HARVARD POLITICAL REVIEW
GLOBALIZING HATRED
SCHEDULE I SACRAMENT
INTERVIEW: MALALA YOUSAFZAI
VOLUME L NO. 1, SPRING 2019 HARVARDPOLITICS.COM
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This issue’s cover topic was originally proposed by Marian Bothner & Savitri Fouda.
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Globalizing Hatred Jessica Boutchie
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Raising Religion Beverly Brown
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Different but the Same Cathy Sun
12 One Nation... Indivisible Alicia Zhang
CAMPUS
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Different but the Same Cathy Sun
27 Time for Climate Justice James Coleman
CULTURE
14 The Harvard Tax Kay Lu
37 Schedule I Sacrament Eve Driver
16 Investigating Care Marcus Trenfield
39 Making a Statement Sandra Ojeaburu
18 Tuition Woes Will Imbrie-Moore
42 The Face on Your Plate Ilana Cohen
UNITED STATES
INTERVIEWS
21 Fifty States (and a Few Territories) Jamie Bikales
45 Girls’ Education and Refugees: Malala Yousafzai Hank Sparks
24 Who is a Refugee? Emily Moss
46 The Pivot to India: Brahma Chellaney Satish Wasti
27 Time for Climate Justice James Coleman
WORLD 30 Modi’s Conundrum Pulkit Agarwal
ENDPAPER 48 Privilege and Proximity Sal DeFrancesco
32 Unchaining Tradition Tamara Shamir 37 Schedule 1 Sacrament Eve Driver
34 A Walk Down Baltic Avenue Kendrick Foster
Email: president@harvardpolitics.com. ISSN 0090-1032. Harvard Political Review. All rights reserved. Image Credits: The Noun Project: 14, 15- Astonish. Pexels: 18- Pixabay; 20- Pixabay. Picryl: 47- British Library. Unsplash: Cover- Jarl Schmidt; 1- Rodrigo Rodriguez; 1, 37- Pretty Drugthings; 1, 9- Leon Liu; 1, 27- Marcus Spiske; 4- Heather Mount; 5- T. Chick McClure; 24- Wellington Rodrigues; 26- Mark Chaves; 32- Zoriana Stakhniv; 39- pina messina; 40, 41- Fancycrave; 42- Thought Catalog; 48- Samuel Zeller. Wikimedia Commons: 3- Guanaco; 3- Wikimedia; 6- Valerii Tkachenko; 11- Gerard Willemsen; 21- Dbebenn; 21- Madden; 21- US Army Institute; 21- Wikimedia; 21- xrmap; 23- United States Congress; 30- Пресс-служба; 34 35- Diliff; 45- Southbank Centre; 46- Chellaney. Design by: Madeleine LaPuerta, Trina Lilja, Erica NewmanCorre, Kendall Rideout, and Matthew Rossi.
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FROM THE PRESIDENT
HARVARD POLITICAL REVIEW
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A Nonpartisan Undergraduate Journal of Politics, Est. 1969—Vol. L, No. 1
EDITORIAL BOARD PRESIDENT: Russell Reed PUBLISHER: Wyatt Hurt MANAGING EDITOR: Chimaoge Ibenwuku ASSOCIATE MANAGING EDITOR: Katie Weiner ASSOCIATE MANAGING EDITOR: Jessica Boutchie STAFF DIRECTOR: Alexis Mealey SENIOR COVERS EDITOR: Sarah Shamoon ASSOCIATE COVERS EDITOR: Lauren Anderson SENIOR U.S. EDITOR: Amir Siraj ASSOCIATE U.S. EDITOR: Ilana Cohen ASSOCIATE U.S. EDITOR: Clay Oxford SENIOR WORLD EDITOR: Keshav Rastogi ASSOCIATE WORLD EDITOR: Kelsey Chen ASSOCIATE WORLD EDITOR: Corbin Duncan SENIOR CULTURE EDITOR: Savitri Fouda ASSOCIATE CULTURE EDITOR: Marian Bothner SENIOR CAMPUS EDITOR: Will Imbrie-Moore ASSOCIATE CAMPUS EDITOR: May Wang INTERVIEWS EDITOR: Gordon Kamer BUSINESS MANAGER: Cate Brock ASSOCIATE BUSINESS MANAGER: Cathy Yin SENIOR DESIGN EDITOR: Matthew Rossi ASSOCIATE DESIGN EDITOR: Madeleine LaPuerta ASSOCIATE DESIGN EDITOR: Trina Lilja SENIOR MULTIMEDIA EDITOR: Jacob Heberle ASSOCIATE MULTIMEDIA EDITOR: Nicolas Medrano SENIOR TECH DIRECTOR: Jason Huang ASSOCIATE TECH DIRECTOR: Natea Eshetu Bashada ASSOCIATE TECH DIRECTOR: Max Snyder COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT DIRECTOR: Alexandra Diggs
STAFF Alisha Ukani, Allison Piper, Amy Danoff, Amy Wang, Annelisa Kingsbury Lee, Audrey Sheehy, Bridger Gordon, Byron Hurlbut, Campbell Erickson , Carter Nakamoto, Chloe Lemmel-Hay, Chris Sun, Clara Bates, Colton Carpenter, Connor Brown, Connor Schoen, Daniel Friedman, David Gutierrez, Devon Black, DJ Kranchalk, Eliot Harrison, Elton Lossner, Emily Malpass, Erica Newman-Corre, Esha Chaudhuri, Ethan Schultz, Gabrielle Landry, Graham Walter, Hadley DeBello, Hope Kudo, Hossam Mabed, Ifedayo Famojuro, Isa Flores-Jones, Jake McIntyre, James Blanchfield, Jamie Bikales, Jamie Weisenberg, Jay Gopalan, Jennifer Horowitz, Johannes Lang, Jon Riege, Jose Larios, Jacob Kern, Joseph Minatel, Josh Berry, Katherine Ho, Kendall Rideout, Kendrick Foster, Kevin Bi, Lainey Newman, Lauren Fadiman, Lindsey Bouldin, Lu Shao, Manuel Abecasis, Matthew Hatfield, Matthew Shaw, Max Snyder, Meena Venkataramanan, Melissa Gayton, Mfundo Radebe, Michael Montella, Michael Wornow, Mikael Tessema, Mimi Alphonsus, Natalie Dabkowski, Nick Danby, Nikole Naloy, Noah Knopf, Noah Redlich, Pawel Rybacki, Peter Wright, Peyton Dunham, Rob Capodilupo, Roger Cawdette, , Ryan Chung, Samantha Frenkel-Popell, Sandy Koenig, Sanika Mahajan, Sarah Tisdall, Satish Wasti, Sebastian Reyes, Sophie Dicara, Tamara Shamir, Tom Slack, Trina Lilja, Vanessa Ruales, Victor Agbafe, Will Finigan, William Boggs, Yash Kumbhat, Yashaar Hafizka, Yuri-Grace Ohashi, Zachary Buttenwieser, Zehan Zhou SENIOR WRITERS: Akshaya Annapragada, Alicia Zhang, Andrew Zucker, Anirudh Suresh, Ari Berman, Beverly Brown, Chad Borgman, Cindy Jung, Darwin Peng, Derek Paulhus, Drew Pendergrass, Henry Brooks, Jacob Link, Marty Berger, Nicolas Yan, Perry Abdulkadir, Perry Arrasmith, Sal DeFrancesco, Sam Kessler
ADVISORY BOARD Jonathan Alter Richard L. Berke E.J. Dionne, Jr. Ron Fournier
Walter Isaacson Whitney Patton Maralee Schwartz
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O
nce every three months, the HPR staff gathers at our home in the Harvard Kennedy School to choose the cover topic for our upcoming print cycle. After everyone settles in, we run through the familiar procedure: members pitch various topics to the crowd, followed by lively debate to determine the winner. At nearly every meeting since I joined three years ago, one pitch has been met with groans and laughter: “Amen.” Without fail, the topic made the final round before losing out to criticism that it was too broad, or too banal. But in December, faced with rising religious tension and conflict in the news, writers voted decisively to dedicate this magazine to untangling the complex role that religion plays in politics and identity globally. Perhaps what makes religion seem mundane is its enormity. It is impossible to understand the history of the United States or of the world without understanding religion, and its legacies and symbols permeate the lives of even the most atheistic. But while it is commonplace, it also remains highly contentious. The media is constantly inundated with stories of violence and persecution fueled by religious difference, and in American politics it has emerged as a formidable tool for political division. Religion has formed nations and dismantled them, just as it has united people and driven them apart. And there is no real opt-out from religion in politics; even secular governments have been characterized primarily by their struggles against it. But despite its great geopolitical power, religion remains deeply intimate. According to the Pew Research Center, 83.7 percent of the global population belongs to an organized religion — and even those who do not are undoubtedly influenced by its existence. At churches, mosques, temples, and monasteries, billions of people interact with religion every day, forming spiritual communities while developing individual identities as well. Much like those who fled England for the Americas on the Mayflower 400 years ago, religious minorities today continue to risk their lives in pursuit of religious freedom, their faith proving stronger than their patriotism. For these
migrants and many others, the politics of religion is not banal at all. While we may shy away from discussing religion, its role in politics, identity, and everyday life cannot be exaggerated. In this edition of the HPR, writers explore a range of topics that lie at the nexus of politics and religion, illuminating nuances often overlooked in partisan media coverage. In “Globalizing Hatred,” Jessica Boutchie uncovers the complicity of American evangelicals in the rise of homophobia in Uganda. Cathy Sun explores religious plurality and persecution in China in “Different but the Same,” and in “One Nation... Indivisible,” Alicia Zhang follows the long legal history of religious language in an increasingly heterogeneous United States. In “Raising Religion,” Beverly Brown synchronizes the stories of two RussianAmericans to reveal an intimate portrait of the intergenerational persecution of religious minorities in Russia. These cover pieces are complemented by a breadth of articles in our recurring sections, including an exclusive interview with education activist Malala Yousafzai. It is with great pride that I present to you the first magazine produced by the HPR’s 51st editorial board. Behind every glossy issue lies the immeasurable talent and commitment of a whole team of editors, writers, artists, and engineers who, to my constant surprise, make it look effortless. We begin the year with a newfound commitment to inclusivity and representation — in our leadership, our larger membership, and our content — and hold fast to the belief that the quality of our content is intertwined with our ability to amplify the voices of our many writers, regardless of background, identity, or political affiliation. Thank you for reading, and for joining us in our undying mission to provide journalism that reflects the great diversity of the Harvard community. Enjoy!
Russell Reed President
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Jessica Boutchie
GLOBALIZING HATRED
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n August 2018, a six-year-long court process against notorious anti-gay, evangelical pastor Scott Lively came to an end. In 2012, the Center for Constitutional Rights filed a federal lawsuit in the state of Massachusetts against Lively on behalf of Sexual Minorities Uganda, a non-profit umbrella organization for LGBT advocacy in Uganda. The suit alleged that Lively, who had traveled to Uganda in the early 2000s, sought to deprive LGBT individuals in Uganda of their fundamental human rights. In the lengthy court process that followed, U.S. District Judge Michael Ponsor opined that there was no question that Lively’s actions “in aiding and abetting efforts to demonize, intimidate, and injure LGBTI people in Uganda [constituted] violations of international law.” However, given that the most significant parts of Lively’s conduct occurred on foreign soil, Ponsor decided that the court did not have extraterritorial jurisdiction over the case and dismissed it. In August 2018, Lively sought to have the pieces of Ponsor’s opinion affirming his crimes stricken from the record but was unsuccessful. Cases like Sexual Minorities Uganda v. Scott Lively provide insight into the bitter history involving American evangelicals and the extreme homophobia they have helped cultivate in African countries like Uganda. Though nearly a decade has passed since the most prominent interventions by American evangelicals,
LGBT individuals in Uganda continue to face intense persecution stemming from the rhetoric once used by these evangelicals. With ongoing efforts to repress LGBT individuals and U.S.-based evangelical groups continuing to intervene, activists warn that only a human rights approach — as opposed to an ideological one — can aid LGBT Ugandans’ struggle.
EVANGELIZING HATRED Christianity has a troubling history with anti-gay sentiment in Uganda. As prominent human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell told the HPR, British colonizers created the first anti-sodomy laws in Uganda as early as the nineteenth century: “Colonizing nations, most notably Britain, exported and imposed anti-gay laws on the people they conquered.” They also “sent out fire and brimstone Christian missionaries who preached against samesex relations,” according to Tatchell. The colonial effort was thus bolstered by proselytizing Christians who sought to ‘civilize’ the once tolerant nations they encountered — in Tatchell’s words, “the existence of homosexuality in Africa was often used by missionaries and colonizers to justify what they described as a ‘civilizing mission.’” When Uganda’s colonial period ended in 1962, these British anti-sodomy laws remained, but went largely unenforced.
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It was not until the early 21st century that, following interventions by evangelical individuals and groups, anti-gay sentiment in the country became what Reverend Kapya Kaoma, a Zambian pastor, human rights activist, and scholar, refers to as “militant homophobia.” As early as 2002, Lively traveled to Uganda to meet and coordinate with Martin Ssempa, an anti-gay activist and minister. Ssempa later became a prominent advocate for the Ugandan Anti-Homosexuality Act of 2009 that sought to punish homosexual acts with life imprisonment or, in some cases, the death penalty. Later, in 2009, Lively returned to Uganda and spoke at a three-day conference on homosexuality hosted by the Family Life Network, a New York-based Christian radio network. Throughout his talks, Lively framed himself as a human rights defender, a lawyer, and a theologian, warning that LGBT individuals wanted to “prey upon” and recruit Ugandan children in order to “defeat the marriage-based society.” “What Scott Lively was doing,” Kaoma explained to the HPR, “was to misrepresent, or demonize, a community of people who are already at the margins of society.” But, because the three elements he used to present himself in Uganda were all “very, very respected across the continent,” he gave himself a powerful platform and then “exploited it.” During his visit, Lively was also invited to private briefings with political and religious leaders and addressed the Ugandan parliament. Following this visit, Lively continued to fight against LGBT equality in Uganda, even discussing and providing suggestions for the 2009 Anti-Homosexuality Act through email exchanges with Ssempa and Ugandan MP David Bahati, the individual who introduced the bill before the Ugandan Parliament in 2009. As chronicled in the 2013 documentary God Loves Uganda, the early 2000s also saw an influx of Christian missionaries from evangelical Christian organizations like the International House of Prayer. In 2010, Lou Engle, a former senior leader at IHOP and the founder of TheCall Ministries, traveled to Uganda to host a rally discussing the alleged evils of homosexuality. Engle also used his platform to praise Ugandan politicians’ “courage” and “righteousness” in promoting the Ugandan Anti-Homosexuality Act of 2009. Unfortunately, individuals like Lively and Engle do not act in isolation. As Kaoma writes in Globalizing the Culture Wars: U.S. Conservatives, African Churches, and Homophobia, American evangelicals in Africa “provide social services, run orphanages, schools, and universities, and offer loans” to Africans through charities like World Vision and Five Talents, which “present a highly conservative, and misleading, position on homosexuality” to the Africans they serve. Of course, not all evangelical missionaries who travel to Uganda and other African countries present similar narratives or maintain similar beliefs. According to a 2015 Pew Research poll, the percentage of American evangelicals who believe that homosexuality should be accepted by society is steadily increasing, rising from 26 to 36 percent between 2007 and 2014. The issue, writes Kaoma, is that “Africans tend not to distinguish between moderate evangelicals in World Vision and far right figures like Scott Lively. For them, the term ‘evangelical’ conveys the notion of Protestant Christianity as a whole, without the substantive distinctions made by American religious groups.” The sensationalized anti-gay rhetoric delivered by extreme
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evangelicals like Lively, though widely dismissed in the United States, thus dominates the politics of homosexuality in countries like Uganda. “Having lost the battle against LGBT rights in the U.S.,” Tatchell summarized, “some evangelicals turned their attention to fighting against LGBT equality in African nations. They went to countries like Uganda and promoted a sensationalist and often fabricated account of gay life in order to provoke African people to turn against their LGBT sisters and brothers.”
FROM BULLY PULPITS TO PARLIAMENTS The messages of hardline American evangelicals resonated in the Ugandan Parliament. In October 2009, just months after Lively’s second visit to Uganda, Bahati introduced the aforementioned Anti-Homosexuality Bill of 2009. The bill did not pass through Parliament in its original form but was later revised, replacing capital punishment for some acts of homosexuality with life imprisonment. The revised bill passed through the Ugandan Parliament in late 2013 and was signed into law by President Yoweri Museveni in February 2014. The law built upon existing anti-sodomy laws in Uganda, adding punishments for any individual or group who offers counseling to LGBT individuals and thus threatening numerous LGBT rights groups in Uganda. Lawmakers in support of the bill argued that homosexual lifestyles threatened to destroy family units by recruiting Ugandan children into these “lifestyles,” echoing statements Lively made during his visit to Uganda in 2009. “All of the talking points that Lively delivered in Uganda [in March],” Kaoma confirmed, “were in the original bill, which was introduced in April.” This Anti-Homosexuality Act of 2014 was nonetheless shortlived. In August 2014, Uganda’s Constitutional Court struck down the law, stating that the bill passed Parliament without the requisite number of MPs present. Because the law was struck down on a mere technicality, the potential for the passage of a similar law remains. As recently as April 2018, for example, Ugandan MP Nsaba Buturo called for Parliament to bring back the Anti-Homosexuality Act. In a similar vein, in March 2018, Uganda’s Speaker of Parliament Rebecca Kadaga threatened to withdraw from the InterParliamentary Union — an organization made up of members of parliament from 178 different countries that seeks to “promote, protect and strengthen democracy around the world” — after some nations attempted to include LGBT people in a declaration on migrants and refugees. The strong homophobic sentiment exacerbated by U.S. evangelicals in Uganda thus continues to influence Ugandan lawmakers today.
EMBOLDENING VIOLENCE Lawmakers, however, do not pose the only threat to LGBT Ugandans. The rhetoric of American evangelicals has also contributed to the dangerously homophobic sentiment that pervades day-to-day life in Uganda. According to the Human Rights Campaign’s September 2015 assessment of life for LGBT people in Uganda, LGBT Ugandans — not the Ugandan government — were blamed for the cutbacks in foreign aid that resulted from the passage of the 2014 Anti-Homosexuality Act. As such, in a country where 96 percent of individuals believe society should
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not accept homosexuality, openly LGBT Ugandans “confront stigma, discrimination, legal restrictions, harassment, intimidation, violence and death threats” in their day-to-day lives. A 2016 report by Sexual Minorities Uganda, for example, documented 264 “verified cases of human rights abuses against LGBT Ugandans” between May 2014 and December 2015. One hundred sixty-two of these reported cases occurred between December 2013 and May 2014, the four-month span that saw the Anti-Homosexuality Act passed through Parliament and signed by the president of Uganda. In comparison, only eight human rights abuses were reported in all of 2013. The passage of the Anti-Homosexuality Act, fueled by the religious anti-gay rhetoric of years prior, immediately encouraged increased persecution of and violence against LGBT citizens of Uganda by both state and non-state actors. A 2016 report by a consortium of NGOs at the Human Rights Awareness and Promotion Forum confirms this increased violence by non-state actors in particular. According to the report, non-state actors were responsible for 54.4 percent of verified cases of human rights abuses against LGBT individuals in Uganda. This percentage represents a striking change from the findings of previous reports, which show that state actors have historically committed the majority of verified violations. In the words of the 2016 report’s authors, the increasing treatment of LGBT individuals as “outcasts” is the “accepted norm,” and “this could be emboldening property owners and other non-state actors to violate rights of LGBTI persons.” Desperate to escape hostile conditions at home, hundreds of LGBT Ugandans have fled to Kenya, registering as refugees with the United Nations High Commisioner for Refugees. Conditions in refugee camps are not much better, however: after one gay pride event was held in Kakuma in June 2018, some LGBT refugees residing in that camp reported that other anti-gay refugees had deliberately set their shelters on fire. Persecuted refugees are then compelled to move to Nairobi, Kenya’s capital, where they continue to face homophobia, xenophobia, and racism, as Adam Fitzgerald from the Refugee Coalition of East Africa told Reuters. That hundreds of Ugandans elect to flee to a country where they continue to face extreme homophobia, Colin Stewart, president of the St. Paul’s Foundation and founder of the Erasing 76 Crimes blog, told the HPR, is “an indication of how bad Uganda is [for LGBT individuals].”
been doing.” Fighting the actions and ideologies of the evangelicals themselves, however, is no longer the most viable option. What activists, journalists, LGBT-supporting evangelicals, and other Africans living in countries with anti-LGBT laws must continue to do in order to overcome the polarized political environment that these evangelicals have constructed, according to Kaoma, is reinforce LGBT Ugandans’ humanity and human rights. “The only way to fight this is by putting human faces to it, as opposed to arguing in the U.N., or in the churches, or in the conference rooms … Unless we do that, it will just be an ideological battle. But this is a life and death battle.” Kaoma continued, “I don’t think that many Africans will agree that we should kill gays. Many Christians will say that is beyond what we stand for. So rather than making it an ideological battle, we need to make it a human battle — by showing the face of the LGBT person, and what that demonization does to people.” A decade ago, extreme ideologies rooted in religious principles exacerbated LGBT Ugandans’ struggle. Today, only appeals to LGBT individuals’ human rights can help improve it. Lawsuits like Sexual Minorities Uganda v. Scott Lively do just that, affirming that efforts to demonize sexual minorities constitute crimes against humanity. n
THE POLITICS OF BEING Ten years have passed since the first major interventions by prominent American evangelicals, but their influence over Ugandan lawmakers continues. Ugandan politicians continue to deny rights to LGBT individuals both in Uganda and elsewhere. The Ugandan government continues to forbid gay pride celebrations, and the Ugandan police continue to raid the pride events that do occur. Most recently, in October 2018, the Ugandan government prevented LGBT activists from opening a center to support LGBT individuals in Uganda. Evangelical groups also continue to have a political presence in the region. According to Kaoma, despite extensive media coverage and criticism of the actions of individuals like Lively and Engle, some American evangelicals feel that now is “the time to stand up for their beliefs — so rather than retreating, they [continue to] go in there and support what Scott Lively had
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