Other Christians want to use the Supreme Courts decision as an opportunity to redouble their efforts in shaping the

culture. Ryan T. Anderson, a senior fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation, recently wrote that there is
urgent need for policy to ensure that the government never penalizes anyone for standing up for marriage. The
Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, the cultural-engagement entity of the Southern Baptist Convention,
issued a statement titled Here We Stand: An Evangelical Declaration on Marriage, which dissented from the
Obergefell decision and called on readers to [r]espect and pray for our governing authorities even as we work
through the democratic process to rebuild a culture of marriage. Pastor and blogger Denny Burk captured the
feelings of many conservative evangelicals post-Obergefell when he wrote, Although I am disappointed with this
decision, I remain confident that Christians will continue to bear witness to the truth about marriageeven if the
law of our land is now arrayed against us.
Burk and the ELRC hail from the Southern Baptist tradition, as did Jerry Falwell and Robert Grant, two of the early
figures in the Moral Majority.* Southern Baptistsand many other Protestant, evangelical Christiansview the
Benedict Option as an unappealing form of surrender, a disobedience of Jesus's command to go and make disciples
of all nations. A common refrain among culturally engaged Christians is the call to be counter-cultural, which
most often involves taking stances they understand to be politically unpopular but indispensable to the practice of
the faith. This case that the Benedict Option is actually anti-Biblical could be its kiss of death within these
communities.
But if the Benedict Option might be unappealing to culture warriors, it could have a revivifying effect on some
Christian communities, many of which find themselves exhausted by their constant effort to row against cultural
tides. In his 2013 article, Dreher talked about the Eagle River community outside of Anchorage, Alaska, a group of
evangelical-turned-Orthodox Christians who live together in the shadows of the Chugach Mountains. The heart of
the community is Monastery Drive, along which sit homes for approximately 75 families, schools, a residence for
single young adults, and St. John Orthodox Cathedral. Christian love can be expressed in very practical ways when
people are close by, archpriest Marc Dunaway told Dreher. Also, community relationships can help people rub off
their rough edges. This is necessary for spiritual growth.
Rough edges have always been part of the evangelical experience in America. For some, the solution has been to
fight back against the secular mores that govern the country. Others are now advocating strategic withdrawal.
Wesley Hill, a gay evangelical Christian and author who has written a book about his choice to remain celibate,
reflected on his blog: How is that Christians strategic withdrawal from mainstream culture and our commitment
to our own re-conversion will prove attractive to an indifferent, or hostile, pagan world?
Hill suggests that this re-conversion is possible, and that Christianity might emerge from a time of monastic
introspection and fortification to become a more dazzling force for good in the world. Growing up in an evangelical
community, I heard a lot of this kind of talk around the issue of abortion. Can we be so supportive as a community,
the thinking went, and so highly value the sanctity of life, that we make it almost unthinkable for a woman to choose
to have an abortion? The Benedict Option imagines that this kind of community is possible, after all. But it requires
withdrawal. American evangelicals have been on a trajectory of increased public engagement in recent decades, so
to change course would be challenging.
Drehers vision of religious separatism isnt unique to him; America was founded by people seeking exactly the
same kind of safe-harbor he now describes. The Mayflower was almost half-full with members of the English
Separatist Church, who were seeking to distance themselves, in more ways than one, from the insufficiently
Reformed Church of England. Rather than becoming a nation of Christian separatists, America became a pluralistic
democracy.
Other sects within Christendom have broken off, some entering into the public sphere and some circling ever tighter
around their own tribe. Even within evangelicalism, comprehensive political activism was a somewhat recent
development linked to the advent of the Moral Majority. Southern Baptists and other evangelicals have not always
been unequivocally opposed to abortion, and the Christian Leftalthough not as powerful a bloc as the Righthas
existed in some form since the days of the social gospel. Political involvement, it would seem, has been as varied in
Christianity as in any other religious persuasion.
Some Christians have criticized the Benedict Option for exhibiting a moral priggishness. David French, a columnist
for the National Review, wrote that "[i]n reality, Christian conservatives have barely begun to fight. Christians,

following the examples of the Apostles, should never retreat from the public square." The impact of Obergefell
remains to be seen in most Christian communities, and even if the Benedict Option is adopted by some, Christians in
America are not nearly well-coordinated enough to all agree to the same way forward. But for some, who have seen
a new Rome, the way forward leads back to Benedict.

There is plenty about GOP hopeful Donald Trump to which potential primary voters respond. Hes successful. Hes
plainspoken. At a time when politicians are historically unpopular, hes not a politician. And he has a great slogan.
That slogan resonates with his supporters, according to Republican pollster Frank Luntz, who ran a recent focus
group, the results of which were written about in Time. I used to sleep on my front porch with the door wide open,
and now everyone has deadbolts, one man told Luntz. I believe the best days of the country are behind us. Luntz
concluded that people see Trump as a real-deal fixer-upper, able to make repairs that others have bungled. We
know his goal is to make America great again, one woman astutely observed. Its on his hat.
It could be on your hat tooTrump has begun selling Make America Great Again merchandiseif you can find
one, that is. They have a tendency to sell out.
As Russell Berman pointed out in The Atlantic earlier this month, many white Americans these days are pessimistic
to the point of despair:white Americansand in particular those under 30 or nearing retirement agehave all but
given up on the American Dream. More than four out of five younger whites, and more than four out of five
respondents between the ages of 51 and 64 said The Dream is suffering.
No wonder Trumps message is so powerfulits a sugar pill coated with nostalgia. He is not promising to make
America great, hes promising to make it great again. But to what era does he intend to take the nation back? And
what would that look like, practically speaking?
The boundaries of Americas golden age are clear on one end and fuzzy on the other. Everyone agrees that the
midcentury boom times began after Allied soldiers returned in triumph from World War II. But when did they wane?
The economist Joe Stiglitz, in an article in Politico Magazine titled The Myth Of The American Golden Age, sets
the endpoint at 1980, a year until which the fortunes of the wealthy and the middle class rose together. Others put
the cut-off earlier, at the economic collapse of 1971 and the ensuring malaise. Regardless of when it ended, it would
not be unfair to use the 50s as shorthand for this now glamorized period of plenty, peace, and the kind of optimism
only plenty and peace can produce.
In 1950, America led the world in GDP per capita. Even by 1973, it had only sunk to number two. Jobs were so
plentiful that male employment peaked at over 84 percent. Unemployment, when it did strike, didnt last long.
Housing was cheap. Gas was cheap. Movies were cheap. If America was ever great, it was great in 1950, and one
can sympathize with a desire to recreate those economic conditions, if not the social ones.
Most of Trumps supporters (but not all) deserve some benefit of the doubt that when they look wistfully at the past,
they arent yearning for Jim Crow laws, Communist witch hunts, or an age before women could own credit cards.
Still, Trumps supporters might not appreciate what an economic return to the 50seven a 50s lacking overt
discrimination against women and political, racial, and sexual minoritieswould entail. The 50 were, as Stiglitz
puts it, a time of war-induced solidarity when the government kept the playing field level. In other words, they
were a time of Big Government. And Big Labor: As Alternet reports, By 1953, more than one out of three
American workers were members of private sector unions. That means there was a union member in nearly every
family.
Then theres the matter of taxes. Though a conservative writer at Bloomberg View scoffs at the oft-cited statistic that
the top marginal tax rate in the 50s was an astounding 91 percent, even she admits that the Internal Revenue
Service reckoned that the effective rate of tax in 1954 for top earners was actually 70 percentvastly higher than it
is today. Indeed, for most of the past 100 years, tax rates have been much higher than they are now, including during
some boom times.

If bigger government, stronger unions, and higher taxes on the rich are what it takes to make America great again,
Republican primary voters might be surprised to learn that the candidate who truly shares their values is not Donald
Trump, but Bernie Sanders.

The New York Times David Leonhardt recently published the second installment of his rather unorthodox collegerankings system. Washington Monthly has just released the 2015 edition of its own breed of unconventional
rankings, too. As with the nations household rankersThe Princeton Review and U.S. News and World Report
and, now, the Obama administrations much-anticipated College Scorecard database, these indexes can be quite
consequential in the higher-education world. Stakes are especially high at a time when colleges are under public
scrutiny for problems ranging from soaring tuition to mission creep.
One might argue that the ways in which Washington Monthly and The Upshot (The Times news-by-the-numbers
subsite) crunch the data make their scoring systems a lot more socially responsible than those of their competitors.
They probably wouldnt be the go-to resources for, say, an economically well-off aspiring business major whos
strictly narrowed his college-selection criteria down to things like prestige, a well-equipped gym, and study-abroad
opportunities in Japan. Rather, the students whod likely find more benefit from these rankings may not even have
the know-how to prioritize these kinds of details, let alone have the wherewithal to pursue them. Or they might have
bigger-picture goals in mind.
In that sense, these indices envision themselves as altruistic tools that hold colleges accountable for the degree to
which they act as conduits of opportunity. College administrators wouldnt phrase it this way, Leonhardt wrote,
yet [the ones with low economic diversity] are essentially deciding that economic diversity matters less than other
prioritieslike sports teams, new buildings, and some low-enrollment academic programs.
Leonhardts index differs from The Washington Monthlys national-universities guide in some key ways. The
formers listing is somewhat exclusive to elite, high-performing schools (those where 75 percent of students
graduate within five years), while the latter looks at three categories, including the percentage of Pell grant
recipients enrolled, research prowess, and students involvement or pursuit of public service. In a blog post last year,
the Monthly writer Ed Kilgore highlighted Leonhardts focus on high-performing schools, comparing what was then
his brand-new index to the magazines 2014 Affordable Elites subcategory. Perhaps in response, Leonhardt
tweaked his algorithm this year, increasing the 75-percent graduation-rate cutoff from four to five years and
effectively expanding the list to include more public universities.
Partly as a result of Leonhardts adjustment, the two indices have one particularly striking commonality this year:
they each have the University of California holding a huge proportion of the top spots. Six of The Upshots top 10
are UC schools (none of which even made it onto the list last year because of the graduation-rate criterion), while
UC campuses occupy four of the top 10 spots on the Monthlys listing of national universities. Notably, the three UC
schools that got top rankings in both listsits flagship Berkeley campus, San Diego, and UCLAare also the
systems most selective.
Both news outlets give kudos to the University of California for focusing on achievement that matters. Despite
excelling in high-school classes and on the SAT, relatively few poor students who perform well academically apply
to and succeed in selective colleges. This is, as Leonhardt has noted, as much of an economic dilemma for society at
large as it is an injustice for the individuals affecteda revelation that has prompted initiatives to ramp up incomebased equality at colleges.
The bent toward affluent students at selective colleges, including those with notably hefty endowments, has
remained one of American higher educations most egregious shortcomings. For example, the University of Virginia,
a public institution, has received widespread criticism for not doing enough to recruit economically disadvantaged
students, despite its $213,000 per-student endowment and creation of diversity-focused administrative initiatives.
This year, it placed 102nd out of 179 on The Upshots index, sandwiched between other elite schools known for
being cost-prohibitive, such as Bryn Mawr and Notre Dame. (Interestingly, it was ranked 63rd out of 279 on the

Monthlys list.) The socioeconomic status quo in higher ed helps explain why upward mobility, as Leonhardt wrote
last year, has become all but a facade in a country thats supposed to be a place where dreams come true.
The University of Californias prominence this year is in many ways a turnaround story. The system has famously
battled budget cuts, labor issues, and relatively slow completion rates, while its economic-diversity endeavors have,
arguably, been hampered by Californias controversial two-decade ban on race-based affirmative action. Yet the two
new rankings suggest that the systems attempts to keep tuition on the low side, enroll community-college transfers,
and target recruitment at families with limited means are paying off. Latinos are now the fastest growing and
second-largest ethnic group admitted to the UC system, making up close to three in 10 of last years freshmen class.
While acknowledging the volatility of the nations higher-education landscape, Leonhards report summarizing this
years rankings was titled Californias Upward-Mobility Machine.
Still, there are caveats to the UC systems victory this year. For one, the schools in large part owe their high rankings
to the states relatively idiosyncratic immigrant population, which as a whole tends to be high-achieving compared
to its counterparts elsewhere in the country. And when broken down, the scores for the Monthlys top-ranked UC
schools vary greatly depending on the category. For most of the guides leading UC campuses, and at UC Berkeley
in particular, their prominence in the research sector seems to be the key reason why theyre so high up on the
overall list; their social mobility scores are much less remarkable. And the University of Californias distinction
this year is, ultimately, tenuous: Amid state-funding reductions, California has been enrolling out-of-state students at
higher rates at the expense of in-state ones. California, rather than making another push to bring college to the
masses, Leonhardt wrote, is taking small steps in reverse.
A less obvious caveat of the University of Californias triumph doesnt have much of anything to do with the
rankings other than a criticism theyre likely to receive. The highly selective UC campuses are known, sometimes
bitterly, to serve especially disproportionate numbers of Asian students; Asians famously make up half of the
undergraduates at UC Irvine, for example, which was No. 1 on Leonhardts list. By highlighting economic diversity
in lieu of its race-based cousin, this years Upshot and Washington Monthly rankings may support arguments that
the states ban on race-blind admissions discriminations has shortchanged blacks and Latinos in favor of whites and
Asians. While that may very well be true, the rankings offer an opportunity to highlight nuances to the model
minority stereotype and the ways in which it hinders the economic equality education.
The California-based Campaign for College Opportunity, which earlier this year found low achievement levels for
both Latinos and blacks in the states colleges and universities, recently released a report highlighting the ways in
which the model minority stereotype undermines opportunity in postsecondary education. Traditionally, Asians
have been grouped with Pacific Islanders and Native Hawaiians in official analyses, including the census, which
until recently didnt even disaggregate the data. Great diversity exists not only across these broad demographic
categories but also within them, both in terms of culture and educational attainment. The report found that, despite
boasting top spots on the two rankings, California is struggling to provide opportunity to large contingents of its
fastest-growing race demographicone that includes 48 ethnicities of widely varying achievement levels.
Asian ethnic groups traditionally associated with achievement are indeed doing well. While 40 percent of whites in
California 25 and older have a bachelors degree or higher, the rate for Asian Americans, on average, is higher
roughly 50 percent. That statistic is bolstered by ethnic groups such as Indians and Chinese, 70 percent and 52
percent of whom have four-year degrees, respectively. Other Asian ethnicities, however, account for some of the
lowest higher-education attainment in California, comparable to that of Latinos and lower than that of blacks:
Laotians (10 percent), Hmong (13 percent), and Cambodian (16 percent). Children belonging to the latter two ethnic
groups, according to the campaigns report, are living in poverty at slightly higher rates than their black and Latino
counterparts.
Meanwhile, just 15 percent of adults in California who identify as Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islanderwho are
often lumped together with Asians despite coming from completely disparate backgrounds and geographical regions
have bachelors degrees. That includes just 12 percent of Samoans and Chamorros, each. Native Hawaiian and
Pacific Islander students also have lower-than-average graduation rates at Californias public postsecondary
institutions, including its community colleges, state universities, or UC schools.
These caveats may have a small bearing on the country as a whole and, ultimately, are all but impossible to factor
into any national, comprehensive scoring system. Still, they demonstrate why its important not only scrutinize the

findings of status-quo college rankings but also those that are more reform-oriented. Theyre also a reminder, more
generally, of the nuances that muddy perceptions of college attainment from the perspective of race. The
educational needs of the most underrepresented and disadvantaged Asian Americans and NHPIs can be overlooked
and exacerbated when policymakers and college leaders base important decisions on data that only capture the
characteristics of these communities as a whole, the report says.
This is true in the K-12 sector as well. In recent deliberations over a rewrite to No Child Left Behind, Congress
rejected a proposal that wouldve required schools to report disaggregated data on Asian Americans and Pacific
Islanders. Sure, there are [Asian American and Pacific Islander] students who reinforce stereotypes, with good
grades and great jobs, wrote Peter Keo, a research associate at NYUs Metropolitan Center for Research on Equity
and the Transformation of Schools and the son of Cambodian political refugees, in an Education Week op-ed
criticizing the move. But there is an equally strong, and growing, counter narrative that rarely sees the light of day

The existence of a growing gap in longevity between the rich and the poor is clearer than ever: Between 1930 and
1960, men at the top of the economic ladder saw an eight-year increase in life expectancy, while men at the bottom
saw virtually no change. Thats just one finding from the National Academy of Science, which has documented how
the growing inequality of wealth and income in the U.S. has been accompanied by, and perhaps is actually causing,
an increasing gap in life expectancy between the wealthy and the working class.
For men born in 1930 who lived in the bottom 20 percent of income distribution, life expectancy at age 50 was 76.6
years; for those born in 1960, it was mostly unchanged at 76.1. For men who lived in the top 20 percent of the
income distribution, it was a different story: Their respective life expectancy numbers jumped from 81.7 to 88.8. (A
similar gap grew between white and black people, and the trends for women were about the same, but not as
dramatic.)
Certainly, retirement has become more democratic since Social Security was passed in 1935, guaranteeing a stable
income to all retired Americans. And cleaner air, cleaner water, and anti-smoking campaigns have greatly increased
life expectancy. But while the National Academys research doesnt establish causal links, it demonstrates an
insidious new form of inequality that has serious implications for retirement securityincluding Medicare, Social
Security, and pensionsand long-term care.
This gap is not just about overall longevityits about the quality of life the elderly will have at the end of their
days. Today, the wealthy live longer, and additionally tend to have well-educated children who can navigate healthinsurance paperwork and help advocate and pay for better health care.
Recently, a friend who is an expert in health-care policy and the regulation of care work wrote to me saying that she
is dealing with end-of-life care for her father. She asked, How do people with fewer resources (of all kinds) manage
this? She and her sister had two PhDs between them, yet all of the medical, financial, and legal details have taken
her nearly to the limits of my intellectual capacity My heart goes out to families with fewer resources and less
familiarity with US social policy than I have!
My friend could not have summarized the research better. The growing class, education, and racial gaps in longevity
go along with corresponding gaps in quality of end-of-life care. People with savvy children tend to live longer and
die in the presence of loved ones. Those who attended college are about 1.5 times as likely to choose hospice care
for their parents than those who never went. And people who live in neighborhoods with a higher median income
were more likely to use hospice than people from lower socioeconomic backgrounds.
The idea that everyone should work longer since everyone is living longer is one used to justify policy proposals
such as cutting Social Security benefits. But that idea is a misleading oversimplification.
The Retirement Equity Lab at The New School (a project I direct) has pointed out that the growing class and racial
gaps have dire implications for retirement policies. A cut to Social Security benefitswhich raising the retirement
age, an oft-suggested proposal, essentially iswould induce people without means to work in old age. This would

produce an unseemly form of inequality: The people who live the longest will be able to retire, and the people who
have to work longer will be the same people who are losing at longevity. The poorer will work and the richer will
play in old age, a class divide weve already seen in the 19th and early 20th centuries. If post-work benefits are not
shored up, this disparity will only get worse.

Last month, the U.K. office of the accounting firm Ernst & Young announced that, starting next year, it will no
longer require new hires to have a college degree. Candidates for jobs at EYs U.K. office used to have to meet the
grade baseline of a B average in college, but will soon be evaluated instead based on the results of a series of preemployment tests.
EY said in a statement that the decision came after an internal 18-month study of 400 employees found little
evidence that academic success was correlated with how well new hires performed on the job. Further, EY believes
that removing these grade requirements will widen their candidate pool: Transforming our recruitment process will
open up opportunities for talented individuals regardless of their background and provide greater access to the
profession, said Maggie Stillwell, EYs managing partner for talent in the U.K.
Degrees and good grades have long been proxies for the kind of cognitive skills required for jobs in knowledge
industries. But many say that these credentials dont meaningfully predict job performance, and companies are
starting to catch onto that. There is a long literature in psychology showing that job performance and college grades
are poorly related, says Peter Cappelli, a professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania who
studies hiring and the American workplace. It is remarkable how frequently companies rely on hiring criteria for
which there is no evidence of it working.
Americas tech sector has been the most outspoken about the irrelevance of degrees and grades when it comes to
hiring: Laszlo Bock, Googles senior vice president of people operations, has been quoted as saying that while good
grades dont hurt, they're worthless as a criteria for hiring. The company administers sample-work teststhe best
predictor of success on the job, writes Bockand he says that theyre less concerned about grades and transcripts
and more interested in how you think. One study found that pre-employment skill testing results in employees with
significantly higher attendance rates and reduces turnover.
Beyond grade requirements, another concern with credentialism is that it might exacerbate inequality. Researchers
have found that top firms often prefer students from elite institutions because they believe that this nets them the
best candidatesbut they fail to recognize that such practices favors graduates from the most affluent
backgrounds. Relying on grades is something that companies do to make themselves feel that they are getting
elites, says Cappelli.
At least two companies are building their business models around this gap in the hiring process, and sell their
services to companies seeking new employees. Gild, a recruiting startup in San Francisco, deploys robots and fellow
developers to gauge a prospective programmers coding skills. And HireArt, a startup based in New York, develops
custom pre-employment skill tests for companies to assess their talent pool.
We've found that traditional hiring, which is based primarily on credentials, is a terrible approach for junior roles,"
says Nick Sedlet, the co-founder of HireArt. The labor market is changing much faster than colleges can keep up.
Cappelli points to the IT company CapGemini, which has taken this logic one step further. They are actually
recruiting IT candidates who have not been to college, training them and then also sending them part-time to college
to get IT degrees. The reason, they say, is because they get cheaper workers who stay longer, and the best ones are
loyal and really good, explains Cappelli.
For the time being, credentialism remains the norm. As Bill Gates remarked earlier this year, attending college is
still a much surer path to success than not going. Even while EYs U.K. branch is changing, things in America are
remaining the same. In the U.S., says Dan Black, the director recruiting at EY Americas, we take a holistic

approach at hiring students candidates, and the grade requirements removed by the U.K. firm are not applicable to
our hiring process.

While money might not be the single most critical ingredient in child rearing, the ability to provide basics such as
food, shelter, healthcare, and education can make a significant difference in a childs overall well being. And a new
paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research finds that increased cash flow might be especially helpful
when it comes to caring for children facing emotional or behavioral obstacles.
In 2011 7.5 percent of 6 to 11-year-olds were on prescription medication for emotional and behavioral problems
such as ADHD, anxiety, and depression according to the paper. But that figure was 9.2 percent for children whose
families fell below the poverty line
The studys authors, Randall Akee of UCLA, Emilia Simeonova of Johns Hopkins, and E. Jane Costello and William
Copeland of Duke, suggest that childrens well being may improve along with household income. In order to
investigate the impact of an increase in household incomewhile omitting the positive impact that a change in
career or education among parents might playthe study took a look at unearned income. Researchers looked at
Native American families who started receiving an average annual payment of $4,000 per adult tribe member after a
casino opened on tribal land. Prior to the casino opening, the average income of these households was $22,145. As a
control group, they also included non Native American families who didnt benefit from the new casino. They
interviewed parents and children annually, from around the age of 9 until kids were 16 years old. They then followed
up with the kids periodically to see how they were doing in adulthood.
They found that after casino payments started arriving, children who had displayed emotional or behavioral
problems started showing significant improvements. Both conscientiousness and agreeableness increased
significantly, as measured by their responses to questionnaires and personality assessments. The less favorable trait
of neuroticism, (which they describe as a chronic level of emotional instability that can lead to psychological
distress) also saw a slight uptick, but it wasnt statistically significant.
These shifts may take place in part because of the positive effect that more money can have on parents. Increased
household income can decrease individual and marital stress, lower reported drug and alcohol usage, and increase
parental supervision and involvement.
That last point may be a key to understanding why an increase in household income can boost the overall health of
kids. The financial health of a household impacts children in many ways. There are obvious ones, like the ability to
put food on the table and to provide safe, clean housing. But household earnings also play a role in how parents
invest in their children. Parents with more income can often afford to give their children better educational
opportunities, they can pay for extracurricular activities, they can move to better neighborhoods, and they can spend
more quality time with their kids. For example, additional income sometimes means that a parent can reduce work
hours in order to care for children. Hourly workers can take on fewer shifts, or be more selective about employment,
choosing schedules that coincide with school hours, so that they can spend time with children after school. These
investments are especially important for children who were already struggling with emotional or behavioral
problems. In the study, families who received casino cash reported better parent-child relationships, and that was
especially the case in households where children had struggled with emotional and behavioral problems in the past.
When researchers followed up with these children at age 25, they found that those who had benefited from the boost
in household income as children went further in school. And they were more likely to hold down a full-time job.
While the findings arent revolutionary, they do show that even a small, consistent boost in household income can
have important and long-term effects on children, allowing them to increase their chances for upward mobility, and a
better life.

In December 1966, Leroy Powell of Austin, Texas, was convicted of public intoxication and fined $20 in a
municipal court. Powell appealed his conviction to Travis County court, where his lawyer argued that he suffered
from the disease of chronic alcoholism. Powells public display of inebriation therefore was not of his own
volition, his lawyer argued, making the fine a form of cruel and unusual punishment. A psychiatrist concurred,
testifying that Powell was powerless not to drink.
Then Powell took the stand. On the morning of his trial, his lawyer handed him a drink, presumably to stave off
morning tremors. The prosecutor asked him about that drink:
Q: You took that one [drink] at eight oclock [a.m.] because you wanted to drink?...And you knew that if you drank
it, you could keep on drinking and get drunk?
A: Well, I was supposed to be here on trial, and I didnt take but that one drink.
Q: You knew you had to be here this afternoon, but this morning you took one drink and then you knew that you
couldnt afford to drink anymore and come to court; is that right?
A: Yes, sir, thats right.
The judge let stand Powells conviction for public intoxication.
Two years later, the Supreme Court affirmed the constitutionality of punishment for public intoxication, rejecting the
idea that chronic alcoholics suffer from such an irresistible compulsion to drink and to get drunk in public that
they are utterly unable to control their performance.
Now, fast-forward almost half a century to the laboratory of Carl Hart, a neuroscientist at Columbia University, who
has been showing that cocaine and methamphetamine addicts have a lot in common with Powell. When Harts
subjects are given a good enough reason to refuse drugsin this case, cashthey do so too.
The basic experiment goes like this. Hart recruits addicts who have no interest in quitting but who are willing to stay
in a hospital research ward for two weeks for testing. Each day, Hart offers them a sample dose of either crack
cocaine or methamphetamine, depending upon the drug they use regularly. Later in the day, they are given a choice
between the same amount of drugs, a voucher for $5 of store merchandise, or $5 cash. They collect their reward
when theyre discharged two weeks later.
More often than not, subjects choose the $5 voucher or cash over the drug, except that, when offered a higher dose,
they go for the drug. But when Hart ups the value of the reward to $20, addicts chose the money every time.
In his new book, , Hart reports that he was surprised by his findings. Wasnt addiction a dopamine-driven
compulsion that hijacked the brain and took control of the will? he asks. As a graduate student Hart was taught
that. It's understood that recovered addicts eschew substances for fear that even a small amount could set off an
irresistible craving for more.
Indeed, this has been conventional wisdom in research circles for at least the past two decades. Many of Harts
colleagues who teach this support their claim with brain scans showing the addicts reward pathways ablaze with
neural activation. But studies going back to the 1960s show that many people addicted to all kinds of drugs
nicotine, alcohol, cocaine, heroin, methamphetamines can stop or modify their use in response to rewards or
sanctions.
This means that the neural changes that occur in the brains of addicts do not necessarily disable their capacity to
respond to rewards. Leroy Powell had surely experienced alcohol-induced brain changes over years of drinking, but
they did not keep him from making a choice on the morning of his trial. Harts subjects loved cocaine, but they
loved cash even more.
It is certainly true that when people have an intense urge to use, resisting is very, very hard. Yet theres room for
deliberate action in the form of self-binding, a practice by which addicts can erect obstacles between themselves
and their drugs. Examples include avoiding people, places, or things associated with drug use; directly depositing

paychecks or tearing up ATM cards to keep ready (drug) cash out of ones pockets; or avoiding boredom, a common
source of vulnerability to drug use.
The decision to self-bind is made during calmer moments when addicts are not in withdrawal or experiencing strong
desire to use. And addicts have many of these moments; as a rule, they do not spend all their time nodding out or in
a frenzy to obtain more drugs.
No one would choose the misery that comes with excessive use. Ive never come across a single person that was
addicted that wanted to be addicted, says neuroscientist Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug
Abuse and an enthusiastic booster of the brain-driven model of addiction. It is true, drug users dont choose to
become addicted any more than consumers of high calorie foods choose to become overweight. But addiction and
poundage is not what they are choosing: what they seek is momentary gratification or reliefa decision that is
rational in the short-term but irrational in the long-term.
A typical trajectory goes something like this. In the early phase of addiction, using drugs and alcohol can simply be
fun; or it can be a form of self-medication that quells persistent self-loathing, anxiety, alienation, and loneliness.
Meanwhile once-rewarding activities, such as relationships, work, or family, decline in value. The attraction of the
drug starts to fade as the troubles accruebut the drug retains its allure because it blunts mental pain, suppresses
withdrawal symptoms, and douses craving.
Eventually, addicts find themselves torn between reasons to use and reasons not to. Sometimes a spasm of selfreproach (this is not who I am; Im hurting my family, my reputation is at risk) tips the balance toward
quitting. Novelist and junkie William S. Burroughs calls this the naked lunch experience, a frozen moment when
everyone sees what is on the end of every fork.
In short, every addict has reasons to begin using, reasons to continue, and reasons to quit. To act on a reason is to
choose. To make good choices requires the presence of meaningful alternatives. And making a series of good
choices leads to achievementsjobs, relationships, reputations. These give a person something meaningful to lose,
another reason in itself to steer away from bad choices.
In his book, Hart uses his own story to breathe life into what may sound like a sterile lesson in behavioral
economics. He grew up in the 70s in the benighted Carol City in south Florida, facing poverty, racism, domestic
violence, bad schools, guns, and drugs. Hart himself stole and used drugs (though he was never addicted) and
peddled marijuana. Yet he ended up thriving due to the many alternatives to drugs in his life. He calls these
competing reinforcershigh school sports, educational opportunities, and mentors. Hart wants all young people
raised in despairing circumstances to have those too.
Combating social ills on such a grand stage may be a pipe dream. But, in the realm of recovery from alcohol and
drugs, the principle of competing reinforcers has been scaled down to size and is being replicated across the country.
Take HOPE (Hawaii Opportunity for Probation Enforcement), a jail diversion program in which addict-offenders are
subject to short periods of detention if they fail drug tests., but receive a clean corrections record if they complete
the year-long program. One year after enrollment, HOPE participants were 55 percent less likely to be arrested for a
new crime and 53 percent less likely to have had their probation revoked than those in a control group.
Hart draws attention to how progressive rehab programs use rewards to encourage completion of job training and
attendance at treatment or Alcoholics Anonymous or Narcotics Anonymous meetings, and so on. Consequences,
rather than rewards, or sticks, rather than carrots, can work too. When at risk of losing their licenses, addicted
physicians show impressive rates of recovery. When they come under the surveillance of their state medical boards
and are subject to random urine testing, unannounced workplace visits, and frequent employer evaluations, 70 to 90
percent are employed with their licenses intact five years later.
Hart believes that both carrots and sticks, when necessary, should be used far more frequently and creatively in the
management of addiction.
As Hart says in his book, Severe addiction may narrow peoples focus and reduce their ability to take pleasure in
non-drug experiences, but it does not turn them into people who cannot react to a variety of incentives. Although
addictions are hard to break, it is most useful to view the potential for overcoming them through the lens of choice.

Its not a matter of just saying norecovery requires far more grit and conviction than thatbut it is very much a
matter of regarding addicts as people who can rationally choose to use opportunities to their advantage, and working
to provide those opportunities.

Those considered successful in America seem, at least superficially, to cover a fairly broad spectrum: the business
entrepreneur, the pop star, the professional athlete, perhaps a surgeon. Yet while their success derives from very
different activities, one feature they all share in common is wealth. To be successful in America means to be rich,
and much of our culture is monomaniacally focused on getting rich.
There is one major subset of Americans for whom this is not the case, who have not put making money at the center
of their lives: service members. And it shows: Many retired service members are not doing well once they enter the
private sector. As former Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said at a Brookings Institution event last month,
If you go into the military at age 18versus an identical person who stays in the private sector and takes a private
sector job10 years later, if you leave the military, your skills and wages are probably not going to be as quite as
high on average as the private-sector person. Living as we do in a climate where to say anything that could be
vaguely construed as anti-troop is anathema, his remarks were quite controversial.
To give some context, the subject of the Brookings event was defense spending and its economic impacts, and
Bernankes comments were referring to the cost of maintaining a 1.4 million-person militarywhich he believes
could be offset by better training service members to enter the workforce once they leave the military. In making his
case, Bernanke specifically referenced the average unemployment rate of 7 percent for vets returning to the private
sector, higher than the national average of 5.3 percent. If veterans were better able to contribute to the general
economy once they separated from the service, America could more efficiently maintain a large military. The case
that Bernanke is making might seem cold and removed, but its a characteristically unsentimental argument coming
as it does from one of the nations top economists.
Predictably, Bernankes statements miffed some veterans groups. Fred Wellman, 22-year Army veteran and CEO of
veteran-advocacy group ScoutComms commented to Foreign Policy, I am not sure where Mr. Bernanke got his
information, but the current numbers just dont reflect saying military service does not help you succeed in the
private sector. The most current surveys show that veterans are far more likely to be employed than non-veterans
and earn higher median incomes in those jobs. Robert L. Gordon III, retired Army colonel and current head of the
veteran-advocacy group Got Your 6, wrote in the Huffington Post that Bernankes statements add to the
misconception that veterans are broken heroes, a myth belied by the fact that veterans vote, volunteer, and help
[their] neighbors at higher rates than their civilian counterparts. Gordon also pointed out that, according to the
Bureau of Labor Statistics, unemployment among all veterans over 18 is actually lower than the national average.
(The discrepancy here is explained by the fact that Bernanke's numbers measure unemployment for post-9/11
veterans, whereas Wellman and Gordon are referring to all veterans, including those who served in Vietnam and
World War II.)
The back and forth with facts and figures is interesting, but one cant help but feel that something fundamental is
missing from the conversation. The military isnt solely a jobs program, or a jobs-training program, and for many it
is that disconnect from the marketplace that is the strength and appeal of military service.
This was certainly the case in my own experience enlisting as an infantry soldier in the Army, though it wasnt until
after I separated from the military that I really was able to fully suss out the reasons I had joined. When friends
would ask why I joined, I would usually struggle to come up with a response that they would understand, whether it
was a family history of service or the GI Bill, before eventually asking a question of my own: Would your
coworkers die for you? Intense, to be sure, but the question illuminates the different mental and moral frameworks
we were operating under. I joined the infantry specifically because I wanted a role in the military that didnt have a
civilian counterpart (unlike, say, becoming a medic or cook) precisely because I wanted to experience the intensity
of purpose and camaraderie that simply doesnt exist within the framework of our civilian economy. I wanted to
serve my country, but I wanted to serve it in a way that placed me outside the rationale of neoliberal consumerism.

CUNY Anthropology and Geography professor David Harvey, perhaps the preeminent scholar of neoliberalism
today, describes our current socio-economic system in his book A Brief History of Neoliberalism as in short, the
financialization of everything. Under the pretext of advancing the cause of individual freedom, market forces
spread and commodifyor transform goods and services into salable itemsin an effort to expand the market. The
concrete examples that spring to mind are for-profit prisons, hospitals, and schools. But the process is sophisticated
enough to incorporate all sorts of things not traditionally adorned with For Sale signs. Companies have attempted
to patentand in some cases succeededthings like seeds, human genetic material, and the human genome in the
last decade. Product placement in movies, and its Fourth Estate equivalent of sponsored content, has blurred the line
between art and commercials, journalism and advertising. Even our relationships, mitigated through the marketized
filter of dating aps or online services, have been commodified. As Michael J. Sandel wrote for The Atlantic in 2012,
Today, the logic of buying and selling no longer applies to material goods alone. It increasingly governs the whole
of life.
There arent many opportunities to escape the dictates and demands of the neoliberalism. And thats one of the
problems it presents: homogeneity. Its an ironic diagnosis for an economic and social system nominally predicated
upon servicing peoples desires. Marketization can give you anything you want, as long as it has a price tag. The
expectation that all things must be brought to market, or else cease to exist, was described by David Harvey as
neoliberalisms valuing market exchange as an ethic in itself, capable of acting as a guide to all human action, and
substituting for all previously held ethical beliefs.
Psychologist Paul Verhaeghe describes the qualities of one adrift in a totally transactional society as being
superficial, manipulative, risk-averse, and childish. He writes, This description is, of course, a caricature taken to
extremes. Nevertheless, the financial crisis illustrated at a macro-social level (for example, in the conflicts between
eurozone countries) what a neoliberal meritocracy does to people. Solidarity becomes an expensive luxury and
makes way for temporary alliances, the main preoccupation always being to extract more profit from the situation
than your competition. Social ties with colleagues weaken, as does emotional commitment to the enterprise or
organisation. All relations become transactional, and the atomized self a nodule in an unbroken loop of production
and consumption.
In the pursuit of such a dry, almost infantilizing, cultivation of banal desire, certain human needs get swept under the
rug. To imagine what might be missing from the neoliberal mindset, it might help to harken back to a pre-modern
description of the self and its needs. In his Republic, Plato divides the conscious self into three parts: logistikon,
thumos, and epithymetikon. These are usually translated as something like the logical, the spirited, and the
appetitive. To describe the conscious self, Plato uses the metaphor of a chariot pulled by the stallions of spirit and
appetite, but controlled under the reign of logic. Epithymetikon, or the appetites, Plato associated with carnal
pleasures and moneymaking. Thumos, the spirit, is more akin to a powerful willfulness, a brute drive, a vital energy,
or even a rage, grief, or horror. Philosopher Allan Bloom called it the central natural passion in mens souls.
Without thumos and logic working in tandem, Plato warned, the self would be completely lost to the appetites.
Critics of neoliberalism often make the charge that its sort of an institutionalized avarice (who can forget Gordon
Gekkos infamous greed is good speech in the movie Wall Street?), that Platos chariot is being pulled by the
single horse of the appetites while the higher spirit languishes. When someone says that they joined the military out
of patriotic duty, its an indication that theyre feeding their thumos, the strength of will that allows them to desire
experiences outside of their own immediate self-interest. Theyre becoming, at least in Platonic terms, more
completely human.
Simply put, military service is one of the few remaining social experiences one can have where the goal isnt to
maximize shareholder value. This isnt to say that everyone in civilian occupations is driven solely by rational
economic expediencyjust that the military operates under an entirely different set of assumptions. Instead of being
in unspoken competition with your coworkers, youre expected to be willing to lay down your life for them.
Loyalty is usually listed first among the Army Values, and is a far cry from the legalistic obligations of the
marketplace. As the French mystical philosopher Simone Weil wrote, professional loyalty becomes merely a form
of commercial honestyBut honesty is not the same as loyalty. A wide distance separates these two virtues. Values
like loyalty and honor are codified within a formal hierarchical military structure and celebrated in ceremony. The
night that I graduated Advanced Individual Training to become an infantryman was capped with the crucible of a
long grueling road march and a torch-lit ceremony in which my drill sergeant somberly explained that he would lay
down his life for me. A bit different from your average promotion office party, and maybe too intense for some. But

in exchange for agreeing to literally give your all, youre able to achieve profoundly deep connections to the people
around you. And your basic material needs are taken care of: food, clothing, medical care, and shelter. Veterans only
become homeless after they return home.
In Bernankes appearance at the Brookings event, he specifically accused the Army of advertising, for making it
appear as if there are direct professional benefits for having served when he doubts that there are. And maybe hes
right. Maybe instead of communicating within the lexicon of market values and recruiting by appealing to selfinterest or later professional success, the military should go in the completely opposite direction and appeal to the
starved thumos. Join the Army: Money only distracts you from Honor.

A new report released Thursday provides a detailed look at the graduation rates of low-income college students. At
many colleges, low-income students graduate at much lower rates than their high-income peers.
At the University of Missouri-Kansas City, only 35 percent of Pell grant recipients graduate college, a rate that is
more than 20 percentage points lower than that of their wealthier peers. And at St. Andrews, a liberal arts college in
Laurinburg, North Carolina, only 13 percent of Pell grant recipients graduate, more than 50 percentage points less
than students who dont receive the grants.
The study found 51 percent of Pell students graduate nationwide, compared to 65 percent of non-Pell students. The
average gap between wealthy and poor students at the same schools is much smaller: an average of 5.7 percentage
points. Thats because many Pell students attend schools with low graduation rates. (You can now look up whether
poor students are graduating at the same rate as their classmates in ProPublicas newly updated interactive database,
Debt by Degrees.)
Ben Miller, the senior director for postsecondary education at the Center for American Progress, said that schools
with large graduation gaps deserve greater scrutiny.
Colleges have responsibility to ensure that the students they enroll are well served, said Miller. If youre going to
enroll someone, you should do the absolute best you can to graduate them, or else dont take their money.
The new report comes on the heels of recently released federal education data that has brought new focus on how
low-income students fare at college, including how much federal debt they take on and how much they earn after
graduation. The graduation rates of low-income students were not included in that data.
The group behind the new report, the Education Trust, collected the graduation rates of Pell grant recipients
typically students whose families make less than $30,000 a year for a selection of more than 1,000 colleges
across the country.
A spokesman for University of Missouri-Kansas City said many of their students are low-income and that the school
is working to do better. We are not satisfied with that gap, said John Martellaro. We are investing more resources
in our student success programs in an effort to narrow that gap. (Read their full statement.)
St. Andrews did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
At more than a third of the colleges studied, schools were able to serve their Pell students almost as well as non-Pell
students, with a gap of less than 3 percentage points.
Other schools have managed to graduate Pell students at an even higher rate than their non-Pell peers. According to
the new data, nearly 90 percent of Pell recipients are able to graduate Smith College, compared with an 85 percent
graduation rate of non-Pell students. And at Western Oregon University, Pell recipients have a graduation rate of 50
percent nearly 10 percentage points better than their peers.
Both schools worked hard to ensure high graduation rates, including improving admissions policies and bolstering
financial aid, as well as increasing advising and support services for students at school, says the new report.

The Pell grant program is the nations largest need-based student grant program, giving out billions of dollars
annually. Yet for years, the data on Pell recipient graduation rates was mostly hidden from the public eye.
Although colleges are required to give the government graduation-rate data that's broken down by gender and race,
the data is not required to be reported by income or Pell grant status. Since 2008, schools are required to disclose
Pell graduation rate data if its requested by prospective students.
Its kind of astounding when you think about how much money is spent on the Pell grant program, said Andrew
Kelly, the director of the Center on Higher Education Reform at the American Enterprise Institute. We dont have
any idea about how much of that money goes to producing degrees. We dont know what happens to Pell recipients
after they enroll.
In order to collect Pell graduation rates, the Education Trust filed requests for data through state higher education
systems as well as with the schools themselves. Some of the data was purchased from U.S. News and World Report.
However, only around 1,150 schools were included in the report, out of the more than 7,000 institutions in the
country. The survey also did not include data from for-profit colleges, where many Pell-recipients attend school.

Shell, the Anglo-Dutch energy giant, says it is abandoning its work in the Alaskan Arctic because while it has found
indications of oil and gas, these are not sufficient to warrant further exploration.
Shell continues to see important exploration potential in the basin, and the area is likely to ultimately be of strategic
importance to Alaska and the U.S., Marvin Odum, director of Shell Upstream Americas, said in a statement.
However, this is a clearly disappointing exploration outcome for this part of the basin.
Shell said it had drilled the Burger J well in the Chuchki Sea to a depth of 6,800 feet and the results mean the
company will now cease further exploration activity in offshore Alaska for the foreseeable future.
This decision reflects both the Burger J well result, the high costs associated with the project, and the challenging
and unpredictable federal regulatory environment in offshore Alaska, the statement said.
The decision will cost Shell $4.1 billion. Bloomberg adds that Shell and other oil companies are restricting spending
after the price of oil has fallen by about 50 percent as the market remains oversupplied with oil.
Shells decision to explore the Alaskan Arcticand the Obama administrations approval of the drillinghad been
condemned by environmental groups.
Greenpeace, in a statement on its Facebook page, called Shells announcement Monday a HUGE victory for the 7
million of us all around the world.
The environmental group Oceana, in a statement, said the future of the Arctic Ocean just got a little bit brighter.
Shells announcement today allows the government to take a step back to apply careful planning, precaution, and
science to forge a sustainable future for the Arctic, Susan Murray, Oceanas deputy vice president, said in the
statement.
As Nicole Lou wrote in The Atlantic in May:
There are likely at least 4 billion barrels of oil hiding there. (For comparison, the U.S. produces a little more than 3
billion barrels of crude oil each year.) The Arctic Ocean, which includes the Chukchi, is estimated to contain 13
percent of the worlds untapped oil and holds a treasure waiting for whoever can reach it. But environmentalists are
trying to stop what they consider to be the exploitation of an unspoiled sea and a seasonal sanctuary for wildlife.

Shell has been eyeing the Chukchi Sea since at least 2008, when it paid the U.S. government $2.1 billion for the
rights to drill there and in several other areas of the Arctic. That deal secured Shells claim to the Chukchi, but didnt
guarantee that its drilling application would be approved by the government. Shells prospects started looking
promising when, after a long legal fight with environmentalists, the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management
(BOEM)published an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for the project in mid-February.

When the real-estate startup WeWork recently terminated a contracting agreement to bring its cleaning staff inhouse, the company claimed that every employee is part of the WeWork family. By using the word family, it
invoked a longstanding management tradition whose problematic provenance it may not have been aware of. Family
metaphors are assumed to have positive connotations, but, as revisionists have long pointed out, family dynamics do
not map evenly onto labor justice. Indeed, many people to go work to escape their families.
Consider the hierarchy of labor that exists in a typical family. For the longer part of the last century, women
performed the majority of chores and childrearing, and men left the home to earn a living. The work of maintenance
and care was designated reproduction, as opposed to something more economically crucialproduction. The
divide between work and leisure relied not on a social contract, but a sexual one: The breadwinners needs were
expected to be met by an implied partner. Today, when men and women have professional opportunities that are
closer to equal, time-use data still shows women have less leisure time than men.
So when a company contracts out service work, from catering to cleaning, it reinforces a line separating housework
from real work, maintaining outdated assumptions about who should do what. Creative jobs are deemed valuable
and thus worthy of analysis by budgeting and recruitment teams, while maintenance work is more or less disposable
(and, often, invisible to those who benefit from it).
Old notions of domesticity and family have influenced work culture in subtler ways. The original idea of the
company as a family can be discerned between the lines of the work of Elton Mayo, a charismatic Australian who
taught at Harvard Business School during the interwar years. Mayo was a pioneer in the field of Human Relations,
a management trend that sought to provide a more caring and empathetic bond between employers and employees.
In the 1920s, he conducted a nine-year study of worker behavior at the Chicago plant of Western Electric, AT&Ts
manufacturing arm. Inspired by Sigmund Freud, Mayo regarded the observed reveries of unproductive workers in
repetitive assembly jobs as evidence of psychological disequilibrium. To remedy this, he and his fellow
researchers analyzed tens of thousands of employee interviews in order to devise guidelines for supervisors to learn
how to listen to workers troubles. Alleviating employees anxieties was seen as a solution to productivity problems
and retention. The whole arrangementa consoling ear, a desire to impress superiorsresembled a parent-child
dynamic.
Mayos belief in the talking cure for the neurotic worker was derived from the psychologist Jean Piaget, who is
famous for outlining the stages of child development. Applied to the workplace, Piagets ideas of cognitive maturity
held that the individual was obliged to submit to the laws of cooperation and abandon selfish behavior to
demonstrate appropriate social integration. Those deemed uncooperative by observers could be expelled from
studieswhich is what happened to two women studied in the Hawthorne Plants Relay Roomand ultimately the
workplace itself.
Mayos theories allowed managers to behave in an authoritative manner in the guise of a paternalistic interest,
wrote Andrzej Huczynski in his book Management Gurus. The manager as father figure embodied a caring
benevolence that rewarded submissive workers. The family metaphor has additional benefits for the firm, as it
promotes corporate harmony by making internal competition taboo. (Today, in high-pressure workplaces, this taboo
appears to be dissolving. Amazons anonymous peer-review system brings to mind children ratting on siblings who
misbehave.) Perhaps, in spite of his theories, Elton Mayo saw the limitations of the domestic unit. After all, he lived
a continent away from his wife and family for much of his professional career.

Today, the modern workplace ideals of equal opportunity and diversity leave little room for the paternalistic
metaphor of the corporate family. Or do they? Unhappy workplaces feature all of the worst aspects of intimate
relationships: They are needy (long hours), they punish by withholding love (promotions), they require obligatory
felicities (email at any hour) and compulsory socializing (networking drinks). In this context, I can think of two
ways the word family makes sense in explaining contemporary work: There is no choice but to belong, and the
best means of escape is to learn to fend for ourselves.

Last Thursday, Senate Republicans failed in their third bid to block the nuclear deal with Iran. Signed in July, the
agreement between Iran, the United States, and the five other PN+1 countries gradually eases economic sanctions on
Iran in return for strict controls on that countrys nuclear-weapons program.
Virtually all of the debate surrounding the agreement has focused on the political and economic scorecard. Obama
wins, as does the Iranian economy; hawks, in the United States and Iran, lose. Behind the scenes, though, a number
of participants are also claiming a quieter victory for scientists.
Scientists have been involved in the international politics of atomic weapons since the fall of 1945, when veterans of
the Manhattan Project, led by the physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, attempted to convince the U.S. government that
world security depended on the international control of fissile materials. In the 1950s and 1960s, U.S. policymakers
experimented with a more formal role for scientists in international relations, installing science attachs and
technical advisors in key embassies. Sometimes as private citizens, and sometimes as government officials,
American scientists participated in the negotiations that produced the Antarctic Treaty of 1959, the Partial Test Ban
Treaty of 1963, the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT I) of 1972, and many more.
The popularity of science diplomacy has waxed and waned, but the U.S. Secretary of Energy Ernest Monizs role
in promoting the Iran deal surely heralds its return. In practice, science diplomacy can mean any number of things:
Scientists might serve as technical advisors to a government agency with international responsibility, or they might
participate directly in negotiations. But because scientists routinely cross international borders to attend conferences
and to work with foreign colleagues, science diplomacy also has a more informal mode, something more akin to
building fellow feeling. Think of American astronauts exchanging handshakes in space with their Soviet
counterparts after docking their Apollo and Soyuz capsules in July 1975.
Since 1950, when a report by the physicist Lloyd Berkner urged the State Department to incorporate science into its
regular operations, the concept of science diplomacy has mixed an optimism associated with the most idealized
visions of scientific behavior with raw cynicism about scientists access to people and information. At the moment,
optimism is ascendant, thanks in no small part to the role of scientists in the nuclear negotiations.
This spring, several reports noted the odd, and yet somehow inevitable, coupling of Secretary Moniz and Ali Akbar
Salehi, the head of Irans Atomic Energy Organization. The two men both spent time at the Massachusetts Institute
of Technology in the 1970s: Moniz as member of the physics faculty, Salehi as a graduate student in nuclear
engineering. Although their paths didnt cross in Cambridge, they shared the language of science and mutual
acquaintances. By late March of this year, Moniz and Salehi were on a first-name basis, disappearing for hours at a
time, according to The New York Times, to discuss centrifuges and plutonium production.
Richard Stone, the international editor for Science magazine, credits the scientists participation with getting the
negotiations back on track. Stone has been covering science in Iran since 2005, and has recently interviewed Ali
Salehi.
In the interview, Salehi makes bold claims not only for the importance of technical expertise at the negotiating table,
but also for being able to communicate with Moniz, scientist-to-scientist. As he told Stone, We tried to be logical
and fair. We understood each other. Their national commitments did not prevent either of us from being rational.
(While the Department of Energy did not respond to a request for comment for this article, a spokesman confirmed
the broad outlines of Salehis account of events for Science.)
While acknowledging that both parties represented their own national interests, Stone says he finds the general
sentiment credible. Thanks to their scientific track records and their personalities, they respected each other and

could ultimately reach compromises on a number of sensitive technical issuescompromises that had eluded the
political negotiators.
This ideathat the language of science can achieve what political negotiation cannotcomes up again and again in
conversations with advocates for science diplomacy. As Sandra Butcher, the Executive Director of the Pugwash
Conferences, an international group devoted to bringing a scientific perspective to global problems, said, scientists
can show technical solutions are possible if the political will is present.
The physicist Rush Holt, the CEO of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and a former seventerm Congressman for New Jersey, agrees that scientists participation was critical. Aside from the closed-door
meetings between Moniz and Salehi, Holt points to the work of the broader scientific community in suggesting
alternative solutions. In the months leading up to the agreement, he says, unofficial American scientists were
proposing in print and in private discussions with Iranian and American leaders specific proposals, such as changing
the core of the plutonium-generating reactor and limiting not only the number of uranium-enriching centrifuges but
a combination of centrifuges and uranium supply. Both of these proposals made it into the final agreement.
Of course, scientists are people too, and not necessarily people with the political savvy necessary to conduct
international negotiations. It would be nave, Butcher says, to think that scientists themselves are personally
neutral. Moreover, she notes, scientists from different countries often have varying levels of independence and
access to different levels of classified information.
On the whole, though, science diplomacy has few contemporary detractors. Those who oppose the Iran deal oppose
its politics, not the role of scientists in making it happen. As Stone puts it, It's amazing how bona-fide scientists, no
matter where they arePasadena or Pyongyang, Toledo or Tehrancan come together and bond over a common
cause.
Stones reference to Pyongyang is not coincidental: With the U.S.s relationship with Iran set to improve, advocates
for science diplomacy are wondering what the approach can accomplish in North Korea. Vaughan Turekian, the
State Departments new science advisor, has participated in several events sponsored by the US-DPRK Science
Engagement Consortium, a group co-founded in 2007 by Linda Staheli to promote a better relationship with the
secretive North Korean regime. Whether science can accomplish more than attempts at informal engagement
remains to be seen, but it surely cant be worse than, say, Dennis Rodmans attempts at hoops diplomacy.

Barcelona is one of the best-known cities in the world, yet visitors expecting to practice their Spanish can often be
surprised when they hear Catalan spoken in the streets. The language has had a troubled history, but is a key marker
of identity in Catalonia, a region where many hope for independence from Spain.
This will soon come to a head as Catalonia prepares for regional elections on September 27. Should a coalition
united on the issue of Catalonian independence win a majority, its leaderthe current Catalan president Artur Mas
has said he would declare independence.
Attempts to suppress the Catalan language and culture have deep historical roots but were intensified during the era
of Francisco Franco. The dictator banned the Catalan language from public spaces and made Spanish the sole
language of public life.
For 40 years under the dictatorship, Spain tried to present itself as an ethnically and politically homogeneous state.
The execution of Francos opponents continued after the end of the Spanish Civil War. One prominent victim was
the former Catalan president, Llus Companys, who was deported from Nazi-occupied France in 1940 and then
executed in Barcelona.
After the Spanish Civil War ended in 1939, the repression was not only political but cultural too. Catalan institutions
were suppressed and Catalan was banned in the school system. Indicative of the new political order were statements
from the authorities, the police in particular, such as Hable el idioma del imperio: Use the language of the
empire.

The immediate consequence was that Catalonia lost many of the material resources for the production and
reproduction of its culture. The Catalan language lost prestige in comparison with Spanish, and some upper-class
Catalans began to start speaking more Spanish.
At the same time, between one and two million people from the south of Spain moved into Catalonia after the
1950s. These migrants were sometimes prejudiced against the Catalan language, not least because many of them did
not even know about its existence before coming to Catalonia. Some felt no need to learn Catalan. This is the kind of
problem which faces all stateless nations.
Despite this, most Catalan people went on using their language at home and the language has survived against the
odds. Paradoxically, other languages such as Irish have had a state to protect them in the 20th century and yet it has
proved difficult to stop the erosion of the language.
With the death of Franco in 1975, and once democratic freedoms had been recovered, the 1978 constitution
recognized linguistic plurality and established that Spanish languages other than Castilian could be official
languages of the state. Catalan is now compulsory in Catalonian schools.
Catalan is spoken in Catalonia, but also in the Balearic Islands, in parts of Valencia, in Andorra, in the French
province of Roussillon, and in the Italian city of Alghero. Overall, it is spoken in a territory that contains over 13
million inhabitants.
More than 150 universities in the world teach Catalan and more than 400 journals are published in the language.
Ironically, Catalan studies are only weakly represented in Spanish universities, reflecting both the historical
discrimination against Catalan and contemporary concerns about the drive for independence in Catalonia. Only
seven universities in Spain (outside Catalonia) teach and research Catalan, whereas 22 universities offer courses in
the U.K., and 20 French higher-education institutions offer Catalan Studies, as do 24 in the U.S.
Catalan is the ninth language in Europe in terms of number of speakersmore than Swedish, Danish, Finnish, or
Greek. More than 80 television channels and more that 100 radio stations are broadcast daily in Catalan and there is
a long publishing tradition. Each year in Spain almost 6,000 books are published in Catalan, some 12 percent of the
total number of books published in the country.
What the Catalan experience seems to demonstrate is that banning a language may be an effective way of preserving
it. Speakers of a banned language feel resentful and resist authoritarian reach into their culture. This Catalan emotion
was picked up nicely by the Irish writer Colm Tibn while he was living in Barcelona in the 1970s.
People lived in a private realm. The parents had moved into that realm at the end of the Civil War, and they had
remained in that realm But what was also interesting was that Catalan, the language, was considered a way of
being free No one was talking about history. No one was talking about politics. But people were talking in
Catalan. And they considered that a fundamental way of resisting, or being apart from official Spain, or the regime.
This Catalan reaction is also expressed by a Catalan writer exiled in Mexico, Pere Calders, in his 1955 short story,
Catalans in the World. A Catalan traveler in the Far East, at an evening party encounters a parrot which, to his
surprise, utters Catalan phrases. He was overcome by emotion: Many were the things which made us different but
there was a language which made us one. Early that morning, when I left, I had a softer heart than the day I
arrived.
As a Catalan myself I have experienced this emotion. After years of teaching Spanish in Queens University, Belfast,
a language I value the more I teach it, last year I offered a course in Catalan for the first time. Standing in front of
my students on that first day, I had to try hard to avoid tears.