faster, and more powerful than those who created them. This reality has profound implications for the field of education and introduces complex ethical, legal, and societal implications that academics, policymakers, and average citizens alike will need to contend with as every aspect of society reshapes around them. Further, the United States risks strategic inferiority if it does not embrace a full reconsideration of education in the digital environment, to include a comprehensive strategy for reimagining our education system at the national level. Today, we are not training our young leaders with the tools required to be successful in the digital age, and that has deeply troubling implications for the future of American society. Nevertheless, just as the United States persevered through the Cold War through technological superiority, I am hopeful that the 21st Century will yet again be one defined by American leadership – with our best and brightest from across the entire society leading the charge in digital era.

*Feature* JPPE INTERVIEWS, YANIS VAROUFAKIS: Inequality, Financialization, and Populism Yanis Varoufakis is the co-founder of DiEM25 (Democracy in Europe Movement) as well as the former Minister of Finance for the Greek government. Additionally, Varoufakis has written several books including his most recent work Adults in The Room: My Battle With Europe’s Deep Establishment, which is a first-hand account of Europe’s hidden agenda and a call to arms to renew European democracy. As a self identified “libertarian Marxist,” Varoufakis calls for a radical new way of thinking about concepts like the economy, finance and capitalism. Fall 2019 JPPE : Many economists have their explanations about where inequality comes from, such as financialization, credit, globalization, technology, and bad policy. When thinking about the causes of inequality in the last thirty years, are there specific areas you think we ought to devote our attention to? Yanis Varoufakis : Well, there’s one word that answers your question: financialization. Financialization came on the back of the post-Bretton-Woods drive for completing a surplus society loop, where the United States operated like the world vacuum cleaner, sucking into its territory the net exports of the world on the basis of pushing down wages, lowering inflation, and, of course, Wall Street and the exorbitant power of the dollar. But the tsunami of capital that was going into Wall Street every day to close this loop and to pay for the increasing trade of the US was what shifted the center of gravity of power from industry to finance. JPPE : Private credit played a big role in that? Varoufakis : Of course. It’s all private credit. You know, financialization is 99.9 percent private money lending. Consider the financialization of blue-collar workers, in which their homes became the only way of catching up and competing with the Jones’, and since their average earnings were stuck at 1973 levels in real terms, it was only the appreciation of house prices that allowed them to continue the American Dream of rising standards and consumption. And in 2008 that came crashing down, and ever since then, you have a process leading to Trump. So today’s extreme inequality is due to a very significant class war against the American working class that started at the end of Bretton Woods. And Paul Volker, who recently passed, was central to this. All of this created a new phase in global history: financialized globalization. It pushed inequality back to 1920s levels, financialization collapsed, and then central banks and governments like that of President Obama’s refloated finance, creating socialism for the very few and permanent austerity for everybody else. That’s the answer in a nutshell. That’s my narrative. But, I have to tell you, since your focus is on inequality, I’m one of the very few left-wingers that doesn't much care about inequality or so much about equality. I don’t consider equality to be such a well-defined term. Equality of what? How do you define it? JPPE : What about income inequality? Varoufakis : Inequality is a terrible thing, but it’s a symptom. For me, it’s not the issue. The issue is exploitation. If we have huge levels of exploitation it is because we live in an extractionary economy in which the very few extract value from humans and from nature. Deep down, I’m a liberal, who thinks that liberalism has not served the cause of liberty. JPPE : You’re a liberal who thinks that liberalism has not fulfilled its promises. Varoufakis : No, it’s gone completely against its mission, like the Marxism of the Communist Party in the Soviet Union led to a regime that violated every principle of Karl Marx. Similarly, what passes as liberalism has created remarkable illiberties and spread them globally. So what matters to me is freedom from the extractive power of others over you and over nature. Capitalism, through its ever-expanding power, destroys the planet and the air that we need to breathe. JPPE : People like Harry Frankfurt argue that what we should care about is not the gap between the rich and the poor, but rather how well off the worst off are doing. Varoufakis : That’s rubbish. This willfully and purposefully neglects the source of the riches of the rich. It is as if it’s a random distribution based on DNA, on ability, and on god-given talents. In the standard debate between John Rawls and Robert Nozick, I was always far more impressed by Nozick than by Rawls because the Rawlsian veil of ignorance is lovely, but the critique of it by Nozick is devastating. He says ‘ok, let’s say we agree with Rawls and we work out what the uniquely just and therefore rational income distribution is. Let’s say we agree, so everybody gets slotted into the income distribution we agreed is uniquely just.’ And then suddenly he’s got this example from basketball, in which one of us becomes very famous for a particular kind of basketballing technique, and people are prepared to pay a lot of money to watch us. Do we ban ourselves from doing this and receiving the money that people are willing to give? Illiberal. Or do we allow ourselves to receive that higher income, in which case we have just proven that the income distribution we decided is uniquely just is not uniquely just? So in the end, what really matters is not what you have, it’s what you do in order to have it. That is perfectly Marxist to me. And, as a leftist Marxist, the point where I disagree entirely with Nozick is on his definition of entitlement. In his entitlement theory of justice, he says anything people agree to give you under any circumstances means you have it justly and that you are entitled to it. I say this is nonsense. So if you’re starving and I have some food to give you and your kids, and then I make you become my slave voluntarily, that is as coercive as it would be to point a gun at you. So, the distribution of basic goods according to Rawls is important because, without the minimum basic goods, you volunteer to give me things that I’m extracting from you coercively. That’s the Marxist critique. I’m neither Rawlsian or Nozickian, but the process that Nozick brings into the conversation, as well as Hayek, is crucial. But where we disagree with the right-wing is on what qualifies as, firstly, sustainable process and, secondly, just process. JPPE : Would it be fair to say the distinction also comes down to the difference between positive liberty—the capacity to act—and negative liberty— the right to act? Varoufakis : Here I think the theories of the Canadian philosopher CB Macpherson are helpful. He criticized the Isaiah Berlin distinction between positive and negative liberty by asking, very correctly, that if negative liberty is freedom from interference, how do you define interference? If you and I meet in the desert and you are dying of thirst and I have a glass of water and say ‘if you want this, you have to sign a contract saying you pass along all your belongs—your house, your car, and everything’. If you say yes because you are dying of thirst, is this interference? Is this a voluntary transaction? Am I impeding your negative liberty? According to Berlin, I’m not because I’m not forcing you to do anything. You are choosing to give me things for a thing. In my view, the inequality of access to basic goods like water allows me to exercise extractive exploitation over you and therefore to impede your basic freedom. If you accept the distinction between positive liberty and negative liberty, you end up saying, in the end, ‘we’re only going to accept negative liberty because who gives a damn about positive liberty—it’s too dangerous because it legitimizes all sorts of violations of negative liberty. My model is the following: if instead of negative liberty, you have freedom from extractive power, and instead of positive liberty, you replace it with the notion of developmental freedom—the freedom to develop as a character. JPPE : Would you say part of the reason it’s so important to object to high levels of inequality comes down to the fact that, in highly unequal societies, you have very different abilities to participate (e.g. unequal baskets of basic goods)? Varoufakis : When so much of one side doesn’t have enough to live on, then you have exploitative power and extractive power that functions to deny every liberty to the party that doesn’t have access to that basket of basic goods. This is, of course, the original argument by Karl Marx. JPPE : Do you think a big component of that comes down to education and access to education? Varoufakis : No, it comes to ownership. As long as we have shareholders, we’re going to live in an illiberal society. What do I mean by shareholders? As long as you have tradable shares and anyone can buy a share in a company in which they don’t work, then you create this situation where the majority of the shares of any company are going to be owned by people who have nothing to do with the company. And once you enter that process, you create an alliance with finance because finance creates the capacity to buy shares and fictitious capital minted out of thin air that allows the oligarchy the right to extract the value of others. Yet imagine a situation in which we have shares, but it’s one share and one vote for one person. So anybody working in our business has one vote. I think of it as similar to a library card. When you’re enrolled in a university you get a library. Everyone gets one. You can’t trade it. It would be similar, in this model I am proposing. As long as you work, you have your share. And then you have one vote. Imagine if corporations operated along those lines. There would be inequality because we would all vote on bonuses, and not everybody would get the same bonuses because we would collectively decide that a certain person is of high value to us and so this person deserves more of a bonus. But the differences would be much smaller. And that has to do with the way in which property rights are distributed. JPPE : Doesn’t this create an incentive for companies to hire fewer people because it would require cutting the company up into thinner slices? Varoufakis : I don’t think that holds water because if you and I create a startup and we add a third person to expand, and the growth rate is higher than the basic wage in our company, then we would do it because it’s in our interests to do it. And the fact that companies would be small and not have more than 300 or 400 people —because you can’t scale this up—is a fantastic thing. We need small companies. The whole point about competition is that you have many small companies competing. Now, we have no competitive markets. So one of my criticisms of capitalism is that it is completely anti-competitive. It’s monopolistic. JPPE : So on some level, it’s almost this Polanyi Esque argument about liberalism undermining itself and actually requiring government state intervention in order for it to even continue as liberalism. Varoufakis : Yeah, the Polanyi argument and also the Marx argument. Any attempt to set the state against the market or the market against the state is historically pathetic because the market was created by states. Even the enclosures in Britain that created the circumstances for capital to emerge in Britain would not have happened without the king’s army. To pit the state against the market is historical nonsense. The only reason capitalism happened in Britain and not in France is that there was a powerful central government in the former but not the latter. And the central government dispatched the army in support of the lords that pushed the peasants off the land and replaced them with sheep. The sheep had the capacity to produce wool which was internationally traded, and suddenly the land had value. Without the king’s army, it wouldn’t have happened. JPPE : Your focus is on financialization when explaining inequality since the 1970s, but do you think that technological innovations played a role in that as well? In the Industrial Revolution, you saw rising inequality because of increased productivity but stagnant wages. Today, researchers talk about how modern inequality seems at least partially a consequence of the hollowing out of middle-skill/middle-wage work because innovations automated work in that middle sector. Varoufakis : I don’t think we have seen this yet. I think we probably will see it. The hollowing out of the middle class is evident, but I don't think it’s because of automation. I think it’s simply a situation whereby two things coalesced. On the one hand, it was the introduction of two billion workers in capitalistic markets after 1991 through the Soviet Union satellite states and the rise of China. Two billion workers came from those countries. There were huge shifts of factories to those countries, whether it was Poland or China. But the proletarianization of former peasants is a standard process that has nothing to do with technology per se. That’s the first dimension. The second dimension is the increasing role and capacity of the financial sector in turbocharging private money minting. Through all the financial derivatives and fast trading, without having to press a button, I can transfer billions at lightning speeds. That technological innovation made a huge difference in shifting and increasing power from the industrial scene into the sphere of finance. JPPE : How did that work? I would imagine a lot of the competition would be between investing firms and companies with better algorithms and better technology. Varoufakis : Yes, but between 1980 and 2008, in 1980 dollars there was an average inflow of money into Wall Street every day of between five and six billion, on average. Now, if you give a banker five billion every day, even for ten minutes, they will find ways of multiplying it. It’s called derivatives, options, financialization. Computers helped them create really complicated instruments that totally blew up the multiplier. So from that five billion, they could create a hundred or two hundred trillion in securities, which very soon started to operate like money to the extent that they were mediums of exchange and a source of value. So effectively they created as much value as they wanted. And immediately, political power shifts to Goldman Sachs, and General Motors becomes a hedge fund that produces a few cars that nobody cares about. So that’s what I mean by financialization. And that creates huge inequality because just think of all the bonuses. JPPE : And very few people have a stake in the stock market. Varoufakis : Most of this was not in the stock market. The derivatives were traded under the table. And so you have a huge new body of the proletariat coming, factories shifting to china. The Chinese people were coming up very slowly in terms of per capita income, but of course, they lose a lot of the old values—community values, environmental values, cultural identity. And fifteen boys living in one room today might make 15 dollars a day, which in the world bank statistics is a fantastic improvement for them. But maybe their life is far worse than it was when they were in their village milking a cow. JPPE : Yuval Noah Harari makes the point that, for many people, even the shift to agriculture from hunter-gatherers resulted in a dramatic decline in standards of living. And the same was certainly true of people in the Industrial Revolution. So how do you reconcile that argument with the notion that all of those innovations resulted in improvements in the standard of living that were eventually felt by everyone? Varoufakis : I simply reject it as uninteresting nonsense. When people say to me, ‘look at the last 200 hundred years and the massive decrease in poverty’, I ask ‘how do you measure poverty?’ Take the Australian Aborigines. When Captain Cook arrived in what is now New South Wales. These people had zero income, but they lived very full and fulfilling lives. Today, an Aborigines person gets a hundred Australian dollars a week from some kind of social security fund, and they are obese, they have diabetes, and they are dying from a number of diseases, if not from police brutality. So you consider that to be an improvement because they went from zero to a hundred dollars? But going back to what you were saying—the hollowing out of the middle class—we should come to that. Given that financialization was based on this exponential growth in fictitious capital that made the very rich exceptionally rich, and at the same time, to have this money coming into Wall Street, you had to have American wages kept very low and below American standards. And this means prices must rise against the home so that people can afford to buy stuff and fill up their garage with rubbish. And then, of course, in 2008 this house of cards comes crashing down. With jobs moving to China and, at the same time, financialization collapsing under the weight of its own hubris, that’s what explains the hollowing out of the middle class. These people initially turned to Barack Obama. He betrayed them. And now they turn to Donald Trump. But AI and automation are going to hit us when we’re down already. I don’t think the hollowing out has to do with automation, but now that the hollowing out has taken place for reasons that don’t have to do with automation, automation will be the second part of the double whammy. JPPE : A lot of people are very happy about automation because they believe in its potential to improve productivity. However, if you believe technological change results in significant short-run damages to certain people’s livelihoods, is it worth trying to stop automation? Varoufakis : Automation would be catastrophic. But why would it be catastrophic? It’s a question of nationalizing it and of socializing it. It’s a question of who owns it. Because if the machines are owned by the very few like they are, then those who own them will look at them as a source of personal enrichment, which means there will be a serious crisis by which those machines will be replacing workers who have no access to the returns of that capital. And so they will not be able to buy stuff. So we’re going to have a collapse. But if we all benefit and we all own the robots collectively, we would not have that problem. This is why I keep coming back to questions of ownership. And this is where I find some commonality with the extreme libertarians, because they also put a great deal of emphasis, not so much on income distributions, but on property rights, and I do too. They want to defend the property rights of oligarchy. I want to socialize property so that everybody has equal access to it. JPPE : When you think about the recent UK elections and the failure of Jeremy Corbyn and the British left to challenge more traditional and conservative leadership, what do you think about the prospects for a US presidential candidate like Bernie Sanders? Varoufakis : Privilege has a remarkable capacity to reproduce itself and kill any challenge to its reproduction. If the challenger is Bernie, Jeremy, you or me, they will crush us. There’s no doubt about that. When I was elected, I never expected for a moment that I would not be vilified. If I wasn’t, then I would be worried, ‘why are they not vilifying me? Am I doing something wrong? Have I sold out already?’ What I find astonishing is that, in 2016, Bernie Sanders came so close. And he would have won it had he not been robbed by Hilary Clinton. This is what happened yesterday with the Labour Party, which was effectively defeated from within by the extreme center—the Blairites and the hard “remainers” that did everything they could for two years to undermine their own party and to undermine Jeremy Corbyn. Why? Because they were in concert with the privileged classes. JPPE : Tactically, what do you make of the primacy of emphasizing cultural issues over economic ones? Do you think the left makes a mistake when it focuses on the culture wars instead of socio-economic challenges? Varoufakis : Yes, the left has been catastrophic. Look, I’m an old Marxist. The economics is always at the base of it. It’s at the base of Brexit. Why did Brexit happen? Because you had a financial sector collapse and you had the rubbish assets of the banks put on the shoulders of taxpayers. But at the same time, the European Central Bank was contracting the money supply and the Bank of England was expanding. And that meant three million continental Europeans went to Britain. And for the country, this was substantial and some people felt they were being pushed out of their own country. So their grievances are economic, even if they don’t consider it clearly as an issue of economics. Whenever we have this kind of economic recession, it’s easy for a fascist to jump on the soapbox and say, ‘I’ll make you proud again by getting rid of foreigners.’ You see this with Salvini or Farage. Why did Trump get elected? He didn’t get elected because of the culture wars. He got elected because half of Americans, for the first time since 1923, could not afford the cheapest car on the market. These people felt betrayed, and here comes a guy who says ‘I’m not the worst person on earth, but there’s a good reason to vote for me: it will annoy the shit out of everybody you hate.’ Of course, the fascists take advantage of these economic grievances and build a narrative by saying that they will make you proud and look after you.

The Brown University Journal of Philosophy, Politics, and Economics (JPPE) is a peer reviewed academic journal for undergraduate and graduate students that is sponsored by the Political Theory Project and the Philosophy, Politics, and Economics Society Program at Brown University. The Brown Journal of Philosophy, Politics & Economics Volume IV, Issue II scroll to view articles current issue Philosophy From Sex to Science: The Challenges and Complexity of Consent Matthew Grady Shoring Against Our Ruin An Investigation of Profound Boredom in our Return to Normal Life Virginia Moscetti Unwitting Wrongdoing The Case of Moral Ignorance Madeline Monge Read More Politics Refuting the myth of progressive secularism An Analysis of the Legal Frameworks Surrounding Religious Practice in France and Bahrain Bridget McDonald Ronald Reagan and the role of humor in American movement conservatism Abie Rohrig Read More Economics The relationship between education and welfare dependency Aiden Cliff Against the Mainstream How Modern Monetary Theory and the Myth of Millionaire Tax Flight Challenge Conventional Wisdom Justin Lee Read More Applications for JPPE will resume in the fall! See Available Positions

We the Prisoners Considering the Anti Drug Act of 1986, the War on Drugs and Mass Incarceration in the United States Sophia Scaglioni Boston University April 2021 Introduction America was founded upon the notions of equality of opportunity, success through perseverance, and the idea that anyone, if they are hard-working and driven, can ascend socially and economically. Currently, however, the United States finds itself diametrically opposed to these ideas. The prison system in the United States contradicts rights guaranteed in the Constitution along with the promise of social mobility and the American Dream. “Mass incarceration” is a phrase frequently thrown about the political arena. These two words, however, represent 2.3 million American citizens who are in jail or prison today. To contextualize the gravity of this statistic, consider this: while the US has about 5% of the world’s population, it has about 25% of the world’s prison population. The majority of the victims of mass incarceration are Black and Latino men, who, despite having been promised equal protection under the law and a right to life and liberty, find themselves trapped in a system marked by racial disparity. One out of every three black boys and one out of every six Latino boys born today will go to prison at some point in their life while white boys born today have a 1/17 chance to go to prison in their lives. Despite being subjected, on average, to lower living standards in terms of housing and schooling, minority men are held to higher standards in the criminal justice system. While African Americans and whites report using drugs at similar rates, there are six times more Black men serving time for drug possession charges. The United States, a country founded on the notion of opportunity, get to these gruesomely imbalanced statistics through a series of public policy decisions. The minorities who make up these statistics have been disproportionately targeted by one of the Reagan administration’s keystone programs: the War on Drugs. While the policy battle against drugs was certainly started during the Nixon years and Nixon’s policies certainly influenced the oppression of minorities, the most detrimental and consequential laws of the War on Drugs were enacted during the years of the next administration. The Reagan White House, which controlled the executive branch during the 1980s, pushed policies that attacked drug possession and use with stringent criminal punishment. The administration was able to do this by stimulating public support for the War on Drugs; this mobilized Congress to act. The public angst the White House strived to create was based on largely ungrounded facts meant to instill fear in the general public. Impacts of policies implemented through this formula of fear mongering are felt today in the form of racial disparities in the American Criminal Justice System and the institution of mass incarceration. The Anti-Drug Act of 1986 imposed mandatory minimum sentences on the possession and distribution of certain drugs, allocated $2 billion to the crusade against drugs, involved the military in narcotic control, allowed for the death penalty for certain-drug related crimes and bolstered the authority of law enforcement. This policy was only strengthened in the coming years, and parts of this legislation remain in place today. Going to prison in America as a minority male, even when the crime is minor, constitutes a figurative life sentence due to the punitive nature of the Criminal Justice system, which taints a permanent record, complicates employment, ruptures family units and removes voting clout for prisoners. One of the most detrimental legacies of the War on Drugs, however, is the ostracization of former prisoners by American society. The institution of mass-incarceration is the outcome of policies like The Anti-Drug Act of 1986; this paper will analyze how this policy was born, implemented and how its hateful roots permeate the American society today. The legacy of The War on Drugs today is seen in the racial-biases in every step of the American criminal justice system: from investigation to sentencing to serving time. The shameful condition of American Criminal Justice doesn’t need to exist. Hundreds of thousands of people do not need to be imprisoned for minor charges, namely drug possession. In fact, this essay will argue, the American conscience cannot be clear so long as the institution of mass incarceration and its suffocating consequences are allowed to continue. The pillars and promises of our democracy must be restored and the way to do this is found in Portugal. Portugal’s drug legislation took a completely opposite perspective than the United States’ did when faced with a similar drug crisis; this essay will try to answer why that is the case. On July 1st, 2001 the country chose to “decriminalize the use and possession of all illicit drugs” and has since successfully reduced “problematic use, drug-related harms, and criminal justice overcrowding.” The values promulgated by this public policy emphasize recovery, safety and above all else, human dignity. By passing similar legislation, America would ameliorate the shameful condition of our discriminatory prison system and thus hold true to the roots and morals it was founded upon and has now seemingly forgotten. The United States’ current social, economic, and political climate makes the passing of such legislation unlikely. The institutional and cultural factors which influenced the Anti-Drug Act of 1986 (and their contribution to mass incarceration in the United States), compared to the same institutional or cultural factor when applied to Portugal, makes American unwillingness to rectify its broken criminal justice system evident. Ultimately, this reflects a very deep inconsistency between the notions American was founded upon and the values its government actually promulgates. The vantage points through which this essay will consider the opposite policy reactions of the United States and Portugal to drug use and possession are (1) Party Systems, (2) Welfare States, and (3) the role of religion in politics in America and Portugal. This essay will compare America and Portugal within the scope of three lenses: party systems, welfare systems and religious foundations. The vantage points will reveal Portugal’s proportional representation system is more responsive than the American two-party system; its universal health-care system has stronger infrastructure with which to implement a widespread drug policy; the common Catholic faith brings communities together and unifies public opinion. These factors combine clearly when considering the policy decision Portugal implemented in June 2001. A morally-unified public saw a clear issue in the rise of heroin use and asked their coalition-style government for a solution. Legislators turned to and trusted technical expertise to find a creative solution: decriminalization of drug possession and use. The country’s National Health Service was readily prepared and built on pre-existing welfare infrastructure, to implement the policy’s prevention and recovery programs. Once implemented, the public supported it fully. Now, drugs have ceased to be a controversial issue in Portugal and any mention of returning to a War on Drugs style approach is shot down. Party Systems Literature Review Two common forms of party system structures are a proportional representation system and a two-party system. The names are rather self-explanatory: a proportional representation system awards political parties seats in a country’s representative body in proportion to how many votes they receive, while a two-party system has two dominant groups in a representative body. Historically, proportional representation systems are superior to the two-party system when it comes to creating credible commitments because, since more than two ideologies are represented in the legislature, creating a majority coalition requires compromise. The negotiation and communication this requires fosters trust and understanding that bypasses the pettiness often seen in two-party systems. A multiparty system suggests that the negotiation and deal-making involved in the country’s policy decisions are collaborative, balanced, and focused on long-term gains. Conversely, in a winner-take-all two-party system, a lack of openness and communication is expected, and policy is likely to be directed towards short-term gains. The United States’ government fits the mold of a winner-take-all two-party system; the polarizing, negotiation-adverse effects of the system are felt in the Anti-Drug Act of 1986. To understand the negotiation-adverse climate which the 100th Congress faced, circumstances of the political climate must be considered. Firstly, the House and Senate were divided: the House was controlled by Democrats and the Senate by Republicans. Divided government is a common feature of two-party systems which can obstruct meaningful cooperation. According to scholars, when two conflicting ideologies must cooperate it is much harder to reach win-win outcomes than if the negotiators held similar views. The state of the American Congress in 1986 was characterized by divided and increasingly competitive split party control. This made the starting point for negotiation on drug-policy already compromised. Further research on negotiation tells us that the entirety of the policy-making process is hampered by the two-party system, not just its starting point. Studies modeling two-party negotiations found that time pressures and power-projections are crucial in negotiation outcomes—especially when parties are already ideologically opposed. More time and a lack of feeling the need to establish dominance leads to more effective discussions due to a lessened sense of pressure. These factors impacted the internal negotiation climate of the American Congress in 1986. There was an intense pressure from both the executive branch and the public on the already-divided Congress for pivotal drug legislation. These two pressures largely worked hand in hand. Recall the formula of fear mongering used by the Reagan administration mentioned earlier, best exemplified by the executive decision to hire staff specifically to publicize the use of crack cocaine in inner-cities. This spurred intense media coverage, creating pressure from an anxious public for Congressional action. This combines with the final, most crucial circumstance impacting the 100th Congress and the Anti-Drug Act of 1986: 1986 was a midterm election year. Therefore, when the divided, two-party Congress sat down in September to discuss drug policy, they were influenced by both time-pressure from November midterms and power-pressure from the desire to project efficacy and strength to voters right before elections. A lack of meaningful discussion aimed at a long-term solution ensued. Both Republicans in the Senate and Democrats in the House tried to create the most severe laws to acquiesce public nervousness, prioritizing power-projections over a constructive drug policy. Both Republicans and Democrats were blinded by hopes of re-election and failed to act in a long-term-oriented, collaborative manner. This directly stems from a divided two-party system, which creates a hostile and negotiation-adverse starting point only worsened in 1986 by time and power pressures. Welfare State Literature Review The design of a country’s social protection system is a fundamental factor to consider when assessing a drug policy such as the Anti-Drug Act of 1986. A country’s welfare state has a variety of characteristics to be considered. For example: whether a country implements universal coverage healthcare or chooses to implement a means-tested coverage system or whether healthcare is funded through public taxes, payroll contributions or private funding. The Anti-Drug Act of 1986 is nearly 200 pages long and has 21 sections devoted to anti-drug policy measures. Of these sections, several appropriate resources to criminal law enforcement and outline explicit punishments for the use and possession of drugs. The words “penalty” and “enforcement” are included in almost every section title. What words are missing, however, are terms such as “health”, “prevention” and “recovery”. If dangerous drugs were really sweeping the nation in ways so horrendous the Reagan administration claimed merited a crusade as aggressive as the War on Drugs, then where is the mention of recovery and prevention techniques? There is no mention of implementing healthcare programs to assist those suffering from drug abuse in the list of the 21 sections devoted to anti-drug policy measures. None of these sections emphasize the importance of recovery treatment. To find mentions of such programs, one must delve deep into the document, past authorization for the death penalty for certain drug offenses or the use of illegally obtained evidence in drug trials. Only in the most obscured corners of this legislation is minimal policy for prevention found. It calls for a board to come together thrice annually to assess how drug abuse prevention measures are doing at a national and state level, as well as for an increase in drug education programs in public schools. Although the amount of spending allocated for this is unclear, while the $2 billion allocated to increasing policing is concrete. Prevention and recovery are not emphasized in the Anti-Drug Act of 1986 and this may be partly due to the American welfare state which is characterized by high private social spending supported by government tax subsidies for the upper and upper-middle classes. Also, there are hardly any large public social programs that benefit all United States citizens nationally. Instead, America uses means-tested social assistance programs for poor people and social insurance programs (Social Security) for the middle-class, while the richest members of society rely on private healthcare programs. This divided structure existed when the Anti-Drug Act of 1986 was implemented, the same time as America was suffering from an alleged crack-cocaine crisis. Whether or not this is actually true has been heavily disputed: research suggests the crack-epidemic that conservative figureheads preached about was nonexistent, that drug use in urban neighborhoods was actually declining. Regardless of how real the crack-crisis actually was, the intention of the American government was clearly not to aid its alleged victims in recovery, but rather target urban populations. There was little to no mention of a national health strategy to combat the alleged issue. Perhaps (and very concerning morally) this is because those promoting the policy knew the crack-cocaine crisis was fabricated. However, it is possible that the reason the focus was not on treatment but increased criminal sentencing was due to the divided and privatized healthcare system which provided no clear roadmap or infrastructure for a national drug strategy to combat the (supposed) drug epidemic. Role of Religion Literature Review While surprisingly little research has been done on how religion factored into the War on Drugs, it can be said with confidence that religion acts as a polarizing force in American politics when certain religious groups align themselves with political ideologies. That holds true when considering American drug policy during the 1980s: President Reagan was supported fervently by conservative religious groups of evangelical Christians trying to return America to “traditional values”. This alliance between conservative Christians and the Republican party became known as the Moral Majority, a political group which mobilized Christian voters who felt as though they had been overlooked by their government during the years of the 1960s and 1970s; the War on Drugs was popular among these voters and they became one of Ronald Reagan’s most dependable coalitions. The years that the Moral Majority claimed the government ignored their voices overlap, of course, were the years of the Civil Rights Movement. Many members of the Christian Right overlap with another constituency of Reagan’s: whites who resented civil rights progress such as affirmative action. Research found that racial attitudes were a key determinant of white support to “get tough on crime” and the people most likely to support criminal-punitiveness were rural, conservative whites. The people that constitute this demographic also comprise those most dedicated to the Moral Majority: evangelical Christians. It was none other than this religious coalition which, feeling threatened and overlooked by years of Civil Rights progress, saw the War on Drugs as an opportunity to halt racial reform without seeming explicitly racist. There was notable support from the Christian Right for the Anti-Drug Act of 1986. Party Systems Case Study The United States’ Party System is a winner-take-all two-party system. In stark contrast, Portugal’s government is a multiparty, proportional representation system. Recall that multiparty systems suggest collaborative, balanced, and long-term-oriented negotiation, while a winner-take-all two-party system is likely to lack openness, communication and long-term foresight. These expectations are completely met when comparing the Anti-Drug Act of 1986 and the 2001 Portuguese decriminalization policy. While the United States met its (alleged) drug crisis with a criminal offensive campaign, Portugal reacted to its similar drug crisis with a strategy that vowed to reintegrate drug-users into society; a strategy based on recovery, not revenge. Analyzing party systems shows why the countries moved in such different directions. The heroin crisis that struck Portugal from 1980-2000 saw the highest rate of HIV infection in the entire European Union plaguing the relatively small country. During the two decades prior to the decriminalization policy, the Portuguese government responded to the epidemic by implementing harsh policies administered by the criminal justice system. Conservative politicians who boisterously condemned drug use supported this approach despite its failure to produce results. The heroin crisis was escalating quickly and the coalition government (The Council of Ministers, Portugal’s Parliament) saw the need for innovative policy—and the need to act fast. Proportional-representation governments are known to use deliberative negotiation tactics (like relying on third-party expertise) to form creative credible commitments. In keeping with this standard, Portugal relied heavily on technical expertise in creating their decriminalization policy. A panel of experts (called The Commission for a National Drug Strategy) was assembled to analyze the efficacy of the American-inspired, criminally punitive approach Portugal was using to combat its heroin crisis. The panel stated the War-on Drugs-style approach was “squandering resources” and advised for a revolutionary new tactic. They suggested converting drug use and possession to an administrative offense, rather than a criminal one. The goal was to regard drug users as full members of society rather than outcasts and criminals. The Council of Ministers accepted almost the entirety of the expert report in October 2000 and has since seen a reduced burden on its criminal justice system, increased uptake of drug treatment, fewer deaths and diseases related to opioids and a reduction in retail prices of drugs. While the United States suffered a crack-cocaine crisis (or so the Reagan administration wanted Americans to believe) in the 1980s which directly paralleled Portugal's heroin crisis, there was little to no use of strategies like reliance on technical expertise to find a solution in Congress. Rather, the hyper-competitive, negotiation-adverse two-party system of the United States Congress went straight for power-projecting, shortsighted policies like the Anti-Drug Act of 1986, which drastically increased drug arrests, thus ostracizing thousands of Americans into the punitive criminal justice system. The harsh system created by the Anti-Drug Act of 1986 manifests itself today in the mass-incarceration of ethnic minorities. The permanence of this system is the divisive nature of our two-party system which did not end with the Reagan years. Up until very recently, no actor in the American federal sentencing system, including Congress, the President or the Attorney General, tried to propose innovative legislation to create a real shift in how the United States’ criminal justice system responds to drug use and possession. In fact, even the most significant policy developments have continued to rely upon the Anti-Drug Act of 1986 for federal sentencing structure. The lack of forward-thinking, creative policy in American drug strategy is caused by the divided two-party system which is just as unwilling to unite in the name of long-term collective gains today as it was in the 1980s. When Portugal noticed it had a heroin epidemic, its coalition-style government sought effective action to better its citizen’s health. Simultaneously, Ronald Reagan sought harsh retribution against drug users by targeting black men as criminal offenders over the possession of minor quantities of drugs. Policies from the War on Drugs, like the Anti-Drug Act of 1986, have deprived thousands of people of voting rights and has forced them to live in what some scholars have called an “under-caste” of society”. The United States’ two-party system facilitates the implementation and permanence of policies targeting ethnic minorities for the possession and use of drugs. Welfare State Case Study If the welfare state of a country matters in how drug policy is implemented, a difference is expected between the drug policy of a country with free, universal healthcare and the drug policy of a country with a system like that of the United States (few national programs for all citizens and a division along class lines of where one’s social safety net comes from). Portugal exemplifies the former of these two options: the country’s National Health Service provides free, universal coverage, protecting all citizens regardless of private wealth. For this reason, when the expert panel assessing the drug crisis proposed making drug use a health, rather than a criminal, concern, the Portuguese Council of Ministers was willing to listen. The 2001 decriminalization policy stresses a humane approach to drug abuse by providing resources in the areas of prevention, harm-reduction and treatment programs. The American healthcare system is marked by division between private and public healthcare sources and a lack of universal coverage programs. This resulted in no groundwork for a hypothetical national health strategy when American legislators were considering drug reform in the 1980s (though scholars question if their motivations were genuine enough to consider reform based on healthcare, rather than criminal punitiveness). This juxtaposes Portugal, where the National Health Service had been well-equipped for years to provide universal, free, public-sponsored health coverage and was able to adapt efficiently to the prevention and treatment programs set forth in the 2001 decriminalization policy. João Goulão, the architect of Portugal’s policy, reflected on the conclusions of the expert panel that was obtained to help the government find a long-term, creative solution to the drug issue. “It made much more sense for us to treat drug addicts as patients who needed help, not as criminals,” he said. This leads directly to the chief priority of Portuguese drug strategy: not to allow the marginalization of those using and possessing drugs. In complete antithesis, the marginalization of those using and possessing drugs was, some scholars have argued, the priority of the architects of American drug strategy. This may be partially due to the different welfare states in each country: the American welfare state lacks national unity and thus, promotes individualism while the Portuguese welfare state is quite literally defined by national cohesiveness and inclusivity. Role of Religion Case Study Religion matters when considering policies a country implements because a country with unified religious opinions will see a more broad public consensus over issues while a country where religion acts as a polarizing force will not. The latter of these two options represents the United States, where the Moral Majority supported the War on Drugs despite its racially divisive policies. In what is perhaps the most prominent contrast of this entire paper, Portugal has a public which is incredibly unified religiously. Although Portugal has no official national religion, almost 90% of its population identifies as Roman-Catholic. In keeping with regional trends (with culturally and geographically similar countries like Spain and Italy), regular mass attendance, is on the decline; while devout Catholicism may be fading, the deep-seeded roots of the religion are ingrained both in everyday life and in politics. One of the most important impacts which Catholicism has had on Portuguese society is rendering it rather socially conservative. As the heroin crisis of the 1980s and 1990s escalated, it cut across all classes, impacting those in the highest and lowest echelons of Portuguese society alike. This meant that drug use became unusually visible: from shady street corners to the most fancy of discotheques. This did not bode well with the socially conservative Catholic society and the unified public religion put pressure on public officials to act. Conversely, public religious sentiment in America during the years of the Anti-Drug Act of 1986 were the opposite of unified. Groups of the same religion, such as the Moral Majority and black churches across America, both Christian organizations, failed to see eye-to-eye on drug issues. One group supported the War on Drugs and the other denounced it. The Christian Right’s support for the War on Drugs and the subsequent legacy of mass incarceration it established, shows a fundamental divide between the policy Black Christians desire and what White Evangelicals push for. The lack of unified sentiment from Christians in the United States, both in the 1980s and now, starkly contrasts Portugal where unified religion lead to widespread public support for ethical principles which directly motivated politicians to act. For the thousands of Black and Latino men who face the dark realities of mass-incarceration in the United States, religious-based political arguments and movements have made little headway on aiding their struggles and religion seems to drive parties and their constituencies farther and farther apart on key issues rather than unite and mobilize them. In Portugal, religion unites; in America, it polarizes. Conclusion Fundamental American writings like the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution promise the right to life, liberty and equal protection under the law. It is grim to realize these rights and protections have been unjustly removed for millions of incarcerated citizens. Minorities in America, specifically African American men, have been historically discriminated against, and the United States’ prison system is a continuation of this marginalization, as mass-incarceration locks a large percentage of African Americans out of mainstream economy and society. The shameful condition of the United States’ prison system is a legacy of the War on Drugs and policies like the Anti-Drug Act of 1986 which called for mandatory minimum sentences on the possession of certain drugs and allocated $2 billion to the crusade against drugs. It is still the backbone of federal sentencing guidelines today. Policies like this are why the incarceration rate has skyrocketed since the 1980s despite violent crime rates falling. The persistence of racial-targeting and racial-biases in the American criminal justice system today, including the fact that legislation such as the Anti-Drug Act of 1986 is still referenced, is opposed to the fundamental values upon which America was founded. The right to equal protection under the law, and the right to life and liberty are all desecrated by the institution of mass-incarceration. How did policy like the Anti-Drug Act of 1986 become implemented? It was due to the Reagan White House’s formula of fear mongering: creating public angst over a crack-cocaine crisis (which scholars dispute even existed pre-War on Drugs) to push a punitive criminal agenda. But, if not criminal harshness, what other ways might an industrialized and modern country respond to an increasing drug problem, supposed or real, and protect the rights and liberties of its citizens while doing so? Portugal responded to growing concern over drug use by rejecting a War-on-Drugs-style approach and instead decriminalized drug possession and use. This essay compared America and Portugal within the scope of three lenses: party systems, welfare systems and religious foundations. The vantage points revealed Portugal’s proportional representation system is more responsive than the American two-party system; its universal health-care system has stronger infrastructure with which to implement a widespread drug policy; the common Catholic faith brings communities together and unifies public opinion. These factors combine clearly when considering the policy decision Portugal implemented in June 2001. A morally-unified public saw a clear issue in the rise of heroin use and asked their coalition-style government for a solution. Legislators turned to and trusted technical expertise to find a creative solution: decriminalization of drug possession and use. The country’s National Health Service was readily prepared and built on pre-existing welfare infrastructure, to implement the policy’s prevention and recovery programs. Once implemented, the public supported it fully. Now, drugs have ceased to be a controversial issue in Portugal and any mention of returning to a War on Drugs style approach is shot down. These differences between America and Portugal, revealed by the case studies, are marked by increased responsiveness and morality on the part of the Europeans. This difference is further amplified when considering the country’s similarities: both advanced and well-educated, both industrialized and marked by diversity. If Portugal is able to implement policies which respond to the needs of their citizens, both in terms of health-concerns and political demands, while ensuring human rights are emphasized, why can’t the United States? The observed phenomena emphasizes the United States’ unwillingness to address the flaws of its criminal justice system due to its polarized party-system, divisive welfare-state and religious-infighting. Where the Portuguese Parliament is willing to compromise, the United States Congress chooses to bash negotiation. Where Portuguese healthcare is universal and free, the American welfare state is divisive and lacks coordination. Where Portuguese society is unified socially, American society is only further polarized. All of these lenses show one underlying theme: Portugal values and promotes human dignity while the United States promotes marginalization of its minorities and the polarization of its citizens. It is not America, but rather Portugal which emphasizes the inalienable right to life and liberty and equal protection under the law. While this realization may seem pessimistic, it should be taken constructively. These are, ultimately, American ideals which are being instilled abroad. Before mass incarceration and racial-biases in our prison system can truly end America must do a few things. Some may say these are radical and impossible but rather, they are the only actions in keeping with the country’s founding values. It must strive to increase responsiveness in its party system which currently only provides two diametrically opposed and negotiation-adverse viewpoints. It must attempt to unify a national healthcare strategy to benefit all citizens, regardless of race or wealth. It must remove the use of religion as a political shield during times of policy discussion and use it as a tool for unity instead. Only then, once the American party, healthcare and religious systems are rectified in order to align with this country’s intended values, can the horrors of mass-incarceration be amended. Works Cited Alexander, Michelle. The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. New Press, 2010. Bajekal, Naina. “Want to Win the War on Drugs? Portugal Might Have the Answer.” TIME, 1 Aug. 2018. Balakrishnan, P. V. (Sundar), and Jehoshua Eliashberg. “An Analytical Process Model of Two-Party Negotiations.” Management Science, vol. 41, no. 2, Feb. 1995, pp. 226–243. Berman, Douglas A. “Reflecting on the Latest Drug War Fronts.” Federal Sentencing Reporter, vol. 26, no. 4, Apr. 2014, pp. 213–216. “Criminal Justice Fact Sheet.” NAACP, 2019, www.naacp.org/criminal-justice-fact-sheet/. Hughes, Caitlin Elizabeth, et al. “What Can We Learn From The Portuguese Decriminalization of Illicit Drugs?”, The British Journal of Criminology, Volume 50, Issue 6, November 2010, Pages 999–1022. “Mass Incarceration.” American Civil Liberties Union, 2019, www.aclu.org/issues/smart-justice/mass-incarceration. Peffley, Mark, et al. “Racial Stereotypes and Whites' Political Views of Blacks in the Context of Welfare and Crime.” American Journal of Political Science, vol. 41, no. 1, 1997, p. 30. Roberts, Dorothy E. “The Social and Moral Cost of Mass Incarceration in African American Communities.” Stanford Law Review, vol. 56, no. 5, 2004 Stanford Law Review Symposium: Punishment and Its Purposes, 1 Apr. 2004, pp. 1271–1305. Robinson, Carin. “From Every Tribe and Nation? Blacks and the Christian Right.” Social Science Quarterly, vol. 87, no. 3, 2006, pp. 591–601. JSTOR. Smith, Catherine Delano, and Jose Shercliff. “Portugal: Government and Society.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 2019. United States. Cong. Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986. 99th Cong. Public Law 99-570. Washington: GPO, 1986. Van Het Loo, M., Van Beusekom, I., & Kahan, J. P. (2002). Decriminalization of Drug Use in Portugal: The Development of a Policy. The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 582(1), 49–63. Williams, Daniel K. “Reagan’s Religious Right: The Unlikely Alliance between Southern Evangelicals and a California Conservative.” Ronald Reagan and the 1980s, 2008, pp. 135–149.

Editorial board Foreword Volume I Issue II Introducing the second issue of JPPE Technological disruption has been a fact of the post-industrial world, producing the growth in productivity and efficiency that led to nearly unfathomable increases in opulence, standards of living, and wealth. It may, as a consequence, seem perplexing why so many of today’s leaders seem concerned about something so seemingly vastly beneficial as technological innovation. And yet, few economic shifts produce more anxiety than those involving the introduction of labor saving technology into the economy. This was true in the 19th century Britain, when the Luddites stood in such abject fear of the permanent redundancy of their labor that they took to murdering machine innovators and destroying designs. It was also true in the early 20th century, as agricultural innovations and new industrial designs dramatically reshaped the US economy. And it’s true again today, as artificial intelligence and digital technology make a wide array of occupations largely or entirely automatable. This has potentially profound implications for the world. As globalization, outsourcing, and the presence of winner- take all markets exacerbate income inequality in many countries, labor automation stands to make possibly significant numbers of jobs redundant, increasing returns to capital, and hastening the growth in inequality as productivity increases faster than wages. It’s the presence of these alarming trends that has driven us to dedicate the second issue of the Journal of Philosophy, Politics, and Economics to the topic of technology and, specifically, technological disruption. We have done this by facilitating submissions from Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon and Brookings Institution President John Allen, both of whom have emerged as contemporary leaders on the front line to develop a politics that confronts some of the more perverse effects of technological innovation. As questions surrounding the effects of labor automation continue to garner more attention, the most popular solutions tend to take on at least one of two forms: education or social security. Ms. Sturgeon and Mr. Allen’s suggestions are therefore an apt encapsulation of the nature of the debate about how best to address technological displacement; the former discusses social security and the latter, education. Mr. Allen argues for a revaluation of modern education and training programs for workers and youths. He proposes that America’s continued dominance requires a strong investment in education programs that emphasize, for example, artificial intelligence, big data analytics, and super-computing. Meanwhile Ms. Sturgeon provides a strong case for considering a universal basic income as a possible approach to curtail the effects of labor automation on inequality. She highlights Scotland’s experiments with such a proposal and underscores the need for bold leadership to develop a new approach to social security befitting of a modern and more technological advanced era. Although this semester’s issue of JPPE is centered on the question of technological disruption, it also features essays from undergraduates on a wide range of topics. One piece discusses the relationship between private companies and US cybersecurity policy. Another considers whether secession is a viable solution to the Georgian-South Ossetian conflict. And, in Moral Manipulation, a student considers the ethics of corporate advertising campaigns through a Kantian paradigm. The Brown University Journal of Philosophy, Politics, and Economics is deeply proud of both the feature articles and student essays published in this issue. As students— from Providence to Beijing— begin to grapple with a rapidly changing economy and socio-political climate, the number of novel challenges the rising generation faces is great. And in the Journal you are now reading, students and world leaders around the world provide a great number of equally novel solutions.

Sheldon Whitehouse is the junior United States Senator from Rhode Island. A Democrat, Sen. Whitehouse was elected in 2007, after having served as the Attorney General of Rhode Island between 1999 and 2003. He takes an active interest in environmental issues, advocating the need to find solutions to *Feature* Sheldon Whitehouse Sheldon Whitehouse is the junior United States Senator from Rhode Island. A Democrat, Sen. Whitehouse was elected in 2007, after having served as the Attorney General of Rhode Island between 1999 and 2003. He takes an active interest in environmental issues, advocating the need to find solutions to climate change. As of March 2018, Sen. Whitehouse gave over 200 speeches on the topic, urging his collogues to take concrete action. Spring 2019 Download full text PDF (3 pages) Every week that Congress is in session, I head to the Senate floor to urge my colleagues to take action on preventing climate change. In more than 225 of these speeches delivered since 2012, I have emphasized the mounting scientific evidence that our carbon pollution is driving dangerous changes in the atmosphere and oceans. I have also called out the powerful fossil fuel industry, which the International Monetary Fund reports enjoys a nearly $700 billion annual subsidy just in the United States. That immense conflict of interest—protecting that subsidy—is the reason the industry has marshalled its massive resources to promote climate change denial and prevent Congress from doing anything to reduce our dependence on dirty energy. Under President Donald Trump, former industry operatives fill executive branch posts, working to roll back climate protections. When the administration released its legally mandated National Climate Assessment in November, officials timed it for Black Friday during the Thanksgiving holiday, when it would be unlikely to get public attention. The report, written by 13 federal agencies, described the monumental damage the United States faces from climate change. It contradicted nearly every assertion Trump and his fossil-fuel-flunky Cabinet have made about climate change. Tellingly, the administration tried to bury the report, rather than contest it. That may be because the science of climate change is incontrovertible. (Back in 2009, even Donald Trump said it was “irrefutable.”) Damage from climate change is already occurring. There is no credible natural explanation. Human activity is the dominant cause. Future damage from further warming will be worse than we previously thought. Economies will suffer. And as the report declares, we are almost out of time to prevent the worst consequences of climate change. The effects of climate change are felt in every corner of the nation. From the Ocean State, we’re already seeing sea levels rise, as oceans warm and land ice melts. If fossil fuel emissions are not constrained, the National Climate Assessment says, “many coastal communities will be transformed by the latter part of this century.” Along coasts, fisheries, tourism, human health, even public safety are under threat from increasingly extreme weather events and rising seas. Out West, “more frequent and larger wildfires, combined with increasing development at the wildland-urban interface portend increasing risks to property and human life.” We need to look no further than the massive wildfires Californians battled last year for stark evidence. More than 100 million people in the U.S. live with poor air quality, and climate change will “worsen existing air pollution levels.” Increased wildfire smoke heightens respiratory and cardiovascular problems. With higher temperatures, asthma and hay fever rise. Groundwater supplies have declined over the last century, and the decrease is accelerating. “Significant changes in water quantity and quality are evident across the country,” the report finds. The government assessment finds that Midwest farmers take a big hit: warmer, wetter, and more humid conditions from climate change; greater incidence of crop disease, and more pests; worsened conditions for stored grain. During the growing season, the Midwest will see temperatures climb more than in any other region of the U.S. Climate change will “disrupt many areas of life,” the report concludes, hurting the U.S. economy, affecting trade, and exacerbating overseas conflicts for our military. Costs will be high: “With continued growth in emissions at historic rates, annual losses in some economic sectors are projected to reach hundreds of billions of dollars by the end of the century—more than the current gross domestic product of many U.S. states.” Danger warnings already flash in some economic sectors. The huge federal home loan corporation Freddie Mac has warned of a coastal property value crash, suggesting economic losses from climate change are likely to exceed those of the housing crisis and Great Recession. The Bank of England, as a financial regulator, is warning of a “carbon asset bubble.” The solution to climate change is to decarbonize, invest more in renewables, and broaden our national energy portfolio. A carbon price would allow this big shift to happen, all while generating revenues that could be cycled back to citizens, and help the hardest-hit areas of transition. The smart move we need to make does not have to be painful. It can actually be a big economic win. Nobel Prize winner Joseph Stiglitz has testified: “Retrofitting the global economy for climate change would help to restore aggregate demand and growth. Climate policies, if well designed and implemented, are consistent with growth, development, and poverty reduction. The transition to a low-carbon economy is potentially a powerful, attractive, and sustainable growth story, marked by higher resilience, more innovation, more livable cities, robust agriculture, and stronger ecosystems.” Or we could do it the hard way, continuing to do the fossil fuel industry’s bidding and racking up the dire economic consequences of flooding, drought, wildfires, and stronger storms. The status quo is not safe. Which way we now go depends on whether Congress can put the interests of our people ahead of the interests of the polluters. The record is not good, I’m afraid. Since the Supreme Court’s disastrous Citizens United decision, which unleashed unlimited corporate money into our elections, the politics of climate change is a tale of industry capture and control. So far, despite the industry’s massive conflict of interest and provable pattern of deception, and despite clear warnings from scientists and economists, the Republican Party has proven itself incapable of telling the fossil fuel industry “no.” So it doesn’t look good. But the climate report does say we still have time—if we act fast. There is one major development gives me great hope for the future. Survey after survey shows that the generation coming of political age today overwhelmingly supports taking action on climate change. They have longer to live on this planet than members of my generation, and they are determined to make it a better place. I expect they will. I’ll close with a reference to The Gathering Storm, Winston Churchill’s legendary book about a previous failure to heed warnings. Churchill quoted a poem, of a train bound for destruction, rushing through the night, the engineer asleep at the controls as disaster looms: “Who is in charge of the clattering train? The axles creak, and the couplings strain. . . . the pace is hot, and the points are near, [but] Sleep hath deadened the driver’s ear; And signals flash through the night in vain. Death is in charge of the clattering train!” We are that sleeping driver; the signals of a changing climate flash at us, so far in vain. It’s time to wake up.

John Taylor and Ben Bernanke on the Great Recession Who Was Right About What Went Wrong? Mikael Hemlin University of Gothenburg University of Oxford London School of Economics Author Hans Lei Leonardo Moraveg Neil Sehgal Editors Fall 2019 Download full text PDF (8 pages) In the autumn of 2007, the United States’ housing market collapsed, pushing the world economy to the brink of disaster. In the US, unemployment rates soared, trillions of dollars of wealth disappeared, and millions of Americans lost their homes in what is generally considered the most severe recession since the Great Depression of the 1930’s. In the aftermath, economists have diligently discussed the properties of the crisis, asking if it could have been prevented and if policymakers could have responded more prudently. The American economist John Taylor has accused US policymakers of paving the way for the housing bubble by conducting an excessively loose monetary policy in the years leading up to the crash, and of prolonging the crisis by responding with measures based on premises that were essentially misguided. Conversely, Ben Bernanke, then Chairman of the Federal Reserve and one of the main targets of Taylor’s critique, offers an opposing view. According to Bernanke, the low federal funds rates during the years 2002–2006 were sound, and did not contribute to the inflation of the housing market to the extent that Taylor describes. Rather, Bernanke claims, it was mainly regulatory flaws that caused the financial collapse, and the actions taken by policymakers prevented the financial system from imploding completely. This essay makes the argument that although monetary policy played a part in the build-up to the crash, it was by no means a defining factor. What sets the Great Recession apart from other economic downturns is the regulatory setting in which the housing bubble developed and the crisis unfolded. As such, the governors of the Federal Reserve are not culpable for the crisis’ occurrence. They, along with the US Treasury, are nevertheless culpable for the misguided policies that were enacted to resolve the situation. Much like Taylor suggests, the measures that were undertaken by the authorities rested on the false presumption that it was lack of liquidity rather than the persistence of counterparty risk that protracted the crisis. The situation could have been dealt with much more efficiently were it not for these misconceptions. Neither Taylor’s nor Bernanke’s argument is convincing on all counts. Rather, it is a combination of the two that offers the most accurate account of what happened. One of the main points of disagreement between Taylor and Bernanke is the role of the Federal Reserve’s loose monetary policy during the years 2002–2006 in inflating the housing market. While Taylor is right in claiming that excessively low interest rates generally accommodate the creation of bubbles, he wrongly alleges that his rule for monetary policy, the Taylor Rule, is detailed enough to work as a reference point for how monetary policy should be conducted, regardless of context. Indeed, as Bernanke argues, the monetary situation in the US in the period 2002–2006 was complex in ways that are unaccounted for in the Taylor Rule. For example, the recovery after the dot-com bubble burst in 2001 was rapid, but did not push down unemployment to the extent that conventional wisdom would suggest. The Taylor Rule does not explicitly account for unemployment, but instead expects it to follow inflation and output as described by Okun’s law and the Phillips curve. Taking into consideration the low inflation rates of the years in question, Bernanke’s argument that raising the FFR at that time would have been deflationary is hardly unfounded. Indeed, while mainstream economic theory would have predicted unemployment to diminish as the economy recovered after 2001, it would also have predicted inflation to fall to very low levels had the Federal Reserve raised the FFR over the period that Taylor suggests. Additionally, as Bernanke points out, the sharp increases in housing prices started in 1998, well before the period of the allegedly too loose monetary policy. Taken together, the evidence above indicates that while the low interest rates before the crisis played a role in inflating the housing market, it was not a major factor. The economic indicators of the time were ambiguous, and the Federal Reserve chose a policy path associated with avoiding the deflationary trap that had suppressed the Japanese economy over the past decades. Nevertheless, the Fed could have better appreciated the instability of the housing market and started raising interest rates in time to prevent the crash from turning into a worldwide financial disaster. If the FFR had been raised a couple of years earlier, the concealed risk in the securities markets could have been exposed without risking a system collapse. In such a scenario, it is plausible that the average creditworthiness of borrowers would have been higher, as lenders would not have had enough time to work their way down to the absolute bottom of the income/asset brackets. In Hyman Minsky’s words, financial practice would not yet have degenerated from “speculative finance” to “Ponzi finance.” As such, the mortgage default rates and banks’ leverage ratios would have been lower, and the recession more manageable. While monetary policy leading up to the crisis did contribute to its onset, the circumstances that magnified the crisis to a global collapse emerged as a result of the government’s exceedingly poor regulatory oversight. Taylor finds that the countries where housing prices rose the steepest were also the ones that deviated the most from his monetary policy rule. He argues that this serves as evidence that the Federal Reserve’s lax monetary policy played a significant role in setting the stage for the crisis. While this statement likely has some truth to it, it suffers from several shortcomings. As mentioned earlier, Bernanke underscores that the housing boom started in 1998 when the FFR was well over 5 percent. Against this background, it is more likely that the regulatory situation both in the US and elsewhere is to blame for the housing boom and subsequent crisis. In 1999, around the same time that Bernanke alleges the boom started, the Clinton administration partially repealed the Banking Act of 1933 (or the Glass-Steagall Act). The act was adopted after the Great Depression to improve financial stability, and essentially separated investment banks and hedge funds from commercial banks. After the repeal, it became legal for financial institutions of all types to merge, thereby making them “too big to fail” and allowing them to engage in larger-scale speculation. This paved the way for a moral hazard and exposed depositors to speculative risk in the process. In addition, the partial repeal failed to give the Securities and Exchange Commission authority to regulate and scrutinise financial institutions, thus allowing for the creation of riskier and ever-more opaque derivatives. As such, the abolishment of parts of the Glass-Steagall Act drastically increased the scale of speculative operations and weakened regulatory oversight, thus shrouding the securities markets in ignorance. Taylor elegantly compares the ensuing situation to a game of hearts, but with many queens of spades instead of just one. Everybody knew that most financial institutions’ balance sheets were riddled with queens of spades, i.e. toxic assets. The problem was that when the crisis hit, nobody could distinguish the toxic assets from the non-toxic ones, and thus, all assets of a kind sharply diminished in value. The indistinguishability of safe mortgage-backed securities from risky ones was in part due to the complexity of the financial instruments in question, and in part due to the failure of the rating agencies to accurately evaluate the risk of the constituent mortgages (Crotty, 2009). This is an issue of poor oversight as well; the rating agencies evaluated the riskiness of loans under the pressure of competition, and therefore consistently gave customers (e.g. banks) the ratings they required to sell off the loans as quickly as possible. Since there were no regulatory mechanisms in place to prevent this from becoming standard practice, it became hugely profitable for banks to grant loans to more or less anyone. The expansive access to credit led the housing market to boom. It is also worth mentioning that the expected future values of the homes that the mortgages financed were included as collateral in the risk evaluations. As such, the stability of the financial system was built on the premise that the US housing market could continue to boom indefinitely. This indicates that it was poor oversight, not lax monetary policy, that paved the way for the housing bubble and the subsequent crisis once the bubble burst. In the wake of the crisis, when the flow of financial transactions had frozen and market interest rates had skyrocketed due to the increased uncertainty and risk, the Federal Reserve and the US Treasury set out to stimulate the economy to prevent it from collapsing altogether. Based on what measures the policymakers chose to enact, it seems they diagnosed the problem to be insufficient liquidity. Taylor correctly claims that they were mistaken—it was excessive counterparty risk, not liquidity, that petrified the financial markets. Among other things, policymakers tried to stimulate aggregate demand by giving out over 100 billion USD in cash to US households. The effects of these cash infusions quickly subsided and had little to no effect in terms of economic recovery. Next, they tried to reduce the financial friction in the system by adopting the so-called Troubled Asset Relief Programme of around 700 billion USD. As the name suggests, the programme sought to relieve troubled financial institutions of bad assets. However, the legislative text lacked a predictable framework as to what kinds of assets would be bought up, at what prices, and what the targeted institutions should do with the money. The consequences were that uncertainty and counterparty risk persisted, and that most of the money was used to buy US Treasury bonds and other safe assets that did not reduce the financial friction in the system (Taylor, 2009). Essentially, the mistake that the policymakers made was to conceive of the crisis as one of liquidity rather than counterparty risk. If counterparty risk in the system is high, then financial friction is high, and if financial friction is high, then neither monetary policy nor fiscal stimulus can restart the economy. This is because the increased risk offsets the effects of any lowering of the FFR or an increase in aggregate demand. Had the problem been diagnosed as excessive counterparty risk from the outset, then predictable and targeted quantitative easing could have been used immediately to remove the toxic assets from the system, thereby decreasing risk and uncertainty. Eventually, quantitative easing was used, but it could have been done much earlier (Taylor, 2009). Neither Taylor nor Bernanke provides a satisfactory account of what went wrong before and during the Great Recession. Taylor is mistaken in claiming that the Federal Reserve’s lax monetary policy in the years leading up to the housing bust is to blame for the crisis. While this might have played a minor role, the fact that the boom began under rather strict monetary conditions and that the Federal Reserve had a strong rationale for its chosen policy path suggests that Bernanke is right that it was inadequate regulation that paved the way for the crash. Nevertheless, Taylor’s critique of the interventions that Bernanke’s Federal Reserve undertook to resolve the crisis is justified. Had it not been for Bernanke’s and other policymakers’ misconception of the crisis as a liquidity shortage rather than an issue of counterparty risk, the recession would have been much less painful. Thus, on a concluding note, future policymakers should enhance the discretion of regulatory authorities to prevent a similar situation from emerging again, and improve the targeting of interventions in the event of a crisis to ensure that they are potent enough to produce the desired effect. Works Cited Bernanke, Ben S. “Monetary Policy and the Housing Bubble.” Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, January 03, 2010. www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/speech/bernanke20100103a.htm. Crotty, James. “Structural causes of the global financial crisis: a critical assessment of the ‘new financial architecture’,” Cambridge Journal of Economics 33, no. 4, 2009, pp. 563-580. doi.org/10.1093/cje/bep023. Dash, Eric. “A Stormy Decade for Citi Since Travelers Merge,” New York Times. April 03, 2008, www.nytimes.com/2008/04/03/business/03citi.html. FRED. “Effective Federal Funds Rate,” Last accessed November 15, 2018. fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FEDFUNDS. FRED. “S&P/Case-Shiller U.S. National Home Price Index,” fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CSUSHPINSA . Accessed November 15, 2018. Gorton, Gary, and Guillermo Ordoñez. "Collateral Crises." American Economic Review, vol. 104, no. 2, February 2014, pp. 343-78. dx.doi.org/10.1257/aer.104.2.343. Greenwood, Robin, and David Scharfstein. “The Growth of Finance.” Journal of Economic Perspectives 27, no. 2, Spring 2013, pp. 3–28. dx.doi.org/10.1257/jep.27.2.3. Jones, Charles I. Macroeconomics. 4th ed. New York, W.W. Norton & Company, 2018. Kaufman, George G. “Too big to fail in banking: What does it mean?” LSE Financial Markets Group Special Paper Series, Special paper 22, June 2013. www.lse.ac.uk/fmg/assets/documents/papers/special-papers/SP222.pdf. Krugman, Paul. The Return of Depression Economics and the Crisis of 2008. New York, W.W. Norton & Company, 2008. Maues, Julia. “Banking Act of 1933 (Glass-Steagall),” Federal Reserve History. November 22, 2013, https://www.federalreservehistory.org/essays/glass_steagall_act. Miller, Richard A. “Minsky’s financial instability hypothesis and the role of equity: The accounting behind hedge, speculative, and Ponzi finance.” Journal of Post-Keynesian Economics, vol. 41, no. 1, 2018, pp. 126–138. doi.org/10.1080/01603477.2017.1392870. Taylor, John B. “Economic policy and the financial crisis: An empirical analysis of what went wrong.” Critical Review, vol. 21, no. 2-3, January 2009, pp. 341–364. doi.org/10.1080/08913810902974865. Trading Economics. “United States Unemployment Rate,” tradingeconomics.com/united-states/unemployment-rate . Accessed November 15, 2018.

The Brown University Journal of Philosophy, Politics, and Economics (JPPE) is a peer reviewed academic journal for undergraduate and graduate students that is sponsored by the Political Theory Project and the Philosophy, Politics, and Economics Society Program at Brown University. The Brown Journal of Philosophy, Politics & Economics Volume IV, Issue I scroll to view articles Volume IV Issue I Philosophy Authenticating Authenticity Authenticity as Commitment, Temporally Extended Agency, and Practical Identity Kimberly Ramos Can Pascal Convert the Libertine? An Analysis of the Evaluative Commitment Entailed by Pascal’s Wager Neti Linzer The Growing Incoherence of Our Higher Values Aash Mukerji The Necessity of Perspective A Nietzschean Critique of Historical Materialism and Political Meta-Narratives Oliver Hicks Read More Politics The Unchurching of Black Lives Matter The Evolving Role of Faith in The Fight for Racial Justice Anna Savo-Matthews From Bowers to Obergefell The US Supreme Court’s Erratic, Yet Correct, Jurisprudence on Gay Rights Sydney White Predictive Algorithms in the Criminal Justice System Evaluating the Racial Bias Objection Rebecca Berman Read More Economics God Save the Fish The Abyss of Electoral Politics in Trade Talks––a Brexit Case Study Eleanor Ruscitti The Black Bourgeoisie The Chief Propagators of “Buy Black” and Black Capitalism Noah Tesfaye Breaking Big Ag Examining the Non-Consolidation of China’s Farms Noah Cohen Read More Applications for JPPE Now open! See Available Positions

A Death Sentence Beyond Death Row: Helling v. McKinney and the Constitutionality of Solitary Confinement Hallie Sternblitz Author Lachlan Edwards Aditi Bhattacharjya Editors Originally written for U.S. Magistrate Judge Zia M. Faruqui & Assistant U.S. Attorney Olivia B. Hinerfeld Abstract On any given day, there are 80,000 to 120,000 Americans living in solitary confinement. Restricted to their cells for twenty-two to twenty-four hours a day, these inmates are deprived of human interaction for days, weeks, years, or even decades. While the practice is intended as a means of protection for the general prison population or vulnerable inmates, researchers have found extreme and irreversible psychological damage in inmates who were placed in an isolated unit for both short and long periods of time. In fact, Dr. Grassian, a psychiatrist at Harvard Medical School, determined that there was a specific psychiatric disorder associated with solitary confinement, which is now referred to as Special Housing Unit (SHU) Syndrome. Others have since found higher rates of suicide, self-harm, violence, and premature death associated with this form of isolation. Though the practice has become a longstanding custom in American prisons, I argue that solitary confinement is unconstitutional, as it violates the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment by subjecting inmates to serious and unreasonable dangers to their future health and safety. Through a two-pronged parallel with Helling v. McKinney , a SCOTUS case in which a former inmate successfully defended his freedom from cruel and unusual punishment after being subjected to secondhand smoke while incarcerated, I demonstrate that there is clear precedent for ruling the practice unconstitutional. Here, I employ the Deliberate Indifference Doctrine as well as the previous rulings that informed it to establish the application of Helling v. McKinney to the case of solitary confinement. Finally, I conclude with alternatives that better achieve solitary confinement’s intended outcomes. A timid Boy Scout with a knack for mathematics and writing, Benjamin van Zandt was sentenced to four years in prison for a property crime at age seventeen. While incarcerated, he sought out counseling, coursework, and several other opportunities to fulfill his intellectual potential. After being named valedictorian of his inmate GED program, he eventually enrolled in the Bard College Prison Initiative to begin his college degree. Despite his model behavior, he was caught bringing a piece of bread from the prison cafeteria back to his cell and was immediately transferred to New York’s Fishkill prison as a consequence. There, he was repeatedly harassed, beaten, and sexually assaulted by inmates twice his age, most of whom were seasoned criminals dominating the prison network. Still a reserved adolescent, Van Zandt was immediately preyed upon and coerced into being a carrier of contraband. As a result, he was placed in solitary confinement. Ten days later, he was found hanging from his sheets and shoelaces. Introduction: What is Solitary Confinement? On any given day, there are 80,000 to 120,000 Americans living in solitary confinement. Restricted to their cells for twenty-two to twenty-four hours a day, these inmates are deprived of human interaction for days, weeks, years, or even decades. They are often denied reading material, natural light, visitation, and participation in group activities. Though originally a pacifist Quaker initiative led by Benjamin Franklin the late 1700s meant to be an opportunity for spiritual reflection and moral contemplation, solitary confinement has quickly been weaponized in the U.S. as a disciplinary act meant to maintain order and deter violence within the general prison population. Today, it is common practice to move inmates to solitary confinement for three primary reasons: (1) discipline for nonviolent transgressions, such as possessing contraband or insolence toward a prison official, (2) protection of others due to an inmate exhibiting violent behavior or the threat of violent behavior, or (3) protection of an inmate who is in danger of being victimized by the violent behavior of inmates in the general prison population. Thus, any inmate regardless of their behavior while incarcerated could be subjected to solitary confinement, which is often the case for LGBTQ+, neurodivergent, or mentally ill inmates, as well as inmates of color. In fact, one study indicates that 11% of all black men born in the late 1980s experienced solitary confinement by their thirty-second birthday. This disproportionality partially stems from the bias of prison officials, who often allow an inmate’s race, mental illness, or other identifying factor to dictate their perception of the events. Despite its protective intent, solitary confinement has been shown to amplify rates of violent recidivism. This is a direct result of the mental health issues caused from extreme solitude. Thus, the motivations for placing inmates in Special Housing Units (SHU), a euphemistic title for solitary confinement, are void. However, in this paper, I will focus not on why the U.S. should terminate all solitary confinement units but why it must . Shown through a parallel analysis with Helling v. McKinney , I argue that solitary confinement is an unconstitutional practice, as it violates the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment by subjecting inmates to serious and unreasonable dangers to their future health and safety. To support this argument, I will first provide an overview of the inadequacies of legal action taken against the extreme isolation in prisons thus far. Then, I will dive into the case of Helling v. McKinney and its two-pronged application to the practice of solitary confinement. Finally, I will introduce alternative methods of accomplishing the intended goals of SHUs that will facilitate the realization of ruling solitary confinement unconstitutional. Looking through a Legal Lens: Eighth Amendment Implications The Eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution reads, “Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.” Both the most controversial and most subjective clause, cruel and unusual punishment is at the forefront of modern debates on penitentiary justice. Originally, the phrase was intended to prevent torture as a technique of coerced confession or simply as a punishment. It was also meant to outlaw the use of barbaric instruments and public humiliation in formal sentencing. Today, the amendment is commonly employed for criminal defendants facing excessive bail or lengthy sentences at a young age. However, its use as a preventative measure against torture is often overlooked due to the lack of resources provided to victims subjected to torture during incarceration. However, the tide of Eighth Amendment cases may be shifting towards an inter-prison perspective, which has the potential to include solitary confinement. In the 2012 class action suit Ashker v. Governor of California , thousands of plaintiffs subjected to long periods of isolation in SHUs across the state due to alleged gang membership, 78 of whom spent over 20 years in solitude, sued the governor for violating their Eighth Amendment freedom from cruel and unusual punishment. They eventually agreed to a settlement that required the state to reduce their SHU population both by capacity and maximum sentence length, remove gang membership as a qualification to be placed there, and provide alternatives for those unable to serve their sentence in the general prison population. However, since this settlement, the state of California has repeatedly violated the terms and minimal change has emerged. Similarly, in Jensen v. Thornell (2012), Arizona inmates in isolation units sued for changes to the prison healthcare system, agreeing to a settlement by which the Arizona government had no intention of abiding. As such, the District Court judge rescinded approval of the settlement, bringing the parties back to trial in 2021 with new guidelines for managing medical care and health-related conditions in the state’s isolation units. Along with a handful of others, these two cases show the inadequacy of litigation over the constitutionality of solitary confinement in civil court. Though the plaintiffs may have won their cases, little has been done to reform SHUs, and tens of thousands of people remain subject to these abusive conditions daily. According to UN Special Reporter on Torture Juan Mendez, any time in forced isolation longer than fifteen days is considered abusive by UN standards. Thus, torture and abuse are commonplace within American prisons, as the average SHU inmate spends one to three months in solitude, with the longest remaining there for over forty years. As such, I argue that reform is insufficient; solitary confinement is unconstitutional and must be outlawed. Helling v. McKinney : A Potential Path Forward The Supreme Court has already laid the groundwork for ruling that solitary confinement is an unconstitutional practice under the cruel and unusual punishment clause of the Eighth Amendment. Helling v. McKinney questions whether future health risks imposed by prison officials is a form of cruel and unusual punishment, and thus a violation of an inmate’s Eighth Amendment rights. In a Nevada state prison, William McKinney was placed in a cell with an inmate who smoked five packs of cigarettes each day. As a result, McKinney inhaled unhealthy levels of second-hand smoke, which he argued posed a serious risk to his current and future health. He sued the warden of the prison as well as several other prison officials for violating his Eighth Amendment freedom from cruel and unusual punishment. The federal Magistrate Judge ruled that the Eighth Amendment did not guarantee McKinney’s right to a smoke-free environment, arguing that McKinney failed to prove any serious medical needs that the prison neglected to address. However, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the federal Magistrate Judge’s decision, holding that McKinney should be given a second opportunity to prove that the levels of second-hand smoke constituted an unreasonable danger to his future health. Yet, during the litigation of Helling v. McKinney , SCOTUS ruled on Wilson v. Seiter , a case in which a formerly incarcerated individual claimed he experienced cruel and unusual punishment and sought financial reparations from two prison officials but lost the case because he did not prove the officials had a “culpable state of mind.” The justices held that conditions of incarceration or confinement that are not explicitly outlined in an inmate’s sentencing require a subjective component that comes from the Deliberate Indifference Doctrine. This doctrine was created in Estelle v. Gamble in 1974 in which SCOTUS held, “Deliberate indifference by prison personnel to a prisoner's serious illness or injury constitutes cruel and unusual punishment contravening the Eighth Amendment.” Exerting “deliberate indifference” has been characterized by SCOTUS as a transgression greater than negligence but less than omission with malintent. Thus, the doctrine is rather subjective in application. Nonetheless, a new dimension was added to McKinney’s case. Now, prison officials could be held accountable for a lack of adequate action with knowledge of a serious health or safety risk to an inmate. Appealing all the way to the Supreme Court, McKinney found himself in a battle with the government over whether the Deliberate Indifference Doctrine applied only to current health and safety risks or future risks alike, as his case emphasized the future health issues resulting from extreme inhalation of second-hand smoke. SCOTUS sided with McKinney, affirming his right to sue under the cruel and unusual punishment clause of the Eighth Amendment and the Deliberate Indifference Doctrine. In the majority opinion, Justice Byron White argued that the doctrine in no way specified that it only applied to current health risks and should thus include future health and safety risks as well. As such, McKinney, despite not being sick at the time, successfully demonstrated a violation of his Eighth Amendment freedom from cruel and unusual punishment, as prison officials acted indifferently to his future health. Drawing a Parallel: Helling v. McKinney and Solitary Confinement Helling v. McKinney greatly expanded the rights of vulnerable inmates, as they can now sue for damages that they are likely to experience post-release. When considering the constitutionality of solitary confinement, one can clearly draw a parallel between second-hand smoke and the mental illnesses that directly result from isolation. For one, solitary confinement aligns with the qualifications to employ the Deliberate Indifference Doctrine stated in Wilson v. Seiter ; it is a condition of incarceration not explicitly stated in judicial sentencing. Once eligibility has been established, there are two axioms of Helling v. McKinney that solitary confinement must satisfy in order to prove that victims of SHUs have a reasonable case to sue prison officials for violating their Eighth Amendment freedom from cruel and unusual punishment: (1) solitary confinement poses a serious and unreasonable danger to the future health of inmates and (2) those overseeing SHUs exhibit deliberate indifference to said danger. Future Health Effects of Solitary Confinement Initial research on the psychological dangers of extreme isolation was funded by the Canadian Defense Research Board and eventually the U.S.’s Central Intelligence Agency in the early 1950s to harness a psychological warfare defense to combat the Soviets, who were brainwashing prisoners of war. Led by Dr. Donald Hebb at McGill University, student volunteers were placed in isolation boxes meant to deprive them of all their senses. Each student was to remain in the box for as long as they felt they could, only leaving to use the restroom and eat meals, during which a facilitator of the experiment would guide them. Dr. Hebb expected to observe changes in their behavior over the course of six weeks; however, the experiment only lasted six days. The results were jarring: the students complained of vivid hallucinations, “blank” periods in their minds, inability to write or solve a basic math problem, hyperrealism of external stimuli, new fears, separation of mind and body, and even the sensation of being hit with pellets. Dr. Hebb’s findings have since been weaponized as a punitive practice for convicted criminals. Though, opponents of solitary confinement have reclaimed his work and used it to demonstrate that solitary confinement is in fact cruel and unusual punishment. Since then, more research has emerged specifically studying the correlation between solitary confinement in prisons and mental illness. For instance, a study on incarceration in New York found that inmates in solitary confinement for any length of time were five times more likely to die by suicide and 3.2 times more likely to self-harm than an inmate in the general prison population. Similarly, a California study found that hypertension was three times more common among SHU inmates. Across the U.S., those subjected to solitary confinement for any length of time were 24% more likely to die within the first year after release, including 78% more likely by suicide and 54% more likely by homicide, demonstrating an increase in violence as a result of the very practice that was meant to curb it. Furthermore, they were 127% more likely to fatally overdose on opioids in the first two weeks following release. Similar research has been conducted to determine if short stays in solitary confinement would fulfill the intended purposes while avoiding the detrimental effects; however, this was not the case. One study only included subjects that had spent less than a week in solitary confinement, yet this group had significantly higher death rates from unnatural causes such as suicide, violence, and vehicular accidents than those who had only spent time in the general prison population. Dr. Stuart Grassian, a psychiatrist at Harvard Medical School, concentrated his research on the set of traits emerging in formerly solitarily-confined inmates post-release. After conducting several series of interviews and experiments, Dr. Grassian determined that there was a specific psychiatric disorder associated with solitary confinement, which is now referred to as SHU Syndrome. In a 2006 publication, he outlines the seven key symptoms consistent among nearly every inmate he studied: (1) hyperresponsivity to external stimuli, (2) perceptual distortions, illusions, and hallucinations, (3) panic attacks, (4) difficulties with thinking, concentration, and memory, (5) intrusive obsessional thoughts, (6) overt paranoia, and (7) impulse control. These symptoms are remarkably similar to those found in Dr. Hebb’s isolation experiment in 1951. Moreover, Dr. Grassian notes that this combination of reactions is unique to SHU Syndrome and cannot be found in nearly any other psychiatric disorder. He characterizes the condition as a form of an acute organic brain syndrome. Confirming this research, neuroscientist Huda Akil suggests that solitary confinement can permanently alter the structure of an inmate’s brain, as the functioning and structure of the human brain changes in response to environmental stimuli. As such, solitary confinement for any length of time can cause a distinct health defect that often permanently affects the inmate, even after release. Therefore, solitary confinement fulfills the first axiom presented in Helling v. McKinney , as it poses a significant and unreasonable danger to the future health of inmates. Deliberate Indifference in the Case of Solitary Confinement Wilson v. Seiter , which established that the Deliberate Indifference Doctrine in Estelle v. Gamble applies to conditions of prison confinement, cites Whitley v. Albers in its holding, stating “the ‘wantonness’ of conduct depends not on its effect on the prisoner, but on the constraints facing the official.” Therefore, the second axiom of applying the Helling v. McKinney precedent to the case of solitary confinement, which requires deliberate indifference on the part of prison officials, relies on the ability of prison officials to inhibit the placement of inmates in solitary confinement, which, as shown, is a grave danger to their future health. This proposition is fulfilled in two parts: (1) by demonstrating that prison officials have the capability to terminate or avoid placements in solitary confinement but deliberately choose to place inmates in SHUs and (2) by demonstrating that prison officials are likely aware of the health effects of extreme isolation but choose to exercise indifference. The decision to place an inmate in solitary confinement is almost entirely up to the discretion of guards and prison officials. As stated previously, inmates are sent into SHUs for a vast range of reasons, including for unprohibited behavior like talking back to a guard. As a result, a large portion of inmates in solitary confinement were placed there at the subjective discretion of a prison employee, despite never engaging in malicious behavior that would make them a danger to the general prison population. Instead, many inmates in SHUs are victims rather than perpetrators and are thus subjected to the rights violations of solitary confinement due to no actions of their own. This issue has been especially rampant in New York state prisons, where investigations show that much of the SHU population is constituted by victims of prison guard abuse, which can either be physical abuse or a guard’s abuse of power over the inmate. In fact, one investigation found 160 lawsuits of inmates who were sentenced to solitary confinement by guards who fabricated assault allegations. Often, these inmates were subjected to physical abuse at the hands of prison guards, some even resulting in permanent injury or death. However, this abusive network of guards is largely protected by their membership in an officers’ union, with which the state signed an agreement to allow arbitrators from the union to be the final determinator of an officer’s employment status. This means that when an inmate accuses a guard of abuse or misplacement in solitary confinement, the guard’s peers have the right to reinstate them in their position even if higher prison officials chose to terminate their employment. Consequently, 88% of the guards accused of fabricating reports to conceal abuse in the 160 lawsuits were reinstated in their roles, as only a court can overrule the decision of the arbitrators. This leads to a demoralizing cycle in which inmates are subjected to abuse, isolated from the general prison population, and then denied the ability to hold their abuser accountable, often leading to further abuse if they try. Once a guard places their victim in an SHU, they are usually the only form of human contact the inmate receives, thus leaving the inmate in an increasingly vulnerable position with no resource but their abuser for help. As such, a prison official can exploit their position of authority over inmates and send anyone who threatens that authority, whether it be their victims or someone who simply verbally offended them, to solitary confinement. This is not to say that all guards or prison officials have malintent in their discretion over SHU placement; yet enough are malicious and are protected by the system that the issue must be addressed. Due to the structural nature of SHUs, inmates’ placement in solitary confinement and thus their future health is often in the hands of prison guards who are neither trained mental health professionals nor judges determining the inmate’s sentence. Nonetheless, they are left to use their discretion in a life-or-death matter. As a result, placements in solitary confinement are the deliberate decision of prison officials, satisfying the first criteria of exercising deliberate indifference: the ability to terminate or avoid placing an inmate in a SHU but instead choosing to send or keep them there. Secondly, prison officials must have the knowledge that an inmate’s health will suffer as a result of placing them in solitary confinement in order to show culpability of indifference. This can be addressed by providing evidence that a prison official was aware of a health or safety risk but failed to act to resolve it. As previously stated, every prison official is in the position to act, which in the case of solitary confinement means removing an inmate from an SHU or avoiding placing them there in the first place. However, their knowledge of the risks involved is somewhat more difficult to prove. One way to establish their awareness of the practice’s dangers is through their direct experience working in a correctional facility. Research shows that prison officials are also physically and mentally affected by working in a solitary confinement unit. One study found that SHU correctional staff witness “intense human suffering” such as “smearing feces, ingesting objects, self-injury, violent outbursts” which causes “vicarious trauma” to the official. As a firsthand witness to the deterioration of inmates subjected to solitary confinement, any competent prison guard can recognize that the health and safety of the inmate are in danger as a result of extreme isolation. Furthermore, reports show that prison officials experience significantly increased stress levels when working in solitary confinement, providing them with empirical indicators of the mental risks associated with spending time in an SHU. Additionally, corrections officials assigned to solitary confinement units are at higher risk of heart disease, hypertension, PTSD, and suicide, which are some of the same health risks for isolated inmates. These rates were found to be significantly higher than both the national average and among individuals with other stressful jobs, such as the military or police force. Thus, knowledge of these personal health effects coupled with the visual sight of inmates suffering from the seven symptoms outlined in Dr. Grassian’s research of SHU Syndrome are clear indicators to prison officials of the dangerous consequences of solitary confinement. Moreover, there is a consensus among the American public that extreme isolation can be a danger to one’s health, as 86% of voters support removing inmates from solitary confinement at the first sign of an adverse health effect. This demonstrates that knowledge of the risks of solitary confinement is prevalent throughout the nation’s people, who are largely in consensus about the dangers of the practice. The deliberate indifference doctrine requires that prison officials deliberately choose to place inmates in solitary confinement over other alternatives, which has already been established, and also requires that the officials know that placing an inmate in solitary confinement will have negative health effects. Thus, this common knowledge paired with being a firsthand witness to symptoms of SHU Syndrome establishes that prison officials know the health and safety risks associated with solitary confinement, are indifferent to them, and deliberately choose to not prevent them, therefore satisfying the Deliberate Indifference Doctrine. Motivations to Outlaw Solitary Confinement As shown, solitary confinement poses a serious and unreasonable danger to the mental health of inmates and is a practice in which a prison official must exercise deliberate indifference, thus making it unconstitutional under the cruel and unusual punishment clause of the Eighth Amendment. Helling v. McKinney implies that any condition of confinement that puts the future health and safety of an inmate at risk and that a prison official knowingly ignores is a violation of the rights of the inmate guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States. Helling v. McKinney set an important precedent in the litigation of prisoners’ rights; however, solitary confinement remains a common practice in each of the fifty states despite the parallel that has been established. Moreover, based on the research provided, the future health risks of solitary confinement are arguably much more extreme than those of second-hand smoke inhalation, with a disturbing portion of inmates like Ben van Zandt not even surviving their sentence. Yet, being subjected to second-hand smoke has been regarded as a violation of the Eighth Amendment for nearly three decades, and solitary confinement remains commonplace. As such, it is time that SHUs across the nation are put on the stand and examined for their compliance with the Constitution of this country. As Helling v. McKinney stands, solitary confinement should be unconstitutional and must be outlawed. Moreover, solitary confinement is not currently adding any benefit to the functioning of American prisons or the rehabilitation of subjected inmates. The practice is employed to protect the general prison population from violent inmates, protect vulnerable inmates who are common targets among others, or discipline inmates who disrespect the rules or officials that govern the prison. However, solitary confinement does not actually achieve any of its intended goals. Rather, it has been found to exacerbate the very issues it sets out to solve. The vast majority of studies on the effects of solitary confinement on future inmate behavior and inter-inmate violence within the general prison population has reached a consensus that there is no statistically significant correlation. This is true for both crime frequency and intensity. In fact, one study found that solitary confinement increased rates of recidivism post-release. An even stronger correlation was found between time spent in solitary confinement and violent re-offenses, indicating that the community was less safe than it would have been in the absence of the practice. As such, SHUs are not fulfilling their intended goals of reducing inter-prison violence. Instead, they are subjecting up to 120,000 people to irreversible psychological damage on any given day. Alternative Solutions to Solitary Confinement Rather than continue this practice, the precedent set by Helling v. McKinney must be employed to rule solitary confinement unconstitutional under the cruel and unusual punishment clause of the Eighth Amendment. However, I acknowledge that inter-prison violence and rule violations must be addressed. I propose three alternatives: specialized units for inmates with mental illnesses, de-escalation training for prison staff, and increased programming. The state of New York has already begun implementing these practices through its Humane Alternatives to Long-Term (HALT) Solitary Confinement Act, which was passed in 2021 and went into full effect in 2022. Prior to the ratification of this bill, the state began to reform its solitary confinement units by introducing the Clinical Alternative to Punitive Segregation, or CAPS, program. Instead of being punished for violating prison rules with isolation, inmates who exhibit serious mental illnesses are directed to the CAPS program where they receive in depth counseling, treatment, and rehabilitative intervention. As a result, the rates of self-harm for inmates who otherwise would have been sent to SHUs decreased drastically. Hence, specialized units, whether it be for inmates with mental illnesses or other groups that may be targets in the general prison population and thus require isolation, provide a realistic alternative to solitary confinement that maintains an inmate’s humanity and sociability while providing them the rehabilitative resources necessary to reenter society. Secondly, Crisis Intervention Training (CIT) for prison staff is a crucial method for creating safer communities within correctional facilities. One study found that prison officials who were trained in crisis management had a significantly decreased bias in the distribution of reported incidents. Furthermore, CIT officials were more likely to seek out less common and less severe alternative punishments rather than choose to send an inmate into isolation. As a result, less inmates were subjected to the cruel and unusual punishment of solitary confinement and were instead given the opportunity to rehabilitate themselves and discuss their actions. As such, de-escalation training for prison staff has the ability to change both the inequitable discrepancies and frequency of use that are associated with placement in SHUs. Finally, educational and transitional programming is key to the rehabilitation of inmates, especially those who have spent time in isolation. In one Minnesota facility, there has been a transition away from the isolating nature of solitary confinement towards the rehabilitative intention of placing an inmate in an SHU. This was primarily achieved through three programs: the introduction of Prison To Community (PTC) specialists, a companion program, and accessible treatment resources. For instance, an inmate who needed to be placed in an SHU would be assigned a PTC specialist to meet with them and discuss a plan to re-enter both the general prison population and society. Similarly, they would be given a hired companion inmate from the general prison population who would be screened to sit outside of their cell and keep them company while in isolation. This is beneficial for the SHU inmate and provides employment to the general population of inmates. Lastly, the isolated inmate would be given a variety of reading, audiovisual materials, and assignments related to addressing emotional, psychological, or behavioral issues, prompting the inmate to self-rehabilitate throughout their time in an SHU. While these programs are still not ideal in the sense that they do not eliminate the use of solitary confinement completely, they are a valuable step in transitioning prisons across the country from relying heavily on the practice to maintain order as they do now to terminating the practice in its entirety. These three alternatives provide a realistic path forward in the aftermath of ruling solitary confinement unconstitutional. Though it may require a shift in public attitude on the rights of inmates, the road to ending extreme isolation in prisons is clear and necessary. The case of solitary confinement, though more dire, parallels McKinney’s battle for his future health. As shown through its future health effects, the presence of deliberate indifference, and the strong precedent set in Helling v. McKinney , solitary confinement is a clear violation of the Eighth Amendment. The practice has existed unrightfully in this country for far too long, and it is time to rule on it for what it is: it is cruel, it is unusual, it is unconstitutional, and the Supreme Court ought to act accordingly. [Prisoners subject to solitary confinement] fell, after even a short confinement, into a semi-fatuous condition, from which it was next to impossible to arouse them, and others became violently insane; others still, committed suicide; while those who stood the ordeal better were not generally reformed, and in most cases did not recover sufficient mental activity to be of any subsequent service to the community. It became evident that some changes must be made in the system. – SCOTUS, 1890 References ACLU Staff. “Ashker v. Governor of California.” American Civil Liberties Union, June 21, 2023. https://www.aclu.org/cases/ashker-v-governor-of-california#:~:text=Summary-,Ashker%20v.,in%20the%20California%20prison%20system. ACLU Staff. “Ashker v. Governor of California.” American Civil Liberties Union, June 21, 2023. https://www.aclu.org/cases/ashker-v-governor-of-california#:~:text=Summary-,Ashker%20v.,in%20the%20California%20prison%20system. ACLU Staff. “Jensen v. Thornell.” American Civil Liberties Union, May 2, 2024. https://www.aclu.org/cases/jensen-v-thornell. ACLU Staff. “The Dangerous Overuse of Solitary Confinement in the United States.” American Civil Liberties Union, August 13, 2014. https://www.aclu.org/publications/dangerous-overuse-solitary-confinement-united-states . Admin. “Five in Six Voters Favor Sharply Restricting Use of Solitary Confinement.” Program for public consultation, June 29, 2021. https://publicconsultation.org/criminal-justice/solitary-confinement/. Barraza, Alicia, Doug van Zandt, Cerissa Harrell, and Danielle MacKenzie. “Families of Fishkill Correctional Facility Prisoners: Covid Deaths Unacceptable.” The Journal News, February 1, 2021. https://www.lohud.com/story/opinion/2021/02/01/families-fishkill-correctional-facility-prisoners-covid-deaths-unacceptable/4338579001/. Canada, Kelli E., Amy C. Watson, and Scott O’kelley. “Utilizing Crisis Intervention Teams in Prison to Improve Officer Knowledge, Stigmatizing Attitudes, and Perception of Response Options.” Criminal Justice and Behavior 48, no. 1 (July 21, 2020): 10–31. https://doi.org/10.1177/0093854820942274. Casella, Jean, Alexandra Rivera, Jack Beck, Scott Paltrowitz, and Jessica Sandoval. “Calculating Torture.” Solitary Watch, June 24, 2023. https://solitarywatch.org/calculating-torture/. Casella, Jean, and James Ridgeway. “A Brief History of Solitary Confinement.” Bunk History, February 2, 2016. https://www.bunkhistory.org/resources/a-brief-history-of-solitary-confinement. Cloud, David H., Craig Haney, Dallas Augustine, Cyrus Ahalt, and Brie Williams. “The Resource Team: A Case Study of a Solitary Confinement Reform in Oregon.” PLOS ONE 18, no. 7 (July 26, 2023). https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0288187. Estelle v. Gamble , 429 U.S. 97 (1976) Fair Fight Initiative Staff. “Solitary Confinement and Prison Guard Abuse.” Fair Fight Initiative, August 6, 2016. https://www.fairfightinitiative.org/solitary-confinement-and-prison-guard-abuse/#:~:text=People%20can%20be%20placed%20in,the%20guards%20and%20prison%20officials. Glowa-Kollisch, Sarah, Fatos Kaba, Anthony Waters, Y. Leung, Elizabeth Ford, and Homer Venters. “From Punishment to Treatment: The ‘Clinical Alternative to Punitive Segregation’ (CAPS) Program in New York City Jails.” International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health 13, no. 2 (February 2, 2016): 182. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph13020182. Grassian, Stuart. “Psychiatric Effects of Solitary Confinement Psychiatric Effects of Solitary Confinement.” Washington University Journal of Law & Policy 22 (January 2006): 325–83. Grondahl, Paul. “The Brief, Anguished Life of a Mentally Ill Inmate.” Times Union, June 15, 2015. https://www.timesunion.com/tuplus-local/article/The-brief-anguished-life-of-a-mentally-ill-inmate-6327006.php. Helling v. McKinney , Oyez, https://www.oyez.org/cases/1992/91-1958 (last visited May 2, 2024). James, Kayla, and Elena Vanko. “The Impacts of Solitary Confinement.” Vera Institute of Justice, April 2021. https://www.vera.org/downloads/publications/the-impacts-of-solitary-confinement.pdf. Kaba, Fatos, Andrea Lewis, Sarah Glowa-Kollisch, James Hadler, David Lee, Howard Alper, Daniel Selling, et al. “Solitary Confinement and Risk of Self-Harm among Jail Inmates.” American Journal of Public Health 104, no. 3 (March 2014): 442–47. https://doi.org/10.2105/ajph.2013.301742. Lobel, Jules, and Huda Akil. “Law & Neuroscience: The Case of Solitary Confinement.” Daedalus 147, no. 4 (October 2018): 61–75. https://doi.org/10.1162/daed_a_00520. Matei, Andreea. “Solitary Confinement in US Prisons.” Urban Institute, August 2022. https://www.urban.org/sites/default/files/2022-08/Solitary Confinement in the US.pdf. Medley, Petitioner, 134 U.S. 160 (1890) National Constitution Center Staff. “The Eighth Amendment.” National Constitution Center, 2024. https://constitutioncenter.org/the-constitution/amendments/amendment-viii/clauses/103#:~:text=(2)%20The%20Clause%20prohibits%20disproportionate,be%20acceptable%20for%20other%20crimes. NYCLU Staff. “The Humane Alternatives to Long-Term (‘halt’) Solitary Confinement Act.” NYCLU, March 7, 2024. https://www.nyclu.org/resources/policy/legislations/humane-alternatives-long-term-halt-solitary-confinement-act. Otterman, Michael. “Codifying Cruelty.” Essay. In American Torture: From the Cold War to Abu Ghraib and Beyond , 42–58. London, UK: Pluto Press, 2007. Pullen-Blasnik, Hannah, Jessica T. Simes, and Bruce Western. “The Population Prevalence of Solitary Confinement.” Science Advances 7, no. 48 (November 26, 2021): 1–9. https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.abj1928. Rockwood, Bill, Evan Wexler, and Sarah Childress. “How Much Time U.S. Prisoners Spend in Solitary – Locked up in America.” PBS Frontline, April 22, 2014. https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/criminal-justice/locked-up-in-america/how-much-time-u-s-prisoners-spend-in-solitary/. Sandoval, Jessica. “How Solitary Confinement Contributes to the Mental Health Crisis.” National Alliance on Mental Illness, February 7, 2024. https://www.nami.org/advocate/how-solitary-confinement-contributes-to-the-mental-health-crisis/#:~:text=A%20recent%20study%20shows%20the,(54%25%20more%20likely). Santo, Alysia, and Joseph Neff. “We Investigated Abuse by Prison Guards in New York. Here Are Five Takeaways.” The Marshall Project, May 22, 2023. https://www.themarshallproject.org/2023/05/22/new-york-prison-corrections-officer-discipline-findings. Special Housing Units (SHUs), 28 CFR § 541.21 (2016) Steiner, Benjamin, and Calli M. Cain. “The Relationship Between Inmate Misconduct, Institutional Violence, and Administrative Segregation: A Systematic Review of the Evidence.” Essay. In Restrictive Housing in the U.S.: Issues, Challenges, and Future Directions , 165–97. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Justice, 2016. U.S. Const. amend. VIII. Vera Staff. “Why Are People Sent to Solitary Confinement? The ...” Vera Institute of Justice, March 2021. https://www.vera.org/downloads/publications/why-are-people-sent-to-solitary-confinement.pdf. Williams, Brie A., Amanda Li, Cyrus Ahalt, Pamela Coxson, James G. Kahn, and Kirsten Bibbins-Domingo. “The Cardiovascular Health Burdens of Solitary Confinement.” Journal of General Internal Medicine 34, no. 10 (June 21, 2019): 1977–80. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11606-019-05103-6. Wilson v. Seiter , Oyez, https://www.oyez.org/cases/1990/89-7376 (last visited May 2, 2024). Zyvoloski, Sarah. “Impacts of and Alternatives to Solitary Confinement in Adult Correctional Facilities.” St. Katherine University Sophia, May 2018. https://sophia.stkate.edu/msw_papers/841?utm_source=sophia.stkate.edu%2Fmsw_papers%2F841&utm_medium=PDF&utm_campaign=PDFCoverPages.

The Brown University Journal of Philosophy, Politics, and Economics (JPPE) is a peer reviewed academic journal for undergraduate and graduate students that is sponsored by the Political Theory Project and the Philosophy, Politics, and Economics Society Program at Brown University. The Brown Journal of Philosophy, Politics & Economics Volume IV, Issue II scroll to view articles current issue Philosophy Interpersonal Remembrance and Mnemonic Wronging Andrej Gregus Shoring Against Our Ruin An Investigation of Profound Boredom in our Return to Normal Life Virginia Moscetti Unwitting Wrongdoing The Case of Moral Ignorance Madeline Monge Read More Politics Refuting the myth of progressive secularism An Analysis of the Legal Frameworks Surrounding Religious Practice in France and Bahrain Bridget McDonald Ronald Reagan and the role of humor in American movement conservatism Abie Rohrig Read More Economics The relationship between education and welfare dependency Aiden Cliff Against the Mainstream How Modern Monetary Theory and the Myth of Millionaire Tax Flight Challenge Conventional Wisdom Justin Lee Read More Applications for JPPE will resume in the fall! See Available Positions