Two Weeks of Victory for Democracy in Senegal! (Yes, Senegal got a new President.)

By Jennifer Browning, MPA 2013

Poster of President-Elect Macky Sall as people celebrate his victory in Dakar. Benno Bokk Yaakaar means “People United with Hope” in Wolof.

(This is a follow-up to my earlier post I wrote before the elections, on February 26. You can read it here.)

Senegal has had plenty to celebrate in the past two weeks. The Senegalese elected a new President, Macky Sall; the former President Abdoulaye Wade peacefully stepped down and Sall was inaugurated on April 2; and Senegal celebrated its 52^nd Independence Day two days later on April 4. Macky Sall’s election is a victory for the youth and opposition protestors who had mobilized for weeks against a questionable third term bid by President Abdoulaye Wade. With a troubling coup in Mali only a few days before (see my classmate William Vu's post on 14 Points Blog on the coup in Mali here), Senegal once again demonstrated that it is the strong, stable democratic leader of the region.

However, Sall’s victory seemed far from assured before the first round of elections on February 26, 2012. The opposition was sharply divided, so people were unsure about which candidate would finish in the top two with Wade. There was a Princeton connection: opposition candidate Idrissa Seck spent a year at Princeton University as a visiting student. When President Wade failed to win a majority and the election headed into a two-candidate run off, the opposition was able to unite around Macky Sall. Sall won the run off with 68.5% of the vote.

Celebrations erupted around Senegal. This election really does belong to the young generation in Senegal. Young people led in many cases by smart and unapologetically critical rappers and followed by more seasoned opposition leaders had been rallying for almost a year to prevent President Wade from a third term.

This video gives a taste of Senegal’s unique sabar dancing, election euphoria style!

The voting also took place in the sizeable Senegalese diaspora. In Harlem and throughout the U.S., about 10,000 Senegalese people registered to vote. At a conference before the election, Columbia University Professor and head of the U.S. DECENA (Overseas Delegation of the Autonomous National Electoral Committee- Article in French on Diagne's Appointment) Souleymane Bachir Diagne explained that the Senegalese diaspora in the U.S. is much larger than 10,000. However, DECENA had challenges convincing many Senegalese immigrants, especially those who are undocumented, to sign up to vote. Apparently immigrants were worried that they could get into trouble with U.S. immigration authorities by voting.

Another problem voters faced is that while Senegal allows for absentee voting, would-be voters must declare the location where they will vote in advance, which can pose problems if they are not sure where they will be. However, despite these challenges, many Senegalese people did vote in Harlem, and throughout the U.S.

New York City had several polling stations- this is Wadleigh Middle School in Harlem.

I visited the election polling station at Wadleigh Middle School in Harlem during the first round. Along with DECENA staff, candidate representatives were present to observe the election and speak with interested voters. People presented their national ID and voter ID cards and then voted in one of the several first floor rooms. Professor Diagne recognized that requiring two IDs seems overly cumbersome and hopefully will change. I knew one Senegalese friend who did not vote because while he had his national ID card, he had misplaced his voter ID card.

Voting Room at Wadleigh Secondary School in Harlem after a long day. The candidates are featured on cards with their pictures during the first round. In the run-off election, only President Wade, 2^nd from left and Macky Sall, 4^th from left remained. The magenta dye was used to mark people who had voted and reduce risk of election fraud.

A Senegalese voter in Harlem shows his national ID and voter registration ID; both are necessary to vote. His dyed red fingertip marks that he voted.

List of candidates in the first round of elections on February 26, 2012. Abdoulaye Wade and Macky Sall would win out with 34.8% and 26.6% of the vote, respectively.

Voter registration and identification were not solely problems for the diaspora; President Wade’s government had not made it easy for many first time voters to register. Young adults were more likely to support the opposition, and with a very young population, they were an important factor in this election.

Youssou Ndour’s candidacy was not approved by the Constitutional Court. However, this catapulted him into a position of leadership of the opposition. President Macky Sall named Youssou Ndour his Minister of Culture. What many in the West do not realize is that in addition to being a world music star, Youssou is a very successful businessmen who has re-invested in Senegal, first creating a club where he performs most weekends when in town and then expanding to radio station, television channel, and music studio. While the Senegalese may not have been ready to make him President, they deeply appreciate his dedication to working in Senegal.

Macky Sall (left) and Youssou Ndour (right) at a public concert on April 3, 2012 in Dakar to celebrate President Sall’s inauguration.

Youssou Ndour’s decision to open another media outlet is also indicative of the exploding television outlets in Africa. If people are unsatisfied with the government controlled television coverage, they can simply switch to another channel. This proved very important in Senegal’s elections. In the first major protests against President Wade on June 23, 2011, many television stations actively covered center of events in front of the National Assembly building. However, if viewers had only had access to the RTS (the national television station), they may have believed that instead of the largest protests that their nation had seen in a decade, the main event that day was some renovation of the façade of the National Assembly building because that was all the RTS showed. They never turned their cameras to take footage of the thousands of protestors in front of the Assembly’s gates. In marked contrast, Youssou Ndour’s channel, (Télévision Futurs Médias) like several other private channels, featured breaking news and interviews with the protest’s leaders, ensuring that people were kept informed.

The RTS covers the incoming election results. If viewers wanted a more animated reporting, they had to switch to another channel.

Youssou Ndour may have grabbed headlines when he announced his Presidential bid on his own television station. However, the most influential musicians of election season have been rappers who started the movement “Y en a marre” (“We’ve had enough/ We are fed up”). Many young people in Senegal look up to rappers and hip hop artists who offer a witty critical commentary on society and politics. This activist critique of the status quo is largely absent from the type of music Youssou Ndour pioneered, mbalax.

Y en a marre is an ambitious movement that envisions an active citizenry pushing a transformation of Senegalese democracy. Professor Rosalind Fredericks described how Y en a marre even established “esprits” or groups with community discussions in neighborhoods where women and people of all ages participate actively. The rappers often served as spokesmen of the opposition even though they were not running for office. They used media and social network technology to mobilize people, especially youth.

Now that Y en a marre succeeded in thwarting Wade’s grab for a third term, the question is what next. In the past few weeks, cultural organizations have visibly funded several events but surely others outside of the foreign-funded cultural institutions have been organized. I think they are the expression of a real need and desire present in Senegal to celebrate but also to understand what happened and to ensure a future to the movement. As the poster on the left below has scrawled across it, “Résister, c’est le début de la victoire/Resistance is the beginning of victory.” But it is only a beginning.

Posters for events on the election protests. In the left poster, rapper, filmmaker, and intellectual Awadi is featured in a victory pose. At the event, he will speak with Thiat, a leader of Y en a marre and a rapper in the group Keur Gui and other intellectuals.

Macky Sall now has the privilege of being at the helm in a country where his people have laid out a hopeful, ambitious vision of the future. However, he surely also must know that if he falls short, if he too starts to overstep his power, there is a young generation that can mobilize to defend their democracy.

In the U.S., we too have elections approaching. I think my generation here has much to learn from our counterparts in Senegal. For democracy and freedom need vigilance and action. Otherwise, we risk losing it all.

A Real Remedy for Youth Unemployment in Saudi Arabia: Scrap "Saudization" and emphasize employment education

Mary Svenstrup, MPA


The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has been relatively unaffected by the Arab Awakening. So far, the government has been able to maintain stability by cracking down on protests while simultaneously providing generous handouts to appease its citizens. Saudi youth, however, are growing increasingly dissatisfied with their government because they cannot find employment. And as recently seen in Egypt, Tunisia, and Yemen, a dissatisfied youth population has proven to be an important factor contributing to instability – and, ultimately, regime change.

Employment has significant cultural implications in Saudi Arabia and the Arab world: it is an essential prerequisite for marriage and transition to adulthood. Without employment, youth are stuck in social purgatory, feeling restless and unsuccessful. Yet Saudi Arabia has the highest youth unemployment rate in the Middle East and North Africa region excluding Iraq.

The Saudi government’s answer to youth unemployment is “Saudization,” a policy that sets employment requirements for Saudi nationals. This policy has been ineffective because it does nothing to address the underlying issue that Saudi graduates do not have the skills demanded by private companies. Furthermore, this policy disincentivizes non-hydrocarbon sector growth, which is critical to create more jobs in the Kingdom. The Saudi government should scrap Saudization and instead focus on education that will build skills for employment.

Structural Barriers to Employment in Saudi Arabia
Saudization is an artificial employment requirement that does not address the structural problems with the Saudi economy that contribute to youth unemployment, such as an overreliance on the hydrocarbon sector, a constantly growing social transfer system, and insufficient private sector growth.

Saudi Arabia’s economy is largely based on petroleum, but the hydrocarbon sector is not a reliable source of job creation. Oil and gas comprise about 45% of fiscal revenues, 55% of GDP, and 90% of export revenue – yet, the national oil company employs less than 1% of Saudi labor force. The hydrocarbon sector does create a source of revenues for the government’s generous social transfer programs; these programs, however, may not be sustainable, crowed out other social expenditures, and most of all, do nothing to address unemployment. As an example, in lieu of real social reforms, the Saudi government introduced new fiscal initiatives on February 23 and March 18, 2011 to quell domestic protests. Although these types of social transfers may help to immediately pacify the population, the IMF notes that these programs will require oil prices sustained higher than $90 per barrel for the next several years. That may not be sustainable and puts a huge burden on the Saudi government to control oil prices.

Given the problems created by reliance on the hydrocarbon sector for employment, the non-hydrocarbon sector of the Saudi economy is critical. This sector, however, has not been able to create enough jobs for Saudis. Over the next five years, the IMF estimates that private sector non-oil GDP will need to grow by 7.5% annually to create a sufficient number of employment opportunities for the domestic population. While Saudization addresses the issue that most private sector jobs are being allocated to more qualified expatriate workers, the policy increases the operating costs of private companies in the Kingdom, thereby reducing incentives for investment and hindering non-hydrocarbon growth. For example, a recent equity research report by EFG Hermes suggested that Saudi companies will meet Saudization requirements in the near term by hiring more Saudis rather than reducing the number of expatriates, given the skills mismatches of Saudi workers. Basically, companies are being forced to increase personnel costs simply to satisfy a legislative mandate.

Furthermore, both the appeasement tax and Saudization may have a feedback loop creating more pressure on the government. As Saudis become wealthier and more connected to the rest of the world, their expectations for employment and inclusion in the economy will continue grow. Higher expectations combined with growing dissatisfaction with unfulfilling employment opportunities will further increase the government’s cost of appeasement. Therefore, creating sustainable economic opportunities for its citizens will mitigate the long-run fiscal burden of providing appeasement handouts and remove the need for Saudization, as long as Saudis have the skills necessary to be competitive employees.

Education for Employment
The underlying cause of youth unemployment is that, even with a postsecondary degree, Saudi graduates lack the right skills for jobs in a modern, knowledge-based economy. The Saudi education system itself has flaws, but a main problem is that students choose to study subjects that have no direct linkages to labor markets. For example, in 2008, 40% of university students in Saudi Arabia were concentrating in arts and humanities (versus averages of 20% and 17% in Asia and Latin America, respectively), while only 24% chose to study science or engineering. Furthermore, there is a social stigma against technical and vocational training, and any type of university degree, even one that is very unlikely to lead to employment, is socially viewed as superior.

To reduce youth unemployment—and the risk of social instability in the Kingdom—the government ought to at least address skills mismatches by orienting the education system toward private sector employment opportunities. Ideally, Saudi Arabia should scrap Saudization and instead focus on making their graduates competitive employees. Forcing graduates to compete for jobs will ensure that they choose education tracks that are conducive to employment. Additionally, technical and vocational programs should be associated with prestigious universities and fellowships, which would alleviate some of the social stigma of choosing this track. Lastly, the government should adopt a national quality assurance framework to regulate private education companies doing business in the Kingdom to ensure that degrees and certificates are uniform across the country. These changes, paired with continued investments in upgrading the overall education sector, should help to link skill-based post-secondary education with employment opportunities.

Encouraging youth to select education for employment will result in more qualified workers that will naturally increase the demand for Saudi workers and ultimately reduce the cost of doing business in the country. The government and the royal family should act quickly on this issue, for their own sake and for the sake of the growing youth population in their kingdom.

Big Business, Small Hands: Changing child labor laws in US agriculture

Megan Corrarino, MPA

Imagine a country where twelve-year-old children work twelve-hour days, where wage theft is rampant, and where child workers handle pesticides, operate hazardous machinery, and engage in other dangerous work that contravenes of the International Labor Organization’s Convention 182 on the Worst Forms of Child Labor. In the US, these are the workplace conditions for roughly half a million children currently working on commercial farms. While most forms of child labor are strictly regulated, a farmwork exemption to the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) allows children to work at younger ages, for longer hours, and under more dangerous conditions than in any other industry in the country.

When the FLSA was created in 1938, agricultural lobbyists convinced Congress that applying the same standards to agriculture would spell the end of the rural way of life. But most children working on farms today are not family farmers’ sons and daughters, rising early to milk cows before school or spending summers learning the family business. Most children today work on commercial farms. They are overwhelmingly migrant, poor, and vulnerable. They perform routine tasks for hours on end, leaving them susceptible to repetitive motion injuries, and are often exposed to highly toxic pesticides and other hazards. An average of 104 child agricultural workers die each year, and over 22,000 are injured – a rate more than four times that in other sectors. Sexual harassment and abuse are commonplace. Children employed on farms, like their adult colleagues, work long hours, are not entitled to overtime, and often move in order to follow the growing season. Half of all child agricultural workers never graduate from high school.

Current farm labor law fails to protect the rights of children in two ways. First, the laws themselves fail to require reasonable working conditions that respect the dignity of child workers and that provide sufficient support and time for schooling. For example, in addition to allowing children to perform hazardous work, current farm labor laws allow 14- and 15-year old children to work unlimited hours – even during the school year. In any other sector, the same children would be restricted to three hours of work a day on school days and eight hours on other days.

Second, agricultural labor laws that do exist are often poorly enforced. Children are particularly vulnerable to rights abuses. The 1983 Migrant and Seasonal Protection Act, for example, guarantees a minimum wage. Although farmers may pay by the pieces picked instead, they are required to make up the difference if that does not reach the set wage. But children often pick on family tickets, making it difficult to determine what they should have been paid and allowing employers to hide the hours worked if children ever try to recover unpaid wages.

A proposed Department of Labor rules change, designed to “bring parity between the rules for agricultural employment and the more stringent rules that apply to the employment of children in nonagricultural workplaces,” would, among other things, limit animal and pesticide handling, prevent children under 16 from working on tobacco farms, and restrict operation of power-driven equipment by children under 16. But even these relatively straightforward changes have faced opposition from a wide range of agricultural lobbyists.

Given the resistance to even these small changes, comprehensive child labor reform will be a political challenge. But it is nevertheless necessary; child workers in agriculture typically work out of economic necessity and are among our country’s most vulnerable workers. Workplace laws must protect their fundamental human rights.

One bundle of suggested reforms, the Children’s Act for Responsible Employment (CARE Act), HR 3564, would apply the same workplace standards to agricultural child workers as are currently applied to others. (It would still include a family farm exemption.) Crucially, because enforcement of labor law is often challenging, particularly in agriculture, it would require better data collection by the Department of Labor and would raise the fines for violations from $11,000 to $15,000 – making employers less willing to take a risk.

Advocates for the CARE Act are currently lobbying with a non-traditional coalition of agricultural unions, members of Congress, filmmakers, Hollywood stars, and human rights organizations. Successful advocacy will require continued public mobilization and creative alliance-building – perhaps drawing on coalitions of workers in other informal sectors, or parlaying the growing national interest in food policy to highlight labor practices in the food production chain. As Edward R. Murrow observed in The Harvest of Shame, a 1960 documentary that reflected agricultural working conditions strikingly similar to today’s, “The migrants have no lobby…Maybe we do.”

21st Century Slavery: The scourge of human trafficking and how we can fight it

Elina Sarkisova, MPA

Human trafficking, although not a new phenomenon, has experienced exceptional growth in the last quarter of the 20th century, becoming one of the fastest growing criminal enterprises in the world. According to the State Department, an estimated 600,0000 to 800,000 men, women, and children are trafficked across international borders each year, the majority being women and children. When accounting for internal trafficking, the number of victims jumps to 12.3 million. Most states have taken steps, both on an individual and collective level, to try to reverse this trend; most noticeably in the form of international legal instruments and national laws aimed at migration controls, crime prevention, and victims’ assistance programs. However, these efforts have proved largely ineffective and are even to blame, in some circumstances, for making matters worse.

Why human trafficking is on the rise
The competing and often conflicting forces of globalization and national sovereignty help explain the increase in the overall volume of human trafficking. While globalization has brought about unprecedented opportunities for economic growth and prosperity, the results of economic liberalization (a key feature of globalization) have been mixed for developing countries. The swift spread of free markets has led to increased levels of inequality both within and between states and widespread economic instability, thus fostering strong “push” factors in migrants’ countries of origin. Meanwhile, increased demand for cheap labor in developed countries (characterized by a growing ratio of elderly to working-age people), declining birth rates, and high cost of labor, fosters strong “pull” factors.

On the other hand, governments have stepped up efforts to limit the movement of people across their borders, even when such policies are highly inconsistent with national labor market demands. This is usually the result of strong societal resistance to immigration and/or political pressures. Such restrictive immigration policies have the effect of increasing undocumented migration flows. However, trafficking flourishes where an additional factor is present: few opportunities to overcome barriers to illegal migration without the help of a third party. Most trafficking cases start out as voluntary transactions between a potential migrant and a smuggler – an exchange that is usually initiated by the migrant. However, the situation quickly deteriorates upon arrival at the destination country, where the victim often finds himself in a situation of forced labor.

National responses to human trafficking and why they haven’t worked
States tend to perceive human trafficking through the lens of national security, best addressed through migration controls, crime prevention and victims’ assistance programs. The United States, for instance, has increased border control enforcement along its 2,000-mile border with Mexico over the last two decades. However, strong migratory pressures render such efforts useless at best and counterproductive at worst, contributing to an increasing death toll in the border area and driving increasing numbers of economic migrants to seek the services of unscrupulous migration intermediaries intent on exploiting the gap between labor supply and demand. Law enforcement (e.g. police raids) has also become a key tool in countries’ toolbox for combating human trafficking. However, such efforts simply drive the trade further underground, where victims become more and more isolated and vulnerable to abuse, especially in the case of prostitution. Lastly, while some countries have initiated victims’ assistance programs, efforts have largely been limited to “rescue” operations that offer little in the way of long-term solutions and conditional assistance programs that overlook underlying incentives.

A way forward
The human security framework can offer a new, more useful way of conceptualizing an old problem – namely, from the standpoint of the driving forces behind the trade, the mechanisms that facilitate the trade, and the threat that such a trade poses to society. Broadly, policy response should focus on prevention (targeting underlying causes of supply and demand specific to each country), prosecution (law enforcement), and protection (victim assistance programs). Policy options should include, at a minimum:

• Women, children, and minority empowerment programs: Past projects aimed at the economic empowerment of women have, for instance, tended to be components of broader economic development programs rather than anti-trafficking strategies. Efforts need to be streamlined and incorporated into a broader anti-trafficking strategy.

• Immigration reforms: Destination countries should create temporary guest worker programs, perhaps in a more targeted way than some countries have already done, as part of a broader anti-trafficking agenda.

• Anti-corruption programs among border patrol officials: Trafficking would not be as widespread were it not for the help of corrupt government officials, especially in border patrol areas, who are complicit in this trade.

In the end, improving the track record of international anti-trafficking programs will require both structural changes in the manner in which the issue is conceptualized by states and operational changes in the manner in which programs are implemented. Only then could we realistically attempt to end this scourge of the 21st century.

Making Butter Without the Cream of the Crop: Overcoming the bimodality of urban school choice

Drew Haugen, MPA


In the education reform world, charter schools have been garnering a lot of attention. Schools like KIPP (Knowledge is Power Program), started in Houston in 1994, have achieved tremendous gains with students from underserved communities and have taken their model nation-wide.

Charters like KIPP also usually endure a barrage of criticism and scrutiny. Common critiques range from charges that they take the “cream of the crop” of available students to accusations of being quick to expel students with behavior, language, or disability issues. Others argue that their model is financially unsustainable.

My critique of charter schools like KIPP is through a different lens—what I call the Commitment Dilemma.

Commitment to a school like KIPP, with its longer days, Saturday school, longer academic year, hours of homework every night, and a rigorous behavioral culture, is a hefty commitment for a child of any ability level to make. Colorado State Senator Mike Johnston, my boss this summer and former principal of a high school that dealt with at-risk students, explained the Commitment Dilemma to me using the following analogy.

Let’s say, hypothetically, that all students have 100 “Free-time Commitment Points.” These 100 points represent the available free-time a student has for the activities to which they can devote their energies outside of mandatory requirements (sleeping, the seven-hour school day required by law, etc.).

Students can allocate their Free-time Commitment Points however they like, divvying them up between activities like studying, family time, organized sports, time with friends, and so forth.

For the purposes of this example let’s say that to graduate in the middle of her class at a KIPP school the average low-income urban student, Shirley, must allocate 80 of her total 100 Free-time Commitment Points to KIPP and the additional time, activities, and homework KIPP requires.

In contrast, Shirley’s local school, which is not as academically rigorous and does not yield the same high probability of college acceptance for Shirley as KIPP, is nonetheless a safe and moderately performing school that many of Shirley’s friends attend. To graduate from this school in the middle of her class requires 40 of Shirley’s Commitment Points.

Now let’s pause for a moment and inject some self-reflection into this analogy. Say I give you two options for the undergraduate institution you will attend: Vanderbilt or CalTech. You must choose one of these two options.

If my intuition is correct, a number of my capable and intelligent readers will choose Vanderbilt and a number will choose CalTech.

Applying our Free-time Commitment Points analogy, my guess is that readers who want to devote a large portion of their Points to academic extracurriculars like course reading, studying, and so forth in exchange for a more rigorous academic experience will choose CalTech. I’d also guess that readers who want to spend more of their Free-time Commitment Points on activities not directly related to school, such as social events, sports, and so on, will choose Vanderbilt.

This is a rough analogy, but the gist is this: students that are equally capable and intelligent (my readership) will choose different schools for different reasons and some of these reasons have little or nothing to do with academic pursuits.

Luckily for us, CalTech and Vanderbilt are both academically rigorous institutions that yield intellectual development and professional readiness for their students and a baseline of required academic proficiency in order to receive a diploma.

The same cannot be said of Shirley’s choices in our example. Even if Shirley is an above-average student with 60 Points to commit to academic enrichment, she falls short of the extraordinary commitment required to succeed at KIPP and will most likely end up in her neighborhood school. Shirley becomes a cautionary tale. This is the Commitment Dilemma.

It is true that KIPP achieves extraordinary results. But KIPP also enjoys extraordinarily committed administrators, teachers, parents, and students. The portion of our society willing to devote this much free-time and energy to schooling is a small minority.

If we can assume normality of student free-time commitment levels, then ideally there should exist a normal distribution of school options for students like Shirley to pick from. It would be a relatively easy endeavor for Shirley to find a school to match, or come close to, her 60-Commitment Point level.

All schools in this distribution would require a baseline academic proficiency of their students equivalent to a high school diploma or GED. As schools increase their academic enrichment activities (longer days, school years, more homework, AP and IB courses, advanced diplomas, etc.), so would their Free-time Commitment requirement.

Near the top of this distribution, we would find schools that prepare students for entry into elite higher education institutions. Near the bottom of this distribution, we would find schools that prepare students for success in community and junior colleges and entry-level four-year institutions.

Unfortunately, the reality of what most poor urban students encounter is a bimodal distribution of school options. Their first option is a low-commitment school, usually a failing public school that graduates them unprepared for success at a community college. The other option is a high commitment school, usually a rigorous charter school that prepares them for success at a mid-range four-year college.

The education reform movement must devote more energy to “building out the middle” of this currently bimodal distribution of school options. The development of rigorous and challenging schools for administrators, teachers, parents, and students of all commitment levels must be a much stronger priority.

A fitting model is the California higher education system, which was reorganized under the 1960 Master Plan for Higher Education.

The Master Plan organized California’s higher education system into tiers. Tier 1 is comprised of the state’s marquee institutions—the University of California (UC) system. The California State University system makes up Tier 2, and the state’s community and junior college system rounds out Tier 3.

In California, the top 12.5% of graduating seniors are guaranteed a spot at one of the UC schools. The top 33% is guaranteed a spot at a Cal State, and California Community Colleges are to admit “any student capable of benefiting from instruction.”

This diversification of higher educational opportunities in California has yielded tremendous results: enrollment has increased ten-fold since 1960, while the California population has only approximately tripled. What’s more, there are avenues for advancement and enrichment between tiers: Santa Monica Community College in Los Angeles is the #1 institution for transfers to UCLA and UC-Berkeley.

By providing a similarly wide array of school options for public K-12, all of which afford students rigorous opportunities for academic proficiency and enrichment, our school system will yield higher retention levels, better academic fits for students, and more robust achievement on a large scale. Our education system must adapt itself to make butter with all types of milk—not just the cream.

Smells Like Teen Xenophobia: Chinese “Angry Youth” and anti-Japanese nationalism

Keqin Wei, MPA


In spite of the growing economic cooperation and cultural exchange between China and Japan in recent years, the number of “Angry Youth” in China is also rising commensurately. The phenomenon of “Angry Youth” refers to young Chinese ultra-nationalists with a visceral hatred of Japan. Since most “Angry Youth” were born after the 1980s, they did not live through the Sino-Japanese War of the 1940s, but nevertheless demonstrate much stronger anti-Japanese sentiment than former generations. Importantly, these youth are generally highly educated and children of the internet age – blogs and chat rooms are often the repository for their anti-Japanese polemics. While there are many reasons for the growing numbers of “Angry Youth,” the most salient are the censored media in China and the way history is taught to students.

“The Modern History of China” is an important course in both Chinese middle school and high school. Stereotypes aside about China’s infatuation with inculcating math and science, great efforts have been made to teach students their national history from the Opium War of the 19th century to the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949. Particular concentration is placed on the eight-year Sino-Japanese War in the 1930s-40s. This curriculum is also included on important exams, such as the College Entrance Exam, in order to encourage students to spend more time learning history. For most Chinese young people, having received the compulsory education, Japanese wartime atrocities are described in such vivid details that it becomes deeply ingrained in their memories. In comparison, other aspects of Japan, such as its culture, economy, and politics, are largely neglected.

Furthermore, the internet provides biased reports of modern-day Japan by amplifying its conflicts with China and reiterating tense historical issues. Just a few months ago, if one searched for “Japan” on Baidu, the most popular Chinese internet search engine, the top three news hits were: “Crisis in Fukushima,” “Japan claims its sovereignty over Diaoyu Islands,” and “Japanese history textbooks deny the Nanjing Massacre.” If it were not for the disaster in Japan, there would also very likely be articles criticizing the “basic quality” of Japanese people among the top news articles. As these “Angry Youth” spend their leisure time on the internet and browsing the websites that host such articles, this kind of information is constantly repeated, which intensifies the stereotype of Japanese brutality and hostility towards China.

Psychological research shows that people often make judgments based on accessible information. Most “Angry Youth” don’t have the opportunity to visit Japan, so the information available to them from textbooks and media is often the main resource to make their judgments. Their attitudes towards Japan are biased based on these historical memories and prejudiced news source.

Social norms also help shape people’s behavior, especially in a country like China which has a strong tradition of collectivism. As framed by former PRC president Jiang Zemin: “Forgetting the humiliating Chinese modern history means betraying your country.” In this environment, forgetting or even forgiving Japanese aggression is tantamount to treason. A second example comes from a popular Chinese movie about the Nanjing Massacre, “Nanjing, Nanjing” (2009). The Nanjing Massacre of 1937 is widely regarded as evidence of Japanese soldiers’ brutality and is still a hot topic given current Japanese leaders’ reluctance to apologize for its occupation of China. Upon the film’s release, one influential movie critic was quoted as follows: “You are not qualified to be Chinese if you do not watch this movie.” The assertion that failure to appreciate a movie about Japanese wartime brutality means losing one’s Chinese identity puts extreme pressure on those who do not plan to see the film.

While these social norms partly explain the expansion of anti-Japanese nationalism, why does the anti-Japanese sentiment in the “Angry Youth” surpass that of other age groups, including older generations who actually lived through the brutality of occupation?

One would not be surprised to find out that peer pressure plays a large role in shaping this attitude for teens. The Chinese internet, which is notorious for its censorship of sensitive political topics, has no problem with the proliferation of nationalist comments. Allowing the “Angry Youth” to be the only outspoken adolescent political group in the country gives the false impression that they are the only politically-oriented youth in China. When “Angry Youth” spread their anti-Japanese comments on internet, people their age with similar education backgrounds tend to take this movement as a reference group, and modify their own attitudes accordingly.

Nationalism proves to be an effective tool for totalitarian states to suppress dissidents and maintain social stability. To date, it seems China has been successful at stoking nationalist themes and training “Angry Youth” to vent their frustrations in politically-acceptable directions. Unfortunately, it seems that these “Angry Youth” have already begun to transform their attitudes into behaviors, as evidenced by frequent anti-Japan demonstrations that have taken place since 2004. One way to assuage the hostile attitudes towards Japan is to expand the information channels about Japan, by introducing Japanese cartoons and movies in China in order to show different aspects of the island nation; and most importantly, to revise Chinese modern history textbooks to show the Chinese people that modern Chinese history is much richer than an eight-year war with its neighbor.


Thanks to Eddie Skolnick for his comments and editing.

Guess Who’s Coming to Breakfast? And Lunch, and Dinner?

Jenn Onofrio, MPA


Earlier this month the Food and Drug Administration issued guidelines for food manufacturers on recommended decreases in the level and frequency of sugar-sweetened cereals marketing to children. The guidelines, though voluntary, remind us again of the pervasive place of the food industry at the kitchen table.

Ask a parent who has tried to get her child to eat the boring oatmeal instead of the Cocoa Puffs before dashing out the door—the task is daunting to say the least. Food research tells us, though, that this is not entirely a matter of children’s taste buds being so normalized to sugar that they just hate oatmeal—it’s also the product of millions of dollars of targeted advertising that reminds children over and over again through television and internet commercials that Tony the Tiger is “grrrrrrreat!”

According to the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at Yale University, “food marketing to youth has been shown to increase preference for advertised foods; consumption of advertised foods; overall calorie consumption; requests to parents to purchase advertised foods (known as “pester power”); and snacking.”

The food industry has literally wedged itself between parents and children.

I studied food policy this fall as part of a working group preparing recommendations for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Childhood Obesity Group. We researched and visited programs all over the country that were tackling the issue of childhood obesity. I was fortunate to be able to meet with leadership in San Francisco about the hot topic of the time, the so-called “Happy Meal ban.” What was amazing was that it wasn’t a ban at all, but rather a requirement that fast food companies could not hand out a free toy with a meal that contained over 600 calories (with more than 35% derived from fat), and more than 640mg of sodium. It was actually an incentive for companies to increase their nutritional standards. Make it healthier, and add a serving of fruit and veggies. So long as they complied, they could reintroduce the toy.

But that wasn’t the argument heard ’round the world. Frustrated parents accused the government of trying to take the happy out of the meal. Parent after parent protested, “But my kid wants the Happy Meal.”

Without greater regulation of marketing standards, we’re getting our battles confused. Kids (with the help of the food industry) rebel against adults; adults rebel against government initiatives because of what their kids want. (Conveniently, it’s also what the food industry wants.) It creates a lot a noise and not a lot of change in the fact that the childhood obesity rate has tripled since 1980. According to the Centers for Disease Control, 17% of American children are obese.

Regulation won’t cure everything. Our research found that the most effective programs implemented a mix of bans, incentives, and education. To complement this troika, it may be time to think about setting one less place at the kitchen table. Tony the Tiger, you’re out.


Editor’s Note: You can read more about this subject in “Tipping the Scales: Strategies for Changing How America’s Children Eat,” a WWS graduate policy workshop final report presented to the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Available here.