It’s strange to think that once, Dartmouth was a missionary school. By the time Dartmouth became a secular institution and religious affiliation was no more, it maintained a bastion of religion in the Tucker Foundation, created by President Tucker at the turn of the century. Today there are more than 25 religious groups on campus, ranging from the Quakers to the Hindu group Shanti. And now, there will be a religious group for the non-religious.

Atheists, Humanists, and Agnostics (AHA) serves those who wish to question faith from a non-theistic perspective and discuss secular humanism and scientific inquiry. There has always been a significant non-theistic discourse at Dartmouth, especially in the classroom, where many people assume a secular viewpoint no matter their spiritual beliefs. Yet for years non-theistic people at Dartmouth have been discussing their beliefs outside of any organization, only engaging their beliefs with others whenever the topic comes up, such as when someone writes a fundamentalism-fueled rant against abortion or women’s rights on B@B. Those who define themselves as religious embrace group solidarity around loving the same gods. There needs to be a community for like-minded secular and non-theistic thinkers at Dartmouth, just as there are communities for religious and theistic thinkers

As a deist and humanist with a love of science and reason, I came to this school wondering why a group like AHA did not already exist in what seemed like such a liberal, progressive or at least moderate political environment. Upperclassmen attendants at AHA meetings report that there have been gatherings in the past but no organized community or discussion group under the Tucker Foundation. After all, where does a non-religious group fit into a religious institution? Directors of the Tucker Foundation have expressed positive feedback for making an official secular organization, and if AHA is any indication, the many voices of the non-theistic community have been waiting for such an outlet.
AHA meetings in Fahey McLane ground floor lounge are held every Tuesday at 8 p.m. This past meeting on May 4th, group founder Siyue Liu ‘13 led a discussion on the non-theistic view on death and the afterlife. The meeting started with an SMBC cartoon of the Ten Commandments, portraying God’s original commandment as simply: “Don’t be a dick.” Then the talk turned to whether the non-theistic view subscribes to an afterlife, and if a religious belief in an afterlife offers solace from the very human fear of death. Later, the discussion branched out to touch on how there is still a societal taboo surrounding the label “atheist,” whether there is an objective morality tied to any one religion or an innate morality built into humanity as a species and finally whether science is a “faith” or not.

I arranged to have an online chat with Siyue Liu ‘13 who has orchestrated this success.

SR: What inspired you to found AHA? How do you feel about starting the first atheist and agnostic religious group of its kind at Dartmouth?

SL: Before the establishment of AHA at Dartmouth, there were more than 25 religious organizations on campus, but none for students with explicitly non-theistic worldviews. I feel that it’s important for AHA to represent the non-theistic community on campus, as well as provide a voice to students without religious belief. We also hope to engage in interfaith-dialogue, while promoting greater understanding of worldviews of students without religious faith. Through constructive dialogue, we hope to encourage more open discussion concerning questions of religious faith and morality, while enabling the voices of non-theistic students as well. Ultimately, our community aims to provide a safe and civil ground to socialize with like-minded individuals, while engaging students in dialogue about faith and ethics from a non-theistic identity.

SR: I imagine religious freedom in all its forms is important to you. Would you like to say more to that effect?

SL: Of course. People are free to practice their own set of beliefs, and people who reject those beliefs should be free to do so as well. However, in many parts of the world (even more so in America), there still exists a negative stigma on the word “atheist,” and many people are still hesitant to “come out” to their religious friends and family about their non-theistic worldviews. Unfortunately, a lot of people have only vague ideas and misconceptions about what non-theists or humanists believe, so increased discussion would promote greater awareness understanding of the worldviews of students without religious faith.

I think that because Dartmouth is such an intellectual environment with its cultural roots in religious doctrines, we need to engage in more open and critical discussion of questions concerning faith. Despite the uncomfortable stigma surrounding these issues, religion is not immune to critical analysis, and both theists and non-theists should treat it as a subject for evaluation and multi-faceted dialogue (like politics).

Liu then related an anecdote about a question a fellow student had recently asked her on the nature of secular humanism. The student answered by noting that secular humanism is a popular stance for atheists to take. But said student found here a philosophical inconsistency: namely that you cannot be an atheist and still assert that people are good and should live moral lives.

After letting this sink in for a few seconds, Siyue started animatedly, “Of course you can be good without God!” Liu believes we do not need the threat of burning in hell for eternity to do good things. In fact, Liu insisted that she would question the sturdiness of someone’s beliefs if they felt like they need the idea of someone constantly watching and judging them, in order to live a life of decency and morality.

Liu argues that there is absolutely no basis on judging someone’s morality on the premise of whether they believe in a supernatural entity or not. Secular humanism is not a religion, but a life stance that specifically rejects supernatural and religious dogma as the basis of morality, while focusing on how human beings can lead good lives without an overseeing god. Ultimately, Liu concludes, we should love not God, but humanity and ourselves.

While planning future meetings of AHA, Liu is currently working on securing group recognition for AHA from the Tucker Foundation. She is confident that once a proposal is submitted, Dean of the Tucker Foundation and College Chaplain Richard Crocker will be willing to acknowledge the importance of discussions on spirituality and morality from a non-theistic perspective, relying on reason and experimental evidence that enhances, rather than taking away from human wonder in awe of a complex, beautiful universe.

At 9:45 a.m. on April 20th, an explosion rocked the Deepwater Horizon, an offshore drilling rig owned by British Petroleum (BP) in the Gulf of Mexico. Survivors had mere minutes to escape the inferno as black, multi-story clouds of smoke rose into the sky. The captain of a rescue boat reported the fire as being so hot that it melted the paint off of his boat. One hundred and fifteen were evacuated, 17 of whom were injured. After burning for two days, the Deepwater Horizon sank at 10:21 a.m. on April 22nd. By that time the United States National Guard had already covered more than 1000 miles by sea and air in a massive rescue operation. The next day, the Guard called off the search for 11 missing persons who were probably incinerated on the spot and are now presumed dead. At a press conference on April 30th, BP still did not know the cause of the explosion. Interviews with rig workers conducted during BP’s internal investigation revealed that a bubble of flammable methane gas escaped from the oil well and shot up the drill column, expanding rapidly and bursting through several barriers before igniting and exploding in what is known as a blowout.

According to the most recent estimates, the oil spill emanating from the site of the sunken rig measures an area of at least 2,500 square miles and is viewable from space. Five to twenty-five thousand barrels, or between two hundred thousand and a million gallons, of crude oil from the Macondo Prospect deepwater oil field is being discharged into the Gulf daily. Efforts have been made to contain the spill, including the construction of a hundred ton steel-and-concrete box, and the controlled burning of sections of oil slick in open water. However, the spill will surely eclipse the 1989 Exxon Valdez as the worst US oil disaster in history. The oil slick has already reached the Gulf coast 48 miles away. On May 8th, blobs of tar appeared on Alabama’s white beaches. Like the 1969 Santa Barbara oil spill, also caused by a blowout of an Union Oil rig, this oil spill will undoubtedly cause black tides and the unnecessary deaths of endangered turtle and bird species. The spill will damage fishing and tourism industries in addition to destroying or disrupting hundreds of estuaries, deltas, ecosystems and habitats that house thousands of species. This is the Gulf Coast environment’s 9/11. Like the human version, this 9/11 is a call to arms, not against the Middle East, but the United States’ continued reliance on oil, coal and other fossil fuels, whether dredged from the Middle East or from off our shores.

Like the recession, the blowout wasn’t supposed to happen, and like bailout companies such as AIG and GM, Deepwater Horizon was “too big to fail.” Reminiscent of the Titanic, Deepwater was built to epic proportions. The ultra-deepwater, column-stabilized, semi-submersible mobile offshore drilling unit (MODU) or floating drill rig was completed for Transocean Ltd. by South Korean Hyundai Heavy Industries in 2001 and leased to BP until 2013. One of the largest of its kind and built to tap leftover oil beds once inaccessible due to ocean depth, Deepwater measured 396 by 256 feet, could operate in waters of eight thousand feet deep, and drill up to 30 thousand feet deep. BP churned out a lovely 52-page safety report in February 2009 to condone the necessity of drilling that deep, saying it was “unlikely that an accidental surface or subsurface oil spill would occur from the proposed activities,” and that “due to the distance to shore and the response capabilities that would be implemented, no significant adverse impacts are expected.” In fact, seven BP executives who were later injured but survived were celebrating Deepwater’s safety record when the blast occurred.

In J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Fellowship of the Ring, a lost race of dwarves unearthed a fiery demon while mining for precious metal. Likewise, BP “delved too greedily and too deep,” expressing an eagerness to violate the law by drilling to depths of 22-25 thousand feet instead of the 18 thousand feet maximum depth allowed by its permit. Such eagerness and greed contributed to the calamity.

BP was named as the responsible party by the US government, and will be held accountable for all costs of the clean-up. The company has accepted responsibility but, anticipating multiple lawsuits, now argues that the accident was not entirely its fault because the rig was run by Transocean personnel. Adrian Rose, vice president of Transocean, has said that there was “no indication of any problems” just prior to the blowout. Workers were performing standard routines and the rig was drilling but was not in production. Rose then passed the buck to US oil company Halliburton, which had completed a delicate operation of reinforcing the drilling hole’s metal pipe casing with concrete only 20 hours before the blast. Pressured by Congress on May 1st, Halliburton confirmed that it cemented the Macondo Prospect oil well but never set a cement plug to properly cap the hole, claiming that “operations had not reached a stage where a final plug was needed.” Rose concluded that “undoubtedly abnormal pressure” accumulated in the drill column contributing to the massive destructive power of a single fiery methane bubble. Eighteen of the 39 oil rig blowouts in the Gulf of Mexico have been triggered by poorly-done concrete reinforcements of oil pipes. Meanwhile Haliburton, which has been associated with the Bush family and once had former Vice President Cheney as its CEO, is already under fire in Australia for an earlier catastrophic 2005 blowout in the Timor Sea caused by its faulty application of concrete casing.

Some politicians are still touting a “drill, baby, drill” approach to solving the nation’s up and coming oil crisis. Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT), for example, still supports offshore drilling and downplayed Deepwater, saying “accidents happen.” Some conservatives see this as an opportunity to criticize President Obama. On May 5th, former Alaskan governor Sarah Palin tweeted “learn from Alaska’s lesson w/foreign oil co’s: don’t naively trust.” Palin, however, seems to forget not only that a Valdez oil tanker leak in 1989 off the coast of Alaska was the fault of ExxonMobil, a U.S. company, but also that BP once employed her husband, Todd. Due to this oil spill’s proximity to New Orleans, right wing pundits have been quick to call Deepwater President Obama’s Katrina. But this comparison is a dangerous one for conservatives if they are trying to make Obama look bad. First, the Bush Administration’s response to Hurricane Katrina in 2007 was abysmally slow, while in less than a month the Obama Administration has assigned personnel from the Coast Guard, the Corps of Engineers, the Interior Department, the Departments of Commerce and Defense, the EPA and NOAA to the task of investigating and cleaning up the spill. Second, long-term culpability for the disaster belongs to the Bush Administration for the utter corruption of the Minerals Management Service (MMS), an Interior Department oil drilling oversight agency.

Like the recession, Deepwater was another “accident” that was a long time in coming. Both problems can be linked to the Bush Administration’s rabid efforts to deregulate, whether it was Wall Street or “Big Oil.” Between January and March 2001, incoming Vice President Cheney sat down with more than a hundred oil industry officials in secret meetings that eventually drew up a “wish list” of industry demands to be implemented by the Big Oil-friendly administration. Cheney also packed the MMS with many of his oil-loving cronies, who lead the corrupted regulatory agency to go to bed with the industry– often literally. In 2009, the Inspector General conducted an investigation into the MMS that found that MMS officials “frequently consumed alcohol at industry functions, had used cocaine and marijuana and had sexual relationships with oil and gas company representatives.” Female employees and sexual favors were sent to industry big wigs in return for illegal oil contracts for agency workers. Agency workers were more likely to turn a blind eye to unsafe or unfair oil company policies if they could do things like get so drunk at a golf event sponsored by Shell that they had to stay in a hotel paid for by Shell. Lobbyists also paid out agency officials with personal contracts, concert tickets, golf, paintball or ski outings and other bribes.

This “culture of ethical failure” that pervaded the industry and its regulatory agency not only cost the American taxpayers millions but also went out of its way to produce bad science to justify unregulated offshore drilling in the tempting, never-before tapped oil prospects of the Gulf of Mexico. The comprised regulatory agency encouraged companies to take dangerous risks, such as BP’s failure to install a deep pipe shut-off valve. Also in 2003, the MMS released a study saying that “acoustic systems are not recommended because they tend to be very costly.” An acoustic regulator or a remotely triggered “dead man’s” switch could have shut off Deepwater’s gushing pipe at the seafloor oil well opening when the manual switch failed or couldn’t have been reached. However, no such switch was installed on BP’s oilrig because President Bush’s 2005 energy bill dropped an earlier 2000 MMS requirement for such regulators, claiming that industry standards at oilrigs were “failsafe.” An “expensive” acoustic trigger costs $500,000 while the cost of Deepwater will be more than $14 billion.

However, in the wake of Deepwater, it looks like there could be political movement in a better direction. An energy bill in the works that sought to expand offshore drilling will no longer hold water with Democrats, especially those from Gulf Coast states. Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL) said such a bill was “dead on arrival.” Governors have also shown solidarity, most notably Arnold Schwarzenegger of California who said, “You turn on the television and see this enormous disaster, you say to yourself, ‘Why would we want to take on that kind of risk?’” Greenpeace is already out protesting in the capital. They also have an online petition touting clean energy, citing the dangers of not only Deepwater, but another, earlier methane gas explosion that took the lives of 29 West Virginian coal miners in April.

How many more will the U.S. sacrifice for our quest for fossil fuels? Even if Deepwater had not happened, the oil it would have ultimately pumped to the surface would have been later burned for fuel, releasing tons more carbon dioxide into the air. Forget offshore drilling; the U.S. is already scraping the bottom of the barrel with our aging on-shore oil wells and our dependency on OPEC’s volatile gas prices, which were more than four dollars a gallon before the recession. Worldwide, oil wells will only hold out at the current rate of consumption for 30-50 more years. What will we do when those wells run dry? How much more of the environment and the economy will we be willing to lift as a burnt offering to our faulty faith in high profit margins? Surely, the money can’t be worth what we are doing to our planet. Humanity’s funeral pyres of flaming rigs, scrubbed and un-scrubbed smokestacks, and avid coal mining in China are all a part of a fossil fuel complex that is trapping heat in the atmosphere. Doomsday preachers predict the world ending in fire, but their apocalyptic myths can’t be all that far from the reality of global warming.

Thankfully there’s hope on the horizon. By May 12th, Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) hopes to unveil his long-awaited bi-partisan energy and climate bill, which aims to cut emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases 17 percent below 2005 levels by 2020. No longer will the Senate pander to the obstructions of Big Oil and special interests which perpetuate America’s addiction with dirty, unsafe fossil fuels. Capitol Hill will finally penalize pollution and push the car industry and the national grid into a new era of clean, safe energy. In January’s State of the Union Address, President Obama proposed a plan to combat fossil fuels and unemployment by offering funding to green start-ups that will provide the technology for alternate energies as well as a new wave of “green” jobs. President Obama knows that China, or any nation, that produces a viable industrial alternative to oil or coal will become the world’s future green giant and stands to benefit from the future jobs and capital flowing in from such a venture. President Obama rightfully wants the United States to be that nation. Not only will such a coupling of interests allow the U.S. to get back on its feet, but it will allow us to fulfill the disreputable BP’s early green moniker and finally move “Beyond Petroleum.”

Despite the green movement, even the most optimistic must fear that people tend to care a lot more about terrorism, immigration, abortion and gay rights than the future of the environment. The green revolution, worryingly, has become something of a fad—especially for commercial corporations trying to tap the media’s next great new hype. Terrorism and other topics are indeed very important, but only a few people seem to realize that a planet in peril is just as important and pressing. Somebody has to take green beyond the fad; somebody has to take it seriously. Green jobs must be, have to be, in America’s future. Between oil spills and oils wells drying up, the stakes are just too high for things to be otherwise. Our environment and our world cannot afford another Deepwater.

Last issue, I reported on Dr. Dambisa Moyo’s talk on her book Dead Aid in which she argues that the billions of government-to-government aid to Africa is not only an inefficient mess, but is also hurting African countries. She reasons that aid harms development directly by causing foreign dependence and inflation, and indirectly through corruption, mismanagement of resources, lack of foreign investments, inadequate healthcare and civil unrest. Moyo believes that greatly reducing and eventually eliminating aid will reduce the dependency of African governments on first-world countries and allow them to pursue investments and encourage entrepreneurs and microfinance on their own. The West’s low expectations for the potential of African economic success has kept these nations on a seemingly never-ending stream of aid.

Moyo received her MA from Harvard and her PhD at Oxford. She has worked on hedge funds and macroeconomics for eight years at Goldman Sachs. Hailing from Zambia, she has seen first-hand the effects of the band-aid of aid. Others such as New York University economist William Easterly also agree with Moyo, yet her argument is still up and coming. For years, more aid has been the only way to go. Surprisingly, the man who has backed billions of dollars in Western aid to Africa is none other than Moyo’s former mentor and lecturer: Jeffrey Sachs.

Who is Jeffrey Sachs? Raised in Detroit, Sachs received his BA, MA, and PhD all from Harvard, and was appointed the special advisor to Secretary-General Kofi Annan on the 8 Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and from 2002 to 2006 he was the director of the UN Millennium Project. Sachs currently also serves as special advisor to the current UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. He’s been named as one of Time Magazine’s “100 Most Influential People in the World” twice, once in 2004 and again in 2005.

Despite Sachs’ impressive education, he still believes that the only way to end extreme poverty, (defined by living below a $1 a day, as 70 percent of the billion people in Africa are) is through donations in the form of billions of dollars from Western governments. He wants to raise worldwide aid from $65 billion a year in 2002 to $195 billion in the 2015. In his New York Times bestseller The End of Poverty, he cites India and China as examples of aid success stories; in the span of two decades (70’s and 80’s), 300 million people in China alone were lifted out of extreme poverty. However he fails to realize that China received little economic aid packages from national governments when it was making the shift from a communist economic framework to capitalist. A major internal land reform was the primary force that lifted thousands of Chinese peasants from the communes into the middle class. Africa instead has received billions of dollars in external aid, yet since 1970 the continent has actually grown poorer. While the rest of the world, for the most part, has grown richer, the GDPs for African nations continue to lag behind.

In a 2009 article in the Huffington Post, Moyo responded to one of Sach’s Huffington Post articles continuing the ongoing dialogue regarding foreign aid. According to Moyo, when Sachs was her lecturer at Harvard he made the statement: “the path to long-term development would only be achieved through private sector involvement and free market solutions.” Nonetheless, Sachs still pushes foreign aid. William Easterly, in his book review of The End of Poverty in the Washington Post and his subsequent book White Man’s Burden, argued that nations stuck in a “poverty trap” can escape without the massive scaling up of government-to-government aid. He offered statistical evidence that many emerging markets in Asia, i.e. China, Singapore and South Korea, have gained momentum without the help of billions of dollars of aid. There is an inherent bigotry in Sach’s approach to ‘helpless Africans.’ Moyo feels that “Mr. Sachs’s development approach was made for countries such as Russia, Poland and Bolivia, whereas the aid- dependency approach, with no accompanying job creation, was reserved for Africa.” Instead of allowing elected officials to represent Africa nations, seven of which have said they don’t need a continuous flow of aid, Sachs and his celebrity friends Bono and Angelina Jolie dictate what Africa needs during UN and G8 conferences.

On the weekend of April 17th, the Dartmouth Great Issues Scholars and yours truly went to YaleUniversity for the 7th Annual Unite for Sight Conference on Global Health and Innovation. Conference sessions were held in a host of different fields, such as: the non-profit sector, philanthropy, medicine, public service, microfinance, human right advocacy, and health policy. There were a number of keynote speakers, including Sachs himself. The Great Issues Scholars had already had lunch with Moyo, heard her talk, and obtained signed copies of her book. That weekend we heard the argument from the other side—Jeff Sachs.

Sachs began his talk by pointing out that it has been a decade since “We the Peoples,” the creation of the Millennium Development Goals: eight commitments against global issues like poverty, treatable disease, discrimination against women, and illiteracy. In 2000, Secretary-General Annan and Sachs challenged the world to achieve these goals by 2015. With only five years left, is the world any closer to ending problems like poverty and hunger? Sachs felt that advances made in technology such as cell phones, the improvement of primary health delivery, new HIV/AIDS medicines, and new finance and business models were helping the whole world work toward achieving the MDGs. Sachs also believed that if the richest one billion in the world each gave $30 year, in one year $30 billion could be put towards the MDGs. Ten cents on each $100 could go to funding health services for the third world.

Sachs remains dedicated to aid because he feels that since African governments have so little to budget, spending on one sector means not having enough to allocate to another sector like, say, healthcare. Because of this, supposedly an African government lacks the ability to improve their entire nation. He sees no window for microfinance and he wishes to quadruple world aid and pad the World Fund. According to Sachs, the UN should also open another global fund and pump troubled economies, such as that of the US, for more money that will be ineffectively used and will contribute to the conditions that necessitate aid in the first place. Sachs says donor countries don’t give enough, and although he makes a good point that the US spends too much on military funding, he wants to press world leaders into passively dumping aid on Africa instead of actively seeking investments in Africa.

For the final question in the Q&A period after the talk, I asked Sachs about his thoughts on Moyo’s position and those of other intellectuals who say aid isn’t working. Sachs became quite spirited, to say the least, and lashed out at Moyo, referring to her as “that Goldman Sachs employee.” One Great Issue Scholar remarked afterward “I thought he was going to jump off the stage and throttle you.” Sachs defense of aid was constituted almost entirely by what Moyo calls the “emotional argument for aid”; his position was mainly ‘Children are dying!’ Indeed, Sachs did mention how he has been to Africa and has seen children suffering and dying but he offered no economic or logical argument for why aid would work just as well as or better than microfinance or investments in the private sector. He offered no rebuttal to the poor track record of aid and offered no end date for aid. He did not even address Moyo’s most powerful argument: that bucket loads of aid may actually be contributing to the continued destitution of the African continent. In a nutshell, Sachs said there are horrible problems in Africa, so don’t criticize aid; just send more money.

The Unite for Sight Conference was, for the most part, a pro-aid community, and Sachs answer was met by applause. Yet it was obvious that introducing the opposing argument was troubling not only Sachs but to the audience. After Sachs left the podium, his wife Sonia Ehrlich-Sachs, MD came up to talk on the Millennium Villages’ progress on the MDGs in Africa. Dr. Sachs wasn’t as charismatic as her husband and her presentation relied more on its power point instead of effective speaking. Those who questioned her wanted to know if the facts and figures she had up on the screen translated into actual lasting improvement on the ground or in the nation’s government. One questioner wanted to know if this was enough evidence to justify that aid was working, especially for “the other side of the debate.”

Now this isn’t meant to villainize Jeff Sachs. Sachs’s privileged position does not prevent him from taking a deep-seated interest in those in need. However, I think his benevolent character prevents him from seeing that there are other, better ways to help Africa. Moyo doesn’t want the West to ignore the needs of Africa, but she feels that continuing to catch all the fish for Africa will keep it in continuous poverty and is not a sustainable economic course for the West, and the US in particular. As Daniel Quinn describes in his book Ishmael, feeding a group of starving people will only allow them to thrive enough to raise the next generation, and unless these children are taught to feed themselves, they will have no choice but to demand even more.

We cannot hold the Continent’s hand forever and then blindly hope that African governments will suddenly become less corrupt and the common people will magically become entrepreneurs and hedge fund managers. And there are signs that others in the aid community think so too. Although Unite for Sight was pro-aid, it appeared from this conference that the not-for-profit sector is in a transitional stage. More and more people want to empower Africa through investments, loans and business models.

The first keynote speaker of the conference, Jacqueline Novogratz, founder and CEO of the Acumen Fund, gave a presentation entitled “Patient Capital for an Impatient World.” The Acumen Fund supports entrepreneurs in Kenya and other parts of eastern Africa who start projects to alleviate poverty. One entrepreneur started a housing project in the slums of Nairobi, offering small, clean houses with indoor plumbing to people living in tin shanties. Most importantly, these houses are not handouts—they aren’t free, but are offered at reduced loans that once paid off are used to build more houses. Novogratz notes that the fact that houses are not free is key because it gives people a sense of dignity rather than shame at being the recipient of hand-outs.

Innovation in aiding Africa doesn’t stop there. Scott Hilstrom, Co-founder and CEO of the HealthStore Foundation helps create local franchises to dispense much needed medicines as an alternative to the many companies selling counterfeit medicine. HealthStore’s franchises not only have local Africans as business owners and mangers, but also provide the needed oversight to prevent the dispensing of fake pills. Ted London, PhD from the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan, believes in empowering the people and hidden assets at “The Base of Pyramid” (BoP) through nurturing innovators and encouraging social enterprise balanced with traditional enterprise. The new business model for developing economies involves a development community, a private sector and most importantly, interdependence.

Andrew Wok is the CEO of Root Cause, which according to its website is a research and consulting firm dedicated to “mobilizing the non-profit, public and business sectors work together in a new social impact market.” Wok argues that after trillions of dollars have been poured into poor communities, there has not been a corresponding amount of social progress in return. He wants to create a social impact market that nurtures relationships between non-profits, embraces citizens on the ground as public innovators, and engages Western governments as well as local government. Billy Shore of Share Our Strength, a national organization committed to fighting hunger in the US, spoke on achieving global health through small community wealth. The culture of the non-profits must be recast to capture untapped wealth and aspiring entrepreneurs. How the aid community works right now is “good, but not good enough” he says. Shari Barenbach, President and CEO of the Calvert Foundation, also believes in investment at the “base of the pyramid” instead of handouts. Her foundation works to maximize the flow of capital to developing nations through mainstream investments. Allen Hammond, co-founder and chairman of Healthpoint Services sees the need for hybrid profit/non-profit models. In poverty stricken communities, the poor either pay exorbitant amounts for simple things like sanitary napkins from crooked merchants or they receive free medicine, food and other goods and services from the NGOs. However, due to shame, pride or social stigma, they will avoid the NGOs and will continue to pay exorbitant amounts or go without. It is not immoral to charge a small fee for medicine or clean water if a poor community will buy those goods.

Kevin Starr MD, affiliated with the Mulago Foundation for tactical philanthropy, pushed for an overhaul of the entire way the non-for profit sector does business. Instead of focusing on sad anecdotes to attract donors, NGOs need to start thinking like a capitalist business. He offers the microfinance non-profit Kiva as a good example of a successful NGO that is run well and helps poor communities through loans. Moyo is an avid supporter of Kiva.

The bureaucracies of NGOs right now are for the most part flabby and ineffective. They must start thinking about results in impact rather than profits, and the scalability of their projects and efforts. You can’t have an NGO delivering aid but only 25% of its aid recipients actually climbing out of poverty. A successful intervention in a poor community must be replicable, scalable, and engaging to the local and later national government. Most importantly, the efforts of an NGO must have a staying power so that when the NGO eventually leaves, the community will not revert back to poverty. Aid is like war; there has to be a way to get out once the intervention is over. As the eloquent Dr. Starr put it, “What happens when the donor dollar is gone?”

The face of the aid community is changing, and fortunately Sachs was the only person I heard at the Unite for Sight Conference advocating for billions more in aid. Sachs has done great work drawing attention to global hunger and poverty with the Millennium Villages and the Millennium Development Goals, but he’s stuck in the old way of helping the poor, through free handouts. Although handouts in the billions may alleviate a problem temporarily, they offer no lasting change and do not strike at the root of sustained extreme poverty: lack of investments, capital or participation in global bond markets. Moyo, Starr, Wok, Hammond, Easterly and others are the faces of a new era for aid that will hopefully bring about the end of the current aid situation. “I think Moyo and Sachs desire the same things,” commented Amy Newcomb, director of the Great Issues Scholars program, “but they’re going about it differently.” While Sachs’s vision sees no end in sight for poverty in Africa, Moyo offers a way to systematically revamp Africa’s economy. Sachs would do well to end his long rivalry with Moyo and join in efforts to move Africa beyond aid.

Episcopalian Bishop Gene Robinson, the first non-celibate gay bishop, spoke this past Wednesday in Rollins Chapel to kick off Pride Week. His talk, Sexuality and Religion, was organized by the Pride Planning Committee and the Tucker Foundation and was well-attended by members of the LBGTQA and faith communities alike.

Bishop Robinson is described as humble by his diocese in New Hampshire. An effective speaker, he spoke with me last November, at DGALA, the annual gathering of Dartmouth LBGTQ Alumni. Like the last time, He did not fail to impress.

Robinson began his talk by emphasizing the importance of a Pride Week even in a place like Dartmouth, which on the surface seems absent prejudice. Pride Week is a celebration of how far LBGTQ people have come, but it also serves as reminder that even in places like Dartmouth or New Hampshire, there remains work to be done. Visibility is a public and political statement that not only strengthens the LBGTQ community but a community as a whole.

He then opined that other great civil rights movements of the past, such as those for racial and ethnic minorities, women, the elderly and the disabled, truly gained momentum when members of the dominant majority—whites, men, the young—joined forces with the oppressed and helped bring about justice for all. Civil justice becomes more attainable once all realize that discrimination negatively affects both the oppressors and the oppressed. The need and appreciation for straight allies is more important to the LBGTQ community than ever before. He stated that when people know at least one gay or lesbian, they are less likely to discriminate. When someone says, “that’s so gay” to refer to something lame or stupid, a face pops up. That is why Robinson stresses the adage of the late Harvey Milk: “Coming out is the most political statement you can make.” Today, most of the younger generation may know someone who is gay, but people from Robinson’s generation, contemporary lawmakers and politicians, may not. So for him, visibility is vital.

Yet coming out, for some, can be a difficult process. Here, Robinson delved into the religious side of LBGTQ issues. He described how most moral justifications for gay bashing and hate crimes originate in the Bible, the Torah, or the Koran, illustrating how a sense of religious alienation pervades the LBGTQ community. For instance, Robinson once led a workshop for LBGTQ youth who all came from fairly secular households. However, every one of them was aware of the word “abomination” and its perceived reflection on their lives.

Despite this intimidating precedent, Robinson does not feel that spirituality and homosexuality are incompatible, and in fact argues the opposite. His problem instead lies in how the seven or so verses that condemn homosexuality in the Bible are interpreted, and he He outlines three ways in which LGBTQ people can reinterpret those verses.

First, many if not all of supposedly anti-gay verses are taken out of their cultural context. For example, the most explicit condemnation of homosexuality in the Bible, Leviticus 18:22 (“Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination”) occurs only a couple chapters away from Leviticus 15:16-18, which condemns the “sin of Onan”—better known as “spilling seed” (in Genesis 18:8-10, Onan pulls out before ejaculating while having sex with his wife and God slays him. This passage has historically been used to condemn male masturbation and birth control). Robinson then questions, then, why society at large turns a blind eye to the sin of Onan but not to a similar passage condemning homosexuality. These two parts in Leviticus must obviously be taken together; spilling seed, whether by pulling out or through homosexual acts, was prohibited within the young Hebrew nation, which prized male sperm as a means to increase population. Also, those verses condemning homosexuality operate on the assumption that all people are heterosexual. People living at the time had no conception of homosexuality, so any person, any heterosexual, was going against his or her nature by engaging in homosexual acts. The Bible doesn’t prohibit homosexuality per se, but instead the act of going against one’s nature.Second, verses condoning slavery and sexism have already been reinterpreted within their cultural contexts, and preachers no longer invoke them according to original understanding. Should the verses condemning homosexuality be treated any differently? Robinson doesn’t believe that the living God presented us with a religious text that was only culturally relevant through the first century. No, the living God continues to work with humanity, helping it to gain a greater understanding of what it means to have justice and equality for all. Robinson quoted John 16:22, in which Jesus says to the disciples, “I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now. Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth…he will shew you things to come.” The message of Jesus was culturally and politically revolutionary for its time. The disciples did a good job of absorbing the controversy of “God is love” (1 John 4:8), but throughout the resulting centuries we still struggle with a full understanding of what it means to love all regardless of race, gender, and sexual orientation and presentation. Robinson feels that the living God still continues to sends the Holy Spirit to guide believers to a greater acceptance of all God’s children, whether gay, straight, and everything in between.

Third, Robinson encourages members of the LBGTQ to no longer fear or shy away from religion. Too often LBGTQ people feel terrible pain when their faith communities reject them, barring them from attendance or refusing to marry them in synagogues, churches or mosques. Yet LBGTQ people must learn to see religious texts as their texts too. Although there are no (so far as we can tell) openly LGBTQ Biblical heroes, LBGTQ people can still feel empowered by Bible stories. For example, Robinson sees the Exodus as biggest “coming out” in history. He compared being in the closet to being enslaved until a great person comes and leads you out. When the Israelites crossed the Red Sea, Robinson feels Moses’ parting of the waves was little less dramatic than presented in the film The Ten Commandments. Instead of clearing a giant boulevard across the sea, Moses had to embark in faith, and with each step of faith just the right amount of land for a dry footfall was cleared. Robinson feels the process of coming out is just as gradual and terrifying. It involves stepping out in faith, stepping out into the unknown, without seeing what lies ahead. And even when the other side is reached, there’s still a long trek to the Promised Land.

The LBGTQ community has yet to reach its Promised Land. Although there is greater awareness of LBGTQ people and issues than ever before in history, homophobia still pervades the discourse in many more circles than we’d like to believe. Robinson prefers the term heterosexism as opposed to homophobia; linguistically, he argues, homophobia is the fear of homosexuality. It’s a prejudice, but as Robinson points out anyone can have an irrational prejudice against anything. What’s truly troubling is an “-ism,” a linguistic construct according to which a prejudice is no longer simply a prejudice, but is paired with the power to actively silence and discriminate by way of its recognition. We are aware of racism, prejudice paired with power favoring white people, and sexism, prejudice paired with power favoring men, but what we know as homophobia is really heterosexism, prejudice paired with power favoring straight people. When a minority is denied basic civil rights, the majority is actively and/or passively using its power to oppress said minority. The members of said minority are second-class citizens—it’s as simple as that.

The kind of acceptance that enables Pride Week snowballs into greater awareness and acceptance. As LGBTQ people continue to empower themselves politically, socially and spiritually, more people will begin to see that LGBTQ awareness is here to stay and that such powerful voices cannot be silenced. Robinson notes that some people may wonder if a there is need for Pride Week at a place as open and diverse as Dartmouth. but acknowledge the need to celebrate the strides made by the flourishing LBGTQ community here and, more importantly, the strides to come.

Healthcare reform has become the law of the land. This is a momentous, yet tumultuous time in America’s history. A great victory has been won but like all great victories, health care reform is controversial. The great majority of Republicans have sworn to roll back healthcare. The Democrats have a huge struggle on their hands, but they have history on their side. Katrina Swett, wife of former Congressman Dick Swett and current Democratic candidate for Congress visited the Dartmouth College Democrats on Monday, April 13th. She believes healthcare reform is just one of the many aspects of a decent society. Democrats fought hard to erect socially progressive programs such as Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and Civil Rights Equality throughout the twentieth century. All of these reforms, now sacrosanct in our society, met fierce backlash when they were first introduced. However, just like it is hard to imagine a United States of America without a commitment to racial equality or Social Security today, it will be hard to imagine a world without a better health care system tomorrow.

The healthcare reform bill is not perfect. Some Democrats feel this reform hasn’t gone far enough. And of course the reform bill will face modifications and improvements in the future. However, healthcare reform is a big step in the right direction when it comes to addressing the wrongs of so many insurance company abuses or making health insurance affordable to millions of everyday Americans. Here is exactly what healthcare reform offers, in case anyone is confused. According to http://www.healthcare.BarackObama.com:
1) 5.6 million people with pre-existing conditions will no longer be denied insurance. Starting this year, no child will be denied health insurance due to a pre-existing condition, and by 2014, discrimination against adults with pre-existing conditions will become a thing of the past.

2) Starting in 2014, tax credits for up to 29 million individuals will help pay for health insurance. Individuals and middle-class families who cannot get or afford health insurance through work will be eligible for tax credits that will provide affordable coverage through new health insurance exchanges.

3) 3.5 million small businesses that offer employees health coverage can receive tax cuts of up to 35 percent this year and up to 50 percent in 2014.

4) In 2007 medical expenses were the cause of 62% of all bankruptcies in the US. Healthcare reform will cap the annual-out-of-pocket spending on insurance in order to save 500,000 families from bankruptcy each year.

5) Most importantly, 48 million uninsured Americans will have the opportunity to purchase new, affordable insurance options. Young adults will now be covered by their parents’ insurance until age 26 instead of age 21 (something very important to many college students) and many Americans who were once denied healthcare or couldn’t afford healthcare can be covered, thanks to fairer insurance policies, tax credits and affordable health coverage at lower rates.

There’s definitely a lot of good in the healthcare bill. Yet despite this big step, there are many people who would just as much like to take an even bigger step backward. The new G.O.P slogan is “Repeal and Replace.” Another, less official slogan is “Fire Nancy Pelosi.” On the eve of the historic vote, tensions ran high. Immediately preceding the passage of healthcare reform, thousands of protestors descended on Capitol Hill. On Saturday, March 20th, House Democrats passing through the Longworth House office building were subjected to abusive and derogatory remarks and behavior. Members of the Tea Party spat on Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-Mo.), called Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) a faggot (in offensive lipsy screams no less) and called Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.), a former civil rights activist, a nigger.

Rep. James Clyburn (D-S.C.) commented on the mob-like mentality of the day, saying “It was absolutely shocking to me … I led the first demonstrations in South Carolina, the sit-ins… And quite frankly I heard some things today I have not heard since that day. I heard people saying things that I have not heard since March 15, 1960 when I was marching to try and get off the back of the bus.” He later received an anonymous fax with a picture of a noose. The next day, a brick was thrown through the front office window of Rep. Louise Slaughter’s (D-NY) district office. On Sunday night, Rep. Randy Neugebauer (R-Tex.) “in the heat and emotion of the debate” shouted “baby-killer” at conservative Democratic Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.) on the House floor. Neugebauer later claimed he was referring to the healthcare bill and not Stupak. That weekend a number of calls for President Obama’s assassination appeared on Twitter, Facebook and signs carried by Tea Party protestors. Death threats have been sent out to Democratic congress people, threatening to harm them and their families.

Frankly, having to resort to epithets and death threats only illustrates how very desperate Republicans are. Swett is also alarmed at the direction political rhetoric is taking. Vitriolic language steeped in extreme Republican ideology is not healthy for the overall body politic. This hyperactive hate towards healthcare reform does not produce an environment people would like to live in, much less discuss the issues in. The Republican Party and the Tea Party seem to want to keep their base whipped up with enough fear, hatred and paranoia to carry them over to November’s primaries. Threatening behavior is conducive neither to compromise nor to intellectual debate. However, while the Republicans are involved in an emotional, vengeful discourse against what Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky calls a “raft of sweetheart deals that were struck behind closed doors,” Democrats continue the fight for more accessible healthcare in a cool and collected manner.

Democrats need to believe in and continue fighting for healthcare. The battle isn’t over. In fact, it’s just begun. Throughout the blogosphere and news cycle a number of dark and gloomy predictions have been voiced over the Democrats’ future. One commentator believes that by throwing in his lot with House Speaker Pelosi and by resisting smaller reforms, President Obama has opened a Pandora’s box. Not only has he widened the gaping hole of the great partisan divide, but he has sharpened the Republican argument against him. Before, the Republicans were saying “no” just to get by. Their party had no real rallying point. After their tremendous loss in 2008, the Republicans were back at the drawing board, trying to revitalize and re-center the party with women and youth. Some even said the party was dead; now the Republicans have found their calling card. They hope everyone will look at the messy, drawn-out journey to healthcare and wonder how this perversion of democracy hacked together by a weak majority with socialist leanings ever became law. In contrast, a few disappointed liberals think that letting healthcare reform fail and then blaming “the party of no” for it would have been a better way to save face. Many in this apocalyptic camp, right and left alike, think that in betraying pro-choice (the President signed an executive order to cut funding for non-rape, non-incestuous abortion in the healthcare bill in order to please Stupak and other conservative Democrats), and in throwing the public option under the bus, only to still enrage the right, President Obama will pay in the ballot box, come 2012.

Yet to succumb to pessimism is to look at only one side of the coin. On the other hand, the Republican Party’s groundless, and stubborn behavior united The Left behind a call to action. Healthcare reform was long overdue. As candidate Swett put it, it was embarrassing to see that the US had fallen behind every other developed nation when it came to healthcare. The long ideological battle allowed President Obama to find his inner FDR and LBJ. The nation got to see President Obama use not his “celebrity status” but the wits and calm demeanor we elected him for. He was also fortunate to have powerful and determined allies such as Pelosi and Congressman Reid. After Brown won Kennedy’s seat in Massachusetts, many liberals were ready to throw in the towel and run away from healthcare reform. But Obama and Pelosi were not fazed by the loss of the coveted majority. They bounced back. During last summer’s raucous town hall meetings, as his approval ratings were falling and his fresh-out-of-the-election political capital was dwindling, many said that President Obama’s campaign would live or die with healthcare reform. And healthcare reform lived. President Obama won.

By pushing healthcare reform through Congress, no one can hit President Obama with the “did-nothing” label. Come this fall, the Democrats can come before the people with a promise fulfilled. The elderly, the freelancers, the uninsured, the college students, the single moms, and the working class parents cannot forget what President Obama has just done for them. President Obama will be forever remembered for bringing healthcare reform to pass. As Paul Begala put it, “When David Obey swung that gavel—the same gavel used to hammer home Medicare—and struck it on that historic rostrum, it made a joyful noise unto the Lord. And I for one said, ‘Hallelujah.’”

The aftermath of healthcare reform will be rough but it is certainly not hopeless. The Democrats need to continue to believe that they have done something great for this country, even in the face of severe criticism. Eventually, everyone will come to realize that there is no going back; we can only move forward. Healthcare reform is here to stay.

Aid and the well being of Africa are so inextricably linked in today’s culture that to question the value of the former seems utterly sacrilegious. However, this is exactly what Dambisa Moyo PhD discussed on April 1 over lunch with the Great Issues Scholars. Born and raised in Zambia, Moyo received her BA and MBA at American University in Washington, D.C., her Masters at Harvard and her Ph.D in economics at Oxford. She went to work at the World Bank in D.C. and now has worked for eight years at Goldman Sachs in debt capital markets, hedge fund coverage and in global macroeconomics. She signed copies of her book Dead Aid for the scholars. Her book expounds on the controversial topic of her talk in Moore Hall.

The simple truth is that Western aid doesn’t help; it actually hurts.

There are three things that everyone can agree on whether one is pro-aid or not. The first is that someday Africa should not need aid. Second, everyone knows that in order for Africa to climb out of poverty, African governments need to be motivated to help their people. Third, everyone knows that aid contributes to Africa’s problems, whether they believe aid should be curtailed or not.

It is important to distinguish which aid is hurting Africa. There are three kinds of aid: emergency or humanitarian aid, charity aid sponsored by NGOs, and government-to-government aid. Moyo argues that emergency and charity aid are not the problem. Rather, government-to-government aid, Moyo claims, is holding Africa back and perpetuating the need for aid in the first place.

Government-to-government aid has been so ineffective that since 1970, Africa as a continent has actually become poorer. Today seventy percent of a billion people—a sixth of the world’s population—live on less than a dollar a day. Yet despite the massive failure that government-to-government aid has incurred, the initiative had noble intentions. In the middle of the twentieth century, government-to-government aid seemed like it would work — the Keynesian model illustrated that savings created from aid would lead to investment which would lead to growth for an Africa newly-emerged from colonialism. In 1944, the Bretton Woods Conference lead to the creation of the International Monetary Fund, which oversaw the transactions of huge loans to help nations ravaged by World War II and Africa get back on their feet. For Europe, and much later, India, short but effective aid projects such as the Marshall Plan and the Green Revolution, respectively, helped jump-start economies. However, a continual stream of government-to-government aid to Africa has actually allowed growth to stagnate and poverty to rise. Today, Africa needs to grow its GDP a whopping seven percent per year (almost China’s rate of development) in order to even put a dent into the poverty it has sunk into. At this point, aid is not even scratching the surface.

One reason large scale aid has been allowed to continue for so long is because it’s virtually impossible to have logical discussion about aid. Many of those who staunchly back aid do so for reasons steeped in emotion. Seven African presidents, people elected to represent the interests of the African people, have stated that their nations to do not need this continual stream of aid. However, no one cares about what these elected officials have to say. Instead, it is celebrities like Bono who actually represent Africa in the eyes of the global community. According to the emotional appeals of celebrities, Africa needs aid. Isn’t it odd that the international community doesn’t hold elected leaders responsible for their counties, but it turns to non-Africans for counsel on African interests? Would Americans like it if a foreign pop star represented our interests in the international sphere?
Exactly why does aid not work? Most people think that aid does not work because its effects are stymied by corruption. It’s true; African governments no longer have to be held accountable for their people’s needs and interests. Those in power concern themselves only with holding on to power; aid money doesn’t reach people because it is being stolen by people who will continue to receive aid and remain in power even if they are not providing basic goods and services to the people they claim to serve.

Aid also doesn’t work because it leads to inflation. Too many dollars clogging a small economy make goods and services excessively expensive for ordinary people. People lose their jobs and can’t afford to obtain the basic necessities. Coupled with Dutch disease, the exploitation of natural resources and depressed manufacturing, inflation is the major economic reason for why aid, in the long run, fails. However, an imagined moral duty reminiscent of a modern-day White Man’s Burden continues to prevail.

The problem of dependency also prohibits development since African governments abdicate their responsibility to the people who pay taxes. The governments that depend on aid neglect budgeting and allotting tax money for basic public goods such as healthcare, national security, and infrastructure. This is especially evident when governments don’t lift a finger while waiting on the West to do everything for them. Now the West provides adequate services and billions of dollars in aid. But most of the aid money is squandered on personal gain by aforementioned corrupt officials or is lost in bureaucracy. Western governments are not African governments nor the African people. We cannot be called upon to know an African nation’s needs or do the African government’s jobs for them.

Despite this, the West insists on giving aid to complacent, even corrupt African governments. We maintain an embassy in Zimbabwe and still send aid to Zimbabwe’s government even while we express outrage over the corruption and oppression of Mugabe’s regime. In following our hearts rather than our minds, we are hurting those we intend to help. Africa has the youngest population in the world, but with economic stagnation in many of the continent’s countries there are few job opportunities for these nations’ youth. There is little impetus for these young adults to pursue a degree beyond high school. Disenfranchised unemployed, and uneducated, these youth have little where to turn but to crime and delinquency. Many youths start families early and remain in poverty, in a country with few opportunities and very little economic mobility. Aid has created a continent without a future.

In most African countries there is virtually no middle class—only a huge gap between the rich and the poor. As a result, there are constantly coups in African countries, as different groups of people revolt and try to seize the Presidency and their only chance at a decent life. The high political uncertainty and instability engendered by the economic problem of aid is not just a domestic problem, but an international problem. Restless and unemployed—or worse, underemployed—youth will not only turn to crime and rebellion but will become pirates and terrorists. The hijacking of cruises of the coast of Somalia or the Ugandan underwear bomber is just the beginning. We will only see more of these cases if the question of systematic poverty and negligence resulting from problems that aid engenders is not addressed.

Yet such aid continues to be wasted for reasons not easily grappled with. The international community simply does not expect Africans and black people in general to be able to fend for themselves. There is a quotation from President George W. Bush which (believe it or not) adequately describes this notion: “Beware the soft bigotry of low expectations.” India and China, both with populations larger than a billion, each have a greater percentage poor people than that of the African continent. Yet, we do not see charities trying to entice donors to give money using pictures or videos of Chinese or Indian children on the internet or the television, as neither the Chinese nor the Indian government will allow this, and for good reason.

African children are the poster kids for aid even though that aid probably will not improve their futures. There is obviously a double standard similar to the outright paternalism and racism of old. We need to beware the pity that hides the smug smile of superiority. We cannot feel we are doing our best with the band-aid of aid. We cannot be so comfortable with a perpetually impoverished black continent. And yet, there would be a huge political backlash to any political candidate who suggested ending aid. The West should take a stand and let African nations know that over the next ten or twenty years, aid will gradually decrease and finally come to an end. If people are paid, they should be paid to innovate and thrive, not merely survive. Most importantly, if Africa begins to clean up its act we should reward it economically, not in aid, but in further investments, so that African economies can continue to grow.

There are already hints of an economic overhaul in the making. Kenya and Tanzania have already entered the global market, obtaining budding credit reports. More impressively, under the charismatic leadership of President Kagame, Rwanda has rebounded from the horrific genocide the nation experienced in 1994. Most Westerners only know Rwanda as seen in the film Hotel Rwanda. Yet Kagame’s Rwanda has jumped 63 places in the world economy since 1994. This drastic improvement is the result of a few big changes catalyzed by a simple motivation.

If aid is greatly reduced and Africa is allowed to succeed, the whole world will be better off. No longer will Africa be the ‘sick man’ of the global economy. No longer will we have an entire continent with GDPs lagging behind everybody else’s. Africa not only has great potential for investments and new capital, but also the many intellectuals who could be brought out of poverty and obscurity in order to give back to the global community. All it takes is a belief in the African people, a belief that they are people just like any other people, a people looking for economic and social opportunities for themselves and their children.[cap

Vagina Day, usually shortened to V-Day, embodies a world-wide movement to empower women with knowledge of their bodies, their sexuality, and the dignity and honor that comes with possessing both. Most importantly, V-Day lets people everywhere know that women don’t deserve to be raped, manipulated or abused. In other words: the beatings stop here.

Everyone is aware of the world’s sexist past. One thing most people don’t realize is that the feminist movements of the twentieth century haven’t obliterated sexism or violence against women. In Latin America, gang warfare between drug cartels has led to women being kidnapped and raped. Thailand enjoys a thriving sex trade of women and children. In the Muslim world, women who refuse to wear a veil or a full-body burqa may be subjected to “honor killings” performed by their male relatives. The Japanese government still has not issued an official apology to the thousands of “comfort women” who were abducted from China and Southeast Asia and were forced to have sex with Japanese soldiers during World War II. Wherever or whenever war may be found, whether it be in Iraq, Bosnia, Vietnam, Darfur, or Nanking, women have been gang-raped, tortured, and killed. Most of the aforementioned atrocities were remedied after the fact, if they were remedied at all. These atrocities should have never occurred in the first place.

Vagina Day began as a play by Eve Ensler called the Vagina Monologues. The aim of these monologues, narrated by women of different ethnicities, cultures, ages, sexual orientations, and economic backgrounds, was to allow men and women to learn more about female sexuality so that it would be honored and respected. You would be surprised to know how little women know about their sex organs and their sexuality, even in the present day. Many women have never had an orgasm, even if they are sexually active. Some older women have never even seen their vaginas and probably would not be able to locate their clitoris if asked.

There is too much misunderstanding and mystery surrounding female sexuality. The wonders of female sexuality and sexual organs were deified by ancient cultures for their ability to create life. In ancient India, both male and female sexuality was understood and encouraged. The symbol for female sexuality, the yoni, held just as much, if not more importance, than the male sex symbol, the lingam.

However, the rise in power of patriarchal religious systems such as Confucianism, Judaism, Islam, and Christianity throughout the centuries made a major switch from the earlier religions now collectively referred to as “pagan.” Male sexuality was deified while female sexuality was demonized, crushed and effectively silenced. The remnants of this systematic subjugation are still evident today. For example, why is male masturbation widely accepted and female masturbation hardly spoken of? Did you know that as late as the last century, young girls could have their clitoris medically removed if they masturbated too much? According to the Woman’s Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets, the last clitoridectomy in the United States occurred in 1948 and was performed on a five year old girl. And you thought “female circumcision,” a.k.a. genital mutilation, only happened in Africa. Did a boy ever have his penis removed for masturbating too much?

The silence and the mystery surrounding female sexuality enable women to be misunderstood, abused and ignored. Many women are afraid of saying the word “vagina.” They use other words to describe “down there.” If women are too uncomfortable to even use the right word to describe their primary sexual organ, how can they voice their sexual desires? How can they defend themselves? Are any men afraid to say the word “penis?

“?The Vagina Monologues empower women to reclaim their bodies, their sex, and their vaginas. Women need to realize that their sex organs and their sexual pleasure don’t belong to their husbands, but to them. Women need to know how to be masters of their own sexual pleasure. They should see masturbation as a liberating force, not as something shameful. Did you know that the clitoris is the only organ in human anatomy whose purpose is solely for pleasure? With 8000 nerve fibers the clitoris has more nerve endings than anywhere else in the body including the mouth, lips, fingers and tongue. That is twice the number of penis. Twice! Can you believe that? Natalie Angier, author of Woman: An Intimate Geography, couldn’t believe it either. If men had such an organ, everyone would know about it. Why is there so little focus on women’s sexual fulfillment?

Right now, most of the world’s focus is on male sexual pleasure, from porn to pole dancers. The world must learn to see female sexuality on the same level as male sexuality. That way, the abuse of females physically, emotionally, psychologically, and sexually will not be excused. Many see masculinity as aggressive while femininity is recessive. This is only because female sexuality remains silent, unknown, mysterious, lost on the world and lost on women themselves. Women are then defenseless when it comes to protecting their displaced sexuality, a sexuality that has been used for centuries to prop up male sexuality. Vagina Day has helped women worldwide reclaim a sexuality that must be able to stand strong and alone on its own two feet.

I encourage women (and men) to read the Vagina Monologues or attend the public readings held on Vagina Days all over the globe. Money raised at these readings goes to providing workshops for women struggling with abuse or hoping to learn more about their sexuality. More importantly, the money also goes towards opening safe houses in places like Africa and India, where women fleeing abuse may have nowhere to turn.

The world is slowly being forced to realize that domestic abuse can’t be ignored. It can be found at all levels of society and doesn’t just go away. Even in a feminist society, domestic abuse and sexism still exist. Those who support Vagina Day are fighting for women who are being abused now, but they are also fighting to prevent women from being abused in the future. Hopefully men’s and women’s mindsets about female sexuality can be changed, and changed for the better.?

Last Saturday at the Hop, I watched A Serious Man—the sixth movie I’ve watched out of the ten nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture.

It was a good movie, simply said. I enjoyed the movie even more than Up in the Air—another dark comedy—which was well-written, but unfortunately plagued with obvious moral judgments of its protagonist’s lifestyle. The acting in A Serious Man was definitely the best of all the Best Picture nominees I’ve seen so far.

A Serious Man is full of dark, almost absurd humor told on a subtle, even keel. You’ll find the plot quite familiar if you are familiar with the story of Job in the Bible. Larry, the protagonist, is a good, normal, serious man who’s suddenly plagued with troubles at home and at work.

Some seemingly strange bits are directly tied to Job and other Bible stories. Larry’s monitoring of a beautiful naked woman from his rooftop echoes the story of David and Bathsheba; a random tornado at the end of the film mirrors God’s final answer to Job’s laments over his fate.

Not only did I appreciate these Biblical references, but I also appreciated being immersed in the Jewish-American landscape of the 1960s. It was a rare depiction that was done well—artfully, eloquently and certainly not stereotypically. The landscape felt real, updating an old parable and bringing Job into the twentieth century.

Like Job in the Bible, Larry wonders why Hashem seems to be punishing him unfairly. But the story was also a nice touch on a very human theme that anyone with a notion of a god or morality could understand: why do bad things happen to good people?

The award-winning directors Joel and Ethan Coen have done it again. I’ll be disappointed if this movie doesn’t win Best Picture. I heartily recommend A Serious Man.

Diversity has been coming up a lot lately. The First Year Forum held a talk on race at Dartmouth recently. A week ago Beta had a student panel called “Branded” on the stereotypes that limit the Dartmouth experience, and my floor had a meeting about floor diversity. And of course, it’s Black History month. It seems like the discussion of diversity is everywhere and everyone has a unique opinion. But just what is diversity, and when have we achieved it?

The celebration of diversity is hailed as an emblem of progress in the realm of race relations. But when looked at closely, it’s not very progressive, or at least it’s not the most progressive option.

Diversity today sometimes boils down to pointing out that there is a white, black, and person of Asian descent in a room without bloodshed, so yeah us! However, while pointing out diversity points out that race relations have taken a turn for the better, it only continues to draw attention to race instead of transcending it. Real diversity, which exists in the hearts of the people, does not need to be noted—it simply exists.

In A Paler Shade of White, Eric Arnesen writes that “the very solidarity of language, of clear cut and well-understood categories and definitions of who was black and who was white, has given way to the widely accepted notion that race is not a biological category or a trans-historically fixed phenomenon, but is itself, socially constructed.”

Now if this is true, which I believe it is, then pointing out diversity of race is also a construct. It is excitement over a particular point in history where race is no longer taken as a natural indication to certain proclivities, and people of different races can exist in peace and harmony, but the troublesome notion of race still exists.

This age of diversity is not the end-all of racial history, but simply a happier period of it. Now we should focus on progress and trying to move beyond this period of celebrated diversity. The fact that diversity is held up as the ideal that institutions must be pushed to attain reveals that diversity does not address the real root of the problem: continuing to use race as a social category.

Also, the fact that diversity is applauded and pointed out shows that we are still far from diversity being the norm. Diversity is all well and good, but it is annoying to draw attention to it with such glee as if we’re being exceptionally good for exhibiting it. This means that diversity is not yet accepted as a common good.

Morgan Freeman’s views on Black History Month correlate to this celebratory stance on diversity. In a 60 Minutes interview in 2005, he said, “You’re going to relegate my history to a month? I don’t want a black history month. Black history is American history.” As Freeman rightly points out there is no “white history month,” for it is commemorated all year long. Freeman goes on to say to the interviewer, “I am going to stop calling you a white man, and I’m going to ask you to stop calling me a black man,” because the labels of “white” and “black” merely bring attention to and reinforce race (or racism). Pointing out race or diversity of race does not do anything to de-construct the divides of race.

I’m not advocating silence on race or the cessation of the social and academic dialogue on race; we still need these things for progress. But we should understand that a diversity of labels is not true diversity. We should understand that it is possible to move towards being a society that doesn’t need to draw attention to race, a society that doesn’t need to feel good about diversity, because lack of diversity is no longer a problem.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev) has opened up, in the past several weeks, that longstanding debate on political realism, racism, and the intersection of both. Reid sparked the controversy following the release of Game Change, a book by Mark Halperin and John Heilemann in which it is reported that “[Reid] was wowed by Obama’s oratorical gifts and believed that the country was ready to embrace a black presidential candidate, especially one such as Obama—a ‘light-skinned’ African American ‘with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one.’” The book, which some see as a sludge report of 2008 campaign gossip, was vindicated when Reid admitted to spouting the scurrilous remark.

But does Harry Reid’s comment make people uncomfortable because it’s racist or because it’s true?

The statement is both racist and true. Yet just because it is true does not make it right, and just because it is true does not validate the attitude behind it. Even the most liberal-minded people still buy into, either consciously or otherwise, the prejudices associated with black people— they are violent, overly-sexual, unintelligent, and unintelligible. Today, it is still not uncommon to hear “He’s black and so polite!” or “What a beautiful black model!,” implying that blackness and certain positive attributes are normally incompatible.

Truth can also be found in Reid’s statement. No one primarily speaking a “Negro dialect” or any stereotypical “dialect,” whether Asian, “white trash,” gay, or female, would find him or herself in high office. This is simply a point of political realism, not racism. People want their elected officials to fit their ideals and speak proper English. And when the office in question happens to be the Presidency, people want their candidate’s background, speech patterns and overall demeanor to not be representative (supposedly) of a single community, but of all of America. Some voters may appreciate a certain dialect, but any particular one likely alienates more than it endears.

Dr. Boyce Watkins, in his blog “The Gri,” believes this is indicative of something broader and perhaps more sinister; “What is saddest about Reid’s commentary, however, is that it reminds many African-Americans across the country that if our speech patterns or appearance are “too black” (whatever that means) or too different from what some consider acceptable, we are going to be deemed inferior. It seems that looking, sounding and behaving like a white man is the only way I might be considered to be as good as a white man. That is White Supremacy 101.”

Reid’s commentary is politically realistic, but it is also racist.

Speaking a certain way is an action, and an individual can choose (wisely or unwisely) to act in such a way at certain times and in certain places. Wise and unwise choices can be indicative of character, but skin color cannot.

Whether the non-black people of the United States chose President Obama based on the darkness of his skin is a reflection not on him but on the people and the degree to which they still make important judgments of character based on skin color and its socially constructed connotations.

How do black people (or any people) respond to these realistic but racist “compliments?” There are five typical responses.

At the extreme is passivity or a rebuke. For some, it is easier to stay silent and accept propositions like “I actually have a smart black friend” as problematic but genuine compliments that reflect an unfortunate status quo. Then there is the immediate rebuke, which points out that such statements are inherently racist. A rebuke, though, which leaves no question as to how one feels about the remark, may do more harm than good by discouraging well-meaning, non-black people who straddle a line between tolerance and acceptance.
The third response is humor, which offers no active explanation for or condemnation of the remark it responds to, but relaxes tensions and allows the offensive party to reflect. This is perhaps the most moderate kind of response to these remarks, which is then paired with either a thoughtful response or with passivity and forgiveness. A rebuke with a well-tempered explanation points out racism carefully and kindly, yet actively helps a person understand what was racist about a given remark. Passivity with forgiveness is usually employed towards one who knows better or should know better. There is no condemnation—on the contrary, there is usually unconditional forgiveness when an offensive party realizes his or her error on their own.

Choosing between such options is ultimately left to the discretion of a victimized party, who decides according to the strength of his or her personal connection with the offensive party. This introduces a social, and therefore necessarily political, relativism into the manner with which we react to racist comments.

President Obama chose to passively forgive Reid, saying recently “As far as I am concerned, the book is closed.” He didn’t need to condemn Reid. Reid was aware of what he did and had already apologized. The Republicans, on the other hand, were in an uproar. When RNC Chairman Michael Steele was asked if Reid should resign on Fox News Sunday, he responded saying “I think he should.”

There is a standard where Democrats think they can say these things and apologize when it comes from the mouth of their own. But if it comes from anyone else, it’s racism. It’s either racist or it’s not. And it’s inappropriate, absolutely. Steele compared Reid to Republican Majority Leader Trent Lott, who in 2002, at Strom Thurmond’s 100th birthday celebration, told Thurmond that if he had won his presidential bid in 1948, on a platform that supported segregation, the nation would have been a better place today. Consequently, Senator Lott was forced to step down.

Political relativism has justifiably helped Reid keep his job because his statement is much different than Trent Lott’s endorsement. First of all, it’s doubtful that President Obama would pardon just any Democrat who uttered a racially insensitive remark. Reid is not like other Democrats in the fact that he has sacrificed his career for President Obama’s health care initiative. Before this incident, Reid was already trailing in the polls behind the Republicans in Nevada’s upcoming Senate race due to his support of healthcare reform. The President will not alienate someone who risked so much for him.

Secondly, unlike Lott, Reid isn’t a racist. Though what he said may be, Reid’s actions are not. When Reid’s office called civil rights leaders to apologize, the Reverend Al Sharpton said “While there is no question that Senator Reid did not select the best word choice in this instance, these comments should not distract America from its continued focus on securing healthcare or creating jobs for its people.”

Democratic Committee Chairman Timothy Kaine responded to Steele by saying that, while Lott’s comments seem to imply segregation of blacks is a good thing, Reid was simply politically incorrect while praising then-candidate Obama. Dr. Watkins (author of the “Gri”) argues that “he wasn’t necessarily giving his own opinion. Rather, he was giving his assessment of the preferences of the American public,” albeit in a “racist white male dialect” using outdated words like “negro.”

Even if this was Reid’s opinion, Watkins explains that, “You don’t have to be a racist to embrace white supremacist thinking. You don’t even have to be white, since many African-Americans also believe that whites are superior… Harry Reid’s words are painfully connected to the day-to-day challenges that black people face all across America.”

Others have made comments equally, if not far more, egregious than Reid’s. During the 2008 campaign, former President Clinton tried to convince Senator Edward Kennedy to endorse his wife’s presidential bid. The late senator refused when Clinton said, “A few years ago, this guy would have been getting us coffee.” Outside the campaign in 2007, Joe Biden called Obama, “the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy.” President Obama maintains relations with both of them.

A statement can be racist and politically realist or true and it can make people uncomfortable because of its dual nature. The nature of such statements, or “compliments,” makes responding to them more complex than responding to explicitly racist statements. This doesn’t make such statements right, but the reaction can make all the difference in diffusing or complicating the issue.

The statement itself is indicative of an attitude that may be bigger than the statement and the reaction themselves. Given that it’s nearing Dr. Martin Luther King Day, Dr. Watkins says “Fulfilling the dream of Dr. King is going to take hard work, not another string of benefit dinners and superficial Black History Month celebrations. It is going to take a commitment to policies that seek to eliminate systemic inequality, and a commitment to the dialogue necessary for all Americans to understand each other. This problem is far deeper than Harry Reid.”