“Chasing Ice” Catches Up to Earth’s Changing Climate

By Elisabeth A. Cohen, MPA candidate 2012

It’s probably hard to imagine all of Manhattan tumbling into the Hudson River and washing away in less than five minutes, but that’s the equivalent of what you’ll see in the film “Chasing Ice,” as a city’s worth of towering icebergs collapse violently into the ocean — and that’s just one of countless spectacular images that flash across the screen in this astonishing documentary by director and cinematographer Jeff Orlowski, which premiered at Sundance in January and is opening at SXSW this week. 

The film is a documentary about a documentarian — a scientist-turned photographer named James Balog, whose obsession with images of ice has gotten him into the pages of The New Yorker and National Geographic. Despite his training as a geographer and geomorphologist, Balog was stunned to see how fast some of the glaciers that he shot were receding in the face of global warming. So he decided to create a long-term photography project he called the Extreme Ice Survey (EIS), which he hoped would merge art and science into a compelling story in pictures about what humans are doing to the climate.

A layer of cryoconite, dust which absorbs solar radiation, melting the snow, at the bottom of a Greenland Ice Sheet channel, July 2009. Credit: James Balog/Extreme Ice Survey. 

Originally, Balog planned to set up two time-lapse cameras to photograph glaciers, but within a few weeks his ambition had grown: he bought 23 more cameras, then assembled a team of 30 scientific experts, engineers, and photographers to help him carry out his vision.  Balog also asked Orlowski to film the project. “I wanted to work with James in some capacity,” said Orlowski, and the collaboration turned into “Chasing Ice.”

The movie is nothing short of spectacular. As you watch, you can see how Balog and his team set up all of those cameras on three continents, in places including Alaska, the Rockies, Greenland, Iceland, and Mt. Everest.  The team worked in below-freezing temperatures and high winds, rigged cameras to the sides of cliffs, and programmed them to take automatic photos every half-hour, powered by solar panels.  In total, they captured more than a million glacier portraits over five years.  “Without a doubt,” Orloski said, “this has been the most challenging project in my life.”

The same is clearly true for Balog and the rest of the team, but the photos they brought back are incredibly valuable. It’s one thing to see an image of a single retreating glacier, but Balog’s cameras recorded dramatic changes in glaciers around the world.  The Columbia glacier in Alaska is just one striking example. Since 1984, the Columbia has deflated by a thickness equivalent to height of the Empire State Building. Over the life of the project, it retreated so quickly that to keep the edge of the glacier in the frame, the team had to keep returning to adjust the camera’s angle. “We never expected to see the glaciers change as much as we’ve seen,” Orlowski said. “That was the most shocking part for us.”

On one trip to Alaska, Orlowski recalled, “there are entire areas where we spent days and days climbing on ice, using our ice tools, and going up and down parts of the glacier. When we revisited them, all that ice was gone. The landscape looks so different that you almost don’t recognize it . . . that giant playground, that world of ice we were pretty much living on for a week, is completely gone.”

For the director, the experience was eye-opening.  “We think of glaciers as being part of geologic time,” he said, “something that happens over centuries and thousands of years.” What Balog has shown so vividly, he said, is that in a warming world, this conception is completely out of date.

On the other side of North America, in Greenland, Orlowski and project engineer Adam LeWinter stood watch in frigid conditions waiting for the end of a massive tidewater glacier to break off into the sea — a calving event, a glaciologist would call it. Finally, on the 17^th day, it happened. With nine cameras rolling, they recorded a chunk of ice some 400 feet deep and three miles wide calve off of the Ilulissat Glacier — and in a little more than an hour, the glacier continued disintegrating until it had retreated a total of about 1 mile. The block of ice that retreated and broke off into the ocean could have fit about 3,000 U.S. Capital buildings in it. Orlowski and his team condensed this event into a 3-minute clip that was, to put it simply, awesome.  For Orlowski, watching this live “was a life-changing event. Adam [the engineer] and I were the only two there and we felt we were watching history unfolding in front of us.”

James Balog hangs off a cliff near Columbia Glacier, Alaska to install a time-lapse camera. Credit: Tad Pfeffer/Extreme Ice Survey. 

“Chasing Ice” has lots of this natural drama, but there’s plenty of human drama as well. A couple of years into the project, for example, Balog had surgery on his knee. He opted for a procedure that had a quicker recovery time, so he could get back into the field faster, but it wasn’t as effective in the long run. His doctor ordered him to quit ice climbing — an order he promptly ignored. One night Balog even walked out onto the ice on crutches to capture one of Orlowski’s favorite photos of the entire project.  There are also lots of action scenes, with members of the team rappelling into gaping crevasses, making the movie a cross between a frozen “Planet Earth” and an action film.  In fact, “Chasing Ice” won the best adventure film award at the Boulder International Film Festival.

What is perhaps most surprising about the film is that Balog used to be a climate skeptic. He explains how he once thought that climate change theory was based solely on computer models, where in fact it’s based on scientific measurements of both modern and ancient climates. Once Balog learned that tree rings, sea floor sediments, and ice core data were showing that the climate is warming on average, he changed his mind. Orlowski’s film about Balog could, in turn, change the mind of other climate skeptics. One thing that struck me, however, was that although the evidence of climate change is overwhelming in “Chasing Ice,” there’s very little about slowing or stopping the planet from warming. 

It is hard to decide whether the jaw-dropping imagery or the climate-change messages in this film were more compelling. But it’s  no surprise that the film received the “Excellence in Cinematography Award: U.S. Documentary” during the 2012 Sundance film festival. In at least one screening at the Sundance Film Festival, the audience leapt to its feet cheering.

To do this film justice, go see it on the big screen.  The next opportunity to see the film is at the South by Southwest (SXSW) arts and music festival in Austin, TX the second week of March. The TV rights to “Chasing Ice” have been acquired by the National Geographic Channel and its website says a theatrical partner will follow shortly. To find out more see  National Geographic Channel Takes 'Chasing Ice' and visit the movie’s website. For “Chasing Ice” movie show times at SXSW click here.

* This article is reposted, with permission, from Climate Central. 

Occupy Wall Street: Occupying the public discourse

Laura Noonan, MPA


Since the inception of Occupy Wall Street (OWS) in September, critics and commentators have questioned both the motives and tactics of the populist movement. Perhaps the most common objection is that OWS protestors have failed to focus on a single, unifying demand. To be sure, their concerns are broad, and even at times seemingly conflicting. Issues that have been voiced include protesting social and economic inequality, high unemployment, corporate greed and corruption, and the undue influence of corporations – especially financial services firms – on the political process.

The fact is, their demands are far from simple. While some are fairly tangible (e.g. more progressive tax policies), others (like reducing the influence of Wall Street and corporations on the political process) are much more complex, requiring the overall of deeply-embedded systems.

For that reason alone, it was ultimately beneficial for the OWS movement that protestors were recently forced out of Zuccotti Park in New York City and other locations across the country. While an aggressive tactic such as ”occupation” was perhaps necessary to draw initial attention to their cause, over time it was bound to became a war of attrition, one that would be nearly impossible for the protestors to win given the lack of clear solutions to the issues they are protesting.

Semi-permanent encampments also require intense dedication from protestors, tending to draw a higher proportion of the more extreme (less understood, more easily attacked) supporters, while potentially scaring more moderate compatriots away. I, for instance, care deeply about economic and social inequality, but chose for various reasons not to join the protests. To be ultimately successful, the movement of the 99% must gain more support from the 99% of Americans they claim to represent.

In addition, to make changes within our current political system, the movement would be wise to make the distinction that they are protesting against policies which serve to protect the rich at the expense of the rest of us, not the rich themselves. Warren Buffett, who has come out against regressive tax policies, should serve as an example that the wealthiest 1% of Americans are not always the enemy.

The OWS movement does seem to be moving towards more mainstream acceptance, and is now publicly supported by a coalition of more than 70 liberal organizations, including MoveOn.org, several large labor unions, and Planned Parenthood, as well as hundreds of prominent and influential individuals. This could help to provide additional resources, legitimize the movement, and ultimately force a prioritization of demands.

It remains to be seen, however, whether the Occupy Wall Street movement will be able to have the electoral impact needed to achieve many of their stated goals. The Tea Party, a similarly ambitious and unfocused movement, was able to successfully attract candidates to run on a platform representing the movement, and to shift mainstream Republicans’ campaigns in an effort to please Tea Party constituents.

While the long-term impact of the OWS movement is still unclear, it has in many ways already been successful, primarily by starting to reframe the public discourse on inequality.

The top 1% of the individuals in the American economy take home 25% of total income, and own 40% of the wealth. Research has shown that most Americans support a much more equal distribution of resources, but are also optimistically ignorant of the level of inequality that currently exists. But this may be changing as more and more attention is drawn to the issue. The term “income inequality” is appearing more and more frequently in the media, rising from 90 mentions in the week before the protests started to nearly 500 by mid-November.

And while most Americans still think of the United States as a land of opportunity, a 2006 report from the Center for American Progress showed that among high-income countries, only the United Kingdom has a lower rate of intergenerational economic mobility than the United States. For example, children from low-income families in the US have only a 1% chance of reaching the top 5% of the income distribution, versus children of the rich, who have about a 22% chance of doing so. Simply bringing awareness to the current reality has the power to subtly change public opinion that may be based on rosier assumptions.

Getting Americans to understand current social and economic inequalities of opportunity would be an important accomplishment. Whether policies ultimately change to prevent them, however, will depend on whether the country as a whole decides that they no longer find them acceptable.

When it Comes to Colleges, Spare Us the Rankings (But Keep the Numbers)

Dan Fichtler, MPA


Arguably the most relied-upon college admissions advice for high school seniors comes not from a guidance counselor or an admissions officer or even a parent, but rather from the pages of a well-known magazine. The editors of U.S. News & World Report (USNWR) have just released the 2012 version of their annual college rankings (Editor’s note: Princeton #1!), and like in recent years, many soon-to-be applicants took another step towards higher education by consulting this publication to navigate the difficult decisions that lie ahead.

As has also become something of an autumn tradition, this year’s USNWR rankings were taken out to the woodshed by a wide variety of educators and pundits. The rankings have existed for nearly three decades now, and the charges laid against them are fairly predictable. Critics often cite the use of input-driven data (SAT scores and class rank of incoming students) rather than output-driven data (post-graduation salaries and percentages of alumni pursing or holding advanced degrees). Another common complaint is the ability of colleges and universities to manipulate data by changing their practices; that is, allocating resources towards those characteristics that the USNWR editors deem important, at the expense of the many other crucial elements of a college education. Anyone who has ever wondered why so many college courses are capped at the unusual level of 19 students, for example, can likely find an answer within the USNWR rankings formula.

But perhaps most objectionable is the idea that colleges and universities can be ranked in such a neat and simplistic way – or that they can be ranked at all. This criticism has more merit than any other that is regularly piled onto the USNWR editors (more on this point in a bit).

So how does USNWR determine these rankings? Well, it assigns each college and university an overall score, which is calculated via a relatively simple process. Data on a series of school characteristics are compiled, computed into common units, and summed, with different characteristics holding different weights. The schools are then ranked based upon their overall scores.

USNWR makes no attempt to hide its methodology[1], and yet anecdotal evidence suggests that very few high school seniors or their parents (or really anyone else for that matter) understand how the scores are calculated. And while an informal survey certainly cannot substitute for more rigorous hypothesis testing techniques, I sought to observe this anecdotal evidence. I asked about a dozen well-educated individuals to estimate the weight given to a school’s acceptance rate in the USNWR rankings. Answers ranged from a low of 8% to a high of 100%, with most falling in the range of 15-20%. The correct answer: 1.5%.

The table below provides the factors (and weights) used to determine the USNWR overall scores.

Methodology Used by U.S. News & World Report in its 2012 College Rankings[2]
Component	Weighting (out of 100%)
Undergraduate Academic Reputation	22.5%
Academic peer assessment	15%
High school counselor assessment	7.5%
Retention	20%
Six-year graduation rate	16%
Freshman retention rate	4%
Faculty Resources	20%
Average faculty salary (including benefits)	7%
Proportion of classes with fewer than 20 students	6%
Proportion of faculty with highest degree in their field	3%
Proportion of classes with 50 or more students	2%
Student-faculty ratio	1%
Proportion of faculty who are full-time employees	1%
Student Selectivity	15%
SAT and ACT scores of entering students	7.5%
Proportion of freshman graduating in top 10% of HS	6%
Acceptance rate	1.5%
Financial Resources	10%
Graduate Rate Performance	7.5%
Alumni Giving Rate	5%

Perhaps what appears to be systematic overestimation of the importance of acceptance rates comes from perceptions encouraged by the USNWR critics. Stories in the media that demonize elite universities for lowering their acceptance rates to game the rankings may lead readers to believe that this single variable plays an important role in the rankings formula. Of course, there are plenty of reasons to be concerned about ever lower acceptance rates. There are also, however, plenty of reasons why schools might seek to lower their acceptance rates, USNWR aside. To directly or indirectly attribute causal effects to USNWR for this trend without considering these other factors represents nothing more than lazy analysis.

As the critics know, it is not difficult to find flaws in this system, or at least to question the validity of the specific weights assigned to various factors. What the critics often fail to acknowledge, however, is the valuable service that the USNWR editors provide. That service is the pure provision of information in a market that has otherwise been difficult for consumers to navigate.

Choosing which colleges to apply to, and eventually which to attend, are important life decisions. Future careers, lifelong friends, and even spouses are discovered during these years for many individuals, which therefore raises the stakes on the importance of making good decisions. If we believe that high school students (and parents and counselors) are best served by having access to information on many characteristics of colleges and universities, then we must applaud those who make this information widely available and easy to process. That group includes not only USNWR, by the way, but also the editors of rival rankings systems, who created their rankings in part to rectify what they felt were flaws in the USNWR system.

The creation of new, widely circulated systems suggests that college rankings will not be disappearing anytime soon. Forbes and Washington Monthly have entered the rankings game in recent years, and the college rankings edition of USNWR continues to sell remarkably well. And despite the valid criticisms of the specific USNWR methodology, the larger question remains: can simple rankings of colleges and universities across many variables help consumers?

For example, is #12 Northwestern really an incrementally better university than #13 Johns Hopkins? And is #2 Amherst really an incrementally better liberal arts college than #3 Swarthmore? They surely are not – at least not categorically. Ranking schools on this type of continuous scale therefore makes very little sense. For some students, Northwestern is a better option than Johns Hopkins; for others, the opposite is true. The same goes for Amherst and Swarthmore.

So how do students make these decisions? They could use the wide array of data that USNWR puts forth, comparing schools on the characteristics that are most important to them, whether those are class size or graduation rate or academic reputation. Some students certainly do this. Many others, however, fall victim to the “rankings-as-gospel” syndrome. Swarthmore may be a better fit for their personality and interests, but they cannot get beyond the fact that Amherst is ranked higher, and a mismatch occurs. The solution to this dilemma is quite simple: remove the rankings, keep the numbers.

And so the critics are correct – USNWR seems to be at least partially to blame for mismatching and suboptimal decision-making. But USNWR is also at least partially responsible for the good decisions of those students who are able to look past simple rankings and delve deeper into the data. Since 1983, USNWR has provided crucial information to students in an easy-to-digest manner. For that, they deserve our (partial) thanks.

---

References

[1] See: http://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/articles/2011/09/12/how-us-news-calculates-the-college-rankings-2012
 

[2] Applies only to National Universities and National Liberal Arts Colleges.

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.

Islamophobia and the etymological roots of the King Hearings, Part III: The public policy implications of language use

Editor’s Note: This is the third of a three-part series on Islamophobia in America. Part I discusses the premises and implications of the King hearings. Part II examines the emerging semantics of Islam and Muslims in the West.  

Nazir Harb, MPA


With the death of bin Laden, the world faces another opportunity to re-evaluate status quo assumptions and modes of operation. However, this is also an important time to think critically about how we use language to describe the events occurring in the Middle East and the “War on Terror.” Obama was right to describe bin Laden not as a Muslim leader but as a mass murderer of Muslims—having orchestrated the killing of, according to several studies, x38 more Muslims than non-Muslims in his lifetime. But among bin Laden and al-Qaeda’s most insidious contributions to the targeting and vilification of Muslims everywhere is their malicious manipulation of Islam’s idioms, phrases, and its co-optation and distortion of sacred Quranic conceptions. Unfortunately, as I discussed last week, post-9/11 anti-Islamic sentiment led many to unwittingly adopt al-Qaedaists’ language and its corresponding ideology that perpetuates both the network’s self-portrayal as defenders of Islam and the notion that Islam is a geo-political entity rather than a world religion that is not only devoid of the terrorist organization’s political agenda but in fact contravenes it at every turn.

In short, I argue, language matters a lot—the way we talk about Islam, Muslims, and Arabs in the United States impacts people in the Middle East in real ways. Not only insofar as the United States is participating in a third major combat operation in a Muslim country—Libya—but also on a social and cultural level. The way English-language media describe events and people affects Arabic media and, critically, innocent lives are often lost in translation.

The adoption of English media norms by Arabic media
Research I conducted on English and Arabic media prior to 2011 indicated that certain politically-charged discourse items in Western English-language media ranging from “Islam” and “Muslim” to “terrorism,” “threat,” “violence,” or “fundamentalism” tended to readily go in and out of Western political discourse following crises where, whether true or not, Muslims or al-Qaeda were suspected of inciting or carrying out violent acts. After their respective frequencies would peak, these terms did not always decrease to pre-crisis levels but they generally experienced a period of significant decline until another event triggered them. However, the usage of these same discourse items in Arabic media, once becoming politically-charged in the context of a crisis situation (e.g. terrorist incident) and introduced into Arabic political discourse in popular media (Al-Jazeera, Al-Arabiyya, etc.), tended to escalate increasingly from that point onward with no abatement, and in many cases exceeded the limitations of charts and graphs over time.

Since 9/11, the use of terms relating “Islam” and “Muslims” to “terrorism” or “extremism” in Western English-language discourse has been steadily rising—by now there is a conflation of the words “Islamist” and “threat” such that “Islamist” has come to imply a threat in its own right. In Arab media there is a time lag as these terms creep into the Arabic language environment initially via translation and secondary-source references. As such, phrases that conflate “Islam” with words like “terror” (irhab), “terrorism” (irhabiyya), and “violence” (‘onf) had an average frequency of 8.27/year pre-9/11. After 9/11, the rate escalated rapidly, especially after the invasion of Afghanistan and the beginning of the Iraq war. There was another peak after January of this year with the onset of the Arab revolutions across the Middle East. On average, since 9/11, the conflation of Islam with terror and violence in Arab media has increased to the unprecedented level of 1,222.57/yr.

Why? What is the difference between the Arabic-language political environment and its English counterpart? Why might a post-crisis politically-charged word’s or phrase’s frequency not just linger on but continue to rapidly increase in the former environment but not the latter?

How do ideas become paradigmatic?
An April 2011 study by the Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging at University College London reported that new word associations form ideas in the mind by physically creating synaptic connections through the process of potentiation—a finding that challenges prior assumptions about the brain’s ability to learn new ideas after a certain age. This cerebral plasticity, the brain’s ability to learn and change, was found in adults over the age of 18. The Centre found that new connections are triggered by repeated novel sensory experiences, which include new combinations of words.

The fact that Arab media are repeating phrases that associate Islam with violent extremism and terrorism should concern U.S. policymakers. While al-Qaeda recruiting numbers remain very low in absolute terms, there is a correlation between new recruits and the increased incidence of new phrasings that cause neurological associations between the words “Islam” and “Muslim” with “violence,” “terrorism,” and “al-Qaeda”. Though U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East remains overwhelmingly the most commonly cited motivation for violent extremism, language plays an important role in individual and collective national identity formation in the Middle East. (Suleiman 2003) This factor to date has been largely ignored—at our peril.

While many argue that an integral part of the “War on Terror” is combating al-Qaeda’s narrative, it is not easy to come up with a counter-narrative when many do not understand the master narrative of the Arabic-speaking and, for that matter, non Arabic-speaking Muslim world, let alone its complicated, radical offshoots—or what socio-linguists would call a “restricted narrative,” i.e. the particular idiom of al-Qaeda and its affiliate networks that portends to re-appropriate Islam’s vocabulary such as “Ummah” (community) and Quranic spiritual concepts like “Jihad” (striving for self-improvement and closeness to God). Countering this narratology requires considerable expertise. Such a campaign may not be possible in the near future given the low levels of even the most basic Islamic literacy among average Americans, policymakers, and leaders in the “War on Terror” the world over. But we can help to change this by educating ourselves. And the first step can be as easy as how you spell the word “Muslim.”

Get involved! Please sign our petition to stop the targeting of American Muslims: http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/hearings/